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

Haight sneered, looking him up and down. ‘Who are you to lecture me?’ he retorted. ‘Your offers and arguments are all tricks to help yourself! Let me tell you something – something of service! True, even emperors can make foolish mistakes. What is Philipium but a foolish old man? But that is not important. Something more surrounds the Ixians and welds the empire together. That something is service – the ideal of service to the empire! Men give their lives to this ideal, it is the empire’s main strength. And what of you? What do you understand of this strength?’ Haight’s voice rose to a roar. ‘You are a traitor, a criminal, a coward! But now you face me, a loyal servant of the empire!’

Aton stood pale-faced but erect while the commander raged. ‘I had been undecided as to what to do with you,’ Haight said more quietly, ‘but now I think I will kill you anyway.’

Aton skipped back. His hand darted into his tunic and came out with a small hand beamer he had found in Haight’s stateroom.

‘I am set upon a course, Commander. I will not give up, at least until I have spoken with Colonel Anamander. Perhaps he agrees with me.’

‘And perhaps he does not. It makes no difference, but in fact he does not.’ Haight stared contemptuously at the beamer.

Aton was pointing the gun uncertainly at Haight. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them, sir.’

‘I need no gun. I have a weapon pointed directly at your heart: your own vagus nerve.’

Aton’s eyes opened wide.

‘Your information is probably incomplete,’ Haight continued. ‘You have conquered the compulsion to pronounce the trigger-word, evidently. But it is not necessary that you should pronounce it. It is only necessary that your nervous system should hear it. And I, as the receiving officer, know what the word is.’

Although his finger tightened on the stud of the beamer, Aton found that he could not, after all, fire on his commanding officer. He staggered back yet another step.

‘Vom.’ The word dropped from Haight’s lips like a dose of poison.

And Aton’s nervous system reacted instantly. Brain cell after brain cell fired in response to the signal, spreading the message in a web of pending death. Aton sought to clamp down on the impulse, to dampen it before it could reach the vagus nerve, sometimes called the suicide nerve because of its ability to initiate cardiac arrest on instructions from the brain.

His heart gave a convulsive leap and missed several beats. Aton staggered, the gun slipping from his fingers. He was vaguely aware of Haight looking on, half in satisfaction, half repelled.

Then the scene before him vanished, for a split second – a split second that was an eternity long. And so, for that same split second, did orthogonal time.

He was back in the strat, transposed there spontaneously by his nervous system somehow and experiencing its impossibilities all over again.

And when, almost immediately, he phased back into Haight’s lounge, the cabin bore its former flat, two-dimensional appearance. But this time he was far from being mentally, incapacitated. He felt strangely young, strong, and omnipotent, as if he could fly while others were earthbound.

Vom. The word had no danger in it now. Its fearful virulence had been expunged from his mind.

‘Wha – Did something happen just then?’ Haight whispered. For a moment he had seemed to see Aton surrounded by an aura of near-invisible flame.

‘Yes. Your word won’t work against me either. I have rid myself of it.’

He paused. He still did not understand what was happening to him, at least not entirely. He only knew that it was surprising, incredible, and yet logical.

‘Commander, you have wondered why the empire requires a time-courier to die. I think I can tell you.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘It is because he becomes like a god.’

‘A god.’ Haight chuckled derisively. ‘Well, you may have broken the psychological conditioning, but let’s see how well you fare against hot energy.’

He had unflapped his waist holster and now he drew his clumsy-looking hand beamer, larger than the toy-like weapon Aton had discarded. With slow deliberation he clicked off the safety and aimed the orifice at Aton’s chest.

Aton had time for a hasty valediction.

‘Commander,’ he gasped, ‘I also am a loyal servant of the empire.’

Then he seemed actually to see the dense microwave beam, made visible by its accompanying dull red tracer waves, advancing through space towards him.

And Commander Haight gave a hoarse cry. For Aton had vanished completely from his cabin. He had been plunged back into the strat.