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

Aton found he could strike little cheer from the Chief Archivist and his assistants. They seemed unable to recognise that the existence they knew had, in fact, vanished and that they would shortly die. In what Aton found a morbid manner they preferred to go about their duties and spent as much time as possible lovingly going over recorded scenes of bygone days and endless lists of names, places, and events.

Neither was he able to answer any of their questions. But two hours later those scanning the surrounding strat reported that an object was again approaching.

For the second time the Imperator materialised into the loading bay.

‘Aton, my servant!’ it boomed.

Aton stood before it stiffly. ‘I am here, Imperator.’ Then he added, ‘Where have you been?’

‘Into the far future. My mind is clear now.’

The Imperator seemed larger, more powerful, more majestic than it ever had before. ‘The time for your greatest service to the empire has arrived, Captain Aton.’

‘I do not understand, Imperator. There is no empire.’

‘What has been will be. If you are victorious.’ The machine-emperor paused. ‘The Minion thinks he has won. He has recovered the time-distorter from his Hegemonic tools and now plans to use it again for another purpose.’

‘Imperator! What is there to talk about?’ Mayar interrupted brokenly. ‘All is gone!’

Impatiently Aton cautioned Mayar to keep silence. The Imperator hummed loudly. ‘At present potential time, alike to primordial chaos, has drowned the world of real time,’ it resumed. ‘The Chronotic storm, however, is abating; soon orthogonal time will form again on the gulf’s surface, like a skin forming on a liquid. If allowed to congeal without interference, it is impossible to say what that new world will be like. That is where the Minion intends to come in. He will use the time-distorter to project a world agreeable to Hulmu, his master. That must not be. You must fight him, Aton. You must take the distorter away from him.’

‘But I don’t think I can, Imperator,’ Aton said. ‘I have already learned to my cost that the Minion is strong.’

‘With the help of religion, you can defeat him.’

Without warning a wide-angled beam of light shot out from the Imperator and bathed Aton. Immediately an extraordinary flood of thoughts and feelings flooded his mind, all connected with the religion in which he had been brought up. Prayers, catechisms and hymns such as he had been taught as a child seemed to sing in his brain.

The emotion engendered by this experience made him feel humble. Objectively, he recognised the use of a thought ray similar in principle to a field-effect device, except that it worked in reverse. The Imperator was reminding him of his religious training. But why?

‘The Minion approaches. Come.’

Once more the door to the inner chamber in the machine’s metal side opened. Aton hesitated.

Then he entered. The Imperator phased into the strat and went speeding down, seeming to know where to go. After what felt like a long wait, Aton became aware that it had killed its velocity and was idling. The door opened, and through it he could see the strat, spreading and convoluting before his tortured eyes.

The message was clear. He ventured into the strat.

He saw the Minion almost immediately, soaring up from the deep, carrying the big tube-like device Aton had seen once before. As Aton came closer he saw the jewel eyes flash and glint through the supernal fire that surrounded them both. The Minion’s mouth was agape and raucous laughter issued from it.

‘Ha ha ha! You want my little toy! Oh, no! This time Hulmu will have you!’

Aton moved in to the attack.

The Minion pointed the tube. Vapours gushed forth and Aton felt himself being wafted away, his four-dimensional form deformed and eroded. With difficulty he evaded the vapours, and then he closed with the Minion and wrestled bodily with him.

The Minion had more than one shape! Limbs and extruberances shot out from him in all the directions of the five-dimensional space in which they fought. Aton found himself encaged in a living organism of roots, limbs, and branches.

He himself was not without resource. With a supreme effort he caused every cell of his body to discharge the transcendent energy it had gained by immersion in the strat. There was a sort of explosion, an uncoiling of the immaterial continuum, and he was free.

But he was weakened. And then, before he could take stock of himself, he was imprisoned once more.

This time he seemed to be transfixed or encaged in brilliantly coloured glass or crystal. There was a sudden shift, and then he knew he had been transferred to a similar, but second prison.

He was inside the Minion’s eyes, being flashed alternately from one to the other!