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

The emperor opened a lacquered box and sniffed at a pinch of the reddish powder it contained. He was thoughtful. ‘We do have agents in the Hegemony. Mostly among those whom our early missionaries converted to the true faith. Needless to say they are already at work on the business of the distorter, but messages are slow to reach us due to the inability to transmit through time.’

He inhaled more snuff. ‘You will attend the meeting of the Military Council tonight. We will discuss this.’

‘With great pleasure, Your Majesty.’

In the event Illus Ton Mayar delayed his departure from the palace for an hour or two. Princess Mayora was an insistent host, and despite his gloomy manner, she continued to inveigle him into conversation with the socialites who flitted in and out of the court chamber. He even spoke with Captain Vrin and heard from him a first-hand account of his part in the recent battle for Gerread – an account, he suspected, already polished with much retelling, even thought the battle-damaged timeships had arrived only a little before dawn.

But his nagging desire to return to his underground vaults eventually overcame the pleasure of social life. He was about to tender his farewells to the princess when a liveried servant approached him.

‘His Highness the Prince Vro would speak with you, Archivist, if it is convenient,’ the servant informed him.

Although couched in the politest terms, coming from a prince the message was an order. Puzzled, Mayar followed the servant and shortly came to Vro’s morbid quarters.

The prince leaped up with alacrity when he entered. ‘Ah,’ he greeted, ‘I tried to contact you at the archives, but they said you were here at the palace.’

Mayar glanced surreptitiously around the place, trying not to seem inquisitive. ‘An audience with His Majesty your father,’ he explained diffidently.

‘More mutations, eh?’ Vro gave him a querying, penetrating look.

‘I’m afraid so.’

He relaxed a little. Prince Vro had always struck him as being the most intelligent of the imperial family. The business with the body of Princess Veaa was known to Mayar, of course… but that was entirely a personal affair.

He tried to keep his eyes away from the wall-wide holocast of the vacant mausoleum. ‘How may I serve Your Highness?’ he asked.

‘Ah, you come straight to the point. A man after my own heart.’

Holding nothing back, Prince Vro told him how he had hired the Rolce Detective Agency to hunt down Princess Veaa’s body. He recounted, as well as he could, the conversation he had held with Rolce an hour before. When he came to speak of the peculiar difficulties and anomalies Rolce had been encountering, Mayar grew more and more agitated.

‘Could time become dislocated in the way Rolce suspects?’ he asked Mayar.

‘From natural mutations – no,’ Mayar told him. ‘The natural movements of the substratum always smooth out cause-and-effect relationships in both directions. But in principle there’s nothing to prevent dislocated phenomena arising through some sort of artificially applied distortion. Excuse me, sir, but may I be permitted to sit?’

Prince Vro nodded sympathetically. Mayar edged himself to the straight-backed chair Perlo Rolce had recently occupied. He felt weak and dizzy.

‘A detective agency – of course!’ he exclaimed, his voice hoarse with sudden understanding. ‘It’s logical. Only a detective would notice details on so small a scale. Even the Achronal Archives cannot keep track of everyday events.’

‘But what does it all mean?’

‘It means what Rolce says it means. That the war with the Hegemony is going badly. It’s that damned distorter of theirs. Cracks are appearing in the order of things – little cracks, at first. Eventually they’ll get bigger.’

‘What an amusing prospect.’

Mayar looked at him sharply.

‘Well, you might as well get used to the idea, Archivist. It’s got to happen. Nothing can stop the war now. You have observed, of course, that my father the emperor is a religious maniac. Aided and abetted by that incredible bigot Reamoir, he is determined to hurl his armada at our descendants in the far future. I am even expected to command one of its squadrons myself!’ Vro’s lips twisted cynically. He moved away to gaze into the mausoleum. ‘No doubt all will shortly come crashing about our ears. But all of this means nothing to me. I care only for saving my beloved Veaa.’

Mayar scarcely heard his last words. He passed a hand wearily across his brow. ‘We are living in a dream,’ he said in an exhausted voice. ‘This world – it is all an illusion. Only the strat is real…’

‘An interesting point of view.’ Prince Vro turned to face him again.

‘In my archives are records of nations, cultures, whole civilisations that have been removed from time,’ Mayar said. ‘Millions of people – mere figments, of whom we have a record only by a technical trick. How can something that vanishes and changes be real? That is why I say only the strat is real – and even then, what is the strat? We do not know. This time-travel: it is merely a way of moving from one part of a dream to another.’

‘Your view of life comes close to my own,’ Prince Vro told him softly. ‘Nothing is real; no matter is of more significance than any other. That is what I tell myself whenever my intellect chides me for my obsession with my beloved Veaa.’

The prince handed Mayar a thick envelope. ‘Since you are able to take Rolce’s suspicions seriously, I want you to do some work for me. This is his report. I’ll send him to you tomorrow to explain it personally.’

‘Work, Your Highness?’ Mayar accepted the envelope gingerly.

Vro nodded. ‘With his investigations and the contents of your files, it should be possible to carry out a – what do you call it – a mapping, should it not? I want you to help Rolce locate the princess. If detective work in orthogonal time is not enough, then perhaps you can turn something up in strat time.’

When Mayar left Prince Vro and made to leave the palace, clutching the private investigator’s report, his mind feverish, he chanced to pass by the audience chamber where he had earlier spoken with the emperor.

The huge frame of Commander Haight emerged from the chamber. Grim-faced, he swept by Mayar without a word.

After him came the emperor, leaning on the arm of an attendant. He stopped when he caught sight of Mayar, who bowed low.

‘Still here, Archivist?’

‘Your Majesty, there is a recommendation I would make.’

The notion had been in his mind for some months, but in the last half-hour it had jelled into a firm desire. Philipium frowned, not liking to be accosted so, but he signalled Mayar to continue.

‘I am becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of the archives, Your Majesty. I have come to the conclusion that the present arrangements are unsatisfactory.’

Now Philipium became displeased. ‘The time-buffers surrounding your vaults were installed at colossal expense,’ he admonished. ‘You approved them at the time. Now you tell me they are no good.’

‘I feel that the situation is changing rapidly, Your Majesty. My new proposal will entail less expense. The buffers are satisfactory up to a point – but if the enemy should succeed in getting behind us, as it were, and attacking the year in which the buffers were erected, then they could be obviated and the archives would be rendered useless for their purpose.’

Philipium’s grey face lost its anger as, with eyes downcast, he considered the point. ‘So?’

‘The only really foolproof way of making the archives safe from orthogonal mutations is to locate them in the strat. This could not be done before, due to the communications problem – it’s necessary to have continuous computer contact with the records of the Imperial Register, so as to detect anomalies, and there was no way to do this. The technical problem has now been solved. We can float at anchor in the strat while connected by cable to the offices of the registrar.’