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Overview
Swords, sorcery, and time travel are a strange and dangerous mix
Wayfarer Inspector Danolarian saw his world's future and did not approve. The inspector knew about time travel because he had once met his future self. What he did not know was that he would be abducted into the future, and wind up on the run with a constable who had shape-shifted into a cat. Danolarian would also find himself marooned in the ancient past, where he would have to recover his time engine from five thousand naked, psychopathic horsemen.
A faulty repair plunges him another three million years back in time, to a world of strange, beautiful people living idyllic lives in splendid castles. But things are not always as they seem. After being attacked, he learns from his unlikely rescuer that time travel is not entirely real. A furious Danolarian returns to his own time, planning revenge against the time engine's true builders.
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429917711 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/22/2008 |
| Series: | The Moonworlds Saga , #4 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Sean McMullen is one Australia's leading SF and fantasy authors, and lives in Melbourne. He has had a dozen books published, and is the winner of thirteen awards for SF and fantasy.
Sean McMullen is one of the leading Australian SF authors to emerge during the 1990s, having won more than a dozen national awards in his homeland. In addition, he has sold many short stories to magazines such as Analog, Interzone, and Fantasy&Science Fiction, and was co-author of Strange Constellations, a History of Australian SF. He established himself in the American market with the publication of the Greatwinter trilogy (comprised of Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, and Eyes of the Calculor). His fiction has been translated into Polish, French, and Japanese. The settings for Sean's work range from the Roman Empire, through Medieval Europe, to cities of the distant future.
He has bachelor's and master's degrees from Melbourne University, and post-graduate diplomas in computer science, information science and business management. He is currently doing a PhD in Medieval Fantasy Literature at Melbourne University, where he is also the deputy instructor at the campus karate club, and a member of the fencing club. Before he began writing, Sean spent several years in student reviews and theatre, and was lead singer in three rock and folk bands. After singing in several early music groups and choirs, he spent two years in the Victorian State Opera before he began writing.
He lives in Melbourne with his wife Trish and daughter Catherine.
Read an Excerpt
The Time Engine
The Fourth Book of the Moonworlds Saga
By Sean McMullen
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Sean McMullenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-1771-1
CHAPTER 1
Part One
FUTURE TENSION
I awoke to find myself bound and gagged, with my hands trussed behind my back and digging into me very uncomfortably. I opened my eyes. There were two long bars of brilliant light above me. Turning my head away, I saw that I was in some manner of room, but nothing in it was familiar. It was filled with the strangest of machineries and engines, yet one fact was quite beyond dispute: the place was a mess. Sitting on the edge of what was either a bench or a bed was what I at first took for a boy; then I noticed the small breasts of a girl not far past puberty. Her hair was short, and cut in a strangely geometric style, as if a Palionese guardsman's helmet had been put on her head and all the hair still visible had been slashed away. She was smiling, but that did not seem like a very good sign, judging from the way she was rubbing her hands together.
"Inspector Danolarian, it's thirty generators, but at last I will be brought to justice," she declared in a very heavy accent; then she gave what was probably a curse in some unknown language.
She clenched her jaw, and the air hissed between her teeth as she drew breath.
"Inspector Danolarian, at last I shall bring you to justice!" she now shouted. "After thirty generations, that is, I have — no, I shall brought — bring — you to justice."
My impression was that she was presenting me with a very important speech, but that she had rehearsed and refined it somewhat too often. Princes at coronations, brides at weddings, criminals facing the noose, all have carefully rehearsed words, and most get a few of them wrong.
"Varria, is that you?" a male voice called in the distance.
"Yes!" my captor bellowed in reply.
"Don't you yes me, young woman! I want you out here in ten, and I mean seconds."
The girl stood, strode across the room, then loomed over me with her hands on her hips as she glared down.
"One sound, even so much as a thump against the floor, and you get a dose of this that will leave your nerves dead in a six-inch circle for the rest of your life."
She held up an oblong thing on a chain. It was about the size of a tinderbox striker, and I concluded that it was some utterly incomprehensible weapon. With that she walked out of the door, pulling it shut behind her.
For a moment I lay there, genuinely amazed and thoroughly alarmed. I was shocked not so much by my surroundings as by the fact that someone had tied me up yet left my boots on. In the Alberin of the limbo year nobody would tie anyone up without removing their boots. I rolled over, then got to my knees. Sitting back on my heels, I fumbled for the heel of my left boot, then twisted. It came free, and from within I took a sliver of razor-sharp obsidian. I prefer glass or flint for my heel blade, as boots do tend to get wet, and a rusted blade is of no use whatever. It was the work of moments to slice through the cords binding my wrists. With my hands free, I untied my legs and returned my heel blade to its proper place. Apparently people did not know about heel blades in wherever I was, and that was already to my advantage. As I sat rubbing the circulation back into my muscles I heard footsteps approaching outside.
I stood as a key rattled in the lock, and took up a position behind the door. Grasping the handle, I wrenched it open. My captor tried to hold on to the outer handle, and was pulled off-balance with her head forward. I now slammed the door back, and was rewarded with the heavy thump of wood striking skull.
As I again pulled the door open, I saw my young abductor lying against the opposite wall in the corridor outside. She was putting a hand to her forehead, and did not look to be at her most coherent. Glancing to and fro along the corridor, I saw stairs at one end and some manner of window at the other. Stairs, people will come up them, window, glass, breaks easily, cuts skin, most buildings one floor high flashed through my mind, then I put my hands on my head and my forearms over my face as I ran at the window and jumped.
With a very dramatic crash of shattering glass, I burst out into the night, prayed that I was only one floor up, and discovered that I was three floors up as I started falling. Almost immediately I encountered a tree, and began smashing down through the leaves and branches. I came to rest in a springy bush with prickly leaves. Somewhere above me a bell was ringing with unnatural rapidity. Dogs began barking, and brilliance castings came to life as I ran through garden beds. I came to a stone wall topped by iron pointwork, and taking the belt from my tunic I made a loop, snared an iron spike, then scrambled up over the wall and dropped to the street outside.
The street was something that nobody from the Alberin of 3144 could ever have imagined. There were white strips on either side, and the center was of black stone. Everything was smooth and without cobbles. There were gutters, but they were absolutely free of sewage. Do these people not piss or drop turds, I thought in wonder as I began walking away at burglar pace — which is fast but casual.
Intensely bright castings on poles illuminated everything as if it were near-daylight. I walked without looking back, keeping close to the walls. Huge carriages shot past on the black stone surface, driven along by invisible autons rather than horses, and equipped with lamp-castings that blazed brighter than the sun. I thought I was sure to be pursued and caught in moments, but those in the carriages ignored me.
As I reached a larger street, I slowed and turned. I had actually escaped from the Wall Tower building, which sat solid and dark amid a row of other buildings that seemed to be made largely of lights and glass. A sign bolted to the wall on the corner declared this to be Chandler's Lane, and a sign below it read TOURIST WALK 17 and WALL TOWER—HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE GRADING B.
I kept walking. A walking man attracts a lot less attention than one who is running or loitering, after all. On the footway ahead of me I saw people, along with various other creatures. Some of those creatures were Lupanians. The deadly, near-invincible invaders from another moonworld were now just part of the crowd. A shop sign declared the goods on sale inside to be LUPAN RED FRIES, but none of the customers behind the enormous expanse of glass window were from Lupan. A Lupanian man with about a fortnight of beard growth was sitting against the shopfront with a sign that read HOAMLIS. Beside him was a cap containing a few silver coins.
As first I thought that I stood out, but the variety of weirdness in the clothing of that nightmare city meant that nobody gave a second glance to my Wayfarer Constable uniform of boots, drawstrings, and tunic, and even the charred slashes that Terikel's white-hot talons had put in my left sleeve drew no comment. Still, if the constables of this place were to be issued with a description of me, it would be a good idea to look a little different.
A glowing sign above a building declared 18FIVEMONTH 1006 IS THE BEST DAY TO BUY A ZARVID. That was clearly a date, but 1006? Is that a year, I wondered. If it was a year, was it a thousand and six years from the one I was in about a quarter hour ago? If I was a thousand years in the future, rather than in some obscure part of hell, then this was quite possibly Alberin, I concluded.
"You look good, I'm depressed!"
The man addressing me was startlingly overweight, balding, and dressed in clothes that were wonderfully tailored, yet filthy. He was holding up some sort of daemon or auton that seemed little more than a single eye.
"You could be thin and rich if you but spent less silver on food," I advised as I walked on without breaking stride, confident that he could not keep up.
"I got your pix," he shouted after me. "I gonna sue 'cause you made me depressed by lookin' so good, an' insultin' me, an' not sayin' sorry ..."
After nearly tripping over another Lupanian sitting on the footway and displaying a sign that declared economy victim, I hurried on. Between lupan red fries and the next street I was accosted and abused another half-dozen times for looking fit, looking fast, looking at someone, spare jingle, the good word on doomsday, and an offer of a good time with a Lupanian girl. From another shopfront that was just a huge expanse of glass and a door, a Dacostian woman dressed only in a folded handkerchief waved her four breasts at me and beckoned with her forefinger. The thought crossed my mind that a lamplight woman's bedchamber might afford a good place to hide for a half hour or so, then I was distracted as something cheeped on my left wrist. I saw that there was a loop of glowing material there, but it was not secured tightly and my wrists were slick with perspiration. It was the work of a moment to slip the thing off and drop it into the gutter.
A female voice erupted behind me.
"I saw that, I got your pix, I'm reportin' you for enviro-degradation atrocity."
A woman was waving one of the small eye-daemons at my back, and as I looked on she pointed the eye at the loop in the gutter, then waved it at me.
"I got evidence, this is a citizen's arrest," she declared.
Without warning we were bathed in light more intense than that of the sun at noontime. A booming voice from above told the two of us to throw down our weapons and lie on the ground with our hands above our heads or our right to sue for false arrest would be limited to five million electors. Needless to say, I turned and ran. There was the shrill squeak-sound of the strange weapon that had destroyed Terikel and stunned me, and I glanced back in time to see the woman collapse, still bathed in the intense light.
I knew that the constables in the sky above were sure to realize their mistake soon, and would be in pursuit of me. Desperate for somewhere to hide, I scanned the walls, shops, and signs. There were actually signs everywhere, and I could hardly believe that nobody had yet stolen them for firewood. One in particular caught my attention: BARGEYARDS HERITAGE BRIDGE 50 D. Where there was a bridge there would be water, and where there was water there was somewhere to hide. Fifty D turned out to be about thirty yards. Dodging the auton carriages that screeched and howled at me, I ran out onto the bridge in the middle of the nightmare Alberin that had not been there a quarter hour before. Vaulting the stone railing, I had a brief moment of serenity before hitting the water. Reasoning that my pursuers would be seeking me where I had dived, I used the light of their brilliance casting to swim underwater for the shelter of the bridge.
I surfaced again and saw that there was some sort of boat on the water, a large, oblong barge full of bright lights and people who sounded as if they were drunk. Shouts to the effect of "Man overboard!" echoed across the water to me, and I saw people throwing white, circular things into the water, while others hurled themselves into the river instead. From what I could tell, nobody seemed to be steering the barge, which was moving at quite a good pace in spite of having no oars, sail, or tow horse. It struck the central arch support of the bridge very solidly, cracked open, and began to take water.
* * *
Keeping close to the stone wall that was now the bank of the river, and with my head just high enough above the surface so I might breathe, I moved with the current. The water smelled like a mixture of lamp oil, rancid vegetables, and rotten eggs, and it stung my eyes. I have never actually tasted sewage, but I imagine the taste of that river water must have been a good approximation. Beneath the next bridge, on a sandbank, I discovered a group of ragged people pointing to the commotion upstream. Bridge bears, we called them in my time. They were shambling beggars who lived beneath the city's one bridge — except that now there seemed to be a bridge every couple of hundred yards. Crawling up out of the water behind them, I huddled beside their little fire and squeezed water from my clothes. By the time I was noticed, I was no longer dripping.
"Ay stranger, what bring?" asked one who held a walking stick as if he knew how to hit with it.
I was in wet and unfashionable clothes, and had strange speech and a total lack of local knowledge. In my century were there people in my situation? To be sure, there were. They were generally press-ganged sailors who had taken the opportunity to escape a forced and unpaid voyage when their ship had docked in Alberin.
"Sailor," I replied, hoping that ships still existed, then added "from Gatria."
Gatria did not exist, but bridge bears were not known for their scholarship.
"Have coin?" asked the man with the stick.
I produced three silver reils. He took them, held them to the firelight, then called to someone.
"Sam t'Coiner, give say, on these."
A rank bundle of rags shambled out of the darkness, wheezing loudly with every step. When shown the coins he interspersed his wheezes with a whistle.
"First minting, Free Greater Alberin, 3144. See there, Riellen Unites Us — 3144 on rim. Very rare."
"Where lifted?" asked the man with the stick. "Which museum?"
I had no idea where any museum might be, but was fairly sure that I was supposed to have stolen the coins.
"Open window," I replied, and he nodded.
I soon learned that beggars were called treadfolk here, but they no longer had a guild. Instead they belonged to local gangs. I bought membership with the Scraps for a coin of Greater Free Alberin. This gained me a twisted nail on a string, which I was expected to wear around my neck. A little man named Pile was assigned to me as my mentor. Were he not human-sized, I would have thought him a rat who had been dropped into a cesspit once too often. My estimate was that I had so far spent an hour in this Alberin of the future, and I recalled that I had been fighting Terikel perhaps two hours before midnight. As I settled down for the night on the damp sand I was convinced that I was far too tensed to sleep amid so much weirdness, yet the sleep of absolute and bone-deep exhaustion came to me very easily.
* * *
The treadfolk were apparently the only people in the future who still retired and woke in time with sunset and sunrise. As the sun rose through a yellowish haze behind a mountain range of angular glass buildings, Pile and I set off for what he called the Uppers. The Uppers consisted of anywhere above the bridge. By now I had learned that they talked a form of Alberinese called Streetfox, a sort of rhythmic language where nearly all words were paired. It was strangely clear, concise, and easy to follow.
"You need, victim status," he explained as we walked. "Got accent, tha's good. You be, economy victim, from Gatria."
"Truly?"
"Tha's good, like that."
Pile took me to a tavern called Hurry Inn Takeaway. It served cooked food but no ale, and he explained that it was one to remember because it served treadfolk. I looked around as we waited in the queue. Mounted on a wall pedestal was a daemon with a single large eye and mouths to either side of it. The eye was the area of a dinner tray, and it was displaying small images that moved.
As far as I could tell, this was a distant descendant of the marketplace bulletin board, except that its bulletins spoke and moved. One bulletin was about the crash of a voidliner from Lupan, in which three hundred passengers and crew had died. There were images of a smoking hole about the size of a large village. The cause was mentioned as ceramic fatigue, whatever that was. Some electocracy named Zanon was invading its neighbor Ashkina in an act of self-declared self-defense, an action which had been condemned by a narrow majority in the Council of International Consensus of Electocracies. This bulletin was accompanied by images of what looked like glass dragons attacking a city with fire castings. The next bulletin declared that physicians had discovered that eating to excess and spending most of the day sitting down causes people to put on weight. After all this, some merchant-sponsored bulletins proclaimed the virtues of various low-cost foods and comfortable chairs.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Time Engine by Sean McMullen. Copyright © 2008 Sean McMullen. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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