'I don't know,' Secundo responded, 'but I can't reach the technician responsible for the African transfer machine – she's not responding.'
The flight to Africa dragged interminably, but at last we saw the network of beam power receiver aerials in the distance. They cast long shadows in the evening light. We flew past them to where the cabin stood by the transfer machine. In the cabin, we found the technician – she appeared to be in deep shock, almost catatonic. Tertia stayed with her, focusing her healing skills with urgent intensity, while Secundo examined the machine.
'It's been reset – I'll get a tech from the ship.'
The ship's slider technician confirmed that it had indeed been reset, and was now providing a direct link between New Earth and S2. No activity was visible on the screens at either end. I focused my mind to see New Earth directly, and turned to look around. An embryonic town centre had grown up around the slider hole, which now emerged in the middle of the main square. The buildings were intact, but there was no sign of life, except for a man sitting on the ground a short distance away, his head in his hands. There were what looked like some collections of rags dotted about, then my spine chilled as I realised that they were bodies.
The tech shut down the transfer machine and began to reset it. I called to the ship to lower its own slider machine; it was already powering up as it reached the ground. Secundo and I stepped in, waited for the hole to appear, then stepped forwards into the town square. The smell of death was ripe in the air; the bodies had been lying for over a day in the broiling sun. I scanned the area, senses at maximum alert, and detected a large mass of people some distance away, their minds radiating panic and despair. The characteristic mental signature of saurians was mixed in with them. Apart from that, there was no-one alive but the man in the square. I lowered the P.A.W. and ran over to him. In my agitation I shouted. 'What's happened? Where's Luke?'
He looked up at me, his eyes red from many tears, his mind numbed by shock. I recognised one of the organisers of the transfer, an African who worked closely with Luke. 'They came. The kangasaurs. Out of the hole. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. With weapons. They killed people here. They took Luke away, somewhere. Then they left the town, went out to the countryside. They left me here with a message for you. They said to tell you that Luke is with the Representative. That the Representative wants to talk with you.' He put his head down again and I felt him withdraw into his own mind, a world of sorrow.
I stood up and began to scan more intensely than before, holding Luke's mental pattern in my consciousness. A feeble response came, some distance away, off to one side of the main body of people I had detected before. I turned to Secundo and asked him to stay in the ship's slider cabin, to shut down the hole to avoid any risk of the S2 soldiers gaining access and to monitor what was happening on the viewscreen, ready to open the hole to let me back in. I helped him through the hole again, watched as it flicked out of existence, then turned and began a steady jog towards my brother.
Part way there I received a message from Tertia. 'I have managed to get through to the technician. The Representative used our mental comms system to target her. He started by insinuating nightmares of torture and death into the tech's mind, for night after night. When the tech was awake one day he showed her saurians from S2, who the Representative said were related to her by common ancestry. They were then tortured to death – the nightmares came true. The Representative told her that if she told anyone of this, more of her relatives would die, and that the only way to stop this was to reprogramme the transfer machine. So she did it. She is in a very bad way, and will need lots of treatment and recovery time.'
The Representative. Again. I felt my pace increasing as anger started to replace my other emotions, a burning need to reach the vicious saurian. He was using Luke as bait, to get at me. He had always hated me, and I had provided plenty of reasons for that hatred to increase. Well, that could cut both ways. I raced through the newly tilled fields, drawn like a lodestone to Luke's signal.
I soon realised that I was heading for an outcrop of rocks, a bare hillock of large, jumbled boulders, perhaps a hundred metres high. Luke was in there, near the base. I couldn't detect anyone else but that meant nothing; I was aware that the Representative could cloak his presence almost perfectly. I masked my own presence, slowed and approached more cautiously, beginning to circle the hillock at a safe distance. I knew how fast the saurians were, needed to leave myself enough room to bring the P.A.W. into action if he attacked. A dark hole loomed between two giant boulders. Luke was in there. I sensed his pain and despair, and his fear for me. I recognised the trap but I had no choice; I had to go in. I refrained from linking with Luke, in case that alerted the Representative.
That side of the hillock was in shade, the cave even more so. I walked slowly in, and as my eyes adjusted I made out Luke, sitting on the floor, his head down on his chest. He was praying, I realised. I took a pace towards him and was hit violently, mentally and physically, from the side. I was thrown against the wall, my mind stunned, the P.A.W. sent clattering towards the back of the cave. The Representative loomed over me and lowered his mental shields, his mind pressing down on mine like one of the great boulders. Anger, hatred and triumph glowed from him.
He spoke out loud. 'What a great pleasure to make your acquaintance again. When I discovered that this man was your brother I thought that you might pay us a visit. I am going to kill you now, and then him, but I first wanted to tell you to your face that you have lost. We killed a few settlers as a statement of intent; we are holding several thousand others as hostages. I know you will have switched off the transfer machine by now, but it doesn't matter. Your weak saurian friends will not be able to stand by and see their beloved human pets killed slowly, one by one. Even with many men with guns, appearing out of slider holes, you could not save them – my soldiers are mixed in with them and will start killing the instant they detect a slider hole forming. The Convenor and her spineless Assembly will give us what we asked for; control of the slider machines. Except that this time, we want all of the machines, together with the scientists who understand them; we will tolerate no more interference.' He paused, gloating, and I knew that he hadn't finished. 'The best bit is yet to come. We will colonise this world, then turn our attention to the other human worlds. You know, the previous inhabitants of this world had a good idea; we are developing a human-specific plague which will kill off all of you, on every world. Your pestilential species will die out within a few years. Now, I shall enjoy killing you.'
He was so focused on me that he had forgotten my brother. Luke flung himself desperately on the saurian, who turned with a growl and threw him off. Luke got up again and the saurian kicked viciously. I saw the flash of a blade and Luke gasped and fell to the floor, his mind going blank with shock. The Representative snarled in satisfaction and turned back to me. But the distraction had released his hold on my mind, which frantically seized on one of the serried ranks of parallel worlds in my memory and twisted.
I lay alone in the cave. I extended my mind and sensed some saurians not far away; Tertia among them. I was back on S1.
I lay in shock for a few moments, trying to comprehend what had just happened. I had crossed to a parallel world by myself, without any machine – just by a desperate effort of will. I ran through the memory of what I had just done. So – I just needed to focus on a world, look at it and then twist my mind somehow. I held the technique in my mind, then used my interworld vision to look back at New Earth. The Representative was peering around the cave, his bafflement evident. Luke lay still on the floor. I walked to the back of the cave, waited until the saurian had moved towards the front, then twisted back into the world. The saurian instantly sensed me and turned around, but the P.A.W. was in my hands and up to my eyes and as he lunged forwards the gun fired, the recoil kicking hard and the noise deafening in the confined space, and the shell punched through his chest, sending him staggering backwards. It did not explode. The
Representative shook his head and started to advance again, but he was slowed by the hit so I centred the red dot on his head and fired once more. The heavy projectile smashed open his skull and he collapsed on the ground, limbs jerking, his mind and life extinguished like a doused blaze. I belatedly realised that the shells had a bore-safe nose fuze, which would not arm until a safe distance from the firer.
I walked over to Luke but I did not need to look at him to know that there was nothing any healer could do. The foot-blade of the saurian had ripped open his abdomen and his blood covered the floor. I crouched over him and held his hand. His glazing eyes tried to focus on me so I spoke in his mind. 'It's all right Luke. I will stop them. I guarantee it.'
I caught a faint, grateful response, then his mind slipped away from mine as he died. I sat for a while, my mind blank. Eventually, I got up and walked out of the cave. The hostages and their saurian captives were not far away, so I walked slowly towards them. I did not feel like running any more; I felt very tired. The soldiers saw me coming and three of them came hopping towards me, rifles at the ready. Their minds were bright with blood lust, the desire to kill again. Behind them, I located the distinctive mental signatures of the other saurians. I felt my numbness give way to a burning rage. They were not mind-linkers, had no barriers, no defences. I held their minds in mine, and wrenched violently. The first three spasmed and collapsed like marionettes whose strings had been hacked through. As did the other soldiers, my mind sweeping like a scythe through them. In a few seconds over two hundred saurians lay contorted in death.
I sat on the ground, suddenly exhausted and overcome by grief. For several minutes I could do nothing, think no coherent thoughts. Then I slowly roused myself. I contacted Secundo and asked him to open the slider hole and bring Luke's assistant over to the hostages, now looking around them in bewilderment. They needed someone to organise them, and he needed something to do.
The next morning, back on the airship heading north, Tertia and Secundo were staring at me in amazement. We had just finished burying Luke and the settlers killed in the town (the Representative and the soldiers we piled together and burned), and I had finally been able to describe to my friends what had happened, what I had discovered I could do.
'What are you going to do next?'
'End this threat now.'
'We have already cut off S2 from our comms system, they can't do the same thing again.'
'They'll think of something else. They need a powerful disincentive. Where does the Primary of their Council live?'
They consulted their data and reported that his country was in northern Italy. I asked them to head for the location of his capital.
As we approached, I put a full clip of ammunition in the P.A.W.. My friends looked at me anxiously.
'You do realise that they will have worked out how you rescued the Ambassador, and their castles and palaces will be ringed with detectors?'
I smiled a mirthless smile. 'So who needs slider machines?'
The lift cabin slowly descended through the Primary's palace. It was late evening, and he was hosting a function in a grand hall. The high-arched ceiling was decorated in gold and adorned with dynastic flags. The hall was filled with brightly dressed Rulers, smaller servitors hopping around them. Guards lined the walls, rifles at the ready. The Primary stood at the front of the hall, chatting with a respectful circle. I contacted the pilot, and the airship shifted slightly so that the cabin's location coincided with that of a small balcony at the back of the hall. I twisted through into the hall, suddenly enveloped by the strange sound of saurian music, the low roar of conversation. I rested the P.A.W. on the balcony railing, and took careful aim.
I felt a sudden hesitation; I had never killed anyone in cold blood. I thought of Luke, of the Representative's appalling threat to humanity. Suddenly the Primary became aware of me, looked up at the balcony, his mind forming a warning command to his men. I gritted my teeth and squeezed the trigger. This time, the distance was long enough for the fuze to arm, and the Primary's chest burst open as the shell detonated. His defences dropped in shock and I wrenched the life out him as he collapsed to the floor. I twisted back into S1 a second before the balcony disappeared in a hail of high-explosive shellfire.
A couple of hours later I visited another capital. And then another. My mind was numb, I aimed and fired automatically, tried not to think about what I was doing. I held on to the feeling of grim determination, that this must be done, to end the threat now. Tertia was becoming nervous and concerned, looking at me as if she had never seen me before. 'Are you going to kill all of them?'
'No, that's enough. The next one can live – after I've spoken to him.'
It was night by then and the Ruler was in his private apartment. He goggled at the muzzle of the P.A.W. centred on his forehead and paid due attention as I spoke slowly.
'You will live. But only because I need you to give a message to your Council. You are to stop all research into slider technology immediately and forever. You are to make no attempt to develop the ability to communicate with parallel worlds. If any Ruler disobeys I will come visiting, and kill him and all of his family. His line will cease to exist. Know that I can always reach you, no matter what defences you try to use. I have killed some of you today, including your Primary, to demonstrate this. Is that clear?'
I took a gargling noise as assent, and left him staring at empty space.
We returned home early in the morning. The Convenor had arrived at Laketown before us and was waiting in the dwelling we shared. She was, of course, already fully aware of all that had happened, and looked at me with concern clear in her mind.
'I'm not sure what to say to you Cade. You have averted a terrible danger, at great cost – most of all to yourself, I think. I understand why you took the actions you did, although none of us could have done it. We have been too comfortable, too civilised, for too long. But we would have lost all of that without you.'
'Sometimes the beast has its uses, when faced with other beasts. It's a question of balancing the scales.'
She sadly acknowledged that, then asked, 'What will you do now?'
'Oh, I have a lot to do. There are scores of human worlds, all blindly working their way towards the extinction of their civilisations. I have a mission now, to show them the error of their ways. When I turn up on their doorstep, they are going to pay attention.'
A flash of wry amusement. 'Yes, I expect they will.' She thought for a moment, then said, 'you will need transport. We can make sure than an airship is always available to you, so you can travel safely in this world before entering the others at whatever location you want to.'
'Thank you; that will be most helpful.'
I went for a walk alone, to clear my head and think through my plans. They involved an inherent paradox, of course; my visit to each world would form a point of divergence, causing it to split into "visited" and "not visited" worlds. But I felt that saving one version of each human world was better than losing all of them. And if I kept chasing down the "not visited" worlds to visit them in turn, perhaps the network of braided worlds I created would eventually come back together again, all ending up with the same basic history save for some historical confusion over a few dates.
Slowly, despite all that had happened, I began to feel the first stirrings of optimism. The next few centuries promised to be very interesting.
EPILOGUE
The airship travelled low over a flat, marshy landscape which was glowing in the last rays of a late summer sun. Rivers meandered through reed-beds and the air was alive with water-fowl, rising from the surface in alarm as the great ship cruised overhead.
The pilot warned that we were approaching the target, so I accessed my index of worlds, chose the right one, and looked. The view magically changed from a natural idyll into a great swathe of arable land, the rivers tamed into straight channels. A few narrow, ruler-straight roads paralleled the water-courses. Along one of them, just coming into view, was a stra
ggle of buildings; a farm, some houses and a pub.
The lift cabin deposited me on the road at the edge of the village. In front of me was the ruin of a house – roofless, and with only part of the walls still standing. The interior had been cleared, and an information plaque set in the centre. A part of the grounds at the front had been paved to provide parking for visitors' cars. No doubt the pub was seeing more passing trade than it used to.
I gazed at it for a long time, my mind full of memories. Luke; the childhood we had shared together, the long estrangement and the reconciliation before his death. I hoped that he had found what he believed in, there where my mind could not follow. Then I recalled Sophie's saucy grin, the long walks along the shore, the welcoming warmth of her body. Freya, now living her own life. Zara – I must visit her sometime, to tell her all that had happened to me. And Richards, he deserved to hear the tale as well. But first, I had some tasks to begin.
I selected another world, and the scene shifted. The house sprang tall against the darkening sky, lights glowing in the windows. I saw a shadow moving inside, heard the faint strains of jazz music.
Well, I had to start somewhere, and this world was closer to disaster than any other.
I walked up to the house and knocked on the door.
Also by Anthony G Williams:
The Foresight War
A novel of an alternative World War 2
What if – you went to sleep as usual in 2004: and woke up in 1934?
Scales Page 28