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unnatural clarity of the temporal stasis field that protected it from the unintended side-effects of modern civilization. Rutherford had made no objections to the presence of Mondrago and Chantal. There had been a certain amount of huffing and puffing about Aiken’s junior rank, but Jason had insisted and Rutherford hadn’t thought the point worth contesting. So they all sat across the wide desk, facing Rutherford and the display case behind him with its items snatched from the past, some of which even Jason could never look at without gooseflesh.
    Now Jason forced himself to avert his eyes from those items and concentrate on the matter at hand. “Why are we here, Kyle?” he prompted anew. “What makes you think the Transhumanists are engaged in illicit time travel off-world—and on Zirankhu, of all places?”
    “Actually,” Rutherford admitted, “we have no proof of off-world time travel on their part. But we have compelling evidence that they are active in the Zirankhu system. And since their machinations that we do know about have involved time travel, we thought it advisable to call in you and your colleagues here, so that we could draw on your unique expertise in these matters.”
    Jason ignored Rutherford’s as-always-inept efforts to stroke him. “And as to this ‘compelling evidence’?”
    “You must understand that the current rebellion on Zirankhu has placed our government in a somewhat delicate position—”
    “So I’ve heard.”
    “—and therefore the intelligence branch of the Internal Defense and Response Force has been called in . . . without undue publicity, inasmuch as it is somewhat outside their usual jurisdiction.”
    “Somewhat,” echoed Jason drily.
    The government—by courtesy so called—of the Confederal Republic of Earth had arisen from the rubble of the war of liberation from the Transhuman Dispensation. Like the revolutions of the sixteenth-century seven provinces of the Netherlands or of the eighteenth-century North American colonies, that war had been in the truest sense a conservative revolution. So the resultant confederation had been cobbled together from the old nations, however uncomfortable a fit they had been with the demographic, economic and ethnic realities of the late twenty-third century. Now, a hundred years later, they were still jealous of their sovereignty, their jealousy reinforced by the general archaism that permeated Earth’s culture. In particular, the resources for large-scale military action were still under the control of the few nations that could afford them, with all the resultant duplication of effort and divided command. The Deep-Space Fleet was an administrative abstraction; there was no such thing as a unified “space navy.” Any major coordinated action practically required negotiation preceded by sealed bids.
    The quasi-military IDRF, however, had been permitted by a human race still very much attuned to the dangers of internal subversion. As the one instrumentality that the Confederal Republic could employ without cumbersome consultation with its members, it tended to be employed in ways that pushed the envelope of its strictly defined legal powers.
    “Certain of their agents on Zirankhu possess brain implants like yours,” Rutherford continued. Like most contemporary people, however urbane, he was unable to keep a faint distaste out of his voice at the mention of such things. “By chance, one of them detected functioning bionics.”
    “That was luck,” said Jason. The sensor feature was very short-ranged.
    “Indeed. Our natural assumption of a Transhumanist presence was confirmed by subsequent investigation. Unfortunately, the Transhumanists seem to have become aware of the attention they were drawing, and have grown more circumspect. As a result, the trail has largely gone cold.”
    “Not surprising,” Mondrago remarked, and Jason nodded. The Tranhsumanist underground had been practicing and refining secrecy for a century,