The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “Right. Ed—are you still driving that cab part time?”

  “What do you mean, part time?” Ed demanded mournfully. “I’m doing eight to ten hours a night!”

  “If we furnish descriptions of the thugs, can you put all the cab drivers in the Rochester area on the lookout for them?”

  “Sure,” Ed said. “That part is easy. It’s recognizing them from a description that’s difficult.”

  “We can but try,” Bob said. “A cousin of mine is a truck driver. He will ask all the truckers in this part of the state to help. Can anyone think of anything else?”

  “My uncle is a postal supervisor,” one of the girls said. “He can put the mail persons onto it.”

  Connie, a petite, dazzlingly attractive brunette, asked, “What about waiters and waitresses? Thugs have to eat, don’t they.”

  “Great idea,” Bob said. “Waiters, Waitresses, bell hops, bar tenders, newspaper boys—we need all of them. We also will need a line to the ham and citizens’ band radio operators. Let’s get working on it. We are calling it Operation J, for Janie. Someone will be at this phone twenty-four hours a day from now on.”

  * * *

  Jeff’s errand was an appointment with a former teacher of his. Professor Marcus Brock, a retired specialist in optics, lived in a magnificently wooded setting east of Rochester in the town of Penfield. His private laboratory, a long, low stone building, was separated from his home by an ornamental garden.

  The crushed tube lay on his work bench. The odd object Jeff had thought might or might not be a lens was mounted in a testing clamp.

  “The police told me you recommended me,” Brock said with a grin. He was a tall, slender, gray-haired man with a neatly-trimmed beard, and he spoke with a marked English accent. “I suppose you meant it as a compliment, but you are going to be as disappointed as the police were. This thing is impossible. It doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.”

  Jeff grinned back at him. “That’s interesting. When I held it in my hand, I could have sworn it was real.”

  “I didn’t say it was unreal,” the professor said testily. “I merely said it didn’t exist. Look!”

  He aimed a beam of light at the object. “It neither reflects nor refracts light. It absorbs light, which is impossible. The light must go somewhere, but it doesn’t. On the other hand, this monstrosity emits light from nowhere. In a dark box with no possible light source, it manages to focus a measurable amount of light.”

  He placed the object in a dark box and closed the lid. The needle on the attached meter swung wildly.

  “There is no light source,” he said. “There can be no light source. Hence there can be no light. Nevertheless, this thing emits light. And that’s impossible. I have tested it with infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma rays, and it is opaque to all of them, which also is impossible. Ionization is present—it fogs film—but the pulses are irregular, and that is impossible. The police said this was found near the scene of a violent death. Was anything else found there?”

  Jeff shook his head.

  “That’s a great pity. I was hoping for another piece of this material for analysis. I would love to know what this thing is made of, but there is no way that could be determined without destroying it.”

  “Would the results justify destroying it?”

  “A chemist would think so. Chemists believe everything can and ought to be analyzed. But what if it is made of devitrified glass? Or what if these peculiar properties are due to trace ingredients in amounts too small to be measured or even identified? I would rather have the lens to experiment with.”

  “Is it really a lens?” Jeff asked.

  “It is hard to say what the function of an opaque piece of glass might be, but I think it is. In that mounting, what else could it be?”

  “That was my thought, but the shape of the thing—”

  “Ah—the shape. That is impossible, too. But you have reminded me of something.”

  He tilted back in his chair and meditated, his eyes on the ceiling. “The shape,” he said finally. “It has a series of concentric undulations, and someone did come to me with a plan for a lens with some such configuration. That was years ago, and I can’t remember who it was or what he thought the undulations would accomplish. But the shape was something like this. I remember that distinctly.”

  “Was it by chance someone named Johnson?”

  The professor straightened with a jerk. “Let’s check.”

  Filing cabinets stood in the corner of the room. The professor went to one containing five by eight cards and opened a drawer. “If this individual’s ideas struck me as interesting or unusual—and they probably did, since I remember them—I will have notes about him. Unfortunately, there are thirty-five years of records here.”

  He thumbed through a section of the cards, thumbed again, and shook his head regretfully. “No,” he said, pushing the drawer shut. “If I kept a card on that person, his name wasn’t Johnson. I’ll run those tests again, and I’ll give the chemists a piece of the broken case to analyse. One never knows, there may be something unusual about the wood. Anyway, I’m grateful for the recommendation. An impossible lens doesn’t happen to an optics expert more than once in a lifetime.”

  They walked back to Jeff’s car together. Behind them on the work bench, the lens, the broken case, and an assortment of tools that chanced to be nearby, suddenly disappeared.

  19. GEVIS

  Roszt and Kaynor fled, leaving the girl lying crumpled in the hedge. Egarn leaped to his feet and gazed after them in horror. Arne, deeply puzzled as to what could have happened, leaned forward and stared. Inskel matter-of-factly started to adjust the len to follow the fleeing men, but Egarn snapped, “Leave it.” For more than an hour they watched the drama unfolding at DuRosche Court—the people gathering in consternation about the girl, ambulance and medics, her body taken away, the shock and grief displayed by those at the DuRosche mansion.

  “What were Kaynor and the girl struggling over?” Arne asked finally. “It looked like—”

  “It was his weapon,” Inskel said flatly.

  “But why would he be carrying it in his hand? Surely there was no danger threatening. It wasn’t to be used unless all else failed.”

  “Everything went too easily for them at first,” Egarn said soberly. “Now the police are searching for them, and people are talking about them, and newspapers are printing stories about them, and they were getting jittery. Even so, Kaynor had no reason to carry his weapon in his hand. Something must have frightened him.” He turned to Inskel. “Where did they go?”

  Inskel first focused on their motel room, where Val was comfortably stretched out on the bed. Roszt and Kaynor weren’t there. The dog raised his head hopefully whenever he heard footsteps in the hallway.

  Inskel searched the entire neighborhood around the DuRosche mansion, but there was no sign of them.

  “They will have to come back eventually, if only to feed and exercise the dog,” Egarn said. “I will leave a message for them. They must get out of Rochester. This isn’t like a breaking and entering where nothing is stolen. This is a disaster. They must leave at once and go back to Buffalo.”

  Egarn wrote a stern order. Gevis, who delighted in his expertise with the small machine, deftly landed it on the motel room’s table. Then they checked the various hiding places Roszt and Kaynor had established for emergencies. There was no sign of them anywhere. The despairing Egarn finally slept; Inskel continued the futile search. At intervals they focused on the motel room again. It was mid-morning the next dae when they suddenly found the room empty. Roszt and Kaynor had returned for the dog. They also had taken the message but without leaving a reply.

  Inskel, hoping the two men were only walking the dog and would soon return, continued to watch the motel, but there was no further sign of them. A maid put the room in order. Then a new guest checked in, a bustling, well-fed, middle-aged businessman, who dropped his suitcase, used the toilet, and then left at once.<
br />
  Roszt and Kaynor had checked out.

  “We need another len,” Egarn complained. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I thought of using the small len, but it just isn’t adequate for this kind of viewing. If we had been able to watch two places at once, we wouldn’t have lost them.”

  Inskel agreed. There was a duplicate in the secret emergency room, but moving anything that bulky through the cramped escape route would be a problem. He said, “Do you want me to try to bring—”

  “No,” Egarn said. “It is too late now, anyway. We will grind another when we have a chance. Surely they have started for Buffalo. I told them to look up their friend the first thing. He would be willing to help them again if they paid him, and they are going to need help.”

  “Do you want me to look for them in Buffalo?” Inskel asked.

  “Give them time to arrive there and get settled. Then we can watch for them at the check points. You try to get some sleep. Gevis can take your place. We will keep watching that house on DuRosche Court.”

  Only then did they notice that the young assistant schooler was missing. It seemed so odd that he would absent himself in the middle of a crisis that Arne went looking for him. The guards had come on duty only a short time before, and they knew nothing about him. Finally Arne consulted Fornzt, the housekeeper, who told him Gevis had gone scrounging. “He needed a breath of fresh air, and he thought no one had searched the herders’ huts. They are widely scattered, and they don’t look like places where one would find anything of value, but he said herders sometimes laid in supplies for an entire eson, including wine. There seemed no harm in looking, so I told him to go ahead.”

  “It is a pity he didn’t tell me,” Arne said. “I searched all of the huts in Midlow when I first arrived. What little I found is already in your larder.”

  “Anyway, he should be back soon,” Fornzt said.

  In the workroom, Garzot, Inskel’s assistant, was watching the DuRosche mansion on the len. Nothing was happening there. Egarn and Inskel were sleeping. When they awoke, they switched the scene to Buffalo and found the checkpoints, but Roszt and Kaynor did not appear.

  Neither did Gevis, but it was the two scouts they were worried about. While Egarn, Inskel, and Garzot focused and refocused the len, Arne moved a chair to a remote corner and sat there for some time, meditating. Finally he announced, “Kaynor surely knew how dangerous it was to be carrying the weapon in his hand. He wouldn’t have done it without a good reason.”

  Egarn stopped his fussing with the len’s controls. “The girl had been visiting at the house,” he protested. “She was on her way home. No one else was near them. What sort of reason could he have?”

  “He must have learned something—or suspected something—about that house or someone living there.”

  Inskel agreed excitedly. “Yes. Of course. If the inventor of the Honsun Len does live there, or even if he comes there occasionally, Kaynor would have been prepared to deal with him. And he would expect him to have a weapon of his own and be able to defend himself.”

  “If the girl was the Honsun Len’s inventor—” Garzot began.

  “But she wasn’t,” Egarn said impatiently. “If they had suspected that, they would have acted differently. Kaynor was trying to pull away from her.”

  “However it happened, Kaynor must have thought they were close to completing their mission,” Arne said. “That is why he had his weapon in his hand. If I am right, they won’t leave Rochester until their work is finished, and there is no need to search for them all over the city. All we have to do is keep watching DuRosche Court. They will be back.”

  “In that case, they certainly will be back,” Egarn agreed.

  Inskel made the adjustments to bring the DuRosche mansion and its grounds into focus. Egarn sat down with a sigh. “I do hope you are right,” he said. He looked about him. “What has happened to Gevis?”

  When new sentries came on duty at the entrance to the ruins, Ellar, who was acting as head sentry, conferred with Havler, who was to replace him. He remarked that Gevis had gone scrounging and hadn’t yet returned.

  “That is odd,” Havler said. “Where did he go?”

  “He went to search some herders’ huts,” Ellar said. “I don’t think he intended to be gone this long, but maybe he found so much he is having trouble carrying it back.”

  “Maybe he found some wine, and he is having trouble drinking it all,” Havler said. Then he added worriedly, “They shouldn’t have let him go alone. He was the assistant schooler—probably he had never been outside the village. Now someone will have to look for him.”

  “He will be back soon,” Ellar said confidently.

  Half the niot was gone when Gevis finally returned. Connol, who met him at the checkpoint, had been expecting him for hours. He identified him with a flash of light—as though Gevis’s shrill voice wasn’t immediately recognizable—and passed him on to Havler.

  “What took you so long?” Havler asked.

  “I went further than I had planned,” Gevis said.

  “The way back is always seems further than the way out,” Havler said with a chuckle. He obligingly opened the tunnel for Gevis. As he straightened up, Gevis buried a knife in his back, pulled his body aside, and positioned himself to guard the alarm wire. That was the critical point. He had been told that over and over—he must not permit anyone to pull the alarm wire.

  Only then did he shout the signal, a “Ho!” that echoed through the trees. The Lantiff, who had been stealthily edging into position in a wide circle around the ruins, surged forward. Sentries shouted the alarm and put up a token resistance, killing a number of the Lantiff with Egarn’s weapon and holding the others off long enough for the head sentry to pull the alarm wire and make his own escape—or so they thought. Then they attempted to slip away themselves, but the encircling Lantiff had already blocked all of their escape routes. Arne had not foreseen the possibility of attack by an entire army of Lantiff. The sentries continued to spread death and devastation through the forest until their weapons were exhausted. Then they killed Lantiff with their knives until they bled to death from their wounds. None of them were taken alive.

  With the Lantiff fully in control of the surrounding forest, Gevis led a picked squad through the tunnel to the stairwell. He paused while the Lantiff removed their shoes, and then he clumped down the stairs in his usual noisy fashion—members of Egarn’s team used this ploy to let the guards below know one of their own was coming—and the Lantiff tiptoed after him, wincing with every step on the metal mesh of the stairs. They halted one flight from the bottom. Behind them a second squad, shoeless like the first, was silently descending half way. Behind it, a third squad was waiting its turn and a fourth was working its way through the tunnel.

  Gevis moved haltingly forward through the darkness to the checkpoint where the candle flickered. He performed the prescribed ritual of standing under it and then moved on to the concealed door.

  The door swung open. On this night the guard was Larnor, a refugee from the south and a former potter, who had been a special friend of Gevis’s. Larnor had an unlikely interest in history, and he had been fascinated with what Gevis told him about the world of the past. He greeted the assistant schooler with his usual question. “Anything moving up there?”

  Gevis said nothing was moving, but the weather was nice. As Larnor turned to bar the door, Gevis stabbed him in the back—and then had to stab him again because Larnor began to struggle with him. As the potter slumped to the floor, Gevis murmured, “I’m sorry, Larnor—but I don’t want to be blown out like a candle.”

  Gevis pushed the body aside and returned to the corridor, closing the unbarred door behind him. At the stairwell, he whistled softly. The first squad of Lantiff tiptoed to the bottom. The second squad began its descent. The third waited at the top of the stairs to charge down the moment it was needed.

  Gevis returned to the door where he had killed Larnor. The Lantiff followed caut
iously at a distance. Now everything depended on the next guard post, where two men were posted. They had to be killed before either could give the alarm.

  Gevis was challenged, gave the password, “Green,” and waited tensely for the door to open. The Lantiff were already edging forward. Once inside, Gevis stabbed Dayla and turned to grapple with Lanklin. Dayla, fatally wounded but not yet dead, almost reached the alarm wire before the Lantiff were upon them. Lanklin was cut down; Dayla was hauled away from the wire and hacked repeatedly.

  Now there were no more guard posts to pass. Unless they had the bad luck to encounter a member of the team who was off duty, they could count on complete surprise. The two dead guards were dragged outside, and the first squad of Lantiff waited just beyond the door for the second to arrive with a battering ram. Gevis closed the door and settled himself in the duty position. If anyone looked into the corridor from the other end, he would pretend to be acting as guard while Lanklin and Dayla had a break.

  When all was ready, the Lantiff lit their torches. Gevis pivoted the section of brick wall for them, and they swept through the rooms where the off-duty men were sleeping. All of them were dispatched before they could struggle out of their blankets. Fornzt, cooking a meal, was cut down at his stove.

  Only the steel door to the workroom remained. The Lantiff poised themselves to rush it. When they were in position, Gevis went to the pipe by the door, tapped the prescribed signal, and identified himself. Scrapping noises could be heard as the bars were removed. As the door began to open, the Lantiff rushed it.

  * * *

  It was the battle-wary Arne who responded to Gervis’s signal—the others were occupied with adjustments to the len. He had opened the door only a crack when the Lantiff began their charge, but that glimpse was as much as he needed. He was neither startled nor frightened; he had seen thousands upon thousands of Lantiff, in far more threatening guises. He slammed the door shut, braced himself against it, and called for help. The stout latch and Arne’s weight withstood the first rush; Inskel had the bars in place before the second.