X

"All right. Thank you, Midgard. We'll look into that possibility," said Caelestis, over Wei'To's deskcom. I'd just finished telling her what Chernobog had revealed about the attack on Io.

"Yes, Ma'am," I said. "And could I ask...?"

"No," said Caelestis. "I know exactly what Commander Horus's instructions to you were. Over and out."

I sighed with frustration and sat back in Wei'To's chair. I should have guessed Horus would be thorough enough to make certain I couldn't get into the investigation by the back door. But at least Caelestis would be doing something with the information, while I was stuck here, trying to solve a murder while surrounded by leads that went nowhere. I was starting to worry that the only possible perpetrator would turn out to be someone from outside the project, who'd already escaped, leaving us with the murder weapon, but no clues to track them down. Horus would have the perfect excuse to order me to stay on this case indefinitely if that happened.

"Um... Detective?"

"Come in, Miss Uzume," I said. Uzume was hovering nervously in the doorway. "I'm all finished."

"Good. It's just... I just remembered something," said Uzume. She came into Wei'To's office and knelt down to pull a box off one of the bottom shelves. She stood up again and brought it over to the desk and set it down in front of me.

"These all belonged to Andrew," she said. "They're his personal affects. The professor was looking after them until we can send them back to his family on Corporate Mars. I... I thought they might be useful. Or maybe you'd want to see them."

"Yes. Thank you," I said, sitting up and pulling the box towards me. "This could be helpful." Andrew Tawaret was unlikely to have killed the professor from beyond the grave or to be our mysterious third backstepper, but there was still a chance he was somehow involved with the rifle recharger. In either case, it was nice to have something resembling a new angle to explore.

The box contained a boardcom and various data crystals, a pair of sunglasses and an Oxbridge Luna baseball cap. There were various different stones at the bottom, so perhaps he had been collecting souvenirs in the past, choosing something that would minimise the risk of paradox creation. There were a couple of the replica Mayan folding books, which were evidently prototypes of what the finished ones for the library would look like, and a larger, leather bound book.

"What was Tawaret like?" I asked, as I took it out and opened it.

"He was very nice," said Uzume. "We all liked him. He was very... thoughtful. He didn't talk very much, but he wasn't unsociable. He was very contemplative, I suppose."

"Right," I said. "Was he another history student?"

The larger book had turned out an artist's sketchbook, filled with old fashioned pencil drawings. Some were a bit smudged, but otherwise, they were very good. My hopes that he might have drawn a vital clue somewhere were quickly dashed. He'd spent nearly his entire time drawing landscapes and buildings and animals, including the statues and pyramids in Tutal Xiu, the walls of Constantinople, the trees outside Glasney College and the lighthouse at Alexandria. None of them were dated and he hadn't drawn the jaguar knife at any point.

"Yes. He was on the same scholarship as me," said Megan. "He actually told me about the Library Project. He was really interested in it from the start. He... He liked the idea of being able to use time travel to save things. He said it was a gift."

"Yes, it is nice when it's possible," I said. I turned the sketchbook around so I could study a drawing of the Mayan ball game more closely, but I couldn't make out Xibalba among the players.

"Have you ever done it?" said Uzume, suddenly. I looked up and she suddenly looked nervous.

"...Yes. In a sense," I said.

I had used time travel to save the Prince of Jupiter's life at the Time Traveller's Ball, making sure he was out of the way and that everyone who had been planning to kill him thought he was already dead while my past self investigated his "murder". But it hadn't really been my own work. I'd just been following a path and completing a time loop that time had laid out for me. I hadn't realised it until the end. As I might be doing right now.

"It must be," said Uzume, cautiously looking back at me and then looking away again. "Nice, I mean. When it's possible. Everyone talks about time being so fixed and unchangeable and... written. It's nice to know that it's not. That, sometimes, there are ways. That we can change things. And maybe... maybe we can do it more than we realise. It's just that we think time is fixed, so we don't bother trying."

"Maybe," I said. I had no idea why Uzume had suddenly launched the conversation down this path, but it wasn't making me feel any better. I had saved the Prince's life, when a dozen different things were trying to kill him, but the time stream had practically orchestrated that. It had used me. But if it decided it had no more use for me, it could kill me just as easily. Mirabi definitely had been right though. Megan Uzume was very insightful...

Mirabi.

My head snapped up and I looked Uzume in the eye. Her eyes went wide as she realised she'd given herself away. She turned and fled out of the room.

_ _ _ _ _

Mirabi was talking to Anthony Hades down on Earth over Baal's phonecom as I stalked back into the main room.

"What do you mean you can't find it?" she said.

"I'm sorry, Detective. I genuinely can't," said Hades. "I'm trying to find the sarcophagus, but it's taking time."

"I thought you dug it up two weeks ago," said Mirabi.

"Yes, I did," said Hades. "Only I've just found out that my students have not been putting the boxes in the storage tents in the correct order. Or in any particular order."

"Oh, wonderful!" said Mirabi. "How long is this going to take?"

"Well, however long it takes me to find box 74389..."

"How many boxes are there?"

"...Just under seven thousand."

"Oh. Well, that's great," said Mirabi. "All right. Just call me back when you've got it. Hi, Erik."

"Excuse us for a moment," I said, as Mirabi ended the call and handed Baal back his phonecom and started playing with her wristcom without looking at me.

"Oh. Sure," said Baal. "I..."

"Go," I said, as quietly and controlled as I could. As soon as he was gone, I grabbed Mirabi's arm.

"You told her?"

"Let go of me," said Mirabi, without looking up.

"You told... OW!"

"Yes, I did," said Mirabi, as I shook my hand out, trying to get the feeling back into my fingers.

"You haxing, evolution-forsaken... How could you?" I said. I glanced around. Thankfully, none of the others had noticed yet.

"She asked me what it was she kept saying that upset you," said Mirabi. "I explained."

"You utter...!" I controlled myself and spoke through my teeth. "That is private."

"Oh, please," said Mirabi. "I know, Horus knows, the senior officers know, the medical staff know, Jake and Debra know, the Hierophants know. It's never been private, Erik."

"That doesn't mean I want it spread around the Solar System..."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about," said Mirabi. "She not the kind of person who passes on gossip. That's another reason she'd be very good for you."

"For crying out... I am not interested in..."

"Because fate might drop a meteorite on your head at any moment because you cheated it in the future," said Mirabi. "Wake up, Erik. We all live in the danger of sudden death. All the more reason to live while you can. You just complain that you can't live today because you might die tomorrow."

"You should have told me," I said.

"Why? Would you have said yes?" said Mirabi, looking at me. "And even if you aren't interested in her, she's extremely interested in you. She's got a right to know exactly how much neuroses and paranoia she's letting herself in for."

"That isn't funny," I said. "You had no right..."

"So arrest me," said Mirabi. "But in case you're forgetting, we've got a murder and a temporal smuggling case to solve. If you're not too busy enjoying having something to be angry about, I've got an idea."

I breathed deep, and resisted the urge to strangle her. And the one to somehow find a way to wipe Megan Uzume's memory. Perhaps one of Baldr's neurological teaching devices or Chernobog's stolen interrogation gadget could do it.

"Fine," I said.

"Great," said Mirabi. "Doctors!"

The academics looked up and came over to us again. Zeus and Baldr were still glaring at each other, but otherwise, they seemed to have cooled to a rather frosty truce.

"Yes, Detectives?"

"You mentioned gifts before," said Mirabi. "Is computer data really the only thing you bring back from the past?"

"Well, no," said Ra. "We do have the absolute rule against souvenir hunting, but we do occasionally accept gifts. In most ancient cultures, it's considerably rude to refuse them. Those we do bring back with us."

"It's relatively safe," said Baldr. "Most of them are specially made for us so there's no chance of them going missing from the time stream. It's no different from those rich fools who get Michelangelo to do sculptures of them."

"When was I ever going to get a chance like that again?" said Zeus.

"Right. Where do you keep all these artefacts?" said Mirabi. "Do you have any from the Mayans?"

"Plenty. They're all in the safe," said Ra.

"The safe?" I said. I flashed back - for the first time in two hours - to what I'd overheard in the future. The safe that Megan Uzume knew the combination too. Though she was the last person I wanted to talk to right now.

"Yes, just until the Library's finished," said Baldr. "We're going to have a display case in each hall with the gifts from each one. A nice physical link to the past. We've been looking at borrowing items from other museums as well."

"Great. Show me to this safe," said Mirabi.

"Is that really necessary?" said Ra. "I assure you the knife hasn't been in there. I check it almost daily..."

"No, but everything in it has been through time via your teleporter," said Mirabi, resetting the scanner on her wristcom. "They'll all have picked up a temporal radiation signature, depending on where they came from and the journey time, that will be as distinctive as DNA. That'll tell us if the knife has been through time or not."

I blinked and then immediately felt stupid. This was another simple, and completely obvious, thing we could have done that hadn't occurred to me. As much as I hated to admit it, Horus might be right. The problem of my missing cloning tube was affecting me.

_ _ _ _ _

"It's right here, Detectives," said Ra, lifting a large framed mosaic off one of the walls in the Alexandria room. Behind it was a large supra-steel door set in the wall with a keypad next to it. "Though are you sure you need to see the artefacts? Couldn't you get the same reading from our clothes? Or from anything else we've taken back."

"No. That's going back, not coming forwards," said Mirabi. "It needs to be something that started life in Total Zeezoo, or whatever this place is called."

"Very well," said Ra. He sounded surprisingly reluctant for a historian who was about to show off some physical bits of history, but he punched several numbers into the keypad and pulled the door open with both hands. I remembered again that this might be the safe Uzume knew the combination to.

Inside, the safe was divided into shelves, each on laden with small items. There were decorated cups, small statues, wooden carvings, pieces of jewellery, small books and scrolls. It was easy to see, or at least guess, which of the different cultures and times they had come from.

"The Mayan stuff is the fourth shelf," said Zeus, as Mirabi stepped forward and began scanning the Mayan artefacts.

"I'll thank you not to refer to my people's artwork as "stuff"," said Domingo Xibalba. "They gifted us with some splendid pieces."

"Yes, they did," said Chernobog. "And I still don't see why I can't keep the necklace I got in Alexandria. It was given to me."

"For the last time, no," said Ra. "It is part of the Project. It is staying here."

"And you did tell that guy you'd consider marrying him," said Ishtar.

"Shut up," said Chernobog.

"OK. It's working," said Mirabi. "Good strong signature... Except on these."

She leant forwards and reached into the back of the Mayan shelf, right back into the safe.

"Oh, don't worry. Those are mine. They aren't important," said Ra, as Mirabi pulled out three magazines; actual printed paper ones and not data crystals. They were all issues of The Solar Scientist.

"What are you keeping them in there for?" said Zeus.

"I'm a little short of shelf space in my office at the moment," said Ra. "I'm had to put them somewhere."

"The safe is meant to be for temporal artefacts only," said Baldr. "That's how I justified it on the budget. Take them home if you haven't got space..."

"Oh, don't worry," said Mirabi, who was looking at the covers. "They are artefacts. Just not from the past."

She turned them around where we could see them. All three magazines were dated as June, July and August 3016. They were going to be published next year.

There was a pause as well all stared at them. Then we just as quickly looked at Ra, who was gritting his teeth and turning red again.

"What in Darwin's name...?"

"You've been going to the future?" said Anubis, stepping forward.

"No, I haven't," said Ra, holding up his hands. He sighed. "They're not genuine. Scan them, Detective. You'll see they don't have a temporal radiation signature. Or if they do, it's very weak. I actually put them in there in the hope they'd soak it up from the other artefacts. In case anyone checked."

"And why would anyone be checking," I said.

"Page six," said Ra.

Mirabi flipped the magazine open. I looked over her shoulder. On page six was the announcements section of new academic appointments throughout the Solar System.

""Newly appointed to the Titan chair of historical linguistics: Professor Bartholomew Themis"," Zeus read over my shoulder. "But that's Gertrude Vesta's chair..."

He broke off and his head snapped up.

"You...!" he said, pointing at Ra.

"Yes," said Ra, sighing.

Baldr grabbed the other two magazines from me and flipped through them.

"Cydonia chair of Japanese history; Samantha Ninurta... Oxbridge Earth chair of Textile Archaeology...Arstan Veles," he said. "Julian!"

"Do I really need to say it?" said Ra. "You two geniuses can obviously work it out."

"You were trying to cheat in the Wells Prize as well?"

"Yes, he is," said Zeus. "Oh, very clever. Offer to let the judges see a magazine from the future that mentions them; without mentioning that it's about their greatest rival getting their job. You've basically stolen my idea, Julian."

"You're one to talk," said Ra, folding his arms. "And no, I did not steal your idea. I didn't even know about it until Midgard found the emails. But yes. You were right about one thing. The competition is going to be stiff this year and translation work is never a crowd pleaser. I wanted to give myself a small advantage too."

"So the judges read these and give you the prize in the hope it'll change the future?" said Mirabi. "Good plan. Let's just hope none of them have heard of paradox reactions."

"I do not believe this. You're all entering, you're all trying to cheat and you all call yourselves professionals," said Isabel Chernobog.

"Academic office politics has always included strategies and tactics that a South Martian street fighter would consider dirty," said Baldr. "That's older than the original Oxford and Cambridge."

"I am still going to inform the Wells judges about all of you," said Chernobog. "Unless of course, you want to discuss right now who's getting the doctoral place next semester?"

"Isabel!" said Baal.

"That's not fair!" said Ishtar.

"You can discuss this later," I said. "In the meantime, could we go and see if the knife has the same radiation signature?"

"You've got a deal," Zeus muttered to Chernobog as we left the room.