Permafrost(34)

Cho was sweating and shaking. There was a damp line around his collar. But he nodded and reached the telephone. While he was doing that, I took the automatic and examined it carefully. It had felt familiar to me and now I knew exactly why. My hands had been on it once before, a long time ago.

“They found it in the wreckage,” Cho said, reading my expression.

“The wreckage of what?”

Cho completed his telephone call, trying no tricks. Then he reached over to the end of the desk and retrieved the thing that had been in his fingers when I arrived. I recognised it as well. It was the dial, the piece of instrumentation he had used as a paperweight, when we were piecing together my time location.

Not a dial, I now realised. An aircraft altimeter.

“Where did it come down?” I asked, beginning to shiver.

“Right under us,” Cho said. “At the exact centre of the station, precisely where the Admiral Nerva’s positioned.”

“That’s impossible. I was in that plane. We didn’t pick our landing site. We just came down on some random piece of ice, somewhere in the Yenisei Gulf.”

“You didn’t pick the landing site,” Cho answered. “But I picked Permafrost.”

*

We crossed over the connecting bridge to the carrier, two small figures stooping against the wind. I had one hand on the Makarov, the other on my cane.

“I am prepared to believe that we neglected this detail,” Cho said, pausing to shout back to me over the wind’s howl. “That the upstream probes could be used against us. But I cannot see how a shift to a new equilibrium is going to help us now.” His eyes flashed to the automatic. “Are you serious about pointing that gun at me?”

“Where did you find it?”

“It reached me by the same means as the altimeter, recovered from the wreckage. There was a note, stuffed into the broken face of the altimeter. May we continue this once we’re indoors?”

“Can I trust you, Cho?”

“We are in this together, Valentina. Two people caught up in the gears of something much larger than ourselves. You may do with the weapon as you wish. I am . . . persuaded of your seriousness.”

“And my rightness?”

“Yes.”

I passed him the Makarov. “Then you as may well have this. Shoot me now, I’m not sure I’d really care. Things can’t get much worse than they already are.”

Cho reached for the automatic as if it might be a trick, but I surrendered my grip on it without ceremony, much preferring that he be the one who carried it.

He must have seen it in my face.

“Did you have to do something with that weapon, Valentina?”

“Yes. A bad thing, a long time ago.”

Half a day ago, half a century.

“I am sorry. Sorry for all of this. Sorry for what we put any of you through. But if it isn’t too late to make things better . . .”

“It may be. But we try, anyway.”

“I am concerned that we will fail with the seeds. That we have failed, or did fail, or will fail.”

“Something will happen, Cho. Something must happen. Or else upstream wouldn’t be trying so hard to undo our work.” I gave him an encouraging shove. “Keep going! We’ve got to see this through.”

The bridge steepened on its ascent and then we entered the side of the carrier, out of the wind as soon as we passed into the hull, and then out of the full fury of the cold once the weather door was closed behind us. It was still chilly in the carrier, but infinitely more bearable than the conditions inside.

After a brief deliberation we agreed to go straight to the Brothers, rather than concentrating our efforts on the time-probes. The Brothers were delicate artificial intelligences, dependent on power and cooling systems. The time-probes were rugged medical machines that had already survived decades of misuse and neglect. They could be damaged, but it would take far too long with the tools at our disposal.

“To be really sure,” Cho said. “We would need to destroy the Admiral Nerva.”

“Could we?”

Cho thought about his answer before giving it. “The means exist.”

I followed him down to the Brothers’ level, but not before unhooking a fire extinguisher from its wall rack. I felt better for having something dumb and heavy in my hands. Cho glanced back, his hand tight on the Makarov. He pushed open a connecting door, hesitating before stepping over the metal rim at the base of the doorway. I was only a pace behind him when I had to catch myself, nearly dropping the extinguisher. I was hit by a wave of nausea and headache.

“What is it?” Cho asked.

“Paradox noise,” I answered, as certain of that as I’d been of anything. “Just like the times when I was embedded, and skirting close to some major change.”

“Now we are dealing with paradox noise generated by changes to upstream, rather than downstream events. I am afraid it will get worse as we approach the Brothers. Can you bear it?”

“It must mean we get to affect a change.”

Cho set his face determinedly.

“For better or worse.”

Side by side now, we walked into the echoing darkness that was the Brothers’ chamber. As always, the four artificial intelligences were the only illuminated things in the room. Their dark columns rose from pools of gridded light around their bases, where the underfloor systems were connected. Only as we approached did data patterns begin to flicker across the faces of the machines themselves.