Whispers [Mass Market Paperback]

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."
--Edwin Limmer

It is a fateful day when Lucas Hawthorn awakes in his own home to find Edwin Limmer standing before him. Lucas first met old man Limmer back in 1952. Only now Limmer is much younger--and the idea that someone can actually age backward in time is almost too much for Lucas and his wife, Maude, to handle.

But Limmer is here to turn the Hawthorns' Kansas home into a time-travel depot for the Whispers, mysterious beings from the future.  The Whispers mission? To find the beginning of time.

So the Hawthorns land smack-dab in the middle of a drama that spans history, past and future: from ancient Troy to colonial Kentucky to a Camelot of the next millennium, where a murderous tyrant thirsts for immortality.

He just needs time . . .

This is an engaging and provocative science fiction series where the theories of time travel are revealed through the adventures of a Kansas farm couple, their friends, and bioengineered humans from the distant future searching for the answers to their origins.

Dan Parkinson is the author of many westerns, as well as a number of successful TSR fantasy novels.

The siege was nearing its end. Even the boy watching from the willow copse
could see that. The latest barrage had lasted through the day, round after
shattering round thudding into the limestone shelves and blasted slopes of
the Revivalist stronghold. Each impact blossomed in a flowing ball of
bright fire and sent gouts of sundered stone aloft to rain as debris on
the darkened earth below.

It was methodical demolition. It was a slaughter. The Revivalists were
dug in, deeply entrenched in the caprock and stocked with provisions. But
they had no weapons capable of reaching their tormentors. For the
batteries of the Royal Artillery, spread along the flats beyond the river,
it was target practice.

It was a land engagement, of course, and strictly conventional. Few
viable authorities had survived the Paper Revolts of three decades before,
but one that remained was the Edict of Enroachment. It was the final
vestige of international order, but behind its skeletal facade was the
combined power of all the once-mighty military regimes of the western
hemisphere. Worldwide economic chaos had led to worldwide social ruin. The
mission of the Protectorate Authority for Common Trust was to fend off the
final plunge into barbarism--to hold the line for civilization until
things worked themselves out, somehow.

Built on the ruins of NATO and empowered by the Edict of Encroachment,
PACT straddled two oceans with a structure as tenuous as spiderweb. But
like the spider, its sting was lethal. It was both a shield against the
fanatic Asian hordes and an arbiter among the myriad small regimes that
had arisen in the Euro-American Theater. PACT did not dictate or even
address the internal affairs of any client regime. But it did set rules
for the conduct of disputes, and its decrees were final.

Thus no airborne weapons ranged the skies above the Cimarron Basin as
the man who proclaimed himself King of the Tri-State, Arthur Rex,
disciplined his subjects there. But none was needed. With the wealth of a
heartland at his command and an army built around the capabilities of the
Royce AATV, King Arthur had all the weapons he needed.

The Revivalist rebellion had been a brief, hot spark. Now it was being
snuffed.

Squadrons of sleek, steel cavalry waited, in driving ranks flanking
the artillery batteries, as the shape of Long Mesa was methodically
altered by barrages. The AATVs waited like panthers, ready to sweep across
the river and complete the job when the artillery had finished its
demolition. With each thunderous volley, the stone cap of the mesa seemed
to erupt in flying debris, and new clouds of whitish dust drifted on the
wind, flowing up the valley.

The boy's hiding place was downriver, a spread of willows and wild
plum thickets at the very edge of the river. Shallow waters snaked along a
dry sand bed just beyond, pooling here and there. Crouched in the thicket,
the boy had watched through the afternoon as the king's forces pounded
away at the crumbling mesa rim. While the sun was high, he had seen the
AATVs scurrying around the base of the mesa. Like great, sleek animals of
steel and fire, the roving vehicles had toyed with retreating Revivalists,
concentrating them for the kill. By the time the artillery was assembled
on the flats, the AATVs were alone in the field. All the surviving
Revivalists had retreated into their burrows and bunkers under the cap of
Long Mesa.

The laser-aimed guns of the artillery were deadly. Four times the boy
had seen great slabs of the flat-topped hill break loose and slide
downward, converging at the bottom in huge clouds of dust and debris. The
gray-white clouds tumbled, rolled in the wind, and surged away like giant
fogs, drifting up the valley. And as each cleared, restoring visibility,
the lasers danced and the guns of the Royal Artillery spoke again. Again
and again.

After the third strike there had been a brief lull when figures moved
atop the shattered mesa. A standard was raised, white fabric fluttering at
its peak. The boy knew what that meant. The Revivalists wanted to
surrender.

He squinted, shading his eyes. The mesa top was a long way off, and
the people up there were tiny creatures at this distance. There were seven
or eight of them in sight, or maybe more. He couldn't be sure. But one
among them caught and held his attention. A dark-haired man, the one who
had raised the staff. The boy rubbed his eyes, trying to see better. The
man was ragged and thin, with darkness on his cheeks where unshaven
whiskers grew. His hair was unkempt, blowing in the breeze like the
tatters of clothing he wore. He looked terribly alone up there, as if
apart from those around him. And yet, somehow, he looked strong--strong
and determined.

The boy squinted, trying to see him better. Then suddenly he was gone.
A flicker of motion, as if the very air around him had somehow shifted,
and he was gone. Around the white-flagged staff, others gazed around in
wonder ... and again the guns of the Royal Artillery roared.

The lull had been only momentary. From the artillery flats seeking
lasers homed on the tiny figures above, and the guns thundered.
Projectiles screamed overhead, and the cap of the mesa erupted again in
gouts of smoke and fire.

When the dust and smoke rolled away there was no flag up on the hill,
nor any movement there. The boy hid his face in his hands, muffling his
sobs. He was frightened and hungry, lost and confused and terrified. He
was ten years old.

Long minutes crept by as the guns continued to speak.

Now the west rim cast a long shadow across the flats, reaching toward
the artillery field. The bombarded mesa across the river bled stark in red
sundown. The shelling had become sporadic. The gunners were tired. Evening
was coming on and it was a long forty miles from these wild Cimarron
breaks to their comfortable barracks in Camelot. For a long time now there
had been no sign of life on the mesa.

As the evening sun rode the horizon, the barrage ended. The last
thunders rolled away, their echoes trailing up the valley, and in the
silence the boy heard powerful engines purring to life. The lines of AATVs
began to move. Easily, lazily they crept to the bluff above the riverbed,
plunged down it in little clouds of dust, then crawled across the sand,
three squadrons in formation. The nearest machine splashed across a
surface runnel not more than fifty yards from where the boy lay hidden.

Red sundown gleaming on their cowls, the king's machines nosed up the
river's east bluff, climbing like huge, dark beetles, and found their
footing on level ground. The purr of massed engines became a whine and
then a howl. The beetles grew legs and became racers, streaming away,
converging in a half moon toward the base of the ruined mesa.

Horrified and fascinated, the boy watched. These were the King's
Cavalry, the royal hounds gathering to the kill.

The sun was huge as it sank below the western rim. The crushed,
blasted mesa stood silent in creeping shadows as the AATVs assembled below
it, tipping and clambering among the rubble at its base. Up at the
caprock, great holes had been gouged out and nothing moved except the wind
of evening.

The central squadron began its climb, turreted noses sniffing toward
the demolished stronghold. Then the watching boy gasped and raised his
head higher. Sharp young eyes had seen movement up there--furtive,
ghostlike movement, gray on gray in the shadows of the shelf.

The AATVs were halfway up the mesa's shoulder when things--squat,
round shapes--began appearing on a ledge below the caprock shelf, forming
a line at the very edge. There was a twinkle, as of a torch being ignited.
Then brief flickers appeared all along the line.

One of the round things plunged over the edge, careening downward
toward the advancing engines. Then another, and another. For a moment the
tableau on the mesa's face seemed frozen--the AATVs advancing, noses high
and arrogant, as a ragged line of rolling objects hurtled toward them. One
of the objects struck an AATV and bright flame billowed, engulfing the
vehicle. Then the one next to it was hit, and the fifth in line, and the
third. All along the advancing front, AATVs exploded into brilliant flame.
Soaring balls of fire climbed above them in the evening dusk.

Some of the objects missed the crawlers, rolling past them to shatter
and flame in the rubble below, among and around the waiting ranks of the
reserve squadrons. And now, as the seconds elapsed, the wafting breeze
brought the roar of explosions and the shrieks of men--men in the AATVs,
screaming as they died.

George Wilson's Revivalists had kept a secret in reserve--one last
weapon to hurl at King Arthur's forces.

Stunned silence hung across the valley for long moments. Several of
the AATVs on the hill, some of them trailing fire from their shells, were
turning to flee. But then the Arthurians responded. Guns thumped and
roared on the flats, and fury erupted on the mesa. Round after massive
round smashed home, as scarlet lasers traced the erupting air. A giant
sliver of limestone caprock tilted outward and smashed down, sheering away
the ledge below. A fleeing AATV bounced skyward atop a gout of smoke and
debris. Another flipped aside and fell dead on its back. Two more took
direct hits as gunners across the river fired ahead of their laser traces.

Then a projectile entered the little cave below the sheered caprock,
and the entire mesa shook and danced as internal explosions sundered it.

The boy clamped his hands over his ringing ears, but still the thunder
went on as the fury of King Ar...