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

For several hours he was forced to endure Cree’s witless expatiations. But eventually the effect of the flower’s perfume wore off and the ex-soldier fell into a deep sleep. And so they continued on for several days more. Deeper into the empire the land began to take on a more urbanised aspect, and remembering the kuron’s warning Jasperodus thought it prudent to descend, abandon the plane and continue on foot. Sometimes walking, sometimes by rail, meeting a number of adventures together, the pair arrived at last in Tansiann.

7

Tansiann!

Pausing on the eminence of a tall hill, one of ten guarding the Imperial City, Jasperodus looked down to where he hoped to prove his capacity to achieve all.

‘Tansiann,’ he murmured after a while. ‘It is everything I imagined.’

‘The centre of the world,’ Cree Inwing agreed. ‘A city one could lose oneself in.’

‘True. Every experience is to be found here, no doubt, such being the nature of capitals.’

For some short while they had been travelling through the environs of the city, consisting of farmlands, satellite towns, private estates and fenced-off areas containing secret government projects. Tansiann proper, on which they now gazed, was a well-defined entity occupying an undulating estuary valley, bounded on one side by the sea and on the other by the encircling ten hills which in preceding centuries had provided a natural landward defence. Through the city flowed the river Tan, a waterway created during the Rule of Tergov but overbuilt by the clustered conurbation now, and fully visible only near its mouth, where ocean-going ships pulled up at the three-mile-long dockland. With all these natural amenities Charrane had chosen well in placing his capital here. Boasting a population of three million, Tansiann had become the world’s most important city, and exuded a lively, vigorous atmosphere. Jasperodus felt a mounting excitement as he beheld it. Admiration, anticipation, a desire to share in ambitious endeavours, all blended into a kind of longing.

Like all large cities Tansiann was separated into districts each exemplifying a different function. In one area grimy tenements mingled with the workshops of artisans; in another temples and skyscrapers piled together and lurched skyward. Near the dockland larger workshops, factories and foundries poured smoke into the air; elsewhere a sparkling commercial centre adjoined an elegant tree-lined residential district inhabited by the wealthy. To the northeast, in a quarter dating from the Old Empire, new dwellings sprang up amongst old ruins and a long wall, like a spine from which other ribs radiated, still represented some enigmatic antique construction. Yet such relics detracted but little from the triumphant signs of a resurgent civilisation. Cree and Jasperodus had passed through towns displaying far less favourable a contrast between past glory and present achievement. In Tansiann the projects beloved of the Emperor Charrane stood out proudly: soaring monuments of nascent might, buildings to reduce a man to the size of an ant, public colonnades of delightful extent, statuary and vast murals of Byzantine splendour.

A sudden flash of fire caught their attention. A pillar of white energy was climbing like a rising sun from behind one of the more distant hills. It lifted aloft a glinting mass of metal which accelerated rapidly until it was no more than a dot in the sky.

Jasperodus nodded in satisfaction. He was already aware that the Emperor, missing no opportunity to invest the city with an air of impressiveness, had located the Empire’s largest spaceground close at hand too. No doubt the daily thunder of rocket engines reminded Tansiann’s citizens of how far the New Empire could reach.

The two travellers returned to the highway, from which they had departed so as to gain their panoramic view of the city, and followed it as it descended into the estuary. An hour of walking brought them, through dusty streets lined with canopied shops, to a district near the river. Here, at the intersection of three thoroughfares, they paused and looked about them.

The place bore the unsettled seediness of a transit area, frequented mostly by sailors, casual labourers and recently arrived immigrants. Taverns, inns and rooming houses were plentiful. One of the three streets curved round to run alongside a ribwork of concrete pillars, through which could be glimpsed the murky brown water of the Tan, much fouled by industrial waste, and bearing slow-moving black barges.