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

Rilke did not answer the question. ‘You stay in here, Captain,’ he said. ‘This is something I ought to do, nobody else.’ He paused, then opened a fascia panel beneath the control board. Another beamer was in the small compartment.

‘He has a gun too,’ he told Aton. ‘One shooting lead slugs. Maybe he’ll kill me instead. If so, you’d better finish it. Think you can?’

‘If I have to.’

Rilke opened the sheet metal door and stepped out. Hearing the sound, the young Rilke turned. Aton saw a steady-eyed young man in his thirties who was less confused than most would have been by the sudden appearance of the bulky cabinet.

‘Who are you?’ he said sharply after a long time. ‘How did you get here?’

The elder Rilke was close to collapsing with the emotion of the moment. ‘I am your elder self, Dwight,’ he cried in a shaking voice. ‘And I’m here to kill you!’

The other looked startled and then, surprisingly, laughed. ‘You lunatic!’ He leaned over and held down a switch. ‘Security? I have an intruder.’ Then he turned back to the old man. ‘Now why should you want to kill me?’

‘Because in a few years you are going to discover something that will turn the world inside out. Look at me, Dwight, don’t you recognise me?’

Aton was wondering why Rilke was prolonging the scene instead of getting it over with. Then he understood. Rilke could not bear to see his younger self die in ignorance. He had too much respect for himself.

And that self-respect was liable to prove fatal to his intentions. The young Rilke was astute. He glanced from Rilke to the time-machine as if prepared to take the old man’s words seriously. Then he suddenly stood and crossed to one of the cupboards lining the walls of the laboratory and produced from there a hand weapon made of a bluish metal.

Old Rilke, who had kept his beamer out of sight up to now, pointed it and fired. From his shaking hand the beam went wide. The younger man dodged out of the way, turned, pointed, and fired his own gun.

Two loud bangs shattered the air of the laboratory. There was no visible beam but something whanged off some metal support struts. Old Rilke, it seemed, hadn’t been hit. He took his beamer in both hands and held down the beam on continuous – a rarely used ploy since it exhausted the power pack. Before it faded the dull red ray scythed across the younger man, who toppled to the floor.

Aton came to the open door of the time-machine. Rilke let fall his beamer. His face sagged.

‘It’s done!’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s done!’

Aton stared with interest at the living paradox.

And then what life there was in Rilke’s eyes went out. He collapsed to the floor as if every string holding his body together had been cut. With amazing rapidity the flesh began to dry up and shrivel. In little more than a minute nothing remained but a skeleton covered with parchment-like skin.

The paradox was resolved. If the time element was taken out it was a simple suicide.

In moments the security men would be here. Aton gazed around himself once more, marvelling at his continued existence. Then he moved back to the control board.

Experimentally he depressed the automatic retrack stud.

The drive unit started up with a whine and instantly phased the time-machine into the strat.

He sat passively while it carried him back to the starting point, his thoughts subdued. Through the still-open door he could see the naked strat and the conjunction of that with the orthogonal interior of the cramped cabin was one of the oddest things he had ever seen. It occurred to him that there was a way he could control, to a limited extent, his time-travelling ability. He could take a timeship into the strat, open one of its ports, and jump out to go where he pleased – if his subconscious did not take over for him. He could jump out now if he liked. But he decided to see the thing through, and after a while closed the door. From time to time he did some navigational checking to make sure the automatic pilot wasn’t being blown off course by Chronotic vagaries, but everything seemed to be functioning normally.

When the machine phased back into orthogonal time San Hevatar was standing in the laboratory looking pensive. Aton stepped calmly out of the cabinet.

‘Where have you been?’ San Hevatar asked sombrely.

‘Trying to straighten out time,’ Aton said with a cynical twist of his lips, dispensing with the customary deferences. ‘Your assistant Rilke suddenly became one of my disciples and thought he could cancel out everything that happened since you and he worked together. But he was wrong.’

Concisely he related what had taken place. San Hevatar was not in the least embarrassed by the disclosure that it had been Rilke who discovered the basic principle behind the time-drive. He merely remarked that for purposes of religious mythology it was better that he, founder of the Church, should be the man to take the credit and that he, in his humility, should attribute it to a direct revelation from God.

‘I suspected it would turn out like this,’ Aton finished. ‘That’s one tenet of the Church that’s apparently true. Once invented, time-travel stays invented. Rilke’s sacrifice was unavailing because paradoxes don’t alter anything.’

San Hevatar nodded thoughtfully. ‘I always considered that the Historical Office’s protective attitude towards the crucial God-given event is unnecessary. Chronotic history is much too ravelled to be undone so easily. The very fact of time-travel weakens from the outset the unique relationship between cause and effect, even when movement is only from node to node. So now, we have time-travel without its ever being invented. Truly wondrous.’

‘And truly disastrous,’ Aton said. ‘Rilke couldn’t wipe out the empire, but the Hegemony can. And probably mankind with it.’

The prophet was staring at Aton with a terrible burning intensity. ‘ You are he! ’ he gasped abruptly. ‘You are the one! I know you!’ He passed a hand across his eyes and swayed as though suffering from dizziness.

‘What are you talking about?’ Aton demanded harshly.

‘Forget my small deceptions,’ San Hevatar said with a weary smile. ‘Despite those, I am still a prophet of God and occasionally I see through the veil.’ His voice became dreamy. ‘You are our hope, Aton. You are God’s champion, His sword, to fight the enemy of Church and empire.’

A dizziness came over Aton also as he heard the unexpected words. Then, from deep within his mind, he seemed to feel an urgency, a summons. He struggled against the feeling and tried to frame a reply to San Hevatar.

But it was no use. The subconscious part of his nervous system was asserting itself again.

Aton phased into the strat.

He went hurtling futureward – plusward, in chronman’s language. All around him flamed and roared the supernal fire of the strat. As he went, that fire burned into him and he realised that his personal ortho field was down. He was soaking up transcendental energies, was becoming multidimensional in his nature and powers.

Because he was fused with this fire, because he maintained no subjective sense of passing time, the journey to his new destination involved no duration. He was vaguely aware that he was skimming at tremendous speed close under the silvery lead screen of orthogonal time. The events on the screen raced past him in a blur of motion.

Then the screen swayed as he slowed down and approached a certain location on it. He found himself looking into a room in a tall building in Node 6. Two men, one lean and feral, the other pudgy and bland, stood over a naked woman who lay on a cloth-draped table, her back arched. In their hands were gleaming daggers which they were bringing down slowly and deliberately towards her white body. All around stood humming, clicking, droning instruments.