Palimpsest Read online

  “Stasis Control thus has access to a theoretical maximum of 5.6 times 1021 slots across the totality of our history—but our legion of humanity comes perilously close, with a total of 2 times 10 19 people. Many of the total available slots are reserved for data, relaying the totality of recorded human history to the Library—fully ninety-six percent of humanity lives in eras where ubiquitous surveillance or personal life-logging technologies have made the recording of absolute history possible, and we obviously need to archive their lifelines. Only the ur-historical prelude to Stasis, and periods of complete civilizational collapse and Reseeding, are not being monitored in exhaustive detail.

  “To make matters worse: in practice there are far fewer slots available for actual traffic, because we are not, as a species, well equipped for reacting in spans of less than a second. The seven-millisecond latency of a timegate is shorter by an order of magnitude than the usual duration of a gate used for transport.

  “We dare not use gates for iterated computational processes, or to open permanent synchronous links between epochs, and while we could in theory use it to enable a single faster-than-light starship, that would be horribly wasteful. So we are limited to blink-and-it’s-gone wormholes connecting time slices of interest. And we must conclude that the slots we allocate to temporal traffic are a scarce resource because—”

  Yarrow paused and glanced across her audience. Pierce shifted slightly on his stool, a growing tension in his crotch giving his distraction a focus. Her gaze lingered on him a moment too long, as if she sensed his inattention: the slight hint of amusement, imperceptible microexpressions barely glimpsed at the corners of her mouth, sent a panicky shiver up his spine. She’s going to ask questions, he realized, as she opened her lips. “What applications of the timegate are ruled out by the slot latency period, class? Does anyone know? Student Pierce? What do you know?” She looked at him directly, expectantly. The half smile nibbled at her cheeks, but her eyes were cool.

  “I, um, I don’t—” Pierce flailed for words, dragged back to the embarrassing present from his sensual daydream. “The latency period?”

  “You don’t what?” Honorable Scholar Yarrow raised one perfect eyebrow in feigned disbelief at his fluster. “But of course, Student Pierce. You don’t. That has always been your besetting weakness: you’re easily distracted. Too curious for your own good.” Her smile finally broke, icy amusement crinkling around her eyes. “See me in my office after the tutorial,” she said, then turned her attention back to the rest of the class, leaving him to stew in fearful anticipation. “I do hope you have been paying more attention—”

  The rest of Yarrow’s lecture slid past Pierce in a delirium of embarrassment as she spoke of deep time, of salami-sliced vistas of continental drift and re-formation, of megayears devoted to starlifting and the frozen, lifeless gigayears during which the Earth had been dislodged from its celestial track, to drift far from the sun while certain necessary restructuring was carried out. She knows me, he realized sickly, watching the pale lips curl around words that meant nothing and everything. She’s met me before. These things happened in the Stasis; the formal etiquette was deliberate padding to break the soul-shaking impact of such collisions with the consequences of your own future. She must think I’m an idiot—

  The lecture ended in a flurry of bowing and dismissals. Confused, Pierce found himself standing before the Scholar on the roof of the world, beneath the watching moon. She was very beautiful, and he was utterly mortified. “Honorable Scholar, I don’t know how to explain, I—”

  “Silence.” Yarrow touched one index finger to his lips. His nostrils flared at the scent of her, floral and strange. “I told you to see me in my office. Are you coming?”

  Pierce gaped at her. “But Honorable Scholar, I—”

  “—Forgot that, as your tutor, I am authorized to review your Library record.” She smiled secretively. “But I didn’t need to: You—your future self—told me why you were distracted, many years-subjective ago. There is a long history between us.” Her humor dispersed like mist before a hot wind. “Will you come with me now? And not make an unhappening of our life together?”

  “But I—” For the first time he noticed she was using the honorific form of “you,” in its most intimate and personal case. “What do you mean, our life?”

  She began to walk toward the steps leading down to the Northern Courtyard. “Our life?” He called after her, dawning anger at the way he’d been manipulated lending his voice an edge. “What do you mean, our life?”

  She glanced back at him, her expression peculiar—almost wistful. “You’ll never know if you don’t get over your pride, will you?” Then she looked back at the two hundred stone steps that lay before her, inanimate and treacherous, and began to descend the mountainside. Her gait was as steady and dignified as any matron turning her back on young love and false memories.

  He watched her recede for almost a minute before his injured dignity gave way, and he ran after her, stumbling recklessly from step to stone, desperate to discover his future.

  HACKING HISTORY

  Pleasure Empires

  They will welcome you as a prince among princes, and they will worship you as a god among gods. They will wipe the sweat from your brow and the dust of the road from your feet, and they will offer to you their sons and daughters and the wine of their vineyards. Their world exists only to please the angels of the celestial court, and we have granted you this leave to dwell among our worshippers, with all the rights and honors of a god made flesh.

  They will bring wine unto you, and the fruit of the dream poppy. They will clothe you in silk and gold, and lie naked beneath your feet, and abase themselves before your every whim. They are the people of the Pleasure Empires, established from time to time by the decree of the lords of Stasis to serve their loyal servants, and it is their honor and their duty to obey you and demonstrate their love for you in any way that you desire, for all their days and lifetimes upon the Earth. And you will dwell among them in a palace of alabaster, surrounded by gardens of delight, and you shall want for nothing.

  Your days of pleasure will number one thousand and one; your lovers will number a thousand or one as you please; your pleasures will be without number; and the number of tomorrow’s parties shall be beyond measure. You need not leave until the pleasures of flesh and mind pale, and the novelty of infinite luxury becomes a weight on your soul. Then and only then, you will yearn for the duty which lends meaning to life; energized, you will return to service with serenity and enthusiasm. And your colleagues will turn aside from their tasks and wonder at your eagerness: for though you may have spent a century in the Pleasure Empires, your absence from your duty will have lasted barely a heartbeat. You are a loyal servant of the Stasis: and you may return to paradise whenever it pleases you, because we want you to be happy in your work.

  Palimpsest Ambush

  Almost a hundred kiloyears had passed since the Yellowstone eruption that wiped out the Benzin and the hunter-gatherer tribes of the Gulf Coast. The new Reseeding was twelve thousand years old; civilization had taken root again, spreading around the planet with the efflorescent enthusiasm of a parasitic vine. It was currently going through an expansionist-mercantilist phase, scattered city-states and tribute empires gradually coalescing and moving toward a tentative enlightenment. Eventually they’d rediscover electronics and, with the institution of a ubiquitous surveillance program, finally reconquer the heights of true civilization. Nobody looking at the flourishing cities and the white-sailed trade ships could imagine that the people who built them were destined for anything but glory.

  Pierce stumbled along a twisty cobbled lane off the Chandler’s Street in Carnegra, doing his faux-drunken best to look like part of the scenery. Sailors fresh ashore from Ipsolian League boats weren’t a rarity here, and it’d certainly explain his lack of fluency in Imagra, the local creole. It was another training assignment, but with six more years-subjective of training and a Stasis phon
e implant, Pierce now had some degree of independence. He was trusted to work away from the watchful eyes of his supervisor, on assignments deemed safe for a probationer-agent.

  “Proceed to the Red Duck on Margrave Way at the third hour of Korsday. Take your detox first, and stay on the small beer. You’re there as a level-one observer and level-zero exit decoy to cover our other agent’s departure. There’s going to be a fight, and you need to be ready to look after yourself; but remember, you’re meant to be a drunken sailor, so you need to look the part until things kick off. Once your target is out of the picture, you’re free to leave. If it turns hot, escalate it to me, and I’ll untangle things retroactively.”

  It was all straightforward stuff, although normally Pierce wouldn’t be assigned to a job in Carnegra, or indeed to any job in this epoch. Training to blend in seamlessly with an alien culture was difficult enough that Stasis agents usually worked in their home era, or as close to it as possible, where their local knowledge was most useful. As it was, two months of full-time study had given him just enough background to masquerade as a foreign sailor—in an archipelagean society that was still three centuries away from reinventing the telegraph. It’s a personalized test, he’d realized with a jittery shudder of alertness, as if he’d just downed a mug of maté. Someone up the line in Operational Analysis would be watching his performance, judging his flexibility. He determined to give it his all.

  It took him two months of hard training, in language and cultural studies and local field procedures—all for less than six hours on the ground in Carnegra. And the reason he was certain it was a test: Supervisor Hark had changed the subject when he’d asked who he was there to cover for.

  Margrave Way was a cobblestoned alley, stepped every few meters to allow for the slope of the hillside, lined on either side with the single-story bamboo shopfronts of fishmongers and chandlers. Pierce threaded his wobbly way around servants out shopping for the daily catch, water carriers, fruit and vegetable sellers, and beggars; dodged a rice merchant’s train of dwarf dromedaries loaded with sacks; and avoided a pair of black-robed scholars from one of the seminaries that straggled around the flanks of the hill like the thinning hair on the pate of an elderly priest. Banners rippled in the weak onshore breeze; paper skull-lanterns with mirror-polished eyes to repel evil spirits bounced gaudily beneath the eaves as he entered the inn.

  The Red Duck was painted the color of its namesake. Pierce hunched beneath the low awning and probed the gloom carefully, finally emerging into the yard out back with his eyes watering. At this hour the yard was half-empty, for the tavern made much of its trade in food. The scent of honeysuckle hung heavy over the decking; the hibiscus bushes at the sides of the yard were riotously red. Pierce staked out a bench near the rear wall with a clear view of the entrance and the latrines, then unobtrusively audited the other patrons, careful to avoid eye contact. Even half-empty, the yard held the publican’s young sons (shuffling hither and yon to fill cups for the customers), four presumably genuine drunken sailors, three liveried servants from the seminaries, a couple of gaudily clad women whose burlesque approach to the sailors was blatantly professional, and three cloak-shrouded pilgrims from the highlands of what had once been Cascadia—presumably come to visit the shrines and holy baths of the southern lands. At least, to a first approximation.

  One of the lads was at Pierce’s elbow, asking something about service and food. “Give beer,” Pierce managed haltingly. “Good beer light two coin value.” The tap-boy vanished, returned with a stoneware mug full of warm suds that smelled faintly of bananas. “Good, good.” Pierce fumbled with his change, pawing over it as if unsure. He passed two clipped and blackened coins to the kid—both threaded with passive RF transceivers, beacons to tell his contact that they were not alone.

  As Pierce raised his mug to his lips in unfeigned happy anticipation, his phone buzzed. It was a disturbing sensation, utterly unnatural, and it had taken him much practice to learn not to jump when it happened. He scanned the beer garden, concealing his mouth with his mug as he did so. A murder of crows—seminary students flocking to the watering hole—was raucously establishing its pecking order in the vestibule, one of the sailors had fallen forward across the table while his fellow tried to rouse him, and a working girl in a red wrap was walking toward the back wall, humming tunelessly. Bingo, he thought, with a smug flicker of satisfaction.

  Pierce twitched a stomach muscle, goosing his phone. The other Stasis agent would feel a shiver and buzz like an angry yellow jacket—and indeed, as he watched, the woman in red glanced round abruptly. Pierce twitched again as her gaze flickered over him: this time involuntarily, in the grip of something akin to déjà vu. Can’t be, he realized an instant later. She wouldn’t be on a field op like this!

  The woman in red turned and sidestepped toward his bench, subvocalizing. “You’re my cover, yes? Let’s get out of here right now, it’s going bad.”

  Pierce began to stand. “Yarrow?” he asked. The sailor who was trying to rouse his friend started tugging at his shoulder.

  “ Yes? Look, what’s your exit plan?” She sounded edgy.

  “But—” He froze, his stomach twisting. She doesn’t know me, he realized. “Sorry. Can you get over the wall if I create a diversion?” he sent, his heart hammering. He hadn’t seen her in three years-subjective—she’d blown through his life like a runaway train, then vanished as abruptly as she’d arrived, leaving behind a scrawled note to say she’d been called uptime by Control, and a final quick charcoal sketch.

  “I think so, but there are two— ” The sailor stood up and shouted incoherently at her just as Pierce’s phone buzzed again. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “Hard contact in five seconds!” The other agent, whoever he was, sounded urgent. “Stay back.”

  The sailor shouted again, and this time Pierce understood it: “Murderer!” He climbed over the table and drew a long, curved knife, moving forward.

  “Get behind me.” Pierce stepped between Yarrow and the sailor, his thoughts a chaotic mess of This is stupid and What did she do? and Who else? as he paged Supervisor Hark. “Peace,” he said in faltering Carnegran, “am friend? Want drink?”

  Behind the angry sailor the priest-students were standing up, black robes flapping as they spread out, calling to one another. Yarrow retreated behind him: his phone vibrated again, then, improbably, a fourth time. There were too many agents. “What’s happening?” asked Hark.

  “I think it’s a palimpsest,” Pierce managed to send. Like an inked parchment scrubbed clean and reused, a section of history that had been multiply overwritten. He held his hands up, addressed the sailor, “You want. Thing. Money?”

  The third agent, who’d warned of contact: “Drop. Now!”

  Pierce began to fall as something, someone—Yarrow?—grabbed his shoulder and pushed sideways.

  One of the students let his robe slide open. It slid down from his shoulders, gaping to reveal an iridescent fluidity that followed the rough contours of a human body, flexing and rippling like molten glass. Its upper margin flowed and swelled around its wearer’s neck and chin, bulging upward to engulf his head as he stepped out of the black scholar’s robe.

  The sailor held his knife high, point down as he advanced on Pierce. Pierce’s focus narrowed as he brought his fall under control, preparing to roll and trigger the telescopic baton in his sleeve—

  A gunshot, shockingly loud, split the afternoon air. The sailor’s head disappeared in a crimson haze, splattering across Pierce’s face. The corpse lurched and collapsed like a dropped sack. Somebody—Yarrow?—cried out behind him, as Pierce pushed back with his left arm, trying to blink the red fog from his vision.

  The student’s robe was taking on a life of its own, contracting and standing up like a malign shadow behind its master as the human-shaped blob of walking water turned and raised one hand toward the roof. A chorus of screams rose behind it as one of the other seminarians, who had unwisely reached for the robe,
collapsed convulsing.

  “Stay down!” It was the third agent. “Play dead.”

  “My knee’s—”

  Pierce managed a sidelong look that took in Yarrow’s expression of fear with a shudder of self-recognition. “I’ll decoy,” he sent. Then, a curious clarity of purpose in his mind, he rolled sideways and scrambled toward the interior of the tavern.

  Several things happened in the next three seconds:

  First, a brilliant turquoise circle two meters in diameter flickered open, hovering directly in front of the rear wall of the beer garden. A double handful of enormous purple hornets burst from its surface. Most arrowed toward the students, who had entangled themselves in a panicky crush at the exit: two turned and darted straight up toward the balcony level.

  Next, a spark, bright as lightning, leapt between the watery humanoid’s upraised hand and the ceiling.

  Finally, something punched Pierce in the chest with such breath-taking violence that he found, to his shock and surprise, that his hands and feet didn’t seem to want to work anymore.

  “Agent down,” someone signalled, and it seemed to him that this was something he ought to make sense of, but sense was ebbing fast in a buzz of angry hornets as the pinkness faded to gray. And then everything was quiet for a long time.

  Internal Affairs

  “Do you know anyone who wants you dead, scholar-agent?” The investigator from Internal Affairs leaned over Pierce, his hands clasped together in a manner that reminded Pierce of a hungry mantis. His ears (Pierce couldn’t help but notice) were prominent and pink, little radar dishes adorning the sides of a thin face. It had to be an ironic comment if not an outright insult, his adoption of the likeness of Franz Kafka. Or perhaps the man from Internal Affairs simply didn’t want to be recognized.