The Overlords of War

Chapter 36

He made a preliminary time jump to obtain two space suits. It would be best to organize the getaway in two stages. He decided to step in one minute before the moment of the actual escape. That would allow him to spy out the defenses and sow the confusion essential to the second phase. He had little trouble in slipping into one of the maintenance tents, but, as he had expected, night had brought no relaxation in the vigilance of Veran’s camp. He hardly had time to seize two suit packs and remount before the alleys were loud with alarms. The tent he had just raided was in a sector of the camp almost diametrically opposite where Corson and Antonella were imprisoned. The first movement of the guards would be to converge on the site of the robbery. They would have no time to rush back the other way.

He jumped a few days into the past, chose a lonely spot, and examined the suits. Satisfied, he decided to proceed to the second phase. He locked in on the proper moment and parked his pegasone next to Veran’s. Among all the commotion no one noticed him. He was wearing a regulation outfit and might have been coming back from patrol. He at once switched on the light inhibitor and ran along the alleys of the camp as quickly as the blurred image of his surroundings afforded by the ultrasound projector would permit. He estimated it would take at least ten seconds for the most quick-witted of the guards to think of doing the same. Which would not get them much further forward, because they had no idea where the attack was coming from. The range of their projectors was reduced and their beams interfered with each other, fogging the images that they did pick up. The officers would probably waste a minute or so convincing their men that they must shut them off because they were useless. That would be plenty of time, provided that Antonella, warned by her precog talent, managed to persuade Corson to cooperate. And he knew she had succeeded.

Everything worked out as he had foreseen. He had blacked over his faceplate so that the other Corson would not recognize him, and communicated only by signs. It was not the moment to introduce another element of confusion into his earlier mind.

They took off into space, now, then leaped across time. Corson made a few swerves to shake off their pursuers, but the other pegasone followed like a guardian angel. Veran’s soldiers did not know their destination and might wander forever through the continuum without chancing on the mausoleum world. What was more, Veran would call off the chase as soon as a patrol informed him that Corson was about to come back.

The mausoleum world… I wonder, Corson said to himself, when I first discovered it!

He had shown himself the way to it. It seemed he had managed to break the Law of Non-regressive Information; he had set up a closed loop. There must be a beginning to everything… or maybe that was simply an illusion? Perhaps, much later, he would come across this planet for the first time and arrange for the information to be fed into the loop. Or did some mysterious bond of which he was at present unaware unite all the possible Corsons? For the moment he dismissed the enigma; he did not possess the data to reach a solution.

At the right spot above the planet he gave instructions to the other pegasone and abandoned it along with Antonella and his double. He himself jumped into the future. He could discern no trace of his earlier visit. That was a good sign. He had been half afraid of meeting himself face to face, or of stumbling on two bleached skeletons.

He climbed down from his pegasone and—not without apprehension-entered the vast and dismal hall. Nothing had changed. He set to work with deliberation. Time was no longer of much account to him.

Cid had been right. Equipment for reanimating the women and endowing them with synthetic personalities was located in an underground annex to the great hall. But the entry was so well hidden that he had to explore the foundations with the help of his pegasone. Operating it was simpler than he had feared it might be. Much of the job was taken care of automatically. Whoever the warlords were who had assembled this monstrous collection, they must like quick work. Very probably they knew even less than Corson about the principles underlying reanimation.

His hands trembled nonetheless when he set about his first test. He had designed a synthetic personality intended to last five seconds. The woman blinked, opened her eyes, uttered a sigh and slumped back into immobility.

The result of the first more serious trial was very unpleasant. A huge statuesque blonde, almost a head taller than himself, leaped up, gave a wordless cry, hurled herself upon him, and caught him in such a bear hug he almost suffocated. He had to knock her out. Shaken, he concluded he had overdone the folliculin.

To give himself a respite he decided to go back and deposit, at the right moment, the ration bag and the metal plate he had left before the mausoleum door. Now, the bit of metal seemed completely smooth. A few experiments convinced him that it must be sensitive to displacements in time. Its component crystals tended to regain their original relationship after a time jump. So the problem was to engrave the key section of the message deeply enough for it to survive several time trips. He did some figuring and set about inscribing the plate. He wondered what would happen if, say, he changed one of the words. Probably nothing; it would be below the timequake threshold. But he preferred not to alter the wording which was so deeply impressed on his memory. The stakes were too high.

There remained the problem of conditioning the pegasone which would take Antonella and his earlier self to Aergistal. He decided on a substitution. He undertook as complete an exchange of data as he could with the beast. He made certain that it would take its riders not merely to Aergistal but to the precise point where he himself recalled being set down. Beyond that he could control the pegasone no further. However, he assumed that under identical conditions the creature would react in an identical manner. The chance of a slip-up would be negligible. Besides, he could doubtless rely on Those of Aergistal to take care of details like that. He conditioned the pegasone to the mere name of Aergistal shouted in a loud voice.

In return he obtained a great deal of information concerning the habits, behavior, and motivations of pegasones. Although the beast’s racial memory had been weakened by captivity, enough came across for Corson to form an impression of its home world. To his great surprise he found that the Monster he had learned to beware of—at least in its wild state—was almost as timid as a rabbit. The image it retained of its original masters, who had long disappeared, was not very clear; plainly, though, it both adored and feared them.

The substitution proceeded without difficulty. Corson took the trouble to swap the harnesses. He did not want the other Corson’s attention alerted by some unnoticed mark on the straps. He laid the ration bag alongside the road and in clear view of the door.

Then he returned to the period at which he had undertaken to revive the warlords’ trophies. He did not know what would happen if he misjudged by a few hours and met himself unexpectedly, but the pegasone’s instincts saved him any worry on that score. The beast refused to take the precise path it had already followed across the continuum; it seemed that it could detect its own presence from a few seconds away, and shied off. In one sense it displayed blind obedience to the Law of Non-regressive Information. Corson preferred not to make it go against its nature.

He resumed the preparation of Veran’s “recruits.” Now he worked frenziedly, eager to complete the job. He was also worried about the chance of being surprised by the warlords and having to settle his account with them. But a few patrols into the future and the near past set his mind partly at rest.

He designed three main types of synthetic personality. Too great a uniformity in the behavior of the women might expose the trick he was playing prematurely. For the same reason he took a random sample of them to avoid the chance of using too many similar physical types. After his first experiments he had intended to make the personalities sexually neutral; in the upshot, despite his reluctance, he did introduce a few feminine characteristics into his programs.

Another question he thought about long and hard was the durability of the personalities. Too short a life might endanger his plan. On the other hand the idea of giving these undead women an over-long existence… Even though he was treating them as mere machines, he was repelled by the thought of their lasting long enough to be exposed to the tender mercies of Veran’s men. He ended up by settling for personalities with a probable duration of forty-eight hours plus or minus ten percent. After that time Veran’s recruits would lose all semblance of life and without adequate supportive facilities would die beyond recall. If the situation worked out as he hoped, it would all be over in a few hours, if not in a matter of minutes. If it didn’t proceed that quickly, Veran would have time to regain control over his men even if it meant ruthlessly wiping out his “recruits,” and the plan would fail.

At this point Corson was wondering how many bodies to revive. Too limited a number might lead to arguments among the men, who would probably appeal to their leader for arbitration. Too large an invasion, apart from posing problems of transportation which Corson had not yet solved, might excite suspicion among Veran’s little army.

He estimated that it must comprise about six hundred men. Accordingly he decided to revive about two thousand women. But that was too many for him to tackle by himself in reasonable time. Unenthusiastically he endowed a score of bodies with personalities which would enable them to act as his assistants, turning them into docile, painstaking, tireless instruments. He had trouble stopping himself from bullying them, for their dumbness and their unchanging smiles got on his nerves.

What it came down to, he told himself, was that no industrialist had ever owned so many slaves, no conqueror had ever led such a horde of Amazons, no sultan had ever boasted such a harem, as he now had at his disposal.

But it was simply not his style.

When he was certain he could revive the whole two thousand in a few hours, he turned his attention to clothing them. Not a single garment was to be found in the mausoleum; as he thought bitterly, butterflies don’t wear clothes. He reconnoitered a nearby planetary system and, by shuttling back and forth in time, eventually located a military supply depot which he robbed without compunction. He hoped his depredations would not unleash a timequake in the planet’s history, but he thought it unlikely. From experience he knew that despite computerized records large stocks vanished from the stores of all armies now and then without entraining untoward aftereffects. Some clerk would spend a few sleepless nights inventing a more or less convincing explanation for the discrepancy in his stock of overalls. At worst he would be court-martialed. But that wasn’t the sort of person who made history.

Transportation was another matter. He almost appealed to Aergistal. But he put off that ultimate solution. The idea of asking advice from the gods was unbearable. He retained too clear a recollection of the scorn in that great voice. He was willing enough to be a pawn, but by the seven circles of hell he would not let himself become a robot! Perhaps that was a childish attitude, but it was his own.

At last he hit on a solution which though inelegant was nonetheless practicable. With the help of his assistants he dismantled several of the internal fitments of the mausoleum and obtained enough metal plates to build a reasonably airtight container. After all, he himself had traveled from Aergistal to Uria in a sort of coffin. A pegasone could carry a good deal of material across space-time provided the journey was not too long. That was how Veran transported his equipment. He had had to come to Uria from the far end of the universe, and twenty-five men plus their gear was as much as his pegasones could manage. Corson established with a few trials that between here and Uria he might shift two hundred women at one go.

When he gave the signal for departure, he had spent a little more than two weeks on the mausoleum world. He had long ago used up the rations he had brought with him, but he had obtained plenty of extra provisions from the warehouses on the neighboring planet. For lack of anything better he had kept his helpers going on serum and glucose drawn from the life-support system.

He was almost at the end of his resources. He would dearly have liked to rest awhile, but he preferred to spend no longer than he had to on this dismal planet.

With close attention he supervised the revival of the first batch and the implantation of their artificial personalities. A tired smile crossed his face when he saw the two hundred women leave their couches, parting the sterile mist which had served them for shrouds, assemble in the central aisle, and line up as though on parade. Then nausea turned him inside out like a glove.

One of his helpers took a step toward him. He waved her—it?—aside.

“It’s okay,” he said. As he would have done to a human being.

But he could read nothing in the splendid violet eyes trained on him, neither comprehension nor pity; they were like soft stones. Reflex, not surprise, had provoked the motion. These creatures could hear, they obeyed his voice, they even possessed a limited vocabulary which he had carefully worked out and included in their programing, but they had no understanding. They did not exist as people. Each time he was tempted to forget their nature, those eyes would remind him, and the overprecise movements they made among the shadows. They were no more than crude projections of his own mind. Behind their eyes there was no one else for him to meet.

The door control at the exit was not deceived. It would not open for the procession of the undead. He had to stand on the threshold while they filed past him, picked up the overalls he had dumped in piles on the grass, and put them on. Then, on his word of command, they drew hoods over their heads and entered the rough metal box he had fashioned where, at another order, they sank into a hypnotic trance. He fastened its door and attached the pegasone’s traces and climbed into his saddle and plunged into time with his cargo of ghosts.

He set down on Uria, near Veran’s camp, in a secluded spot and at a time not long after he had set out on his embassy to the future. He would not be away from here again more than a few seconds, although the return, the revival of another contingent and the second trip would take him several hours. He made ten trips, which took up whole days of his subjective time. The third day he broke down in tears and fell asleep. The fifth day the pegasone showed signs of exhaustion and he had to wait until it recovered, his mind empty and dry. At the moment when he left the mausoleum world for the last time he called his helpers together and pronounced a single word. They collapsed, still smiling.

He aroused the recruits and marched them in a long column toward the encampment. A good distance from the perimeter defenses he halted them in plain sight and hailed one of the sentries. A moment later Veran showed himself.

“You look tired, Corson,” he said. “What have you brought us?”

“Recruits,” Corson said.

Veran made a sign. Gunners trained their weapons on the veiled forms standing in a curve around the camp. Others activated scanners.

“No trickery, I hope, Corson! Otherwise your collar—”

“None of us is armed,” Corson interrupted. “Except myself.”

“No weapons,” a technician confirmed.

“Good,” Veran said. “So you found out how to convince them, up there in the future. I approve of efficiency, Corson. Perhaps even they felt themselves touched by ambition. Advance the first rank. And tell them to take their hoods off so I can get a sight of them.”

Everyone in the camp had gathered behind him, except the pickets on guard duty. Corson noted with satisfaction that the men seemed less alert, less rigidly organized than when he saw them for the first time. Weeks of inactivity on Uria had taken their toll. It was not so much that discipline had slipped as that the atmosphere had changed. Corson’s practiced eye picked out the almost imperceptible evidence: one soldier who had hooked his thumbs in his pockets, another placidly sucking a little metal tube.

He strained to identify by their security collars the members of Veran’s personal bodyguard. He counted just under a dozen of them.

He uttered a single meaningless command. The front rank advanced. Veran made a sign. The defensive wire ceased to glow. Two soldiers rolled a section of it aside. Veran seemed to have lost all suspicion. But Corson knew how crafty the warlord’s mind was. He would not let anyone enter the camp without checking for himself.

After a pause, the second rank followed the first, and the third, and the fourth, their clothing making a rustling sound. Corson shouted another order. He was sure no one in the camp had guessed the true nature of these recruits. They were all tall, and their loose-cut military overalls hid the shape of their bodies. At his voice, in a unison movement, the first rank threw back their heads and let their hoods slip down.

Now there was no sound, not even footfalls or the brushing of cloth on cloth, except for the distant whistling and grunting of a pegasone having a dream.

In the camp someone stifled a sneeze, or a laugh. Then someone else began to shout.

“Women! They’re only women!”

“There are two thousand of them,” Corson said with deliberation. “They are strong and obedient.”

Veran did not react. His head did not turn by the least fraction of a degree. Only his eyes moved. He studied the faces of the women. Then he bent his gaze on Corson.

“Strong and obedient,” he echoed.

Yonder in the camp the men had started to fidget, leaning forward, craning their necks, their eyes popping from their sockets.

“Well,” Veran said without raising his voice, “you can just take them back where they came from.”

An unarmed soldier, who must have been off duty, jumped the fence at a point where it had not been rolled aside, and headed toward the women at a run. One of Veran’s personal guards took aim at him, but Veran struck the gun aside. Corson understood and admired his quick thinking. He was afraid, but he wasn’t showing it. He hoped this was a trap, that the soldier would fall into it and his fate would serve as a lesson to the others.

But this was no trap, or at least not of the kind he was hoping for. When the soldier was halfway to the women, Corson uttered a key word, clearly but quietly. He did not want the men in the camp to mistake what he said for an order to attack.

The front rank undid their overalls and took a half pace forward. The garments slid to the ground. They wore nothing else. They stood among the tall dense grass, haloed by the sunlight. Their hair fell around their shoulders and over their breasts. They scarcely moved but for their slow deep breathing, and kept their empty hands open, palms to the front.

There was a sort of roar from the camp, not a cry or a call, but a dull groan like a monstrous bellows, a unison gasp from hundreds of lungs.

A score of soldiers rushed forward. Others dropped their guns and gave chase, uncertain whether they were running after the others to bring them back or because they were afraid of getting there last. One of Veran’s guards made to open fire, but his neighbor pushed him off balance. Some of the soldiers took the precaution of breaking the power packs on their weapons before likewise making for the women.

Corson had thought of saying something, addressing the soldiers over Veran’s head despite the risks. But it was no longer necessary. The camp was emptying. Veran was fighting his own men. Bodies fell. Someone was trying to reactivate the perimeter fence, not without trouble, for it was blinking on and off. Clearly Veran was still trying to avoid more than minimal bloodshed. But he had no one around him now except his personal guards. A few other men, demoralized, were fighting with little enthusiasm.

It looked as though Veran was going to give in; Corson saw him raise his hand. The shots grew fewer. Then night came down. It swallowed up women, camp, soldiers, and all.

Irresolutely Corson took a few steps backward. Then he dropped to the ground. Veran had played his master card, the light-inhibitor. Now perhaps he would turn his guns loose at random on the neighborhood of the camp. Corson tried simultaneously to burrow into the earth and to crawl away. Over the muffled uproar that filled the darkness he heard the sound of a footfall. He rolled over, folded into a ball, straightened like a spring, jumped up, almost lost his balance, struggled to retain it while flailing the air with his hands.

A grip on his arm spun him around. An arm tilted back his chin and crushed his throat. He heard Veran pant in his ear.

“You fooled me, Corson. You were tougher than I thought. I could kill you for getting me in a mess like this! But I’m leaving you the key—the key to your collar. Think of the others.”

Something fell between Corson’s feet. The grip relaxed. His skull seemed to swell up as though it would burst. He dropped on all fours, gasping for breath. Somewhere in the darkness behind him Veran was running into the forest, in search of the pegasone Corson had not taken the trouble to hide. Corson heard him shout in a mocking voice half muffled by the inhibition field, “I’ll get back on my feet, Corson! You’ll see!”

There came the fierce howl of a heat beam, shrunk by the field to a wasp-like buzz. Corson ducked. Eyes closed, he waited. Smells rose to his nostrils: smoke, burning wood, scorching meat. Beyond his lids the universe glowed.

He opened his eyes. Day had returned. Still in a crouch, he looked around. More than a hundred of the women had been killed, and a score of soldiers. A dozen more would never be good for anything again. Part of the camp was in flames.

Rising, he turned in the direction of the forest and saw what remained of Veran. The pegasone had vanished.

Veran had played his last card, and lost. He had managed to get himself killed in two ways at once. The heat beam—possibly aimed at him—had touched him just as he was mounting the pegasone. A fraction of a second earlier the beast, alert to the danger, had shied through time without caring what was nearby. It had taken half of Veran with it, and his light-inhibitor.

Somewhere in the universe, Corson thought, there must be a pegasone drowning in night and silence, struggling in unfathomable darkness at the bottom of a well which no energy could reach until the inhibitor’s power pack ran out or until it managed to shake off the device during one of its frantic time leaps. But why should Veran have taken his pegasone, when his camp was full of the beasts? Then Corson realized. He must have wanted access to the memory of that particular pegasone, to find out how and by whom he had been outwitted.

He trod on something. Bending down, he retrieved a little flat blade of blackened metal with a square notch at one end. He raised it to his neck and engaged the collar in the notch. No result. He began to turn the collar slowly. His hands shook and he almost had to stop. A block of ice exploded in his guts. Sweat poured into his eyes. The capillaries in his suit, overloaded, ceased to keep his back and armpits dry. He was suddenly very thirsty.

When he had turned the collar completely around, it fell apart in two sections. He caught them, looked them over for a moment—seeing that their edges were smooth, as though they had been no more than pressed together—and, in a futile gesture, hurled them far away.

He could see no sense in what Veran had done. Had he hoped to get clear so completely that Corson would never again be a threat to him? Had he detected a certain fellow feeling on Corson’s part?

An idea came to his mind. Maybe Veran had tried to take the pegasone in the hope of returning to Aergistal. That was the right place for him. And if indeed Aergistal was hell, he had no doubt succeeded.

Corson headed into the camp, hoping to find another pegasone there. The fighting had died down. In a few hours at most the Urians would have the situation in hand. They would meet hardly any resistance. The dying had been finished off. A few lightly injured men were trying to dress their wounds. Guns lay around here and there. But what Corson had been most afraid of was not happening. The soldiers were not maltreating the women. Some were walking about, rather shyly, in the company of three or four beauties, while others, sitting on the grass, were trying to strike up a conversation. They seemed surprised, almost frightened, at the willingness of the girls to cooperate. Maybe they were disappointed.

They would be even more so, Corson thought, forty-eight hours from now…

He spotted a soldier wearing a security collar, who sat grief-stricken on a gun carriage with his head in his hands. He touched the man’s shoulder.

“The key,” he said. “The key to your collar.”

The man looked up. Corson read in his eyes stupefaction and alarm. He repeated, “The key of your collar!”

He bent down and opened it, and handed the two pieces to the soldier, who gave a weary smile.

“Take the key,” Corson said. “Other men have collars on. See to them.”

The soldier nodded, but his expression remained absent. The collar might have left his neck, but no key could release him from the memory of Veran, from the ghost of his dead leader.

Corson picked out a pegasone without meeting any opposition. He strapped himself on with extreme care. He had done what he had to do and closed the loop in time. There remained one more jump for him to make, to the beach where—perhaps—Antonella was awaiting him.

And the Council of Uria, Selma, Cid, and Ana… his friends.