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

She would get a job, would survive somehow. She would make no friends for years to come.

She opened the window and relaxed with the sound of the breeze and with Virov’s quaint, well-melded odours.

Then she heard a nervous, tuneless humming from the other side of the door.

Mmmmmmmmm…

With a fear-stricken cry she flung herself against the door, trying with her body to hold it closed. Her slight frame was far from sufficient to resist the force that pushed it open from the other side.

The feral-faced Stryne moved into the room, followed by Velen.

‘Nice to see you, Inpriss. Let’s carry on where we left off, shall we?’

For an hour they enjoyed themselves with her, going through the ceremonies slowly. The hologram screen pounded out a sensuous, sinister mood, showing Hulmu in a playful aspect and filling the room with weird light. They went through the litanies that reminded Inpriss Sorce of what awaited her soul in the depths of the strat, where Hulmu would use her for his own purposes, and they urged her to forsake and vilify the false god of the Church.

After the Sporting of Shocks, where mild electric currents were applied to various parts of the body at random, they decided to carry out the Ritual of Mounting. First Stryne had intercourse with her and then Velen, while they both chanted the Offering of Orgasm.

Panting and sighing with satisfaction, they paused for a while, looking down at the glazy-eyed woman.

‘That’s enough for here,’ Stryne said. ‘They want to finish the rituals in the local temple.’

‘We have to move her?’

Stryne nodded.

Velen frowned petulantly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? I thought this was going to be our show.’

Stryne shrugged. ‘They have some special equipment they want to use. It will be spicy. Come on, help me get her ready.’

‘Now listen, lady,’ Stryne said when they had dressed her and put her on her feet, ‘we’re going to take a short walk. Act normal and don’t try to scream for help, because we’ll only use a narco-spray on you and get you there anyway.’ He shoved her satchel into her hand. ‘Right, let’s move.’

Velen had finished packing their equipment into his tool-box. They went down the wooden stairs and out on to the street, which was overhung with tall silent houses and wound down a steep incline.

Inpriss walked as if in a dream. The air was heavy. Virov was a city totally unlike Chronopolis. Thick scents cloyed along its antique streets and alleys: the smell of coffee, of spices, of exotic blossoms. In other circumstances she would have liked it here.

Perhaps she could commit suicide, she thought wildly. Killing herself would be one way of saving herself from whatever horrible thing it was the Traumatics would do to her soul at death. Would she have the opportunity? But then she remembered that if she succeeded in dying free from their attentions, her soul would travel back in time and she would live her life again.

Would it end with this same nightmare? A curious thought occurred to her. If the Traumatics gave her soul to Hulmu she would not repeat. Inpriss Sorce would vanish from ordinary time. Did that mean that the Traumatics had never before, in her previous repetitions, threatened her? She tried to imagine what kind of life stretched ahead of her without their intervention.

Or had they always chosen her for a victim? And had she always cheated them by committing suicide? The eternal recurrence of this nightmare was, in itself, a horrible thing to contemplate.

They emerged on to one of the town’s main concourses, close to the bazaar, and walked past open-fronted shops, many of them selling handmade wares. The street was quite crowded. Stryne and Velen stuck close to her, one en each side. Stryne nudged her warningly whenever she faltered.

Suddenly a commotion erupted from a side street. A gang of brawling youths swayed and spilled on to the sidewalk. Inpriss felt herself jostled and pushed roughly aside. A bottle narrowly missed her face and thudded on the head of a ginger-haired young man who was punching someone else in the stomach.

Stryne clutched at her with a snarl, and then, with a feeling of wonderment, Inpriss realised that she had been separated from her captors. Bewildered, unable to make sense out of the noise and confusion, she struggled through a tangle of violent bodies. Something struck her a blow on the face.

Uncertainly she stood for a moment on the edge of the crowd. She caught a glimpse of Velen trying to ward off blows from an acned thug.

Then she ran and, unable to believe her freedom but exulting in it, ran and ran without pause.

The Internodal travel official was a pinch-faced man wearing a short peaked cap. He was circumspect when Inpriss tendered her application and read it slowly while rapping his fingers on the desk.

‘The travel quotas have been cut down, citizeness,’ he told her coldly, ‘due to the hostilities.’ He peered closer at the form. ‘“Reason for journey: migration.” You intend to live in Revere?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I just—’ Inpriss wrung her hands. She hadn’t known it would be like this.

She had got out of Virov in disguise, buying a ticket on a charabanc, and had tried to settle in a smaller town a few hundred miles away. But the Traumatic sect had caught up with her again !

For the third time she had escaped, again by a lucky accident. Her tormentors hadn’t known there was a back way out of the house, through a door hidden by a curtain. A few minutes after their arrival they had left her alone for a moment to carry in a box. She had slipped away.

To escape three times! It seemed miraculous to Inpriss. Perhaps God was helping her, she thought, but she couldn’t depend on miracles. It had become plain that the Traumatics could find her in any part of the world. Only one other recourse was open: to flee into the future and hope that the Traumatics could not, or would not, pursue her down the centuries. She had returned to Chronopolis with the intention of boarding a chronliner.

But it was dangerous and more difficult than she had anticipated. To obtain a permit to leave Node 1 she had to use her real name. And the official was proving obstructive.

‘I have to leave,’ she pleaded desperately. ‘There are some people I have to get away from!’

The official looked at her expectantly.

She fumbled in her satchel. ‘Look, this is all I have, except for the fare. Five hundred notes. I’ll land in Revere with nothing.’

She laid the money on his desk. The official coughed, then began shuffling his papers, tidying up the desk. When he had finished, the money had magically vanished.

‘It’s not really in order… but I think I can stretch a point for a charmer like you.’ He winked at her, his manner suddenly cheery and patronising in a way that filled her with disgust.

He filled out her travel permit and she hurried to the offices of Buick Chronways, one of the three commercial enterprises that had imperial charters for internodal services. There was a chronliner due to leave in a few hours, and she spent the remaining time walking the streets, keeping always to busy places.

It was dark by the time she went to the big terminus. As she passed through the barriers and set off down the long boarding ramp she could see the chronliner towering up out of its well. It had none of the grey-clad grimness of the military vessels of even greater size. Though of the same general design, it was covered with brightwork and along the flank of its upper storey the name Buick stood out in flowing, graceful letters.

With a rush of hope, feeling the press of the crowd around her, she moved towards the humming timeship.