Time’s Eye

“We can decide where to begin the reentry,” Musa said. “But after that we are in the hands of the automatic sequence; once we are dangling from our parachute, we will have little control over our fate. We don’t even have a weather forecast—the wind could drag us hundreds of kilometers. We need the room for a messy landing. That means we have to land in Central Asia, just as our designers intended.”

He seemed to have expected an argument from Sable over that, but she shrugged. “That’s not necessarily a bad idea. There are signs of people in Central Asia—nothing modern, but human habitation, quite a concentration—all those campfires we saw. We need to find people, and that’s as good a place as any to look.” This seemed logical, but Kolya saw a puzzling hardness in the set of her mouth—as if she was calculating, already thinking ahead to the situation beyond the landing.

Musa clapped his hands. “Good. That’s settled. There is no reason to hesitate. Now we must prepare the ship—”

A buzzer sounded from the living compartment.

“Shit,” said Sable. “That’s my ham radio rig.” With a single movement she launched herself up through the hatchway.

***

The simple detector Sable had rigged up had actually detected two signals. One was a steady pulse, strong but apparently automated, coming out of a site somewhere in the Middle East. The other, though, was a human voice, scratchy and faint.

“ … Othic. This is Chief Warrant Officer Casey Othic, USASF and UN, at Jamrud Fort in Pakistan, broadcasting to any station. Please respond. I am Chief Warrant Officer Casey Othic …”

Sable grinned, showing gleaming teeth. “An American,” she whooped. “I knew it!” She began to adjust the tangled equipment, eager to reply before the radio footprint of the Soyuz drifted too far.

12. Ice

On the day Bisesa’s scouting party was to set off, the reveille was sounded by a trumpeter at fiveA.M. Bisesa woke blearily, her body still not quite accustomed to this new time zone, and went to look for her companions.

After a quick breakfast, the party formed up, lightly loaded with gear. A unit of twenty troopers, mostly sepoys, under the command of newly minted Corporal Batson, had been assigned to escort Bisesa—and here were Josh and Ruddy, both of whom insisted they couldn’t possibly miss this jaunt. They were all on foot; Captain Grove, reasonably enough, didn’t want to risk any of his dwindling population of mules. Grove was also uneasy about allowing the journalists to go. But there had been no sightings of Pashtuns to the north and west, not a single sniper’s bullet. Even their villages seemed to have disappeared, as if apart from Jamrud humanity had been scraped off the planet. Grove relented about Ruddy and Josh, but he insisted that the party was to keep to tight military discipline at all times.

Off they marched. Soon Jamrud had disappeared over the horizon, and the world seemed empty, save for themselves. It was the tenth day since Bisesa’s stranding.

The going was tough. They were clambering over country that was little more than a mountainous desert. At noon the heat climbed ferociously, though it was March—if this actually was still a slice of March 1885, of course—and at night, Bisesa was given to understand, the temperature would drop below freezing. Still, Bisesa expected to be comfortable enough in her flight suit, which was made of all-weather fabric manufactured in 2037. The British soldiers were much more poorly equipped, with their serge jackets and pith helmets, and laden down with heavy-duty kit, arms, ammunition, bedding, rations and water. But the men didn’t complain. They were evidently used to their gear, and knowledgeable about ways around its shortcomings, such as using urine to soften boot leather.

As they advanced, following military drill, Batson sent picketing troops out ahead. In a country crowded by hillocks and ridges, three or four of them would clamber up the next commanding feature, covered by the rifles of their comrades, to be sure there were no Pashtuns hiding there. As they made their way further north, some of the hills rose as high as three hundred meters or so above the track, and it could be forty minutes or more before the pickets had reached the high point, but even so the rest of the column would not be moved forward until they were in position and had confirmed the way ahead was clear. It was frustrating, but the routine enforced plenty of rest halts, and they still made respectable progress.

As they marched they found more Eyes. There would be one every few kilometers or so, hovering silently, all apparently identical to the one at Jamrud. Batson marked their positions on a map. But soon these became as familiar as the first Eye, and nobody seemed to notice them—nobody save Bisesa. She found it hard to turn her back on an Eye, as if they really were eyes, watching her pass.