Light and Shadow 4

Mea Culpa - Again

@copyright 2009 Jean G Hontz all rights reserved

 
I slammed up screens as best I could. I'd been learning Sam's mind and thought I had screened effectively this time. We'd see.

"I need to think," I said aloud.

-?-

"Undisturbed. Please," I added, grudgingly.

I felt Sam withdraw completely from my mind, even from the farspeak center.

"Thanks. I'll give a shout when I'm ready to talk again," I said aloud.

"Affirm." Sam said. Then me and the scotch were alone in the room.

I got up and refilled my drink. I then walked over to the transparent membrane and regarded the view. It was not, in any way shape or form, a normal view.  We were, I decided, considering the data Sam had shared, going backwards in time.  He was in the middle of a time jump.

"Quel putain de gachis," I muttered angrily. Nothing quite like being spirited off without a by your leave.  No wonder I couldn't feel my bond to Dinah. Nor to Cola nor to the kids. Would they think I was dead? What would Dinah do?  Why the hell hadn't Sam let me reassure her?  Probably, I decided, because it never occurred to him that another human might worry. Well, with luck  Aaru would fess up. Maybe... Yeah, I was gonna have a long and serious talk with that female whale when I got back. If I got back.

I turned at a slight noise then, to see what I thought of as one of the walls of the room I was in beginning to go transparent then disappear entirely. Standing on the other side of it was a gargantuan blond warrior.  He looked as startled to see me as I no doubt looked at seeing him.

"Ah, not the only one kidnapped I see," I muttered. "Merde alors."

Kalket stepped tentatively forward as if wondering if there were still some transparent force field or something to keep us apart. There wasn't, as became apparent when he stepped through the former wall and walked up to stand beside me, regarding the vista.

On my intimate mental mode, Kal asked, -Safe to speak?-

"Yeah, why not," I replied aloud. "Surprised to see you here."

"Affirm, likewise," Kalket replied aloud. His mind was buzzing away considering all the implications of our predicament. I let him process it all, unsure how much he knew, what he didn't yet know.

"It wants me to contact my father," Kal finally said aloud.

That got my attention. Obviously we needed to compare notes and share what we knew.

----------

An hour or so later, Kal and I, sitting with our drinks in hand, regarded one another. We'd combined what we knew regarding our situation and I didn't like it much. Kal was more sanguine. But then he was Tanu. Give him a sword and all problems dissolved in the face of his inbred warrior aggressiveness.

We'd been silent for a few minutes when I offered, "So let me get this straight.  Apparently, because of my interference with their past, my future, the balance the Tanu had managed to achieve in the Many Coloured Land has been upset."

Kal nodded.  "The ship hasn't explained exactly how. But then I doubt he'd know," Kal added.  "He doesn't seem the type to even care, so I'm not sure.."

I nodded. My mind was working busily at trying to understand how the changes I'd made could possibly have affected the Pliocene. It was, after all, 6 million years in the past. How could something I'd done... The penny dropped.

I'd missed the first few words Kal had said as he stood. "I should check on him," was all I'd heard.

"Check on who?" I asked.

Kal regarded me a moment. "Paxx. Paxx Palandjian."

"Paxx?" I asked stupidly.

"I just told you," Kal replied, staring at me as if he were trying to figure out if I'd lost half my brain. "He'd been hurt, showed up on board Aaru, I was in the middle of healing him when suddenly I was brought here to this ship. I raised holy hell and then the ship brought Paxx."

"Oh..." I commented again quite stupidly. "Well, he should fit right into things there."

Kalket grinned. "Yes, he should. He's got latent Tanu genes in him, I'm quite certain."

I gave that some thought and decided I'd have to take a look at that. Now that Kalket mentioned it, it might easily be possible.

I followed Kal through the open wall area and sure enough, there was Paxx laid out on a bed of the sort Aaru had created for Kalket's ship's surgery.

Paxx was looking pale still and out of it. Kal had wrapped one of Paxx's legs in the healing skin the Tanu used.  There had been a nasty wound in Paxx's thigh, which was now mostly just scar and would, probably, not even be a scar when the skin completed it's healing.

"What happened?" I asked.

"According to Aaru, a pirate attack on his ship. Dragonfly went to a port for repair. Aaru, who'd been monitoring the event, brought him to me when he passed out from blood loss. She was afraid for him."

"She watches him?" I asked, my surprise clear.

Kalket laughed. "She watches all of us, I think."

"And yet here we are, kidnapped, and she apparently helped," I growled in reply.

"It would seem she thinks you'd want this," Kal replied. "And if my people are in trouble, then I want to help them," the Tanu warrior added softly, eying me thoughtfully.

I frowned.  "I assume Paxx will be healed soon?" I'm not good at redaction, although I can rip a brain apart and put it back together again fairly well. I guess I'm just not that interested in the rest of someone's body. Other than Dinah's.

"Yes. He might have some residual muscle weakness until he works the repaired limb a bit, but he'll be fine."

"Good," I replied. "I wouldn't want him to be at a disadvantage when we drop into orbit around the Many Coloured Land."

"You should rest," came Sam's deep voice from the aether. "We have a number of your hours before our arrival."

I had to admit fatigue had set in. I just wasn't sure I'd sleep. Alone.  "Fine," I muttered. "How about create me a private room with a bed and bath, and do we have anything I can conjure some food out of?"

I left Kal with Paxx and followed the mental directions Sam gave me. At the end of them I found a room that could have doubled for my own aboard Aaru, except it didn't include Dinah. A table was set with food I liked. Yes, I'd definitely have to discuss this with Aaru.

I sat down and ate a crisp watercress salad, sea bass in a wine and mushroom sauce with wild rice and pecans, and there were fresh strawberries and raspberries for dessert. The wine was quite good.

I forced myself to savor the food as my mind raced through what it knew, and what I guessed.

My alterations had, apparently, worked their way through the fabric of time. It isn't a steadily flowing river, after all, despite our human experience of it. I thought of it as a sort of mesh net, with undulations throughout that let it writhe around based on winds I didn't understand but that created ripples and rents and waves that let one time rub up against another time. Infections were then possible. Perhaps there were even multiple layers of netting that represented possible different universes where things might have happened differently, and they too could rub up against each other. I sighed.

So, whether I was in the same time-stream I'd started out on, or not, this one had a different future and somehow my actions had changed its past, or at least infected somehow that past. I groaned. So stopping my own Rebellion, preventing my own birth, had, apparently created other problems.

I sat back and considered. The Guderian device that would open the Pliocene - a one way Time Gate - could not have been affected, at least not directly, by me. Or could it? He'd used some of the technology from the intervention, if I remembered correctly. Could it be he never got it built?  Or .. I sighed. This was pointless. I'd just have to wait to get there to assess the differences and try to understand just what the hell Sam thought I could do, or not do, to change things for the better for the Tanu and Firvulag, not to mention future humanity.

I found I did indeed have a bathroom and made use of it. Then I stood in the shower for some time, trying to force my mind to cycle slower so that I could rest. Instead I found my emotions cycling toward despair. Would everything I do always end in disaster for someone, or somewhere?  If I changed things here, would that change the death of my grandmother and make me possible again, thus changing things here yet again, and I'd be in an endless loop of repairs and changes and have no life of my own.  "Fuck."

I finally got out of the shower, toweled off, and lay on the bed, staring up at what passed for a ceiling. I tried to mindspeak Kalket.

He replied quite quickly to reassure me he was being well treated and that Paxx would awaken in a few hours.

I wished him a good rest and closed my eyes. To my surprise I slept.

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