Escape to Chaos

Chapter One

The third son of Sham, the rebel son, the traitor to Empire, was pursued thrice across the Galaxy, was trapped five times and five times he escaped. Now he stood in the blue and eternal dusk of a cobalt city on Zeran, one of the old planets, a planet of many histories, of many peoples, of the sadness of things lost beyond regaining. Zeran kept its face always toward the vast pink-orange sun that bore it, a half billion miles away.

Three years before, Shain had listened to the reports of the activities of his third son, Andro. Shain lay on the couch and ate of the fruit the women had brought him. He listened. “Andro said to Telka of Vereen, ‘How long will you permit my father to oppress you?’ Andro said to Clangaron of Lell, ‘When the uprising comes, you must be ready to join us.’ ”

“Enough!” Shain said in the voice of Empire. He dropped seeds to the soft amber floor, selected another fruit. There was a small wet sound as he bit into it. He chewed, swallowed, yawned. “Have him killed,” he said languidly.

Three years later Andro stood alone in the dusk of the city of endless blue. He stood alone with heavy shoulders braced against the wall at the end of a forgotten alley. His burns suppurated and they weakened him, but his hand was firm on the grip of the weapon. Forty ships there were, and now there were none. Seven thousand had pledged their loyalty beyond death, and of the seven thousand the last one, the girl, Daylya, had died as he dragged her from the ruin of the last ship.

He was a big man and he waited with a big man’s patience. He waited and it was hate that gave him the strength to stand against his hurt. Once he smiled as he thought of what it had cost them. Four times seven thousand. Five times forty ships. Rumor among all the planets of Empire would make those totals greater. The deeds of Andro would be whispered in quiet places. And one day another one would dare, and win. Andro had shown them, shown all of them that revolt, even unsuccessful revolt, was possible, and to many it would seem a good way to die.

The wars of nations on ancient earth had been the rationalization for the founding of what had become galactic empire. For centuries as man had exploded across the star wastes, Empire had been weak. And then when the galactic wars began, star against star, cluster against cluster. Empire had regained its old strength merely by seeming necessary.

And the House of Galvan had ruled Empire for several thousand years. Shain of Galvan was no better and no worse than the average, Andro knew. The House of Galvan had not permitted itself to become weak. The men went to the far wild planets to find the strong-thighed mothers of Empire. The men of the House of Galvan were big. But the House had ruled too long. They had ruled from a time of enlightenment through to a time of superstition and stagnation. Andro, the youngest son, had not been as cleverly and carefully indoctrinated into the mores of Empire as his eldest brother, Larrent, as the middle brother, Masec. He had read much, of the olden times. Then, steeped in the rich traditions of early days, he had looked around him.

He had seen the prancing perfumed artists, claiming an ultimate reality in incomprehensible daubs. He had visited the slave markets of Simpar and Chaigan, and had been sickened. He had seen that the ships were old ships, the weapons old weapons, and the old songs forgotten. He had seen the dusty rotting machines that had been the hope of man, while ten thousand laborers built, by hand and whip, a temple to the glory of the House of Galvan.

And he had said, “This is the dark age of Empire. We have had enough.”

Even as youngest son in the great palaces and fortifications of the heart of Empire, on the green and gold planet called Rael at the heart of the Galaxy, he had only to raise a languid hand to acquire forty slave women, the rarest of wines, or the tax-tribute of a dozen planets for a hundred years.

And he said, “We have had enough.”

And Shain said, “Have him killed.”

And Larrent and Masec said, “Have him killed.”

Death was close. The last ship had crashed near the wall of the empty blue city. The burns on his left side were deep enough to hold his doubled fist, and each time the wave of weakness lasted a bit longer. He wanted to take one more, or two, or three or even a dozen with him. Another fragment to add to the legend, to be said in an awed whisper, “And when they finally trapped him alone, on Zeran, he...”

Andro coughed and it was a cat-weak sound in the eternal dusk. Deralan, Chief of Empire Police, had personally headed this final, successful chase. And Andro knew that wiry, dour Deralan was a cautious man. Andro had felt the streets shudder as the ships had landed in a circle around the blue city. The ring of Deralan’s men would be advancing toward the heart of the city, searching each building with care, the ring growing closed, tighter as they neared the center.

When he breathed there was a bubbling in the deepest part of the highest wound on his left side. His legs started to bend. He braced them once more, lifted his heavy head in time to see a flicker of movement at the end of the alley. All weakness was forgotten as he raised the weapon a trifle.

There was hard amusement in him as he thought how the pursuers must feel. Each one of the previous five escapes had bordered on the miraculous. Now they would be expecting a further miracle.

“No miracles this time,” he said, and knew that the borderline of delirium had caused him to speak aloud.

A shadow appeared at the end of the alley. He lifted the weapon, sighted carefully. The firmness on which his feet were braced opened with an oiled abruptness. It wrenched his wounds so that he screamed out in agony. As he fell he saw the vast rim of the orange star directly overhead before the opening clapped shut far above him and he fell through an emptiness that was blacker than deep space.

Sarrz, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Socionetics, was a round little man with squirrel-bright eyes and a face like a plaster death mask. It was situations exactly like this which made him realize that his EC — Emotional Conditioning — was getting a bit frayed around the edges. He could not prevent a thalamic reaction to such... stupidity. There was really no other word for it.

He turned in his chair so that he would not have to look at the two of them, so that he could regain some of his control. Framed in the window, thirty yards across and fifteen yards high, was most of the City of Transition. It looked, Sarrz sometimes thought, like several thousand bridal cakes with raspberry frosting. Beyond the ten thousand foot towers which marked the four corners of the city was darkness.

In the name of energy conservation Transition was now resting on a .8 gravity planet in Era Middle 6 in a high index probability. Transition was imitating a mountain, hence the opacity beyond the slip towers.

Sarrz realized that his pride in the Field Teams was possibly a bit unreasonable. He spoke without turning toward the two members of the team.

“The quality of your indoctrination is questionable,” he said softly. “I shall conduct this on a primer basis. What is Transition?”

He knew by the voice that the younger of the two, the female, had spoken. She was the atavistic type — a throwback to a higher index of sensuality and emotional sway. A mistake to have ever let her go out.

“Transition,” Calna said, “is an operational station in probability space-time. There are three such stations. This one operates on the socionetic level through the medium of Field Teams.” She used the exact words of the basic manual.

“Excellent,” he said with a trace of irony. “Please continue, Agent.”

Her voice faltered a bit. “There are twenty-six known galactic civilizations with a high probability index, and many thousand more... distant.”

He turned and stared at her. With her sturdy figure and overlong hair she looked like one of the old prints. “Is that the right word?”

“Not distant. Less available,” she corrected.

Sarrz leaned back in his chair. “Much better. Continue, please.”

The male agent was obviously uncomfortable. He kept fingering the tunic insignia. Calna said, rapidly, “With the discovery and application of the Oxton Effect, it became apparent that there was no need to limit any galactic civilization to the space-time rigidity previously known. With easy slip between the twenty-six civilizations with high probability index, it was believed that a unification on twenty-six space-time levels could be accomplished. Research had shown that only three space-time levels could be unified immediately. This was done. The unified civilization of three space-time aspects set itself the task of bringing the social level of the remaining twenty-three up to the point where unification could be undertaken.”

“And how could this be done?” Sarrz asked in silky tone.

The girl flushed. “Field Teams, trained in Socionetics, and based at Transition, were assigned to the twenty-three lagging cultures. It was discovered that if the Field Teams acted openly, as agents from a parallel space-time, their efforts caused a deviation in probability of the culture development so that the civilization resulting became less probable, and hence could not be kept within slip range. It could still be reached, of course, as can the several thousand less probable ones, but only with exorbitant power expenditure.”

“I see,” said Sarrz, as though he were hearing of it for the first time. He leaned forward a bit. “And have we ever lost one of these parallel space-time cultures through too obvious meddling?”

“One,” the girl said, “Several years ago. It was number seventeen on the program chart.”

Sarrz was ready for the kill. He leaned forward a fraction of an inch more. “How can you be certain that it isn’t two that we have lost. Agent? How can you be certain that your violation of all standing instructions hasn’t lost us number four as well?”

The girl flushed and then turned pale. “You sit here in Transition and lose touch with the Field Team problems,” she said boldly. “Solin and I have been on the case for over five years. As soon as we were well enough educated in language and customs to walk among them as subjects of the Empire, we found out that our hope was Andro, youngest son of the ruler. You do not know, Deputy Director, how hard we tried to get close enough to Andro to control him, control his rashness, so as to improve his timing. He led the revolt against Empire when his followers were too few, his resources too slim. Five times we managed to save him. I could not stand by and see him killed in an alley. I could not face beginning again. And let me absolve Solin here, my teammate, from any responsibility. He made the strongest protest possible. I went ahead on my own authority. And I do not think we have forced number four out of range into a low probability index.”

Sarrz closed his eyes for long seconds, opened them suddenly and stared at the girl. “You were trained, Agent. You were told the danger of obvious meddling. You were told how long these things can continue. You knew that it may be two thousand years before we can steer that culture to the point where acceptance and unification can be considered. Knowing all these things about you, Agent, you leave me with but one conclusion. That you became personally and emotionally so involved with this Andro savage that you lost your head and tried, very sentimentally, to save him. Is that not true?” She turned her eyes from him. “Answer me!” he said softly.

“I... I don’t know. Possibly it is true.”

“Agent, there are seven hundred teams operating in that parallel culture. Most of them are attempting to activate a technistic renaissance. Others are directing the subjects of that Empire in equally necessary paths. Other teams, such as the one you two form, have been operating on the socio-political level. Up until now there has not been one violation of security.”

Sarrz stood up and walked to the window. He whirled “Think of it once! Think of what you’ve done! One tiny little push and a galaxy of two billions of habitable planets is pushed forever out of our reach! What did you do with him?”

Solin said in a low tone, “We cut the passage and as he fell, we resealed it. He was unconscious by the time we floated him down to the chamber He was badly hurt. Calna stayed with him and I set up the field, returned to our ship and activated the field, removing both of them from the city. He was almost gone. We rebuilt the tissues took him in deep sleep to the dark side of that planet, to one of the dead cities which they have lost the skill to visit, and placed him on the zero metabolic level Then we grew worried and came back.”

“So you grew worried, did you?” Sarrz said with acid sweetness. “What am I to tell the Director?”

“If only they hadn’t spotted him as he escaped from the ship.” Solin said.

“I’ve been going over your detailed reports,” Sarrz said, with a sudden note of hope in his voice. “This Deralan, he who headed the pursuit, isn’t he a very ambitious one?”

“Very,” Solin said.

“Then there’s our chance! This sixth escape by Andro will ruin Deralan. Shain will probably have him shot. Shain will want proof of Andro’s death. Is there any distinctive mark on this Andro?”

“A tattoo of the royal House of Calvan on the upper portion of the right arm.”

“Go into slip at once, Solin. Take a square of the skin with the tattoo on it. Use your finder to contact the Field Team on Rael. Give the little trophy to either Agent of the team. It will be placed in Deralan’s hand before he has his audience with Shain. I don’t think Deralan will ask any questions.”

“But then,” said Calna, in a thin voice, “when Andro reappears...”

“He won’t reappear. He’ll sleep there for ten thousand years, if it seems necessary.”

The girl stood up, one hand at her throat. “You can’t do that!”

“You have no hand in any more discussion of either policy or procedure, girl. You are no longer an Agent. You will receive all the usual pensions. Report to field five at once. They’ll have orders on you. You are being sent back to our own space-time. Any planet preference?”

“Earth,” the girl said softly.

For a moment Sarrz forgot his irritation with her. “Indeed! I guess I never noticed origin on your card. Do you know, this is the first time I have ever actually met anyone from our planet of origin.”

She lifted her chin, with a look of pride. “It is a good place,” she said. “It is a good place to know, and a good place to go back to.”

“I am sorry,” Sarrz said with gentleness. “Possibly you were never right for this sort of work. I am truly sorry.”

“Why can not Andro be released to recruit new personnel for his revolt?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it save time?”

The irritation came back into Saarz’ voice. “Release him and he knows that he did not escape through his own powers. He knows he was helped, and to him it would be help through the good offices of the supernatural. He would at once relate this last escape to the previous five, and become, through his new convictions, a son of the gods rather than a revolutionary. Rebellion would change from a social to a quasi-religious basis, and we know that in order to keep number four within the high probability index range, we must hasten development along the same lines as would normally occur. We have plotted their culture curve. We can accelerate it without affecting probability, but we cannot redraw the curve on a new basis without losing them forever, or at least until slip becomes possible for lesser probabilities, and our technicians in symbolics say that will never occur.”

“So,” Calna said in a dead tone, “you will leave him there. A living death.”

“There is no room for sentimentality in our work,” Sarrz said.

Calna turned and left the Deputy Director’s headquarters. The door orifice folded softly shut behind her.

Earth was always the origin. Symbolics made that clear. Ten thousand times ten thousand, Earth was the planet of origin. In the beginnings of the science of Symbolic Probability, it was thought all deviations were of equal value. The result would be, if it could be vizualized at all, in the shape of a fan, with an infinity of lines diverging from a fixed point, lines equally spaced.

This concept did not take into account the limitations on culture deviation. Always it was humankind, and reactions — social reactions — are limited, so it became a problem or dividing infinity by the finite. The result is infinity also, but the lines were no longer equally spaced from the common point. They were bundled. Each space-time frame was thus co-existent with its sister probabilities. And as long as they were bundled, grouped, you could slip from one sister probability into the next.

The space-time frame in which the conception originated had tried to jump extra-galactic space and had been burled back. It was a rigid boundary to further expansion, until, of course, it was found that there were twenty-six superimposed home galaxies in the probability grouping. The small golden pyramidal ships quivered, shimmered, became milky and disappeared in one frame to reappear in the next. So mated were three of the probability frames that the languages, the mores, even the fads and fashions were co-existent. Had it not been possible to slip to one of the other two, the slip would have been accomplished in the other direction within a matter of months rather than years. Three were ready for unification. Twenty-three needed acceleration in their own charted culture line. One was lost. One day it would be twenty-five times two billion planets. Symolic Probability indicated that there were other bundles of space-time frames in which complete unity and cross-travel had been achieved, but their probabilities were so divergent, and on so low an index that slip could not be accomplished.

Slip was the only word that would fit the mode of travel. Travel in a dimension for which there was no name. A dimension folded upon itself, so that the little golden ships were neither up nor down nor sideways. They neither shrank nor expanded. They “slipped” across a probability matrix into a sister reality without positional change. So close were the co-existences that it explained everything that had ever gone bump in the night, shadows half-seen out of the corner of the eye. You left your own frame and entered the sister frame which had been brushing at the sensory tendrils through generations of superstitution. And the frame you left behind was the frame which, through its very closeness, had appeared to rap on tables and speak through trumpets.

Calna stepped from the express strip onto a local strip and then across the increasingly slower strips to the platform of field five. The planet on which Transition rested, was in Era 6, a frame not ready for unification. She had been assigned to Era 4. Eras one, two and three were the unified ones, and, with her loss of Agent standing, the only ones available to her. Possibly, in her lifetime, another would be unified. Era twenty, she had heard, was almost ready. Transition rested in Era 6, next to space stations constructed in Eras one, two and three.

She turned and looked back across the city she would never see again. To the great mass of peoples in Eras one, two, and three, the three great cities constructed to slip across probability lines were more rumor than actuality. Only trained minds could comprehend the enormity of the task the three unified cultures had set themselves. Only highly specialized people could aid in the task.

To the average man and woman of the three basic eras, it was merely a new and wondrous and inexplicable advantage to be able to enjoy three contiguous environments. Those with ample means arranged title to the same piece of property co-existent on three probability levels. The slip field was installed in a central doorway with minimal controls. Each room was three rooms. For the very wealthy, proper positioning of the co-existent homes could result in three climates to be enjoyed. The ideal was a tropic warmth in one, eternal springtime in the next, and a crisp and endless October in the third.

She turned her back on Transition. There was a thickness in her throat. She knew that she should feel shame at the enormity of her mistake — and yet she could not. She knew that her identification with Andro had been too intense, and yet she did not wish it any other way.

“Ex-Agent to Era One,” she said crisply to the routing clerk. He eyed her curiously. Ex-Agents were rare. Dead Agents were not so rare. Resignation was unheard of. And so the routing clerk knew that the change of status had been disciplinary.

The customary respect shown to Agents was markedly lacking. He stared at her until she flushed. “Why the delay?” she asked angrily.

He winked. “Are your pensions going to be big enough for two of us?” he asked, leering.

“I can still put you on report,” she said.

“But you won’t.” He yawned. “Take the one at the end of the platform.”

She walked out and down the platform. She saw it and felt lost. It was one of the rooted ships, built only for the slip between frames. Unlike the Agent ships, it could not leap like a golden arrow from planet to planet within any frame. It would contain no survival equipment. The minimal controls would be no more complex than the buttons in an elevator.

Once she was in that stodgy ship there would be no turning back. She slowed her pace as she neared it. The ship beyond was a true Agent’s ship, with its double control panel, one for probability change, one for positional change. She could see the new seal beside the insignia and knew that this ship had just been completely checked and re-equipped.

She turned and glanced back. The routing clerk had his back to her. She moved quickly then. It had to be done in seconds. She darted into the Agent’s ship. In her mind was the great stabbing pain that came with disobedience. It was the same pain she had felt when overruling Solin and rescuing Andro. Conditioning caused that pain, and should have made disobedience impossible. But, as in the rescue of Andro, there was something in her that fought the pain, made it endurable.

She knew that to slip to Era 4 would mean capture within seconds. She picked Era 18 at random. As she hit the lever with the base of her palm, she heard the suck-snap of the port behind her. As the ship began to fade around her she heard the clangor of the alarm. In thirty seconds they could track her. As the ship shimmered hack into life in Era 18. she dropped her hands to the lower panel and shot it straight up at maximum takeoff. As the planet dwindled in the screen, she chopped the ship over onto SL drive, counted slowly to ten, swung it out of SL twenty light-years from the planet, slipped over into Era 22. picked a random course change, put it back into SL for a twenty count. After nine Era shifts in which she kept away from the basic eras and from Era 4, she knew that pursuit was out of the question.

The strain of escape had kept her from thinking of the consequences of her act. Now that she was safe for a time, she felt slack, exhausted. She wept for the first time since she was a child. When there were no more tears, she slept.