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

Where was the Imperator taking them?

So it had happened. The one thing uniquely feared by achronal archivists had finally come to pass.

Phased permanently into the strat, the Achronal Archives were the one department of Chronopolis’s administration to survive. The archivists now saw the fullest justification of their cult of isolationism. The emotionally shattered men and women prowled around the vaults, touching one another for comfort, caressing the humming casings that contained the computer store of all that had taken place in the vanished Chronotic Empire.

All around them lay nothing but the strat. There was no orthogonal time . The time-storm, of unprecedented proportions, had eliminated it, and potentiality reigned supreme. There was no actuality, except for this one little isolated bubble.

The in-turned atmosphere of the sepulchral establishment, always noticeable, now intensified by the minute. Chief Archivist Illus Ton Mayar knew that in short order it would develop into group insanity. But he did not think that any of them would live to see that happen. Very soon the archives would melt into the strat like sugar in water. Their existential support – the whole material background from which they had sprung – had been taken away. They persisted now only by virtue of strat time, which did not match one-for-one with orthogonal time.

Mayar was sitting alone in his private room when there was a hammering on the door and an excited shout from one of the senior archivists.

‘There’s something approaching through the strat.’

Mayar hurried to investigate. He arrived at the loading bay just in time to see the imposing bulk of the Imperator materialise there.

All present fell to their knees. A door in the side of the Imperator clicked open and a man and a woman, the man dressed as a captain of the Time Service, stepped out.

Mayar watched the apparition with astonishment. ‘God be praised!’ he managed to say. But he still did not dare to hope.

The man and the woman stepped towards him, but before he could speak again the Imperator had once more vanished.

And in the Invincible Armada, swaying its way through the disturbed and roiling strat, there also dawned the realisation of the empire’s destruction.

Prince Philipium, Grand Admiral of the Armada, enthroned in the majestic bridge in the titanic flagship God’s Imposer , froze as though paralysed. His face was almost green with shock.

There could be no mistake. From all parts of the huge armada the message was the same. The instruments revealed that the concept of order and religion which everyone on board was sworn to serve was irrevocably gone.

To the commanders surrounding Prince Philipium the news brought varied emotions. Sick anger, sinking fear, stony grimness, defiant hatred.

‘We are ghosts!’ uttered Prince Philipium in a voice hollow with grief. ‘What can we do? The empire is vanquished!’

‘Ghosts we may be, but we shall still live for a while,’ growled Commander Haight. He tried to calculate how long it would be before the armada faded away and lost all vestige of materiality, now that it had no existential support. It could be hours or days.

‘One thing is still left to us,’ he urged. ‘Revenge! Let us ensure that of the Hegemony, too, nothing remains!’

Exultant shouts greeted his words. Prince Philipium, his eyes staring but devoid of life, gave the orders.

The ghost armada moved forward only to find that its quest was needless. The Hegemony had gone down along with the empire. The ships that it had put into the strat, however, persisted like those of the armada itself. The two forces locked on to each other and began to battle. There was no question of phasing into ortho to fire their weapons – there was no orthogonal time any longer – and the strat torpedoes were too ineffective to satisfy their blood lust. Instead the ships sought to destroy each other by collision. The conflict raged on, fed by despair and hatred.

Aton found he could strike little cheer from the Chief Archivist and his assistants. They seemed unable to recognise that the existence they knew had, in fact, vanished and that they would shortly die. In what Aton found a morbid manner they preferred to go about their duties and spent as much time as possible lovingly going over recorded scenes of bygone days and endless lists of names, places, and events.

Neither was he able to answer any of their questions. But two hours later those scanning the surrounding strat reported that an object was again approaching.

For the second time the Imperator materialised into the loading bay.

‘Aton, my servant!’ it boomed.

Aton stood before it stiffly. ‘I am here, Imperator .’ Then he added, ‘Where have you been?’

‘Into the far future. My mind is clear now.’

The Imperator seemed larger, more powerful, more majestic than it ever had before. ‘The time for your greatest service to the empire has arrived, Captain Aton.’

‘I do not understand, Imperator . There is no empire.’

‘What has been will be. If you are victorious.’ The machine-emperor paused. ‘The Minion thinks he has won. He has recovered the time-distorter from his Hegemonic tools and now plans to use it again for another purpose.’

‘ Imperator! What is there to talk about?’ Mayar interrupted brokenly. ‘All is gone!’

Impatiently Aton cautioned Mayar to keep silence. The Imperator hummed loudly. ‘At present potential time, alike to primordial chaos, has drowned the world of real time,’ it resumed. ‘The Chronotic storm, however, is abating; soon orthogonal time will form again on the gulf’s surface, like a skin forming on a liquid. If allowed to congeal without interference, it is impossible to say what that new world will be like. That is where the Minion intends to come in. He will use the time-distorter to project a world agreeable to Hulmu, his master. That must not be. You must fight him, Aton. You must take the distorter away from him.’

‘But I don’t think I can, Imperator ,’ Aton said. ‘I have already learned to my cost that the Minion is strong.’

‘With the help of religion, you can defeat him.’

Without warning a wide-angled beam of light shot out from the Imperator and bathed Aton. Immediately an extraordinary flood of thoughts and feelings flooded his mind, all connected with the religion in which he had been brought up. Prayers, catechisms and hymns such as he had been taught as a child seemed to sing in his brain.

The emotion engendered by this experience made him feel humble. Objectively, he recognised the use of a thought ray similar in principle to a field-effect device, except that it worked in reverse. The Imperator was reminding him of his religious training. But why?

‘The Minion approaches. Come.’

Once more the door to the inner chamber in the machine’s metal side opened. Aton hesitated.

Then he entered. The Imperator phased into the strat and went speeding down, seeming to know where to go. After what felt like a long wait, Aton became aware that it had killed its velocity and was idling. The door opened, and through it he could see the strat, spreading and convoluting before his tortured eyes.

The message was clear. He ventured into the strat.

He saw the Minion almost immediately, soaring up from the deep, carrying the big tube-like device Aton had seen once before. As Aton came closer he saw the jewel eyes flash and glint through the supernal fire that surrounded them both. The Minion’s mouth was agape and raucous laughter issued from it.

‘Ha ha ha! You want my little toy! Oh, no! This time Hulmu will have you !’