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

‘In recent years an acceleration in the rate of shrinking has been observed, leading to the belief that the moment is now very close for the extinction of this island of materiality unique in the spatial frame. For a long time it has been effectively invisible from City 5, or indeed from anywhere outside the interface region, for the reason that the enveloping barrier has an outer and an inner surface known as the first and second thresholds. The inner threshold is permeable to radiant energy but offers a strong resistance to the passage of solid masses. The outer threshold may be crossed quite easily by slow-moving masses, but is opaque to light and other radiation passing to it from the inner threshold. In order to view the sidereal universe it is therefore necessary to position oneself between the two.

‘City 5 was designed to be self-subsisting in perpetuity. Physicists on Earth nevertheless entertained the expectation, or rather the hope, that other areas of materiality where humanity could again proliferate would be located in the void, even though they might be immensely remote from the home universe. For a long time long-range spaceships were built and despatched from City 5 in efforts to discover even one atom or electron of matter. Any one of these missions covered a distance equal to many billion times the diameter of the old metagalaxy at its original full size, a feat that has added poignancy when we reflect that by pre-shrinkage standards of measurement City 5 itself is slightly over half an inch in diameter. All such projects have long since been abandoned as useless and the exploratory rockets dismantled. It is now accepted that materiality is not a normal feature of the space frame and that it does not exist anywhere apart from the sidereal universe already known to us. All future endeavours on the part of humanity must perforce make do with such material as was transported in City 5 at the time of the migration, and the City has therefore had to face the problems of perpetuating the life of mankind in complete isolation. The technical aspects, though prodigious, do not present any insoluble difficulties; the chief problems lie in the social and psychological fields.’

The screen went suddenly blank. ‘I think we might as well end the tape there,’ Tamm said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s the valid part of the mission.’

His audience was silent, thoughtful, perhaps a little stunned. Finally Ham-Ra said: ‘Well, that fills in some gaps in our knowledge. Any comments?’

‘It shouldn’t come as any great shock,’ someone said after a moment, ‘but somehow it does. We have always known we were isolated and alone, that we can’t return to Earth. But I always presumed that Earth and the rest of the universe still existed somewhere and would always continue to exist. It makes a difference.’

‘That’s a fact,’ said another. ‘It means we have to re-think our aims and objectives. Which brings me to the point that it still hasn’t been explained why Kayin is absent.’

Tamm cleared his throat and glanced at Ham-Ra, who nodded for him to go ahead. ‘When Kayin and myself returned to City 5 we still had very little technical data of a useful kind. While beyond the first threshold we did of course take a whole library of image and spectral recordings which we can all study at our leisure. But a great deal of the other instrumentation we took along proved useless. More specifically, the nucleon rocket’s instruction tape had whetted our appetite to know more about the early efforts to explore the empty void, as this seemed to be the direction in which the Society’s interest would lie. Unfortunately the requisite documents lie well behind the Mandatory Cut-Off, and no one we could reach in the Administrative Ramification had authorisation to give us access. So we devised a scheme to tap the archives illegally.’

The audience was torn between fright at this manoeuvre and admiration for its audacity. The brighter of them had already anticipated the outcome of the story. A skinny, scowling youngster with a sharp face snorted. ‘The tap was detected, of course?’

‘Yes, but only Kayin’s part in the matter is known to the Ramification. It was his training that made the attempt possible. Now, although both Ham-Ra and myself, and to that extent the whole Society, were involved, the only chance to save the Society from dissolution is to disavow responsibility. We all agreed that Kayin should be expelled and his actions condemned.’

‘Isn’t that a little unfair?’

‘Kayin doesn’t seem to think so.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Nothing much, not the way the wind’s blowing at present. You could say our loss is just as great as his – we’ve lost one of our only two members to have seen the sidereal universe with their own eyes.’

The news seemed to have agitated, energised the Society. They began speaking all at once, shouting each other down.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We ought to force the Ramification to act!’

‘We ought to steal the nucleon rocket—’

Ham-Ra held up his hands for silence. The hatchet-faced, damp-haired young man who had spoken before rose to his feet. Ham-Ra nodded.

‘Obviously the Ramification expected us to accept what we’ve learned and to give up quietly, maybe even to dissolve ourselves voluntarily,’ said the youth, whose name was Barsh. ‘Their message to us is: there is no science of astronomy, there is no exploration of space . I don’t think we should take it lying down. Instead, I think we should revive the whole question of whether there is matter in the empty void and of launching new missions going even further than they did before.’

‘That’s right! Last time they gave up too easily.’

Curtly Ham-Ra once again stopped the rising hubbub. Tamm was smiling wryly. ‘I don’t imagine they gave up easily. I think they tried as hard as it’s possible to try. These days the Ramification has trouble of a different kind.’

He flicked a switch, reeling back a few inches of tape. The screen glowed with its incredible picture, accompanied by the instruction tape’s closing remark:

‘…the chief problems lie in the social and psychological fields.’

The others heard the words, but the blank looks in their eyes betrayed their lack of interest. ‘What are we going to do about outfitting an expedition into deep space?’ Barsh said.

To Kiang, Chairman of the Temporary Board, the meeting with Kord was slightly frightening, slightly thrilling. The man was large – tall, broad, and bulky; his face, which gave one the impression that it had never smiled, was also large, and lined with the impress of years of wilfully directed thought. Its colour was grey, not the grey of illness but the grey of granite, of obdurate strength. When Kord spoke, everybody listened. He was that rare man, the great leader who in times past would have directed the affairs of continents, of planets. There was something heartbreaking in seeing that powerful personality applied with full force to the promotion of stasis and conservation on this pathetic scrap of a vanished universe.

The boardroom was divided down the centre by a long, polished table. On one side sat the Temporary Board, headed by Kiang and backed by Haren, Kuro, Chippilare and Freen. Facing them sat the Permanent Board: Kord flanked by Bnec, specialist in physics, the science of materiality; Engrach, specialist in technology; Ferad and Elbern, specialists in sociodynamics. Elbern was one of Kord’s strokes of strategy, for he was a converted member of the old opposition of centuries ago. Kord knew that the errors promulgated by the vanquished party would occur again and again in the history of City 5, though he hoped with steadily diminishing force, and he realised the advantage of having a man who understood the kind of mentality that fostered them.