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

The soldier holding the emitter went down on one knee and aimed it at Jasperodus, who instantly realised he had little chance of escaping its beam. He was about to fling himself sideways and into the undergrowth but before the soldier could fire the chatter of a repeater gun rang out from above him and the man fell dead.

The eyes of the others shot startled up to the top of the rock behind Jasperodus. Cree Inwing sprang down into the clearing, his gun voicing death again. A few bullets came in return, aimed wild and a few of them bouncing off Jasperodus, but in seconds it was all over.

‘Got bored and thought I’d come looking for you,’ Inwing explained, turning to him with a grin. ‘Then I saw this lot coming so I hid up there.’ He jerked his thumb to the craggy overhang.

‘There are others behind me,’ Jasperodus said, ‘and possibly yet more I haven’t seen.’ He urged Inwing along. ‘Back to the plane quickly – we have to get away from here at once.’

In minutes they had regained the aircraft. One to each wing, they manhandled it out on to the improvised runway, lining it up so that hopefully it would manage to slip in between the trees. In the pilot’s seat Jasperodus paused; take-off should not really be any more difficult than landing, unless they hit a tuft or mound that bounced them off-course.

In the event he was able to get off the ground smoothly, soared up the narrow canyon and into open air. He turned the nose East and flew low, following the undulations of the landscape for some miles, and apparently they weren’t spotted for no pursuit came.

‘Something puzzles me,’ Jasperodus said when they felt safe again. ‘You realise what you just did? You risked your life to save a machine construct. Why did you do it? Surely you must have known that your best chance was to head straight back to the plane and take off without me?’

Inwing looked doubtful, as if this idea was new to him. ‘I didn’t think about it,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve told you I’m no philosopher… If it comes to that, why were you so thoughtless as to leave me alone with the plane? By your reasoning I should have taken off with it at the first opportunity, since without you I could make better speed and go where I choose.’

‘You need me,’ Jasperodus replied bluntly. ‘Two can survive better than one.’

‘Yes, there’s that too. Anyway, it’s a poor man who’ll desert a companion at the first sign of trouble. I suppose I’ve worked with you so long I just didn’t think of you as a machine. Perhaps I should have.’

Jasperodus laughed briefly.

He did not mention that part of the reason he had gone exploring was to see what Inwing would do in his absence.

For the rest of the journey he avoided towns, as well as the castles and fortified camps that occasionally dotted the landscape. They flew on and on, and very gradually the appearance of the Earth changed. There was more land under cultivation, and towns and villages, as well as the odd city, grew more numerous. Also more in evidence were railways, roads, canals and air travel: they were entering the area of large national groupings. But all this, Jasperodus could not help but notice, merely overlay the immense remains of the classical civilisation: the gigantic ruins, the reshaping of the Earth, the enigmatic formations, all of which were slowly sinking into the soil.

Jasperodus was merciless to Cree Inwing. Once, after travelling for two days, they landed and raided a farmhouse to get him food. After that Jasperodus simply kept going. If he thought the engine was overheating he switched it off and glided for a distance to give it a chance to cool. Inwing cursed, slept and sweated in the cramped cabin, having nothing to occupy himself with, and was forced to shift for himself as regards calls of nature.

After a week of this he could stand it no longer and begged Jasperodus to land and give him respite. Accordingly Jasperodus winged down from their high altitude and looked out for a convenient landing place.

They passed over a kuron town. It was the first Jasperodus had ever seen, and forgetting his former caution he circled it twice, inspecting the curious arrangement of mushroom-shaped houses. Then he passed on, and a short distance away came down on a wood-fringed meadow. They pushed the aircraft beneath the spread branches of the trees, as was their practice, and since evening was drawing on settled down for the night.

Cree Inwing spent some time running to and fro, flexing his arms and performing various muscle-toning exercises. When he felt sufficiently relieved he built a fire and roasted a small animal he had trapped. For a couple of hours he and Jasperodus sat patiently by the fire, desultorily discussing their future route to Tansiann, whose precise location was unknown to either of them.

Inwing’s preparations for sleep were interrupted by the snap of a twig and the sound of light footfalls coming through the trees. Presently there came into the firelight the small, slight figures of three kurons.

Jasperodus observed them with curiosity. They were between four and five feet in height and seemed approximately manlike, at first reminding him of the fairy folk of legend. On closer inspection, however, the humanish appearance diminished. Their faces bore no more resemblance to a man’s than to, say, a tiger’s or a lizard’s, and were pinched and bony, giving an appearance of exaggerated delicateness. The proportions of body and limbs were also all their own, so that the correspondence to the human race consisted entirely of their being bimanual and bipedal.

They wore nondescript garments like coarse shifts and flaps. Jasperodus noticed that one of them was carrying a glass jar carefully in both hands, but he could not immediately see what it contained. With no evidence of fear or caution they walked directly into the small camp and sat down opposite the two travellers.

‘Good evening,’ said Inwing sardonically.

‘And likewise to you,’ replied one of the newcomers in a faint, breathless voice.

There was silence while the kurons stared into the fire and Inwing and Jasperodus stared in turn at them. Since they seemed in no hurry to explain their presence Jasperodus put a question of his own.

‘We are en route for Tansiann,’ he said, ‘but are unsure of its exact whereabouts. Perhaps you can direct us?’

‘You must travel on a course East and about forty degrees South,’ the kuron told him in the same piping, breathless voice: ‘Here we are on the western fringe of the New Empire; to the north are hostile nations which you must avoid. You will not, however, reach Tansiann unopposed in your aircraft. On approaching Kwengu you will be noted on radar and apprehended.’

‘Will we not then be allowed to continue?’ Jasperodus inquired.

‘That will depend on your business. I cannot say. We kurons prefer to live well outside the main stream of human life, by reason of past atrocities and persecutions.’

‘Indeed? That aspect of history is new to me. You have been badly treated?’

The other nodded awkwardly, in a way which suggested it was not a native gesture. ‘To survive the Dark Age was extremely difficult for us, for it was an age of violence and brutal ignorance. Prior to that time we had lived in the big human cities as well as in our own rural towns, engaging in trade and certain kinds of manufacture at which we excelled, but when the light of reason went out irrational hatreds were raised against us. Any misfortune or natural calamity was ascribed to our agency, and it was widely believed we practised malign magic. Massacre of kuron ghettoes became a frequent occurrence; added to which the breakdown of commerce rendered our normal livelihood impossible. Very few of us remained alive at the end of those bad centuries.’