Collision with Chronos

by Barrington J. Bayley

  “Regrettably, they must go by the board,” the unmasked Titan said evenly. “They’re too trivial to deserve our attention in a crisis of such proportions as this. It’s humanity, not any particular subspecies, that’s at stake.”

  Voices rose in violent argument. And faces that had long grown hard in a life of continuous plotting began to show their determination, one way or the other.

  Sobrie was not sure how, or when, shooting broke out. Guns seemed to appear in several hands at once. A bullet caught the Titan in the chest and he went down, slumping against the table, his handsome, clean-cut face sagging in extreme nervous shock. Shots exploded deafeningly. The Chairman, even as he squeezed the trigger, was hit in the shoulder and spun around with a snarl of pain.

  Somewhat belatedly Sobrie produced his own gun, ducking below the level of the table, only to see that all the voices that had been added to his side of the argument had been silenced, their owners dead.

  He ripped open his shirt, plunged his hand inside, and slowly rose.

  Guns were trained on him. He took his hand from his shirt and held up the s-grenade he had taken from his body-pouch.

  “Don’t move, anyone,” he said in a strained voice, “or we all get it.”

  Step by step he backed to the door, their eyes watching him blankly. In seconds he had reached it, flung it open and then was racing through the cavernous cellars.

  White faces, shocked by the sound of gunfire, stared at him, their mouths black holes. He waved the gun and shoved people aside, strangely aware that no pursuit was, as yet, being organised. No more than twenty seconds passed before he had reached the nearest exit. He plunged into it, up the dank tunnel, pounding along it for yard after yard.

  The tunnel ended in a concealed door which opened on to yet another cellar beneath a disused warehouse. Sobrie presently emerged in a side street in an outlying district of Sannan. He hurried from the spot to more populated streets, and stopped at the first vidbooth.

  Layella’s face came up on the screen. Her eyes widened at the sight of him.

  “Hello. What is it?”

  “Layella, get out of the apartment right away.”

  Alarm showed on her features. “What?”

  “Get out of there this minute. Don’t wait to take anything – just as much money as you can snatch up.” He thought for a moment. “Meet me under the clock in Kotsin Square. Have you got that?”

  Her face became pale, but calm. “Yes.”

  “Right.” He killed the screen, and a moment later was pacing the busy street, his mind racing, trying to figure the situation from all angles. They’d have to leave Sannan, and quickly. They could go – my God, where? Everything was in turmoil. Already the networks would be breaking open; there’d be almost nothing left.

  He took a tubeway and came up some distance from Kotsin Square. Making a rough calculation of how long it would take Layella to get there, he walked slowly the rest of the way. When he arrived she was already waiting, looking nervous and fidgety, dressed in a drab brown coat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, looking at him with round, Amhrak eyes.

  “We’ll go to Jorb Gandatt,” he said. “He’ll help us.” Some of the League was bound to survive, he told himself. There were bound to be some diehards, like himself and Jorb, who wouldn’t surrender. Enough would pull through so that some kind of organisation remained.

  He felt sure that Jorb was trustworthy and that he’d be able to help them. The Sannan circuit (his own circuit, he thought ruefully, the one he commanded) would be entirely blown, but Jorb didn’t belong to it; he was one of Sobrie’s contacts with the outside. He might be able to tell them where to go to be safe.

  She took his arm as they crossed the square. At first he didn’t notice that the entrance to Kotsin Square seemed a little crowded, or the grey van, without any insignia or designation, that was parked unobtrusively to one side of the square. But just before they entered the throng they were both taken roughly by the arms and propelled toward the vehicle.

  The back of the van was open. Inside sat a pudgy little man who had been scanning the square’ through a set of periscopes. Sobrie realised, with a sudden jump of his heart, that they’d fallen into one of those Titan devices one heard about but never met: a roving racial street-check. And the pudgy man was that half-legendary figure, the dev expert: one who could tell a dev or a part-dev at a glance.

  The dev expert looked Layella up and down as though she were something dirty. “She’s one all right,” he said in an acid, slightly nasal voice. “I don’t know how she’s got away with it so long.”

  Sobrie gave a strangled cry. Whether he’d have had the nerve to use his s-grenade, thus killing Layella too, he’d never know. Because two plainclothes Titans held him with arms outspread, while one reached under his shirt and yanked out the deadly device.

  “Interesting,” murmured Limnich, “And Leard Ascar is still out there, you say?”

  “Yes, Leader,” said Heshke.

  “Hmm. Of course, we’ve always known there was a possibility of human settlements existing out among the stars – some of them perhaps dev. There are indications of interstellar flight in the records of the Pundish Aeon – but you know that, of course, Citizen Heshke.”

  “Yes, Leader,” Heshke said again, slightly embarrassed. Planetary Leader Limnich was, as Heshke had found during meetings with him earlier in his career, obsessive about anything bearing on the history of True Man. His knowledge of archaeological detail came close to challenging Heshke’s own.

  Heshke faced Limnich across the latter’s massive desk, and was spoken to respectfully by him. Hueh Su-Mueng was also present, but was forced to sit in the corner, flanked by two guards. Planetary Leader Limnich cast him a disdainful glance every now and then, plainly disliking to have the dev in his office.

  “And what do you make of this plan of theirs, Heshke? What’s their ulterior motive?”

  “I sincerely believe they have no ulterior motive, Leader,” Heshke told him frankly. “They evidently have no designs on Earth, indeed no direct interest in our planet at all. Strange though it may seem, they’re prompted simply by the urge to help a neighbour in distress.”

  “The fiendishly clever Chink,” Limnich muttered audibly, nodding to himself as if with some inner satisfaction.

  “Yes, I’ve heard the phrase before,” Heshke said stiffly.

  Behind Limnich stood Colonel Brask, looking on the scene much as Heshke recalled him doing on that day in Titan-Major Brourne’s office. The looks he gave Hueh, however, displayed undisguised loathing.

  “And how did you find it, living with … the Chinks?” Brask asked him.

  Heshke squirmed uncomfortably. “They are … not like us,” he admitted.

  “Indeed not.”

  “I was impressed, however, by how much they could help us,” Heshke added.

  Brask gave a smile of wintry sarcasm, and Limnich replied: “Whatever their intentions were, their scheme has come unstuck this time. Surely you’re aware, Citizen Heshke, that we’ll never give up our efforts to hold Earth for True Man. The son doesn’t desert his mother, even to save his own life – and no matter how dire the peril to them both. We’re building up our power to defend our birthright. That defence will be total – desperate, perhaps – but overwhelming. Titan-Colonel Brask here, as it happens, is in charge of the formation of the Titanium Legions of Kronos, named after the ancient god of time, that will enable us – already are enabling us – to strike across the centuries. He can tell you that we’re not beaten yet.”

  “But you know the nature of the catastrophe that’s coming!” Heshke exploded. “It’s a natural catastrophe, not due to any living enemy. How are you going to deal with that?”

  “We already have a plan,” Brask told him loftily.

  “And what’s that? I’m fascinated!” Despite being in the presence of such charismatically high rank, Heshke couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

 
; “Our aim is to effect the total annihilation of the enemy’s biosphere. By means of a massive nuclear attack we’ll eradicate all life, so that not a microbe remains. Their time-system is associated with the existence of life: consequently, by removing that time-wave, which will die with the death of alien life, we remove the impediment to our own existence.”

  Heshke twisted around to look questioningly at Hueh Su-Mueng. But the Retort City technician merely shrugged. He turned back to Brask.

  “If you’re letting off thousands of fusion explosions —”

  “Hundreds of thousands,” Brask interrupted tonelessly.

  “— if you’re doing that four centuries in the future, what happens when our time reaches that point? Aren’t we going to be headed into all those explosions?”

  Brask smiled faintly. “That’s one of the peculiar things about time. By the ‘time’ we get there the effects will have died away – provided we do succeed in cancelling out the enemy time-front. If we don’t, it won’t matter anyway.” Noting Heshke’s incomprehension, he added: “I know it sounds odd, but that’s how time works, apparently.”

  Heshke looked again at Hueh, who nodded. “He’s quite right – provided the reversed time-system were to be destroyed.”

  “Can you now doubt our determination?” Limnich said in his low, fruity voice. “The coming struggle may be the acme of our glory. Let all who come against us know—” He clenched his fists spasmodically, and Heshke thought he actually saw him, as in fact Limnich had done many times, draw himself back from the edge of madness.

  Are we an insane race? Heshke wondered darkly. Perhaps so. Perhaps it’s good that all is lost. And, in those very thoughts, he thought he detected then the emergence of the death-wish that Blare Oblomot had once claimed pervaded Titan mentality.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Planetary Leader,” he said humbly.

  “Your adventure has been so extraordinary that I could do no less,” Limnich responded with a touch of graciousness. He rang a little gold bell that lay on his desk. “Escort these two back to Bupolbloc,” he ordered to the extra guards who came in.

  In the subterranean levels of Bupolbloc, as Heshke and Hueh were being taken to their adjacent cells, the archaeologist suddenly pulled up short. Coming along the corridor, also under escort, was someone who, after a momentary start of false recognition, he realised was a person he had met but once: Blare Oblomot’s brother, Sobrie.

  “Oblomot!” he exclaimed.

  The other looked at him for a moment, and then smiled bleakly. Their guards made to goad both of them along, but Heshke turned angrily. “I demand to be allowed to talk to this man! I’m not exactly a prisoner, you know!”

  “True,” said one of the guards indifferently. “Citizen Heshke is in custodial detention only. And he has the ear of the Planetary Leader.”

  The guards eyed one another for a moment, and then one of them pushed open a door. “In here.” And because they didn’t want to split the escort, Hueh Su-Mueng was prodded inside too. The guards stood by the door, eyeing their wards, swinging their batons.

  Heshke found it easy to ignore them. After some diffidence he explained how he had seen Blare die, but Sobrie merely nodded dismally: he already knew.

  In a rush of words Sobrie told him everything that had happened: his involvement with the Panhumanic League, his part-Amhrak girl friend, their arrest and how they’d been brought here to Bupolbloc in Pradna.

  “They’re trying to make a deal with me,” he finished bitterly. “They want to mop up the Panhumanic League once and for all. If I put the finger on enough League members who haven’t so far defected they’ll let Layella live on the Amhrak reservation instead of … putting her down like a dog.”

  “Could you do that?”

  “I could, but … oh, God. …”

  Heshke gave a sad sigh. “Well, at least they show a trace of civilised conduct,” he said gently. “They could have used third degree.”

  Sobrie looked at him, startled, and then laughed incredulously. “You don’t think they have scruples, do you? It’s a matter of time, that’s all! They’re so busy now that the torture facilities at Bupolbloc Two are being overworked. They don’t want to wait while I stand in line!”

  One other item of deference Heshke had wrung from the Titans was that he and Hueh were in connected cells, so that they could talk to one another. They held a brief conversation after leaving Sobrie Oblomot.

  “I feel sorry for them both,” Heshke said. “They’re in a hopeless position … the Titans will do just what they like with them. This is an evil world, Su-Mueng.”

  “All worlds have their evils,” Su-Mueng observed.

  “Perhaps. At any rate, I’m too old for the kind of role I’ve been expected to play lately. I’ve done what I can; now I just want to be left alone.” Heshke was lying on his pallet. He closed his eyes.

  “This plan your friends have won’t work,” Su-Mueng told him. “They make a basic mistake: the time-wave isn’t dependent on organic life, it’s the other way around. Biological organisation is a by-product of a time-system, not a cause of it.”

  “So?”

  “It will make no difference if they destroy an entire biosphere: the time-wave will come rolling on just the same.”

  “Just so,” said Heshke faintly. “What can I do about it?”

  Moments later he was asleep.

  Although it was late into the night, Limnich was still at his desk, poring over the genealogical charts of Titan officers who had come under suspicion. Racial vigilance within Earth’s elite force was something in which he took a personal interest.

  Outside, the murmur of traffic had lapsed into silence, broken only by the drone of an occasional car, and all was quiet. But suddenly Limnich jerked bolt upright and gasped with shock.

  There, standing before him in the half-darkened office, was the dev Chink Heshke had brought back with him from space.

  Limnich wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to penetrate the building uninvited; the Chink seemed to have materialised out of thin air. He snatched up a pistol that always lay on a shelf under the lip of his desk, and pointed it at the intruder’s stomach with trembling fingers.

  “How in the Mother’s name did you get in here?” he rasped.

  “By being fiendishly clever,” Su-Mueng said with a smile, remembering Limnich’s earlier remark.

  In point of fact his entrance had been made without the least difficulty. For while the Titans had made a thorough search of his person, they had failed to find a number of gadgets which had been strapped to his body in past time. Phased one minute into the past, these had been quite undetectable. To make one available, Su-Mueng merely brought it forward into the present.

  Chief among these gadgets was a compact personal time-displacer, like the larger, clumsier version he had used to escape from the Production Retort. He had phased himself one minute back in time, sprung the lock tumblers on the door of his cell, and simply walked out of Bupolbloc. He had made his way here to Limnich’s office, walked unseen past guards and secretaries, and once he was in Limnich’s presence phased himself back into normative time.

  How to explain this to Limnich, to whom his sudden appearance must smack of magic? “I have a device which renders me invisible,” he offered casually. “Please don’t be alarmed, Planetary Leader – I’m not here to do you harm. I have a proposal to make, which I hope will work to our mutual advantage.”

  Limnich kept his gun trained on the dev, trying to control the revulsion that being in the presence of the creature caused him. His free hand strayed to the golden bell that would summon help. But then his sense of calculation overcame his natural feelings. He withdrew his hand and leaned back, looking up into the svelte young Chink’s repugnantly inhuman face.

  “Go on,” he purred.

  “Your civilisation is in deep trouble, Planetary Leader,” Su-Mueng said easily. “Your planned hydrogen bomb attack on the future-Earth aliens may destroy a
n enemy, but that will be all. The basic problem will remain: hydrogen bombs won’t wipe out a powerful time-stream.”

  Limnich listened carefully to his words, and appeared to take them seriously.

  “Indeed? Well, we’ll have made progress, nevertheless. And we still have fifty years, perhaps a hundred years, in which to deal with the situation. …” His words trailed off broodingly, and his eyes left Su-Mueng’s face. He gazed down at his desk, apparently forgetting the gun in his hand.

  “Let me tell you something of ISS Retort City,” Su-Mueng said. “It has a social system which is inhuman, unjust and cruel. Do you know why I was chosen for this mission to Earth? Because I’m a renegade, an embarrassment to the masters of my city. They were glad of the chance to get rid of me – because I’ll do anything to change things as they are there.”

  Limnich gave an explosive grunt. “They get everywhere!”

  “Hah?” Su-Mueng inclined his head inquiringly.

  “Subversives. Like worms in the woodwork. All societies are riddled with them. But how does this concern me? Be brief; I have much work to do.”

  “Don’t you realise,” Su-Mueng said softly, “what an asset Retort City could be to you? Its industrial capacity is enormous: it could double the output of your whole planet. Besides this, you have much to gain from Retort technology. Our control over the forces of time are far in advance of your own.” He held up a smooth ovoid object that fitted into the palm of his hand. “How do you think I was able to make myself invisible and enter your office unseen? I’ll show you how to invade and occupy Retort City if, in return, you’ll wipe out its social system and allow a more equitable one to replace it.”

  Limnich finally put down his gun. “How could we invade it?” he asked, his eyes bulging behind his round lenses. “I understand it lies some light-years away.”

  “Not only that, it’s removed in time as well. But you have rocket-driven spaceships, do you not? They’ll suffice. I’ll show your technicians how to make space-time drives for them – I am,” he added incidentally, “a fully trained engineer. With perhaps thirty or forty such ships, carrying a few thousand well-armed men, the city could be taken.”