Date: Mon, 31 May 93 05:23:53 MDT
From: tperreau@banshee.VLA.NRAO.EDU (Bill'n'Opus'96)
Message-Id: <9305311123.AA01503@banshee.vla.nrao.edu>
To: alt-ql-creative@cisco.com
Subject: Future Perfect -- Part 8

				Future Perfect

				  Part VIII

"Biocomp:  short for biological computer.  Constructed from biomatrix
crystals (ref. bmc), it is at the current time the best interface
between humans and artifical intelligence programs."

Glossary of Paratemp Terminology, Revised Edition (Internal Use Only)


Temporal Index:  August 21, 1023
Spatial Co-ordernates:  6 degrees West, 56 degrees 30 minutes North, Terra
			(Isle of Iona, off the coast of Mull, Scotland)


Sam was surprised at how smoothly the burial of Duncan went.  The latin
phrases came easily to him, with Thom and the other brothers speaking
the refrains in time.  Duncan was placed in the cold ground, no coffin
surrounding his body, wrapped only in thick linen.  The morning was cool,
with lowering clouds.  Sam could smell the rain in the air.  The dirt and
sod of the holy isle covered the body.

The moarmers then gathered in the chapel, and their presence made the
small building smaller.  As Thom had said, Sam was asked to be chancellor
and to guide the discussions.  Thom, for his part, took over the task of 
writing down the event as it unfolded.  Sam looked over from time to 
time, and noticed that Thom's script was very precise.  Sam partailly
recognized the style of the text as Thom was writing it, but could not
remember what it was called.

MacBeth, for his part, sat to Sam's left.  Thorfinn, dominating the other
men, sat to MacBeth's left, as Thorfinn was Jarl of Orkney, he also 
held the region of Caithness in Scotland.  The other moarmers were gathered
around a small table that last night had been a bench from one of the
longboats.

The discussions dragged out through the day without a break for lunch.  Sam
felt his stomach shrink, but he dared not stop the meeting for lunch.  No
one else, he felt, seemed hungry in the least.  By afternoon, the threatening
rain began to fall.  It was a gentle mist that softened the hard edges of
the world.  Finally, before sunset, Sam declared the meeting over for the
day.  Sam and Thom were the last to leave the chapel, and Sam placed his
hands on the small of his back and bent, groaning all the time.

"Chairs.  Chairs with cushions and backs."

Thom smiled.  "Not used for another couple of hundred years, at least
by the clergy."  He led the way to a bee hive shaped buidling that was
slightly larger than the other buildings.  Thom motioned Sam inside.

Sam crouched down and crawled through the opening.  The inside of the cell
was warm, a small peat fire burned in a fire pit.  Sam moved over to the
far side of the cell and Thom entered, crouching down by the doorway.  Sam
looked about, noticing a large leather pouch that looked like a cross
between a backpack and a purse.

"This is where I...the abbot lives?"  Sam felt claustrophobic.  Thom nodded
as he mixed some oats and water, forming two medium sized cakes which he
placed on flat rocks near the fire pit.

"The buildings normally associated with Iona, the monestary, is Benedictine
and will not be started for about another hundred or so years.  In fact,
the chapel will be torn down and rebuilt in a slightly different location.
Then the monestary itself will be constructed, along with a nunnery about a
hundred yards south."  Thom leaned against the wall next to the door opening.
"These buildings will be torn down during the Reformation, and reconstructed
in the early 1900's.  That is if history doesn't change."

Sam looked into the fire and frowned.  "Just how did all this happen?"

"You were caught by a tachyon wavefront from a supernova as you were 
inbetween leaps.  Between leaps, you are nothing more than an energy
pattern, whose resonance freqency was a harmonic of the wavefront.  Be happy
that it was a high energy wavefront.  A lower energy would have most
likely deposited you outside the range of paratemp."

"What is your range?"

Thom poked at the cakes.  "From Monitor in the 27th century, we can temport,
without downlinks, to roughly 1500 BC."  Thom smiled, remembering.  "In fact,
I personally visited Minoan Crete.  Interesting place."

"Oh, Sam.  That's where the women wore dresses that, were, lacking in
frontal coverage, if you know what I mean."  Al looked at the two men
as he puffed away on a cigar.  "Did they really do the bull dances?"

"Yes.  Even I, enhanced as I am, would think twice about going into
the pit and doing a bull dance.  You'd like it there, Admiral.  The
Minoans knew how to throw a party."  Thom lifted up one of the cakes and
handed it to Sam.  "Best time for debauchery until the early Roman empire
under Caligula and Nero."

"What's this?"  Sam looked at the cake.  Thom picked up his and blew on
it.

"'This' is a bannock; an oat cake.  It's the staple food source found here
and now."

"No wonder the old buzzard is so thin," Al remarked.  Sam looked up at Al.

"And just how is the abbot?"

"He thinks that he's gone to the Isle of the Blessed, where ever that is."

"Tir-nan-Og," Thom said around a mouthful of bannock.  "It's the land of
the ever young, where time passes differently than here.  There is no
disease, no aging, no death.  Likewise, no love."  Thom explained, down
loading the information from his biocomp.

"Whatever.  He saw himself, and was shocked, to say the least.  Then he
saw Tina and Verbeena.  Lusty old goat.  We got him sedated right now."
Al puffed on the cigar.  "And here I thought that the clergy were supposed
to be celibate."

"Not the Celtic Church.  They did not believe in forced celibacy.  The
Celtic Church was very forward thinking for it's time in many ways.
However, the primacy of Rome will win out."  Thom said.  "Knocking the
abbot out was a good move.  Have Sara administer a memory blocker; this
make it easier for us to overwrite and make things the Waiting Room feel
like a dream."

"'Overwrite'?"  Sam looked alarmed.  Thom looked from Sam to Al and back.

"Oh.  Sorry.  One of the reasons that there are a pair of telepaths here
is that they are keeping tabs on me.  They will also facilitate in making
the events that have transpired 'real' for the abbot, using my impressions
and feelings.  Can't leave a big hole in history, that would be almost as
bad as the broach.  Speaking of which," Thom raised an eyebrow at Al, "any
news, Admiral?"

"Still expanding at the same rate.  Columbus was killed in 1492 in the
West Indies, and the Spanish never established a foothold in Mexico."
Al shuddered.  "It's weird, knowing the real history and yet seeing it
change."

"If we don't stop the wavefront by the time it reaches 1999, you will be
living in this new history and have no memory of the old history."
Thom said.  "At least, that is the current working theory of parallel
timeline generation.  Mind you, it has never happened that we know of."

"Until now," Sam finished the bannock.  "What's our chances, Tom?"

"Slim, Dr. Beckett.  Ziggy is giving us only a 10% chance of success.
For some reason, you get killed, and this alters the timeline.  My best
guess is that Siward, king of Northumbria, is trying to place Malcolm, the
bastard son of Duncan, on the throne of Scots seventeen years before this
actually happens in 1040."

Thom finished his bannock and procured from the large leather pouch a
couple of small skins.  He tossed one to Sam, who caught it deftly.  He
noticed that there was a liquid in the pouch.

"A little something from the 570s, Dr. Beckett, for your enjoyment.  It's
called Atholl Brose, or heather ale.  It was made by the Picts, and lost
to history."  Thom rolled outside and knelt down, poking his head in the
doorway.  "I'm going down to the longboats bearing gifts.  Norsemen just
love their booze, and in wine, there is truth.  Heather ale gets there a
lot faster."  Thom walked off in the rain, whistling a little tune.

Sam opened up the spigot to the skin.  "Ah, I'd be careful with that, Sam."
Al said with a worried tone.  Sam poured a little of the liquid out into
his hand.  It was colorless, and there was a faint odor of heather.  Sam
tossed the liquid into the fire pit, which flared up with a bright blue
flash.  Sam took a sip of the ale.  It was cool with a light taste until
it reached his throat where it burned it's way down into his stomach.  Sam
coughed and put the skin down, covering up the spigot so that the volatile
fluid would reach the fire pit.

"Sam?  You okay?"

Sam nodded as he tried to clear his throat.  "Yeah.  That stuff packs
quite a whallop."  Sam's voice was rough.  He cleared his throat once
again.  "But good."  He yawned.  "I'm tired Al.  I'm going to go to sleep.
It's been a long day."

"You do that Sam.  Either Sara or I will be here on watch."  Al said as
Sam pulled the warm wool cloak about him.  He was asleep, using the nearly
full skin of ale as a pillow.  Al sighed and looked outside.  It was
raining hard now.  He could make out dim lights near the longboats.  Al
shivvered.  "We'll get you out, kid, even if I have to come back and
get you myself."