The Chronocide Mission
Lloyd Biggle Jr.
In a world 300 years in the future, shattered by war and holocaust, time travel may hold the answer to all of mankind’s problems. But when things go wrong. Will the world ever be right again?
The Chronocide Mission
by Lloyd Biggle Jr.
In memory of JOHN FLORY, who asked for it.
NOTE FOR THE READER
Much of this book’s action takes place in the future, and the characters taking part in that action are, of course, future characters. In the more than three hundred years postulated between the present and the novel’s setting, with a massive catastrophe in between, a great deal would have happened to our language. It may well have become unrecognizable to the reader of today.
As a reminder of this fact, fabricated words (some will look like typos or misspellings!) are used for flavoring throughout to remind the reader that a different—or greatly modified—language is being spoken by people living in, or originating in, the future. (This of course will not be true of the present-day characters who appear in the final chapters of the book!)
In the “future” language:
Day, days are rendered as Dae, daez.
Night, nights are niot, niots.
These words hold in combinations: middae, midniot, dae-light, overniot.
Sike is used for year; tenite, meaning ten nights, is the unit of temporal measurement used instead of “week.” Mont is used instead of month.
Lens and lenses become len and lens.
Some changes in common punctuation practices are also employed to contribute to that future “flavoring.”
—Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
1. BERNAL
Bernal awakened suddenly to the drumming of horses’ hoofs on a forest road. “Some idiot peerlings on a drunken frolic,” he told himself indifferently. He had spent more than half of his life deep in this enemy Peerdom of Lant, and he was fond of telling young scouts he survived only because he was most alert when he was sound asleep.
He raised up briefly to determine where the horses were and what direction they were going. Then he lay back, stretched his arms and legs luxuriously, and considered the one serious problem he faced at that moment, whether his beard needed trimming. The niot was only half advanced, the weather mildly warm, and his bed, fashioned of a chance accumulation of leaves in the shelter of an enormous, drooping prickle bush, the most comfortable he had experienced in more than a tenite. He loved the forest’s pungent scents, loved living in the open. For the second time that niot, he composed himself for sleep.
The distant horses rumbled across a bridge and left the main road for a little-used branch that led to a long-abandoned lumber camp. Bernal continued to listen with closed eyes. An experienced scout in a thick forest was in no danger from a rackety enemy on horseback. Almost subconsciously he analyzed the sounds he heard and pondered the question of whether there were four horses or five. He decided on five.
He had begun to doze off again when his ear caught the yapping of dogs, and that brought him tensely to his feet. Dogs meant the riders were Lantiff, the vicious, mounted warriors of Lant, and the yapping meant they were on leash. The Lantiff used dogs for only one purpose, tracking, and they leashed them only when someone wanted a fugitive taken alive—which never happened when the ferocious beasts ran loose.
A runaway worth that much trouble to the Lantiff would be worth the loss of a little sleep to him. If nothing else, the fugitive might have useful information. Bernal gave no thought at all to the odds he faced in taking on five Lantiff with dogs. Everything one did in life involved some risk.
He unsheathed one of the two long knives he carried, his only weapons, and moved like a flitting shadow through the dense undergrowth toward the approaching horses. He had the confidence of long experience, but the silent, swift sureness of his movements through a dark and dense forest was purely instinctive. The Easlon scout in Lant who could not move with silent swiftness did not survive to acquire experience.
A full moon, shining brightly in a clear sky, had ruined many a hunt for Bernal, but on this niot it would not be a factor. Only where roads and widely scattered clearings had made rents in the dense overhead canopy could the moonlight penetrate the forest.
The sound of the chase altered abruptly, and he paused for a few seconds to listen. The hunters had dismounted to follow their dogs on foot. The advantage now belonged to Bernal, for the squat, muscular Lantiff were clumsy in foot combat and bunglers in a dismounted chase. They crashed through undergrowth, got caught up in vines and bushes, and soon were adding their curses to the dogs’ yapping.
The dogs’ killing instinct rivaled that of their masters, and both knew that a panicky, exhausted fugitive could not outdistance them for long. The Lantiff’s course shouts became frenzied; so did the dogs’ yapping, and they snapped at their leashes as they hauled their masters forward. The Lantiff were trying to whip them into line for a methodical search.
Listening alertly as he ran, Bernal used an angling approach that would overtake them from behind and downwind. He would attack one Lantiff and dog at a time, beginning with the pair on his right—the man first, before he could sound an alarm. His death grip on the leash should hold the dog long enough for Bernal to deal with it.
Then he would circle and take the pair on the left, leaving the odds tilted in his favor. He had the advantage of surprise and a fight on his own ground and terms, and the dogs, straining as they were to overtake their prey, would be a deadly encumbrance when their masters were attacked from behind in thick undergrowth. On horseback, the Lantiff’s most effective weapons were their long-handled, flesh-ripping, multiple pronged and barbed lances. These were left with the horses when they fought dismounted, and their clumsy, curved swords were of no use at all in a dense forest.
Bernal slowed his pace and began stalking his first victim, moving with long, silent strides.
Suddenly a beam of light cut through the darkness, passing over his head with a deafening crash, severing branches, searing the foliage, and leaving in its wake tiny flames that flickered momentarily on the leaves it had touched.
Bernal sank to one knee and froze there. The light stabbed again and again with the same violent clap of sound. A dog screamed, and a man, and Bernal caught the revolting reek of burnt flesh. Then the air was rent thunderously just above his head, leaving him momentarily deafened, and he ducked as flames enveloped a dead bush close behind him. There were more screams. A beam of light bored into the ground almost at Bernal’s feet, and the thick forest humus emitted a rancid cloud of smoke.
Keeping low, Bernal began to edge forward.
A clearing opened before him, half illuminated by moonlight and strewn with death. The Lantiff lay crumpled in the semicircle they had formed when they brought their quarry to bay. Nearby, three dogs crouched with fangs bared viciously, still straining on their leashes in death. A fourth had broken away from its dead master and died in the charge. At the far side of the clearing, the moon glimmered on the most horrible sight of all: the one dog that survived was tearing at its victim.
Bernal leaped forward. His knife flashed, and he heaved the dog’s massive body aside to bend over a pathetic, moaning figure. It was an elderly man, hideously wrinkled as though wasted by illness. His head was totally bald but with incongruously thick eyebrows. He was of an age rarely attained in those unsettled times, but that was not why Bernal stared at him. This was no ordinary fugitive. For one thing, he was a foreigner. He possessed none of the usual Lantian racial characteristics. He was slight of build and fair-skinned. For another, he had no beard—merely an untidy growth of facial hair. He had shaved—or been shaved—within the last teni
te, and beardlessness was the sternly enforced perogative of a peerager. He also wore finely woven, meticulously cut and fitted peerager trousers, but his blue smock was the one-name badge of high office in Lant. These two garments on the same person were a stark impossibility.
A strange black tube some twelve centimeters long and three in diameter lay on the ground beside him; nearby was a clumsily fashioned back pack with flimsy straps that had broken during the struggle with the huge dog. The old man had tried to protect himself with his arm and his pack, but the dog ripped the pack from his grip and made a gory mess of his arm.
Bernal examined him as carefully as the moonlight permitted. The entire forearm resembled shredded meat more than a human limb, but the artery seemed miraculously untouched. Clucking his tongue softly, Bernal went to the Lantiff, one after another, and swiftly sliced pieces of cloth from their clothing. With these he mopped up the blood and skillfully bandaged the arm. While he was working on it, the old man’s eyes opened, and he struggled to a sitting position.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Bernal.”
“You killed the dog!” The old man sounded incredulous. He sat looking about him while his dazed mind groped to understand this miracle. The dog’s next lunge would have buried its teeth in his throat, and he had resigned himself to a hideous death.
“You are a one-namer!” he exclaimed, still sounding incredulous. “And you dare to help me?”
“I scout for the Peerdom of Easlon, and I dare many things,” Bernal said. He fashioned a sling from the back of a Lantiff’s shirt, tied it in place, and then asked, “Can you walk?”
With his help, the old man struggled to his feet. He was taller than Bernal had expected, and there was an amazing resilience his wiry form, for his teeth were clenched with pain and his breath came in shallow sobs. As the shock lessened, that pain would become throbbing agony.
For the moment, his mind was focused on the miracle of his rescue. “The Peer of Easlon must pay you well for taking such risks,” he said.
Bernal smiled. “A scout avoids risks as much as possible, and he works for a cause, not for a reward. In Easlon, I am considered a patriot. Come—there will be less danger if we move quickly. Let’s see if you can walk.”
“My pack!” the old man gasped.
Bernal retrieved the ripped pack and tied its torn straps together. The old man leaned unsteadily against a tree and followed every movement with anxious eyes. When Bernal stooped to pick up the strange tube, the old man exclaimed, “Give it to me!” and extended a trembling hand. He snatched it and tucked it under his blouse.
“Were there more of them?” Bernal asked.
“No. I only kept one. To defend myself.”
“It certainly did that,” Bernal remarked. If he hadn’t arrived on the scene when he did, he wouldn’t have believed that one elderly fugitive could have wrought the carnage that lay about them.
Blood was soaking through the bandage on the old man’s mangled arm, so Bernal added more layers of cloth. Then he picked up the pack and began to guide him toward the road, gently supporting him with an arm around his back.
“I am Egarn,” the old man said suddenly.
Bernal halted. He couldn’t contain his astonishment. “You are who?”
“Egarn.”
Bernal didn’t believe him. Egarn was Med of Lant and the peer’s most trusted advisor. He was an enigma even to the Lantians, living a solitary life, holding himself apart from palace intrigue and preferring the study of sorcery to the court cycle of hunts and parties. Younger peeragers avoided him out of fear that he might cast spells on them, or so it was said, but the Peer of Lant, the most cynical and cruel tyrant alive, was said to rely on him absolutely. Only a colossal court upheaval could have placed him in disfavor.
No hint of such a thing had reached Bernal, but court gossip was difficult to come by when a peerdom was at war. Certainly there always had been something peculiar about Egarn. He held a high office that was reserved for peeragers, and he enjoyed all of its privileges despite the fact that he had only one name.
Bernal could make up his mind later. The fugitive’s importance hardly mattered unless he could be kept alive and gotten out of Lant quickly. They would have to travel fast and cover their trail as well as they could. If this old man really was Med of Lant, the peer’s pursuit would be incessant and relentless. Only a great personal affront or the foulest act of treason would so infuriate her that she would send Lantiff with dogs in pursuit of a long-trusted official.
While he guided Egarn back along the trail left by the clumsy Lantiff, he considered what form the pursuit would take next. The peer’s commanders would suspect the old man had confederates waiting for him, and once the death scene was discovered, they would be certain of it. One elderly fugitive could not overcome five Lantiff and their dogs without help.
Every one-name village in the peerdom’s northwest province would become suspect. An army of searchers would comb the forest and question local inhabitants, who would be uncommonly lucky if they only suffered torture. Bernal wanted Egarn as far away as possible before that search got organized.
The horses were waiting quietly by the road. The Lantiff had dropped the reins when they dismounted for their dash to death, and these massive, superbly trained black beasts from the peer’s own stables would not move as long as the reins trailed.
The dense forest had hidden the moon the moment they left the clearing, but the road was illuminated brightly. Bernal looked about him with a scowl. The niot was dangerously bright for fugitives who might have an army on their heels before the darkness faded. The officer who considered five Lantiff, with dogs, an adequate force for tracking down one feeble old man would taste the whip himself before morning, and a hundred Lantiff would follow the first five—or a thousand, with all of the armed might of the peerdom in support.
Egarn could not ride unassisted. One of these magnificent steeds could easily carry both of them, but if Bernal took one and left the others, the pursuing Lantiff would deduce more than he wanted them to know. He had to take all five.
The first problem was to delay the discovery of the carnage in the clearing. The peer’s commanders would be less energetic about sending reinforcements if they thought the original pursuers were still on the fugitive’s heels.
Egarn sank to the ground the moment Bernal released him. The short walk had exhausted him, and his mangled arm had to be throbbing more intensely with each halting footstep. He was whimpering with pain.
“I must cover our tracks before we leave,” Bernal told him.
First he cut an armful of branches from a pungent stink bush. He spread them along the road and went back for another armful, which he distributed carefully over the trampled trail for a short distance into the forest. He crushed the leaves underfoot and swept the road with them where the old man’s tracks had veered aside when he heard the pursuit close behind him.
“Dogs won’t try to follow your scent through that,” he told Egarn cheerfully. “Especially if your trail continues along the road. You will have to walk about a kilometer. Can you do it?”
“If I have to, I can,” Egarn said grimly.
Bernal busied himself with the horses. The lances were a nuisance, but there was no time to find a secure hiding place for them. He tied the horses in tandem and helped Egarn struggle to his feet. Then he mounted the lead horse. Egarn staggered along feebly, clinging to Bernal’s leg with his good arm, and Bernal bent low to help him as much as he could. They made slow but steady progress. Bernal watched admiringly as the old man set his teeth against the steadily worsening pain and plodded forward without complaint.
Finally they reached their goal—a tiny, unbridged stream. It was an insignificant ribbon of water trickling off through the forest, but tonight it might save a man’s life. Egarn waded into it, and then Bernal hoisted him onto the horse he was riding. Egarn lost consciousness almost at once, but he had accomplished as much as Bernal had
hoped for and far more than he had expected. If dogs tracked him to the stream, the Lantiff would waste hours searching it from source to mouth for the place he left it again.
Bernal made Egarn as comfortable as he could and let the horses run while he pondered the opportunity fate had given him.
The swolen armies of the Peer of Lant were everywhere invincible. The war in the north had long been finished. That in the east was in its final stages of plunder, destruction, and slaughter of noncombatants. The southern invasion was rolling relentlessly. Now the peer was looking westward. She had dedicated her life to war, and she had no other neighbors left to conquer.
To the west lay the Ten Peerdoms, protected throughout their independent existence by a formidable mountain range. The only passes known to the Lantians were blocked in winter and difficult even for intrepid explorers the remainder of the year. The scouts of Easlon, the easternmost of the Ten Peerdoms, regularly crossed the frontier on trails known only to them, but the Lantians would have considered these hazardous routes impassible. No sane Peer of Lant would attempt to march an army westward.
So the rulers of the Ten Peerdoms had always believed— while neglecting their defenses and failing to train even token armies. Clouds of war had hung over Easlon’s mountainous frontier all of Bernal’s lifetime, and Easlon’s scouts had skirmished regularly with scouts from Lant, but no army appeared. Unfortunately, those mountain passes were no obstacle for a determined commander, and the present Peer of Lant was a military genius. She could attack whenever she chose, and Easlon had only its few hundreds of scouts to oppose an army of thousands. The Ten Peerdoms were about to be devastated in an orgy of blood and fire.
In a desperate attempt to stave off disaster, the League of One-namers, a secret Ten Peerdoms organization, had attempted to make contact with the one-namers of Lant. The League wistfully hoped independent crafters everywhere could band together and constitute a force for peace and reason. Arne, their leader, had not subscribed to this silliness, but he was the designated emissary. Bernal had recently completed the most important mission of his life: guiding Arne to a series of secret meetings in Lant and bringing him back safely.
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