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been fingering as
I had pondered where to begin the time-diving sweeps.
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"Colonel-General, I have already supplied tools. Gerloc and some of the other
divers are providing new equipment.
But there are only so many of us. I was to have three timedivers to help map
the possible technical systems. All I have is Derika, because you said the
equipment was more important."
Odin Thor opened his mouth.
I held up my hand. "Let me explain. A star system lasts for millions of years.
Not all systems have habitable planets.
Those that are habitable are used for only a fraction of their physical
lifespan. An even smaller number of those have high-technology civilizations,
and those civilizations do not last long."
"But you can time-dive!"
"Diving takes a fraction of an instant. That's true. But," I lied, "you know
you cannot see real time from the undertime, and that means spending real time
investigating each possibility. With just two timedivers, you cannot ex-
pect great progress in a mere few ten-days."
"You argue too much, Sammis. Former Trooper Sammis."
"Yes, Colonel-General. It is one of my faults, but I also do my best to
produce. So let me."
Odin Thor knew that. So he glowered at me again and stomped out of the cottage
kitchen. Verlin had not said a word, and he followed Odin Thor. The two of
them stood by the vegetable garden that Tyra had planted and continued to
cultivate. As they whispered to each other, it looked like a conspiracy, but
it was only a discussion of where Odin Thor wanted to go next. He put his hand
on Verlin's shoulder, as if congratulating the fellow, and they disappeared
into the undertime.
I could sense the vortex. Odin Thor spent energy like water. That might be
because he never felt what he was doing.
I decided to see if I could catch Wryan before Odin Thor did. My first thought
was our hidden operational center in the Eastron mountains. I was so upset
that I dropped undertime still holding on to the small ceramic tile I had been
fingering.
When I emerged near the waterfall on the Bardwalls, the tile was flashing with
flecks of timelight or energy or something. I set it on the ground and stared
at it. A thought at the back of my mind tickled at me, some memory of
something, but I could not exactly recall what. I picked the tile back up and
studied it. The energy flows were looped into the undertime somehow, and my
fingers had a tendency to skitter off the surface.
The tile was linked undertime, not totally either in or out of the now. Why
hadn't anything like that happened before?
To me or to anyone else?
Crack!
The noise was an impact on the boulder. The tile was unscathed, but there was
a dent in the granite.
Plain old fired clay, wrapped into the undertime some way, was tougher than
solid granite. If you could do that with stone or metal, what a building
material you'd have. I could see it wouldn't work for weapons, even knives,
because the time flows had made the tile hard to hold.
"Oh ..." Then I remembered a long ago dream about a tower built with
glittering stone. A real dive made half-asleep?
I picked up a chunk of stone the size of my fist and dropped undertime, then
popped back out. There was no change in the stone that I could see or sense.
I sat down on the boulder to think.
Was it the clay? I picked up the tile and went undertime, and popped back out.
The glitter was gone, and I could tell the tile was a plain and ordinary tile
again.
I thought some more.
"Sammis? What are you doing?" Wryan was standing almost at my shoulder. Like
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me, she was almost undetectable when she went undertime or emerged. Strange
how we seemed able to find each other.
"Thinking."
"Thinking? About Odin Thor?"
"I was. Came here looking for you. Try to tell you about his latest
complaint but I got side-tracked.''
"He caught me with Jerlyk, trying to develop a full-time hydro generator for
the diver's camp, enough to handle what we had in mind. If we were successful,
we could always borrow it..."
"We need two... just like the duplicators."
"Damn." She shook her head. "You're right."
"What did the great Colonel-General say?"
"We weren't keeping up with the needs of the Marines and the Guard, and you
were becoming impossible."
I grinned for a moment. "I'm glad he thinks so highly of me."
"You are impossible." She gave me a smile. "What sidetracked you?"
I told her about the tile and showed her the gouge on the boulder.
"Did you know you had the tile in your hand?"
"Not the first time."
"What about the second?"
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