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

‘Captain Mond Aton, serving in His Chronotic Majesty’s Third Time Fleet under Commander Veel Ark Haight, it is laid against you that on the eleventh day of cycle four-eight-five, fleet-time, you were guilty of cowardice and gross dereliction of duty in that, the vessel under your command being crippled by enemy action, you abandoned your ship the Smasher of Enemies ahead of your men; and further that you fought with the men under your command so as to board a life raft, thus saving yourself at their expense. How do you plead?’

The young lieutenant stepped forward. ‘Sirs, I wish to tender that Captain Aton is unfit to plead, being the victim of amnesia.’

‘I plead not guilty,’ Aton contradicted firmly. ‘I do not believe I am capable of the acts described.’

A faint sneer came to the prosecutor’s lips. ‘He does not believe he is capable!’

With a despairing shrug the counsel for the defence stepped back to his place.

Inexorably the prosecution proceeded to call witnesses. And so Aton was forced to experience what he had already experienced at the preliminary hearings. First to be called was Sergeant Quelle, his chief gunnery noncom. With blank bemusement he heard him recount how he, Aton, a beamer in each hand, had killed all who stood in his way in his haste to leave the foundering Smasher of Enemies. Occasionally Quelle glanced his way with what seemed to him a spiteful, fearful look. At those moments a double image flashed into Aton’s mind: he seemed to see Quelle’s face distended and made bulbous as if seen through a magnifying glass or through the visor of a strat suit. But the picture faded as soon as it was born, and he put it down to imagination.

Seven other witnesses, all crewmen from the Smasher of Enemies, followed Quelle. All repeated his tale, pausing sometimes to glare accusingly at their captain. They named the men and officers they had seen Aton gun down, and told how they had succeeded in disarming him only once the life raft was floating free in the strat and the Smasher of Enemies had broken up. Then, after an agonising delay, they had eventually been located and picked up by the flagship. Aton had been arrested and sent to Chronopolis.

Of all this Aton remembered practically nothing. He could recall some details of the battle with the Hegemonics, in a confused kind of way, but it all had the aspects of a dream. As for the events Quelle and the others spoke of, it was just a blank to him. The only thing he could remember was coming to and finding that life raft 3 was being hauled inboard the Lamp of Faith, Commander Haight’s flagship.

Could he really have murdered, among others, Lieutenant Krish? Could he have fallen prey to such animal panic, in the grip of some mental derangement, perhaps? If so, the derangement was still affecting him, for everything seemed still possessed of a dreamlike quality. He simply could not reconcile what was happening with his own image of himself, with his love of the Time Service, and with his loyalty to the empire.

The prosecutor conceded the floor to the defence. The young lieutenant called his one and only witness.

‘Major Batol,’ he said to the slim officer who entered, ‘what is your function in the Time Service?’

‘I am a doctor and surgeon.’

‘Do you recognise the accused?’

The major eyed Aton briefly and nodded.

‘Will you please tell us the result of your examination of Captain Aton earlier.’

Major Batol turned to the tribunal. ‘I examined the captain with a field-effect device. This is a device that responds to the “field effect”, that is to say the electrostatic nimbus that surrounds the human body and brain. By its means it is possible to ascertain a person’s mental state and even what he is thinking, since thoughts and emotions leak into the field. The technique may be likened to eavesdropping on the operation of a computer by picking up its incidental electromagnetic transmissions –’

‘Yes, you may spare us the explanations,’ the head of the tribunal said sourly. ‘Come to the point.’

‘Captain Aton has total amnesia of the period under question,’ Major Batol informed them.

‘And what would be a likely cause of such amnesia?’ asked the defence counsel.

‘It is almost certainly traumatic in origin,’ the major said. ‘Remember that the destroyer was foundering into the strat. Anyone who happened, for only a moment, to see the strat with his bare eyes would undergo trauma sufficient to account for amnesia of this type.’

‘Thank you, Major.’

The prosecutor was quick to come forward. ‘Major Batol, would you say that a man suffering from the trauma you describe would be capable of purposeful action, such as fighting his way aboard a life raft?’

‘It is highly unlikely that he would be capable of any action whatsoever, certainly not of an integrated kind.’