Keith Laumer - The Other Side of Time

“How do I do that, Henry?”

He clung to the bars and I could see the fight he was having to hold to the glimmer of sanity that had come to him—if that was what it was.

“I must speak quickly, before the veils descend again,” he said. His voice was steadier now. “This is the tale that he told me:

“Long ago, a king of our line bore Balingore into battle, and with him built a mighty empire across the world. But in the end, he turned aside from honor. Balingore passed to the hands of another, and for seven centuries, served the cause of evil. But at last the usurper’s greed undid him. His wise men built a strange machine in which a man might leave his proper frame of fate and walk in worlds of might-have-been. He sought to use this wonder as a weapon, to spread his black dream of empire—but he failed. And in his failure, he brought down the very skies about him!”

“The machine was called a shuttle,” I said. “It used the MC-drive to move across the alternate world-lines. I’ve heard that the Blight was caused by the drive running out of control.”

“Nay—it was no accidental havoc! Van Roosevelt knew what he did when he unleashed its power on the world! And now his spawn seeks again to mold the cosmos to his liking! But this is a task too great for him alone! He needs the might of Angevin beside him. This much he told me when he snatched me from my manor house in the far world of my birth. But I defied him! As you must!”

“Who is he, Henry? What is he?”

“A fallen angel; a man so evil that the world cannot contain his malice! Even now it melts and flows—as I have seen it melt and flow before! Run, lad! Flee this pit of horrors before you find yourself forever lost… as I was lost, so long ago…”

“You were telling me about the sword,” I reminded him.

“Many things have I learned, strange beyond belief,” Henry mumbled. “And yet you must believe them!” The fire came back into his tone. “There are many worlds, many lines of fate that grow across the walls of time like so many vines of ivy! Once there were many Balingores, each holding some fraction of the power that was once welded into one. But in the disaster that overtook the world, all were lost, save two: One, in the hands of the devil, Roosevelt. And another, which hung on the high wall of my house, in a far land I shall never see again!” Knuckles whitened as he gripped the bars. “Once, this was my house, these chambers my cellars. Then he came. His talk beguiled me, in my ignorance. At his behest, I took down the ancient blade of my ancestors, and would have put it in his hand. But at his touch, it shattered.

“He raged, blamed me for the miracle. But I took new pride from the sign given me. I defied him, then! Too late, I defied him! He brought me here, told me his tale—and his lies. He swore I was the key to his greatness, that together we would rebuild his world—that other world, so like mine, and yet so different. I would not listen. I saw the sword he bore—the other Balingore, so long ago dishonored—but I sensed that the true power flowed not in it. He needed me, in truth—but what he did not know was that I had saved one fragment of the true sword. I hid it away from him, and when he scattered the shards in the salt sea, there to corrode to nothing, one piece was left behind…”

“There were more than two Balingores,” I said. “I have part of one. And I found another part, in a ruined city in the Blight—”

“Listen to me!” Henry’s voice shook. “I feel the red darkness returning! Time is short! Go to my world, Curlon! Find my house of the high stone walls and the red towers; and there, in the chapel dedicated to St. Richard, search beneath the altar-stone. But beware the False Balingore! Now go—before the world melts away into a tortured dream!”

“I’ll try, Henry,” I said. “But I can’t leave you here. I’ll try to find something—some way to release you.” I went back along the passage, feeling the walls, with the vague idea I might find a ring of keys hanging there; but there was nothing.

When I came back to the barred window, the candle still burned on the table; but the room was empty. Only the rusted shackles lay on the floor among scattered bones.

For a long time, I stood in the dark, watching the candle burn down and gutter out. Then I went on. I don’t know how many hours later it was that I came into a room where light filtered down from a heavy oak door, half-smashed from its hinges. I went up stone steps into late afternoon light in a kitchen that looked as though it had been fought through. There was shooting going on outside, not far away.

The door opened into a bricked alley under high walls. A dead man in a blue uniform lay on his back a few feet from it. I picked up his gun and moved up to cross the street without any unnecessary noise. In the distance, big guns rumbled and boomed, and flashes showed against the colors of early dusk. I knew where I was now. I had covered several city blocks, underground. The viceregal palace was in the next square, a hundred yards away.

A sudden burst of gunfire nearby made me flatten myself against the wall. I heard running feet, and three blue-uniformed Imperial guards dashed out of a doorway, heading across the street. There was more gunfire, from up high, and one of them fell. A shell shrieked, and a section of street blew up and blanketed the scene with dust. When it cleared, a dead civilian with a bandolier across his shoulders lay near the dead soldier. The revolution was in full swing, but somehow I had a feeling that in spite of that, things hadn’t turned out the way Roosevelt had wanted them. The thought warmed me, and turned my mind to what I had to do next.

I left my cubbyhole, made it across the street, and into a narrow street that led to the delivery yard at the back of the palace. I went along it with the machine pistol ready; I didn’t want to be gunned down, by either side. Near the gate, I heard feet coming up behind me. I threw the gun away and went over the wall and was in the viceregal gardens, fifty feet from the spot where I had left the shuttle on half-phase.

The shadowy trees and bushes looked different somehow;-wild flowers of a kind I’d never seen before sprouted in the tended beds. Somewhere a nightingale was singing his heart out, ignoring the gunfire.

I was still wearing the ring Bayard had given me, the one with the miniaturized shuttle recall signaler set inside the synthetic ruby. I had left the shuttle in another world-line, with Imperial suppressor beams holding it pinned down like a butterfly on a board, but this wasn’t the time to pause and consider things like that. If the signaler worked, I was on the board for another round; if not, the game was finished now. I pressed the stone.

The bird sang. A breeze stirred the long grass. At the far side of the garden, a man stepped into view, capless, dressed in sweat-stained blues. He stopped when he saw me, shouted, and started for me at a run. He was halfway there when the shuttle shimmered and phased into solidity with a rush of displaced air. I stepped inside and flipped the half-phase switch. On the screens, the twilit garden faded to eerie blue. The man who had been running skidded to a stop, raised his gun and fired a full clip into the spot the shuttle occupied. The gun made a remote, flat sound. Then the man threw the gun down and laughed a wild laugh. He turned and wandered away. I could sympathize with him. I knew how he felt. The world had come apart around his ears, and there was no place to turn.

The telltale light on the panel was blinking on, off, on. It was the tracer that had been locked to Roosevelt’s shuttle. It still was—and the target was moving.

Again, I didn’t stop to calculate the odds. I threw in the drive lever and set off in pursuit.