Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

open the messages. They put them in time capsules, as if
putting history back in order. Others take a look, find other ways to
cope with the news. We don’t tell people how to react. But we don’t
keep anything from them; that’s the policy,’ She studied me. ’This is
a time-travellers’ war, ensign. A war like none we’ve fought before.
We are stretching our procedures, even our humanity, to cope with the
consequences. But you get used to it.’
    Tarco said apprehensively, ’Sir, please - what about me?’
    Gravely, Dakk handed him a data desk.
    ’Hey, buttface,’ he said, reading. ’You make me your exec. How
about that. Maybe it was a bad year in the draft.’
    I didn’t feel like laughing. ’Read it all.’
    ’I know what it says.’ His broad face was relaxed.
    ’You don’t make it home. That’s what it says, doesn’t it? You’re
going to die out there, in the Fog.’
    He actually smiled. ’I’ve been anticipating this since the Torch
came into port. Haven’t you?’
    My mouth opened and closed, as if I was a swordtail fish in the
belly of a Spline. ’Call me unimaginative,’ I said. ’How can you
accept this assignment, knowing it’s going to kill you?’
    He seemed puzzled. ’What else would I do?’
    ’Yes,’ the captain said. ’It is your duty. Can’t you see how noble
this is, Dakk? Isn’t it right that he should know - that he should
live his life with full foreknowledge of the circumstances of his
death, and do his duty even so, right up to the final foretold
instant?’
    Tarco grabbed my hand. ’Hey. It’s years off. We’ll see our baby
grow.’
    I said dismally, ’Some love story this is turning out to be.’
    ’Yes.’
    Commissary Varcin’s Virtual head coalesced in the air. Without
preamble he said, ’Change of plan. Ensign, it’s becoming clear that
the evidence to hand will not be sufficient to establish the charges.
Specifically it’s impossible to say whether Dakk’s actions hindered
the overall war aims. To establish that we’ll have to go to the
Libraries, at the Commission’s central headquarters.’
    I did a double-take. ’Sir, that’s on Earth.’
    The disembodied head snapped, ’I’m aware of that.’
    I had no idea how bookworm Commissaries on Earth, ten thousand
light years away, could possibly have evidence to bear on this
front-line incident. But the Commissary explained, and I learned
there was more to this messages-from-the-future industry than I had
yet imagined. On Earth, the Commission for Historical Truth had been
mapping the future. For fifteen thousand years.
    I said, ’Things weren’t weird enough already.’
    My future self murmured, ’You get used to it.’
    Varcin’s expression softened a little. ’Think of it as an
opportunity. Every Expansion citizen should see the home world before
she dies.’
    ’Come with me,’ I said impulsively to Tarco. ’Come with me to
Earth.’
    ’All right.’
    Dakk put her hands on our shoulders. ’Lethe, but this is a
magnificent enterprise.’
    I hated her; I loved her; I wanted her out of my life.

 
III
     
     
    It was all very well for Varcin to order us to Earth. The Navy
wasn’t about to release one of its own to the Commission for
Historical Truth without a fight, and there was lengthy wrangling
over the propriety and even the legality of transferring the court of
inquiry to Earth. In the end a team of Navy lawyers was assigned to
the case.
    We were a strange crew, I guess: two star-crossed lovers, court
members, Navy lawyers, serving officers, Commissaries and all. Not to
mention another version of me. The atmosphere was tense all the way
from Base 592.
    But at journey’s end all our differences and politics and
emotional tangles were put aside, as we crowded to the hull to
sightsee our destination.
    Earth!
    At first it seemed nondescript: just another rocky ball circling
an unspectacular star, in a corner of a fragmented spiral arm. But
Snowflake surveillance stations orbited in great shells around the
planet, all the way out as far as the planet’s single battered Moon,
and schools of Spline gambolled hugely in the waves of a mighty ocean
that covered half the planet’s surface. It was an eerie thought that
down there somewhere in that sea was another Assimilator’s Torch, a
junior version of the battered old ship we had seen come limping into
port.
    This little world had become the capital of the Third Expansion,
an empire that stretched across all the stars I could see,