"They had a Mensinger as well," Drakov continued, "one very much like ours. Only they listened to him. They possessed the sanity to stop their Time Wars. But we have forced them to begin again by making war on them. "
"What are you talking about"" said Phoenix. "No one’s made-"
"What do you think happens when someone sets off a warp grenade"" said Drakov, "such as when Lucas Priest exploded one in 19th century Ruritania to break out of Zenda Castle""
Phoenix frowned. "What are you getting at""
"A peculiar temporal phenomenon occurs," said Drakov. "The chronocircuitry in a warp grenade, as I understand it, is designed to clock the surplus energy of the explosion through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to the Orion Nebula, where it can do no harm. Correct" Eminently practical for military applications, one would think. You can focus the energy of a nuclear explosion with pinpoint precision while the major force of its destructive power is teleported elsewhere. Only such massive expenditures of energy are never totally predictable, especially when coupled with the delicate alignment of chronotransitions."
"Which means"" said Phoenix.
"It means, my friend, that this latest insane escalation of military weaponry has thrown off the chronophysical alignments of the bridges Einstein-Rosen Generators tap into. The people in the alternate timeline have been the unfortunate victims of this phenomenon. You have been waging nuclear war upon them."
"My God," said Phoenix. "That would mean. His voice trailed off.
"Thousands have been annihilated," Drakov said. "Hundreds of thousands. And they never knew the reason for the holocaust. They had no idea who was behind it. Until now."
Chapter 8
They clocked into a large, shadowy hall inside a dark, cavernous building. The atmosphere was dank and musty, with a feeling of great age. Massive stone columns supported a domed ceiling, and torches flickered in stone sconces. At the far end of the hall, atop a giant altar, was a huge obsidian statue of the goddess Kali, arms held out like an arachnid, skulls around her neck, tongue lolling. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor.
"Whereare we"" said Finn.
"Inan old, deserted lamasery high above the Khyber Pass," said the twin Priest. "It used to be the temple of a thugee cult, which accounts for the statue and the grotesque carvings on the columns. It makes for a suitable base of operations. From below it’s virtually in-visible. An observer won’t even spot it with field glasses unless he knows what he’s looking for."
They saw a number of Pathan tribesmen standing guard and a few gray-uniformed soldiers moving about briskly, carrying equipment. They were taken to a small chamber, lit by portable lamps which generated their own power. There was a long table in the center of the room, with about a dozen chairs around it. Priest directed them to sit.
There were a number of soldiers in the room, all standing around the perimeter, watching them. A number of the faces looked unfamiliar, but Delaney spotted one he thought he knew.
" Bryant" " he said.
The officer looked back at him, deadpan.
"Bryant, but not B * ryant," Finn said.
The officer gave him a faint ghost of a smile.
"Martin,"said Andre, seeing another man.
The husky, bearded lieutenant gave her a brief nod.
"It’s amazing, — said Delaney. "A mirror-image universe."
"Not quite," said Priest. "But close." He walked up to Finn and pulled off his turban. "If you have a counterpart, I haven’t met him." He turned to Andre and yanked off her turban. Her long blonde hair cascaded down.
There was a strange look on his face. "Tell me about the other Lucas Priest," he said. "What was your rela-tionship to him""
"Wewere a team," she said. "The three of us. Lucas was my friend."
"For what it’s worth, I’m sorry he’s dead. How did it happen""
"He died saving a man’s life."
Priest nodded. "As good a way to go as any, I suppose. I wanted very much to meet him. I’d heard a great deal about you three."
"From whom"" Delaney said, frowning.
Priest smiled. "From a man named Drakov."
"Drakov!" saidDelaney.
"Nikolai Drakov arrived in our timeline escaping from you. Exactly how he managed to arrive is a complex question which we’ll save for the time being. He was unaware at first that he was not quite where he thought he was. As a result he made several mistakes which led to his arrest. Imagine his surprise, and ours, when we learned the truth. He was put through an exhaustive interrogation, the purpose of which was to learn as much about your timeline as we could. I use the term we generically. I was not personally involved. At least not at that point.
"The discovery of your timeline’s existence explained a great many things for us. It also raised a number of extremely difficult questions. For a number of years we had enjoyed uninterrupted peace. Our history, it seems, paralleled yours very closely. We had a Professor Mensinger as well, only he was considerably more successful than his counterpart in your timeline. He managed to prove to the Council of Nations that temporal warfare could interfere with history. Consequently, a ceasefire resolution was passed and temporal warfare was abandoned. The temporal armies were redirected toward space colonization, which I understand you have not pursued as extensively as we have. We found other means of settling our conflicts. Not perfect solutions, admittedly, but that need not concern you.
"Several years ago, by our Plus Time reckoning, we came under attack. A colony transport fleet was almost completely annihilated while en route to its destination with new settlers in coldsleep storage tanks. The few surviving ships could give no indication of why they were attacked, from where, or even by whom. Not long after that, the city of Altaira on the colony world New Queensland was destroyed. Reduced to slag. Again, no indication of who launched the attack nor from where it came. Other, similar attacks followed, apparently without rhyme or reason. Sometimes populated areas were destroyed, sometimes uninhabited moons or planetoids, sometimes the explosions occurred in space. Yet they all had the same things in common. No one could tell who was responsible. No one could tell where the attacks came from. Each aitack was a nuclear strike. And we have now learned that each attack came from your timeline, through an artificially created warp in spacetime."
"Warp grenades," Delaney said in a low voice. "Sweet Jesus, what have we done""
"Killed thousands, millions of innocent people," Priest said. "And, until Nikolai Drakov fell into our hands, we had no idea who was responsible."
"How could we have known"" said Andre in a shocked voice.
Priest shrugged fatalistically. "Perhaps you couldn’t have. Your moral culpability, on purely ethical grounds, is certainly open to debate, but that’s neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that while it may be understood, in principle, that you didn’t realize what you were doing, a great many people don’t see it that way. If you had known, I have no doubt you would have stopped teleporting nuclear explosions through corridors in spacetime that bridged to our universe. But would that have been enough" What about all the lives that were lost" How could you possibly make reparations for them" Besides, the situation is considerabl, more complex than that.