The Overlords of War (24 page)

Then he would turn to Cid.

“Are you sure that throwing Veran’s camp into confusion will be enough? Are you sure the citizens of Uria can cope with the soldiers and their pegasones?”

“Absolutely,” Cid would say. “Apart from Veran none of those soldiers has the makings of a leader. As soon as he is out of the way the rest will put up little resistance.”

“Collectively, perhaps not. Individually, I’m not so sure. They’re used to fighting under very bad conditions."

“They won’t be inclined to fight after what you’ll have dumped on them. And don’t underestimate the people of Uria. They may not be war veterans, but I’m not certain Veran would have gotten the better of them even without your plan. There would have been a fearful number of casualties, which is what we want to avoid, but in the end Veran would have been brought to his knees. In any case, though, that’s for us to worry about.”

The prospect of this confrontation filled Corson with anxiety. He knew that Veran’s men would be disoriented by the probable breakdown of the strict combat discipline they were used to. But they did possess formidable weapons, and knew how to use them.

“I’d very much like to be there,” Corson would wind up.

"No. You’ll have other tasks to attend to. You might be hurt or even killed. That would lead to a major timequake.”

Since the start Cid had insisted that Corson stay clear of the eventual battlefield. He had agreed without understanding why. He could not get to grips with the idea that this battle had already taken place and in one sense had already been won.

One evening Cid did not launch into his customary thesis. He simply said, “I hope you’ve finished your preparations, friend. Time is wasting. You must be on your way tomorrow.”

Corson gave a thoughtful nod.

That evening he took Antonella to a distant part of the beach. She turned out to be quite passive. He had retained a different memory of her. Now she was neither afraid nor eager, simply compliant, whereas on the same beach three hundred years earlier she had displayed great passion. He was sure of one thing: this was not her first time. But that was of no importance to him. What he did wonder was how many men she would meet before he found her again. Then he dozed off, cuddling her against him.

Next morning he harnessed the pegasone. He had found little time to attend to the beast, but it did not need much looking after. He had thought of trying to contact Aergistal, but he had not put the idea into effect. He preferred not to make inquiries of Those of Aergistal unless he was forced to. When he thought back to the crystal voice he had heard under that purple welkin he felt ill.

Cid was alone on the beach. He approached just as Corson was ready to mount.

“Good luck, friend,” he called.

Corson hesitated. He did not want to make a long speech at this parting, but on the other hand he did not want to leave without saying a word to anyone. When he had wakened Antonella had gone, perhaps to spare him a painful goodbye.

Simply to say thank you doesn’t feel like enough. He licked his dry lips. So many questions still to ask, so many things left unsaid . . .

“May you live here to the end of eternity,” he said at last. ‘To meditate your fill, as you said the evening of my arrival . . . Do you do it only so that you can administer these centuries?”

“No. That’s not even the most important aspect of it. We are preparing, as you know, to master time, and this”—Cid gestured to indicate the beach, the sea, the sky—“is our laboratory.”

“In order to travel into the future?”

“Not just that. Time travel is almost an incidental. We are trying to get used to the idea of living in a new way. We’ve coined the name ‘hyperlife’ for it. How shall I explain that? Perhaps I could say that what we want is to live in several possibilities at once, maybe in all possibilities. To coexist with ourselves on many probability lines. To be several people at once yet remain our unique selves. To be multidimensional. And think what it will mean when every being can introduce its own changes into history. The changes will combine with each other, they’ll set up interference patterns like ripples meeting on a pond, and some will be favorable and some will be harmful. No human mind could attain hyperlife and still be sane! Everyone is part of another’s possibility. You would have to know somebody incredibly well before risking a change in his destiny and your own. That’s what we are preparing ourselves for, Selma, Ana, and I. It’s a long road we’ve set out on—a long road.”

“You will become like Those of Aergistal,” Corson said.

Cid shook his head. “They’re different, genuinely transformed by evolution . . . No, that’s not the right term. No concept of ours even comes close. They will no longer be human, or avian, or saurian, or descendants of any species you can dream of. They will be all of them at once, or rather they will have been. Really we know nothing of Aergistal, Corson. All we know of it is what we see, not because it’s all we’re allowed to see but because it’s all we are capable of seeing. Almost nothing. We interpret it in the only way we can, and what we see there is ourselves. Those of Aergistal will conquer something which makes us afraid.”

“Death?” Corson said.

“No, death holds no terrors for those who have caught a glimpse of hyperlife. To die once is no great matter if an infinity of other parallel existences remain to you. But there is something we call hyperdeath. That consists in being relegated to mere potential, in being eliminated from all probability lines by a timequake. To be sure of escaping that, one must control every creode in the universe. One must make one’s own possibilities congruent with those of the continuum. Those of Aergistal have succeeded in doing so.”

Corson said slowly, “Is that why they are afraid of the Outside, and have girdled their domain with a moat of wars?”

“Perhaps,” answered Cid. “I’ve never been there. But you must not let what I say upset you. Come back here when you have done what you have to do.”

“I’ll come back,” Corson said. “I hope very much to see you again.” Cid gave an equivocal smile. “Don’t hope for too much, my friend. But return as quickly as you can. There is a seat waiting for you on the Council of Uria. Good luck again.”

“Goodbye!” Corson cried, and the pegasone took off.

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

He jumped a few days into the past, chose a lonely spot, and examined the suits. Satisfied, he decided to proceed to the second

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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