Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

The Pointers huddled together. One of them pulled a cord. A curtain swished aside, revealing a complete set of Chronopolis’s massive street directory.

A sect member with a self-absorbed face thoughtfully selected a volume.

Another snatched it from him, bent back the covers, and flung the book to the floor so that it splayed its leaves on the tiles.

Yet another picked it up and smoothed out the pages that fortune, through this procedure, had selected. He stared at the ceiling while allowing his fingers to roam at random over the paper.

Everyone watched in silence as his fingers slowed to a stop.

‘Eighty-nine Kell Street,’ he read out. ‘Precinct E-Fourteen. Inpriss Sorce, female.’

‘Inpriss Sorce,’ someone said, savouring the name. They all started wondering what she was like: young or old, pretty or plain; what her fear index was.

‘The Pursuer team will begin operations tomorrow at nine,’ the vicar intoned.

‘Inpriss Sorce.’ All the Pursuers began murmuring the name to themselves with a growing sense of pleasure.

They were glad the victim was a woman.

Inpriss Sorce was thirty years old. She had a neat, slightly melancholy face with light-brown eyes, and an average figure. She lived in a two-room apartment and worked as a clerk for Noble Cryonics, a firm that did a great deal of work for the government.

Once she had held a better-paid job with the Historical Office, but had lost it when a jealous comforter cast aspersions on her piety. The post she held now, though it reduced her station in life, did not require vetting by the Church. It did, however, entail living in a poorer part of the city. Also, most of her friends from the Historical Office now wanted little to do with her, so she was, for the time being, lonely.

She had come home from work and was wondering what to do with the evening when the Pursuers paid their call.

The casers had already been at work some hours before. One of them met Rol Stryne and Fee Velen as they arrived at the entrance to the apartment block. Briefly he explained the layout of Inpriss Sorce’s small dwelling. The window in the living-room gave access to a fire escape.

‘Very good,’ said Stryne. ‘Give us half an hour.’

Velen carried a large tool-box which he lugged awkwardly as they mounted the stairs. On the third floor Stryne found the right door and knocked on it. When it opened, they both pushed their way inside.

Inpriss Sorce was carried back by their onrush. ‘What – what do you want?’ she demanded shrilly.

Their eyes flicked around the small apartment. Stryne looked at Inpriss, studying her face, his gaze roving up and down her body. He liked what he saw and was feeling a warm glow of anticipation.

Hulmu had chosen well. It was going to be good; Hulmu would be entertained.

The girl retreated to the far wall and put her hand to her throat. ‘What do you want?’ she repeated in a whisper. She had seen the expression in their eyes. ‘Just tell me what you want.’

‘This is the most important day of your life, lady,’ Stryne told her. ‘You’re going to experience … what you never experienced before.’

They both took the black cloths from their pockets and draped them over their skulls.

Inpriss shrank back in horror. ‘Oh, God! No! No!’ She let out a weak scream, but before she could finish it they had seized her and Velen had clapped a hand over her mouth. She was trembling and almost unresisting as they carried her to a table from which Stryne swept cups and books. They placed her on it. Stryne took stout cord which he looped around the legs of the table and, using specially prescribed knots, caught her wrists and ankles.

When Velen took his hand from her mouth she no longer screamed. They rarely did; the appearance of the infamous Traumatic sect was calculated to inspire helpless terror. Instead she began to pray in a trembling, sobbing voice.

‘It’s no good praying to your God like that,’ Stryne said conversationally. ‘He doesn’t exist, it’s all a con. Before we’ve finished here you’ll be praying to Hulmu, the authentic god who created us by projecting us on to the screen of reality.’ He liked to engage the sacrificial victims in a dialogue, to establish a rapport with them.

Humming meditatively – a nervous habit that came over him at moments like this – he noted her carrying satchel lying on a chair. Caressingly he opened it and inspected the contents. Small personal effects, identification papers, a voucher for a bank account, money, and a few letters.

He placed the satchel on a ledge near the window.

They opened the tool-box and began taking out their equipment.

The girl ceased praying and lay gasping with fright. Stryne waved a meter near her head. Her fear index was high – nearly eighty. That was good.

‘How are you going to do it?’ she asked them. ‘Please tell me how you’re going to do it!’

‘Mmmmmm … There are so many ways. The knife, inserted slowly? The Terrible Vibrator? The Exit by Burning?’ He showed her the various instruments one by one.