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

One end of the court chamber was kept clear. Emperor Philipium I made towards it with tottering step, followed by the arch-cardinal, Mayar, and Commander Trevurm. A hush fell over the scene as his presence was noted, but then the chatter started up again.

One of his young daughters, Princess Mayora, approached him with a smile, but he brushed her aside and stood before the great panel, featureless and of a dull gold colour, that occupied that entire end of the chamber.

‘ Imperator ,’ he called in a weak husky voice, ‘grant us an audience!’

After a pause the gold panel rumbled up to reveal a square-cut cavity. There was the whine of motors.

The machine they knew as the Imperator slid out on giant castors and stood in the vacant space as though surveying the chamber. A deep hum issued from within its body.

Even though he had seen it several times before, Mayar still could not prevent a sensation of awe as he beheld the huge machine. It towered over them like a miniature castle, with its odd crenellated towers, one at each corner, and its walls plated with matt greyish-black metal. It had a distinctly regal appearance entirely in keeping with its function. For though the Imperator was a machine – admittedly much more advanced and mysterious than a common computer – it was also, in some indefinable way, alive .

More than that, it was in principle the true titular head of the empire. Emperor Philipium I – like any emperor before or after him – held his position by proxy, as it were. The rationale behind this system was quite clear: the Imperator contained the distillation of the minds of all the Chronotic emperors, of whom there had been five before Philipium, as well as of many other members of the imperial dynasty whose wisdom seemed to merit it, this distillation being accomplished by a transfusion from the memory centres of their brains after death.

Not that the Imperator was merely a receptacle of their dead intelligences; it was much more. No one quite knew what went on inside the Imperator , or what it did with these borrowed personalities. They never emerged, that was certain; the Imperator had a nature of its own.

The origin of the machine was equally obscure to the outside world, being a state secret. San Hevatar was reputed, by legend, to have had a hand in its manufacture. Mayar, however – he was not privy to this state secret either – had received a very good indication from a member of the Ixian family itself, that there was no secret, that no one, not even the emperor, knew where the Imperator came from or how long it had been there.

The hum from within the machine grew deeper and the Imperator spoke in a full-bodied baritone that thrilled the hearer with its presence.

‘You have summoned me?’

Philipium nodded, leaning on an attendant. ‘Advise us on the matter we have been discussing.’

There was no need to explain further. Every room in the palace, as well as every department of government, was wired for sound for the Imperator ’s benefit. No one felt embarrassed by this state of affairs, since the machine had never been known to repeat anything it had heard.

The humming faded almost to inaudibility before the Imperator spoke again.

‘What has been will be.’

The machine rolled back on its castors, disappearing into its private chamber. The gold panel slid down into place.

Mayar had expected nothing better from the interview. The Imperator undertook no executive function. While it was consulted occasionally, the cryptic nature of its pronouncements rendered it more in the style of an oracle. More than one emperor had spent days trying to puzzle out the meaning of its statements, only to have to ignore them in the end.

‘ What has been will be ,’ Philipium muttered feverishly. ‘How do you interpret those words, Reamoir?’

‘The Imperator understands the mysteries of time,’ the arch-cardinal replied smoothly. ‘It intimates that the victory of our invincible armada is foreordained.’

The emperor gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘The enterprise against the Hegemony must go ahead… all must be prepared to the utmost.’ He lifted a shaking hand to his attendant. ‘To my quarters. I must rest. Later I will receive Commander Haight.’

He moved off. Commander Trevurm bade Mayar good day and went about his business. The arch-cardinal, disdaining civilities, also drifted off.

Mayar allowed his gaze to wander over the court chamber. He was feeling dismal. He was about to make his way back to the archives when Princess Mayora rushed up to him.

‘Chief Archivist, it is so long since we saw you here.’

Mayar smiled politely. ‘Regretfully my stay must be short, Your Highness. I must return to the vaults.’

‘Oh, nonsense. You can easily spare an hour or so. Come over here.’ She seized him by the arm and led him towards a couch.

Disarmed by the young woman’s charm, Mayar obeyed. Once seated, she turned and faced him directly.

‘So what have you been talking to Father about?’ she said breezily.

Mayar was embarrassed. ‘With all respect, Your Highness—’

‘Oh, yes, I know,’ she interrupted with an impatient wave of her hand. ‘State confidence. Still, I know what it was all about. Daddy’s enterprise against the heathen.’ She leaned closer, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘Will there be great battles in the substratum? Awful mutations in time?’

‘I fear there will, Your Highness,’ Mayar said heavily.

She drew back in an expostulation of surprise. ‘Well, don’t sound so gloomy about it. Look over there – there’s Captain Vrin.’ She pointed out a tall chron officer in full dress uniform – resplendent tunic, plumed hat, and waist-high boots belled at the top – who was talking animatedly, surrounded by spellbound young women. ‘He’s in the Third Fleet. He’s just come back from a battle at Node Five. Isn’t it exciting?’

Mayar turned his head away, feeling that if he tried to speak his voice would choke him.

Noticing his reaction, Princess Mayora pouted in disappointment. ‘Well, if you’re going to be so serious about it you might as well go and talk to my brother Philipium,’ she said. ‘There he is over there.’

Mayar followed her gaze and located Philipium, the eldest of the emperor’s sizeable brood. Aged about forty, he had already begun to resemble his father and sported the same type of beard. He was destined to become Emperor Philipium II, although the date of his coronation was not permitted to be made known to anyone in Node 1, particularly not to the present emperor. Gazing upon him, Mayar allowed his thoughts to dwell for a few moments on the perplexing intricacies of time such a situation presented. Futurewards of Node 1 – in the internodal hinterland – was a Philipium the Younger who was not emperor but who remained until his dying day merely the son of the emperor. Yet eventually Node 1 would travel onwards, past the death of Philipium I, and Philipium II would become emperor. The soul of Philipium the Elder would travel back in time to be reborn; but in that cycle of his eternally recurring life, the cycle succeeding the current one, he would not be emperor but merely the father of Emperor Philipium II.

Likewise Mayar, in the next cycle of his recurrent life, would find himself living in the internodal hinterland that Node 1 had left behind. He would be removed from the centre of the empire and so, he hoped, would find life a good deal more peaceful.

The eternally repeated rebirth of the soul into the same life was one of the few dogmas of the Church that had been scientifically proved. That, together with the nodal structure of time, provided the empire with a form of passing time that, so to speak, transcended ordinary sequential time. At the same time the system of nodes was extremely convenient for the average mind, such as that of Princess Mayora, who sat with him now. She was happily able to ignore the enigmas and paradoxes that time-travel entailed, leaving such troublesome matters to the theoreticians of the Historical Office, of the Church’s Order of Chronotic Casuistry, and of Mayar’s own Achronal Archives.