Keith Laumer - The Other Side of Time

I swam back from across a gulf wider than the Universe and was standing in the room I remembered from an eon—or a second—before. The sword burned hot in my hand—no longer an awkward stub, but a blade four feet long, ending in a blunt, broken tip. The cross-guard was different: longer, the quillons curving out above carved knuckle-bows. There were traces of gold on the grip, and a single jewel glinted in the pommel. It was the same magic I’d seen before, all the talk in the world about probability stresses and the reshaping of reality couldn’t make it anything else for me. I groped after the dream that had filled my head a moment before: a panorama of faces and sounds and vain regrets; but it faded, as dreams do, and was gone. Then my reverie was shattered into small pieces as the door to the next room slammed open and feet came across the rug toward the bedroom.

“Milord Baron,” a familiar voice called. “An emergency in the Net! The stasis has been broken! The probability storm will strike within hours!”

His rush had carried him past me where I had flattened myself to the wall beside the door. He halted when he saw the room was empty, spun, saw me, yelled.

“Thanks for the information, Renata,” I said, and laid the flat of the sword against the side of his head with all the power in my arm. I didn’t wait to see if I had broken his skull. I went across the study and was back inside my private tunnel before the first of his men had gotten up his nerve to enter without knocking.

An hour or two of exploring the tunnel system turned up plenty of side-branches, some secret rooms with tables and rotted bedding, a cramped stairway leading down to ground level; but there seemed to be no direct way into the other wing of the palace and the exit behind the rhododendrons. I thought about coming out and trying it in the open, but there were too many sounds of activity beyond the walls to make that seem really attractive. The whole building seemed to be in a state of uproar. That wasn’t too hard to understand. With a dead viceroy to handle, and a probability storm coming on, it looked like a busy day.

My break came when I found a shaft with a rusty ladder bolted inside it.

The rungs were too close together, and scaled with rust, and the bore was barely big enough to give me operating space. It seemed to get smaller as I went down. It ended on a damp floor that I recognized as running behind the rank of cells where I’d once been a guest. I started along the two-foot-wide passage, in near pitch-dark. What light there was came from chinks in the mortar between the stones. If night fell while I was still here, the going would be rough.

I followed the passage fifty feet to a dead end. I turned back, and after thirty feet, encountered an intersection that I would have sworn hadn’t been there two minutes 4 before. The right-hand branch led to an uncovered pit that I discovered by almost falling in it. The other spiraled down, debouched into a circular room lined with dark openings. I turned my back, and when I looked again, everything had changed. This time I was sure; where the passage I had entered by had been there was a solid wall of stone. I knew now what Roosevelt meant by a probability storm. Subjective reality had turned as insubstantial as a dream.

The next passage I tried ended in a blank wall of wet clay. When I came back into the circular room it was square, and there were only two exits now. One led to a massive iron-bound door, locked and barred. I retraced my steps, but instead of a room I came into a cave with water trickling across its floor and a single dark opening on the far side. I went into it, and it widened and was a carpeted hall, faced with white doors, all locked. When I looked back, there was only a gray tunnel, cut through solid rock.

For a long time, I wandered through dark passages that closed behind me, looking for a way up. And then, in a tunnel so low that I had to duck my head, I heard the clank of chains, not far away.

I listened hard, heard heavy breathing, the rasp of feet on stone, another clank. It wasn’t what would ordinarily be considered an inviting sound, but under the circumstances I was willing to take the risk. I pushed ahead ten feet and saw dim light coming through a crack in the wall. It was a loose stone slab, three feet on a side. I put my eye to the crack and looked into a cell with windowless walls, a candle on a table, a straw pallet. An old man stood in the center of the room. He was as tall as I was, wide through the shoulders, with big, gnarled hands, a weather-beaten complexion, pale blue eyes with a hunted look. He was dressed in tattered blue satin knee-pants, a wine and rose brocaded coat with wide fur lapels, a flowered vest, scuffed and worn shoes that had once been red. The chains were on his ankles. He looked around, scanning the walls as if he knew I was there.

“Geoffrey,” he said, in a hoarse, old voice that I’d heard before, in a dream, “I feel you near me.”

I got a grip on the stone and slid it aside and was looking through a barred opening. The old man turned slowly. His mouth opened and closed.

“Geoffrey,” he said. “My boy…” He put out a hand, then drew it back. “But my boy is dead,” he told himself. “Forever dead.” A tear ran down the leathery cheek. “Who are you, then? His cousin, Henry? Or Edward? Name yourself, then!”

“Curlon is my name. I’m lost. Is there a way out of here?”

He ignored the question. “Who sent you here? The black-hearted rogues who slew Geoffrey?” He caught at the bars, and the sleeve of his coat fell back. There was a welted, two-inch-wide scar all the way around his wrist.

“No one sent me,” I said. “I managed it on my own.”

He stared at me and nodded. “Aye—you’re of the blood—I see it in your face. Are you, too, caught in his traps?”

“It looks that way,” I said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“Henry Planget is my name. I claim no other honor. But I’ll not fall in with his schemes, though all the devils in hell come to haunt me!” He shook his fist at the wall. “Do your damnedest, rascals! But spare the boy!”

“Snap out of it, old man!” I said roughly. “I need your help! Is there a way out of here?”

He didn’t answer. I drew the broken sword and levered at the bars. They were solid, an inch thick, set in barred sockets.

“My help?” His rheumy eyes held on mine. “A Planget never calls for help—and yet… and yet, perhaps it would have been better if we had, so long ago…”

“Listen, to me, Henry. There’s a man called Roosevelt—Baron General Pieter van Roosevelt. He’s crazy enough to think he can remake the Universe according to a private set of specifications and I’m crazy enough to believe him. I’d like to stop him, if I can. But first, I have to break out of this maze. If you know the | way—tell me!”

“The maze?” The old man looked at me vaguely; then as if he were shaking off a weight, he straightened his back; his eyes cleared and vitality came into them.

“The maze of life,” he said. “The maze of fate. Yes, we must break out!” He stopped, staring at the broken sword. His hand went out to it, but stopped, not touching it.

“You bear Balingore?” his voice quavered. His eyes met mine, and now fire flashed in them. “A miracle passes before my eyes! For these same eyes saw Balingore broken and cast into the sea! And now… he lives again!”

“I’m afraid it’s just a broken sword,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

“Balingore lives again!” he quavered. “His strength runs in you, lad! I sense it! And still the powers draw at you across the veils of the worlds! I’ve seen them—yes, he showed me, long ago, when he plied me with fine words and talk of glories vanished. There are more worlds than one, and they call to me—and to you, too! Can you feel them, the voices that cry out of darkness, summoning you? Go! Go to them! Break the ring of fate that forever doomed our house!”