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

Polla stared from one to the other of the young men in disbelief. ‘Kayin, can this be true? What’s happening?’

‘Kord is finding out that he can’t enslave the mind of humanity for ever,’ Herren said. ‘We are discovering freedom.’

‘It’s all over a difference of opinion,’ Kayin told her wearily. ‘Kord and his people think that the City can best be preserved by rigid control and a low level of aspiration. Our technology is sufficient, so there’s no need for further development in the arts or sciences. The others, like Herren here, believe that that approach leads to a slow but sure disaster and that the City must be kept bubbling to stay healthy, that life isn’t worth living any other way anyhow. They both feel strongly enough about it to go to war. They’re all in the minority, of course. The great majority of the population have the good sense to interest themselves in nothing much except the inertial stocktaking.’

‘But which side is right?’

‘Right?’ Kayin said with a grimace. ‘Neither! Both roads will lead to disaster… There isn’t any solution… The City exists in a place where it isn’t supposed to be…’

Herren leaned forward and gripped his slumped shoulder comfortingly ‘Steady, old chap. I know how it must have been for you this afternoon, seeing your friends executed. Believe me, we’ve all been through it. But you’ll pull through. I know we’ll be able to depend on you when the time comes.’

Kayin remembered the wry smile on red-headed Tamm’s face, just before they injected the poison.

When Kuro finally answered Kord’s invitation, he found the centuries-old Master of City 5 looking drawn and strained. For his part, it had been a mortal blow to Kord’s confidence when he had failed to contain the situation. He suspected that for some years the briefings he had been given had been tampered with to play down the actual motion of events. Now, though he held the central premises of the Ramification, he effectively controlled only two-thirds of the City.

‘Very well,’ he said curtly, ‘you are strong enough to fight us.’

‘And we will.’

Kord spoke in an exasperated tone. ‘Already there have been gun battles in the City! Yesterday fire broke out in the Northern Segment.’ Angrily he rapped his artificial leg. ‘Do you know how I got this? In a civil war pretty much like this one is becoming. Sheer lunacy! It’s suicidal to fight inside the City; we can’t allow it again.’

‘So?’

‘If we have to fight, it will have to be done outside the dome .’

‘My conclusion exactly,’ Kuro said sombrely, ‘as far as heavier weapons go, anyway. We can both construct space vessels of some sort. For the arrangement to be effective each side must be allowed to transfer sufficient forces outside, without interference.’

‘Agreed, then. We shall set up an independent commission to control the egress port.’

He paused reflectively. ‘By the way, I got some news today. You know that there is an instrument in the Ramification set to record the moment when the material universe finally vanishes altogether. Just after eight last night, the event registered.’

Kuro made no comment. After they had completed the formal arrangements he left, feeling only slight discomfort about what was going on.

‘It’s like a nightmare,’ Polla said.

The City appeared to be huddling, expectant. In the north could be seen the fire-blackened region, and a faint smell of smoke still hung in the air, not quite eradicated by the circulatory system. The crystal dome sparkled; but beyond it vague shadowy forms were moving as the contending forces arrayed themselves.

‘Well, at least the City will be safe,’ Kayin replied. Herren had come to him and expected him to take part in the street fighting. When he had declined, he had again come to him and invited him to help man the weapons carried by the new spacecraft. Kayin could imagine what kind of a battle that would be: hastily built ships manoeuvring in an utterly empty void, carefully avoiding proximity with the City and offering perfect sitting ducks to one another. With luck, none of them would return and the City could live in peace.

Kayin was fingering a key in his pocket. It was a special key, working by electronic impulses, and it gave its owner possession of the observatory’s nucleon rocket. Kayin had never handed it back after his mission with Tamm.

‘Poll,’ he said, ‘let’s go somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘Out,’ he answered sardonically, ‘outward bound. The early expeditions failed because they always turned back when they reached the point of no return, when their engines wouldn’t have got them back if they’d gone further. We’ll keep on going . What does it matter?’

She didn’t understand what he was talking about, but she followed him to the park where they used to meet. He headed for the observatory, but this time bypassed the dome and pressed the key into a small slot in the base of the tower.

A door slid open. He stepped inside, taking Polla by the hand and tugging her through. There was a gap of about twelve feet between the hull of the rocket and the shell of the tower. The spacecraft loomed above them like a huge shaft.

He pressed the same key into a slot in a large box inside the door. It clicked and hummed; automatically the rocket was being readied for use.

‘ Kayin ,’ Polla protested in sudden alarm. ‘What’s going on? I’m not going anywhere—’

Without waiting for her fright to become hysteria, he closed in on her. For a few moments she was gasping as they grappled, then he had her held securely over his shoulder. Still she struggled, bewildered, but there wasn’t far to go. He carried her to the embarkation platform; swiftly it took them up the side of the rocket to the port. Inside the rocket he stepped down a short passage and threw her down in the luxurious living apartment.

‘What are you doing? ’ She sat up on the floor, her legs asplay.

He switched on the wall screen, tuning it to the external scanners. ‘Enjoy the show,’ he said, then left for the control cabin, locking the door behind him.

The controllers of the egress port were used to a constant stream of craft applying for exit; they asked no questions in his case. For the second time in his life he floated up above the dome, seeing the City spread out below him. But this time there were big, clumsy cylindrical objects floating in the vicinity of the City, some of them sporting wicked-looking equipment welded on in various places. The war was due to begin soon.

Kayin chose a direction at random and started up the nucleon engines at full power. In a second City 5 was gone. He and Polla were alone in the void; the eternal, infinite, vacant void.

On and on and on and on and on. The engines never stopped. Although they ran silently, Kayin checked their action constantly on the instruments in the control cabin.

Polla had wept and screamed, then sulked for weeks, and then gradually became friendly again. By now Kayin himself felt defensively sullen about what he had done. It was boorish and uncharacteristic of him. But he stubbornly refused to apologise, even to his own conscience.

At this distance it was impossible even with the most powerful magnification available on the rocket to gain as much as a photon’s worth of image from the City. Shortly after departure he had picked up brief flashes that came not from the City itself but from the spaceships that were fighting one another with nuclear weapons. Even if they had not been travelling at billions of times the speed of light, such minute flickers would not have been detectable by any means now.

So there was only the emptiness on all sides. Looking out into it, one could not even discern distance; there was only absolute lightlessness.