The Overlords of War (19 page)

A long finger of energy brushed the Monster for a nanosecond or so. Stirring in its sleep, it greedily drank in the sustenance offered to it, heedless of where it came from. The second contact, light as a feather touch, half roused it. The third made it alarmed. It knew how to recognize most natural sources of energy. This was artificial. Someone, or something, was trying to locate it.

It realized confusedly that it had made a mistake in absorbing the energy of the first beam. It had betrayed not only its existence but its position. And done the same the second time. It tried to restrain its appetite when the third contact occurred. But it was too scared to control itself, and could not avoid soaking up a fraction of it. When it was afraid, its instincts commanded it to gobble up all the energy available, in whatever form it was offered.

Already it felt new and harsher lances of energy stabbing its weakened body. It began to weep over its lot, a poor little creature unable to control more than a narrow fringe of the future or fission more than ten or so natural elements. It keened for the fate of the innocents between its sides, which risked losing their chance to live.

Nearly six thousand kilometers away, giant avians were surveying their instruments under the interested eye of Colonel Veran. The neutrino beam which was sweeping the bowels of the planet had thrice been absorbed at the same spot. The associated wave train had been subtly altered.

“It is there,” Ngal R’nda said worriedly. “Are you sure you can deactivate it?”

“Absolutely,” Veran said, displaying arrogant confidence. The agreement had been tough to forge, but it was biased in his favor. His encampment was threatened by Urian guns, but that did not bother him. He had a trump up his sleeve. Turning away, he issued his orders.

Five hundred meters underground the Monster mobilized its resources. It felt hamstrung. The gestation of its offspring was too far advanced for it to be able to move through time. It would be impossible to synchronize the motion of eighteen thousand babies. By now they had acquired enough independence to oppose the efforts of their parent. If the threat materialized, it would have to abandon them. It was a case where the instinct of self-preservation conflicted with that of reproduction. By good fortune some few might survive, but most would never be able to locate themselves in a stable present. They would suddenly coexist with the matter composing them. The energy released would be of the same order as that of a low-yield nuclear bomb. It would not seriously affect the Monster, but it would instantly kill the embryo involved.

Perhaps the solution lay in burrowing deeper into the planetary crust. But the Monster had chosen for its nest a weak point at the junction of crustal plates. A pocket of lava, unusually close to the surface, had drawn it as a warm hearth attracts a cat. In its normal state the Monster would have bathed luxuriously in the lava. But in present circumstances it hesitated. The intense heat would hasten the hatching. Then it would be unable to put enough distance between itself and its young to avoid becoming their first victim.

Should it return to the surface and take its chance? Unfortunately for the Monster, the giant planet where its distant ancestors had been conceived and which it recalled in its dreams had been haunted by predators which would have made a mere mouthful of it. They too knew how to move through time. They had vanished half a billion years ago, but that fact could not influence the Monster’s behavior. Its racial memory was unaware of that crucial datum. As far as the Monster was concerned, those millions of years had never happened. It did not realize that its species had outlived its creators and original masters, that it had owed its survival to its role as a pet, found in nearly every home, coddled and pampered by the members of a powerful culture wiped out in a forgotten war.

The surface was out of the question, then, while time travel was forbidden and the deeper strata were dangerous. The Monster, fully awake by now, once more bewailed its fate.

It registered a presence, not far off, a few score kilometers at most Ordinarily its first reaction would have been to jump through time. But the fear of losing its offspring overcame its terror at being spotted. The presence became more marked, then multiplied. Several creatures of its own kind were approaching. That held no comfort for the Monster. It knew from its own past experience that a Monster at gestation time was a succulent prey. In its species cannibalism facilitated the interchange of genes and thereby prevented the line from becoming decadent through inbreeding. Its creators had known nothing of the sexual mode of reproduction.

At the last moment it tried a prodigious effort and made a vain attempt to escape pursuit. It soared into the air atop a geyser of lava. But Veran’s pegasones had foreseen that, and acted in accordance with a systematic plan quite foreign to the habits of their species. They closed in from all directions at once, clear along the segment of time which the Monster controlled. They trapped and immobilized it simultaneously in much the same way as, thousands of years ago on Earth, tame elephants would surround one of their wild cousins and push it into a stockade.

The Monster found itself caught in a web of energy far stronger

and more reliable than the cage aboard the Archimedes. At first it went on weeping; then, when its complaints proved futile, it allowed itself to be dragged away and at last went back to sleep, regaining in dreams the deceitful refuge of its long-vanished home world.

It was weapons-training time. Corson relished the quietness of an existence organized down to the smallest detail. Morning and evening, on Veran’s orders, he was learning to ride pegasones. The soldiers who instructed and no doubt kept guard on him either were not surprised to see the safety collar around his neck or else forbore to mention it. Doubtless they had concluded that Corson now formed part of Veran’s personal bodyguard.

Veran himself was making plans with Ngal R’nda and the leading Urian nobles. He had apparently gained their confidence completely. They let themselves be persuaded, day after day, to deliver examples of their finest weapons to him and explain the method of their use. The obvious discipline of Veran’s little army impressed them, perhaps all the more so because their incurable sense of superiority prevented them from imagining that this man, their servant, could want to break the alliance and threaten them. In Corson’s opinion they were sometimes unbelievably naive. Veran’s seeming deference filled them with smug satisfaction. The colonel had ordered all his men to make way for any Urian regardless of his rank, and the order had been obeyed. That proved to the Urians that at least these few humans knew their proper place and how to keep to it As Veran said oracularly, the situation was developing nicely.

That did not seem quite so obvious to Corson. A formidable war machine was being assembled under his eyes. The Monster, approaching full gestation term, was imprisoned in an enclosure without a breach; since it was too old to be trained, it was to be left for its young to devour.

It seemed to Corson that the union between Veran and the Urians was leading to a result diametrically opposite what he had counted on. It was impossible for him to escape. He would have done so had he only known how. He felt he might be about to witness one of the most terrible military adventures in history. But his future made no sign to him. His destiny seemed to be laid down, but in a direction he had not wanted.

One calm night however, his melancholy thoughts took a less dismal turn,

He was staring at the trees and the sky, wondering how it was that the activity at the camp had not yet been noticed and why nobody from Dyoto or some other city had decided to come and investigate, when Veran approached.

“A fine evening,” he said. He was biting on a small cigar, a luxury he rarely permitted himself.

He blew a smoke ring, then said abruptly, “Ngal R’nda has invited me to the next Presentation of the Egg. That’s a chance I’ve been waiting for. It’s high time I got him off my back.” '

He drew on the cigar again without Corson daring to make any Comment.

“I’m afraid he’s growing more and more suspicious. For the past several days he’s been pressing me to set a date for the start of hostilities. That old vulture has nothing in his head but blood and battle! You know, I don’t care for war, myself. It always wastes a lot of materiel and a lot of good soldiers. I’ll only resort to it when there’s no other way of getting what I’m after. I’m sure that with Ngal R’nda out of the way I can make a deal with the government of this planet What’s so odd, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be one. Do you know anything about that Corson?”

A long silence.

“I thought not,” Veran said in a voice that had suddenly become sharp. “You see, I’ve sent spies to various cities around the planet. They didn’t have the slightest trouble infiltrating themselves, but they learned practically nothing. That’s the worst of these very decentralized societies. It seems this planet doesn’t have an official government, apart from Ngal R’nda’s limited authority.”

“Well,” Corson said, “that’s going to make things easy for you.” Veran gave him a keen glance. “No, it’s the worst thing that could have happened. How am I to negotiate with a government that doesn’t exist?”

He stared thoughtfully at his cigar.

“But,” he continued, “I only said it seems that way. One of my spies, a bit smarter than the rest, told me a peculiar tale. He says this planet does have a political organization, but of a completely original kind. There’s a Council which watches over several centuries and is based elsewhere in time. Some three centuries up, to be exact. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Imagine ruling over dead men and kids that haven’t yet been born!”

“Maybe they don’t have the same idea of government as you do,” Corson said softly.

“Yes, they’re democrats, aren’t they? Maybe even anarchists! I know their theme song. Reduce the administration of people and things to the strict minimum. It never lasts for long. At the first invasion the whole setup goes smash.”

“They haven’t been invaded for centuries,” Corson said.

“Then they’re going to learn a nasty lesson. By the way, Corson, there’s something else odd, which I haven’t mentioned yet. One of the members of this Council is a man.”

“What’s odd about that?”

"Who looks very like you. I find that a surprising coincidence. One of your relations, maybe?”

“I don’t have connections in such high places,” Corson said.

“My spy hasn’t seen this man personally. He hasn’t even managed to lay hands on a document describing him. But he was quite definite about it. He’s an expert physiognomist, knows his typology inside out. There’s not a chance in a million of his being mistaken. Besides, he’s a clever artist. He made a sketch of you from memory and showed it to his informants. Everyone who has seen this man recognized you, Corson. What do you make of that?”

“Nothing,” Corson answered honestly.

Veran scrutinized him. “You may be telling the truth. I could put you under a lie detector, but you’d become a moron, at best. And it was no moron who sent that message to me. So unfortunately I still need you. Well, when I learned all this, I tried to put two and two together. They refused to make four. At first I thought you might be a machine, or an android. But you’ve undergone thorough medical examinations since you’ve been with us, so I had to scrap that idea. I know everything about you except what goes on in your head. You’re not a machine, and you weren’t bred in a vat. You think like a man, you have human courage and human faults. A little backward in some respects, as though you hail from a bygone age. But if you are carrying out an assignment, I have to admit you’ve got the guts to do it by yourself. Of course, not without taking out some insurance for yourself, like that damned message. Corson, why don’t you lay your cards on the table?”

“I have a bad hand,” Corson said.

“What?”

“I don’t have the right cards.”

“Maybe not. But you’re an ace in somebody’s game. And you’re acting as though you don’t realize it.”

Veran dropped his cigar butt and ground it underfoot.

“Let’s recapitulate,” he said. “This Council possesses the means to travel in time. They hide away in the future, but they must have it because otherwise a government three centuries ahead couldn’t administer the present. They already know what I’m going to do, what’s going to happen if there isn’t a timequake. And they haven’t made a move, either against me or against Ngal R’nda. That implies that in their view the time is not yet ripe. They’re waiting for something. What?”

He drew a deep breath.

“Unless they have already begun to act. Unless you’re a member of the Council on special assignment.”

“I never heard anything so silly,” Corson said.

Veran, stepping back a pace, drew his gun. “I could kill you, Corson. It might be suicide for me, but you’d die first. You’ll never send the message and I’ll never land on this world and never have the chance to take you prisoner and kill you, but the timequake will be so fierce that you’ll be caught up in it. You won’t be yourself any longer, but someone else. What counts, for a man? His name, his features, his chromosomes? Or his memories, his experience, his personality?”

They gazed at each other. At last Veran holstered his gun.

“I hoped to scare you. I admit I failed. It’s hard to frighten a man who’s been at Aergistal.”

He smiled.

“In the final analysis, Corson, I do believe you. You probably are the man who sits on the Council, three centuries up, but you don’t know it. You haven’t become that man yet. For the time being you’re only his trump card. He couldn’t come here himself because he already knew what was going to happen. He would have broken the Law of Non-regressive Information. But he could not trust anyone else. So he decided to send himself as he was in an earlier period of his life, altering the course of events only by such minute touches that they stayed below the timequake threshold. Congratulations, Corson. You have a brilliant future ahead of you—if you live so long.”