As he worked he wondered about the success of this assignment they'd been forced into. Impatience gnawed at him, the more maddening because there was no single person to blame. Milliard and Kelgarries both had been sincere in their regrets for the curtailed honeymoon. They were both plain-spoken men, honest, and hardworking. They did not demand more of the agents than they demanded of themselves.
Yet the truth was, Ross did not want to go blasting across the galaxy in a ship designed and made for unknown beings, to a planet as weird as it was dangerous. He wouldn't want to go again with other Americans he knew; double that a bunch of Russians; and triple that for going with his wife.
"Dammit," he snarled, and sent a punishing roundhouse kick to the padded target. The sound he made was a satisfying whump! but the top of his foot stung.
Wincing, he glanced at the clock—and realized how late it had gotten. He was still in a frosty mood when he dashed out of the gym, his wet hair cold.
Down the hall to the main corridor—and at the sight of two people he stopped short.
One, a tall man with long blond hair, had his arms around the other.
And the other was Eveleen.
CHAPTER 4
LIGHTNING FLASHED THROUGH Ross's brain.
He wasn't aware of crossing the hall. Suddenly he was next to them, drawing in his breath preparatory to choking the life out of that yellow-haired sleazebag, but then Eveleen stepped back, her arms moving with calm deliberation.
Somehow she was outside the guy's grip—and somehow she was also between Ross and his target.
"Ross," Eveleen said with determined cordiality. "Allow me to introduce you to Mikhail Nikulin. The last of the Russian team," she added, with just enough emphasis to keep Ross from moving, or speaking. Her head turned, and in the same voice she said to the newcomer, "My husband. Ross Murdock."
Nikulin raised his hands and stepped back, miming surprise. "Now, why is it that the most beautiful ones are always taken first? And I thought it so promising a beginning." His accent was strong, but his English was quite good.
Ross realized his jaw was clenched so hard his teeth hurt. He forced himself to relax. The desire to punch that challenging grin was almost overwhelming, but he had to control it. Nothing had happened.
Nothing had happened.
"I had hoped to meet you eventually, Ross Murdock," the fellow went on. He talked in a lazy drawl that did not fool Ross for a second; the guy's stance, the assessment in his gaze, made it clear he was quite ready for any sort of action Ross might offer.
He knew who she was, Ross realized. And, He did that on purpose.
It made him angry all over again, but at the same time he had to admit it was a fast way of testing the territory.
"We have heard much about your experiences," Nikulin went on, still with the smile and the appraising gaze. "There are questions I have. We shall share a drink and talk, you and I."
Ross forced himself to shrug, and to speak. He was glad his voice came out sounding natural. "We shall sit and listen to a lot of tapes—and sooner than later."
"It's true, we are a bit late," Eveleen said. Ross did not mistake the relief in her eyes. "If you will follow this way, Mr. Nikulin."
"Misha Petrovich," the man corrected. "You must call me Misha."
Eveleen slid her arm into Ross's and led the way. Misha fell in on her other side, his long stride easy. Ross glanced over, still saw that readiness, caught sight of callused palms. This Misha had obviously seen plenty of action. Ross then comprehended what he'd said, and realized that he was not unknown to the Russians.
So was Misha Petrovich Nikulin Ross's Russian counterpart?
The thought did not give Ross any added pleasure in the prospect of this mission.
They reached one of the all-purpose rooms where they found Kelgarries and the rest of the team—Russian, Ethiopian, and American—waiting. Ross saw the short Russian woman he'd met at the dinner the night before (what was her name? Irina something?) smile for the very first time. She greeted Misha in fast Russian. As the tall blond guy sauntered over to talk to his group, Eveleen squeezed Ross's arm.
He turned his attention to her.
She whispered, "You let me handle him."
"He knew who you were," Ross said—angry all over again.
"Of course he did," she whispered back. "It's a verbal martial-arts trick—he wants you off-balance. And as long as you come snorting around like a bull before a red cape, he's going to keep pestering me." She grinned. "Think of it as a compliment to your reputation. It is, after all, in a kind of backhanded way."
"If he wanted to compliment me, he could have said, 'Nice work! Glad to have you on the mission.' Or is that unknown in Russia?"
Eveleen gave a soft laugh, but then she whispered more firmly, "I repeat: you let me handle him."
"Please," Kelgarries said. "We need to get started. Everyone, please find a desk."
Ross gritted his teeth again. This mission was already a disaster as far as he was concerned. But he spotted his own laptop waiting, and dropped down behind the desk where it lay. Sitting next to it was a pair of earphones.
Gordon Ashe had the desk next to his. Eveleen had gone over to sit near Saba Mariam.
"All right. We will begin with the tapes found in the Time Capsule. On your terminal, you'll see choices for your language preference. My people: you know the drill," Kelgarries said. "For the benefit of our visitors, let me explain how we usually proceed. We'll listen all the way through just once. Feel free to make notes. When we're done, we'll begin again, this time stopping for questions and explication. But we all need a basis from which to start, so without any further talk, let's proceed."
Ross settled into his chair, yanked his laptop over, and plugged it into the database terminal. As he pulled the headphones on, he stole a look at his wife; she had her head supported in her hands, her favorite listening position. To all appearances she had forgotten the existence of the blond Russian.
Ashe was already making notes, as was Saba. Interesting. The Russians all sat, polite and impassive. They'd heard this before, of course.
The tape began. The translator's voice was a bland, professional actor's voice. "This begins the Record of Exploration Team A, recorded by Katarina Semyonova, team archivist. Day One. We have just arrived…"
Ross looked down, saw his hand tapping on his laptop case. He stopped it, and sat up straight. He was restless, but didn't want to show it.
He wasn't just annoyed with that blasted Russian version of Don Juan. He also hated the beginnings of these Project tapes. It was always the same: the recordings went on in great detail about every single thing, most of which usually turned out to be insignificant later, when the team had gathered more data.
"… what seem to be feathered cats."
Ross grinned to himself. Feathered cats! He remembered those. Now, that was one weird thing. What kind of biological niche would feathered cats possibly fit into?
Ross looked down at his laptop and typed out a quick note. You never know, he thought, what details turn out not to be insignificant later.
When he was done typing, he turned his attention to his earphones—and discovered that the Russians had already made their jump into the past. He listened closely—and sure enough, the voice reported that their biologist had gone missing.
The Russians, because of time pressure and a lack of clues so far, had regrouped into doubles and proceeded more cautiously, their priorities being to search for their missing member and to stay hidden.
About a week into their stay in the past, Ross felt his mind wandering again—returning to the feathered cats. Feathered cats—what purpose could they serve? How would they evolve?
The voice changed suddenly, and Ross caught the end of a real surprise.
"… no evidence of the winged folk, contrary to what we had been led to believe from the tapes of the American Expedition. But this is our third sighting of the beings we call, for lack of data, the weasel
folk—as the Americans did. Only at night, and within the great city, have we seen them. During the day, we have seen other beings, but no weasel folk. We have not made ourselves known as yet, though again, unlike what the Americans reported on their tapes, these beings exhibit no signs of aggressive behavior…"
Weaslies? No winged beings?
Had someone else gone back in time and caused a major rupture in the timeline? But everything else had checked out—
Ross shook his head, as if to chase away his thoughts. That was the problem with time travel, all the blasted ramifications. It was enough to give any super-scientist a brain sprain, much less an everyday guy.
So Ross decided not to think. He turned his attention back to the tape, and this time he kept his attention on the bland voice detailing a daily load of new surprises.
CHAPTER 5
WHEN THE TAPE was done, the first question was from Ross, which did not surprise Eveleen. "The Weaslies are the dominant culture?"
Eveleen bent her head, hiding a smile. Her husband was an acknowledged top agent, brave, intelligent, and altogether wonderful—but he was also impetuous, impatient of rules, and a maverick.
And she adored him for it.
Kelgarries's hatchet face didn't change in expression, but Eveleen sensed very strongly that he was trying to hide a smile. Some of the Russians looked a little startled at the outburst. Only Ashe remained, at least outwardly, unmoved— he and Saba both, she noted belatedly.
"Yes," Kelgarries said. "You are correct."
"But the winged people in the ruined tower were still there in the present," Ross stated. "Are still there."
"Yes, they are," the Colonel affirmed.
"And the Weaslies are still feral."
"Again, you are correct."
Kelgarries went on, when the Colonel sat back, "So we can assume that the timeline has not been tampered with— though I guess we'll never really know. But for our purposes, we can assume not."
Ross sighed, clapping down the lid on his laptop. "Weaslies. When I think of that fight we had—well, this is beginning to look like a puzzle where half the pieces are missing. These Weaslies in the past sound like some kind of ancient Chinese culture, only even older and more stratified—so what happened? There was sure no sign of any culture at all when we met 'em."
"The violence is there," Eveleen spoke. "Remember the biologist, whose only crime seems to have been to enter an enclave without identity or place. How did all that change so drastically?"
"That's one of the mysteries we are going to have to solve," Ashe spoke up.
Ross groaned theatrically, clutching his head. "I don't think we're the ones to send. This is sounding more and more like a case for a regiment of brainiacs. Not a handful of agents."
Kelgarries shook his head—echoed by the Colonel.
"No. These people—we may as well get used to their term, Yilayil—would, to all appearances, not tolerate being studied. We need skilled agents—yourselves—to adapt to their culture in the ways outlined by the missing team, and work from within."
"But it sounds like we're going to be a cross between servants, and… and house pets!" Ross protested.
A soft laugh and a swift exchange of Russian reminded Eveleen of the presence of Misha Nikulin. She did not turn her head. Her long years of martial-arts training had already inured her to certain types of men—of which Project Star inevitably had its fair share. One sure way to provoke Mr. Nikulin would be to look at him—a glare just as much as a smile would be equally challenging.
"Being house pets is an easier assignment than running after mastodons in winter, wearing nothing but a wolfskin mini skirt and a coat of grease," Ashe said, laughing.
Saba smiled slightly. Eveleen caught her glance, and Saba's smile increased.
The Russians were now deep in conversation, the Colonel illustrating something. Ashe leaned over to speak with Kelgarries and Ross.
Under cover of the other conversations, Saba murmured softly, "Your husband. Very like my first partner, Lisette Al-Aseer." Saba's dark eyes were difficult to read. Humor? Sadness? Eveleen sensed a little of both.
"Tell me about her," Eveleen whispered back.
Saba gave a little shrug. "She was just as impetuous. Always in trouble with the authorities—while pulling off brilliant coups. I learned a great deal from her."
"Where is she now?" Eveleen asked.
"One of the first ones sent off-world," Saba answered, her expression now sober. "I have had no word for over two years. In the data banks she's listed as 'On Assignment' and whatever that assignment is has been classified beyond my level."
Eveleen nodded. If anything had happened to Saba's friend, the other agents might never find out. There was too deep a need for secrecy; though the world knew about space exploration, the governments had made a concerted effort to keep all hints of news about time travel from ever reaching the media. The chance of unscrupulous individuals getting hold of a time machine for their own uses was too great a danger.
So the Project was veiled in secrecy, and that meant strict data control even among agents, always judged on a need-to-know basis.
Unfortunately.
As Kelgarries paused to answer a question from one of the Russians, Eveleen thought back over the night before. While Ross had been watching his video, she'd been in the library using the E-mail to query the three teams of married agents that she had found after a quick scan through the data banks.
I'm so used to taking care of myself, she thought as Kelgarries, the Russian with the query, and the Colonel now talked in quiet voices.
Eveleen felt a little sad to have even one secret so early in a marriage, but she hesitated to discuss this with Ross— especially after seeing his reaction at Misha's absurdity.
What good would telling him do, except make him worry? Men had been blithely launching into action for millennia. Women had been equal partners with men relatively recently—but they had been champion worriers since the dawn of time. Better to ask some married couples with more experience in partnerships under dangerous conditions how they coped with the fear of loss of a partner.
She watched Ross typing notes into his laptop, a little frown between his brows.
I'd rather get lost than lose him, she thought bleakly, and then scolded herself for defeatist thinking. The idea was to keep them both safe.
Kelgarries looked up then. "The Colonel suggests that we might actually speed the training along if we split for the language-assimilation portion. We'll get together again when we start training for specific positions on the world. Gordon? Summation?"
Gordon Ashe looked up. "I'll give us all a quick synopsis of what kind of civilization we're looking at, so we can keep the worldview in mind as we crash-learn it in pieces."
He cleared his throat.
"One. The Yilayil people are the dominant culture, a hyper-complex civilization trying to maintain the diversity of an interstellar culture that—for some reason—has no new entries showing up. But the process for assimilation has already begun, through a complex of behaviors that are both cultural and ritualistic, called ti[trill]kee—" He whistled the middle part with difficulty. "It seems to mean deportment, but it's more than just that; it's a way of life accepted by all, and deviation, once one has been accepted by the Yilayil, is not tolerated. Since there is no mention in the Time Capsule of the winged people, we must assume they arrived later—"
"From a crashed spaceship, perhaps?" one of the Russians asked, enunciating carefully in English. "Or from one of the islands on the far side of the planet from the spaceport?"
"It is a possibility, though unlikely—not if they have any kind of culture with technical capabilities," the Colonel said. "When our globe ship skirted the planet, we did energy readings. Energy use is uniformly low, except on the island containing the spaceport. There it is exceptionally high."
Kelgarries said, "We assume from the observable drive to conformity that any other race with technical capab
ilities is eventually drawn to the capital island and conformity in order to have access to data and technology."
"The flyers are not tech-capable in the present timeline," Ross spoke up. "Of course, none of the three races we encountered were. They were a lot more civilized than those feral humanoids or the Weaslies."
"The flyers might be indigenous and hidden, and might be latecomers. We will be looking for clues, of course," Ashe said, nodding. "Second: the Yilayil are the only nocturnal land-living intelligence on the planet, and all the diurnal creatures exist lower in the cultural hierarchy, locked into rigid castes that determine their status and duties. Divergence means ostracism; obedience is rewarded with privileges which translate to various forms of wealth, leisure, etc."
Ashe stopped, looking around for questions. No one spoke, but Ross frowned, flexing his scarred hand. Eveleen bit her lip.
Ashe said, "Ross?"
The scarred hand balled into a fist, and then opened. Eveleen watched her husband force his feelings behind a polite mask as he said, "It sounds a little like we're expected to fit into a society of robots."
"Not robots," Ashe said, smiling. "If they were, there would not be a question of conformity, would there?"
"Conformity," Ross repeated, grimacing. "I have to admit that's what sticks in my craw. Conformity seems another word for—" He looked over at the Russians, and Eveleen saw Misha nod and give Ross a thumbs-up.
It was an unexpected gesture. Eveleen was relieved to see Ross flick a hand up in salute. Then he went on, "I don't know what. Main thing is, I didn't catch who decides if any given race has 'conformed' properly."
"That's because the First Team didn't say." Ashe sat back, scanning his notes. "Until we find out, we can assume that the Yilayil decide. Anything more to add?"
Ross shook his head.
"Then I'll continue with the Yilayil," Gordon said. "They dwell in tunnels and caves, vast spaces underground. At first they had seemed unable to deal with the sudden appearance of the First Team whose place of origin they—obviously— couldn't figure out. This is important to remember: they are, of course, aware of other races—we will apparently meet several—and their way of dealing with them has been to assimilate them into the hierarchy through ti[trill]kee. Every race has its enclave somewhere on the world—yet the spaceport on the main island is closed, so no new ones are coming in. We don't know if this is by accident or design. We will have to find out."