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

by Barrington J. Bayley

  Haight pondered briefly and shook his head. ‘They are on a homeward flight path after having completed their work. We need to find them on the ingoing flight before they’ve reached their target.’

  The torpedoes faded away, lost in the strat. The Hegemonic warships eventually receded from view.

  Haight gave the order to proceed pastward, traversing across the vertical time-axis. A hundred and fifty years deeper into historic territory he ordered the fleet to stand by; the flagship phased briefly into orthogonal time.

  They hovered over a sunlit landscape. Down below, roads and rivers made a meandering pattern among the towns and villages that were dotted here and there across the patchwork of fields. The flagship’s computer library was busy comparing the scene with the official encyclopaedia, but neither Haight nor Anamander needed its report to know the worst. The geography of the place simply did not correspond to the official record. In particular, the sizeable city of Gerread was completely absent.

  In orthogonal time the Hegemonic attack had already been successful.

  Haight inspected the landscape carefully, looking for signs of recent devastation. There was none: it did not seem that Gerread had been removed by bomb or plague.

  Instead, the Hegemonics must have used their most terrible weapon, of which the High Command had obtained some information but which they had never been absolutely sure existed: a time-distorter, capable of altering the fabric of time directly. Gerread had been simply … annulled. All trace of it, past and future, had vanished.

  It was a sobering thought that in all probability no one except those aboard the ships manoeuvring in the strat, and those in the special Achronal Archives at Chronopolis, had even heard of Gerread any more. Once again Haight experienced the familiar burden: the terrible responsibility of being a chronman.

  The priest, having finished his asperges, retired to the rear of the bridge, where he learned the dreadful facts confronting Haight and Anamander. He began to pray in a sonorous, desperate mutter. The two officers shared his feeling of horror: Gerread and all its inhabitants had been swallowed, foundering like a ship, by the infinity of nonactual, merely potential time. That, at least, was how it was described technically. In church language it was the Gulf of Lost Souls.

  Leaving behind it a clap of air, the flagship rephased into the substratum. Haight recalled the region of turbulence they had recently passed through. That, no doubt, had been connected with the new distortion in the orthogonal time-flow. But the battle was not yet lost. There was still strat time, and in strat time events did not vanish, once having taken place, but lingered for hours, days, sometimes months of subjective personal time. Nothing was irreversible.

  They might yet snatch back those lost souls from perdition.

  The fleet continued its traverse. This, Haight reminded himself, was but a preliminary exercise in how the coming time-war would be fought. Always the object would be to alter the adversary’s history: reaching back and further back into the murky tale of mutated events, answering every move with a cancelling counter-move. And final victory would be achieved only when the history of one side was so completely distorted that the existential support for its fleets of timeships was removed. Even then they would continue to fight for a while, ghosts moving through the strat, never having been manufactured, manned by crews that had never been born. Then they would fade, sinking into nonactual, potential existence.

  But it was some time before the warning gong sounded again and Hegemonic ships came up once more on the scope screen.

  ‘Heading for Node Five,’ the scanman informed him.

  They counted the ships as they appeared blurrily on the screen. There were twelve.

  ‘This is it,’ Haight said. ‘This is their incoming path. Get ready.’

  Captain Mond Aton, officer commanding the Smasher of Enemies, had seen the Hegemonics’ outgoing flight path on the scope screen of his own ship and had fully expected to enter battle. Only later, when the order to hold came from the flagship, did he realise that he had been impetuous. The homeward-bound ships would probably have refused to fight; and even if defeated, their destruction would solve nothing.

  His own bridge was a miniature of Commander Haight’s; it was manned by only seven men. Unlike the bigger, heavier ships that doubled as battleships and troop carriers, the Smasher of Enemies was a manoeuvrable, lightly manned, heavily armed destroyer. It had the speed to pursue, and elaborate chronphase equipment for accurate microsecond broadsides.

  ‘Breaks your heart to see them go,’ said the scanman, looking up from the screen, ‘doesn’t it, sir?’

  Aton nodded. ‘They haven’t escaped us yet, Scanman. Those ships we see are already ghosts, though they don’t know it.’

  The wedge-shaped Hegemonics faded. Aton did not think too deeply about the paradoxes involved in what he had said. In the strat paradoxes were commonplace. And not only in the strat, either: since the rise of the Chronotic Empire every lowly citizen had been made aware of how contingent his existence was on the fickle mutability of time. Many were the millions who, having existed once (once, if that word were to be given a meaning outside time altogether), now ceased ever to have existed. Outside, that is, the roll of nonexisting citizens in the Achronal Archives, which contained more history that had disappeared than it did extant history.

  Unless the Hegemonic attack could be stopped, many millions more would be added to that roll.

  Aton turned to Lieutenant Krish.

  ‘Hold the bridge for me. I’m going to make a quick check.’

  As he left the bridge and walked through the galleries he could feel the tension building up in the ship. This would be his third sizeable engagement and on each of the others he had liked to visit each section under his command beforehand. It gave him a feeling of integrating the vessel into a tight fighting unit. And it would be a good half-hour, he told himself, before the fleet found its quarry.

  He visited the gunnery-room, where tension was, of course, at the highest pitch – and no wonder. His glance swept around the computer terminals, of which the men themselves were in a sense mere appendages. In some ships gunnery was on the bridge itself, which at first sight seemed a logical arrangement, if cumbersome. But Aton preferred it this way, although he knew some captains did not.

  After a few words of encouragement to his gunners he went deeper into the ship to the drive-room.

  He paused outside the door at the sound of voices, then smiled to himself. Ensign Lankar, a keen young engineer but newly inducted into the Imperial Time Service, was loudly displaying his knowledge to a drive-room assistant in his charge.

  ‘The time-drive is really based on the good old mass-energy equation,’ Lankar was saying. ‘E equals MC squared. Let’s take one of the factors on the right-hand side of this equation: C squared. That’s where time comes in. C is the velocity of light – the distance per time of an otherwise mass-less particle. So energy is really mass multiplied by time squared. But we can also write the equation this way: M equals E over C squared. This shows us that mass is a relationship between energy and time. So now we’re getting somewhere: what happens if we disturb this relationship? We do this by forcing energetic particles to travel faster than light. And now we find that the equation doesn’t balance any more: energy divided by the velocity of light squared no longer adds up to rest mass. But the equation must balance – it’s a fundamental physical law. So what happens? The equation keeps the scales even by moving rest mass through time, to the same extent that the time factor is transgressed on the right-hand side.’

  ‘But where does the strat come in, Ensign?’

  ‘The strat is what time is made of, lad. If you move through time, that’s what you have to move through.’

  Ensign Lankar thumped the steel casings that bulged into the drive-room. ‘And here’s where it’s all done. This is where we accelerate pi-mesons to anything between C and C squared. It’s the most important part of the whole ship, and don’t you fo
rget it.’

  Lankar’s voice sounded incongruously young as he talked self-consciously down to his underling. ‘M equals E over C squared,’ he repeated. ‘Notice that time is involved in both elements on the right-hand side. That’s why pure energy can’t be transmitted through the strat, only mass. So we have no radio communication with the High Command and have to use the couriers, poor devils.’

  Both young men jumped up with embarrassment and saluted hastily as Aton entered. They had been seated on wooden benches well away from the main control desk, where the drive-room’s senior staff were too busy for such idle talk.

  ‘Everything in order?’ Aton called gruffly, speaking over the high-pitched whine that always infected the drive-room.

  The chief engineer looked up from his work. ‘No problems, sir.’

  Aton inspected the flickering dials briefly and went on his way. He paced the short galleries and corridors, speaking to a man here, an officer there. He was about to ascend a long ladder that would take him back to the bridge, passing by the gunnery-room, when a drone of voices caused him to pull up sharp.

  It came from a nearby storeroom and had the sound of chanting. Aton felt himself stiffen. Then, dreading what he might find, he unfastened the clamps on the door and eased it quietly open.

  The chanting came louder and he was able to distinguish some of the words. ‘Lord of all the deep, if this be our moment for darkness … sear our souls with thy vengeance …’

  He peered within. Six figures occupied the cell-like storeroom, having made space for themselves among the crates of chronphase spares. By the look of things this was their regular meeting place – the crates had been arranged to leave a neat cubbyhole that had a much-used appearance. All six wore normal uniforms, except that their caps had been replaced by black cloths that hung down over their ears. Five men were on their knees, heads bent and faces hidden in their arms, and they had their backs to Aton. The sixth stood before them leading the chant, a gold medallion hung about his neck, a black book in his hand. Aton recognised him as Sergeant Quelle, of gunnery. His lean sharp face bore the look of desperate rapture Aton would have expected from such a rite as this.

  In the same moment that the startled Sergeant Quelle saw him, Aton pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster and flung the door wide open. He slammed a com switch on the corridor wall and bellowed for the ship guard. Then he moved into the confined space, towering over the kneeling figures, the heavy beam pistol sweeping over them all warningly.

  White faces, shocked and guilty, turned to look at him. Sergeant Quelle backed away, slamming shut his book. He bore the look of a trapped rat.

  ‘Traumatics!’

  Aton spat out the word. The outlawed sect was known to have adherents in the Time Service – chronmen were, in fact, unusually prone to be affected by its heresies, for obvious reasons – but Aton had never dreamed he would find aboard his own ship not one heretic but a whole congregation. He felt shaken.

  Booted, running feet rang on the metal decks. The com speaker on the wall outside the storeroom crackled.

  ‘Are you all right, Captain?’

  ‘Yes, Lieutenant,’ he replied, recognising the voice from the bridge. ‘Better send down Comforter Fegele.’

  The guards clattered to the scene. Aton let them stare at it for a few moments. There was a strained silence.

  ‘Better not do anything to us, Captain,’ Quelle said in an impulsive, frightened voice. ‘Your soul will go to the deep if you do!’

  ‘Silence!’ Aton was affronted by the continued blasphemy.

  The ship’s priest, Comforter Fegele arrived, pushing his way through the guards. As he saw the evidence before him, the six men standing half-sheepishly, half-defiantly, a gasp came from deep within his cowl. He swiftly made the sign of the circle, then raised his hand palm outward.

  ‘Depart, Prince of Abominations,’ he muttered in a hurried, feverish voice. ‘Depart into the deeps of time, plague no more the servants of the Lord.’

  The Traumatics immediately turned to him and made a curious sign with the fingers of their right hands, as though warding off a curse.

  Quelle laughed fiercely. ‘Don’t you plague us with your exorcisms, priest!’ But Comforter Fegele was already beginning an incantation of sacred names, at the same time producing a vase-like chalice from within the folds of his robe.

  ‘Get them out of here and lock them in the cells!’ ordered Aton angrily. ‘Commander Haight can decide whether to charge them fleetside or back in Chronopolis.’

  The guards hustled the heretics from the room, while the priest splashed consecrated wine everywhere, on the worshippers, on the crates, on the floor of the cubbyhole.

  At that moment a deep-toned gong rang through the ship.

  Lieutenant Hurse spoke from the bridge through the wall com. ‘Message from the flagship, Captain. Enemy located on target-bound path.’

  ‘I’ll be with you presently,’ Aton returned.

  He made for the ladder, but suddenly Sergeant Quelle, who with the others was in the process of being handcuffed, burst free and lunged supplicatingly towards him.

  ‘You need us, Captain. You need me, especially. Nobody can handle a gunnery comp like I do.’

  Comforter Fegele hurled a handful of wine in his face. ‘You have lent yourself to foul crimes and flaunted God’s commandments …’

  Quelle appealed again to Aton. ‘Let me do my duty, Captain. This is no time to cut down the ship’s fighting power. Let me handle my comp.’ He cringed. ‘I don’t want to sink into the strat … without …’

  Suddenly Aton understood. The Traumatics believed that a certain ceremony could – or at least might – protect a soul if it was plunged naked into the strat, as, for instance, should the Smasher of Enemies be destroyed in the coming fight. That had no doubt been the purpose of the rite Aton had interrupted. It was all nonsense, of course, fanatical superstition; but Quelle, robbed of his imagined precaution, wanted to fight for his life and not sit out the battle helplessly.

  And he was right about one thing. Quelle was an excellent gunner, the best the ship had. Without him the gunnery-room would be fighting below maximum efficiency.

  Aton looked at the sergeant with open contempt. ‘Very well. For the duration of the engagement.’

  He glanced over the faces of the other prisoners and pointed to two others he recognised as also belonging to the gunnery crew. ‘Release Sergeant Quelle and those two. They are to be rearrested once the invaders have been dealt with.’

  Closely followed by Comforter Fegele, Aton turned from the scene and ascended the ladder to the bridge. The Hegemonic ships were already showing on the scope screen, relayed from the flagship’s powerful beta scanners.

  ‘We’re closing, sir,’ the scanman informed him.

  It would not be long now.

  But for the time being a lull fell over the proceedings, a lull during which the flagship was frantically busy assessing the situation, but in which the periphery ships, consisting in the main of destroyers like the Smasher of Enemies, were passive.

  Aton waited for his orders, trying to fight down the feelings of shame that assaulted him. This was no time for emotion, but nevertheless that emotion was there.

  Standing across the desk from him was Comforter Fegele (it was Church policy for the ship’s priest to be present on the bridge during an action, ever ready to give moral support). The priest looked into the brooding face of the young officer. ‘You are troubled,’ he murmured.

  Aton had been gazing at his own reflection in the metal of his desk. His even features, with their clear grey eyes and straight, finely chiselled nose, were distorted by the metal and seemed to stare back at him across tortured aeons.

  ‘How long has this been going on aboard my ship?’ he wondered quietly. ‘Had you an intimation of it?’

  ‘No. The Traumatic sect is notoriously good at keeping its presence secret. It disturbs you, no doubt, to discover such perversions.’


  ‘I do find it hard to understand,’ Aton admitted. ‘Every man on board has sworn the same oath I have sworn. And that oath is to defend not only the empire but also the true faith. How can such men turn heretic?’

  ‘The ways of religious delusion are indeed strange.’

  ‘I confess, Comforter, that I am questioning my own judgment in permitting Sergeant Quelle and his co-conspirators to take part in this action. How can one trust heretics and traitors?’

  ‘The odd thing is,’ said the priest slowly, ‘that their perversion is probably of a spiritual character only. It has been found that heretic chronmen are nevertheless loyal to the Time Service. That part of their oath remains sacred to them.’

  A signal sounded on Aton’s desk. A burry voice spoke from the annunciator.

  ‘The following vessels will break off and engage the enemy. Exorcist, Smasher of Enemies, Emperor’s Fist, Incalculable …’ Aton counted twelve names in all, the same number that made up the enemy’s squadron. This was necessary, probably, if the Hegemonics were to be persuaded to stand and fight rather than to flee home without accomplishing their mission.

  The Smasher of Enemies swung away from formation. The Hegemonics disappeared from the scope screen, then came back after a brief interval, even more blurrily, as the destroyer picked them up on her own less powerful radar.

  The established procedures of attack swung into action. One of the bridge controllers was getting in touch with the rest of the attack squadron. At the same time beta contact beams sped ahead of their flight path, seeking out the enemy and offering negotiation.

  Comforter Fegele retreated to one side and was heard muttering prayers and blessings, dipping his hand into his chalice occasionally and sprinkling a token amount of wine on to the deck.

  As soon as they became aware of their pursuers the Hegemonics put on speed and went into evasion manoeuvres. The wedge-shaped ships, five times taller than they were broad or long, multiplied into a series of fading prismatic images, like a multiple exposure, as they changed direction. The pilot of the Smasher of Enemies, snuggled into the nose of the bridge, also put on a surge of velocity, taking them close to the maximum. Before Aton’s eyes the forward end of the bridge diminished in size; the pilot became a midget, a boy-like figure, then a puppet no more than six inches high.