Collision with Chronos

11

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.”

“Thank God we discovered the truth in time!”

He turned from the screen toward Brask. In the room’s grey light the younger man’s oddly deformed eyelid looked almost grotesque. In a less talented man that eyelid would have excluded him from the Titanium Legions altogether, but the exhaustive genealogical investigation every applicant underwent had shown the defect to have no genetic origin, and Limnich had let it pass.

In spite of his own fanaticism in that area, he did sometimes exercise leniency if there was an advantage in it. There was actually an officer in the new Command Team – a Colonel Yedrasch – who was part Lorene. But he was a ferocious fighter for True Man, even more so, it seemed, because of his knowledge of his mixed nature, and his services to the race were of such a high order that Limnich had decided (and the World President agreed with him) that he couldn’t be dispensed with. Thus, instead of liquidation, Yedrasch had merely undergone a vasectomy to ensure that he could not defile the future blood of True Man.

An oak-panelled door opened. “Colonel Hutt is here, Leader,” Limnich’s secretary told him.

Limnich nodded curtly. Titan-Colonel Hutt entered. Both men gave the hooked-arm salute, then Limnich sat down.

“About the question of public information, Leader.…”

Limnich nodded again. “I’ve made a decision. The average man’s intelligence is too limited to be able to comprehend the whole truth all at once. The public announcements are to give a more restricted idea of the nature of time: they will speak of an attack from the future, where the alien interventionists have established their second attempt to settle the Earth.”

“In other words, the public is to understand the matter as we ourselves did until recently,” Brask added. “Later, when they’ve been further educated, the full facts can be made clear.”

“I understand,” Titan-Colonel Hutt said.

“There’s one other point,” Limnich resumed. “The emergency, the greatest that has ever faced mankind, will entail a big political crisis. All political work must be intensified. Dissident groups must be totally nullified. To this end, I order you to apprise the Panhumanic League of all the facts at our disposal, through our secret contacts.”

“All the facts, Leader?” Hutt echoed in dismay. “But why?”

“What better way could there be of pulling the ground from under their feet?” Limnich said, his face fish-cold and unsmiling. “It’s a certain bet that the larger part of the League will defect and come over to us, once they know the truth.”

A look of dawning realisation came over the other’s face. “Correct, Leader. That is so.” He was reassured to see that the old fox had not lost his grip, that Limnich’s sense of manoeuvre was as subtle as ever.

Limnich, for his part, fought to snatch his mind back from the edge of madness. His brain filled yet again with a dreadful, incomprehensible vision of two onrushing time-systems encountering one another. He hadn’t even begun to think how this looked from the aspect of the Earth Mother, a deity in whom he believed without question. He didn’t even want to think about it.

“Thank God we discovered the truth in time!” he repeated in a low voice. But had that done any good? Could anything save them?

The Approach to the future-Earth aliens was necessarily more incautious than that planned for the Titans. The task before Wang Yat-Sen and Li Li-San, the two young philosophers selected for it by the Prime Minister, was a delicate one.

Firstly they had to convince the lemur-like creatures that they were not from the civilisation that was threatening them. This was no easy matter, since the aliens were, naturally, insensitive to fine differences of physique. But already the previous expedition had decoded the aliens’ language (in fact, several languages) from electromagnetic transmissions and had prepared language-course tapes. Consequently Wang Yat-Sen and Li Li-San were fairly competent in the hesitant, chittering tongue, though their pronunciation brought them barely within the bounds of intelligibility.

Eventually the aliens were, it seemed, persuaded, and the two young men were taken from the prison-hospital (actually a biological research station) where they had been kept with the other human prisoners (and what they had seen being done to those prisoners was most distasteful).

Now they sat in a conically shaped room of bare stone. The aliens seemed to go in for bare stone, as well as for conical shapes in building, and all the doors were triangular, too low for a man to go through without bending. The furnishings of the room were sparse, made of square-cut unpolished timber and board. The aliens’ technological achievements were not matched by any interest in interior decoration.

But the two individuals who faced the young men across the rough plank table were among the highest authorities in their society. Wang Yat-Sen gazed at them calmly, fascinated as usual by their nervous sensitivity. Anything was enough to set their fragile bodies to quivering, and their fine nose-whiskers to twitching and vibrating.

“And why should you make us this offer?” chittered one. “Why should you go to such lengths to help us? How are we to know that this is not some devious trick?”

“To take your points one at a time,” Li Li-San answered, “our readiness to give assistance merely demonstrates the good regard of one intelligent species for another. Your second point: guarantees of good faith can be arranged. Our offer applies also to the other, human civilisation. If you both agree, then you’ll be cooperating with one another instead of fighting.”

“We will, if you wish, take your ambassadors to our ISS,” Wang Yat-Sen put in equably. “Then they’ll see for themselves.”

The lemur-creature ignored this last. “You expect us to retreat from the enemy? To abandon our planet?” he said, his vowel-sounds indicating considerable passion. His limbs were trembling visibly, like those of a mortally wounded animal. “It’s our planet, ours since the beginning of time. We’ll defend it to the last.”

The other lemur-creature joined in. “Never do we retreat from an enemy. A few days ago they – your biological cousins – launched an attack upon two of our large cities, using weapons, which, judging by the intensity of the energy produced, relied upon the fusion of light atomic nuclei. Our cities were utterly destroyed and there is radioactive waste for distances all around. But we’ll strike back! We’ll strike back!”

Both men from Retort City, brought up to regard everything in a detached and clinical manner, were puzzled. “But surely you realise that your emotional attitude toward your historical habitat is inappropriate in the current situation,” Wang Yat-Sen put forward. “Your ‘enemy’, as you put it, is merely reacting in the same manner, and to attacks you’ve made on him. Evacuation is the only hope for either of you.”

“We don’t accept that it’s the only hope,” chittered the lemur-leader shrilly. “We know that enemy life-forms lie in our future, and that if they continue to exist, we’ll perish. Therefore – we’ll deal with it!”

“But how?” Li Li-San asked simply.

“We’re developing viruses destructive to all life in the enemy biota,” the lemur said. “We’ll sow these viruses on a massive scale. By the time our time-system reaches the projected collision point, all trace of life in the enemy biosphere will be gone. There’ll be nothing to obstruct the passage of our own time-wave.”

Glancing at one another, Wang Yat-Sen and Li Li-San saw from each other’s expressions that they both concluded that their mission had failed. They stood up.

“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?”

“Layella, get out of the apartment right away.”

Alarm showed on her features. “What?”

“Get out of there this minute. Don’t wait to take anything – just as much money as you can snatch up.” He thought for a moment. “Meet me under the clock in Kotsin Square. Have you got that?”

Her face became pale, but calm. “Yes.”

“Right.” He killed the screen, and a moment later was pacing the busy street, his mind racing, trying to figure the situation from all angles. They’d have to leave Sannan, and quickly. They could go – my God, where? Everything was in turmoil. Already the networks would be breaking open; there’d be almost nothing left.

He took a tubeway and came up some distance from Kotsin Square. Making a rough calculation of how long it would take Layella to get there, he walked slowly the rest of the way. When he arrived she was already waiting, looking nervous and fidgety, dressed in a drab brown coat.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking at him with round, Amhrak eyes.

“We’ll go to Jorb Gandatt,” he said. “He’ll help us.” Some of the League was bound to survive, he told himself. There were bound to be some diehards, like himself and Jorb, who wouldn’t surrender. Enough would pull through so that some kind of organisation remained.

He felt sure that Jorb was trustworthy and that he’d be able to help them. The Sannan circuit (his own circuit, he thought ruefully, the one he commanded) would be entirely blown, but Jorb didn’t belong to it; he was one of Sobrie’s contacts with the outside. He might be able to tell them where to go to be safe.

She took his arm as they crossed the square. At first he didn’t notice that the entrance to Kotsin Square seemed a little crowded, or the grey van, without any insignia or designation, that was parked unobtrusively to one side of the square. But just before they entered the throng they were both taken roughly by the arms and propelled toward the vehicle.

The back of the van was open. Inside sat a pudgy little man who had been scanning the square’ through a set of periscopes. Sobrie realised, with a sudden jump of his heart, that they’d fallen into one of those Titan devices one heard about but never met: a roving racial street-check. And the pudgy man was that half-legendary figure, the dev expert: one who could tell a dev or a part-dev at a glance.

The dev expert looked Layella up and down as though she were something dirty. “She’s one all right,” he said in an acid, slightly nasal voice. “I don’t know how she’s got away with it so long.”

Sobrie gave a strangled cry. Whether he’d have had the nerve to use his s-grenade, thus killing Layella too, he’d never know. Because two plainclothes Titans held him with arms outspread, while one reached under his shirt and yanked out the deadly device.

“Interesting,” murmured Limnich. “And Leard Ascar is still out there, you say?”

“Yes, Leader,” said Heshke.

“Hmm. Of course, we’ve always known there was a possibility of human settlements existing out among the stars – some of them perhaps dev. There are indications of interstellar flight in the records of the Pundish Aeon – but you know that, of course, Citizen Heshke.”

“Yes, Leader,” Heshke said again, slightly embarrassed. Planetary Leader Limnich was, as Heshke had found during meetings with him earlier in his career, obsessive about anything bearing on the history of True Man. His knowledge of archaeological detail came close to challenging Heshke’s own.

Heshke faced Limnich across the latter’s massive desk, and was spoken to respectfully by him. Hueh Su-Mueng was also present, but was forced to sit in the corner, flanked by two guards. Planetary Leader Limnich cast him a disdainful glance every now and then, plainly disliking to have the dev in his office.

“And what do you make of this plan of theirs, Heshke? What’s their ulterior motive?”

“I sincerely believe they have no ulterior motive, Leader,” Heshke told him frankly. “They evidently have no designs on Earth, indeed no direct interest in our planet at all. Strange though it may seem, they’re prompted simply by the urge to help a neighbour in distress.”

“The fiendishly clever Chink,” Limnich muttered audibly, nodding to himself as if with some inner satisfaction.

“Yes, I’ve heard the phrase before,” Heshke said stiffly.

Behind Limnich stood Colonel Brask, looking on the scene much as Heshke recalled him doing on that day in Titan-Major Brourne’s office. The looks he gave Hueh, however, displayed undisguised loathing.

“And how did you find it, living with… the Chinks?” Brask asked him.

Heshke squirmed uncomfortably. “They are… not like us,” he admitted.

“Indeed not.”

“I was impressed, however, by how much they could help us,” Heshke added.

Brask gave a smile of wintry sarcasm, and Limnich replied: “Whatever their intentions were, their scheme has come unstuck this time. Surely you’re aware, Citizen Heshke, that we’ll never give up our efforts to hold Earth for True Man. The son doesn’t desert his mother, even to save his own life – and no matter how dire the peril to them both. We’re building up our power to defend our birthright. That defence will be total – desperate, perhaps – but overwhelming. Titan-Colonel Brask here, as it happens, is in charge of the formation of the Titanium Legions of Kronos, named after the ancient god of time, that will enable us – already are enabling us – to strike across the centuries. He can tell you that we’re not beaten yet.”

“But you know the nature of the catastrophe that’s coming!” Heshke exploded. “It’s a natural catastrophe, not due to any living enemy. How are you going to deal with that?”

“We already have a plan,” Brask told him loftily.

“And what’s that? I’m fascinated!” Despite being in the presence of such charismatically high rank, Heshke couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Our aim is to effect the total annihilation of the enemy’s biosphere. By means of a massive nuclear attack we’ll eradicate all life, so that not a microbe remains. Their time-system is associated with the existence of life: consequently, by removing that time-wave, which will die with the death of alien life, we remove the impediment to our own existence.”

Heshke twisted around to look questioningly at Hueh Su-Mueng. But the Retort City technician merely shrugged. He turned back to Brask.

“If you’re letting off thousands of fusion explosions —”

“Hundreds of thousands,” Brask interrupted tonelessly.

“— if you’re doing that four centuries in the future, what happens when our time reaches that point? Aren’t we going to be headed into all those explosions?”

Brask smiled faintly. “That’s one of the peculiar things about time. By the ‘time’ we get there the effects will have died away – provided we do succeed in cancelling out the enemy time-front. If we don’t, it won’t matter anyway.” Noting Heshke’s incomprehension, he added: “I know it sounds odd, but that’s how time works, apparently.”

Heshke looked again at Hueh, who nodded. “He’s quite right – provided the reversed time-system were to be destroyed.”

“Can you now doubt our determination?” Limnich said in his low, fruity voice. “The coming struggle may be the acme of our glory. Let all who come against us know—” He clenched his fists spasmodically, and Heshke thought he actually saw him, as in fact Limnich had done many times, draw himself back from the edge of madness.

Are we an insane race? Heshke wondered darkly. Perhaps so. Perhaps it’s good that all is lost. And, in those very thoughts, he thought he detected then the emergence of the death-wish that Blare Oblomot had once claimed pervaded Titan mentality.

“Thank you for seeing us, Planetary Leader,” he said humbly.

“Your adventure has been so extraordinary that I could do no less,” Limnich responded with a touch of graciousness. He rang a little gold bell that lay on his desk. “Escort these two back to Bupolbloc,” he ordered to the extra guards who came in.

In the subterranean levels of Bupolbloc, as Heshke and Hueh were being taken to their adjacent cells, the archaeologist suddenly pulled up short. Coming along the corridor, also under escort, was someone who, after a momentary start of false recognition, he realised was a person he had met but once: Blare Oblomot’s brother, Sobrie.

“Oblomot!” he exclaimed.

The other looked at him for a moment, and then smiled bleakly. Their guards made to goad both of them along, but Heshke turned angrily. “I demand to be allowed to talk to this man! I’m not exactly a prisoner, you know!”

“True,” said one of the guards indifferently. “Citizen Heshke is in custodial detention only. And he has the ear of the Planetary Leader.”

The guards eyed one another for a moment, and then one of them pushed open a door. “In here.” And because they didn’t want to split the escort, Hueh Su-Mueng was prodded inside too. The guards stood by the door, eyeing their wards, swinging their batons.

Heshke found it easy to ignore them. After some diffidence he explained how he had seen Blare die, but Sobrie merely nodded dismally: he already knew.

In a rush of words Sobrie told him everything that had happened: his involvement with the Panhumanic League, his part-Amhrak girl friend, their arrest and how they’d been brought here to Bupolbloc in Pradna.

“They’re trying to make a deal with me,” he finished bitterly. “They want to mop up the Panhumanic League once and for all. If I put the finger on enough League members who haven’t so far defected they’ll let Layella live on the Amhrak reservation instead of… putting her down like a dog.”

“Could you do that?”

“I could, but… oh, God.…”

Heshke gave a sad sigh. “Well, at least they show a trace of civilised conduct,” he said gently. “They could have used third degree.”

Sobrie looked at him, startled, and then laughed incredulously. “You don’t think they have scruples, do you? It’s a matter of time, that’s all! They’re so busy now that the torture facilities at Bupolbloc Two are being overworked. They don’t want to wait while I stand in line!”

One other item of deference Heshke had wrung from the Titans was that he and Hueh were in connected cells, so that they could talk to one another. They held a brief conversation after leaving Sobrie Oblomot.

“I feel sorry for them both,” Heshke said. “They’re in a hopeless position… the Titans will do just what they like with them. This is an evil world, Su-Mueng.”

“All worlds have their evils,” Su-Mueng observed.

“Perhaps. At any rate, I’m too old for the kind of role I’ve been expected to play lately. I’ve done what I can; now I just want to be left alone.” Heshke was lying on his pallet. He closed his eyes.

“This plan your friends have won’t work,” Su-Mueng told him. “They make a basic mistake: the time-wave isn’t dependent on organic life, it’s the other way around. Biological organisation is a by-product of a time-system, not a cause of it.”

“So?”

“It will make no difference if they destroy an entire biosphere: the time-wave will come rolling on just the same.”

“Just so,” said Heshke faintly. “What can I do about it?”

Moments later he was asleep.

Although it was late into the night, Limnich was still at his desk, poring over the genealogical charts of Titan officers who had come under suspicion. Racial vigilance within Earth’s elite force was something in which he took a personal interest.

Outside, the murmur of traffic had lapsed into silence, broken only by the drone of an occasional car, and all was quiet. But suddenly Limnich jerked bolt upright and gasped with shock.

There, standing before him in the half-darkened office, was the dev Chink Heshke had brought back with him from space.

Limnich wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to penetrate the building uninvited; the Chink seemed to have materialised out of thin air. He snatched up a pistol that always lay on a shelf under the lip of his desk, and pointed it at the intruder’s stomach with trembling fingers.

“How in the Mother’s name did you get in here?” he rasped.

“By being fiendishly clever,” Su-Mueng said with a smile, remembering Limnich’s earlier remark.

In point of fact his entrance had been made without the least difficulty. For while the Titans had made a thorough search of his person, they had failed to find a number of gadgets which had been strapped to his body in past time. Phased one minute into the past, these had been quite undetectable. To make one available, Su-Mueng merely brought it forward into the present.

Chief among these gadgets was a compact personal time-displacer, like the larger, clumsier version he had used to escape from the Production Retort. He had phased himself one minute back in time, sprung the lock tumblers on the door of his cell, and simply walked out of Bupolbloc. He had made his way here to Limnich’s office, walked unseen past guards and secretaries, and once he was in Limnich’s presence phased himself back into normative time.

How to explain this to Limnich, to whom his sudden appearance must smack of magic? “I have a device which renders me invisible,” he offered casually. “Please don’t be alarmed, Planetary Leader – I’m not here to do you harm. I have a proposal to make, which I hope will work to our mutual advantage.”

Limnich kept his gun trained on the dev, trying to control the revulsion that being in the presence of the creature caused him. His free hand strayed to the golden bell that would summon help. But then his sense of calculation overcame his natural feelings. He withdrew his hand and leaned back, looking up into the svelte young Chink’s repugnantly inhuman face.

“Go on,” he purred.

“Your civilisation is in deep trouble, Planetary Leader,” Su-Mueng said easily. “Your planned hydrogen bomb attack on the future-Earth aliens may destroy an enemy, but that will be all. The basic problem will remain: hydrogen bombs won’t wipe out a powerful time-stream.”

Limnich listened carefully to his words, and appeared to take them seriously.

“Indeed? Well, we’ll have made progress, nevertheless. And we still have fifty years, perhaps a hundred years, in which to deal with the situation.…” His words trailed off broodingly, and his eyes left Su-Mueng’s face. He gazed down at his desk, apparently forgetting the gun in his hand.

“Let me tell you something of ISS Retort City,” Su-Mueng said. “It has a social system which is inhuman, unjust and cruel. Do you know why I was chosen for this mission to Earth? Because I’m a renegade, an embarrassment to the masters of my city. They were glad of the chance to get rid of me – because I’ll do anything to change things as they are there.”

Limnich gave an explosive grunt. “They get everywhere!”

“Hah?” Su-Mueng inclined his head inquiringly.

“Subversives. Like worms in the woodwork. All societies are riddled with them. But how does this concern me? Be brief; I have much work to do.”

“Don’t you realise,” Su-Mueng said softly, “what an asset Retort City could be to you? Its industrial capacity is enormous: it could double the output of your whole planet. Besides this, you have much to gain from Retort technology. Our control over the forces of time are far in advance of your own.” He held up a smooth ovoid object that fitted into the palm of his hand. “How do you think I was able to make myself invisible and enter your office unseen? I’ll show you how to invade and occupy Retort City if, in return, you’ll wipe out its social system and allow a more equitable one to replace it.”

Limnich finally put down his gun. “How could we invade it?” he asked, his eyes bulging behind his round lenses. “I understand it lies some light-years away.”

“Not only that, it’s removed in time as well. But you have rocket-driven spaceships, do you not? They’ll suffice. I’ll show your technicians how to make space-time drives for them – I am,” he added incidentally, “a fully trained engineer. With perhaps thirty or forty such ships, carrying a few thousand well-armed men, the city could be taken.”

The Planetary Leader became deeply thoughtful, considering this remarkable offer from all angles. A feeling of excitement grew in him as he realised the vast benefits that could accrue.

Hueh Su-Mueng’s enormous treachery didn’t surprise him in the least. The creature was a Chink, following his natural tendencies. Also, Rond Heshke’s report on the dev city confirmed his claims.

“Very well, it’s agreed,” he said abruptly. “You’ll have what you ask for – provided things go as you promise.”

A look of triumph came suddenly over the dev’s face, quickly to be followed by his usual blandness.

“Now that matters have reached this stage, perhaps I might add one more condition?” he said. “Rond Heshke, whom I’ve come to look upon as a good man, is saddened by the plight of two friends of his who are being held in Bupolbloc: Sobrie Oblomot and Layella Frauk. Instead of having them put to death, allow them to live on the reservation as he hopes for them.”

“What? You dare to make petty conditions?” Limnich glowered to find himself being dictated to by this subhuman. “Do you think we depend on your goodwill? More of this and I’ll simply torture cooperation out of you.” And the ugly look on his face showed that he meant what he said.

“Remember, we are not as you are,” Su-Mueng said coldly. “Perhaps I can withstand torture. And have you not asked yourself why I’m doing all this? I alone of all my people seem to know the meaning of strong human relationships. That’s why I feel for the man and the girl in Bupolbloc – they have such a relationship. Such a bond. There was a bond between my father and myself, and he was put to death for it. That is why I’m doing this – because I am a son to my father. You can understand that, can’t you? Your people aren’t strangers to these feelings.”

Limnich didn’t answer immediately. But for the first time the hint of a smile, even of amicability, came to his features.

“Yes,” he said sardonically, “I can understand that.”

“There’s one other small problem,” Su-Mueng said with a frown, a few days later.

“And what’s that?” Limnich leaned back, strangely at ease. In spite of the physical revulsion he still felt for the Chink (at first he’d been obliged to stifle an impulse to vomit), alongside with that revulsion he found that he derived a perverse pleasure from their dealings together. It was spicy, like having truck with the devil.

“The ship that brought us here is still in orbit around Earth. It would certainly spot our armada.”

“Can’t we destroy it?”

“Possibly, but it’s doubtful. And if we failed, it would return immediately to warn Retort City. By the time we got there, we’d find them prepared.”

“Then we need to get it out of the way. I suggest you contact the ship and tell it to return to base forthwith.”

“They wouldn’t go without either myself or Rond Heshke. That would be against all protocol.” For once Su-Mueng was at a loss.

“So? Send Heshke,” said Limnich impatiently. He didn’t like to be upset by such details.

“Apparently he doesn’t want to go either.”

“Hmm.” Limnich pondered. “Can he contact this ship?”

“He could if I gave him my communicator.”

“Good. Then I’ll make him want to go. You asked for some friends of his to be sent to a dev reservation, didn’t you? Well, they will be – and he can join them.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Planetary Leader gave a humourless smile. “The dev reservations are to be closed down within the next few weeks, their inmates liquidated. I’ll see that he gets an advance warning. That should send him screaming for your orbiting spaceship.”

Su-Mueng was uneasy. “I don’t like using him as a pawn.…”

“All men are pawns,” Limnich purred. “When he leaves for the reservation, give him your communicator. Urge him to call the ship to take him off, so he can make a report to your city on his mission. But no hint of what we’re really about, mind.” He eyed Su-Mueng speculatively. “Maybe you Chinks aren’t so clever after all.”