Vestiges of Time (26 page)

mand of the Paratimers, Mica’s lieutenant, in the place called Staunton.

“Yes, that’s so,” replied the lady OrDjina. “That must somehow be related to the phenomenon you described.”

“That may well be,” said the voice of another woman, a voice that was in Mathers’ memory as well.

“Here,” said OrDjina’s voice. “This door does not appear to have been opened.”

The Shadowy Man tensed, waited, listened, as a hand curled around the knob of the door, turned the knob, and tried to force open the bolted door.

“It’s locked,” said Scoti’s voice. “That figures.”

“Then kick it open,” said a voice that the Shadowy Man did not recognize, a voice with an accent unknown to Eric Mathers, a voice that somehow did not sound like that of a human.

“Right,” replied Scoti’s voice; then he grunted as he kicked the door, rattling it and the wall.

“Kick it again,” said the alien voice.

“Right,” Scoti repeated, and once more the Paratimer kicked savagely at the door. This time there came with it the sound of wood splintering.

“Once more,” said the voice that the Shadowy Man did not believe to come from a human mouth and throat.

With the third kick the lock broke and the door swung inward.

There were six individuals in the corridor, six who began to come into the room to look down at the unmoving form of Eric Mathers.

The first of these was the lady OrDjina, dressed in a black, tight-fitting gown more appropriate for a dinner party than for the charnel house that the Underground had become. There was an ugly pistol in her hand, and on her face a look of satisfaction, an expression that briefly turned to one of disgust when she saw the mutilated body of the technician MaLarba on

the floor near Mathers’ chair. Her eyes quickly went back to the figure in the chair and the look of satisfaction returned.

Immediately behind her was a stocky, dusky-skinned man, fairer than OrDjina, a man whom Mathers had once considered an improbable blend of Italian and Nipponese parentage. Scoti, also armed, was dressed in a blouse and slacks of pale green, and had a look of satisfaction similar to that of OrDjina’s—a look that swept the gamut from revulsion, when he saw MaLarba’s body, to astonishment, when he saw the face of the man in the chair before him, and finally to triumph.

“My God, OrDjina!” He gasped, glanced back at the others behind him for confirmation, then continued: “Do you know who your HarkosNor
really
is?” “No. Should I?” OrDjina asked, puzzled.

Scoti laughed, then clenched his left fist and shook it toward the man strapped in the chair. “Dammit, we should have known who he was.”

“This does sort of tie things together, doesn’t it?” said a young, beautiful, black-skinned woman, who was the third to enter the room, and who was dressed similarly to Scoti, and armed as he was. Long, tempestuous nights with G’lendal came up out of Mathers’ memory. She would have been difficult to forget.

“Oh, doesn’t it!” Scoti gloated. “All of it begins to make sense now.”

“Well, who is he?” OrDjina demanded.

Before Scoti could answer, the remaining three had filed into the room. Two of them, a black man and woman, were dressed in the long white robes of Paratimer physicians, with the badges of telepaths on their chests. As they came into the room, each was moving exactly as the other did, down to the most subtle gestures. The Shadowy Man knew who they were, something of a forerunner of himself: Sol-Jodala they/

it were called. And were probably among the finest, most talented physicians in all the universes.

The sixth individual gave the Shadowy Man pause as he—a male, surely—moved forward. The others gave way, moved aside, so that this one could come up to Mathers’ immobile form and look down into his open eyes.

“Can he hear me, OrDjina?” this one asked, human vocabulary coming only with difficulty to his lips, mouth, and tongue.

“Yes, sir, I believe he can,” OrDjina answered, a respect and a submissiveness in her voice that Eric Mathers had never heard before.

“Hear me, then, you who are known by many names. I am called Foraldar. Some call me the Inquisitor. You will know me as Master.”

Through the eyes of Eric Mathers, and through his own electromagnetic vision, the Shadowy Man looked at the one who called himself Master Foraldar the Inquisitor.

He was as tall as a man, taller than Scoti, equal in height to Sol of Sol-Jodala, and, like a man, he had two arms, two legs, a head on a neck above his shoulders, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and two ears. He looked much like a man, yet there was a coloring of blue to his skin and his eyes were too large and his jaw was hinged wrongly and he had six fingers on each hand.

“We have many names,” Foraldar said slowly, carefully articulating his words to the being he believed to be Eric Mathers, who was he, but was also something more. “To you we are the masters. You will do as we say. You will obey. You will answer. And you will assist.” The being glanced over his shoulder at G’lendal and said, “With your mind, speak to
him.
Tell him why we have come.”

Foraldar stepped back a pace or two to make room

for the black woman, who approached the form of Mathers, extended her fingers, and touched his temples.

In the background he could hear OrDjina’s whispering voice asking of Scoti, “Who is this man?”

“He called himself Erie Mathers when I knew him,” Scoti whispered in reply.

“Eric Mathers?” OrDjina said with a gasp.

“Exactly,” Scoti told her.

Inside Eric Mathers’ head, inside the Shadowy Man’s mind, came these words:
Eric, you know me, don’t you? G’lendal, G’lendal from Staunton. We have come to help you, Eric. We know what you are and we wish to help you.

Help me?
the Shadowy Man asked, pretending to be the man who was but a single part of him.
How can you help me? What do you want of me?

Eric, we know
who
you are. We know about the Shadowy Man and how he is fighting the Kriths. The Kriths are our enemies too. Together we can fight them and together we can defeat them.

Exactly who are you asking me to help? That
thing
over there?

He is not a
t
hing,
Eric. You would never give them a chance to explain themselves. They aren’t our enemies. They’re helping us fight the Kriths. They and mankind, together with you, can defeat the Kriths.

And then be what, G’lendal? A race of lapdogs for your
masters?

That’s just Foraldar’s way of speaking, Eric. He’s our leader, our unit’s leader, and like any good leader he expects his people to follow his orders.

It sounds tike a great deal more than that to me.

You don’t understand, Eric. . . .

I don’t even want to understand the mentality of a
willing
slave, G’lendal.

Eric! Thafs not the way it is at all.

Isn’t it? Then tell me, G’lendal, what is
he?
What

kind of creatures are they and where do they come from?

There’s no time for all that now, Eric. We will explain it to you later, when it’s safe. . . .

While this mental conversation passed back and forth, the Shadowy Man formed a second mental extension, a fine and delicate psionic probe, which he carefully pushed toward the creature who called himself Master Foraldar, toward the brightly glowing point of alien mental light in the psionic darkness.

He probed, touched, entered into the brightness, and found . . .

Even the Shadowy Man, a composite of 337 human cerebral cortices and their mentation patterns, who had entered into the minds of parallel Eric Matherses and who had grappled with the minds of the female rulers of the Kriths, could not deal with what he now encountered: below the glow of self-awareness, of consciousness, he found inside the mind of Foraldar a type of mental process such as he had never encountered before, had never even imagined. This was not a mind like a man’s, or even Uke a Krith’s, or Uke that of the composite Tromas, or even, by a stretch of the imagination, a mind like that of an electronic computer. There were mental processes going on there, passages of neural impulses, thoughts being created, but these were being done in fashions totally incomprehensible to the Shadowy Man. He found no way to equate these with his own mental processes, no way to translate these into' anything he could understand. He could have called them dark, evil, aUen, maUgnant, but he was not certain that would have been correct. Different, they were. AUen, yes. But beyond that he could gather almost nothing.

He formed words in the language Foraldar had spoken, pushed them into the alien mind:
What are you?

The alien screamed, threw himself backward, clawed

at his face, then collapsed to the floor in a shuddering bundle.

The humans stood for a moment, transfixed. Then Scoti moved, turned away from the sobbing alien, faced the form of Eric Mathers, leveled his pistol, and asked, “G’lendal, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” the black girl said aloud, then turned back to Mathers and touched his temples again.
Eric, what have you done? . . .

I just asked him who he was.

My God!
.
.
. G’lendal’s mind gasped. Then she said, angrily,
Leave him alone, Eric. Give us time. . . .
Aloud she said to Scoti, “He’ll be okay in a minute. Get him outside and give him some water. Sol-Jodala can tend to him.”

“G’lendal,” Scoti cried, “we’re running out of time.”

“I know,” she said, glancing back at Mathers. “But give me just a few more minutes. I’ve got to convince him.”

“Maybe it would be better to kill
him
now,” Scoti said.

“Foraldar wants him.”

“Wanted him, you mean. He may be ready to kill him now too.”

“Then he will have to decide that,” G’lendal said. “See to him.”

Angrily, reluctantly, with the help of the physician Sol-Jodala, Scoti carried Foraldar out of the room and into the corridor.

Well, Eric,
G’lendal said into his mind,
do you see what you have done?

It wasn’t my intention to harm him.

You did, though. Their minds are very unlike ours, although I am surprised that even you have the power to cause him pain like that.

I’ve changed a lot since you knew me.
. ..

I know that. That’s why we’re here.

Why?

As I said, we know of the Shadowy Man. We need him.

You won’t get him until I know a great deal more.

And I told you we don’t have the time.

What’s the hurry?

Don’t be a fool, Eric. If we know of the Shadowy Man, where
he
is, don’t you think the Kriths do too?

Yes, I suppose they would. But how did you know?

We have no time for all that now. Just think on this: if we have come here, the Kriths are surely sending people too. They will be here soon. . . .

I imagine they will, G’lendal, but it will be too late for them, just as it’s too late for you.

And what do you mean by that, Eric?

Answer my questions and I’ll answer yours. What is this Foraldar of yours? Where does he come from?

A mental sigh.
Oh, very well, Eric. Foraldar’s people, the people you know as “Albigensians,” come from a Timeline on which there occurred a terrible genetic war.

Explain that . . .

Very well. On Foraldar"s Line of origin, the Kriths returned to Earth from UR-427-51-IV, as you know, but rather than moving across the Lines and establishing KHL-000, they remained and set out to exterminate the humans of that world. During the war that followed there were
—

G’lendal’s narrative was cut short by the sound of shouting voices, then the firing of weapons.

“Right over there, Cal-sarlin,” said the first of the voices, a deep, masculine voice speaking in Shangalis. “Over . . . Look out!”

“Who . . .”

Guns began to fire.

“Paratimers!’’

G’lendal screamed.

Through Mathers’ eyes the Shadowy Man could not see what was happening, divorced himself from that

body, threw psionic extensions into the corridor, then saw.

A band of men, led by a towering, naked, ugly Krith, was coming down the corridor, armed as were the Paratimers. The two men leading the Timeliners were tall and were dressed in harsh, black uniforms, and they had sighted the Paratimers outside the room clustering around the figure of Foraldar, had yelled a warning to their Krithian leader. Scoti had gotten his weapon up and had pulled off the first shot. As they dispersed, the Timeliners fired back.

Now energy weapons and slug throwers raked the hallway. A blast of coherent energy caught the kneeling Scoti full in the face, washed away flesh to blackened bone, kicked Scoti’s still-writhing body backward against a wall. Leaden slugs tore through both members of the telepathic team Sol-Jodala, ripping apart Sol’s arm and shoulder, almost cutting Jodala apart at the waist. Another bundle of slugs kicked into the still-prostrate Foraldar, puncturing his green uniform and the body wearing it, giving it some semblance of jerking life as the impact of the slugs knocked him against the crumpling form of Scoti.

OrDjina, who had been standing in the doorway, leaped back into the recording room, too frightened even to use the gun she held. G’lendal stood transfixed.

In moments the two black-clad men stood in the doorway, their energy pistols covering the two women and the immobile Eric Mathers.

The Shadowy Man recognized the towering men dressed in midnight black, Turothians, Eric Mathers had once heard them called. Humans, but . . . from worlds so far across the Timelines, the products of experiences so far outside the pale of Eric Mathers, that it had been hard for him to consider them humans.

One was named Pall, and the look he gave Mathers was one of intense hatred.

The second was named Marth, and he had but one