Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

by Barrington J. Bayley

  For there was even more at stake than the increasingly unstable situation within the empire. The Historical Office was determined to acquire a sample of the time-distorter before the Hegemonics, overwhelmed by the might of the armada, decided to destroy it. Possession of the distorter, or rather of the principle by which it worked, opened up limitless possibilities for the easy restructuring of history.

  Aton, meanwhile, spent the time lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Gradually his mind began to clear. Little by little he felt as though he was being reinserted into the world of orthogonal time. But he still behaved like a robot or a zombie. The batmen brought him meals; he ate nothing. They asked if he wanted anything; he made no answer.

  He felt as though his body was made of dead flesh, his mind of dead thoughts.

  Eventually Commander Haight walked into his room unannounced. ‘Well, how are you feeling?’ he demanded gruffly.

  Aton was silent.

  Haight walked over to him and peered down. He poked Aton in the chest, as though making sure he was still alive. He grunted.

  ‘I’m no psychologist. God knows what those hypnotic commands will do to you while I’m fouling up the programme. Still, even that should be interesting to watch.’ Haight sighed. ‘You know, I’m curious to know why couriers have to die. Something of a mystery surrounds it. The instructions are very strict – I’ll be in serious trouble if this business gets back to Chronopolis – but nobody will tell you the reason. As far as I’m able to ascertain, it’s a Church secret.’

  He paused thoughtfully. ‘I’m tired of seeing you in that convict’s garb. Let’s go the whole hog.’ Turning his head he let out a bellow.

  ‘Sturp!’

  Instantly one of the batmen appeared. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Go and fetch a captain’s uniform somewhere, to fit Aton here.’ He threw himself into a deep chair. ‘Maybe it will help you get your bearings,’ he remarked, ‘if the cloth of the service doesn’t unnerve you. Tell me, do you feel any disgrace over what you did?’

  ‘Did?’

  ‘Shooting down your own men! Deserting your ship!’ Haight was in an aggressive mood. His face went slightly purple as he roared the accusations at Aton.

  ‘No, sir.’ He strove to recall the events he should feel ashamed of, but for the moment could not.

  Haight leaned forward earnestly. ‘The strat,’ he urged. ‘Try to describe it now.’

  Aton looked up at the ceiling. His mouth opened and closed. He licked his lips.

  ‘One sees one’s life, not as a process, but as an object,’ he said. ‘Something that can be picked up, handled, re-moulded like a piece of clay.’

  Haight laughed shortly.

  ‘Would you like to die?’ he asked after a moment.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When you have lived through your life millions, billions of times in every detail, the purpose of living is exhausted. There is nothing left that’s new. One wants only to forget, to find oblivion; that way, if one must live again, one will not realise it’s for the billionth time. It will seem new.’

  ‘Death is the only positive experience remaining?’

  ‘One has been cheated. Death is an event; once begun it should be completed. Mine was only partial death. It yearns to be complete. I must die naturally, so as to forget.’

  Haight mulled over his words. ‘Mm. It seems that our couriers are more fortunate, after all, than the poor chronmen who drown in eternity when their ships go down.’ He shot Aton a look of contempt. ‘What is the strat? How would you describe it?’

  ‘It is a place of terror.’

  With a slightly bleary look Haight climbed to his feet. ‘Don’t be too sure you’ve seen the last of it. We move out in an hour. I’m going to get some rest till then.’

  The big man padded away. Aton had remained motionless throughout the exchange. He continued to stare at the ceiling, where by some projective trick of the imagination various incidents of his life were being played out before his eyes.

  Big as a city block, the step-storeyed Lamp of Faith moved through the eternal geodesics of the strat like a glimmering shadow. Riding in support were three escort ships of the destroyer class, designated as expendable in Commander Haight’s despairingly realistic battle plan.

  Beyond Node 7 the formation hurtled into the no-man’s-land separating the empire from the Hegemony: a great uninhabited wilderness of over a hundred years’ duration. Once the squadron was futureward of the imperial forward alert posts, the destroyers shot ahead of the larger flagship. It was here, where the entire Earth was a radioactive desert, that the Hegemony’s beta-radar stations would probably pick them up.

  Given sufficient warning the Hegemonics might try to set up time-blocks. These installations, though costly and requiring effort and skill, could bring a timeship travelling in excess of a certain velocity to a savage halt, precipitating it into orthogonal time where it was vulnerable. For this reason a timeship usually moved cautiously if it was suspected that a block was being attempted. Yet the Lamp of Faith needed to move fast to arrive at its target with any chance of success.

  On the bridge, Commander Haight did not allow himself the luxury of personal feelings. His fatalistic gloom was relegated to the closed corners of his mind as he brought the full force of his attention to bear on the operation in hand.

  He had already received the precombat blessings of the Church. The comforter still moved about the bridge asperging each man in turn. As he traversed the room from end to end his cowled figure changed size dramatically due to velocity contraction. In the nose of the ellipsoid he was barely a foot tall.

  A gong sounded. The scanman spoke.

  ‘Enemy approaching. Two items.’

  Presently the louvred wedge shapes of the Hegemonic ships appeared on the swirling strat screen. They hovered and turned close by the flagship looking like prismatically cascading towers, showering images of themselves as they kept pace.

  ‘Release torpedoes,’ ordered Haight automatically.

  The torpedoes trundled away without hitting their targets.

  ‘They are offering tryst, sir,’ the beta operator informed him.

  ‘Ignore.’

  The second beta operator spoke up urgently. ‘Sir, I think Incalculable has gone ortho!’

  ‘Full speed astern!’ roared Haight.

  Their stomachs lurched as the Lamp of Faith decelerated fiercely. The nose of the bridge ballooned in size; the pilot was near normal height.

  The three destroyers had been strung out ahead of the flagship in a staggered echelon. Incalculable, the leading vessel, had clearly run into a time-block.

  Although the destroyer had probably been annihilated by now, in an instantly withering barrage of fire, the success of his ploy occasioned Commander Haight a grim satisfaction. The two remaining destroyers – Song of Might and Infuriator – had, like the Lamp of Faith, managed to check their speed in time. Slowly the depleted formation cruised through the block region. Instruments on the bridge flicked and pinged as they registered the blocking field, which was designed to retard the c-plus velocity of pi-mesons in a moving ship’s time-drive, thus preventing the passage through time.

  The steady thrum of the time-drive changed to a lower pitch. Even at their present speed, too slow for its relativistic field to be efficacious, the block had a damping effect.

  Then they were suddenly through it and were picking up speed again.

  And now they had passed beyond the Century of Waste and were into the territory of the Hegemony. Their journey now would be short. The Hegemony, unlike the empire, comprised only one node – did not extend over the entire Earth’s surface, in fact. Indeed, as far as was known, only the empire imposed its authority on other centuries. No similar grand design had been detected anywhere in the future.

  In terms of history, the Hegemony began at the fringes of the Century of Waste and continued for about a hundred years up to its domestic node, and for a
similar period after that. By the time of the succeeding node (Node 10 by imperial reckoning) it appeared to have changed its political character and no longer called itself the Hegemony. What it would call itself after receiving the empire’s attentions was, at this point, a matter of speculation.

  ‘Several enemy vessels converging,’ said the scanman.

  ‘Ignore.’

  They would be subject to a considerable number of interception attempts from now on. The pilot was busy tracking the Lamp of Faith through the multidimensional continuum in a preplanned zigzag. The manoeuvre had two purposes: to render more difficult any further stopping exercises by means of time-block and to disguise the ultimate target.

  The screen operator tried to get them a glimpse of what chronmen called ‘the surface’ – the orthogonal time-scape they were invisibly skimming through. This was occasionally possible by adroit handling of the scanning equipment. But on this occasion the strat defeated him. The roiling, multidimensional geodesics, the rapid course changes, turned the surface of reality, even though he managed to focus the instruments in that direction, into a senseless collage without one recognisable shard.

  More important was the abstract metering that told them where they were. In the bowels of the ship was a device of extraordinary subtlety: an inertial navigator capable of noting and computing shifts of position on a six-dimensional scale. Without this gadget to make a timeship free of reliance on surface-based reference points, the operation of warships would have been quite impracticable.

  As the minutes ticked by tension in the bridge became almost unbearable. Haight accepted readiness reports from all sections. Gunnery, commando, technical teams, were all pent up and waiting to go.

  Wedge ships flew around them thick and fast. By now the Hegemonics knew that something was up. The Time Service had already carried out a few retaliatory raids on their bases and cities, but generally had been too busy trying to defend imperial history. The appearance of the mighty battle-wagon flagship on their territory probably came as an unpleasant surprise.

  And, the nature of the strat being what it was, they had little chance to prepare. Warnings could not go ahead of them any faster than the Lamp of Faith itself travelled; even if the Hegemony used the courier system, which was doubtful, they would not have installed the expensive catapult apparatus midway between nodes. And they could not attack the intruders until they emerged into ortho.

  A thought occurred to Haight. From the defenders’ point of view he was now travelling on the incoming, attacking flight path. If the raid was to be successful and the Lamp of Faith to return home again, then somewhere in the strat must already be the outgoing homeward flight path with the flagship hurtling along it. That was one of the paradoxes of this business: that the strat contained every chronman’s future, even though he himself could not determine what that future would be. Only in orthogonal time, and at the very nodes themselves, was time regarded as determinate.

  ‘Base Ogop in scanner range!’ announced the scanman excitedly.

  Haight sounded the alerting klaxons. The elements of the operation were now coming to a climax. One of the beta operators, in touch, but barely, with the destroyer vanguard, was babbling reports and figures.

  ‘Song of Might and Infuriator due for ortho in one minute five seconds. Our approach due in three minutes –’

  Another operator broke into Haight’s attention. ‘Twelve Hegemonic ships harassing formation.’

  Haight licked his lips. Down below the commandos and technical teams were pouring into their exit bays. The word for them to go would have to come from him. But first the approaching enemy ships, as well as Base Ogop's defensive armament, needed to be dealt with.

  ‘How much weight have they got?’

  The operator was studying his blips with a frown, glancing occasionally at the big strat screen. ‘Three at least are of the Hegemonic Tower class. Most of the others look like the Ranger class.’

  ‘Going ortho!’ yelled the destroyers’ linkman. The vicarious excitement of their exploit was upon him.

  A sudden silence fell upon the bridge.

  These were probably the most crucial few seconds of the whole enterprise. The destroyers Song of Might and Infuriator did have one advantage: they were not engaging in a tryst. They were emerging from the strat without warning and it would take the pursuing Hegemonic ships seconds or minutes to realise what had happened and follow suit. In that time the destroyers had to silence Base Ogop’s guns, prevent any ships there from phasing into the strat, or at least do as much of all that as possible to soften up the approach for the Lamp of Faith.

  ‘Report?’ demanded Haight impatiently.

  The linkman was intent upon his earphones. ‘Infuriator’s drive crippled, severely holed, but armament intact. Song of Might undamaged.’ He strained to hear what was being said. ‘Base defences inoperable … five warships grounded … two got away.’

  It was much better than he had feared. He nodded brusquely. ‘Right. We’re going in.’

  A minute later the great ship phased into materialisation on the main yard of Base Ogop.

  Every window on the exterior of the huge battle wagon tuned to transparency. The crew could see the shattered base all around them.

  Haight surveyed the scene on the bridge’s main monitor screen. They were parked on a yard perhaps half a mile in extent. Ringing it were buildings in a foreign, exotic style, some of them burning, others dashed to the ground. Nearer at hand were the wrecks of column-like timeships, either tumbled across the concrete or sagging and smoking.

  Towering above it all was the mighty Lamp of Faith, vaster and more powerful than any timeship the Hegemony had built. It had crushed smaller vessels, trucks, and machinery beneath it as it settled its full weight on to the yard. With its rows and tiers of windows it would have looked in place lining the street of any major city, except for its beam projectors and torpedo tubes.

  Scanning the environs, Haight spotted the Infuriator lying propped athwart a blockhouse, exactly like one building thrown on top of another. Further off, beyond the other side of the base, the Song of Might hovered in the air in a standoff position so as to provide the flagship with covering fire.

  Haight picked up a microphone and sent his voice haranguing throughout the ship. At ground level, the port porches opened. Combat chronmen and technicians surged through to take possession of Base Ogop, hurrying away from the timeship before the anticipated assault from the strat met it.

  Less than half a minute later Hegemonic craft began to flick into existence. Within microseconds heavy-duty energy beams had been focused on them and they either exploded into flame or fled back into the strat to lick their wounds.

  Colonel Anamander looked at the commander, his lips curling. A timeship standing in orthogonal time had every advantage over one trying to attack it from the strat. It was not a tryst situation where each party was prevented by the rules of war from phasing out of the strat earlier than his antagonist and so pre-empting the appointed moment. This was like shooting ducks out of the air. They had simply to sit still and watch for ships to appear, focusing and firing before the enemy had a chance to do likewise.

  Very soon the Hegemonics gave up the unequal fight. They were leaving it now for Base Ogop to be relieved by slower air and land forces.

  Haight imagined those forces would start arriving in ten to twenty minutes. He reckoned on being able to hold the base for up to an hour. In that time the sample distorter would have to be found.

  Reports began coming in. Fighting with the base staff. The technical teams going over the damaged ships, examining the workshops, questioning prisoners for some knowledge of the coveted weapon.

  He controlled his impatience and sat stolidly, as if made of stone.

  Fifteen minutes later radar reported strike aircraft converging from three directions. The Lamp of Faith lifted off the shipyard and hovered at two thousand feet. As the aircraft approached at supersonic speed their courses w
ere tracked and plotted. At almost the same instant that the timeship released missiles to down them, the strike planes fired their own missiles. Those hurtling towards the Lamp of Faith were licked out of the sky by energy beams. The flagship’s own projectiles found their targets. Somewhere beyond the horizon the attacking planes rained down in fragments.

  There was a lull. Occasionally surveillance craft screamed overhead at a height of miles. Haight let them go. The time-ship could stave off any amount of missile attack. The real fight would begin when the enemy brought in their own energy beamers.

  So far the technical teams had discovered nothing. Haight was becoming worried. Half an hour after their landing, huge vehicles appeared over the horizon, moving swiftly forward on what was probably an air-cushion principle. Large-aperture beamer orifices were plainly visible. Behind them came troop-carriers carrying, he estimated, thousands of men with full equipment.

  He put the Lamp of Faith down on the ground again to lower its profile.

  The blue flashes of high-energy beams began to criss-cross one another like swords. Molten metal ran down the sides of the Lamp of Faith as the beams slowly ate into the structure of the ship.

  Then the exchange died down as the flagship’s weapons put the Hegemonic beams out of action. But the respite could only be temporary. More and more projectors would be brought up until the ship’s resources – and those of the two destroyers – were beaten down.

  As it was, the Infuriator had been silenced and the Song of Might had only one projector operating. Haight gave orders for any survivors on the grounded ship to come aboard the flagship. Song of Might he sent back into the strat for its own protection.

  ‘If we stay any longer, sir,’ Colonel Anamander reminded him, ‘we may not get away.’

  He was referring to the possibility that the Hegemonics might be able to erect a time-block to prevent their escape pastward.