Into the room walked Hueh Su-Mueng.
Heshke reclined on a low couch, wiping his brow with ice cubes wrapped in a cloth. His head ached and he was tired. He needed a long rest; he was scheduled to leave for Earth tomorrow.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.…
Time’s illusion.
Nearby was a decanter of a light, peach-tinted wine, of which Heshke had taken a draught. It was refreshing on the tongue and had an invigorating effect, but he was in no mood to drink any more of it.
Ascar, however, sloshed it back with gusto. “I think it’s very bad of you,” Heshke reproved him, “to back out at a time like this. In spite of your past actions, which have been awful enough, I’d have expected you to show a greater sense of responsibility, in the circumstances.”
The physicist had announced that he wouldn’t be returning to Earth with Heshke. Shiu Kung-Chien had accepted him as a pupil; he washed his hands of Retort City’s entire scheme for the sake of an academic career under the great master.
He guffawed to hear Heshke’s protest. “You know what the Titans are like,” he said. “The whole enterprise is a lost cause. I’m too old to back any more lost causes – you’re quite capable of conducting the fiasco by yourself.”
Perhaps he’s right, Heshke thought to himself. I’ve suffered enough mental upheavals myself lately. Someone as unbalanced as Ascar probably would react by turning his back on everything, his whole race, his whole planet.
Not that Heshke could count himself as a racist any more. As an archaeologist, he had taken good care to delve into Retort City’s version of Earth history. Theirs wasn’t archaeological inference, it was recorded fact. And the fact was that there never had been an alien interventionist invasion, never had been such a thing as True Man. Human civilisation had risen and fallen into barbarism again and again of its own accord, that being its pattern. The elders of Retort City claimed that theirs was the only system that wasn’t subject to that pattern, the only one that could preserve itself for millennium after millennium. As for the deviant subspecies, Heshke knew now that Blare Oblomot’s version of their arising had been the correct one. It was a natural tendency for species to radiate into diverse subspecies. Usually, when there were global communications, so much interbreeding took place that the different strains all merged. But some time ago, after one particularly violent collapse, geographical groups of men had been isolated from one another for a lengthy period. The natural mutation rate had been accelerated by radiation left over from a series of nuclear wars, and they had evolved into distinct races.
And the subspecies to which Heshke belonged – known in Titan racial science as True Man – didn’t particularly resemble the homo sapiens that had existed, say, thirty thousand years ago, any more than the others did. It was simply the one that had come out on top.
“I wonder if Hwen Wu’s scheme extends to rescuing the dev cultures, too,” he mused, dropping his futile attempt to make Ascar feel ashamed of himself. “Did you know there’s an organised underground on Earth, opposed to the Titans and trying to help the devs?”
Ascar grimaced. “Yeah, I know of them. The Panhumanic League. A bunch of nuts.”
“Well, I suppose the devs are pretty well beyond any kind of help now, anyway.” He put down the ice and wiped his brow with a towel. “Tell me, Leard, what do you think of our hosts?”
“What do I think of them? Why, they’re brilliant, of course!”
“I’m not sure I like them. There’s something cold about them. Something too logical, too sophisticated. They’re effete, over-cultured… without any real compassion.”
Ascar grunted. “You sound like a Titan education tape.”
“Perhaps. But have you learned how their social system works? How they give up their children to be brought up as workers and technicians?” Heshke could remember the horror and revulsion he had felt when the system had first been explained to him. The two retorts were phased differently in time. The children of the Leisure Retort, taken from their parents at birth, were passed back twenty-five years in time. They grew up and usually, at the age of about twenty-five years, had children of their own… which were passed to the Leisure Retort. People gave up their babies and on the same day received a baby in return… their grandchild.
“I think it’s fascinating,” Ascar said, a rare smile coming to his features. “They play all kinds of tricks with time. They oscillate the Production Retort through phases, sending it on cycles not just forward and backward but sideways in some way, in other dimensions.… You know what this means? Here in the Leisure Retort you can order something that takes six months to make, and it’s delivered five minutes later. Shiu Kung-Chien does it all the time. Beautiful!”
“Beautiful if you’re Shiu Kung-Chien!” Heshke said angrily. “What if you’re the man who has to spend his life satisfying these people’s whims?” It all made the Titans’ plans for humanity – True Man, anyway – seem just and compassionate, he thought. At least the Titans believed in a kind of rough democracy. And they believed in culture – even for the workers.
“Oh, they do all right,” Ascar said vaguely. “They’re looked after, they’re happy. And anyway we’re not down there, so what are you worried about?”
“If you don’t mind,” Heshke said wearily, defeated by the man’s single-minded narrowness, “I’d like to get some sleep. We’re starting early in the morning.”
“Oh. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Ascar backed out of the room. He didn’t bother to say good-bye.
Outside the big room’s windows the murmur of traffic rose up from the busy street below.
By the general standard of Titan appointments the room – Limnich’s own private office – was not luxurious, almost drab. The Planetary Leader was renowned for his modest life-style, his retiring habits. His office was not even situated in Bupolbloc, but in a two-hundred-year-old building outside the newly-built administrative sector of the city. Here he kept his collection of skulls, his library of racist lore, and his other collections and paraphernalia.
In the past few days the office had been the scene of an unaccustomed surge of activity, disturbing the contemplative silences of its dark, varnished wood and its soft-piled carpets. Limnich himself confessed to being shaken to the core; there was no time for a dignified convention at the great castle. Everything had to be done now, on the spot. His office had become the nerve centre of the planet as he reorganised the Titanium Legions for the unprecedented struggle ahead.
Many of the old generals had gone, either retired or shunted to administrative roles requiring less initiative. Limnich had replaced them with younger men who had fresh, brilliant minds and newly-minted fervour – men like Colonel Brask (until the onset of the emergency he had been Captain Brask) who had been associated with the time project from the beginning. These were the type who now worked at the centre of things, preparing a colossal Armageddon in time.
Brask was with him now. On a wall screen behind Limnich’s desk he taped a time map that had been drawn up to show the advance of the alien time-system on their own. The map was a moving one, dramatically demonstrating the speed of approach and the estimated point of impact.
Limnich’s bones felt chill as he looked with awe upon that advancing wall of time. “So we have nearly two centuries?” he said.
“To total impact, yes,” Brask told him. “But the effects will be felt far before then. Our knowledge at this stage is still incomplete, but we estimate that the interference effects will become noticeable in about fifty years. After a hundred years, we aren’t sure what our operational status will be. Perhaps zero.”
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