Gérard Klein: The Overlords of War

He rose and started to wander about again. Mission: find the Spaceport, the starship launch station, or the transmatter terminal, and get away, using force if need be. If he were arrested, he could always talk about what he knew.

The layout of the city was becoming clear to him, although it Struck him as extraordinarily haphazard. The military bases of his own day had always been built to the same design. Certain routes were reserved for vehicles, others for pedestrians. Not here. The ability to foresee events—to cog, as Floria had called it—must have influenced the highway code. He recalled the accident he had barely escaped a few hours earlier. That driver had not foreseen Corson getting in his way. Then, in order to cog something, the Urians must have to make an act of will, perhaps focus a kind of inward sight. Or could it be that the power was less well developed in some people?

He tried to concentrate and imagine something that was about to happen. A passer-by: he might carry straight on, turn, go up or down. Corson decided he was going to turn. The man kept on his way. He tried the test again, failed again.

Again. Again.

Perhaps he was failing too often? Perhaps some block in his nervous system was causing him always to make a wrong choice? Perhaps!

Vague recollections of long-ago experiences rose to his mind, premonitions, cruelly clear, which had come true. Like lightning flashes which, at a key moment during battle, had lit up the field of his awareness. Or in the silence of utter exhaustion. Nothing calculated or reasoned out. Just incidents such as one forgot again at once, dismissed as coincidental.

He had always had the reputation of being a lucky bastard. The fact that he was still alive seemed to confirm what his comrades—dead, all dead—laughingly used to say. Had luck become a factor you could measure, here on Uria?

A light floater halted level with him and by reflex he tensed. Muscles taut, knees flexed, he reached toward his armpit. But he did not draw his gun. The machine contained only one passenger, a girl. Empty-handed. Dark. Young and pretty. She was smiling. She must have stopped to talk to him. He had no idea who she might be.

He straightened and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The girl beckoned to him.

“George Corson, isn’t it? Then come along.”

The rim of the floater deformed like cloth, or plastic under a heat beam, to let him board.

“Who are you? How did you know where to find me?”

“My name is Antonella,” she said. “And Floria Van Nelle told me about you. I wanted to meet you.”

He hesitated.

“I know you’re going to get in, George. So let’s not waste time.” He almost turned on his heel. Could one cheat the precog power? But she was right: he did want to get aboard. He had had enough of being alone, and needed to talk to someone. He would have time later to continue his experiments. He climbed into the machine.

“Welcome to Uria, Mr. Corson,” Antonella said with a touch of formality. “I am instructed to greet and guide you.”

“An official assignment?”

“If you like. But I take great personal pleasure in it.”

The floater had gathered speed and was flying off without the girl seeming to pay attention. She smiled; her teeth were magnificent.

“Where are we going?”

“How about a trip along the seashore?”

“You’re not taking me anywhere in particular, then?”

“I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

“Fair enough,” Corson said, sitting down on a cushioned bench. And, as they were leaving Dyoto behind:

“You’re not scared. Floria must have told you everything about.”

“She told us you were a bit rough with her. She doesn’t yet know whether to hold it against you or not. I think what annoyed her most was your walking off and just dumping her. It’s very insulting.”

She smiled again and he relaxed. Without being able to say why, he felt he could trust this girl. If it was really her duty to make strangers welcome, she had plainly been selected with great care.

He turned his head and saw for the second time the enormous pyramidal mushroom of Dyoto, seeming to balance on the two glittering columns of the twin vertical river. The sea, in great slow heaves that indicated a vast ocean beyond, came to gnaw at an endless beach. The sky was almost empty. A faint iridescence, like the ill-defined cloud above a waterfall, surrounded the summit of the city.

“What do you want to know about me?” he asked suddenly.

“About your past, nothing, Mr. Corson,” she answered. “It’s your future which concerns us.”

“Why?”

“You honestly don’t know?”

He shut his eyes for a moment. “No. I don’t know anything about my future.”

“I see.” A pause. “Would you like some smoke?”

She was offering him an oval case. Curious, he took from it a cigarette-like tube, set it to his lips, and sucked, expecting it to light of its own accord. But nothing happened. Antonella held an igniter toward him, and at the moment when it uttered its flame a brief and very bright light dazzled him.

“What are you planning to do?” the girl asked in a soft voice.

He passed his hand across his eyes and filled his lungs with smoke. Amazing! This was genuine tobacco—if he hadn’t forgotten what that tasted like after smoking the sad dried seaweed which had taken its place in a world at war.

“Get off this planet,” he said impulsively, and at once bit his lip, too late. A luminous spot was floating before his eyes as though the brilliant reflection the metal shell of the igniter had flashed onto his retinas had stamped them with a tiny and indecipherable design. He suddenly caught on and crushed the cigarette out against the side of the vessel. He pressed his fingers on his eyelids so hard that he saw rockets, whole salvoes of them, and nova stars. His right hand slid toward his gun. That flash from the igniter had not just been a reflection. Its hypnotic effect, probably combined with a drug in the cigarette, had been intended to make him talk. So much for his combat reflexes! They must have been dulled by the placidity of Dyoto. Still, his training had made him able to resist attacks on this level.

“You’re very tough, Mr. Corson,” Antonella said in a calm tone. “But I doubt whether you’re tough enough to get off this world.”

“Why didn’t you cog that your little trick would fail?” He heard his voice harsh with anger.

“Who said it had failed?” She was smiling as pleasantly as when she invited him on board.

“All I said was that I plan to quit this planet. Is that all you wanted to know?”

“Maybe. Now we’re sure it really is your intention.”

“And are you going to try and stop me?”

“I don’t see how we can. You’re armed and dangerous. We merely wish to advise against it.”

“In my own interests, of course.”

“Of course.”

The floater was losing height and speed. Above a small stream it halted, sank down, landed gently on sand. Its rim subsided like melting wax. Antonella jumped to the ground and stretched herself, sketching a dance step.

“Romantic here, isn’t it?” she said, picking up a polyhedral shell that might have belonged to a sea urchin. An alien sea urchin, Corson reminded himself. After weighing it in her hand for a moment, she tossed it into the waves which were washing around her bare feet.

“So you don’t like this world?”

Corson shrugged. “It’s a little decadent for my taste. Too mysterious beneath its placid surface.”

“I imagine you prefer war, violence, plenty of action. Maybe you’ll find some of that if you stay, though.”

“Love and war?” he said sarcastically, recalling what he had said to Floria.