Barrington Bayley - The Pillars of Eternity

What happened next was terrifying, yet so unexpected and bewildering that, paradoxically, it was robbed of its terror. He was seized. He felt something pick him up and move him, like a chess piece. He hurtled up the winding tunnel, which was still lit by the beam of his torch . An astonishing flurry of sights, thoughts, words and sensations dizzied past him.

He stood in the lounge of Obsoc’s yacht. ‘Perhaps we can be most useful to one another when it comes to leaving,’ he said to the anxious collector. ‘There is still the cruiser to be got past.’

‘And the time-gems?’

‘If we find any, we’ll share them round.’

‘Good!’ Obsoc’s eyes gleamed. ‘And if there should be other finds—’

Once again the chess piece was moved from square to square. Boaz was picked up, whisked across the board. Flashing squares of yellow gold. A kaleidoscope of impressions, like a vid recording played a hundred times too fast. The jewel chamber. Purple blocks. Words, feelings. Flashing squares of yellow gold.

He stood in the lounge of Obsoc’s yacht. He spoke to one of the yacht robots. ‘Take off and enter circumpolar orbit, achieving stable velocity over the magnetic north pole. Meanwhile broadcast a surrender message to the government cruiser. With luck they will intercept you rather than shoot you down, and you can gain medical assistance for your master and his friends.’

The robot inclined its head in understanding. Boaz turned to go, and in turning was moved off again, even faster than before. He was in the storage chamber. Romrey had stuffed his pouches full and shook loose a carry-bag, which he also proceeded to fill.

‘This is where they kept their valuables, all right. I don’t recognize a single gem-stone, not a single metal – if they are metals. Come on, get your share.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Go?’

Boaz was mad with elation. ‘I knew it was true,’ he murmured. Already he understood that he had travelled through time, to the past, then to the future, and now back to the present. ‘The answer is here.’

But he felt a terrible fear that whatever power it was that had seized him would carry him out of the range of his ship’s healing beams. That would be the end of him – in the agony he was doing all this to avoid.

‘I’m going back to the ship,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’

‘Well, all right. But let’s get a couple of these chests to the sledge.’

‘I’m going straight back.’ Boaz turned and started back up the tunnel. Twisting and turning, he eventually gained the outside, to find that Romrey was not far behind him.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Romrey said. ‘We were doing fine.’

Boaz ignored him and made his way through the complex’s eye-straining shapes, signing the sledge to follow. There was a fact that up to now he had been too numbed to admit, but that now was bursting upon him.

It was as if the unreality of a dream had imposed itself on real experience, and as in a dream logic had been short-circuited. But now logic was back, bringing with it a single, luminous inference. Meirjain was not uninhabited. He had been projected into his past, then into his future, he presumed (in the hastiness of his thought he found no time to wonder what was implied by his future instructions to the yacht robot). Ergo, beings existed here who had mastered time travel, probably the same ibis-headed beings he had seen in the time-gem.

Unless a machine had accomplished it, acting at random? Possible, he thought, but unlikely.

Romrey joined him as he stepped over the wall and turned his back on the complex. They saw that a third prospector ship had landed on the plain, a little way in front of his own. Like The Sedulous Seeker it was horizontal in line, but much smaller and sleeker.

‘I don’t like this,’ Romrey breathed. ‘That’s the Hat Brothers’ ship.’

And even as he spoke the figures of the two brothers were already emerging, distinctive in their dark garments and wide-brimmed hats. Romrey came abreast of Boaz, who stood still. ‘They must have followed Obsoc here,’ he said. ‘They probably imagine he knows something they don’t about time-gems.’

‘Fools,’ Boaz muttered. ‘The time-gems are all over the planet. How else could we have found them so easily?’

Giving a nervous smile, Romrey took his deck of cards out of a pocket. ‘You are too sceptical, shipkeeper. It was these cards that led us to the gems. They create events, remember? I told you they were effective.’

‘Don’t you know the econosphere regulates against magic charms?’ Boaz replied acidly. ‘Never mind. I will deal with the Hat Brothers. Come along.’

He had meant to move off toward The Sedulous Seeker . But before he could take the first step a sensation like a sudden and crushing blow made him gasp and stagger. It was as if a huge shadow stood over him, as if a great weight, a gigantic foot, were stamping down to crush him like an insect. And yet the blow was not physical at all. It was mental, a blow at his consciousness.

He gave a choking cry. Instantly the ship was coming to his aid. He felt the integrative machinery gearing up, reaching out, casting about for the source of the attack. Briefly he had the peculiar sensation of being frozen in a block of ice. Then a titanic struggle, an unbearable tension, permeated his body. It was total war, interspersed, to his amazement, with fragmentary, whispered comments:

‘ Special measures necessary …. Total opposition …. The impact has radius vectors in the negative dimension ….’

He was hearing the ship talking to itself as it sought to save him! Never before had he experienced that ! On and on the voices went, debating, conferring, deciding – and all, he realized later, in a split second of time. Then a moment of horror as the ship, as if demoralized, consulted him:

‘You may submit, if you wish.’

‘ No! ’ Boaz shouted. He knew in his heart that it would be the end of him if he surrendered to the assault. He felt the ship rally and try again. He staggered once more, forgot where he was for an instant, and then was suddenly still.

It was over, except for a feeling of inner pressure which betokened an extra vigilance from the ship.

Apart from that, what had changed?

Romrey had changed. The prospector stood stock-still, like a statue. His eyes stared. Boaz passed a hand before them. Nothing.

He touched Romrey’s cheek. The flesh was hard and smooth, like stone.

Experimentally he nudged the rocklike body, then pushed it gently. Romrey toppled over, clanked dully to the floor of gold. Not a finger had shifted position.

Whatever had attacked Boaz, and been fought off by his ship, had attacked Romrey too. Boaz allowed his gaze to wander to three newly landed ships parked on the golden, shining landscape. The Hat Brothers stood staring at one another, or seeming to. They were utterly motionless.

He framed a question, staring at The Sedulous Seeker . ‘ The same ,’ his ship answered, with an alacrity that showed it had already checked the yacht on its own initiative. Briefly it brought Boaz a cameo of Obsoc and Mace sitting together, also motionless.

Boaz came to a quick decision. He would take the stiffened bodies of Romrey, Obsoc and Mace aboard his ship and take off immediately, taking his chance on getting past the econosphere cruiser. In his haste he forgot, for the moment, his advance knowledge of his future words to the yacht robot. When he remembered them it was already too late to do anything, for the chess game began again. Once more Boaz was a manipulated piece. Once more he went through a dizzying sequence of impressions, too fast for him to be able to take in, in which colours, images and sounds flashed past.