Dinosaur Beach

33

“Interesting,” the Karg said. “Most interesting. But…” He looked across at Mellia. She hung in the straps, utterly still.

“She died,” the Karg said. “A pity.” He looked at me and saw something in my eyes. He made a move, and I put out a finger of mind-force and locked him in his tracks.

“Sucker,” I said.

He looked at me, and I watched him realizing the magnitude of the blunder he had made. I enjoyed that, but not as much as I should have, savoring the moment of victory.

“It was your plan from the beginning,” he said. “Yes, that’s clear now. You maneuvered me very cleverly, Mr. Ravel. I underestimated you badly. Your bargaining position is now much different, of course. Naturally. I recognize realities and am prepared to deal realistically—”

“Sucker,” I said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’ll release you at once,” the Karg said, “establish you in an enclave tailored to your specifications. I will also procure a satisfactory alter ego to replace the female—”

“Forget it, Karg. You’re not going to do anything. You just went out of business.’

“You are human,” the Karg told me somberly. “You will respond to the proper reward. Name it.”

“I’ve got what I want,” I told him. “Six coordinates, Karg, for a fix in six dimensions.”

Terrible things happened behind those ten-thousand-power cybernetic eyes.

“It cannot be your intention to destroy the Time engine!”

I smiled at him. But I was wasting my time. You can’t torture a machine.

“Be rational, Mr. Ravel. Consider the consequences. if you tamper with the forces of the engine, the result will be a detonation of entropic energy that will reduce the Final Authority to its component quanta—”

“I’m counting on it.”

“—and yourself with it!”

“I’ll take the chance.”

He struck at me then. It wasn’t a bad effort, considering what he was up against. The thought-thrust of his multiple brain lanced through the outer layers of my shielding, struck in almost to contact distance before I contained it and thrust it aside.

Then I reached, warped the main conduits of the Time-engine back on themselves.

Ravening energy burst outward across six dimensions, three of space and three of time. The building dissolved around me in a tornado of temporal disintegration. I rode the crest like a bodysurfer planing ahead of a tidal wave. Energy beat at me, numbing me, blinding me, deafening me. Time roared over me like a cataract. I drowned in eons. And at last I washed ashore on the beach of eternity.