by Gerard Klein
He was almost at the end of his resources. He would dearly have liked to rest awhile, but he preferred to spend no longer than he had to on this dismal planet.
With close attention he supervised the revival of the first batch and the implantation of their artificial personalities. A tired smile crossed his face when he saw the two hundred women leave their couches, parting the sterile mist which had served them for shrouds, assemble in the central aisle, and line up as though on parade. Then nausea turned him inside out like a glove.
One of his helpers took a step toward him. He waved her—it?— aside.
“It’s okay,” he said. As he would have done to a human being.
But he could read nothing in the splendid violet eyes trained on him, neither comprehension nor pity; they were like soft stones. Reflex, not surprise, had provoked the motion. These creatures could hear, they obeyed his voice, they even possessed a limited vocabulary which he had carefully worked out and included in their programing, but they had no understanding. They did not exist as people. Each time he was tempted to forget their nature, those eyes would remind him, and the overprecise movements they made among the shadows. They were no more than crude projections of his own mind. Behind their eyes there was no one else for him to meet.
The door control at the exit was not deceived. It would not open for the procession of the undead. He had to stand on the threshold while they filed past him, picked up the overalls he had dumped in piles on the grass, and put them on. Then, on his word of command, they drew hoods over their heads and entered the rough metal box he had fashioned where, at another order, they sank into a hypnotic trance. He fastened its door and attached the pegasone’s traces and climbed into his saddle and plunged into time with his cargo of ghosts.
He set down on Uria, near Veran’s camp, in a secluded spot and at a time not long after he had set out on his embassy to the future. He would not be away from here again more than a few seconds, although the return, the revival of another contingent and the second trip would take him several hours. He made ten trips, which took up whole days of his subjective time. The third day he broke down in tears and fell asleep. The fifth day the pegasone showed signs of exhaustion and he had to wait until it recovered, his mind empty and dry. At the moment when he left the mausoleum world for the last time he called his helpers together and pronounced a single word. They collapsed, still smiling.
He aroused the recruits and marched them in a long column toward the encampment. A good distance from the perimeter defenses he halted them in plain sight and hailed one of the sentries. A moment later Veran showed himself.
“You look tired, Corson,” he said. “What have you brought us?”
“Recruits,” Corson said.
Veran made a sign. Gunners trained their weapons on the veiled forms standing in a curve around the camp. Others activated scanners.
“No trickery, I hope, Corson! Otherwise your collar—”
“None of us is armed,” Corson interrupted. “Except myself.”
“No weapons,” a technician confirmed.
“Good,” Veran said. “So you found out how to convince them, up there in the future. I approve of efficiency, Corson. Perhaps even they felt themselves touched by ambition. Advance the first rank. And tell them to take their hoods off so I can get a sight of them.”
Everyone in the camp had gathered behind him, except the pickets on guard duty. Corson noted with satisfaction that the men seemed less alert, less rigidly organized than when he saw them for the first time. Weeks of inactivity on Uria had taken their toll. It was not so much that discipline had slipped as that the atmosphere had changed. Corson’s practiced eye picked out the almost imperceptible evidence: one soldier who had hooked his thumbs in his pockets, another placidly sucking a little metal tube.
He strained to identify by their security collars the members of Veran’s personal bodyguard. He counted just under a dozen of them.
He uttered a single meaningless command. The front rank advanced. Veran made a sign. The defensive wire ceased to glow. Two soldiers rolled a section of it aside. Veran seemed to have lost all suspicion. But Corson knew how crafty the warlord’s mind was. He would not let anyone enter the camp without checking for himself.
After a pause, the second rank followed the first, and the third, and the fourth, their clothing making a rustling sound. Corson shouted another order. He was sure no one in the camp had guessed the true nature of these recruits. They were all tall, and their loose-cut military overalls hid the shape of their bodies. At his voice, in a unison movement, the first rank threw back their heads and let their hoods slip down.
Now there was no sound, not even footfalls or the brushing of cloth on cloth, except for the distant whistling and grunting of a pegasone having a dream.
In the camp someone stifled a sneeze, or a laugh. Then someone else began to shout.
“Women! They’re only women!”
“There are two thousand of them,” Corson said with deliberation. “They are strong and obedient.”
Veran did not react. His head did not turn by the least fraction of a degree. Only his eyes moved. He studied the faces of the women. Then he bent his gaze on Corson.
“Strong and obedient,” he echoed.
Yonder in the camp the men had started to fidget, leaning forward, craning their necks, their eyes popping from their sockets.
“Well,” Veran said without raising his voice, “you can just take them back where they came from.”
An unarmed soldier, who must have been off duty, jumped the fence at a point where it had not been rolled aside, and headed toward the women at a run. One of Veran’s personal guards took aim at him, but Veran struck the gun aside. Corson understood and admired his quick thinking. He was afraid, but he wasn’t showing it. He hoped this was a trap, that the soldier would fall into it and his fate would serve as a lesson to the others.
But this was no trap, or at least not of the kind he was hoping for. When the soldier was halfway to the women, Corson uttered a key word, clearly but quietly. He did not want the men in the camp to mistake what he said for an order to attack.
The front rank undid their overalls and took a half pace forward. The garments slid to the ground. They wore nothing else. They stood among the tall dense grass, haloed by the sunlight. Their hair fell around their shoulders and over their breasts. They scarcely moved but for their slow deep breathing, and kept their empty hands open, palms to the front.
There was a sort of roar from the camp, not a cry or a call, but a dull groan like a monstrous bellows, a unison gasp from hundreds of lungs.
A score of soldiers rushed forward. Others dropped their guns and gave chase, uncertain whether they were running after the others to bring them back or because they were afraid of getting there last. One of Veran’s guards made to open fire, but his neighbor pushed him off balance. Some of the soldiers took the precaution of breaking the power packs on their weapons before likewise making for the women.
Corson had thought of saying something, addressing the soldiers over Veran’s head despite the risks. But it was no longer necessary. The camp was emptying. Veran was fighting his own men. Bodies fell. Someone was trying to reactivate the perimeter fence, not without trouble, for it was blinking on and off. Clearly Veran was still trying to avoid more than minimal bloodshed. But he had no one around him now except his personal guards. A few other men, demoralized, were fighting with little enthusiasm.
It looked as though Veran was going to give in; Corson saw him raise his hand. The shots grew fewer. Then night came down. It swallowed up women, camp, soldiers, and all.
Irresolutely Corson took a few steps backward. Then he dropped to the ground. Veran had played his master card, the light-inhibitor. Now perhaps he would turn his guns loose at random on the neighborhood of the camp. Corson tried simultaneously to burrow into the earth and to crawl away. Over the muffled uproar that filled the darkness he heard the sound of a footfall. He rolled
over, folded into a ball, straightened like a spring, jumped up, almost lost his balance, struggled to retain it while flailing the air with his hands.
A grip on his arm spun him around. An arm tilted back his chin and crushed his throat. He heard Veran pant in his ear.
“You fooled me, Corson. You were tougher than I thought. I could kill you for getting me in a mess like this! But I’m leaving you the key—the key to your collar. Think of the others.”
Something fell between Corson’s feet. The grip relaxed. His skull seemed to swell up as though it would burst. He dropped on all fours, gasping for breath. Somewhere in the darkness behind him Veran was running into the forest, in search of the pegasone Corson had not taken the trouble to hide. Corson heard him shout in a mocking voice half muffled by the inhibition field, “I’ll get back on my feet, Corson! You’ll see!”
There came the fierce howl of a heat beam, shrunk by the field to a wasp-like buzz. Corson ducked. Eyes closed, he waited. Smells rose to his nostrils: smoke, burning wood, scorching meat. Beyond his lids the universe glowed.
He opened his eyes. Day had returned. Still in a crouch, he looked around. More than a hundred of the women had been killed, and a score of soldiers. A dozen more would never be good for anything again. Part of the camp was in flames.
Rising, he turned in the direction of the forest and saw what remained of Veran. The pegasone had vanished.
Veran had played his last card, and lost. He had managed to get himself killed in two ways at once. The heat beam—possibly aimed at him—had touched him just as he was mounting the pegasone. A fraction of a second earlier the beast, alert to the danger, had shied through time without caring what was nearby. It had taken half of Veran with it, and his light-inhibitor.
Somewhere in the universe, Corson thought, there must be a pegasone drowning in night and silence, struggling in unfathomable darkness at the bottom of a well which no energy could reach until the inhibitor’s power pack ran out or until it managed to shake off the device during one of its frantic time leaps. But why should Veran have taken his pegasone, when his camp was full of the beasts? Then Corson realized. He must have wanted access to the memory of that particular pegasone, to find out how and by whom he had been outwitted.
He trod on something. Bending down, he retrieved a little flat blade of blackened metal with a square notch at one end. He raised it to his neck and engaged the collar in the notch. No result. He began to turn the collar slowly. His hands shook and he almost had to stop. A block of ice exploded in his guts. Sweat poured into his eyes. The capillaries in his suit, overloaded, ceased to keep his back and armpits dry. He was suddenly very thirsty.
When he had turned the collar completely around, it fell apart in two sections. He caught them, looked them over for a moment—seeing that their edges were smooth, as though they had been no more than pressed together—and, in a futile gesture, hurled them far away.
He could see no sense in what Veran had done. Had he hoped to get clear so completely that Corson would never again be a threat to him? Had he detected a certain fellow feeling on Corson’s part?
An idea came to his mind. Maybe Veran had tried to take the pegasone in the hope of returning to Aergistal. That was the right place for him. And if indeed Aergistal was hell, he had no doubt succeeded.
Corson headed into the camp, hoping to find another pegasone there. The fighting had died down. In a few hours at most the Urians would have the situation in hand. They would meet hardly any resistance. The dying had been finished off. A few lightly injured men were trying to dress their wounds. Guns lay around here and there. But what Corson had been most afraid of was not happening. The soldiers were not maltreating the women. Some were walking about, rather shyly, in the company of three or four beauties, while others, sitting on the grass, were trying to strike up a conversation. They seemed surprised, almost frightened, at the willingness of the girls to cooperate. Maybe they were disappointed.
They would be even more so, Corson thought, forty-eight hours from now . . .
He spotted a soldier wearing a security collar, who sat grief-stricken on a gun carriage with his head in his hands. He touched the man’s shoulder.
“The key,” he said. “The key to your collar.”
The man looked up. Corson read in his eyes stupefaction and alarm. He repeated, “The key of your collar!”
He bent down and opened it, and handed the two pieces to the soldier, who gave a weary smile.
“Take the key,” Corson said. “Other men have collars on. See to them.”
The soldier nodded, but his expression remained absent. The collar might have left his neck, but no key could release him from the memory of Veran, from the ghost of his dead leader.
Corson picked out a pegasone without meeting any opposition. He strapped himself on with extreme care. He had done what he had to do and closed the loop in time. There remained one more jump for him to make, to the beach where—perhaps—Antonella was awaiting him.
And the Council of Uria, Selma, Cid, and Ana ... his friends.
CHAPTER 37
On the beach a woman alone: blond, naked, lying face downward. She was either asleep or in communion. There were no footsteps on the sand except hers. Corson sat down nearby and waited for her to awaken. He had plenty of time. Ahead of him stretched a fragment of the eternity on which was founded Aergistal.
He relaxed. He had reached the end of his road. He could afford to stare at the sea and run sand between his fingers. Later, he too would learn to master time. He had already had a certain amount of practical experience.
The woman roused. She stretched, rolled over, rubbed her eyes. Corson recognized her.
“Floria Van Nelle,” he said.
She nodded and smiled, faintly and almost sadly.
“Where are they?” he demanded, and when she appeared not to understand, went on: “Cid, Selma, and Ana! I must make my report to the Council of Uria.”
“There has been a time slip,” Floria said softly. “Thanks to you, not a very grave one. But in this line of probability they do not exist.” “They’re dead?”
“They have never existed.”
“I’ve lost my way,” Corson said. “I’m in the wrong place—the wrong time—maybe the wrong universe!”
“You have erased them. They inhabited a parenthesis of history. Your intervention has abolished them.”
Corson felt himself turn pale. He clenched his fists. "They were my friends, and I’ve killed them!”
Floria shook her head. “No. They belonged to another possibility and you have brought about this better one. They knew what would become of them if you succeeded, and they hoped you would succeed.” Corson sighed. He had had friends and they had vanished, shadows now even fainter than those claimed by death. They had left nothing behind, not a footprint, not a scratch on a stone, not even a name in this universe which to them was forever closed. They had not been born. They were no more than a memory in Corson’s mind and abstract entries in the ghostly records of Aergistal.
What I touch I wipe away. I am the eraser of the gods.
He recalled Touray, a good comrade, doubtless tossed back into the crazy chaos of unending battle. He thought of Ngal R’nda, last Prince of Uria, torn to bits by his own devoted followers, and Veran, the cunning mercenary, struck down by his own companions. He thought, with terror, of Antonella. He wanted to ask a question, but words would not come.
“On the other creode I did not exist,” Floria said. “And I was assigned to welcome you when you arrived on Uria. Did you think I turned up by chance? Here I exist, thanks to you. Don’t say you’re sorry.”
Bitterly Corson said, “So we are ripples on the surface of reality, to be reshaped or dispersed by a puff of wind according to the whim of the gods. I’ve been a toy for Those of Aergistal, the puppeteers who are making over history.”
‘They are not gods, even if they are somewhat more than we are. They do not act merely from caprice.”
“That’s only half the story,” Floria said patiently. “They are ourselves.”
“They’re our descendants. They mock us from their billion-year vantage point.”
“They are ourselves, Corson,” Floria repeated. “We are Those of Aergistal. But we don’t know that we are. We have to discover and grasp that truth. They are the sum of everything that’s possible, for their kind, for ours, for all others, even for species you cannot dream of and that could not dream of you. They are all the fragments of the universe and all the perceptions of the universe. We are not the ancestors of the gods, nor are they our descendants, but we are one part of them, cut off from our origins or rather from our completion. Each of us is one of their possibilities, a detail, a creode, aspiring in our muddled way to achieve union with them, yet struggling blindly in the dark to assert our separate existence. Something has happened somewhere in space and time which I myself don’t understand, though I know it was neither at the beginning nor the end of time. There is no ‘before’ or ‘after.’ To them, and already to a tiny extent to us, time is a dimension along which events coexist like objects laid side by side. We are one moment of the long path that leads to Aergistal, toward the union of all possible consciousness, and Those of Aergistal are each and every one of the beings who have ever taken and will ever take that path.”
“Gods with schizophrenia,” Corson grunted.
“Yes, if that helps you to understand them. Sometimes I tell myself that they must have set out to explore the full range of what is possible, and got lost on the way and became us, and that’s the reason for war, this splitting and cracking and crumpling of history which they are so carefully smoothing out. The fact that it has been broken prevents them, despite their great power, from instantly and completely setting the universe to rights. For what they are, we are also. War is part of them. And we must grope about to rediscover the long, the very long road that leads to them, that’s to say to ourselves. They were bom of war, Corson, from this dreadful tumult that shakes our lives, and they will only exist if they abolish it. Here and there they repair a fault, reknot the mesh. We do it, sometimes with their help. You have done it. Do you regret that?”
