Collision with Chronos

1

Rond Heshke wondered if there would ever be victory without arrogance. Banners, everywhere banners.

On the raised forecourt of Bupolbloc, world headquarters of the Bureau of Politics, they hung to form a gigantic grill, like an array of sails a hundred feet tall. Even though the last of the wars against the deviant subspecies – the campaign against the Amhraks – had been won twenty years before, these banners were still redolent of military glory. And still there were the annual parades, the rousing speeches, the braying documentaries on the vidcast.

The War to Win Earth: that was what they had called it. But now Earth was won – irrevocably won for True Man – and privately Heshke thought it was time the paean of triumph was played down.

He crossed the forecourt, intimidated by the immense red-and-black canvases, which swallowed up all visitors like ants. In point of fact Bupolbloc was the most impressive of the many fine buildings in the administrative sector of Pradna, soaring up for over a thousand feet of serried glass frontages, and it exuded a sense of power that soon overshadowed Heshke’s disrespectful thoughts, making them seem sacrilegious. He entered the spacious foyer and checked his destination on the office plan.

He took an elevator to the twentieth floor and then walked through seemingly endless corridors. All around him passed the tall, handsome men and women of the Titanium Legions, the self-styled Guardians of Earth who currently had succeeded in attaining political supremacy over humanity. Wearing sleek uniforms in black and gold, all of impeccable biological pedigree, they cast disdainful glances at Heshke which he chose not to notice. He accepted that any military elite was apt to revel in its own superiority; he was, after all, but a paunchy, middle-aged civilian who, insofar as anyone could these days, took no interest in politics. His concern was with the past, not the future.

The twentieth floor lay in the precinct of the Bureau of Propaganda and the office he had been summoned to was the Archaeological Office – Bureprop (Arch.). He arrived in good time and was kept waiting only ten minutes by the pretty, coolly efficient secretary before being ushered in.

Titan-Major Brourne rose to greet him, smiling jovially.

“Good to see you, Citizen Heshke! Sit down, won’t you?”

Behind Brourne stood a younger man Heshke did not know: a pale, supercilious-looking captain with a deformed left eyelid – an unlikely defect to find in a Titan, and which gave him a disconcerting, quizzical expression. Heshke could only suppose that he made up for the deformity in other qualities, or he would never have been permitted to enter the ranks of the Titans.

“This is Titan-Captain Brask, Citizen,” Brourne said by way of introduction. “I’ve called him to our meeting for reasons which will become plain later.” He sat down and leaned back, placing his large hands squarely on the table. Brourne was a solid-looking man, somewhat too broad for his height, and his tub-like bulkiness was accentuated by the crossed black belts of his uniform. He had thinning brown hair that had once been thick and luxurious, brown eyes and a face that, having seen much and enjoyed much, was now beginning to soften under a new career of desk-work. Heshke preferred him brisk and businesslike rather than jovial, as now. His cordiality always was an introduction to something else.

Heshke’s gaze drifted to an archaeological chart that covered the wall behind the two men. It was a good professional piece of work, even if too much biased in favour of the particular interpretations the Titans put upon historical findings. It clearly showed the periodic rise and fall of civilisation, the persistent pattern of all human history. He was still staring at it when Titan-Major Brourne spoke again.

“Well, Citizen, and how is progress at the ruins?”

“I can’t speak of any new developments, if that’s what you mean.” Heshke fumbled uneasily with his briefcase.

The Titan-Major’s voice became heavy and unaccommodating. “What you’re trying to tell me is that there’s been no progress.”

“You can’t always depend on progress to follow a straight line,” Heshke answered defensively. “The first thing to learn about the alien interventionists is how complete their destruction was, how nearly all their traces were erased. In a sense we are lucky that sites like the Hathar Ruins exist at all.”

Brourne rose from his desk and paced to and fro, his face becoming serious. “Victory is ours, but it must be consolidated,” he intoned. “The history of the Fall and of the Dark Period must be fully researched and documented, if we are going to be able to give future generations a correct historical perspective.”

Titan-Captain Brask continued to gaze on the scene as if from some superior viewpoint while Brourne held forth. “We’ve beaten the deviant subspecies – but they were always the lesser threat. I don’t have to tell you what the greater threat is, or how crucial your own area of research is, Citizen Heshke. You know just what the nature of a future struggle would be; we must never again allow ourselves to become vulnerable to an attack from space.”

He stopped pacing and looked directly at Heshke once more. “Our present ignorance is unacceptable. It has been officially decreed that progress in the research into the alien interventionists is required.”

Heshke did not know how to answer him. He wished he was back at the alien ruins, quietly going about his work with his colleagues, not here in this office being browbeaten by Titan officers.

“In that case new sites will have to be unearthed,” he opined. “I would go so far as to say we’ve already got most of what we can from Hathar.” How much can they expect me to deduce, he thought, from empty stone ruins and a few nonhuman skeletons? It really was extraordinary how few artifacts had survived.

For the first time the younger Titan spoke. His voice was precise and condescending.

“We do not rely only on your efforts, Citizen. We have our own archaeological teams – and they, let me say, are producing better results than you are.”

Yes, they would, Heshke thought. Because the Titans already had an ideology, a creed. It was easy to dig up a few remains and recruit them in support of already constructed doctrines. But Heshke thought of himself as a scientist and a scholar, not as an ideologist, and he took facts simply as facts. As far as the alien interventionists went there was altogether too little information to form a complete picture.

Oh, the broad outlines were clear enough, all right. About eight hundred years ago the powerful and mature classical civilisation had suffered a total, cataclysmic collapse. The subsequent Dark Period had lasted nearly four centuries, and only since then had civilisation been built anew.

But it was also evident that another civilisation, not of Earth, had established itself here side by side with the human one sometime during the past thousand years. It also had been wiped out – but much, much more completely. That a civilisation could be eradicated so completely was puzzling. The actual age of the ruins it had left behind it was still in dispute, but to the ideologues of the Titanium Legions the inference was unavoidable – the old human civilisation had died in a gigantic struggle to save Earth from the intruders. Though it had succeeded in its mission, the effort had been too much for it and had left it too weak to survive.

The argument was plausible. The alien remains showed every sign of having been destroyed in furious warfare, and nearly everyone accepted that the war between the two races had taken place. But as for the second premise… Heshke’s eyes strayed back to the archaeological chart on the wall. The collapse of classical civilisation was hardly a unique event in history. Rather there had been a whole series of such collapses at intervals separated by about two millennia, as if human civilisation were inherently incapable of supporting itself, time and time again falling under its own weight. Some extremists among the Titans attributed this pattern to successive waves of alien invasion, but there was no evidence to support the idea.

And neither, despite exhaustive efforts on the part of Heshke and numerous colleagues, was there really decisive evidence to show that the last, classical civilisation had in fact disappeared under the onslaught of alien attack. To Heshke’s mind the picture was more one of a rapid internal decline covering about a century and culminating in final violent collapse. Furthermore, there was an inexplicable lack of reference to the aliens in most of the records so far unearthed. Nevertheless he found himself having to accept the Interventionist Theory, with some reservations, even if only on the grounds of probability. After all, the aliens had been there, and they might have used weapons whose effects were not now discernible.

He hesitated, then opened his briefcase and took out a set of glossy photographs. “I wasn’t sure whether or not to show you these. They’re quite interesting in a way.…”

He passed the photographs across the desk. Brourne and Brask bent to inspect them. They were pictures, taken from various angles, of the alien ruins where he had his camp.

“These came into my hands a short while ago,” he explained diffidently. “They were passed on to me by a colleague making a study of the old town of Jejos – it’s due for demolition, you know. We think they were taken about three hundred years back, probably by an amateur historian of the time. At first we thought they would be instructive; however.…”

He dipped into his briefcase again and passed over more photographs. “These are modern pictures, taken from the same angles for comparison.”

Brourne looked from one batch to the other in puzzlement. “So?”

Heshke leaned across the desk. “See this conical tower here? Even today it’s in fairly good shape, as you can see. Yet in the old photograph – the one three hundred years old – it’s missing, except for a crumbled base.”

Brourne snorted. “That’s impossible.”

“Yes, obviously,” agreed Heshke. “There are other anomalies too – crumbled walls, generally deteriorated stonework; in fact if we were to believe these photographs it would mean that the ruins are in better condition – are – newer! – today than they were three hundred years ago.”

“So what do you make of that?”

Heshke shrugged. “Apparently, for some reason, the pictures have been touched up and generally faked to make the ruins seem older than they were.”

“And why would anyone want to do that?”

“I haven’t even the beginning of an idea. But that’s what must have happened. There’s no other explanation.”

“Obviously.” Brourne’s voice was sarcastic, and Heshke felt stupid for having raised the matter at all. “And that would seem to negate their historical value,” the Titan-Major continued, staring intently at the pictures. Finally he handed them to Brask. “Have copies made of all these,” he said.

The fakery, Heshke reminded himself, was extremely well-done. The old yellow prints gave him quite an eerie feeling.

Brourne coughed and returned his attention to Heshke. “We are wondering if you have sufficient enthusiasm for the task that has been entrusted to you?” he asked, sending a chill down Heshke’s spine. “Perhaps you fail to appreciate the urgency of what confronts us. Remember that the research you’re doing has more than one motive. There is the need for scientific knowledge, of course – the need to know as much as possible about the great war our ancestors fought with the aliens, so as to give our political attitudes a firm historical basis. But there is also another reason. Already the aliens have tried to steal Earth once: who knows when they might try again? We have to know where they came from, we have to know whether they might still be lurking out there in space. We have to know about their weapons.”

Brask entered the conversation again. Into his icy blue eyes came a glint of steel, making their oddness all the more striking. “Have you heard the latest theories about how the deviant subspecies arose? It has always been a mystery as to why they should arise when they did, when the natural course of evolution is quite plainly in the direction of pure-blooded True Man. Radioactivity from warfare cannot be the answer, because the nuclear weapons used in the classical era were radiologically clean. Well, it has recently been discovered that the Earth’s magnetic field wards off high-powered particles coming in from outer space. If this field were interfered with so as to allow the passage of these particles the rate of biological mutation on Earth would increase to an unnatural level. Such a situation is consistent with the growth of deviant species.”

Heshke frowned. “But could Earth’s magnetism be interfered with?” he asked doubtfully.

“Theoretically – yes. We don’t know precisely how, but we’re working on it, naturally. I think there can be little doubt what happened – the deviant subspecies are the products of an alien weapon whose object was to destroy our genetic purity – to pervert nature itself!”

Brourne nodded his agreement. “We know for a fact that not only man was involved. Several breeds of dog existing today, for instance, were not in existence a thousand years ago.”

Heshke ignored this dubious item of reasoning. “If it could be established that Earth’s magnetic field did undergo changes at the appropriate time, then that would largely substantiate the theory,” he ventured. “But even then – could it not equally have been one of our own weapons that did it?”

Titan-Captain Brask’s response to this suggestion was indignant. “Would True Man have jeopardised the blood of the future? The idea is absurd, inconceivable. The interference can only have come from a nonhuman source, and the enemy that produced it may still exist, preparing himself for a fresh assault. We may yet be called upon to defend not only Earth, but our very genes!” And he fixed Heshke with an icy stare.

“And so there you have it, Citizen Heshke,” Brourne resumed in a tone of deadly seriousness. “Now do you see why our archaeological work is of such importance?”

Wearily Heshke nodded his understanding. The endless ideologising of the Titans fatigued him, yet he had to admit the urgency of their demands. Unpleasant though their practices sometimes were, they were a necessary force.

And at the moment a chill more penetrating than their veiled threats had entered his loins. The picture of alien fingers meddling with man’s genetic heritage was a vision of pure horror.

“You’re right, absolutely right,” he said in subdued tones. “We need to call on all our resources to meet a threat as big as this. Yet to be honest I don’t see what I can do that I’m not already doing. The Hathar Ruins are just about played out. I don’t think I can draw any more fresh conclusions without fresh evidence.”

The two Titans glanced at one another. Brourne nodded, and instantly the atmosphere seemed to relax.

“We’re aware of your difficulties,” the Titan-Major said, “and we have some news for you. In another part of the world a discovery has been made that you don’t yet know about. We want you to take part in a field trip.”

A feeling of relief swept over Heshke. He was not going to be purged after all!

Traditionally suspicious of everyone, the Titans had been baiting him, sounding out his attitudes to make sure he was the right man for the job. Evidently it was something they couldn’t use one of their own people for – Heshke was well aware that they would have liked to dispense with the services of civilians altogether, but they couldn’t. Titan scientists, if left to their own resources, too often seemed to fall down in the last analysis, tripped up by their attachment to prejudicial theories. Heshke was the foremost authority in his field and they needed him and men like him.

Often he had wondered what he would do if, appallingly, he was offered a Titan commission. To accept or to refuse both had the aspect of suicide.

“The trip is extremely unusual in nature,” Brourne continued. “I must warn you that there is a certain degree of danger involved.”

Heshke blinked. “Physical danger?”

“Yes. Not the sort of thing an archaeologist usually has to face, I know, but…” Brourne shrugged, waving his hand casually.

“No, no, not altogether.” Heshke became excited. “As a profession we’re always prepared – unknown regions, and all that. Where will we be going? Into a dev reservation?”

“I’m sorry, the details are top secret at the moment. You’ll be briefed in good time.”

It had to be a dev reservation, Heshke thought. Where on a conquered, controlled planet could there be risk to life and limb except in one of the special regions where a few surviving deviants were allowed to survive for purposes of study? The Titans must have made an important find there – perhaps a hitherto unknown alien settlement.

“Surely you can give me some indication?” he persisted. “I’d like to have some idea of what to expect.”

Brourne hesitated, an unusual gesture for him. “One of our teams has found an alien artifact in good condition. In working order, in fact. It’s a more significant find than anything else we’ve ever turned up… I’m afraid I can’t tell you more. The truth is I’m not allowed to know much myself. But you must be prepared to be called away on short notice.”

He came to his feet again, signalling that the interview was at an end. “Well there it is, Citizen, I’m glad to see you so enthusiastic. I hope we can depend on you to do your damnedest for us… for humanity.…”

Heshke rose, made a curt bow, and left.