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34: Trinity and Singularity
As if in a dream, I was in a hospital bed, with sunlight streaming in through a broad window overlooking a clear blue sky. The window was open, and birds warbled outside in thick tree crowns. The room was plain and pleasant, with light wheat-colored wallpaper, and a few framed photograps of colorful and innocuous subjects. The door burst open, and the black-and-white checkered surgeon with the silver lips walked in. "Hello, Brother Farr. How are you feeling?"
I sat up part-way and stared at her. She was tall, thin, and beautiful, with full gorgeous dark hair cascading around her head in bangs.
"You don't recognize me," she said. It was a question. With a small mysterious smile, she flicked open my medical history on a wall display. I saw images of the inside of my leg looking like a lobster dinner under various stages of cutting apart and reconstruction. "You were working on a nasty infection that was in danger of killing you. We have you all fixed now."
"Then you were real," I said. "I thought I hallucinated about you when I had my surgery earlier."
The door opened, and Professor Taylor walked in. His lips became a small square—something no human could have done, and he made one of those [tweet-gurgle-foooooo-didididi] kind of noises that no human throat could make. The doctor turned to him, formed her lips into a little square, and said [wee-deeble-hee-bee/wooo-kee-wah-booooo-wibbit] and they carried on between each other for a minute or two. Two of a kind, I thought.
"Good day, Brother Farr," the doctor said with a fond glance and a little wave as she left the room.
"How are you?" Taylor said as he stood by the bed with his hands behind his back."
"Better," I said. "The pain is all gone and my leg feels normal."
"Right. When I send you back, don't let on."
"That I was here?"
"Yes, that, and also what I'm about to tell you. Tuttle is not working for Balesso. He is working for the City of En and for me."
"Balesso's men shot the Priestess Singularity."
"I know," Taylor said. "A dreadful thing for you. I think we can intervene, but it required that some other facts fall into place. Do you understand why Balesso is going to the far past?"
"Something about the lost oceans of Mars."
"Right. He is convinced that the Laars, the ancient aliens, took the oceans with them when they vanished."
"Is that possible?"
He shrugged. "In the grand scheme of things, many things are possible that may not be probable. We can't find out for certain because that part of the Temporale has been under frozen interdict for ages."
"What does that mean?"
"The City of En saw a danger to itself and acted. You see, the ancestors of some of the principal people in the Time Wars that ruptured the Membrane far uptime were Martian. One of them is Balesso. Another is you. That is why you are important to us, and also to Balesso, because he found out somehow."
"Ah yes," I said, "his famous years of exile. He must have spent quite a bit of time wandering around the Temporale."
"True. He thinks that the great Anomaly houses the suspended bodies of thousands of Laars who fled their enemies by entombing themselves so they would wake up safely almost a billion years in the future. Balesso doesn't care about them so much, unless it's to learn their powers. What he is more interested in is becoming the Water King of Mars. That is his chosen public relations name, as concocted by Voreill."
"I overheard them saying they want to hold a show trial using me."
Taylor nodded. "It's true, and we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Knowing what you know now, I'm going to send you back and therefore you will cooperate with Tuttle."
"And Sindi?"
"It remains to be seen. It is a very serious thing to undo events in the past."
"I will look into the matter. Meanwhile, rest assured we are doing all we can for the other priestest, Trinity."
"Can I see her?"
He shook his head. "She is comatose." When I became agitated, thinking of the loss of both of my dear friends, he raised a calming hand. "Trust in me, Farr, and do what you can for the City of En. It is all we ask, and in return we will do all we can for you." He beckoned for me to rise from my bed and walk to the wall. There, through a one-way window, I saw into the room next door. It was aseptic, white, filled with ambient light. On a white gurney lay Trini, covered by a sheet so white its folds had bluish shadows. Her eyes were closed and a breathing tube jutted from her mouth. Her reddish hair was the only dark thing visible in that room. I liked the way her curls turned this way and that on the whiteness of her sheets.
As I stood staring at her, a small but strong hand gently descended on my right shoulder. I glanced up and saw Singularity. I turned joyfully and embraced her. "You are alive!"
She hugged me, then pushed away. "They snatched me a moment before the blast that killed me. It changed the universe ever so subtly, and in some other time stream you will grieve over my death, but here we are lucky to be in one piece."
"They did this despite the risk to their city?"
"They do nothing to change time unless it benefits the City of En."
"How—?"
She closed her eyes to signal her lack of knowledge, and she started to fade. At the same moment, Taylor laid a hand gently on my other shoulder. "Time to go back." Even as he said the last word, I found myself falling at a million years a second down that hole parallel to the Time Train route. I arrived at the exact place and moment I had left, with just enough gap so the two soldiers noticed—and I was just in time to see the rest of the fallen cup of water twirling through the air in a silvery rope full of light and spatter all over the ballast gravel.
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