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

He was back in the strat, transposed there spontaneously by his nervous system somehow and experiencing its impossibilities all over again .

And when, almost immediately, he phased back into Haight’s lounge, the cabin bore its former flat, two-dimensional appearance. But this time he was far from being mentally, incapacitated. He felt strangely young, strong, and omnipotent, as if he could fly while others were earthbound.

Vom . The word had no danger in it now. Its fearful virulence had been expunged from his mind.

‘Wha – Did something happen just then?’ Haight whispered. For a moment he had seemed to see Aton surrounded by an aura of near-invisible flame.

‘Yes. Your word won’t work against me either. I have rid myself of it.’

He paused. He still did not understand what was happening to him, at least not entirely. He only knew that it was surprising, incredible, and yet logical.

‘Commander, you have wondered why the empire requires a time-courier to die. I think I can tell you.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘It is because he becomes like a god.’

‘A god.’ Haight chuckled derisively. ‘Well, you may have broken the psychological conditioning, but let’s see how well you fare against hot energy.’

He had unflapped his waist holster and now he drew his clumsy-looking hand beamer, larger than the toy-like weapon Aton had discarded. With slow deliberation he clicked off the safety and aimed the orifice at Aton’s chest.

Aton had time for a hasty valediction.

‘Commander,’ he gasped, ‘ I also am a loyal servant of the empire .’

Then he seemed actually to see the dense microwave beam, made visible by its accompanying dull red tracer waves, advancing through space towards him.

And Commander Haight gave a hoarse cry. For Aton had vanished completely from his cabin. He had been plunged back into the strat.

As he fell through the unending plenum of potential time Aton wondered why – and how – his nervous system had rescued him. Had it been a survival response, an instinctive reaction against threatened death? Or had his subconscious mind, still obeying the suicide command in some perverse fashion, welcomed and anticipated that death, precipitating him into the strat through over-eagerness?

As to how his body had gained this power, he could only guess. Presumably it was connected with the unique combination of his recent experiences. How it was accomplished, considering the heavy equipment and intense energy that was normally required, he could not say. But one thing was sure. He was no longer as others were. He was a four-dimensional man, able to transpose spontaneously through time.

And no longer was he a despairing mote tossed about by the currents of the strat. This time he was not robbed of the sense of sequential time that was his brain’s birthright; he carried his own weak ortho field with him. Because of this his mind maintained its natural rationality. His perceptions had learned to handle the supernal contents of the strat in a way that did not cause his ego to blow a fuse.

Previously the strat had engulfed him, and half-drowned him. That was why his consciousness had taken refuge in experiencing his life over and over: it had been the only familiar element in his surroundings. He could, if he wished, choose this refuge again, but he did not, because this time his consciousness was not overwhelmed and in his new condition, with his brain no longer scrambled by endless unintelligible monstrosities, the start took on an entirely different appearance.

Fire . That was the nearest he could come to describing it. He was in an ocean of eternal fire, whose flames consisted of the myriad half-creatures whose existence was, as yet, only potential. The flames blasted and trembled, whirled and rolled, swelled and receded.

This, he knew, was not the strat as it was in reality; this was the interpretation his newly adjusted perceptions put upon it. The fire hurtled and withered everywhere; it was a five-dimensional sea that could not be understood any other way.

If he turned in a certain direction he could see what appeared to be a vast leaden wall. Upon it, as upon a huge mural, ran scenes of an amazing variety and richness. It was the surface of the strat. The realm of existential, orthogonal moving time from which Aton came. The real, solid world. And if he wished he could gaze upon this world and see what took place there.

But instead he was hurtling pastwards – pastwards, that is, in orthogonal terms – at a terrific rate, bent upon a mission that was only gradually becoming dear to him.

His trajectory, however, was to be interrupted. Suddenly, looming ahead of him, he saw a form that did not belong here. Like himself, it moved in a bubble of orthogonal time, but it was larger than he was. Much larger.

Briefly he recognised it as it swept past him: a step-tiered office block travelling taller end sternwards, the company name Buick written hugely along its side in graceful silver script. It was an internodal chronliner.

He would have passed it by, but apparently the section of his nervous system that controlled his new-found powers had its own autonomic responses. As the ship’s orthogonal bubble touched him he phased precipitately out of the strat and found himself in a new, unexpected situation.

He was standing, still in his captain’s uniform, in the chronliner’s main lounge.

Nervously Inpriss Sorce sipped her drink, her eyes flicking here and there around the lounge like the wary eyes of a bird.

She spent most of the time in the big lounge. There were always plenty of people there, and bright lights. She was short of sleep because she was reluctant to stay long alone in her cabin, where she feared unwelcome visitors. Instead she had learned to live on nervous energy. At the same time she knew that she would have to learn to break this habit when she reached Revere, where she would spend much time alone – hopefully safe and unobserved.

Captain Mond Aton noticed the frightened girl as soon as he took stock of his surroundings.

Surveying the spacious, well-appointed lounge, glancing at the faces of the passengers, he discovered that along with the ability to travel through time at will went another gift. Insight. Either his awareness or his senses had been heightened; he seemed able to guess instantly what thoughts and feelings lay behind the faces he saw. Human personality was an open book to him.

But even without this clarity of perception the young woman’s condition would have been no secret. He recognised her look as that of a hunted animal. He had seen that particular look only once before in his life, and that had been on the face of a man with whom he had been slightly acquainted. At the time it had been a puzzle to him. Later the fellow had been found murdered in an imaginative, bizarre fashion that bore all the hallmarks of the Traumatic sect.

Cautiously he moved towards the girl and sat down at her table. A waiter approached. Having no money, he waved him away.

‘Where are you bound?’ he asked the girl. ‘I haven’t had a chance to ask you before.’ She would not find the question strange: chronliners called at all nodes en route and they were now, he believed, somewhere between Nodes 4 and 5. The ship probably had two or three stops to make.

Her reaction, however, was far from reassuring. She shrank instinctively away from him. In her eyes Aton seemed to see the thought: Who is he? What does he want? Is he following me?

She’s terrified of strangers, he realised.

Seeing that she was afraid to answer the question he let it pass; covering up her confusion with a stream of chitchat while he looked around the lounge, wondering who it was she was so badly frightened of.