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

But what happened on Earth after that, I don’t know. We went into space, so I have only a casual interest.

It’s like this: the King showed me space.

To see it with the bare eyes is enough, but on the King’s set of multi- and null-viewpoint vision screens it really gets hammered in. And what gets knocked into you is this: nothing matters. Nothing is big enough to matter. It’s as simple as that.

However big a thing is, it just isn’t big enough. For when you see the size of totality – I begin to understand now why the King, who has seen it all the time, is as he is.

And nothing is important. There is only a stratified universe, with some things more powerful than others. That’s what makes us think they are important – they’re more powerful, but that’s all. And the most powerful is no more significant than the least.

You may wonder, then, why the King bothers with such trivial affairs as Britain. That’s easy.

When I was a young man, I thought a lot of myself. I thought myself valuable, if only to myself. And, once, I began to wonder just how much it would take for me to sacrifice my life, whether if it came to it I would sacrifice myself for a less intelligent, less worthwhile life than my own. But now I see the sacrifice for what it is: simply one insignificance for another insignificance. It’s an easy trade. So the King, who has ranged over a dozen galaxies, has lost his war, his army, and risks even his own life, for Britain’s sake. It’s all too tiny even to hesitate over. He did what he could: how could he do anything else?

Like the King, I was quickly becoming incapable of judgement. But before it goes altogether, I will say this of you, Hotch: It was a low trick you played on the King. A low, dirty trick to play on a good man.

They always met by television. Usually it was once every three months. Always it was with much argument. The meeting chamber, though in a secret location and possessing neither door nor windows, had a dignity wholly befitting its role. Its walls were panelled with ancient, grained oak. The floor was deeply carpeted. Mahogany, another near-extinct and much-valued wood, had been used to make the incomparable boardroom table. On its dark shining surface rested six holo television sets arranged so that the stage-screen of each could view all the others.

Today Sinatra was sour. ‘You know what I think?’ he said, stubbing out a cigarette with a derisory gesture. ‘I’ll tell you: I think this thing’s not worth talking about.’

Bogart gave a typical puzzled frown, his shrewd preoccupied eyes shifting from side to side as he spoke. ‘If it bothers us it’s worth talking about. This guy Karnak seems to be making progress.’

‘Aw, nuts.’ Sinatra’s blue and disturbingly hot eyes came to rest on Bogart; his lean face was sardonic, his wide mouth wryly twisted. ‘He’s just another bum.’

‘Remember Reagan,’ Bogart continued defensively. ‘Not so long ago he was sitting right here with us. Until, that is, he got over-confident, began over-extending, thinking he could get into SupraBurgh. Suddenly there he was, dying on a rising curve.’

Cagney shook his head sadly. ‘Not even viable for the voters any more.’

‘I remember what it was like seeing him go. Spooky.’

Sinatra chuckled. ‘Sure I remember Reagan. He had it coming: that’s what you get for messing with SupraBurgh. None of us will make that mistake again.’ He paused reflectively, a cigarette held midway to his lips. ‘You know, sometimes when I go over my piece of his holdings I think I can hear him whining through the circuits.’

‘We all can,’ Raft said shortly, in a flat gravelly voice, ‘because we all took a piece of him. I like to think he’d be happy knowing we profited by his fall. But I’d also like to think it can’t happen to me.’ The grisly crack came deadpan out of Raft’s poker face. Cagney and Schultz grinned slightly.

‘It can’t,’ Sinatra affirmed. ‘We’ve got things sewn up too tight now.’

‘If we stick together it can’t,’ Bogart corrected. ‘Maybe Reagan wouldn’t have hit the dust if some of you guys hadn’t been so quick to pull the rug from under him.’

‘Yeah, okay, that’s right,’ said Sinatra hastily, cutting off the angry protests from the others. ‘If things get rough we stick together, okay? Karnak has only taken one ward so far. That’s a long way from being a threat. Now let’s get on to other business. Take a look at this.’

An oak panel slid aside to reveal a holo stage. A simple sine wave moved slowly across it, was momentarily transformed into a stationary bell-shaped probability curve, and then broke up into a dizzying sequence of graph curves, the axes standing out in contrasting colours.

Filling in with a terse commentary, Sinatra watched the flickering curves calmly. ‘I guess you can get the picture from this. Intricative Products, working in harness with Stylic Access Services, are on their way to capturing the whole of the design-percept market. This will mean that a lot of smaller businesses not currently in syn will be brought in syn. Now here are the production breakdowns leading through to maybe four months’ time.’

A new set of dancing, swinging curves appeared, at the rate of two a second. Sinatra held one of them for a few moments.

‘Here’s the aesthetic/inventive index of the stuff we’ll be releasing in a short while now.’

The display went into motion again. ‘I’m giving you the picture because I don’t want you to go upsetting the caper. Putting smaller people out of business isn’t just a matter of seizing their markets, it’s also a matter of denying them operating capital. Now for a short while my activities will create something of a vacuum in the field of property in-decor, an associated area of commerce. Some of you, particularly Lancaster and Cagney, might be tempted to pour money into it. But it’s a fact that capital flows easily from property in-decor to design-percept. So back off, willya? Otherwise you might louse up my operation.’

The display ended and the holo stage showed an indefinite empty depth, tinted pale lilac.

Raft grunted.

‘And why should we want to do you such a favour?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t ask you to do it as a favour,’ Sinatra replied mildly. ‘Just so as to be open and above board, I’ll show you the current programme of another of my properties, Up-SupraBurgh Road Mercantile.’ The holo started up again, dazzling in its rapid disclosure of professional information. ‘If this doesn’t give some of you cardiac arrest, it should. It shows just how ready I am to start forcing the pace in the Up-SupraBurgh outlets. Before long I could – if I wanted – squeeze you out of some of these routes altogether. You wouldn’t like that. So it’s a straight deal. I’ll back off SupraBurgh if you’ll back off property in-decor.’

‘We all agreed not to try to monopolise the upgoing routes,’ Raft said without expression.

‘I hope I won’t have to,’ Sinatra told him affably.

‘ What are you trying to put over on us, Frank? ’ It was Lancaster who spoke now, anger edging into his softly incisive, muscular voice. ‘Let’s take another look at that crap you just handed us.’ And he projected Sinatra’s own graphs back on the wall holo. ‘It’s kind of funny how it compares with what I’m doing in Up-SupraBurgh.’

More curves, Lancaster’s graphs this time, glittered out at them in quick succession, like spitting out pips. ‘Get that, Frank? Put it together, all of you. Frank is telling us he and I share seventy-three per cent of the upgoing trade. Add your own business to it, and how do you explain a total of one hundred and eighteen per cent?’