Temporal Exploring 101 - First Transit

I.42 A menace from the future

I was in the library when I heard them.

I froze with sudden fear. For a moment, I was unable to think clearly, much less to move. My first impulse was to drop to the ground, close my eyes and play possum.

I managed to curb that impulse, but only barely so.

They had to be close by, on the other side of the shelf of books that I had been looking at. Cautiously, I stepped closer and peered at them between two rows of books.

They were standing with their backs to me, two men and one woman. They were discussing something in hushed voices. And they were speaking Pyrtari.

Even if I had not heard them talk, just looking at them would have been enough for me to realize what they were. Though a casual observer might have mistaken them for ordinary human beings, their posture, their poise and the graceful way they moved, all that screamed: pyrtar.

It had happened near the end of the Cataclysm.

In a final desperate effort to create genetically enhanced human beings, an army of invincible soldiers, the ultimate weapon in a war, scientists had done the unthinkable: they had created a new species. The pyrtar were stronger and faster than ordinary human beings, they had greater persistence and they were even more ruthless killers than their human cousins.

Homo pyrtar, their proud creators had named them. Except that soon it turned out that homo pyrtar and homo sapiens could no longer have children together. The new species had been renamed into pyrtar.

Not many of the pyrtar had survived the Cataclysm. In the decades that followed, with humanity slowly recovering from the destruction it had wrought, there was a great controversy about what was to be done with the pyrtar.

Although advocated by some who argued that humanity would never be able to contain and control the pyrtar, killing them had never really been considered an option: after all, they were sentient beings.

On the other hand, they were considered dangerous, and not without reason. In the end, it was decided that humanity would have to live with them. Initially there were hopes that future genetic engineering might eventually succeed in reuniting the two species, homo sapiens and pyrtar. But those early hopes never materialized.

Meanwhile, the pyrtar had developed their own language, Pyrtari. At their request, they were given their own territory to settle on, and they founded their own country, Pyrt.

In the early 23rd century, you would be likely to meet pyrtar in every major City of the Alliance, either as tourists, or doing business. What was troubling me was the fact that their business invariably involved some sort of violence. Pyrtar were hired, often by the government, almost exclusively as mercenary soldiers or as assassins.

To find that a group of at least three pyrtar had been sent back in time to the 1960s scared me no end. I strained to listen to what they were saying.

"She has to be here at this school, somewhere," the female observed, in Pyrtari. "The headmistress as good as acknowledged it."

"We must have patience and not act rashly here," one of the males cautioned. "After all, we have waited more than a decade for this moment."

"Ah, but to finally go home," the second man breathed. "We will need to ...".

He broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps. Headmistress Stuart joined them.

"These are the lists you requested to see," she told them, as she handed over a folder of documents. "I trust that the ministry will find everything to be as it is supposed to be here at our school."

"We are very impressed with what we have seen so far," the female pyrtar assured her, now speaking in English, "and we will be happy to be able to convey this to the minister."

The headmistress beamed. "Would you like to take a look at our new gym?"

I did not stay to listen to the pyrtars' reply. Cautiously, making as little noise as possible, I left the library.

Later that day, both Sara and Mira were shocked when I told them what I had witnessed.

"Pyrtar? Are you sure?"

"Of course I am sure. Great Gauss, they even spoke Pyrtari among themselves!"

They was a longish pause.

"Catherine, this is getting far too dangerous for you to be involved in," Sara declared. "I am seriously considering to take you off this assignment."

Part of me felt relieved at hearing those words, but another part of me was aghast.

"You can't do that. What about Natty? What will happen to her? You can't leave her at the mercy of those pyrtar."

Sara sighed. "We may send special agents to take care of the situation."

"But so far you failed to send anybody, other than me," I insisted.

"I know. But we can make another attempt. In any case, nothing has been decided yet. It is not even clear at this point if their presence has anything to do do with Natalie Fogg at all."

"Uh huh."

"Just promise to be careful, Catherine. And, whatever you do, do not approach the pyrtar."

"Don't worry about that," I told her. "I am scared to death of them, as it is."

That night I started to have the dream. For several nights in a row, I would have a recurrent dream, a dream that surely qualified as a nightmare of sorts.

At the beginning of the dream, I would be standing on the transit pad, getting ready for another temporal transit. Then, seemingly without transition, as it happens only in dreams, I would find myself in the empty city.

Stepping out onto the balcony of a high building, I would take a look around, knowing that all those apartment buildings and houses I could see were standing empty, deserted.

Knowing that I was to blame. That somehow this had come to pass as a consequence of my failure on my First Temporal Assignment.

I had left Natty Fogg when she had needed me the most, left her behind to die. I had merely followed the rules, and yet, or rather because of that, I had failed. Failed utterly. And thus, I had doomed both my own world and hers.

I would invariably wake up in the dark, in our dorm room, with that dreadful realization. It would take me a few seconds to understand where I was.

With a sense of immense relief I would listen to Natty's regular breath as she slept in her bed, only a few meters away from me. Or, sometimes, to a soft rustling of sheets and her telltale little gasps and moans.

I did not have a good explanation for my recurrent nightmares. Perhaps it was merely my fear that Sara would take me off this assignment and force me to leave Natty alone without protection. Not that I would be able to adequately protect her against the pyrtar if they decided to make their move.

I did not know what they had planned, nor did I know for sure that my roommate was indeed their target. But I knew that pyrtar were traditionally hired for acts of sabotage and for assassinations, and I suspected that this particular group had been sent back in time to kill Natty Fogg.

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A / N :  As we approach the end of Book 1 of the Temporal Exploring 101 series, the plot is going to become more fast-paced and also more exciting.

Anyway, I am happy that you guys are still reading this  :-) Please do not hesitate to leave your comments or to vote on this chapter if you liked it.