Journey Through Time: A Time Travel Adventure 3 in 1 Bundle Collection Part 4

Chapter One

DAY FIVE

Winnow Unpo watched the mineral transports come and go.

He struggled to maintain a detached expression.

The base camp was so exuberant that the commander allowed discipline to go by the board in favor of celebrations which lasted well into the dark morning hours. Men danced, sang songs, threw their hats into the air whenever Winnow passed them. Even after some time had passed since the improbable event of two children, a journeyman and a Red stealing a Turtle, the enthusiasm of the camp did not die down.

Winnow understood that the Estonite shipment the two children had protected meant a great deal to the Council of Thirds and, by extension, the United Solar Government over which the council ruled.

Yet he thought that at some point, the soldiers stationed to the Lotus Lion Bridge on the Madagascar side must tire of being so happy.

Winnow shared in their excitement while waiting for a Black Brigade transport to pick him up. Then, when the transport had not arrived at its scheduled time, he gave up on waiting and went to bed.

After going to bed late, he slept in until the sun had risen well over the tall black bridge which cast a shadow over the entire camp. Someone would have awakened him if his transport back to the Unbroken Tower had come. He felt sure of that.

Yet, no one had done so.

Nor, as he went about the routine of preparing for the day, did he find that a transport waited for him outside the base camp.

Someone had informed Indigo Pavun that a ship would come to pick Winnow up, yet none had come.

Winnow, with neither the authorization nor the skills to help the army's efforts on the island, could do nothing but wander the base.

He had done so the previous night, seeing everything he had wished to see. The medical building-the only building in the camp-had been closed until morning. Winnow walked around the camp until he found it, then decided he had no reason to enter. He was neither sick nor hungry.

Moreover, he didn't want to see the smiling face of Dr. Dalk.

Winnow no longer carried his right arm everywhere in a sling. In fact, it felt just as good as it had prior to the crash of the Yesterday.

The process, however, had been about as painful as he could have wished. While the two children went off tank-hunting, Winnow had sat in an unadorned white room while Dr. Dalk monitored a computer screen to see how the bones in Winnow's arm mended underneath a machine designed for just that reason.

Dr. Dalk had offered Winnow medicine for the pain, yet Winnow had refused it. Had he accepted the medicine, the healing process would have been delayed by at least two days. His arm would be numb during this time, or so Dr. Dalk claimed. Winnow didn't want to wait that long, so he had opted to try the procedure without pain medication.

Agony had followed. So much pain coursed through Winnow's arm that he saw frequent spots before his eyes. He had thought that he would lose consciousness, so intense was his suffering.

He could actually feel his bones knitting together.

He had never experienced anything like it before.

He had been sometimes aware of the blood flowing in his veins, as when he clenched a tight fist. However, the mysteries of the biological processes occurring under his skin had largely remained unknown to him.

His bones just were.

No more and no less.

He hadn't thought they could move, or that their movement would have anything to do with his nervous system.

He didn't have nerves in his bones, he knew that.

Yet, as the machine poured down energy which guided the bones of his forearm in the direction Dr. Dalk wished them to go, Winnow could not deny his nervous system as an inferno of pain raged within his arm.

All the while, the doctor smiled his infuriating his smile, humming a tune to himself.

It had been then when Winnow decided he didn't like the doctor.

Resentment grew in his heart for this man who healed him.

While Winnow cried out, he hadn't observed an ounce of concern on the doctor's face.

He left the doctor's office feeling bitter, hurt and angry.

He would have spoken to Indigo Pavun about the doctor's attitude were it not for the chaos Winnow felt in the world.

Before the two children arrived, which he had been told was about five days ago, the world as he knew it had been a stable enough place in which to live. Winnow, as a member of the Black Brigade, had performed his duties as well as he could, never thinking that everything might be turned upside down.

With the central computer still malfunctioning, upside-down was the only phrase Winnow thought applied.

Everyone relied on the computer to a disproportionate extent. The army had adjusted well enough, as it always did, yet Winnow could only think of how desperate ordinary citizens might be to get all the information humanity had ever collected at their fingertips. People relied on it to retain their appointment schedule, their bank account information, their personal photographs and documents, their lists of employees, in addition to many other things Winnow could only imagine.

All of that, every last bit of it, was no longer accessible.

Even if the computer returned to its normal functionality, Winnow did not know if the all the information retained therein would be salvageable. The technicians in Jakarta had been taking such a long time thus far that Winnow did not know if a solution would be easily forthcoming.

The greatest irony was that the information on how people solved the last computer shutdown could be found within those same memory banks.

Because of this, Winnow thought that his services would be needed sooner rather than later. The world would descend into chaos before long, and when it did, members of the Black Brigade would be dispatched to every corner of the world, if for no other reason than to assure people that steps were being taken to resolve the situation.

Consequently, Winnow found it strange that no one had come to pick him up. Surely, he thought, the council foresees the same outcomes I do.

Perhaps they had not.

Perhaps the council, high up in the Unbroken Tower, did not believe that people would panic if cut off from their data for a few days.

Winnow would have liked to subscribe to that sentiment himself.

He would have liked to think that people would approach the situation in a calm manner. After all, people lived for hundreds of years. What might the delay of a few days matter in the larger scheme of things?

His knowledge of human nature told him otherwise.

People were selfish, ego-driven and quick to react irrationally to anything that affected the normal routine of their lives. There would be people with the whole of their lives ahead of them taking matters into their hands.

The situation might be especially bad in Jakarta if no solution appeared forthcoming.

Winnow considered this as he stared at the army's recovered Turtle.

He found the description apt, for the tank moved slowly, in addition to being shaped like a turtle: wide at the bottom, narrow at the highest point.

Such havoc had the Turtle inflicted upon the besieging rebel forces that Winnow could hardly believe his eyes.

He had heard Turtles were the pride of the United Solar Army, yet he had never seen one in action. Even driven by an inexperienced Red such as Wikal, the tank had obliterated everything around it while deflecting the one attack the rebels had dared to cast upon it.

The battle had been a revelation.

Winnow had thought the destructive power of fusion bombs aboard every atmosphere ship to be unparalleled, yet after he had watched the slaughter of the previous day, he had to admit that the ability to make people explode all at once had a visceral, brutal aspect which made him fear for the rebel's chances.

Even with the Turtle, they had not been able to drive out the army from their base camp. Now, with the Turtle, Indigo Pavun had announced that he would pursue a more active campaign of aggression against them. He said this just as reinforcements from Mozambique arrived two hours after the tank returned to his possession.

The newly-arrived soldiers contacted Jungle Command for their orders. As per Pavun's request, they became attached to his command until such time as the rebels based in Madagascar no longer threatened the shipment of Estonite.

Before the mineral transport left, Winnow had held a lump of Estonite in his hand.

The mineral looked unremarkable-a gray rock speckled with gold. When heated up to a certain temperature, a mineralogist informed Winnow, Estonite became a metal that could be molded into any shape, and once placed into that shape, resisted any attempt to pierce it.

Lasers, energy pulses, heat, diamonds, cold, water had been tried against Estonite.

Not so much as a scratch could be inflicted upon the metal.

It was the answer to all the world's problems, the mineralogist claimed.

Winnow could see why the rebels wanted it so badly for themselves.

They called themselves naturalists.

Unlike the rest of the world, the rebels ate food, drank liquid, never grew to their full height and died very young. They believed, as Winnow had learned while recovering from Dr. Dalk's ministrations, that the world had been better off before the Industrial Revolution of thousands of years past. They used weapons from that time, even if such weapons proved inefficient compared with a hand blaster.

Winnow might have told them that the exploding cannonballs weren't utilized in their favorite time period if survivors from yesterday's battle had not been taken away as slave labor for the mines.

The soldiers Winnow had spoken with told him that, even with the defeat, the rebels would not give up. Even if they were forced into hiding, they would not rest until they controlled the planet's only flow of Estonite.

Winnow had discovered that these rebels believed strongly enough in their purpose that they were willing to suffer, even die, for it.

At some point, he thought, reason must win out over passion, no matter how fervent. That, too, suggested the need for a Black Brigade presence.

The rebels called themselves the Knights of the Old Order. From all Winnow had been able to observe, they looked like a rag-tag group of people who could barely scrape together enough money to put food on the table.

Perhaps, thought Winnow, such an assessment wasn't too far from the truth.

People who ate food were hard enough to find. Eating food, every scientist the world over had discovered, accelerated the body's aging process. It also had another side effect: it impoverished people who might have been well-off otherwise, if only because they had to invest a portion of their income in order to maintain their chosen lifestyle.

The more he considered the matter, the more Winnow became sure that he didn't understand the rebels.

He shrugged to himself and turned away from the Turtle.

Wikal Grean waited for him.

Since Pavun had petitioned for Wikal's promotion to Orange for heroism in the line of duty, Wikal's face beamed. He didn't seem able to conceal his glee. Where once he had been a shy, nervous man, now just a day later, he looked Winnow directly in the face.

Wikal's hands no longer flinched and twitched at every opportunity.

They stayed still at his sides.

Citizen Unpo, I have been looking for you.

Winnow looked beyond Wikal to the command tent from which he had emerged. You seem to have found me.

Wikal grinned. He gestured to the command tent. Indigo Pavun has asked to see you. A matter of importance, I believe.

I see. Thank you, Red, Winnow said. If I have not done so already, I must thank you for your actions yesterday. You may have saved the lives of a great many people.

Wikal rubbed the back of his neck. He blushed. Yes, well, I just did what I could. That's all.

Winnow said, So must we all.

Chapter Two

THE INSIDE OF Pavun's command tent had become bogged down in paperwork since Winnow had entered it yesterday.

Without the computer to process all the orders required for the running of a military base, however temporary in nature, the army had been forced to resort to an antiquated system of paper orders.

Pavun sat behind a folding table, reading one of a pile of papers. When Winnow entered, Pavun looked up as though a breeze of fresh air had just entered the room. Relief flooded his face.

Pavun put down the paper and said, Citizen Unpo. The transport still has not come then?

Winnow sat down across from the twelve-foot tall man and said, I've waited for it, but it still hasn't arrived.

Pavun waved a hand, indicating the paperwork before him. I wouldn't be surprised if the delay has something to do with the blasted computer system. Do you know how hard it is to keep track of all the new personnel assigned to my command without a computer database? Germinating impossible, that's what it is. I can only imagine how it might to be to keep track of every arrival and departure at the skystation.

Winnow, who had heard what had happened between the Black Brigade and Unquill at the skystation, said, The skystation can operate even when the computer is offline, as it is doing now. He thought about mentioning that the Yesterday had been cleared to depart without any problems, yet looking at the cloud upon