“Why would he do this?” Tristan asked.
Sjund looked at the other elders and then finally at Tristan. “He’s insane. He thinks he can use it to travel back in time.”
****
Alyd looked at Timo nervously. At two hours before sunrise, a knock at the door couldn’t be good. Timo, shaving, nearly cut his cheek with the new knife. He wiped his face, returned the knife to its sheath, and placed it under the mattress of the bed. Their dwelling was one room, besides a small separate bathroom. There was a dining area, fireplace for warmth and cooking, and a bed tucked away in a corner. In another corner stood a large, metal cabinet. All members of the sniper unit had one of these installed in their dwelling after graduation. In this case, since the two snipers were married, they shared. It securely held all their gear and explosives. It wasn’t large enough for their rifles since they had to share. The rifles leaned against the wall to the left of the cabinet. Pistol belts hung from hooks above the rifles. The walls were stone with a single shuttered window next to the front door, a low wood-slat ceiling, and wooden floors. It was the standard village dwelling layout. Only high-ranking officials had separate rooms for bedrooms, and some even had a separate kitchen. Neither Timo nor Alyd had friends that ranked that high. Alyd, fully dressed in her uniform, sat in one of the two chairs at the only table. She had just finished lacing up her boots.
Timo unlocked and opened the door. A man he didn’t know stood outside holding a flashlight, its beam directed at his feet; the indirect light provided enough illumination for the men to see each other clearly. Timo looked him up and down. Only military officers or special operations soldiers had flashlights. If he was one of them, Timo would have at least known his face. The man wasn’t wearing a military uniform; instead he wore a black leather jacket with white trim along the cuffs and sleeves. Only staff members of the High Council wore those.
“Yes?” Timo said.
“I am a messenger from the High Council. The council orders you and your wife’s appearance at an assembly in the Five-Seven-One Chamber at eleven hundred hours,” the man said.
“But we’re supposed to report for sniper patrol in an hour.”
“Your commanding officer has been notified, and your patrol duties have been reassigned. Bring no weapons to the meeting,” the messenger said.
“Thank you,” Timo said and shut the door.
“I told you—” Alyd said.
Timo held his index finger to his lips. He walked over to the table and sat in the other chair.
Alyd leaned over in her chair toward him. “I told you that you shouldn’t have kept that knife,” she whispered.
“This isn’t about the knife. The High Council wouldn’t care about a knife.”
“What is it then?” Alyd asked.
“It must be about that scout and why we didn’t bring the body back.”
“I still can’t believe you did this. You know it won’t be just you who goes to prison. They’ll think I went along with it. I don’t like it. It makes me nervous. We should throw it away.”
“We’re not throwing it away. You’re worrying about nothing,” Timo answered. Timo stood and finished dressing. “At least we don’t have to start the day on patrol.”
Alyd didn’t answer. As he laced up his boots, Timo felt the silence from her fill the room.
“What do you want me to do? I can’t go back and tell the general now.”
“At least hide it in a better place than under the mattress.”
****
Timo looked up at the Tower. It stood one hundred meters west of the Five-Seven-One chamber. The Tower was a square building, fifty meters wide and long, made of large granite cubes. At a height of forty-five meters, it loomed over all the other one-story dwellings and shops in the village. A single set of oversized metal doors on the south side provided the only entry. Halfway up the Tower on the north side were two vents that constantly released a lazy column of white steam. The steam drifted away from the Tower vertically in the breeze, and then broke apart into small cloudlets that reminded Timo of the cotton-like clouds on a sunny day during the growing season. Just below the top of the Tower, on each of the four sides, protruded a large loudspeaker. Timo did not know what purpose these had. A two-meter-tall security barrier ringed the Tower, and a heavily armed special police force provided security. Only the council and family members were allowed inside. Like the wall that surrounded the village, the Tower took decades to complete, centuries ago.
The doors to the chamber were opened by two security officers. Timo and Alyd walked into the room and the doors shut behind them. The room had no windows. The stone walls and floor were illuminated by electrical lamps mounted on the walls. Neither of them had seen electrical lighting inside before. In the room was a long table, and seated there, facing them, were the five members of the High Council.
Maldor, by far the oldest member, had pale, blotchy skin and clear blue eyes to match his razor-sharp mind. His stern, clean-shaven face glared at them. There were a few short sprouts of white hair on top of his head. He reminded Timo of an angrier version of a school principal. He was the Engineering and Science director and keeper of the historical records for the clan. He motioned to two stone stools before him with his hand. “Please have a seat.”
Timo and Alyd did as they were instructed.
“We’ve summoned you here to enquire about the man you killed yesterday,” Maldor said. “Timo, would you recount the event to us?”
Timo could always tell when Alyd was nervous because she got very still and a small vein protruded on her forehead. At this moment she was more rigid than the stone stool she sat upon, and the vein was clearly visible. Couldn’t we get a stool with some padding? Timo thought.
“We were on sniper patrol in sector twenty-seven. We’d been there since before daylight, to relieve team-five. We had seen nothing until this contact. Alyd acted as spotter. I was behind the rifle. About four hours into the shift, Alyd spotted movement in a ravine across the riverbed. We watched it carefully and determined it to be rock camouflage, known to be used by enemy scouts. I fired one round into the camouflage cover, striking the scout in both legs. He came out of the cover and attempted to crawl to a nearby boulder. I fired a second round, killing him on the spot.”
“Alyd, is that how you recall the events?” Maldor asked.
Timo looked at her. The vein is still there.
Alyd stayed stiff. “Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Continue,” Maldor instructed.
“We reported the contact and were told to conduct normal intel retrieval. We waited for darkness and did that. When we returned to the village we gave what we recovered to General Bartel.”
Bartel leaned his broad, thick chest and shoulders forward in his seat. “You were not instructed to bring the body back to the village?”
“No, sir. We were told to do normal intel retrieval,” Timo replied.
“Timo and Alyd,” Maldor interjected before Bartel could ask another question. “We are not here today to blame anyone for anything, nor are we going to give out any punishment. And nothing you say here will be told to your commanding officers. We are simply seeking the truth about what happened yesterday. Do you understand?”
They both nodded. Please, Alyd, don’t say a thing.
“Was there anything unusual about the man you killed?”
“He was an Asus soldier, but he was dressed in Denock gear,” Timo said. “After we got back, the general sent another team to retrieve the body. You can see it for yourself.”