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

When Velen took his hand from her mouth she no longer screamed. They rarely did; the appearance of the infamous Traumatic sect was calculated to inspire helpless terror. Instead she began to pray in a trembling, sobbing voice.

‘It’s no good praying to your God like that,’ Stryne said conversationally. ‘He doesn’t exist, it’s all a con. Before we’ve finished here you’ll be praying to Hulmu, the authentic god who created us by projecting us on to the screen of reality.’ He liked to engage the sacrificial victims in a dialogue, to establish a rapport with them.

Humming meditatively – a nervous habit that came over him at moments like this – he noted her carrying satchel lying on a chair. Caressingly he opened it and inspected the contents. Small personal effects, identification papers, a voucher for a bank account, money, and a few letters.

He placed the satchel on a ledge near the window.

They opened the tool-box and began taking out their equipment.

The girl ceased praying and lay gasping with fright. Stryne waved a meter near her head. Her fear index was high – nearly eighty. That was good.

‘How are you going to do it?’ she asked them. ‘ Please tell me how you’re going to do it! ’

‘Mmmmmm… There are so many ways. The knife, inserted slowly? The Terrible Vibrator? The Exit by Burning?’ He showed her the various instruments one by one.

Her head had raised itself off the tabletop, straining, to look. Now it sank back again. Her face collapsed into despair.

Velen set up a hologram screen and a laser projector. The screen hovered slantwise over the girl like a descending wing. Velen flicked a switch; the screen came to life. The Impossible Shape of Hulmu gyrated and twisted hypnotically against a background of shifting moiré patterns. Stryne and Velen knelt on either side of the girl, watching her face, their backs to the screen.

‘Hearken to Hulmu!’ declared Stryne.

And the first of the ceremonies began.

Inpriss went into a slight trance brought on by the holo projection. In this state the words and responses from Stryne and Velen penetrated deep into her consciousness.

‘You are to be sacrificed to Hulmu,’ Stryne told her. ‘Your soul will not return through time to your body; you will never live again, as others do. You will belong to Hulmu. He will take you with him deep into the strat.’

‘Hulmu will take you with him,’ reiterated Velen in a singsong voice.

‘You must pray to Hulmu,’ Stryne whispered in her ear. ‘You belong to him now.’

While they intoned the rituals Velen switched on more of their apparatus. Devices gave out strange buzzes and clicks that grated on the nerves; alien whines filled the air. Stryne applied a prong to the girl’s body and began delivering pain in intermittent, increasing amounts. Everything was designed so as to enhance the trauma, and Inpriss Sorce was now catalytic with terror.

She came out of the trance with a start and he let her see the Exit by Burning device ready for use in his hands. Her eyes widened and her face sagged. Her mouth opened but her voice was too paralysed to scream.

There came a knock on the outer door.

Stryne and Velen looked at each other. ‘We’d better see what it is,’ Stryne said.

They left the room, closing the door behind them, and paused. Stryne opened the door to the corridor.

The caser was there. ‘You timed it nicely,’ Stryne said to him.

They stood there, not speaking. Stryne bent his ear to the inner door. There was a scuffling from inside. Then he heard the window open.

A minute later they entered the room. Inpriss Sorce was gone. She had slipped the special knots Stryne had tied and escaped by the fire escape. With satisfaction he saw that she had shown the presence of mind to snatch up her satchel so that she would not be without resources.

‘We made a good start,’ he breathed.

The pursuit was in progress.

For some weeks Captain Aton had been forced to wear military prison garb. Now, on the day that his court-martial was due, the guards brought him his full duty uniform. He dressed slowly and carefully, but had no mirror in which to check his appearance.

The walls of his cell were made of grey metal, which reminded him of the starkly functional interior of the destroyer class of timeship in which he had served prior to his arrest. He missed the deep vibration of the time-drive, and even more so the sense of discipline and purpose that went with active service. Instead, his solitude was broken only by the shouts and clangings that made up the daily life of the prison. It depressed him to know that he was in company with deserters and various other malefactors. Occupying cells in his block were some religious offenders – members of the Traumatic sect – and Aton would hear their calls to Hulmu echoing through the night.

The Traumatic sect. That struck a chord in Aton’s mind. A puzzled frown crossed his face as he tried to recollect why, but the answer eluded him.

He heard footsteps. The door of the cell grated open to reveal two burly guards and his defence counsel, a nervous young lieutenant.

Aton was already on his feet. At a signal from one of the guards he stepped into the passage.

‘The court is convened, Captain,’ the lieutenant said with a diffident cough. ‘Shall we?’

They walked towards the court block ahead of the guards. Despite his predicament, Aton found time to feel some sympathy for his counsel, who was embarrassed at being in the company of a doomed man.

‘We might have a chance,’ the lieutenant said. ‘The field-effect reading is in our favour. I shall argue incapacity.’

Aton nodded, but he knew that the hearing would go the same way that the earlier investigation had.

Gates swung and clanged as they were let out of the penitentiary area of the prison. An elevator took them further up the building and without further preamble they were admitted into the courtroom.

Aton was to be judged by a tribunal of three retired commanders. One glance at their seamed faces told him that they felt about the matter much as he would in their place: that there was no excuse for cowardice.

The prosecutor, an older and more practised man than Aton’s counsel, turned suavely to regard the accused before reading out the charge.

‘Captain Mond Aton, serving in His Chronotic Majesty’s Third Time Fleet under Commander Veel Ark Haight, it is laid against you that on the eleventh day of cycle four-eight-five, fleet-time, you were guilty of cowardice and gross dereliction of duty in that, the vessel under your command being crippled by enemy action, you abandoned your ship the Smasher of Enemies ahead of your men; and further that you fought with the men under your command so as to board a life raft, thus saving yourself at their expense. How do you plead?’

The young lieutenant stepped forward. ‘Sirs, I wish to tender that Captain Aton is unfit to plead, being the victim of amnesia.’

‘I plead not guilty,’ Aton contradicted firmly. ‘I do not believe I am capable of the acts described.’

A faint sneer came to the prosecutor’s lips. ‘He does not believe he is capable!’

With a despairing shrug the counsel for the defence stepped back to his place.

Inexorably the prosecution proceeded to call witnesses. And so Aton was forced to experience what he had already experienced at the preliminary hearings. First to be called was Sergeant Quelle, his chief gunnery noncom. With blank bemusement he heard him recount how he, Aton, a beamer in each hand, had killed all who stood in his way in his haste to leave the foundering Smasher of Enemies . Occasionally Quelle glanced his way with what seemed to him a spiteful, fearful look. At those moments a double image flashed into Aton’s mind: he seemed to see Quelle’s face distended and made bulbous as if seen through a magnifying glass or through the visor of a strat suit. But the picture faded as soon as it was born, and he put it down to imagination.