Collision with Chronos

“All men are pawns,” Limnich purred. “When he leaves for the reservation, give him your communicator. Urge him to call the ship to take him off, so he can make a report to your city on his mission. But no hint of what we’re really about, mind.” He eyed Su-Mueng speculatively. “Maybe you Chinks aren’t so clever after all.”

12

The sun was setting on a dusty yellowish landscape broken only by bare, bone-like trees and scattered houses of brick or mud. Rond Heshke, sitting on a verandah backed by a neat bungalow of red brick, looked upon the scene with an unexpected feeling of calm and peace.

Herrick, the Amhrak who owned the bungalow in which Heshke, Sobrie and Layella were staying, came walking toward the building with easy strides, his body swinging characteristically, and Heshke found that even the sudden sight of a full-blooded dev didn’t upset his contentment.

At first it had been a tremendous shock to him. He’d been angry and bewildered that he, a respectable citizen with a certificate of racial purity, could be summarily packed off to a dev reservation. His protests had been ignored and he’d gathered that it was because of his friendship with the Oblomot family. After all, Sobrie was being banished too, simply because of his association with Layella. Yes, it had been shocking, at first, to be thrown in with the Amhraks. Had not his experiences with the Chinks already prepared him to some degree, he was sure he might have gone insane.

But now … Herrick mounted the steps of the verandah. He was wholly, unstintingly Amhrak. He had the red skin, the compact, round head, the round eyes and the foreign, big-lobed ears. His body, too, had all the disturbing oddness of proportion and of lank, too-easy movement. And it didn’t bother Heshke at all. It seemed entirely natural for him to accept Herrick as a charming member of a charming people – all the more so, perhaps, because they represented a now dying culture.

“Hello, Rond,” Herrick said with a heavy Amhrak accent. “Is Sobrie in?”

Heshke nodded and Herrick swept inside without the usual pleasantries. Heshke continued looking at the receding sun, reflecting on how well the surviving Amhraks had adapted to their circumstances. There were three million of them on this reserve, which measured about two hundred miles across (and yet they had once populated two continents). Most of the land was as Heshke saw it now, arid and useless for cultivation, but the Amhraks had solved that by turning to hydroponics. They had organised themselves into a comprehensive little community, with several small-to-middling towns, and had resurrected a modest amount of industry – all small-scale, just enough for their needs. They were all very much aware that their existence was contingent upon the whim of their conquerors.

While Heshke had known that the Amhraks were technically advanced, he’d always thought this to be due to their copying the inventions of True Man, and it had surprised him, while staying with Herrick, to discover how inventive they were in their own right. Herrick often reminisced about the Amhrak war, when he’d been a young scientist working for the Amhrak’s last attempt at defence. He’d been involved, typically, in a project that never reached fruition – a force screen to ward off nuclear warheads.

“The reason why you Whites were able to win,” he’d told Heshke (Whites being the Amhrak term for True Man), “is that you have such a capacity for submitting to a central authority, which makes you able to organise yourselves all in one direction. Our social organisation was too loose to be able to stand up to you. Even at the end our energies were being dissipated in countless uncoordinated projects.”

“I can’t accept that explanation,” Heshke had objected. “What about the Lorenes?”

“True, the Lorenes had this ability to an ever greater degree. But then, we helped you to defeat the Lorenes. You wouldn’t have done it alone.”

And to that Heshke had no answer. It was strange, talking to someone whose picture of history didn’t follow the Titan version of True Man versus the rest. In official histories, past alliances with other subspecies were always played down, and it was never admitted that they could have been important for the outcome. True Man had saved himself unaided, so the text ran, from numerous horrible enemies.

Heshke had soon ceased to battle with contending concepts; it was a relief to be away from it all.