The Overlords of War

Chapter 4

The sun had been up for more than an hour, and they were flying over the ocean out of sight of land. Corson was beginning to wonder what was keeping the Urian fleet when the girl suddenly roused.

“Corson, you’re a brute!” she said. “Attacking a woman who had made you welcome—that was contemptible! We might be back in the barbarian days of the Solar Powers!”

He studied her closely. Although she was writhing in her bonds, he could read no alarm in her face, only anger. It followed that she knew he did not mean her any immediate harm. Her delicate features relaxed and the rage gave way to cool determination. She seemed too civilized to spit in his face, but effectively that must be what she wanted to do.

“I had no option,” he said. “Like they say, all’s fair in love and war.”

Nonplused, she stared at him. “What war are you talking about? Corson, you’re out of your mind!”

“George,” he said. “George Corson.”

At least she had not foreseen that, the other half of his full name, or at any rate she had not bothered to use it. With deliberation he set about untying her. He realized that that was why her face had relaxed. She let him do it without saying a word. Then she rose in a single movement, rubbed her wrists, confronted him and—before he had time to move—slapped his face, twice. He did not react.

“Just as I thought,” she said scornfully. “You can’t even cog. How could an atavism like you crop up? What use are you? Oh, something like this could only happen to me!”

She shrugged her shoulders and turned away, her gray eyes fixed on the sea over which the craft was soundlessly floating.

Exactly like the heroine of an old teleplay, Corson thought. A prewar teleplay of the kind in which girls would pick up guys by the road, and a lot of more or less dreadful things would happen to them, and generally they wound up falling in love. Myths. Like coffee, or tobacco—or a ship such as this one.

“That’ll teach me to invite people in whom I don’t know,” she went on, as though playing a part in just such a teleplay. “We’ll find out who you are when we get to Dyoto. Until then, you behave yourself. I have influential friends.”

“The Princes of Uria?” Corson suggested sarcastically.

“I’ve never heard of any princes. Maybe in legendary times…

Corson swallowed hard.

“Is this planet at peace?”

“Oh, only since twelve centuries ago to my knowledge! And I hope it’ll stay that way to the end of time.”

“Do you know any of the natives?”

“Yes, of course. They’re avians. Intelligent, harmless, spend most of their time discussing philosophy. Slightly decadent types. Ngal R’nda is one of my best friends. Say, who do you think you’re dealing with?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. That was a strict and literal truth.

Her manner softened. “I’m hungry,” she said. “You must be too, I imagine. I’ll go and see if I’m still capable of fixing something for us after what you’ve put me through.” He could not detect the slightest apprehension in her tone, only friendliness.

“Your name?” he said. “After all, you do know mine.”

“Floria,” she answered. “Floria Van Nelle.”

That’s the first woman who’s told me her name in five years…

“No,” he corrected himself silently. “If I’m not dreaming, if this is not a trap, or a hallucination, the three-dimensional full-color delirium of a dying man, then in twelve hundred years, or two thousand, or three thousand.”

She was putting a glass in his hand. He almost dropped it.

When he was full, his brain started to work normally again. He took stock of the situation. He still had no idea what could have happened on Uria except that apparently a state of peaceful coexistence obtained between the millions of humans who lived here and the scarcely more numerous native population. He knew he was bound for Dyoto, an important city, in company with the loveliest girl he had ever set eyes on.

And that the Monster was wandering in the Urian forest, ready to breed, to give birth to eighteen thousand little Monsters who would quickly become as dangerous as their parent. That would be in at most six months, perhaps less if the Monster found plenty to eat.

Now he could work out what had most likely happened. When the Monster hurled itself clear of the ship just before the explosion, it had not made a jump of a few seconds through time, but a journey across millennia. And had dragged George Corson along. The Princes of Uria no longer existed; nor did the Solar Powers. The war had been lost or won, but in any case forgotten. He could consider himself discharged from the service and abandon his soldier’s uniform. Or else he could regard himself as a kind of involuntary deserter, marooned in the future. He was no longer any more than one man lost among the billions of citizens of a galactic federation covering the whole of the Lens and extending towards the Andromeda Nebula. It united planets he would doubtless never go to, linked by a network of transmatters allowing virtually instantaneous transit from world to world.

Now, he had no identity, no past to live down, no mission to accomplish. From Dyoto, he could head for any of the stars he had seen shining in the night sky and there pursue the only profession he knew, war. Or choose another. He could run away, forget Earth, forget Uria, forget the Monster, forget this girl Floria Van Nelle, lose himself for ever in the mazes of space.

And let the new inhabitants of Uria figure out on their own how to cope with the Monster and—soon—its eighteen thousand offspring.

But he couldn’t fool himself. He was aware it would be a long time before he stopped asking himself one all-important question: why had Floria come to pick him up just in time?

Why did she give the impression that she was acting, rather poorly, a role she had learned by heart? Why had she switched from anger, which wasn’t faked, to cordiality as soon as she had her wits about her again?