Andre Norton - Time Traders 6 - Echoes In Time.pdf

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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 southwestEthiopia .
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.
Sabaglanced 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 Bumi. 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.
Sabahad 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 grass, 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 bumbling around flowers, resolved into a battered old motorcycle
drawing a three-wheeled side car. The rusty machine was probably older thanSaba 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.
Sabaclimbed 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 fromSaba 's rocks.
Sabaheld 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 sunglasses 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 asSaba approached.
The driver looked up, shoving the kerchief into a pocket. "La Professeur Mariam? Vous etesSaba
Mariam?"she asked.
Sabanodded, 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 momentSaba 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 whichSaba had given her strength, her spirit, and nearly her life.
Sabaturned 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."
Sabadrew a deep breath. "And they expect me to cut short my recovery time? And return?"
The agent said, "Whatever is going on is classified 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."
Sabaturned 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 inEthiopia 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, thatSaba knew. Strange, alien, and even more remorseless than the
natural passage 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 Embassy for your
visa."
"New York! So this new emergency involves the Americans?"Saba shook her head. She knew that
Project Star had originated with theUnited 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."
Sabasat 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?
Sabamouthed 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.
Sababent over the recorder, pressed the ON button, then settled back to wait for the Surma to emerge,
like shy ghosts, from the shelter of the brush.
"VIKHODITE! RUKI V' VERKH!"
"Like hell I'll come out with my hands up." Mikhail Petrovich Nikulin smashed the butt 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 theMatch! andclick!sas 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.
"Youknowthe 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.
Glass 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 stitched across the weatherworn, dilapidated building, Misha loaded the
pistol with a teargas cannister, used the butt to knock out a corner of the brittle glass, 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.
"Damn," he said, and slid into the darkness.
 

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