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

She had broken and would obey them. Stryne knew how to recognise the signs. In a way he was slightly regretful it was ending so soon. Many victims kept up the chase for years. He knew of one, a man, who had been pursued for two decades before submitting.

‘Hulmu is the only true reality, sweetheart. You’ll find that out soon. You’re going to him.’

She closed her eyes.

‘Come on, Inpriss. Let’s go.’

Meekly she rose and walked with the two men, clutching her satchel. She was in the grip of something she had never felt before: a resignation so strong it overpowered her. It wasn’t as if they had broken her will. It was as if her will had changed, so that she agreed with what they were going to do to her, simply because she couldn’t see any other future.

‘You see, honey, by the time we get to this stage we’re doing you a favour,’ Stryne told her as they walked. ‘Just imagine if we didn’t sacrifice you for some reason or another. Every time your life repeated you’d have to go through all this again. But this way your life won’t repeat. Your soul will go to Hulmu. You’ll never have to endure the pursuit again.’

‘Where are we going to do it?’ Velen asked eagerly. ‘Somewhere nice and quiet? We could hire a hotel room.’

‘We have to go to the main temple,’ Stryne informed him. ‘The Minion himself is taking an interest in this case. He’ll be watching.’

‘The Minion? Wow!’

‘Yes, he’s one, Your Highness. I was right.’

In Prince Vro’s suite in the discreet, extremely select Imperial Hotel a man was stretched out on the floor. The oblong plates of the field-effect device stood on either side of his head. Perlo Rolce fiddled with the device’s knobs, watching a small screen with a greenish tint across which dim shapes flickered, while one of his men knelt by the prisoner holding a pain-prong.

Progress had been much quicker than even Vro had hoped. Rolce had started by visiting the street where Archivist Mayar believed the causal hiatus might have occurred. While using a map to help him look out the likely routes where the body might have been taken, he had noticed some activity an untrained person would not have observed. In his own words the place was ‘crawling with snoopers’. Rolce had taken a chance and his men had performed a routine but efficient street kidnapping.

‘Why should so many Traumatics be on the street?’ Vro asked with a frown, sipping a liqueur.

‘That’s easily answered, Your Highness. This man’s part of a pursuit operation. They are harrying some poor devil through the city till he drops.’

He nodded to his assistant to apply the prong again, repeating his question to the prisoner. The Traumatic gave a long gurgling scream and squirmed on the thick pile of the carpet, and Rolce kept watch on the screen, stroking his chin.

He had long found that a field-effect device coupled to long jolts of unbearable agony provided an almost foolproof method of interrogation. The subject might discipline his mind so as to prevent the answers the inquisitor sought from forming there, but pain broke down this discipline. While his attention was preoccupied with pain, images and information flooded into the body’s electrostatic field automatically, quite against his will.

‘He doesn’t know anything about Princess Veaa,’ Rolce declared at length. ‘But he knows the address of their chief temple here in Umbul.’

‘So what do you recommend now?’

‘The princess might be in the temple, or nearby. At any rate someone there should know what has been done with her.’ Rolce cogitated briefly. ‘Our best bet is to act quickly and decisively, before the Traumatics have time to suspect anything amiss; the disappearance of one of their members, for instance, might alert them to trouble. I suggest a raid on the temple, perhaps assisted by the police or by members of the Imperial Guard stationed here. Even if the princess is not on the premises we are very near the end of the trail.’

Vro gestured floorwards. ‘And what of him?’

‘If the majordomo can be depended on to dispose of a corpse …’

‘Have no fear. The standards of service in this hotel know no limits.’

‘In that case …’ Rolce bent low, taking from his pocket a rubbery cylinder which he applied to the prisoner’s head. The struggling Traumatic went limp as the weapon turned his brain to jelly.

‘Now, Your Highness, I propose that we make our move with the least possible delay.’

Inpriss Sorce was privileged to be sacrificed with full ceremony upon the altar of Hulmu, in the Umbul Temple itself.

She stared as if hypnotised at the representation of Hulmu’s Impossible Shape. Here it was not an abstract sculpture but a hologram mobile that writhed and twisted. Stryne noticed her fascination and seized her chin in his hand to forcibly avert her gaze. If one stared at it too long one’s eyes began to move independently of one another and sometimes did not right themselves for up to an hour.