Briefly it had occurred to her to go to the police with her story, but she had heard of people who had done that … only to be sacrificed by Traumatics inside the police force once they were taken into protective custody. The vision of some stone cell from which she could not escape filled her with claustrophobic panic.
No. The only answer was flight. To hide, to become too small to be noticed.
Only it was so difficult! This was already her third hiding place since quitting the eternal city, and the third time she had changed her name. The first move had been to a town barely fifty miles from Chronopolis, and for a few hours her eagerness to be safe had fooled her into thinking that she was safe. Then, coming home to her new apartment, she had spotted the two men who had tortured her, walking down the street and glancing up at the houses one by one.
And so she had had to leave, after only one day. But that had not been the end of it. She had left Amerik and gone to Affra, but they had followed. By good chance she had caught glimpses of them several times and so had been warned – in the jetliner passenger lounge and hanging around the transit and accommodation centres. And so finally, not caring about the expense, she had taken several jetliner trips in quick succession, zigzagging about the globe to shake off pursuit before retreating here to an old, out-of-the-way city in the middle of Worldmass.
Besides the two men she knew – Stryne and Velen, they had called each other – how many others she would not recognise had kept watch for her and hunted her down using all the methods that could be used to find a person? By now she had become afraid of everyone and everything.
She wondered if it was possible to live with terror indefinitely.
Idly her thoughts turned to the Church. Could a comforter help her? But churches would be dangerous places to approach. The sect could be watching. As it was, for the first time she felt some relief. Virov was well off the main routes and this tiny room, in a back street away from the main thoroughfares, had a closed-in, cupboard-like feeling. The narrow window admitted no direct sunlight at any time of the day and that, too, gave her a perverse feeling of safety, as if it was a room the world could not see.
She would get a job, would survive somehow. She would make no friends for years to come.
She opened the window and relaxed with the sound of the breeze and with Virov’s quaint, well-melded odours.
Then she heard a nervous, tuneless humming from the other side of the door.
Mmmmmmmmm …
With a fear-stricken cry she flung herself against the door, trying with her body to hold it closed. Her slight frame was far from sufficient to resist the force that pushed it open from the other side.
The feral-faced Stryne moved into the room, followed by Velen.
‘Nice to see you, Inpriss. Let’s carry on where we left off, shall we?’
For an hour they enjoyed themselves with her, going through the ceremonies slowly. The hologram screen pounded out a sensuous, sinister mood, showing Hulmu in a playful aspect and filling the room with weird light. They went through the litanies that reminded Inpriss Sorce of what awaited her soul in the depths of the strat, where Hulmu would use her for his own purposes, and they urged her to forsake and vilify the false god of the Church.
After the Sporting of Shocks, where mild electric currents were applied to various parts of the body at random, they decided to carry out the Ritual of Mounting. First Stryne had intercourse with her and then Velen, while they both chanted the Offering of Orgasm.
Panting and sighing with satisfaction, they paused for a while, looking down at the glazy-eyed woman.
‘That’s enough for here,’ Stryne said. ‘They want to finish the rituals in the local temple.’
‘We have to move her?’
Stryne nodded.
Velen frowned petulantly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? I thought this was going to be our show.’
Stryne shrugged. ‘They have some special equipment they want to use. It will be spicy. Come on, help me get her ready.’
‘Now listen, lady,’ Stryne said when they had dressed her and put her on her feet, ‘we’re going to take a short walk. Act normal and don’t try to scream for help, because we’ll only use a narco-spray on you and get you there anyway.’ He shoved her satchel into her hand. ‘Right, let’s move.’
Velen had finished packing their equipment into his tool-box. They went down the wooden stairs and out on to the street, which was overhung with tall silent houses and wound down a steep incline.
Inpriss walked as if in a dream. The air was heavy. Virov was a city totally unlike Chronopolis. Thick scents cloyed along its antique streets and alleys: the smell of coffee, of spices, of exotic blossoms. In other circumstances she would have liked it here.
Perhaps she could commit suicide, she thought wildly. Killing herself would be one way of saving herself from whatever horrible thing it was the Traumatics would do to her soul at death. Would she have the opportunity? But then she remembered that if she succeeded in dying free from their attentions, her soul would travel back in time and she would live her life again.
Would it end with this same nightmare? A curious thought occurred to her. If the Traumatics gave her soul to Hulmu she would not repeat. Inpriss Sorce would vanish from ordinary time. Did that mean that the Traumatics had never before, in her previous repetitions, threatened her? She tried to imagine what kind of life stretched ahead of her without their intervention.
Or had they always chosen her for a victim? And had she always cheated them by committing suicide? The eternal recurrence of this nightmare was, in itself, a horrible thing to contemplate.
They emerged on to one of the town’s main concourses, close to the bazaar, and walked past open-fronted shops, many of them selling handmade wares. The street was quite crowded. Stryne and Velen stuck close to her, one en each side. Stryne nudged her warningly whenever she faltered.
Suddenly a commotion erupted from a side street. A gang of brawling youths swayed and spilled on to the sidewalk. Inpriss felt herself jostled and pushed roughly aside. A bottle narrowly missed her face and thudded on the head of a ginger-haired young man who was punching someone else in the stomach.
Stryne clutched at her with a snarl, and then, with a feeling of wonderment, Inpriss realised that she had been separated from her captors. Bewildered, unable to make sense out of the noise and confusion, she struggled through a tangle of violent bodies. Something struck her a blow on the face.
Uncertainly she stood for a moment on the edge of the crowd. She caught a glimpse of Velen trying to ward off blows from an acned thug.
Then she ran and, unable to believe her freedom but exulting in it, ran and ran without pause.
The Internodal travel official was a pinch-faced man wearing a short peaked cap. He was circumspect when Inpriss tendered her application and read it slowly while rapping his fingers on the desk.
‘The travel quotas have been cut down, citizeness,’ he told her coldly, ‘due to the hostilities.’ He peered closer at the form. ‘“Reason for journey: migration.” You intend to live in Revere?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I just –’ Inpriss wrung her hands. She hadn’t known it would be like this.
She had got out of Virov in disguise, buying a ticket on a charabanc, and had tried to settle in a smaller town a few hundred miles away. But the Traumatic sect had caught up with her again!
For the third time she had escaped, again by a lucky accident. Her tormentors hadn’t known there was a back way out of the house, through a door hidden by a curtain. A few minutes after their arrival they had left her alone for a moment to carry in a box. She had slipped away.
To escape three times! It seemed miraculous to Inpriss. Perhaps God was helping her, she thought, but she couldn’t depend on miracles. It had become plain that the Traumatics could find her in any part of the world. Only one other recourse was open: to flee into the future and hope that the Traumatics could not, or
would not, pursue her down the centuries. She had returned to Chronopolis with the intention of boarding a chronliner.
But it was dangerous and more difficult than she had anticipated. To obtain a permit to leave Node 1 she had to use her real name. And the official was proving obstructive.
‘I have to leave,’ she pleaded desperately. ‘There are some people I have to get away from!’
The official looked at her expectantly.
She fumbled in her satchel. ‘Look, this is all I have, except for the fare. Five hundred notes. I’ll land in Revere with nothing.’
She laid the money on his desk. The official coughed, then began shuffling his papers, tidying up the desk. When he had finished, the money had magically vanished.
‘It’s not really in order … but I think I can stretch a point for a charmer like you.’ He winked at her, his manner suddenly cheery and patronising in a way that filled her with disgust.
He filled out her travel permit and she hurried to the offices of Buick Chronways, one of the three commercial enterprises that had imperial charters for internodal services. There was a chronliner due to leave in a few hours, and she spent the remaining time walking the streets, keeping always to busy places.
It was dark by the time she went to the big terminus. As she passed through the barriers and set off down the long boarding ramp she could see the chronliner towering up out of its well. It had none of the grey-clad grimness of the military vessels of even greater size. Though of the same general design, it was covered with brightwork and along the flank of its upper storey the name Buick stood out in flowing, graceful letters.
With a rush of hope, feeling the press of the crowd around her, she moved towards the humming timeship.
SIX
The crew of the receiving chamber took Aton out of it quickly, silently, and efficiently.
They entered wearing strat suits, because the chamber was always partially energised in readiness for any couriers that might be en route. Once through the hatch Aton was relieved of his equipment: the tray like rudder control, the oxygen mask, and the earphones. The dispatch case they left strapped to him. No one could handle that but the commander whose duty it was to accept all messages from a courier personally.
Aton, meantime, stood staring blankly with arms akimbo, not speaking, not moving.
Two ensigns came up to either side of him and took a light grip of his upper arms. A door slid open. They urged him forward. They were used to this detail. For a while newly arrived couriers were quite helpless, were scarcely able to keep their balance, bumped into walls, could not find their way through doors.
Dimly Aton sensed all around him the regular activity of the gigantic flagship, which was much bigger than the destroyers he was familiar with.
Steadily they mounted through the pile of decks and storeys, riding on elevators and moving corridors. The chronmen they passed flicked one glance at Aton, then looked away. Everyone was embarrassed to stare at a man who had just died, and was about to die again.
Aton’s consciousness seemed to have retreated a long way from his perceptions, as though in using his senses he was looking the wrong way through a telescope. At the same time everything had a curiously flat, two-dimensional appearance to him. In the strat his mind had begun to accustom itself to four-dimensional, even five-dimensional figures. By comparison the three-dimensional world was weirdly listless, a series of simplified cartoons drawn on paper. No depth. Sounds, too, were flat and empty, without resonance.
He was feeling an urge to leave this paper world. To complete the process that had begun with his being discharged from the dispatch chamber.
To die.
They came to the officers’ quarters in the upper reaches of the timeship. Aton recognised hints of comfort that would have been out of place aboard his own Smasher of Enemies or even aboard most battleships. Then they went through some double doors into an area displaying real, though modest, luxury, such as would not be found anywhere in the Time Service except in one of the great flagships.
It was Commander Haight’s private suite. They halted before a walnut door carved with simple designs. The ensigns knocked, entered, saluted, and departed. Aton faced his former commanding officer.
Haight, sitting at a mahogany table, looked at him gloomily, broodingly. From a replayer in a corner came quiet, moody music, viols and trombones convoluting a web of melancholy calm.
Standing near Haight was a man Aton knew as Colonel Anamander. Like Haight he had the granite impassivity common to many senior officers in the Time Service, but his features were more amenable, slightly less uncompromising.
Haight lifted a hand in a half-hearted gesture. ‘Later, Colonel.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Anamander skirted around Aton and exited.
The commander rose and approached Aton, who stared straight ahead, the muscles of his face slack. As if he were an inanimate object Haight unstrapped the dispatch case from his chest and carried it to the table.
Before opening it he glanced up at Aton again and suddenly his eyes narrowed in recognition.
‘Captain Aton, is it not?’
After a long pause Aton forced his larynx into action. ‘Sir,’ he croaked feebly.
‘Captain Aton,’ Haight repeated sourly to himself. ‘An extraordinary case. One that surprised and distressed me a good deal. I have wondered if you would end up here.’
Aton found his voice. ‘Am I to terminate my life now, sir?’ He waited expectantly for Haight to pronounce the releasing words.
‘Wait until I am ready,’ snapped the commander. He eyed Aton calculatingly, then sat down and broke the seals on the dispatch case.
For what seemed like a long time he studied the papers he found within, and outwardly became oblivious of Aton’s presence. The viols and trombones pursued each other unendingly through winding, cloying themes, and listening to the music, Aton found himself drifting back to a seemingly stratlike state. There was no before or after. The intricate melody hung on the air like a perfume and Aton stood stock-still in an eternal moment, unable to locate the transition between one note and another.
Commander Haight jutted out his lower lip as he finished studying the papers. He laid them aside, frowning. Then he leaned back in his chair. His grey eyes settled on Aton’s face, concentrating there with an almost obsessive interest.
‘The dispatches originate from the emperor himself,’ he announced gruffly. ‘The raid into Hegemonic territory is to take place. And the Lamp of Faith, no less, is to conduct the mission. That, surely, is a measure of its importance.’
Aton said nothing and Haight continued, his eyes never leaving the other’s face. ‘Do you realise how successful the Hegemonics’ attacks have been over the past week or two? Cities and regions eliminated or mutated. At Node Five the entire continent of Australos was altered. It is now peopled by tribes of Stone Age aborigines. Even worse, there are numerous cases of causal discontinuity. You know what that can do to the fabric of time. The work of the Historical Office is being set at naught. And all due to the Hegemonics’ new weapon, the time-distorter. Once our scientists had called such a device impossible. Now –’ He spread his hands.
His gaze became heavy, penetrating. ‘Speak, Captain Aton,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Tell me what it is like in the strat.’
Aton blinked and stuttered. ‘It is – it is –’
He fell silent.
Haight nodded. ‘I know that it is beyond description. And yet something could be described. Words are never entirely useless. Try to collect your thoughts. To remember. Take possession of yourself once again. Speak, Captain.’
Aton struggled, then said, ‘Sir, should I terminate my existence now?’
‘Ah, you wish to obey your orders and escape this realm. And it is my beholden duty to see that you do. Yet I could not tell you how many times I have been tempted to forget my duty at these moments. There is a comforter at the Imperial Palace – Brother Mundan is his name – whose father
fell into the strat some years ago, following a collision between timeships. Mundan cannot forget the strat since then. He dreams of it, has nightmares about it, tries to imagine what the Gulf of Lost Souls is like. After a lifetime in the service I am filled with a similar curiosity.’
The drift of Haight’s speech came through only faintly to Aton.
‘Most of the couriers who stand before me are, of course, low types,’ the commander continued. ‘Mentally degenerate, hopeless cases. But you, I tell myself, are of different mettle. Despite your astonishing dereliction, you are presumably a disciplined officer. Given time, you might recover your senses. You might be able to answer my questions.’
He lumbered to his feet, walked around the polished table, and stood close to Aton, peering straight into his eyes. ‘On this occasion I think I will commit a dereliction of my own. At such a time – for in my opinion the raid has little chance of succeeding, it is suicide – a small peccancy will go unnoticed. No, Captain Aton, you are not to die now. You are to live, to recover, and perhaps to tell me what you have experienced.’ He turned and pressed a button.
‘This is Captain Aton,’ he said to the two batmen who entered at his summons. ‘See that he is made comfortable in the guest bedroom. But do not allow him to leave this suite.’
Blood was pounding in Aton’s veins as he was led away. This turn of events went entirely against his indoctrination. He felt his nerves falling apart as the death wish, thwarted of its expectation, began to burn up his brain.
Planning the raid occupied Commander Haight and his staff for a whole day.
The information contained in Aton’s dispatch was less precise than might have been hoped for. The base from which the Hegemonics carried out their attacks when using the distorter was named, but there was very little guidance as to where on the base it was kept or on what would be found there.
To raid an operational military base was a requirement of no mean order, which was the reason why the Lamp of Faith had been selected even at the risk of losing the flagship. It had the speed, the firepower, and could carry a sufficient number of fighting men to hold the base for a short while.
Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis Page 57