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

Progress had been much quicker than even Vro had hoped. Rolce had started by visiting the street where Archivist Mayar believed the causal hiatus might have occurred. While using a map to help him look out the likely routes where the body might have been taken, he had noticed some activity an untrained person would not have observed. In his own words the place was ‘crawling with snoopers’. Rolce had taken a chance and his men had performed a routine but efficient street kidnapping.

‘Why should so many Traumatics be on the street?’ Vro asked with a frown, sipping a liqueur.

‘That’s easily answered, Your Highness. This man’s part of a pursuit operation. They are harrying some poor devil through the city till he drops.’

He nodded to his assistant to apply the prong again, repeating his question to the prisoner. The Traumatic gave a long gurgling scream and squirmed on the thick pile of the carpet, and Rolce kept watch on the screen, stroking his chin.

He had long found that a field-effect device coupled to long jolts of unbearable agony provided an almost foolproof method of interrogation. The subject might discipline his mind so as to prevent the answers the inquisitor sought from forming there, but pain broke down this discipline. While his attention was preoccupied with pain, images and information flooded into the body’s electrostatic field automatically, quite against his will.

‘He doesn’t know anything about Princess Veaa,’ Rolce declared at length. ‘But he knows the address of their chief temple here in Umbul.’

‘So what do you recommend now?’

‘The princess might be in the temple, or nearby. At any rate someone there should know what has been done with her.’ Rolce cogitated briefly. ‘Our best bet is to act quickly and decisively, before the Traumatics have time to suspect anything amiss; the disappearance of one of their members, for instance, might alert them to trouble. I suggest a raid on the temple, perhaps assisted by the police or by members of the Imperial Guard stationed here. Even if the princess is not on the premises we are very near the end of the trail.’

Vro gestured floorwards. ‘And what of him?’

‘If the majordomo can be depended on to dispose of a corpse…’

‘Have no fear. The standards of service in this hotel know no limits.’

‘In that case…’ Rolce bent low, taking from his pocket a rubbery cylinder which he applied to the prisoner’s head. The struggling Traumatic went limp as the weapon turned his brain to jelly.

‘Now, Your Highness, I propose that we make our move with the least possible delay.’

Inpriss Sorce was privileged to be sacrificed with full ceremony upon the altar of Hulmu, in the Umbul Temple itself.

She stared as if hypnotised at the representation of Hulmu’s Impossible Shape. Here it was not an abstract sculpture but a hologram mobile that writhed and twisted. Stryne noticed her fascination and seized her chin in his hand to forcibly avert her gaze. If one stared at it too long one’s eyes began to move independently of one another and sometimes did not right themselves for up to an hour.

As the accredited pursuers, Stryne and Velen had the right to perform the ceremony with no other Traumatics present. A camera had been set up so that the Minion, founder and leader of the Traumatic sect, could watch from another part of the temple.

‘Do you believe in Hulmu now, honey?’ Stryne asked Inpriss.

‘Yes,’ she said weakly. And she did. Evil as powerful as theirs could not be founded only on imagination. Something real had to exist behind it.

‘He does exist, you know,’ Stryne assured her. ‘The God of the Church, he doesn’t exist. We are all Hulmu’s creatures. He projected us on to the screen of time, so he could watch us. Mmmmmm.’

The two men moved about the room adjusting the various apparatuses it contained. ‘Strip off, Inpriss,’ Stryne said.

Obediently she removed her clothes.

‘Fine. OK, lie down on the altar.’ His voice became caressing.

They began the ceremonies, going through the Compounding of Villainies, the Plot and Counterplot, the Scriptwriter’s Diversion. To indulge themselves, though it was not obligatory, they both performed the Ritual of Mounting for the second time, offering up the orgasms to Hulmu as before. Sex and death always went well together.

The devices around them hummed and clicked, many of them performing symbolic functions secret to the sect. Eventually, at their prompting, Inpriss began to speak the responses herself. This was most important. The victim’s co-operation had to be genuine.

Stryne and Velen knew that Inpriss had reached a stage of resignation quite divorced from reality: a state that was almost euphoria. If they did their job properly this would be followed by a return to cold realism, a new appreciation of the horror of her position. That was what made the euphoria so useful: the subsequent mental agony was that much greater.

Velen flicked a switch. A chill, urgent vibration undulated through the room. It acted on Inpriss Sorce like cold water. Her eyes widened and came into focus. There came a pause in the Traumatics’ chanting.

‘What will happen to me when my soul is in the gulf?’ she asked in a quivering voice.

‘You will be Hulmu’s to terrify and torture as he pleases.’ Stryne’s voice was harsh and brutal.

Suddenly she was shaking all over, her naked limbs knocking uncontrollably against the altar table, and Stryne knew she was ready – in the state of terror required by the ritual. One that would multiply the natural death trauma a hundredfold.

To verify it he consulted one of the monitoring instruments that were arranged around the altar. Her fear index had passed the hundred mark.

Yet he knew that her obedience remained unconditional; her mind had given up believing in any kind of escape.

Finally he switched on an apparatus resembling a miniature radar set. From its concave scanner bowl a mauve effulgence crossed the room and bathed Inpriss Sorce in a pale flickering aura.

This device was probably the most essential of the sect’s secrets. The method of its manufacture had been imparted by the Minion himself, who was said to have received it direct from Hulmu. The gadget ensured that during the death trauma the soul would be detached altogether from the body it had clung to for so long. No longer would Inpriss Sorce return to the beginning of her life and live again. She would sink bewildered into potential time, to be seized by Hulmu and enjoyed by him.

Stryne nodded to Velen. They had already decided to accomplish Inpriss’s exit by means of slowly penetrating knives. They picked up the long shining weapons.

‘Arch your back. Lift your body upwards,’ he ordered.

Inpriss obeyed. Her belly and breasts strained up off the table to meet the downpointing knife points.

Slowly the knives descended.

In the prototype time-machine Aton and Dwight Rilke spoke little to each other until they approached the end of their journey. Rilke was meticulous about the final vectoring in. He knew to the minute where he wanted to go.

The laboratory they emerged into was the same one they had left, but less tidy, better equipped, and obviously a place of work rather than a carefully preserved museum. Its sole occupant sat at a workbench with his back to them, poring over some papers and oblivious of their arrival.

Aton viewed this on the time-machine’s external vidscreen. Rilke picked up his beamer. He was trembling and there was perspiration on his wrinkled face.

‘You’re afraid,’ Aton said quietly.

The other nodded. ‘Not for me. For him .’

‘How do you see your past self? Is he like someone else? Or is he still you ?’