Echoes in Time.

by Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith.

PROLOGUE.

THE DAY'S HEAT had diminished to only a residual shimmer from the cooling earth. The chitter and click of insects in the scrubby green brush formed a kind of musical accompaniment to the laughing and singing of the long, snaking line of children crouched together, one in front of the other, knees up near their chins.

"Here is our mother!

Our mother, our mother!

Here is our harvest, Our fruit, our harvest!

Our mother, our fruit..."

The children laughed as they sang, their bare toes scrabbling forward in the dust as they waddled and hopped. Their dark brown skin was mottled and streaked with painted patterns, some chalk-white, others subtle earth tones. Sweat and dust marred the fine lines of the patterns, not that the children cared. They were only playing. They sang and laughed with the companionable abandon of children who know that the time for real skin painting, when they became adults with adult responsibilities for food and shelter, war and marriage, lay far in the sunny future, after many harvest games such as this.

Saba Mariam, watching from her post beside a jumble of rocks, felt as if she had been wafted back through time. So the children of the Surma had played and sang for countless generations in this sere mountain region of southwest Ethiopia.

She looked down at her hands, the skin dark against the plain khaki of her trousers. She and her recorder were the only jarring notes in this scene out of history, the only intrusion of modernity-though at any time an airplane might roar overhead, causing children and adults alike to pause, like startled deer, before they scampered off to hide.

Saba glanced at her tape recorder, working silently behind a warm gray boulder. The Surma tolerated her strange ways because she did not interfere with them, and she had proved that she was not in fact sent by their age-old enemies, the b.u.mi. She looked strange to men and women alike, with her ears and lips unpierced. She was, to the Surma, a child walking around in a grown body, for she did not display the ritual markings of a responsible adult, but they dismissed her strangeness with a kind of humorous tolerance.

Saba had learned to sit quietly, patiently, drawing no attention to herself. After her long stretches of neutral observance, she knew that the people would forget her presence. She would become no more interesting than another boulder, or a patch of scrubby gra.s.s, and it was then that she turned on the recorder, making a record of music that had been handed down through families over centuries and centuries of time.

It was good work. Important work. Saba was proud to be one of many who quietly went about recording the songs and myths that had sustained human beings since the cradle of civilization. Progress had brought to the Earth untold advantages, but its pervasive growth was choking off in ever-increasing numbers the very old languages, customs, and cultures of peoples who had lived in harmony with the land since humans first crossed the great continents.

It was indeed important work, Saba thought as one very small three-year-old tripped and went rolling in the dust. The song broke up into laughter. The children reformed into their line; one girl at the front began singing again, soon joined by the others, as in the distance a group of mothers and young unmarried women chattered and prepared food.

Important work-and involving work. It kept one busy, which in its turn prevented one from worrying about those things that could not be solved- As she thought this, she became aware of a sound that perhaps had warned her subliminally of approaching intrusions.

The faint hum, reminiscent of bees b.u.mbling around flowers, resolved into a battered old motorcycle drawing a three-wheeled side car. The rusty machine was probably older than Saba herself.

The children heard it as well. For a moment they all went still, and then their leader dashed through the dust to her mother. The other children followed, some still laughing, others singing bits of song. The mothers gathered their young and vanished into the sun-dried brush.

Saba climbed up on a boulder and shaded her eyes against the great, bloodred late October sun. The driver of the motorcycle revved the engine and zoomed around brush and scraggly trees, halting two meters from Saba's rocks.

Saba held her breath as the wafting odors of petrol and exhaust blew past, so unfamiliar after her month here in the wild mountainous region. The driver, meanwhile, pulled off sungla.s.ses and a tight baseball cap, shaking free a cloud of curling brown hair. The clothing-tough, anonymous bush garb-had made gender difficult to guess at; a gloved hand pulled out a kerchief and mopped some of the dust and grit from a middle-aged female face as Saba approached.

The driver looked up, shoving the kerchief into a pocket. "La Professeur Mariam? Vous etes Saba Mariam?" she asked. she asked.

Saba nodded, adding in French, "Is there an emergency?"

"Oui" French was obviously no more the driver's native tongue than it was Saba's, but Saba had gotten used to polyglot conversations-often in tongues chosen because possible surrounding listeners would not understand the conversation. Not that any listeners were around now.

The woman said, "Je m'appelle Taski Aleyescoglu. Je suis avec L'Etoile Projet."

Project Star.

For a moment Saba stood staring at the unfamiliar woman, angry at this breach of promise.

L'Etoile Projet-Project Star-was the bland name for one of the most secret organizations in the world, one for which Saba had given her strength, her spirit, and nearly her life.

Saba turned her gaze on the Time Agent courier. "I was promised a year," she said in French. "A year to recover."

"It is an emergency," Agent Aleyescoglu replied.

"Answer me this first: has Lisette Al-Aseer reported in?"

The Time Agent did not pretend to not know the name. Her lips pressed into a line, and she shook her head. "I am sorry, Professor Mariam."

Saba drew a deep breath. "And they expect me to cut short my recovery time? And return?"

The agent said, "Whatever is going on is cla.s.sified over my head-as is whatever your former partner is still working on. All I was told was to find you and bring you back. Whatever it is that has them scrambling now, apparently only you can solve it."

Saba turned her gaze to the last limb of the sun, sinking beyond the western peaks. Shadows blended softly now, making it difficult to see the woman's face. If she was to leave, she'd have to go now; they were miles from any road, and driving about at night in Ethiopia in the dark was no simple matter.

She looked back. "Me as a musicologist?"

"You as you. That's all I was told: it must be you, it can be no other person."

Strange. But time travel was strange, that Saba knew. Strange, alien, and even more remorseless than the natural pa.s.sage of time.

She looked over the distant clumps of trees, knowing that the Surma crouched there, and she smiled sadly to herself. All very well to fancy that she had stepped back in time while recording these people celebrating the year's harvest. Apparently she was to be drawn back into real time travel, in a machine designed and built by beings never born on Earth. How many agents had been lost in the quest to understand this technology from beyond the stars?

She shook her head.

"Can you tell me at least where this emergency is taking place?"

"I wasn't told. Of course," Taski said, settling onto the motorcycle and pulling on her goggles. "But when I was on my way out, I overheard an order for someone to contact the American Emba.s.sy for your visa."

"New York! So this new emergency involves the Americans?" Saba shook her head. She knew that Project Star had originated with the United States, but so far her connection with the Americans had been peripheral at best.

Taski grinned as she yanked the baseball cap over her forehead. "Big boss will probably be out here next, and you can ply him with all the questions you like."

Saba sat back on her rock. "If there is so urgent a need," she said, "why did he not come here instead of you?"

Taski revved the engine, which roared, sending some distant birds flapping skyward from the shrubs. Their cries echoed back, faint as the laughter of children, as the motor died down to an uneven growl.

"Might have," Taski called. "But he's still in Mother Russia."

Russia?

Saba mouthed the word, but did not speak. In amazement-and apprehension-she gazed at the courier, who gave her a careless salute, revved the engine once more, then drove off into the twilight, leaving a cloud of light brown dust hanging in the still air.

Russia? And the Americans? Could there be a connection?

She might not have been able to conquer her bitterness, but one thing she had learned was patience.

Saba bent over the recorder, pressed the ON b.u.t.ton, then settled back to wait for the Surma to emerge, like shy ghosts, from the shelter of the brush.

"VIKHODITE! RUKI V' VERKH!".

"Like h.e.l.l I'll come out with my hands up." Mikhail Petrovich Nikulin smashed the b.u.t.t of his pistol into a corner of window, and stuck the muzzle through the hole. Bitter Siberian air smote his sweaty face.

Two things happened almost at once.

From behind came a shout: "Nikulin! You know the orders!"

From outside the rickety old building came the Match Match! and click!s click!s as two of the half-hidden gangsters dropped bullets into the chambers of their rifles. as two of the half-hidden gangsters dropped bullets into the chambers of their rifles.

Phwup. A large-calibre bullet burrowed into the half-frozen slush just below Misha's window, kicking up splatters of mud.

Footsteps from behind. A moment later a short, darkhaired figure crouched below the level of the windowsill. "Nikulin!"

Misha did not have to look down; he knew that voice, and he knew the expression on the older man's face.

"You know know the orders. No violence. If we have to, we activate the destruction device on the ship," Gaspardin said. the orders. No violence. If we have to, we activate the destruction device on the ship," Gaspardin said.

White hot anger flared through Misha Nikulin. "We are not going to lose that ship," he stated, his gaze staying on the figures in the bulky coats creeping foward from the cars to the old stone fence.

He fired once, and heard a shouted curse. Outside, one of the gangsters flung up his weapon and dropped, rolling in the muddy slush, hand clasped around his wounded knee.

"Misha-"

On the periphery of his vision Nikulin saw Gaspardin reach up for his pistol. "Don't touch me."

The hand vanished. "You will answer to the Colonel for contravening orders."

"If that ship is blown up, she will answer to me," Misha said, and again he fired, winging a second figure in the arm.

The trefoil flicker of automatic weapons fire glowed outside, and all around Misha wood splintered. Gla.s.s shattered and rained down in a musical tinkle. He dropped to the dusty wooden floor and belly-crawled, not back to the inner room, as Gaspardin did, but to the kitchen annex, where he'd stashed an old wartime teargas pistol.

As the furious automatic fire st.i.tched across the weatherworn, dilapidated building, Misha loaded the pistol with a teargas cannister, used the b.u.t.t to knock out a corner of the brittle gla.s.s, and then took aim.

He fired into the midst of the attackers. Heard choked, angry cries. A whiff of teargas drifted on the cold air, making him sneeze, just as raking bullets smashed into the antique ceramic oven, sending out a lethal spray of shards.

Warmth creased Misha's ribs. He ignored it. Steadied his grip. Shot a second time, then flung aside the tear gas weapon and picked up his pistol. Dropped the magazine. Checked to see if it still had ammunition. Slid the magazine home and jacked a round into the chamber.

He kept crawling from place to place, forcing himself to make each shot count, until the roaring outside grew louder than the roar in his ears.

The shooting had ceased. He leaned against a window, glanced outside, and realized the gangsters had retreated to their vehicles and roared away.

Misha stared through the window, trying to make sense of the endless gray Siberian sky meeting the distant horizon. But it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense except the fact that the mission was safe. The alien ship was safe.

"... realize it, don't you?"

Misha looked over his shoulder, made out in the swiftly gathering darkness Gaspardin's anger-narrowed eyes, his mouth white in his grizzled jowls.

"You defied orders," Gaspardin repeated. Then his expression changed as his gaze worked down Misha's shirt.

Misha glanced down, but all he saw were billowing clouds of darkness. He lifted his free hand to his side, and felt the wet warmth there.

"d.a.m.n," he said, and slid into the darkness.

HE WOKE STARING up at a low sod ceiling. He smelled generations of cabbage and potato meals and unwashed wool. Heard the creak of a chair.

"So you are awake, young man." That voice belonged to Colonel Vasilyeva. Misha turned his head, saw her sitting by a narrow window set into the thick stone wall. Through the window he glimpsed hayricks, and the long white Russian sky. He knew this place; it was the fallback position for their team, in case of disaster. His hand lifted to his ribs, encountered a taped bandage there.

He said, finding his throat dry, "The mission is safe."

"No thanks to you."

The Colonel's face was calm, her gaze unwavering. Like others who had spent childhood under the shadow of Stalin, she seemed to have no emotions whatsoever.

Misha knew that was wrong.

He said, "The ship?"

"It is safe enough. Now." Her voice was as immovable as granite. When she was angry, her demeanor carried all the force of a rockslide. "But that will not be the case if any of your victims die, and the government turns its attention back on us."

Misha fought against blinding anger, and winced as he moved restlessly on the bed.

"If," she stated in a low, soft voice, "I give orders for that alien ship to be destroyed, it will be done."

Misha gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up against the wall.

The Colonel went on, "They were just a bunch of opportunists, there to take over the energy plant, and use it for some easy piracy by price gouging. They had no idea that we are time agents, and that we have an alien ship. And of course they are going to come back, in bigger numbers. We have to make certain that what they find will be a hydroelectric plant. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing," she said in a slow, cold voice, "to raise questions."

"I'm sorry," Misha said at last, though it cost him more effort than sitting up had.

The Colonel sat back, one blunt hand working at her temples as if she had a headache. If one were to interpret that gesture as weakness, that would be equally wrong.

"The Americans have a ship," she said. "We are now allied with them. The Germans have a ship. The French have a ship, as do the Norwegians, and Africans. May I remind you, Mikhail Petrovich, that these are all our allies now? The Time Agency is worldwide. This mission will be carried through, even if one of us loses a ship."

Misha shook his head, then winced as corresponding pain racketed through his skull. "I'm sorry. I just don't believe the Americans are going to help. Or if they do, what their price is going to be."