Barrington Bayley - Collision with Chronos

“Apparently your decisions are not guided by rationality and we take it that you reject our offer,” Wang Yat-Sen announced, still using the “friendly” mode of speech. “There is, then, noththing more to detain us. With your permission we’ll call down our space lighter and return to our people.”

“Oh, no!” squeaked the lemur. “You’re not returning anywhere with information that can be used against us. You’re of the same race as our enemy – so back to the bio-research unit with you!”

And so the two young men were transported back to the Biological Warfare Station, which they were never to leave.

As soon as he entered the cellar complex, Sobrie Oblomot knew that something was extraordinarily wrong.

This time the Council meeting was to have been in Sannan, Sobrie’s native city. These ancient cellars were completely unknown to the authorities; they had been sealed over during a rebuilding programme years ago. The hidden entrances were few, and known only to trusted League agents.

A printing press was run down here and Sobrie was struck, first of all, by its silence: never before had he known it not to be clattering away. And yet the place was gripped by a sense of feverish excitement: the whitewashed brick walls almost visibly shone with it.

Groups of people stood around, talking with agitation. A small thin man wormed his way between them and rushed up to Sobrie.

“Oblomot! You’re here!”

“What’s going on?” Sobrie said with deference.

“If I were you,” the small man said in a low voice, “I’d get out – now. And take your girl friend with you. Because —”

But he was interrupted by the convener, who appeared suddenly at Sobrie’s elbow. “So you made it, Oblomot. You’re late. We’d thought you might already have heard.”

“Heard what?”

“The news is all over the networks. Right across the globe. It looks like the end.”

To Sobrie’s bewildered demands for enlightenment he responded merely by guiding him across the floor and through a low archway. A door opened, closed again once Sobrie was through.

The Panhumanic Council was sitting. Eyes turned to regard Sobrie sombrely. They weren’t all there, he realised; about a third were missing.

With a start, he noticed that one of the faces was unfamiliar. It was the anonymous member, sitting for the first time without mask or voice modifier!

What could have brought about such a change in policy? Curiously he studied the face. It was striking: a strong, clear face with much character, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired – it was such a perfect example of the Titan ideal that its owner just had to be a Titan. That was it: he was a high-ranking, famous Titan officer who also happened to be secretly a member of the Panhumanic League. Sobrie vaguely recalled seeing his face, now. He was one of the idolised heroes who appeared on the covers of glossy magazines, on vidcast pageants and the like.

“Sit down, Oblomot,” the Chairman said, his voice heavy with strain.

“Incredible!” was Sobrie’s reaction. “It’s just unbelievable.”

“Unbelievable but true.”

“Can we be sure? Suppose it’s just another Titan story? An invention?”

“It’s true enough,” the once-anonymous member said. “It comes from two sources. The Titans have intentionally passed the information to the League, through contacts they have. But I’m able to confirm it independently, through my position in the Legions. The consternation among ourselves is nothing compared with what’s going on there, I assure you.”

Without the voice modifier the Titan’s voice was strong and resonant, mature but somehow still youthful. “I don’t really understand all that scientific stuff you just read out,” Sobrie said to the Chairman. “But is that literally true – that we’ll all be annihilated? By an alien… time-wave… from the future?”

“Not only us, but all life on Earth. Unless we can find a way to stop it.”

“And where does that leave us – the League?”

“That’s what we were discussing before you came in,” the Chairman told him after a heavy pause. “It’s no good denying that what we thought was Titan paranoia has, in the event, been vindicated. We are threatened by an alien power, albeit in a form so weird and overwhelming that the Titans could never have foreseen it. Our own objectives now seem futile, not to say insignificant.…”

“The League must disband itself voluntarily and go over to the Titans,” a voice said. “That will happen anyway, among the greater part of our membership.”

“Those of us who failed to attend this meeting doubtless have already taken that step,” the Chairman added.

Sobrie was shocked by this talk. To talk of joining forces with the hated Titans! To abandon the age-old goal of racial equality!

“But we can’t do that!” he protested. “We have a sacred mission!”

The Titan spoke. “As I see it, there is very little choice. It’s not a matter of saving threatened subspecies any more. It’s a matter of the survival of mankind. I, who have lived with the Titans all my life, and have always hated them, now see that only they can save us. They’re the only hope for humanity: from now on I’ll be a loyal Titan officer.”

Sobrie’s wasn’t the only voice to express dismay at the way things were going. Two others broke in together, making angry denunciations of this betrayal of their ideals.

Sobrie added his own accusations. “And what of the dev subspecies?” he flared. “The Amhraks, the Urukuri and the others? Are they to be abandoned?”

“Regrettably, they must go by the board,” the unmasked Titan said evenly. “They’re too trivial to deserve our attention in a crisis of such proportions as this. It’s humanity, not any particular subspecies, that’s at stake.”

Voices rose in violent argument. And faces that had long grown hard in a life of continuous plotting began to show their determination, one way or the other.

Sobrie was not sure how, or when, shooting broke out. Guns seemed to appear in several hands at once. A bullet caught the Titan in the chest and he went down, slumping against the table, his handsome, clean-cut face sagging in extreme nervous shock. Shots exploded deafeningly. The Chairman, even as he squeezed the trigger, was hit in the shoulder and spun around with a snarl of pain.

Somewhat belatedly Sobrie produced his own gun, ducking below the level of the table, only to see that all the voices that had been added to his side of the argument had been silenced, their owners dead.

He ripped open his shirt, plunged his hand inside, and slowly rose.

Guns were trained on him. He took his hand from his shirt and held up the s-grenade he had taken from his body-pouch.

“Don’t move, anyone,” he said in a strained voice, “or we all get it.”

Step by step he backed to the door, their eyes watching him blankly. In seconds he had reached it, flung it open and then was racing through the cavernous cellars.

White faces, shocked by the sound of gunfire, stared at him, their mouths black holes. He waved the gun and shoved people aside, strangely aware that no pursuit was, as yet, being organised. No more than twenty seconds passed before he had reached the nearest exit. He plunged into it, up the dank tunnel, pounding along it for yard after yard.

The tunnel ended in a concealed door which opened on to yet another cellar beneath a disused warehouse. Sobrie presently emerged in a side street in an outlying district of Sannan. He hurried from the spot to more populated streets, and stopped at the first vidbooth.

Layella’s face came up on the screen. Her eyes widened at the sight of him.

“Hello. What is it?”