“Every man has an objective in life,” Veran mused. “Even if he doesn’t realize it. What I don’t understand, Corson, is what you’re after. Some people are driven by ambition, like me, some by fear, others still—in certain epochs—by a lust for money. And whether they make out well or badly, their actions are like arrows all pointing toward their target. But I can’t see your target, Corson, and I don’t like that. I don’t enjoy dealing with someone whose objective I can’t comprehend.”
“Say that I’m motivated by both ambition and fear, then,” Corson answered. “I want to become important, with the help of the Urians. And I’m scared because I’m a war criminal, a hunted man. Like you, Veran.”
“Colonel Veran, if you please!”
“Like yon—Colonel. I have no special wish to go back to Aergistal, to live out an endless stupid war. Does that make sense?”
“You do know, then,” Veran said slowly, “that at Aergistal wars never have any point? That there’s nothing to conquer up there?”
“I did get that impression.”
“Your attitude is overlogical. When an enemy wants to make you believe he’s going to execute a certain maneuver, he provides good solid reasons for doing it. He hides behind them, and does something else. And there you are walking into a trap.”
“You want me to break down and cry? Because I’m a poor devil lost in space and time, dragged off Aergistal by a slave dealer and sold to a bunch of fanatical birds? Sorry!”
“That message!” Veran snapped.
Corson laid his hands flat on the table and with an effort compelled his muscles to relax.
“You said you sent it to me with the help of the Urians. I’ve mislaid it. Can you remind me of what it said?”
“I made a date with you here, Colonel. I told you how to get away from Aergistal. I—”
“The actual words, Corson!”
Corson stared down at his hands. It looked as though the blood was drawing back from under the nails, leaving the flesh chalk-white. “I’ve forgotten the exact words, Colonel."
“I think you don’t know them, Corson,” Veran said. "I don’t believe you’ve sent that message yet. If you were working for someone who had sent it using your name, you’d know what was in it. That message must belong to your future, and I don’t know if I can believe in your having any.”
“Assuming your theory is correct, doesn’t it follow that in the future I shall perform a great service for you?"
“You know very well what it implies.”
There was a silence. At length, staring at Corson, Veran said, “I can’t kill you. Not before you’ve sent that message. Oh, it’s not the idea of being prevented from killing you that bothers me. It’s the idea of not being able to make you afraid. I don’t like that. I don’t like to make use of someone I can neither understand nor frighten.” “Stalemate,” Corson said.
“What?”
“A term from the game of chess. It means there can be neither winner nor loser." “I don’t gamble,” Veran said. “I’m too fond of winning.”
“Oh, it's not a gambling game. More of an exercise in strategy.” “A sort of war game? With time as an unknown factor?”
“No, without involving time."
Veran laughed. “Then it would be too simple for me. No fun at all.”
Time, Corson thought. Here’s a neat bit of clockwork. I’m protected by a message that I shall probably send, whose phrasing I don’t know and whose very existence was news to me an hour ago. I’m putting my feet in my own tracks to avoid traps that I don’t even know are there!
“And what will happen if I am killed, and don’t send the message?” “You’re worried about the philosophical aspect of the matter. I don’t know anything about that. Maybe someone else will send me an identical message. Or some other message. Or I’ll never get a message at all and stay there and get chopped to bits.”
For the first time he smiled, and Corson saw that he had no teeth, only a bar of white and sharpened metal.
“I may already be a prisoner, or worsel”
“One doesn’t stay dead for long at Aergistal,” Corson said.
“You know that too!”
“I told you I’d been there.”
“Hmm! But the worst thing isn’t being killed—it’s losing a battle.” “But here you are.”
“And here I mean to stay. When you’re juggling with possibilities, the important thing is the present. One discovers that sooner or later. I have a fresh chance. I intend to take advantage of it."
“Just so long as you don’t kill me,” Corson said.
“I’m sorry I can’t,” Veran answered. “Not because I particularly want to, but on principle.”
“You can’t even hold on to me. At a moment which I shall choose, you’ll have to let me go so that I have the chance to send the message.”
“I’ll go with you,” Veran said.
Corson had the impression the man’s confidence was waning.
“Then I won’t send it."
“I’ll make you send it.”
A question which epitomized the problem sprang to Corson’s mind. He realized he had found the flaw in Veran’s argument.
“Then why don’t you send it yourself?"
Veran shook his head. “You must be joking. Aergistal is at the other end of the universe. I wouldn’t even know what direction to send it in. Without the coordinates you gave me, I’d never have found the way to this planet in a billion years. Besides, consider the Law of Non-regressive Information.”
“What sort of law is that?”
“A transmitter cannot be its own receiver,” Veran said patiently. “I can’t warn myself. That would unleash a series of oscillations in time which would eventually damp each other out to get rid of the disturbance. The space between the point of origin and the point of arrival would be annulled along with everything contained in it. That’s why I haven’t shown you the text of your message. I haven’t lost it—it’s here under my elbow. But I don’t want to reduce your chances of sending it.”
“The universe won’t tolerate contradictions,” Corson said.
“That’s a sadly anthropomorphic point of view. The universe tolerates anything. You can even show mathematically that it’s always possible to construct systems of propositions that are rigorously contradictory and mutually exclusive, no matter how powerful the systems may be.”
“I thought mathematics was self-consistent,” Corson said softly, “From a logical standpoint. The theory of continuity—”
“You surprise me as much by what you don’t know as by what you do, Corson. The theory of continuity was undermined three thousand years ago, local time. Besides, it doesn’t have much application to your case. What is true is that any theory based on an infinite number of postulates must always contain its own contradiction. It destroys itself, it dissolves into nothing, but that doesn’t stop it from existing. On paper.”
So that’s why I have to grope my way down the alleys of time, Corson thought. My counterpart in the future can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do. Yet there are gaps, and scraps of information leak through that help me to find my bearings. There must be another kind of physics which takes no account of such disturbances. If I tried to get that paper away from him and force the future to—
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Veran said, as though he had read Corson’s mind. “Personally I don’t set too much store by the theory of non-regressive information, but I’ve never dared infringe the law.”
Yet, as Corson knew, in the very far future the gods would be doing it all the time. They would play with possibilities. The threshold of their interference would be so high the entire universe would be affected. With all barriers down, it would open up, liberate itself, multiply, putting an end to compulsion, making nonsense of what the moving finger writes. Man would cease to be imprisoned in a tunnel linking birth to death.
“Don’t sit there mooning, Corson,” Veran cut in. “You told me that these birds have fantastic weapons they will put at my disposal. You’ve said I’ll never catch the wild pegasone which you claim is at large on this planet without the Urians’ help. And they need me to wreak their revenge for them, they need a trained fighting man to undertake conquests on their behalf and also to tame the pegasone before it breeds and probably brings down on their heads the Security Office, in which case their guns will be well and truly spiked. Maybe you’re right. It all fits together so neatly, doesn’t it?”
He shot out his hand far too quickly for Corson to ward it off or even to dodge back. The mercenary’s fingers brushed his neck. But Veran wasn’t trying to strangle him. He caught hold of the chain on which Corson’s transmitter hung, no larger than a lucky charm. He shut it in a small black shell which he had concealed in the palm of his hand. Corson seized his wrist, but Veran disengaged with a crisp movement.
“We can talk openly now. They won’t hear us any more.”
“They’ll be worried by our silence,” Corson said, at once relieved and alarmed.
“You underestimate me, friend,” Veran said coldly. “They will go on hearing our voices. We shall be chatting about the weather, the art of war, the value of an alliance . . . Our voices, the tempo of our conversation, the length of our pauses, and even the sound of our breathing have been analyzed. Why do you think I went on gossiping for such a long time? Now a little gadget will send them a conversation which may be a trifle boring but as educational as you could wish. There remains one more precaution I must take. I’m going to give you another bit of jewelry.”
He made no sign, but Corson felt himself grasped by strong hands. Fingers he did not see forced his head back. For a moment he thought he was going to have his throat cut. Why kill him now—and in such a messy fashion? Did Veran enjoy being spattered with the blood of his victims?
He felt cold metal at his throat even as he reminded himself Veran had said he could not be killed because of the message.
A tiny catch clicked. The hands let go. Corson felt his neck. A collar had been put on him, light but bulky, like those he had seen some of Veran’s men wearing.
“I hope it doesn’t inconvenience you,” Veran said. “You’ll get used to it. You’re likely to wear it a long time, perhaps all your life. It’s fitted with two separate fuses. It will explode if you try to remove it, and believe me the bang will be big enough to blow you back to Aergistal along with anyone else who’s around at the time. And it will inject a very efficient poison into you if you ever try and use any kind of weapon against me or my army, from a club to a transfixer, which is the nastiest gadget I’ve ever run into. It will even do that if you give orders which might lead to someone else using a weapon against me, even if you get involved in planning a battle with me on the other side. The whole beauty of the thing is that you will trigger it yourself wherever you may be in space or time. It’s set to register a specific conscious aggression. You can hate me as much as you like, destroy me in your dreams a hundred times a night, and you will run no risk. And you can fight like a lion. But not against me or my men. You might conceivably try sabotage, but leave me to worry about that. You see, Corson? You can be my ally or stay neutral, but you can’t be my enemy. And if you think that’s an insult to your dignity, console yourself with the thought that all my personal guards wear the same device.”
He gave Corson a satisfied look.
“Is that what you said was called a stalemate?”
“Something of the sort,” Corson admitted. “But it’s going to surprise the Urians.”
“They’ll see the point of it. Moreover they’ve already received a censored version of our chat. And their little transmitter isn’t as innocent as it looks. At a suitable signal it can release enough heat to kill you. But if they were a bit cleverer they would use an automatic fuse. Well! I imagine you could use a drink?”
“I certainly could,” Corson said.
From a drawer in the table Veran produced a flagon and two crystal goblets. He half filled them, gave Corson a friendly nod, and took a swig.
“I hope you don’t resent what I’ve done to you. I like you, Corson, and I need you, too. But I can’t trust you. Everything fits together too
neatly. And the only reason it fits is because you are here, you were there, you will be wherever else. I don’t even know what game you’re playing, what drives you, deep inside. What you’re suggesting to me is treason against humanity. You want me to put myself at the disposal of fanatical birds whose only dream is to destroy mankind, in exchange for my personal safety and ultimately a hell of a lot of power. Take it that I am capable of accepting. But what about you, Corson? You don’t seem like a traitor to your species. Are you?”
“I have no alternative,” Corson said.
“For a man acting under compulsion you’re singularly enterprising. You manage to persuade these birds to make an alliance with me and come and negotiate the deal yourself. More to the point, you bring me here to make it possible. Fine. Assume you were to catch me in a trap. I disappear. You stay with the birds. You’ve betrayed your species once, by handing me over to beings who from your point of view are worth no more than I am, who aren’t even human, and you know you’ll have to start again. That doesn’t sound like you. The birds wouldn’t notice because they don’t really know humans, because they think of you as a wild beast which is likely to rob their nests but which can be tamed, or rather cowed. But I’ve seen thousands of soldiers like you, Corson. Quite incapable of betraying their species, their country, even their generals. Oh, it’s not the result of inbred virtue, even though they may be led to believe so, but of conditioning.
“So? One other possibility remains. You’re trying to save mankind. You think that Uria, and later on this sector of space, would be better conquered by a man than by one of these feathered fanatics. So you bring me here. You propose an alliance with the Urians because you guess that it will be unstable, that a quarrel will break out sooner or later when the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, and that I’ll exterminate the Urians. Maybe then you could get rid of me? You don’t even have to say so aloud. It’s useless to invoke my help against the Urians if there’s a risk of my betraying you. You know the union is potentially explosive.”
“Don’t forget the wild pegasone,” Corson said coldly.
“I shan’t. I need it, so at one blow I can deliver Uria from this other danger as well. Am I wrong, Corson?”
“Will you accept my terms?” Corson said.
Veran gave a crooked smile.
“Not before I’ve taken some precautions.”
This time, they were creeping along the corridors of the cosmos. Through the perceptions of the pegasone Corson could actually see time. The beast’s tendrils were coiled around his wrists and stroking his temples. Now and then he felt a pang of nausea. Veran, who was hanging on the other side of the pegasone and controlling it, had insisted that Corson must learn to stare time in the face. He hoped that Corson would be able to guide him not only through the maze of the underground city but also through the labyrinth of Ngal R’nda’s life.
They were stealing among the crevasses of reality, in a present that was always new. A creature with very acute senses might have noticed a shadow move, possibly blurred colors, or—with a lot of luck—a vast and dreadful phantom. Before it had blinked, brushed away a nonexistent grain of dust, they would have melted into air or through a wall. And if the light were bright enough to show details, it would have revealed no more than a flat transparent outline. The pegasone never remained synchronized with the present for more than a fraction of a second, just long enough to let Veran and Corson get their bearings. For them walls, pillars, furniture, were a mere mist. Living creatures and anything that moved remained invisible. It was the
other side of the coin. One can scarcely spy without the risk of being seen, nor hide without becoming blind.
“It’s a pity you didn’t get to know this base properly,” Veran had said.
“I asked for a week or two,” Corson had protested.
A shrug. “Some risks I take, others I don’t. I’m not going to hang around for a week while you and these birds rig traps for me.”
“What if someone spots us?”
“Hard to say. Maybe nothing. Maybe a timequake. Ngal R’nda may realize what’s going on and no longer trust you when you meet him again. Or he might decide to forestall you and launch his attack right away. We’d better not be seen. We mustn’t introduce random factors and change history in ways that might affect us. We’ll go alone. No escort. No heavy weapons. To use a gun in a past that one derives from is suicidal. I hope you realize that.”
“So it’s impossible to set traps in the past.”
Veran had smiled broadly, displaying the spiked bar which had replaced his teeth.
“I’ll be satisfied to introduce a tiny modification, a sub-threshold change which won’t be noticed but which I can exploit at the proper moment. You’re a valuable man, you know, Corson. You’ve shown me Ngal R’nda’s weak point.”
“And I have to come along?”
“Think I’m fool enough to leave you behind? Besides, you know the place we’re going to.”
“But the Urians will notice that I’m not here. There won’t be anything for them to listen to.” He touched the black shell around the transmitter he wore, which altered whatever was said automatically into material fitter for Urian consumption.
“We might chance removing it, but that would probably make it emit a warning signal. No, we’ll gamble on a short silence. We’ll only be away from the present for a few seconds. How old do you think this bird is?”
“I don’t know,” Corson answered after a brief hesitation. “Old for his species. And Urians live longer than humans—at least they did in my day. He must be about two hundred. Maybe two hundred and fifty if there’s been a major advance in geriatrics.”
“We’ll take the plunge,” Veran had said, satisfied. “There’s no risk of their picking up messages from your gewgaw before they’ve even put it around your neck, anyhow.”
And now here they were haunting the alleys of time. They had slipped into the underground city, passing through kilometers of rock which seemed like so much fog, and intruded into its galleries like ghosts.
In Corson’s ear Veran whispered, “How do I recognize him?”
"By his blue tunic,” Corson said. “But I imagine he only spends part of his time down here.”
“That doesn’t matter. When the pegasone latches on to him it will follow his spoor back to the moment of his birth. Or should I say hatching?”
A fleeting blue shadow . . . and there he was. They had never subsequently lost track of him, or at least only for such brief intervals that Corson had difficulty in believing they covered the months or even years which Ngal R’nda spent on the surface, playing his role of a distinguished and peace-loving Urian. They were tracking back on his life like salmon following a river to its source. The shadow changed color. Ngal R’nda was young and the tunic of the princes had not yet been set on his shoulders. Maybe he was not even thinking of his plan for conquest? But Corson doubted that.
More blue shadows had emerged with the passage of time: other Princes hatched from a blue shell who likewise and for a long while had plotted vengeance. Ngal R’nda had told the truth. He was indeed the last. The approach of his end had spurred him to action. Before him, generations of Princes had been content to dream.
Ngal R’nda vanished for a long moment.
“This is where he was bom, is it?” Veran asked worriedly.
“I haven’t the least idea,” Corson said, annoyed by the mercenary’s tone. “But I presume so. Ngal R’nda is too important to have been hatched far from the sanctuary of his race.”
On the instant the shadow of Ngal R’nda reappeared. Corson could not recognize him any more, but he was learning to decipher the responses of the pegasone.
“So what is this trap of yours?” he had asked.
“You’ll see.” And that was all Veran would say.
They were heading for the moment when the last Prince of Uria hatched out. Did Veran plan to inject him at birth, Corson wondered, with a genetic sensitizer which would only do its work years later, when it was exposed to the proper stimulus? Or implant a bug in his body, no larger than a single cell, which would spy on him all his life, so deeply buried that no surgical operation was likely to distab it? No, such tricks were too unsubtle. They might cause too violent a disturbance in the web of time.
The pegasone slowed, came to a stop. Corson felt as though every bit of his body wanted to take off in a different direction. He swallowed hard. The nausea faded slowly.
“He has not yet been born,” Veran said.
Employing the senses of the pegasone, Corson perceived a large elliptical room, much like that in which he had witnessed the Presentation of the Egg, but oddly changed. Only a few tendrils of the beast protruded from the wall; it and its riders were hidden in the depths of the stone.
There was little light. A few bright niches gleamed in the polished wall, and in each rested an egg. Right at the back of the room, in a somewhat larger niche, lay a purple one. Corson corrected himself. No, even if it looked purple to the pegasone, it would look blue to a man or a Urian.
That must be the egg of Ngal R’nda. So the niches were incubators. And no one would come into the room until hatching time.
“We’ll have to wait,” Veran said. “We’ve come a bit too far.”
There was a faint noise, like a thousand miners attacking a distant vein of ore. Corson realized what it was: the young Urians rousing and breaking their shells. The time displacement and the peculiar senses of the pegasone combined to alter and exaggerate the sound.
The pegasone sidled toward the blue egg. Corson was getting better at interpreting the beast’s perceptions. He could almost share its all-around vision. Thanks to that he saw Veran move, pointing some sort of device toward the egg.
He said sharply, “Don’t smash it!”
“Idiot!” Veran answered. “I’m only measuring it.”
The insult betrayed the tension he was feeling. In this crucial moment of Ngal R’nda’s life the least shock could introduce a major change in history. Beads of sweat ran from Corson’s forehead and down his nose. Veran was playing with fire. What would happen if they made a mistake? Would they simply vanish from the continuum? Or would they pop up in another area of time?
The blue egg was being shaken by blows from within. Now it opened. At its top an irregular piece of shell broke away. Liquid oozed out. The bit of shell slid to the floor. A membrane tore. The top of the young Urian’s head appeared. It looked enormous, as big as the egg. Then the shell split apart. The chick opened its beak. It was about to utter its first cheep—no doubt the signal awaited by nurses outside.
The shell burst completely. To Corson’s surprise he realized that in fact the chick’s head was no larger than an average man’s fist. But of course Ngal R’nda’s nervous system had a long period of growth ahead; even more than humans, Urians were born immature.
The pegasone emerged from the wall and locked on to the present. Veran threw aside his harness and produced a plastic bag into which he threw the debris of the eggshell, then remounted the pegasone. Without even fastening his straps he ordered the beast into the wall and out of phase with present time.
"First stage over,” he said between his teeth.
In the elliptical room the chicks were uttering their first cries. A door opened.
"They’ll notice that the shell has gone!” Corson said.
“You haven’t caught on yet,” Veran grunted. “I’m going to give them another. If I’m to believe what you told me, they only keep blue shells and throw the rest away.”
They leaped to the surface. In a lonely spot—a ravine full of boulders—Veran synched the pegasone again. Corson, feeling giddy, slid to the ground.
“Mind your feet,” Veran said. “We’re still in our objective past. You can never tell whether breaking a twig may not trigger a major timequake.”
He opened the bag and carefully inspected the bits of the blue egg.
“No ordinary eggs, these,” he muttered. “More sort of articulated plates, like a man’s skull bones. Notice the suture lines? Snug as the edges of a static closure.”
He broke off a tiny fragment and placed it in a device he took from his belt, then set his eye to a viewer on it.
“The pigmentation goes right through,” he reported. “A real genetic curiosity. I wonder whether they overdid the inbreeding to try to bring it off . . . Never mind that, though. It won’t be hard to find a dye of the same shade but not so stable.”
“You’re going to dye the egg?”
Veran snorted. “My dear Corson, you are incurably stupid. I’m going to replace this shell with a newer model, and that one will be dyed. With a substance I know how to neutralize if I have to. All Ngal R’nda’s power is due to the color of his egg. That’s why he thinks it’s a good idea to show it off now and then. Very likely that’s also the reason why there’s nobody in the room when the chicks are hatching out. It means no one can pull a switch. That is, not without a pegasone handy. I don’t believe this swap will ever be noticed, nor that it will entrain a major timequake. To be absolutely certain I’m going to take the shell of an egg hatched at the same time and of the same size. The real difficulty lies in making the exchange in about one second flat, before someone has time to come in and see us.”
“Impossible,” Corson said.
“Oh, there are drugs that increase human reaction time by a factor of ten. I imagine you’ve heard about them. They’re sometimes used during space battles.”
“But they’re dangerous,” Corson said.
“I’m not asking you to take any.”
Veran made to replace the bits of shell in his bag; then he thought better of it.
“It would be safer still to bleach this and leave it in place of the substitute. You never know . . .”
He carried out some more tests, and finally dusted an aerosol over the fragments. They turned to the color of ivory in a few seconds.
“Back in your saddle,” he said with satisfaction.
Once again they dived into the river of time. It was not long before they located a room where dozens of empty shells were lying around. Veran synched the pegasone, inspected various fragments, and finally selected a whole shell of the proper size. It turned a perfect blue under the jet of the aerosol spray and took the bleached shell’s place in his bag. Then he produced a pill and swallowed it.
‘The accelerator will take effect in about three minutes. It’ll give me about ten seconds of superspeed, more than a minute and a half of subjective time. That’s as much as I need.”
He turned to Corson with a smile. “The beauty of this, you know, is that if anything happens to me you won’t know how to get away. I wonder what the Urians would think if they found two men in their incubation room, one dead and one alive. Not to mention a tame pegasone, when all they know about are the wild ones. Oh, you’d have to spin them a pretty yam.”
“We’d disappear at once,” Corson said. “There would be a major timequake. The whole history of this part of the galaxy would be affected.”
“It seems you learn quickly when it suits you,” Veran said good-humoredly. “Yes, the real trick is going to be getting back the instant after our departure. I have no wish to meet myself going the other way. And above all I don’t want to break the Law of Non-regressive Information.”
Corson didn’t react.
“In any case,” Veran went on, “the pegasone wouldn’t like it either. It’s going to be hard to get it to pass itself. It hates that.”
Nonetheless I seem to have done it, Corson thought. Or rather I shall do it. Like all natural laws, the Law of Non-regressive Information must be relative. Someone who understands it perfectly can work out how to break it. That means that one day I shall understand the machinery of time. I’ll get out of here. Peace will return and I’ll find Antonella again . . .
It all happened so swiftly that Corson retained only a blurred memory: Veran’s kaleidoscopic shadow moving so fast that it seemed to define a solid volume of space, the blue gleam of the broken shell, the cells full of cheeping baby Urians, the door opening with a creak, a sudden smell of chlorine even though he knew the air of the chamber could not enter his suit, a sideslip across time, Veran’s voice uttering words so quickly he could barely catch them, a caracole in space, nausea, the sense of being scattered to the corners of the cosmos. . .
“End of stage two!” cried Veran triumphantly.
The trap was primed. Two hundred, perhaps two hundred and fifty years would have to wear away before it would pitch Ngal R’nda, last Prince of Uria, the last warlord hatched from a blue egg, to meet his doom.
Time, Corson thought as rough hands freed him from his harness, is the most patient god of all.
The Monster was sleeping like a little child. Buried five hundred meters under the surface of the planet, gorged with enough reserve energy to fell a mountain, all it wanted was to rest. It was almost totally preoccupied with producing the eighteen thousand spores which would generate its young, and because of that it was vulnerable. Accordingly it had slithered across the sedimentary strata right to this layer of basalt where it had made its nest. The rock was slightly radioactive, and provided a little extra energy.
The Monster was dreaming. In its dreams, it remembered a planet it had never known but which was the cradle of its race. There, life had been simple and good. Although the planet had disappeared more than half a billion years ago—not that the kind of years which Earthmen measured by meant anything to the Monster—an almost flawless recollection of scenes viewed by its far-off ancestors had been transmitted to it by its genes. Now that it was about to breed, the increasing activity of its chromosomal chains heightened the colors and sharpened the details.
The Monster preserved the image of the race which had created its species, more or less in its own likeness, to play the part of a domestic pet, useless but affectionate. If Corson’s original contemporar-
ies had been able to explore the Monster’s dreams during its brief captivity, they would have found the key to many mysteries.
They had never understood how the Monster, which except on rare occasions avoided the company of its kind, could have developed any semblance of culture, let alone the rudiments of language. They knew of asocial or presocial animals with intelligence comparable to the human, like the dolphins on Earth. But none had developed a genuinely articulate language. According to then-current theory, which had never before been found wanting, civilization and language demanded certain preconditions: the creation of organized tribes or bands, vulnerability (for no invulnerable being would be tempted to change itself to suit the world it lived on, or vice versa), and the discovery of how to put inanimate objects to practical use (for any being whose natural appendages were ideal tools for use in its environment was bound to stagnate).
The Monster broke all three of these rules. It lived in isolation. It was as nearly invulnerable as any creature humans had run across. And its ignorance of the use of any tool, even the simplest, was total. Not because it was stupid. One could induce it to operate fairly complex machines. But it had no need of them. Its claws and tendrils were quite good enough for its requirements. Yet the Monster was capable of talking after its fashion, and even—some researchers claimed—of inscribing symbols.
The origin of Monsters posed another apparently insoluble problem. At the time of Corson’s first life, exobiology had progressed far enough for comparative evolution to become an exact science. It was theoretically possible by examining a single creature to work out with fair accuracy the whole phylum it belonged to. But the Monster combined traits from a dozen different phyla. No environment that the ecologists could conceive of ought to have produced such a paradoxical beast. That was among the reasons why it was called by no name more precise than Monster. In the view of a biologist who had given up in despair a decade before Corson was born, Monsters were the sole known proof of the existence of God, or at any rate of a god.
A long finger of energy brushed the Monster for a nanosecond or so. Stirring in its sleep, it greedily drank in the sustenance offered to it, heedless of where it came from. The second contact, light as a feather touch, half roused it. The third made it alarmed. It knew how to recognize most natural sources of energy. This was artificial. Someone, or something, was trying to locate it.
It realized confusedly that it had made a mistake in absorbing the energy of the first beam. It had betrayed not only its existence but its position. And done the same the second time. It tried to restrain its appetite when the third contact occurred. But it was too scared to control itself, and could not avoid soaking up a fraction of it. When it was afraid, its instincts commanded it to gobble up all the energy available, in whatever form it was offered.
Already it felt new and harsher lances of energy stabbing its weakened body. It began to weep over its lot, a poor little creature unable to control more than a narrow fringe of the future or fission more than ten or so natural elements. It keened for the fate of the innocents between its sides, which risked losing their chance to live.
Nearly six thousand kilometers away, giant avians were surveying their instruments under the interested eye of Colonel Veran. The neutrino beam which was sweeping the bowels of the planet had thrice been absorbed at the same spot. The associated wave train had been subtly altered.
“It is there,” Ngal R’nda said worriedly. “Are you sure you can deactivate it?”
“Absolutely,” Veran said, displaying arrogant confidence. The agreement had been tough to forge, but it was biased in his favor. His encampment was threatened by Urian guns, but that did not bother him. He had a trump up his sleeve. Turning away, he issued his orders.
Five hundred meters underground the Monster mobilized its resources. It felt hamstrung. The gestation of its offspring was too far advanced for it to be able to move through time. It would be impossible to synchronize the motion of eighteen thousand babies. By now they had acquired enough independence to oppose the efforts of their parent. If the threat materialized, it would have to abandon them. It was a case where the instinct of self-preservation conflicted with that of reproduction. By good fortune some few might survive, but most would never be able to locate themselves in a stable present. They would suddenly coexist with the matter composing them. The energy released would be of the same order as that of a low-yield nuclear bomb. It would not seriously affect the Monster, but it would instantly kill the embryo involved.
Perhaps the solution lay in burrowing deeper into the planetary crust. But the Monster had chosen for its nest a weak point at the junction of crustal plates. A pocket of lava, unusually close to the surface, had drawn it as a warm hearth attracts a cat. In its normal state the Monster would have bathed luxuriously in the lava. But in present circumstances it hesitated. The intense heat would hasten the hatching. Then it would be unable to put enough distance between itself and its young to avoid becoming their first victim.
Should it return to the surface and take its chance? Unfortunately for the Monster, the giant planet where its distant ancestors had been conceived and which it recalled in its dreams had been haunted by predators which would have made a mere mouthful of it. They too knew how to move through time. They had vanished half a billion years ago, but that fact could not influence the Monster’s behavior. Its racial memory was unaware of that crucial datum. As far as the Monster was concerned, those millions of years had never happened. It did not realize that its species had outlived its creators and original masters, that it had owed its survival to its role as a pet, found in nearly every home, coddled and pampered by the members of a powerful culture wiped out in a forgotten war.
The surface was out of the question, then, while time travel was forbidden and the deeper strata were dangerous. The Monster, fully awake by now, once more bewailed its fate.
It registered a presence, not far off, a few score kilometers at most Ordinarily its first reaction would have been to jump through time. But the fear of losing its offspring overcame its terror at being spotted. The presence became more marked, then multiplied. Several creatures of its own kind were approaching. That held no comfort for the Monster. It knew from its own past experience that a Monster at gestation time was a succulent prey. In its species cannibalism facilitated the interchange of genes and thereby prevented the line from becoming decadent through inbreeding. Its creators had known nothing of the sexual mode of reproduction.
At the last moment it tried a prodigious effort and made a vain attempt to escape pursuit. It soared into the air atop a geyser of lava. But Veran’s pegasones had foreseen that, and acted in accordance with a systematic plan quite foreign to the habits of their species. They closed in from all directions at once, clear along the segment of time which the Monster controlled. They trapped and immobilized it simultaneously in much the same way as, thousands of years ago on Earth, tame elephants would surround one of their wild cousins and push it into a stockade.
The Monster found itself caught in a web of energy far stronger
and more reliable than the cage aboard the Archimedes. At first it went on weeping; then, when its complaints proved futile, it allowed itself to be dragged away and at last went back to sleep, regaining in dreams the deceitful refuge of its long-vanished home world.
It was weapons-training time. Corson relished the quietness of an existence organized down to the smallest detail. Morning and evening, on Veran’s orders, he was learning to ride pegasones. The soldiers who instructed and no doubt kept guard on him either were not surprised to see the safety collar around his neck or else forbore to mention it. Doubtless they had concluded that Corson now formed part of Veran’s personal bodyguard.
Veran himself was making plans with Ngal R’nda and the leading Urian nobles. He had apparently gained their confidence completely. They let themselves be persuaded, day after day, to deliver examples of their finest weapons to him and explain the method of their use. The obvious discipline of Veran’s little army impressed them, perhaps all the more so because their incurable sense of superiority prevented them from imagining that this man, their servant, could want to break the alliance and threaten them. In Corson’s opinion they were sometimes unbelievably naive. Veran’s seeming deference filled them with smug satisfaction. The colonel had ordered all his men to make way for any Urian regardless of his rank, and the order had been obeyed. That proved to the Urians that at least these few humans knew their proper place and how to keep to it As Veran said oracularly, the situation was developing nicely.
That did not seem quite so obvious to Corson. A formidable war machine was being assembled under his eyes. The Monster, approaching full gestation term, was imprisoned in an enclosure without a breach; since it was too old to be trained, it was to be left for its young to devour.
It seemed to Corson that the union between Veran and the Urians was leading to a result diametrically opposite what he had counted on. It was impossible for him to escape. He would have done so had he only known how. He felt he might be about to witness one of the most terrible military adventures in history. But his future made no sign to him. His destiny seemed to be laid down, but in a direction he had not wanted.
One calm night however, his melancholy thoughts took a less dismal turn,
He was staring at the trees and the sky, wondering how it was that the activity at the camp had not yet been noticed and why nobody from Dyoto or some other city had decided to come and investigate, when Veran approached.
“A fine evening,” he said. He was biting on a small cigar, a luxury he rarely permitted himself.
He blew a smoke ring, then said abruptly, “Ngal R’nda has invited me to the next Presentation of the Egg. That’s a chance I’ve been waiting for. It’s high time I got him off my back.” '
He drew on the cigar again without Corson daring to make any Comment.
“I’m afraid he’s growing more and more suspicious. For the past several days he’s been pressing me to set a date for the start of hostilities. That old vulture has nothing in his head but blood and battle! You know, I don’t care for war, myself. It always wastes a lot of materiel and a lot of good soldiers. I’ll only resort to it when there’s no other way of getting what I’m after. I’m sure that with Ngal R’nda out of the way I can make a deal with the government of this planet What’s so odd, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be one. Do you know anything about that Corson?”
A long silence.
“I thought not,” Veran said in a voice that had suddenly become sharp. “You see, I’ve sent spies to various cities around the planet. They didn’t have the slightest trouble infiltrating themselves, but they learned practically nothing. That’s the worst of these very decentralized societies. It seems this planet doesn’t have an official government, apart from Ngal R’nda’s limited authority.”
“Well,” Corson said, “that’s going to make things easy for you.” Veran gave him a keen glance. “No, it’s the worst thing that could have happened. How am I to negotiate with a government that doesn’t exist?”
He stared thoughtfully at his cigar.
“But,” he continued, “I only said it seems that way. One of my spies, a bit smarter than the rest, told me a peculiar tale. He says this planet does have a political organization, but of a completely original kind. There’s a Council which watches over several centuries and is based elsewhere in time. Some three centuries up, to be exact. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Imagine ruling over dead men and kids that haven’t yet been born!”
“Maybe they don’t have the same idea of government as you do,” Corson said softly.
“Yes, they’re democrats, aren’t they? Maybe even anarchists! I know their theme song. Reduce the administration of people and things to the strict minimum. It never lasts for long. At the first invasion the whole setup goes smash.”
“They haven’t been invaded for centuries,” Corson said.
“Then they’re going to learn a nasty lesson. By the way, Corson, there’s something else odd, which I haven’t mentioned yet. One of the members of this Council is a man.”
“What’s odd about that?”
"Who looks very like you. I find that a surprising coincidence. One of your relations, maybe?”
“I don’t have connections in such high places,” Corson said.
“My spy hasn’t seen this man personally. He hasn’t even managed to lay hands on a document describing him. But he was quite definite about it. He’s an expert physiognomist, knows his typology inside out. There’s not a chance in a million of his being mistaken. Besides, he’s a clever artist. He made a sketch of you from memory and showed it to his informants. Everyone who has seen this man recognized you, Corson. What do you make of that?”
“Nothing,” Corson answered honestly.
Veran scrutinized him. “You may be telling the truth. I could put you under a lie detector, but you’d become a moron, at best. And it was no moron who sent that message to me. So unfortunately I still need you. Well, when I learned all this, I tried to put two and two together. They refused to make four. At first I thought you might be a machine, or an android. But you’ve undergone thorough medical examinations since you’ve been with us, so I had to scrap that idea. I know everything about you except what goes on in your head. You’re not a machine, and you weren’t bred in a vat. You think like a man, you have human courage and human faults. A little backward in some respects, as though you hail from a bygone age. But if you are carrying out an assignment, I have to admit you’ve got the guts to do it by yourself. Of course, not without taking out some insurance for yourself, like that damned message. Corson, why don’t you lay your cards on the table?”
“I have a bad hand,” Corson said.
“What?”
“I don’t have the right cards.”
“Maybe not. But you’re an ace in somebody’s game. And you’re acting as though you don’t realize it.”
Veran dropped his cigar butt and ground it underfoot.
“Let’s recapitulate,” he said. “This Council possesses the means to travel in time. They hide away in the future, but they must have it because otherwise a government three centuries ahead couldn’t administer the present. They already know what I’m going to do, what’s going to happen if there isn’t a timequake. And they haven’t made a move, either against me or against Ngal R’nda. That implies that in their view the time is not yet ripe. They’re waiting for something. What?”
He drew a deep breath.
“Unless they have already begun to act. Unless you’re a member of the Council on special assignment.”
“I never heard anything so silly,” Corson said.
Veran, stepping back a pace, drew his gun. “I could kill you, Corson. It might be suicide for me, but you’d die first. You’ll never send the message and I’ll never land on this world and never have the chance to take you prisoner and kill you, but the timequake will be so fierce that you’ll be caught up in it. You won’t be yourself any longer, but someone else. What counts, for a man? His name, his features, his chromosomes? Or his memories, his experience, his personality?”
They gazed at each other. At last Veran holstered his gun.
“I hoped to scare you. I admit I failed. It’s hard to frighten a man who’s been at Aergistal.”
He smiled.
“In the final analysis, Corson, I do believe you. You probably are the man who sits on the Council, three centuries up, but you don’t know it. You haven’t become that man yet. For the time being you’re only his trump card. He couldn’t come here himself because he already knew what was going to happen. He would have broken the Law of Non-regressive Information. But he could not trust anyone else. So he decided to send himself as he was in an earlier period of his life, altering the course of events only by such minute touches that they stayed below the timequake threshold. Congratulations, Corson. You have a brilliant future ahead of you—if you live so long.”
“Wait a moment,” Corson said. He had turned pale. He sat down on the ground and put his head in his hands. Veran must be right. He was experienced in temporal warfare.
“Shock treatment, hm?” Veran said. “Maybe you’re wondering why I said all that to you. Don’t bother working it out. As soon as I’m rid of Ngal R’nda I’m going to send you as my envoy to the Council. Since I have a future statesman in my hands, I’m going to exploit the fact. I told you I want to make a deal. I’m not going to ask for much: just some gear, like robots and spaceships. Then I’ll move on and leave this world in peace. I won’t touch it again even if I conquer the rest of the galaxy.”
Corson raised his head.
“And how are you going to get rid of Ngal R’nda? He seems to be very much on his guard.”
Veran gave a short wolfish laugh. “If you haven’t figured that out, I’m not going to tell you. You might double-cross me. But you’ll see.”
They had to enter the anteroom of the Egg chamber naked. There they underwent a ritual cleansing and put on yellow togas. Corson imagined he could feel the rays of countless scanners brushing his skin, but knew that was an illusion—the Urians possessed more subtle techniques. He was sure that Veran was going to take advantage of the Presentation of the Egg to try something, but he could not guess what. Almost certainly he could not be carrying a weapon; the Urians knew human anatomy well enough to check all the body’s natural hiding places. And if Veran wanted violent action he would have come charging in at the head of his pegasone cavalry: a dangerous tactic, but one which would have invoked time as his ally, even though the Urians had the means to fight back. No, he must have a bolder stroke in mind.
Baffled, Corson passed for the second time through the ranked nobles, and Veran followed him to the front of the throng. He spent a long while wordlessly examining the altar-like box. Then the lights went down. The door irised open and Ngal R’nda made his entrance. To Corson he seemed haughtier than ever. He had recruited these two human mercenaries to his cause. No doubt his yellow eyes were already seeing in imagination the blue standards of Uria floating above the smoking wrecks of cities, or hanging dead still in space
at the prows of starships. He was dreaming of a crusade. There was something of pathetic greatness in him. To think that a creature of such intelligence should have been seduced by the notion of a mere color, a superstition dating back to time immemorial which Veran had summed up and dismissed in three words: “a genetic curiosity.”
Yes, it must have something to do with the Egg. Suddenly Corson realized what Veran must have in mind. Full of terror yet also of a Strange pity for the plight of this last Prince of Uria, and with an equally strange admiration for Veran’s audacity, he followed with wide eyes the smallest details of the ceremony. He heard Ngal R’nda utter and the crowd chant after him words impossible to transcribe in human writing, the names of his ancestors. He watched the metal case open, the egg rise on its pillar like a monstrous turquoise. The Urians stretched their thin necks, despite being long accustomed to all this, and their double eyelids blink-blinked as fast as hummingbird wings.
The last Prince of Uria opened his beak, but before he had time to chirp again, there was a commotion. Veran thrust aside the Urian nobles around him, made a leap, flung his left arm around Ngal R’nda’s neck, pointed at the egg with his other hand, and shouted: “Impostor! Piiekivo! Piiekivol”
Corson did not need a dictionary to work that one out.
“It’s painted!” Veran shouted. “This scoundrel has tricked you! I’ll prove it!”
The Urians were too dumbfounded to move. That was lucky for Veran, Corson thought, but clearly he had been banking on the fact that not even the nobility were allowed to carry weapons into the Egg chamber. There was time for him to rub his palm against the shell. Where he touched it, the surface turned from blue to ivory.
A hell of a trick, Corson thought, panting, feeling his end was near despite the fact that the Urians had completely ceased to pay him any attention.
But that egg was not simply painted. Some sort of chemical had been needed to neutralize the dye Veran had applied two hundred and fifty years ago ... or was it last week? He could have brought nothing in with him. The Urians’ scanners would have located a capsule hidden in his mouth, or anywhere else. And if he had smeared something on his skin before coming here, the ritual bath would have washed it off. The trick was impossible.
And then he caught on. Even naked, even thrice washed and rubbed down with a rough towel, Veran had brought a very active substance with him, a complex liquid that was both acid and alkaline.
His own perspiration.
On the shell the reaction was spreading. Molecular bonds were breaking one after another. The dye was dissolving into colorless constituents or more likely subliming. Veran did not like to leave traces behind.
Shrill whistles arose from the crowd. Claws dug into Corson’s shoulders; he offered no resistance. Veran let go of Ngal R’nda, who, beak wide, struggled to regain his breath. Urians in violet togas seized the mercenary, but he shouted, “I proved it, I proved it—the egg is not blue and he’s an impostor!”
“He’s lying!” Ngal R’nda cried. “He sprayed a dye on the shell! I saw him! Put him to death!”
“Break the egg!” Veran shouted. “If I’m lying the inside will be blue! Break the eggl”
Ngal R’nda was confronted by uproar. Around him Urians formed a circle, still deferential but somehow threatening. It was the chick from a blue egg that these vassals feared, not their warlord. He whistled high, piercing, weary-sounding notes that Corson could not understand. But their import was clear.
“Shall I break the egg?”
Silence. Then more whistling, curt and merciless. Ngal R’nda bowed his head.
“So be it. I shall break the shell which should only be crushed at my death, that its dust might be mingled with my ashes. I, last of the Princes of Uria, shall be the only one of my long line who ever broke the blue shell twice!”
He seized the egg in both claws, lifted it, and smashed it on the base of its pedestal. Fragments fell to the floor. Ngal R’nda seized one of those which remained on the pediment and brought it close to his age-dimmed eyes. He recoiled and fell in a faint.
Then one of the nobles advanced and seized a fold of his blue toga. He pulled on it violently. It did not tear, and Ngal R’nda was dragged with it as in a sack. There was a stampede. Corson felt himself released, then someone bumped into him so that he nearly fell and had to struggle to prevent himself being trampled. At last the tide of bodies swept past him. Mad with rage, the avians were pecking to death the last Prince of Uria. A bitter stench of chlorine filled the air.
Someone touched his arm: Veran.
“Come along before they start wondering how I worked my trick!” They walked unhurriedly to the door, their ears full of angry cries. On the threshold Veran glanced back with a shrug.
“So,” he said, “perish all fanatics.”
About once every decade he dismounted, approached a passer-by, and asked, “What year is this?"
Some fainted. Others fled. Some few vanished. Those must know how to travel in time. But he always found some willing to inform him. They looked at the man and the Monster without surprise, and smiled. An old man, a boy, a Urian, a woman.
A question burned on Corson’s lips: “Do you know who I am?” For their smiles and their readiness to cooperate smacked too much of a miracle. They must know who he was. They were so many guides, beaconing his way. But they simply gave him the date and, if he tried to engage them in further conversation, managed to divert him adroitly into a dead end. Even the child. He was unfit to match wits with these people. In six thousand years culture had advanced a long way. He had not soaked up enough of it. He was still a barbarian, even though he knew some things that they did not
When he saw the Urian, he almost made the blunder of jumping back into time. But the great bird made a sign of peace to him. He wore a white toga with fine embroidery on it, and said with a grimace that Corson took to be a smile, “What are you afraid of, my son?”
At first he had looked like Ngal R’nda. Now Corson realized the resemblance was solely due to his great age.
“I seem to recognize you,” the Urian said. “In a time of trouble you appeared from nowhere. I was fresh from the egg then, but if I recall aright I took you to a bath and gave you food before escorting you to a secret ceremony. Things have changed since then, and for the better too. I am glad to see you again. What do you wish to know?”
“I’m looking for the Council,” Corson said. “I have a message for them. Maybe several messages.”
“You will find them on the seashore, about thirty or forty kilometers from here. But you will have to wait a hundred and twenty years or so.”
"Thanks,” Corson said. “But I won’t have to wait at all. I can travel in time.”
“I presumed so,” the avian said. “It was a manner of speaking. It is a fine animal that you have there.”
“I call him Archimedes,” Corson said. “As a souvenir of something that happened long ago.”
As he was on the point of remounting, the Urian checked him.
“I trust you hold no grudge against us for what happened. It was a mischance. Tyranny always engenders violence. And beings like ourselves are pawns in the hands of gods. They impel us to battle for the pleasure of the spectacle. They love the dance of fire and death. You resolved the situation with much tact. Someone else might have provoked a bloodbath. All we Urians are most grateful to you.”
“All. . . including you?” Corson asked in disbelief.
“The Old Race and the humans. All who live on Uria.”
“All who live on Uria,” Corson repeated thoughtfully. “That’s good news.”
“Good luck on your journey, my son,” the old Urian said.
So, Corson said to himself, peering through the time fog which rose from the ground to engulf him and his pegasone, the humans and the natives have become reconciled. Splendid!
The Urians must have managed to exorcise the demons of war. Their species was not doomed, as he had imagined.
By now he was getting to know the planet well. The location of the beach reminded him of something. That was where Antonella had taken him. By coincidence?
He decided to make a detour via Dyoto. It was an irrational impulse, an urge to make a sort of pilgrimage. He locked the pegasone to the present at the top of a hill, and looked skyward in search of that pyramidal cloud of a city seemingly balanced on its twin vertical rivers.
The sky was empty.
He reconfirmed his position. There was no possible doubt. Up there, a hundred and fifty years ago, a colossal city had reared to heaven. It had not left a trace.
He looked down, into a hollow made by the convergence of three grassy valleys between wooded hillsides. A lake filled it. Corson narrowed his eyes to see better. In the middle of the lake a sharp peak pierced the surface; elsewhere ripples broke around obstacles a few centimeters underwater. Among the vegetation on the shore he recognized other geometrical ruins.
The city had fallen and the vertical river had given birth to the lake. Underground canals were still supplying it and the overflow escaped by a little brook running along the lowermost valley. Dyoto had been destroyed. The force which had upheld its buildings over a kilometer in the air had failed. It had all happened long ago, perhaps a century, to judge by the density of the vegetation.
Sadly Corson recalled its lively streets, the swarms of floaters which poured from it like bees from a hive, that store where he had stolen food, that mechanical voice which had so courteously reprimanded him. And he thought of the women he had met there.
Dyoto was dead like so many other cities overwhelmed by the tempest of war. Perhaps at the bottom of that lake reposed the body of Floria Van Nelle, who had by chance introduced him to the strangeness of this world.
The old Urian had been lying. His smile had been false. The war had occurred and the humans had lost. It must be so, if their cities were in ruins.
He hoped Floria had not had time to realize what was happening. She was unprepared for this or any war. If she had survived for a while, it would have been as a plaything for Veran’s mercenaries, or worse still as a victim of the pitiless crusaders serving whoever had taken Ngal R’nda’s place.
So he had failed.
With an effort he resisted the impulse to jump back into the past. He remembered his dream of a city being destroyed and the cry of its inhabitants, who, too late, were foreseeing their doom. Sweat ran down his face. He could not go back now; he had an appointment in the future which he could not escape. Up there, with the Council if it proved still to be in existence, he would have to discuss the problem and find out whether the lumbering wagon of history might yet be diverted down another road. Then there would be time to come back and discover what had gone amiss.
And even if he could accomplish nothing more, he could kill Veran. A cracked bell rang in his head. If he killed Veran he himself would die. This collar would pierce his neck with poisoned spikes. He was not even supposed to think of fighting Veran without killing himself. He could not quit now.
He suppressed his lust for vengeance. Exhausted, he remounted the pegasone and urged it onward.
It went forward sullenly, and for the first time Corson noticed how gray everything was around him. In the impenetrable fog of the centuries, where nights and days were intermingled, he felt the pegasone escape from his control. His fingers tugged on its tendrils, but in vain. The beast, whether from fatigue or under the command of another will, threatened to lock into the present. Disheartened, he let it do so.
The sound of the sea, a slow and regular rhythm. He was on a long beach which the setting sun had gilded. That struck him as odd. Left to their own devices pegasones normally preferred to synch with daylight because of their appetite for energy. But this time his mount had been drawn to twilight.
He opened his eyes wide. Stretched out on the sand before him were three naked bodies, motionless. He took off his helmet, feeling the moist air on his face, and stared at them. Three naked bodies, dead for all he could tell—could this be all that remained of the Council of Uria? One man, two women, like the victims of a dreadful shipwreck, tossed ashore by the tide.
At Corson’s approach, however, the man moved, rising on one elbow to examine him with interest. He smiled. Apparently he had come to little harm.
“Ah, you must be the man from Aergistal,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Corson managed to say, “The Council—”
“Here we are,” the man said. “The Council of Uria for this millennium.”
Corson leaned over him. “Do you need any help?”
“I don’t think so. Why don’t you sit down?”
“But these women—” Corson began, dropping to the sand.
“Don’t disturb them. They’re in communion.”
“Communion?”
“We have plenty of time, don’t worry. It’s a lovely evening, don’t you think?”
As he spoke he was scrabbling in the sand. Now he unearthed a crystal flagon, which he opened and handed to Corson.
“Refresh yourself, friend. You’re looking very strange.”
Corson made to argue, but changed his mind. If this bit of human jetsam said there was plenty of time, who was he to contradict? He set the flagon to his lips. It contained cool wine. He was so surprised he swallowed the wrong way and almost choked.
“Don’t you like it?” demanded the castaway.
“It’s the best wine I ever tasted.”
“Then drink the lot, friend. There’s more. There's always more.” Peeling off his gauntlets, Corson complied. A second swig put fresh heart into him. Then he recalled the place and the circumstances.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have some field rations with me.” “Thank you,” the man said, "but I prefer somewhat more delicate fare . . . Oh, how stupid of me not to have thought of that. You must be hungry after your journey.”
He rose on his knees, energetically scooped aside more of the sand, and revealed a large silvery container. He removed its lid and sniffed the contents with approval.
“Help yourself. You’ll have to eat with your fingers, I’m afraid, but we lead a very simple life here.”
To Corson’s astonishment, the dish held what looked like half a chicken, garnished with a sauce and vegetables such as he had never seen before. But the smell made him instantly ravenous, and he ate so eagerly it was a while before he was able to utter the words which a moment ago had been at the forefront of his mind.
“I saw Dyoto!”
“A handsome city,” the man said. “If a little out of style.”
“It was at the bottom of a lake. The war has completely destroyed it.”
Startled, the man rose on his elbows and sat up.
“What war?”
And then he began to laugh quietly. “Oh, of course. You come from the time of the troubles. You must have had a shock, but you weren’t to know.”
“Know what?”
“Dyoto was abandoned. That’s all. Not destroyed. It no longer suited the way we wanted to live.”
Corson struggled to digest the information. “And what way is that?” he said finally.
“The way you see. Very simply. We need the opportunity to meditate. We’re getting ready for”—he hesitated—“for the future, I suppose you’d say.”
“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Corson said, rubbing the greasy traces of his food from his fingers with a handful of sand.
“We certainly need you, Corson. But not here, not now.”
“Are you certain you’re not short of anything?” Corson insisted disbelievingly.
“Do I look as though I am? Do you mean clothes? But we hardly ever wear them nowadays."
“Provisions! Medicines! I don’t imagine the whole of this beach is stuffed with mess tins and bottles of wine. What are you going to do when your stocks run out?”
The man gazed thoughtfully out to sea. “You know, that’s a point that had never struck me. I think—”
Corson interrupted fiercely, “Get a hold on yourself! Are you crazy, are you ill? There must be a way to fish the sea, or game to hunt in those woods! You can’t let yourself die of hunger!”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s very likely,” the man said. Looking Corson straight in the face, he rose with a smooth movement. He was the taller of them, muscular and well built; long hair hung around his face.
“Where do you suppose that bottle came from?”
Embarrassed, Corson rose in his turn and used the neck of the bottle to draw a line in the sand. “I don’t know.”
“When we run short of wine, we shall order more, of course.”
“Ah!” Corson said, brightening. “You live in the dunes and you’ve come to dine on the beach. Back there you have servants or robots.” The man shook his head. “Back in the dunes you won’t find palaces or even shanties, let alone servants and robots. I don’t believe there’s a living soul within forty kilometers. I see you haven’t yet understood our way of life. We have no roof but the sky, no bed but the sand, no curtains but the wind. Do you find it too warm, too cool? I can attend to that for you.”
“So where does this come from?” Corson said angrily, kicking aside the empty bottle.
“From sometime else. Some century in the past or future. I don't know. We decided to let these decades lie fallow. It’s a very pleasant spot to rest and think things over. Of course we control the climate, but in this period you won’t find a single machine on the planet. Those we do need are tucked away in time. When we want something one of us enters communion and asks for it, and the article in question is sent here.”
“What about Dyoto?”
“Some while back, we discovered we had taken a wrong turning. We decided to try another way.” “This one?”
“Exactly.”
Corson stared at the sea. A classically beautiful sunset was in progress, but it was something stirring within himself which made him cheer up. The tideless sea plopped against a rock a few fathoms from the beach like a particularly well-domesticated animal. The invisible sun glowed behind the clouds. By reflex he looked for a moon in the sky, but of course here there was none. The stars, in constellations he had now come to know well, were springing into the sky and shedding their faint light on the world.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the man said.
“It is indeed,” Corson admitted.
He cast a diffident glance toward the women sunk in coma, sleep, whatever, their attitudes suggestive of abandon. He thought he recognized a head of hair, the line of a back . . . Surely it couldn’t be Antonella! He took a pace toward them, but the man checked him with a gesture.
“Don’t disturb them. They’re in conference right now, discussing you. They’re communing with Those of Aergistal.”
“Antonella . . .” Corson said.
The man turned his head. “Antonella is not here. You will see her later.”
“She doesn’t know me yet.”
“I realize that.” The man’s voice was low, as though he was sorry the matter had been brought up. “It will be necessary for her to learn to know you.”
There was a pause.
“Don’t hold it against us,” he said at length, and added quickly, “Would you rather sleep now, or talk over our business?”
“I’m not sleepy,” Corson said. “But I’d like time to think things over.”
“As you like.”
Thereafter for a long while Corson remained silent, sitting on the sand with his elbows on his knees. The sun vanished completely. Stars danced on the water. The air was as warm as his skin. After a little he took off his suit and boots. He did not yet dare to strip completely, but he felt a growing desire to do so, to rush out into the sea and swim away for ever and ever, forgetting about the overlords of war. Tides here must be very weak, with no moon, nothing but the sun to stir the sea.
Then he roused himself and broke the silence. He spoke at first in a rather uncertain voice as though he were alone and feared to disturb the subtle balance of the night or to alert an enemy, then in a tone of greater determination.
“I’m an ambassador,” he said. “Of a strange kind. I used to be a soldier. I’ve traveled in time. I’ve heard the gods of Aergistal. I knew that three dangers threatened Uria—the first a creature like the one that brought me here, but wild; the second a plot hatched by the Old Race of this world against the humans; and the third in the shape of a cavalry commander who sprang from nowhere but whom, according to his own testimony, I called here myself. I’m here to speak on his behalf. And, lastly, I’m an ambassador on my own account. I want to rid Uria of all these dangers, but I lack the means of doing so. I was hoping to find help here, even though Those of Aergistal”—the phrase came naturally to his tongue—“told me not to rely on anybody but myself. Provided I succeed, they promised me, I shall gain my liberty and maybe more than that. But I can see they set me an impossible task.”
“Oh, I know all that,” the man said. “And the task is half accomplished. You haven’t done at all badly, Corson, for a man from the far past.”
“The Monster is caged up,” Corson said, “and the plot has been defeated. But I still have to deal with Veran, the warlord, whose envoy I have the bad luck to be.”
The man burrowed in the sand again. “Perhaps you’d like some more wine,” he murmured politely. “It will help you to relax.”
Corson drank gratefully, then continued. “This Veran literally wants to conquer the universe. He’s asking for weapons, and soldiers or robots. In return he is willing to leave this planet alone. But I don’t trust him. Moreover the Security Office won’t let him do it, and there will be a war. It will take place on Uria, because Veran won’t easily be dislodged.”
“But you are the Security Office,” the man said quietly. “And no war occurred in our past.”
“You mean I—” Corson stammered.
“You’re the Office’s agent for this sector. It’s up to you to prevent the war.”
“It didn’t take place,” Corson said slowly, “because here you are. That means that I succeeded. And the Law of Non-regressive Information has been broken.”
The man was absently pouring sand from one hand to the other. “Yes and no. It’s not that simple. That law is only a special case.”
“Then the future can intervene in the past?”
The man let the sand trickle away between his fingers. “Some interventions have negligible consequences. Others are dangerous. But others still are beneficial, at least from the viewpoint of a privileged observer, like you, or me—or Veran. The control of time somewhat resembles ecology, you know. Imagine a world inhabited by insects, birds, and herbivores. The insects break up the soil and encourage grass to grow, the birds eat the insects and pollinate the plants. The herbivores graze on the plants while their droppings and their dead bodies both feed the insects and manure the soil. That’s the simplest possible ecosystem. You could kill one insect, or a dozen, without worrying, because nothing would happen to speak of. You could kill a flock of birds, or stuff yourself on meat from the herbivores, without unbalancing the system. But suppose you were to kill every insect over a wide enough area—a continent, say. The birds would fly off or die of starvation. The grass would die in a few seasons, and the herbivores would likewise disappear. You’d have a desert. It follows of its own accord if you seriously weaken any link in the chain. There’s a threshold for each point. To you it may appear very high. But . . .
“Well, suppose someone introduced to this imaginary planet some carnivores strong and quick enough to kill the herbivores. At first they would barely be noticeable on the planetary scale. You might scour its plains for years and find no trace of them. But in the long run, not meeting any opposition, they would breed in such numbers that they would reduce the herbivore population. The insects would suffer, then the birds, then the vegetation. The herbivores would be threatened from two sides at once. Then the carnivores in turn would start to die of hunger. If circumstances allowed, a new balance would be struck, quite different from the former and possibly not stable. Then, for one species or another, there would be cycles of plenty and famine. The critical threshold would be much lower than in the first example. Indeed, a single breeding pair of carnivores might be enough to trigger changes whose consequences could not be foreseen. As far as dynamic ecology is concerned, the significant factor is never one of the units in the chain but the totality of them. And the process is incapable of spontaneous reversal. It entrains subtle but decisive side effects. Under the threat from the
carnivores, the herbivores will cultivate speed. The longest legs will save the most lives, and so on.
“To some extent that’s analogous with time travel. But ecological problems are laughably simple compared with those of temporality. You might lay a mountain low or snuff out a star without any serious change in your future. Here and there you might even wipe out a whole civilization with no untoward results from your point of view. On the other hand it might suffice for you to tread on someone’s toe in order to shake your heaven and your earth. Each point in the plenum has its own ecological universe. There is no such thing as absolute history.”
“How can you foresee which?” Corson demanded.
“It can be calculated. It also depends partly on intuition, and partly on experience. And it’s best to look at things from as far away as possible in the future. It’s always more comfortable to consider the various ways that might have led to this present than to try to build one which will lead to a desirable future. That’s why Those of Aergistal enter communion with us.”
He indicated the two women.
“But they can’t tell us everything. They can’t create timequakes that might erase them. They are at the ultimate end of time. For them history is almost absolute, almost complete. Besides, we have to work out our own destinies, even though they must take their places as part of a grander scheme.”
“I understand,” Corson said. “I too have the impression of being a pawn. At first I imagined I had free will. But the more I see of the game, the more I realize I’ve been pushed from one square of the board to another.” He hesitated. “I even thought you might be running the game.”
The man shook his head. “You were wrong. It is not we who have devised this plan.”
“But you do know what has been happening.”
“To some extent. For us, though, you’re a wild factor. You appeared at the appointed moment to resolve a crisis. We have always thought of you as the author of the plan.”
“Me?” Corson exclaimed.
“You and none other.”
“But I haven’t even finished formulating my plan!”
“You have time ahead of you,” the man said.
“But it’s already been put into effect.” “That means it will exist.”
“And if I fail?” Corson countered.
“You’ll know nothing about it. Nor shall we.”
At long last one of the women moved. She rolled over, sat up, noticed Corson, and smiled. She was about thirty. He did not recognize her. Her expression was absent, as though from overlong use of her inward sight.
“I can hardly believe it,” she said. “The famous Corson here among us!”
“I have as yet no reason to be famous,” Corson said curtly.
“Don’t be rude to him, Selma,” the man interjected. “He has a long way to go still, and he’s a little upset.”
“Oh, I’m not going to bite him,” Selma said.
“And,” the man concluded, “we all need him.”
“How far have you got?” Selma asked Corson.
“Well, I came here as an envoy, and—”
But she cut him short. “I know that. I heard you talking to Cid. But how far have you thought things through?”
“I can neutralize Veran by not sending him this message that everyone claims I sent. But to be candid I wouldn’t know how to draft it and still less how to get it to him.”
“That’s a simple matter of creodes,” Selma said. “I’ll arrange it whenever you like. And I think that Those of Aergistal will agree to relay it for us.”
“Suppose you don’t send it,” said the man who had just been referred to as Cid. “Who will deal with the Monster and the Prince of Uria? A solution must be sought elsewhere. Veran forms part of the plan. You can’t eliminate him so easily.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Corson admitted. “And I even suspect it may be because I ran across him at Aergistal that I thought of making use of him. But I’m not sure yet. It’s an idea that won’t occur to me until much later.”
“He’s making a lot of progress for a primitive,” Selma said.
Cid frowned. “Corson is not primitive. Besides, he has been to Aergistal. He hasn’t made do with communion.”
“True,” Selma said. “I was forgetting.” Annoyed, she jumped up and ran toward the water.
Corson mused aloud, “Then who is to deal with Veran?”
“You,” Cid replied.
“I can’t attack him. I can’t even plan an action against him.” He
touched his security collar, and added as faint hope sprang up in his mind, “Can you take this thing off me?”
“No. Veran hails from our future. His technology is in advance of ours.”
“So there’s no way out.”
“Wrong. There must be a solution. Otherwise you would not be here. There exists at least one line of probability—one creode— according to which you’ve carried out the plan. I don’t know if you’ve grasped all the implications yet, Corson, but your future depends on you in the most literal sense.”
“I rather had the impression I depend on it.”
“Another way of saying the same thing. You see, for a long time men have wondered about the problem of continuity of existence. Was a man the same on waking as when he went to sleep the night before? Might not sleep be a complete break? Why did certain ideas and memories vanish altogether from consciousness, only to turn up again later on? Was there a unity, or a mere juxtaposition of existences? One day somebody stumbled on the truth. Since his beginnings man had lived in ignorance of the greater part of himself, his unconscious mind. Nowadays we are asking ourselves almost the same questions in almost the same terms. How are possibilities related to one another? What connects the past, present, and future of one’s existence? Does childhood determine maturity, or the other way around? We don’t yet comprehend our own essential nature, Corson, and we shall not do so for a long while yet. But we have to live with what we do know.”
Selma came back toward them, her body running with streams of water.
“Corson, you should sleep,” Cid advised. “You’re tired. May you foresee your future in your dreams.”
“I’ll try,” Corson said. “I promise you, I will try.”
And he let himself slump to the sand.
He became aware of a presence beside him. He opened his eyes and at once closed them again, blinded by the sun high overhead. He turned over and tried to doze off again, but two insistent noises prevented him, the hiss of the surf and the sound of light breathing. He looked again and saw sand at the level of his cheek, sand on which the wind had raised miniature dunes that it was now leveling again. He awoke completely and sat up. A girl was kneeling at his side, dressed in a short red tunic.
"Antonella!” he exclaimed.
"George Corson,” she said in a disbelieving voice.
He swept the beach with his gaze. Cid, Selma, and the other woman were nowhere in sight. And the girl—Antonella—had risen and taken a few steps back, as though embarrassed at having been caught staring at him.
“You know me?” he demanded.
“I never saw you before. But I’ve heard about you. You’re the man who has to save Uria.”
He looked her over more closely. The fact that she was clad while the others went naked suggested that she must come from a period when the life-style had not attained the ultimate simplicity preferred by the members of the Council. She was younger than he remembered her, almost a teenager. He could not tell how many
years had passed for her between their two meetings. For him it had been a matter of only a few months.
He recalled the other Antonella perfectly. How weird to meet someone you had shared all sorts of adventures with, but who did not know you yet! It was like being confronted with someone who had lost his memory.
“Have you been in a war?” she asked in a voice that mingled disapproval with curiosity.
“Yes. It was—unpleasant.”
She pondered. “I want to ask . . . But I don’t know if I can.”
“Go ahead.”
Flushing, she said, “Have you killed anybody yet, Mr. Corson?” What a nasty kid!
“No. I was a kind of engineer. I never personally stabbed or strangled anyone, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
With seeming satisfaction she said, “I was sure you couldn’t have!” “But I did press the buttons,” Corson said fiercely.
She didn’t understand that, apparently. At a loss, she felt in her tunic and produced a little case which he recognized. “Would you like some smoke?” she inquired.
“No thanks,” he said, although his mouth watered. “I haven’t smoked for a long time.”
“It’s real tobacco, not a synthetic,” she insisted. “I know they used it in your time . . . didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did. But I gave it up.”
“Same as everybody around here. I’m the only one who still does smoke.”
But she laid the case aside.
How could I have fallen in love with someone like this? Corson wondered. She seems so shallow, so hollow! Oh, it must be a matter of age and circumstances . . . When did I begin to fall in love with her?
He searched his memory, and episodes from the adventure they had shared came to the surface like bubbles of gas escaping from the depths of a marsh. Aergistal, the balloon, the recruiting officer, the mausoleum world, the escape, the brief stay at Veran’s camp . . . No, before all that. Long before. He struggled to work it out. It was when he kissed her. No, just before he did that. He remembered thinking she was the sexiest woman he had ever met in his life. And she had not made that impression on him at first glance.
He had fallen in love with her the moment that bright flash had sparked from her igniter. He had detected the hypnotic trick and believed she wanted to make him talk. But what she wanted was to make him fall for her. She had succeeded. No wonder she had given such a mocking answer when he asked why she had not precogged the failure of her trick. Was this a regular custom at Dyoto? He felt anger surge in him for a moment, then calmed down. Since the dawn of time women had set snares for men. It was one of the facts of human existence, and one couldn’t blame them.
He thought: I should have left her to rot in Veran’s camp and learn that men have tricks of their own! But he would not have done that. It was in the camp that he had genuinely come to love her, when she kept such a cool head, and still more on the mausoleum planet, when she had shown herself both human and terrified.
Besides, he had no choice. He would snatch her—and himself— from Veran’s grasp. He would set down a bag of provisions on a blue road. So far, his part was scripted. He could not avoid that without creating a timequake in his past. But afterward? When he had sent the message, would he still have to furnish the recruits and the equipment demanded by Veran, the fugitive from Aergistal?
It made no sense. Why should the other Corson, after their escape, have led them to the mausoleum world? Was that a compulsory stopover, the site of some kind of temporal interchange?
But Corson was coming to know the paths of time well, and he was fairly certain nothing of the kind existed. When he carried out his rescue operation he could just as well bring the escapees here to this beach where the Council was based and leave for Aergistal by himself if his stay there proved to be indispensable. He knew that it was. He had changed at Aergistal. And he had learned much which was necessary to the success of his plans.
He recalled the metal plate laid so conspicuously on the ration bag before the mausoleum door. At the time its message had seemed unclear to him. Searching the pockets of his suit, he found the plate was there even though he had changed clothes many times. Sheer habit must have made him transfer it from one outfit to another.
Part of the text had been erased, although the letters appeared to be deeply incised in the metal.
EVEN EMPTY WRAPPINGS CAN STILL BE USEFUL. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO MAKE WAR. REMEMBER THAT.
He whistled softly between his teeth. Just suppose “empty wrappings” meant the undead women in the mausoleum!
He had wondered whether they might be endowed with artificial personalities and used like robots. He had even thought they might be plastoids until he realized they were too perfectly detailed. They had been alive. Now they were dead, even though the slow activity of their bodies might make one assume the contrary. He had estimated there might be a million of them even in the small part of the mausoleum he had seen. They represented a formidable potential army, numerous enough to match the maddest ambitions of Veran. Bar one thing—they were women. The colonel had judged it necessary to tighten discipline when Antonella entered his camp. He trusted his men only up to a certain point. He did not expect them to betray him for money or by ambition. But there were biological imperatives he dared not infringe.
Corson put his hands to his neck. The collar was there still, so light he often nearly forgot about it. Solid—cold—motionless, yet more dangerous than a cobra. But the snake slumbered. The idea of using the undead as recruits ought not to amount to an overt declaration of hostility.
Shaken by nausea, he bowed down to the sand, aware of Antonella watching him. The idea of making use of the undead appalled him. But it was much in the style of Those of Aergistal to make use of the leftovers, the war criminals or their victims, to avert a far worse calamity. They were casuists who adhered to the principle of the lesser evil—or rather they were total realists. Because those women were dead, dead for good and all. Empty wrappings! No longer capable of reason, or imagination, or even of suffering except on the most basic level. Perhaps they could still breed; that was a point he’d have to bear in mind. But to give them artificial personalities would be a crime far pettier than to annihilate a city full of intelligent beings by pressing a button. On reflection, it was no worse a transgression than an organ transplant, and surgeons on Earth had settled that problem long ago: the dead must serve the living.
He scraped sand over what he had vomited, swallowed painfully, wiped the corners of his mouth.
“I’m better now,” he told Antonella, who was still staring at him in dismay. “It’s nothing. A—a fit.”
She had offered no help, or even sympathy. She had not made a move.
Too young, maybe, he thought. Brought up in the silken safety of a world unaware of disease and pain. Hardly more than a pretty flower. Experience will change her. Then I shall be able to love her. By the gods, l'll take Aergistal to pieces stone by stone to find her again! They can’t keep her there. She has never soiled her hands with any crime.
And that justified Corson’s presence here. Antonella could not do what he had done, nor what remained for him to do. Neither Selma, nor Cid, nor anyone from their period could do it. They were not hardened as he was. They belonged to another world and fought on a different front. Unluckily for them, it was not free from danger. And it was the role of people like Corson to minimize their peril.
What we are, he said to himself, we’re the road sweepers of history, the sewermen. We paddle in shit so that the way will be clean for the feet of our descendants.
“Are you going for a swim?” the girl asked.
He nodded, not having recovered enough to speak. The sea would make him feel clean again. The entire ocean might not be too much.