Day of Truth

by Brian Stableford

  I came to do is far more important than one life. It isn’t a matter of threats. If you won’t join me, then I have to kill you. I have no choice, in that case.”

  “Suppose I do say that I’ll fight for you. You said only a few moments ago that you can’t trust me.”

  “I said that I couldn’t depend upon you while you were acting for yourself. You worked for Eagleheart. You owe nothing to anyone. You don’t believe in anything, not in Darkscar, nor in me. The issues behind the war mean nothing to you. All that matters is yourself. What you want is to be on the winning side. And that is my side.”

  “I don’t want to be on any side,” I told him. “I don’t want anything to do with any war. Fight it out between yourselves. I don’t care which one of you wins.”

  “And what will you do now?” demanded Heljanita. “What will you do now that you have no past? You have nowhere to run. You are in the war, already. If you aren’t one of the combatants, you’re part of the battlefield. You’re too important. You can’t turn your back on the war. You have to fight.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. Your crooked wheel is no good anymore. I don’t want to be someone else. I don’t want any toys to play with. There’s nothing you can offer me.”

  “I can kill you.”

  “Probably.” I looked at him, certain that I was showing no fear, but feeling it ins;de. I was training time. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t see why he was still there talking, when, according to his own logic, he should have been killing me. Perhaps he thought that he owed me something. After all, I did win the Beast war for him. It hadn’t stopped him sending his toys out to kill me though. Perhaps that was it—the toys did the killing. It is a different matter to shoot a man yourself.

  Heljanita was hesitating, trying to decide. “It’s not my war,” I said again.

  “It’s everyone’s war,” he retorted. “It belongs to every man in the galaxy, and every dead man, and every man not yet bom. It’s not a war of man against man. It’s a war for a way of life. It’s a war to decide what being a man means.

  It’s a war that never ends. Progress against stagnation. Alertness against sleen. Life against death. You have to fight it, whichever side you’re on. And you have to take a side. You cannot live by two opposites. There has to be a choice. Even trying to turn away, trying to ignore the whole thing, is a commitment. It’s committing yourself to death. It’s denying life, denying self-determination, denying challenge, denying freedom. Your way is a refusal of mine and an acceptance of Darkscar. It pledges you to acceptance, to docility, to the kind of oppression and discipline that his land of society subjects you to. You are fighting, whether you like it or not.

  “And I offer you a choice. A real, honest choice. Are you with me or against me?”

  I looked him in the eye, completely unimpressed. “In your terms,” I said, “a man who won’t fight is a man who is fighting. It’s a paradox. Your logic is wrong.”

  But he wasn’t listening anymore. His attention had been caught by something else. A tall, slender figure descended the ladder from the spaceship. It was a toy, a beautiful, graceful thing that was built like a man only in order to demonstrate how imperfect a man is.

  The robot faced Heljanita, its red eyes and silver expressionless face on a level with the toymaker’s.

  “There is a fleet near the edge of the Time Gap,” it announced. Its voice was unnaturally smooth and calm.

  Heljanita was obviously startled. “Inside the Time Gap?” he asked, perplexity in his face.

  “Not inside. On the fringe.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It is impossible to say. We have only just detected its presence. It could not have been in the galaxy long, but it might have originated almost anywhere.”

  “How many shins?”

  “We can make no accurate estimate. More than one thousand.”

  Heljanita looked astounded. “A fleet that size can’t have originated anywhere. Who could put a fleet like that into space except for the Confederacy?”

  “We do not know,” stated the toy confidently.

  “Where is it going?”

  “It is impossible to calculate,” replied the toy. “At the present moment, it does not seem to be in alignment. Therefore, if it has any specific destination, it may be presumed to be inside the Time Gap. Our instruments are not sufficiently accurate for us to track it very closely. If it were not for the size of the fleet, we would have been unable to detect it. We can detect no high-omega emission.”

  “None at all?”

  “None.”

  Heljanita began to move toward the ship, but paused to think. The problem of the fleet near the Time Gap was obviously worrying him. I presumed that his base too was somewhere inside the nebula.

  My eyes strayed away for a moment to look at the bend round which the castle lay. I was devoting more attention to wondering what had happened in the castle after the door caved in than considering the puzzle of the fleet near the Time Gap. Heljanita was still deep in thought. I caught a movement in the comer of my eye, away to the left, and glanced round to see what it was.

  “Could it be the Confederacy fleet?” asked Heljanita of the toy.

  “The possibility seems remote. We are maintaining a close watch on both Aurita and Falcor, and there has been little or no activity there in the recent past. All the ships seem to be still on the ground. But there should be no other fleet of a comparable size.”

  I decided that it was time to leave. I jumped to my feet, ignoring the pain in my head that it caused, and took a flying leap over the edge of the bank onto the dusty road I regained my balance as fast as I could, and set off downhill at a ran. Had I gone round the bend, I would have been out of sight much faster, but I would also have been running uphill.

  “Catch him!” commanded Heljanita, and the toy sprang forward. I glanced back as it was poised on the bank ready to follow me. Its leap was never completed. There were two vivid flashes as rifle fire scored the fins of the ship. One of the bolts clipped the toy and tumbled it into the road. The range of the shot had been long, and the grazing impact with the ship had robbed the beam of much of its power. But the toy got up very slowly and did not continue the chase. Two more toys catapulted out of the belly of the ship without bothering to use the ladder. They landed, catlike, on their feet. Both were armed, but neither fired immediately. One took up a stand beside Heljanita, protecting him from the line of fire. The other ran toward the source of the shots, aiming as it ran. I could see two or three figures in the distance, moving in the right direction, but neither of them was close enough to have fired the shots.

  I kept running, my first impulse being to get out of rifle range. I heard the crackle of burning grass behind me and deduced that Heljanita must have ordered one of the toys to fire at me. But I felt no heat and was in no danger. I kept running nevertheless, without troubling to turn my head again.

  More men appeared, on the slopes below me, moving past me toward Heljanita’s ship. They were Felides, almost certainly Falcorians. They did not seem surprised to see me. I stopped, breathing heavily and unable to speak. Two of them ran toward me, the rest continued up the hill. I turned round to watch, but there was no battle. Twelve men at least were converging on the ship, zigzagging as they came and firing short bursts with as much rapidity as they could. Their beams were hardly aimed at all, but Heljanita’s ship was very exposed, and the fire must have worried him. The toys were hustling Heljanita back into the ship, doing their best to cover him while he climbed the ladder. All three toys were still on their feet, but the unarmed one also needed assistance to get aboard. White fire spattered on the hull and fins of the ship and left visible scars. But no beam was sufficiently powerful to hole the metal skin or damage one of the spacedrive motors.

  The ship took off; a squat silver bubble rising on six needles of flame, leaving a thin ascending line of smoke which drifted rapidly away into nothing.

  “Come o
n,” said one of the Felides, indicating a direction with a slight inclination of his head.

  There was no hurry. “Thank you,” I said as we moved off. He just shrugged.

  “You’re one of Deathdancer’s men,” I said, drawing the obvious conclusion. “Is he with you?”

  The Felide nodded. As we continued down the road, I saw several men waiting for us. Deathdancer was not there. He would have been in the fighting, of course. But I recognized one man at least—Darkscar of Despair.

  “Was this his idea?” I asked, indicating the collector.

  The Felide shook his head. “Skywolfs ship tangled with the toys in space and called for help. We were in alignment between the edge of the Time Gap and Falcor and came to help. We were too late to help the ship, but we followed the toys down. Good thing you ran when you did. If you’d stayed there, we’d have shot you.”

  I didn’t make any remarks about the accuracy of the shooting being unlikely to cause my demise.

  I said: “It is the Confederacy fleet on the fringe of the Time Gap, then.”

  His eyebrows went up by a fraction. “There’s no fleet anywhere near the nebula. Our ships are all on the Beast worlds.”

  THE TIME WAVE

  There is a link between pulse-and-rotation time and cosmic time; a thin boundary between the galaxy as man sees it and the galaxy as it sees itself. It is a link which exists only in the time dimensions, a thin thread of continuity with a characteristic wave form. It is the thread which connects the beginning of the galaxy with the end. It determines the pattern of change by organizing the correlation of pulse-and-rotation time with cosmic time. It is a fundamental part of the galaxy’s pattern of existence.

  It is very, very simple. Its wave form could be produced in a million different ways by specific arrangements of pulse-and-rotation time. But it is also very susceptible to distortion by any other possible arrangements. The whole existence of the Time Wave is a matter of balance and rhythm. If something interferes with the smoothness of its course, it distorts and reacts. If the interference remains, then the distortion continues and is magnified. Eventually, the effect is felt on the cosmic time scale, and then the galaxy reacts. The galaxy’s reaction concerns only the wave form, the cosmic time configuration. Because the galaxy is the entity which defines the Time Wave, its reaction is bound to be effective. The wave form will be restored. But in pulse-and-rotation time, anything could happen. To the galaxy that is not only immaterial but beyond its frame of reference.

  The galaxy has been slow to react because the stimulus has been slow in building. The original displacement in time of Heljanita and Darkscar was hardly noticed. When Dark-scar tapped the Time Wave in order to make analogues of the minds of Adam December and Moonglow of Amia, that too was hardly noticeable.

  But the changes caused by the Beast war were a different matter. Every small change in time led to a thousand more. The effect built up exponentially, forcing a reaction from the Time Wave. It is still building, faster and faster. One small thing could tip the balance. One jerk as energy is flooded into the Time Wave could make the distortion felt on a galactic scale.

  The consequences of the galaxy’s reaction can only be guessed at.

  DARKSCAR

  Darkscar of Despair is, above all else, a man dedicated to the truth. He has seen the truth, and he has lived with it. He knows that his Utopia provides the happiness and harmony which is the true goal of all sane men. That this is truth was, in fact, decided by the society itself. This does not imply that the truth is to be denied, it merely implies that if there was a mistake, it could not be identified by logic. Logic can only defeat conclusions, not premises.

  The strictness of his premise makes Darkscar a narrowminded man. It robs him of much of the creativity and imagination which would enable him to defeat Heljanita. Darkscar is the cleverer man, with more knowledge at his disposal. He has also the advantage of such help as there is available in the galaxy. In terms of comparative ability, Darkscar should win the war. But at every step he loses ground. He fails to make the best use of the time at his disposal and the qualities of his brain. He has been trained to think that initiative comes from without—from the body of society itself—not from within. In his world inventiveness is not encouraged, innovation is outlawed.

  In some ways, it is surprising how well Darkscar does adapt to the Kingdom of the Beasts. His actions often suggest that he is far more flexible than the philosophy of his Utopia would admit. While firmly believing that disorder represents evil incarnate, Darkscar is oddly prepared to use the methods of disorder to promote order. Many of his tactics, such as the continued attempts to defend Mark Chaos, are directly derivative of Heljanita’s own tactics.

  His belief in himself is continually blind to his inconsistencies. He cannot see that he is not true to his own ideals. His thoughts run on very simplistic levels, considering that he is a highly intelligent man. As far as he is concerned, Heljanita is evil and must be stopped. The galaxy must then be guided back into the paths of righteousness. These things are self-evident, beyond question.

  Because of these failings, Darkscar is doomed to failure. He can never find the understanding required to fulfill either of his goals. If Heljanita is defeated, it will either be by luck or by the Beasts. If Darkscar’s civilization is ever regenerated, then Darkscar will not be the man responsible.

  Within the context of the Kingdom of tire Beasts—the present day—Darkscar is an anachronism. He has no sympathy with its problems or its ways of thinking. Heljanita does not need such things to achieve his ends because his aims are a simple matter of destruction. Darkscar wants to be a builder, the maker of unity and harmony. He has no chance whatsoever. Heljanita has every chance to achieve the destruction he has planned.

  Darkscar knows that he is alone. Rayshade and Death-dancer are using him for their own ends. No one else will listen to him. Perhaps that is why he attaches so much importance to Mark Chaos—another man out of sympathy with the world. Perhaps what he really wants from Chaos is not allegiance, but friendship.

  CHAOS’S STORY CONTINUED

  When we took off from Aquila, I was in Darkscar’s ship again. I felt a little uncomfortable. I seemed to owe him so much, and yet I felt very little gratitude and very little sympathy for the man. As far as I was concerned, Heljanita and Darkscar were only different sides of the same coin. They both thought that no one could opt out of their war. They both thought that their ideas were more important than their actions. They were both vain, almost fanatical men. Even their voices sounded exactly the same.

  Darkscar was toying with the high-omega apparatus on his ship. We were aligned for Aurita, but that was only temporary. The clash with Heljanita on Aquila marked the beginning of open war. He expected the toys to take to space as soon as possible. The existence of the fleet near the Time Gap worried him as much as it had Heljanita.

  “Nothing,” he announced, when he was tired of playing with the knobs. “Just normal communications. Nothing relating to any fleet”

  “Heljanita’s toy said that it couldn’t find anything on high-omega either,” I mentioned.

  “It must be the toys,” put in the Felide who was piloting the ship. He was one of Deathdancer’s best men, a man named Comarre. I had been impressed with his ability in the later days of the war. He didn’t remember me except as one of the Lords. I had been more prominent dining the talking than the fighting, and he was a Felide. The other crewmen were all younger men, too young to have been involved in the war. They knew me only by reputation.

  “It isn’t the toys,” I said definitely. “I can be sure of that. Heljanita knew nothing about it.”

  “There isn’t another fleet that size in the galaxy,” growled Comarre.

  “It’s inconceivable that the toy should have been mistaken,” mused Darkscar, “but more than a thousand ships! No such fleet exists.” He stroked his lip, staring over the pilot’s head at the control screen.

  “Skywolf has ships lef
t from the Beast war,” I said. “Some hundreds, at least. The toy said they couldn’t estimate the size accurately. Perhaps they guessed too high.”

  “If the toy said ’over a thousand’ then it meant it. It probably guessed too low to be sure.” Darkscar spoke definitely, but I didn’t see how he could be certain.

  “The important thing,” said Comarre, “is whether they’re with us or against us. I don’t know how many ships the toys have, but we’ll be hard pressed to muster more than three thousand. A thousand extra on either side could make a big difference.”

  “If they are not toys,” said Darkscar, “then they must be with us rather than against us. Heljanita is against everyone.” I laughed at that. “They’re on no one’s side until they make some kind of a move. They may not even be armed. When we say ‘no one has that many ships’ we mean ‘no one has that many armed ships!’”

  “Unarmed ships don’t fly in flocks,” grunted the Falcorian. “And they don’t stay silent. If two thousand freighters gathered at the edge of the Time Gap, we’d know about it.” I was slightly stung by the tone of his words. I still tended to think of Falcorians as all physique and no finesse. But he was right. I was just fishing for crazy answers to a totally impossible situation. There could be no fleet on the edge of the Time Gap.

  None of us could offer any kind of reasonable explanation, and so the conversation died until we reached Falcor. After we landed, there was not a great deal for me to do. The whole port was an agitated mess, and I was equally in the way off the ship as on. I was completely at a loss to know what to do, and so I did nothing; just wandered around on the apron without straying far from the ship. I would have liked to see Deathdancer, but he was far too busy. The war was on, and the fleet was making ready. I did manage to see the ship which Deathdancer was to fly—an incredibly vast hulk that I would have sworn omega-lifters couldn’t have taken up, let alone spacedrive motors. But my standards weren’t quite right. This was a warship, a mass of guns and power. It had no need to allow for the weight of expensive cargoes. It was all muscle and guts. It stood ten times the height of the ships I had flown during the war, with three or four times the girth. Its spacedrive was built in three tiers, on separate girdles, with wings to stabilize the ship as it came up or down in atmosphere. The omega-drive was built into the body of the ship, where the hold would normally be, into a vast central column. The thing bristled with beam apertures. The whole body was mottled with pods, each with its own restricted field of fire. A battle can be terribly confusing if you’re covering a sixty degree segment of a sphere. The screen is always full of ships, far too many for you to be able to judge which one is closest. You blast away and hope. Perhaps this style of armament would be an improvement.