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

‘Ye-e-e-s.’ The woman’s lips twisted lasciviously. ‘An imperial princess! The Minion thought her soul might be retrievable. That it was suspended in the strat.’

‘And was it?’

‘No! She was good and dead. Properly dead. Her soul had gone back to the beginning, like everyone else’s.’ Her face registered disgust.

‘So what did you do… with the body?’

‘Kept it. For a trophy.’

‘Is it here in the temple?’

‘No.’

‘Then where?’

‘Don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘In the city somewhere.’

Rolce ascertained that she was telling the truth. And as more interrogatees were put under the device, Vro grew more and more fretful. Many of them knew of Princess Veaa. But no one seemed to know where she had been taken.

‘Don’t despair, Your Highness,’ Rolce comforted him. ‘She’s been here, that’s certain. It’s a routine matter to trace her from here on.’

Aton decided to explore the temple and left them to it. It was fairly quiet now, but the Imperial Guard would have their work cut out to winkle out everyone in a building so large. There were probably a hundred hiding places. Aton made his way upstairs towards the area where he had found Inpriss. Perhaps, he thought vaguely, he could find what Prince Vro was looking for.

He opened all doors he came to as he went. He saw altar rooms, storerooms filled with enigmatic equipment, rooms for mysterious purposes. In some of the rooms people huddled in corners and stared at him fearfully. He did not envy them; the Church was not kind to heretics.

Venturing down a deserted corridor he heard a strange mewing sound from behind a door. Aton hesitated, then opened the door slowly and slid inside.

Standing with its back to him was a fat, shabby, slope-shouldered figure holding in pudgy hands a mirror-like object whose surface crawled and shimmered with unrecognisable shapes. The mewing seemed to be an expression of pleasure or amusement as the man gazed into the roiling surface.

At Aton’s entrance he put down the mirror and turned to face him. Aton confronted a being straight out of a nightmare, a nightmare he had endured only recently.

The man with jewels for eyes!

The crystal-filled sockets flashed and glittered in a multitude of colours. The face was pudgy and covered with a film of sweat. The slobbery mouth was agape with mirth.

‘Come in, Captain Aton, and close the door!’ welcomed the creature, its voice giggly and cheerful. ‘I have been waiting for you!’

Aton felt an urge to retreat, to get away. ‘Who – what – are you?’

‘I? Do you not know? I am Hulmu’s Minion, chief of all his worshippers!’

‘But you are not human.’

‘Not human? Indeed I am! A little extended, perhaps, but that is because I am Hulmu’s pet, his little favourite. Like you, I am familiar with the strat. I have been all the way down to Hulmu, to let him sport with me. From time to time he gives me little presents and gadgets. He gave me these eyes, all the better to see in the strat with.’

‘Hulmu is real?’ Aton became aware of a peculiar offensive odour the Minion gave off.

‘Oh, indeed! Do not doubt it. He gave me the time-distorter, all the better to wreak havoc with.’

‘The distorter? It comes from you ?’

‘Correct. Surprised?’ The Minion lolled his head disclaimingly. ‘I don’t use it much myself,’ he drawled. ‘I have an arrangement with the Hegemonics – purely out of the goodness of my heart, of course. When they want to raid the empire, I lend it to them. Afterwards I take it back for safekeeping. They tried to keep it for themselves once. They still don’t know how I got it back!’ He chortled.

‘There is only one?’

‘Only one. It’s enough.’

‘Why don’t they try to make another?’

‘Can’t. They might have tried to analyse it, I dare say. No human being will ever make a gadget like my time-distorter. Only Hulmu is clever enough for that.’

‘But why? Why should you want to destroy the empire?’

‘Why not? It’s all part of Hulmu’s plot and counterplot. He is the scriptwriter, is he not? He projects us, does he not?’ The Minion’s giggles became hysterical. ‘How does it feel to have an audience?’

Aton felt dirtied by this creature’s presence. Surely, he thought, the Traumatics’ creed cannot be literally true. When he compared this giggling monster with the sedateness and calm reason of the Church…

The Minion seemed to read his mind. ‘Oh, the cult of Hulmu is very old. A little bit older than the Church, even. I should know, I started it! Before I became Hulmu’s Minion I was Absol Humbart! But those other fools, San Hevatar and Dwight Rilke, rejected Hulmu, the genuine creator. They founded their silly church.’

Grinning, the Minion came towards him with tiny mincing steps. Aton determined to destroy the loathsome creature if he could. He ejected energy from his body, sending rays and waves against the shambling figure. The Minion laughed. His own body began to pulse, shedding sparkling rainbows all around. He seemed to regard it as a game. Their contest filled the room with fantastic forms of light, but neither was hurt in any way.

‘I was wiser. I gave myself to Hulmu. He gives me my little toys, and I help him to get what he needs – souls in death trauma!’

They both left off wasting energy in firework displays. Suddenly the sound of booted feet came from further along the corridor. The Imperial Guard were on their way.

‘Come, friend Aton,’ the Minion hissed. ‘Come to Hulmu!’

With surprising agility he bounded forward and seized Aton in his arms. Fetid breath wafted across Aton’s face, but before he could react, the Minion had phased into the strat, taking Aton with him .

The Minion was amazingly strong. Aton could not break loose from his embrace. Down they sank, spiralling and plummeting, down, down, down. The four-dimensional screen of orthogonal time was left behind. Left behind, too, were the upper reaches of the strat where what was potential already bore some resemblance to what was actual. They went down, down, into the deeps where potentiality had less and less prospect of becoming actuality – that is, of materialising on to the orthogonal world – and had less and less in common with its forms. The pressure was frightful. They sank into gloomy six-dimensional regions where nameless things lurked and waited in the murk. Aton felt brooding hatred as they passed by; the potential quasi-beings sensed that he and the Minion came from the upper world and experienced a writhing envy.

The descent was timeless and Aton seemed temporarily to lose the will to free himself. Then he began to feel the presence of a vast overpowering intelligence.

Hulmu!

Hulmu was something impossible. A six-dimensional, nonexistent shape that lashed and danced in all directions in frantic convolutions. He was lord of this region; all bowed to him.

A voice he could almost smell spoke in Aton’s mind.

‘Know me and surrender your being.’

In that instant it came home to Aton with a certainty and conviction he could not analyse who the enemy was that had been spoken of by the Imperator and San Hevatar.

The enemy of the empire was not the Hegemony. It was not even the Traumatic sect, or the Minion.

It was Hulmu .

He could not define the ultimate evil that was Hulmu. He only saw, as if in a vision, that the struggle was relentless and would continue until victory was gained by one side or the other.

With newly regained strength Aton lashed out. The Minion sought to restrain him, but he broke free and soared upwards like a bubble, out of the reach of Hulmu’s lashing tentacles. Other powers snatched at him but he knew he was safe.