The Blood Red Game

THREE

The scarlet spacecraft was the only other ship on what was obviously a landing field. They wondered where the rest of the fleet had gone. As they cautiously disembarked, they saw that the crew of the scarlet ship were doing the same. Some of the figures were human.

And, for the first time, they were seeing alien and obviously intelligent life forms.

Renark checked his wrist gauge. 'Looks as if we don't need suits,' he said, 'but it's just as well to be careful.'

He was tense as he walked across the charred ground towards the other group. He studied the aliens mingled with the human beings.

There were two sextupeds with four arms each and completely square heads containing a row of tiny eyes and beneath them a small mouth; several hopping creatures similar to kangaroos but obviously reptilian; a long-legged creature who towered over the others with a body proportionately smaller, a round body supporting long, swinging arm tentacles and a round head.

The leader of the six human beings was young, smiling, fair and dressed in a style which had been out of fashion in the galaxy for two hundred years - a loose blue shirt, baggy trousers tucked into green gaiters, and with mauve pumps on his feet. Over the shirt was a pleated coat fanning out from his waist and dropping to his calves. His weapons included an unfamiliar pistol and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He swaggered.

'Move high, you load,' he said in a peculiar accent. 'How strong goes galaxy - same?'

'It's changed,' replied Renark, recognising in the youth's archaic slang a patois once used by the old CMG - the Criminal Musician's Guild which, two hundred years before, had been composed of men outlawed because they refused to play the specific kinds of music deemed 'healthy' by the music censors.

But, two hundred years ago, the Shifter had been unheard of and Migaa not settled. Renark was curious. He could understand that two centuries hadn't passed as far as the young man was concerned, the flow of time being different here. Yet there was something wrong.

'You're after me, aren't you?' the young man said. 'I blew the long note around two-twenty W.W. Three. You?'

'This is now four hundred and fifty-nine years after World War Three on Earth,' Renark said. 'We use a new reckoning, though. How did you get here? Mankind had only just reached the Rim when you were around.'

'Accident, com. We were on the run - chased by Geepy ships - ran straight here. Found strange mixture, man - I inform you - and everyone from future. You're the farthest into the future I've met Kol Manage is my name. Let's go.'

'Go where?'

'Entropium.' He pointed at the city. 'Come on, it's a long blow.'

The city could be seen about two miles away, scarring the skyline with a peculiar assortment of massive structures, some horribly ugly. But at least its outline now seemed firm and definite.

'Haven't you got ground transport?' Talfryn asked.

'Sometimes, com - not today. We scrap it all. Too square…'

'Why was that?'

'It palled, you know - we build something different sometime.'

Renark fumed inwardly. This casual attitude was aggravating when he needed clear, definite answers to the questions concerning him.

There was little time to lose. Now they were here he wanted to get started on his investigations. Yet the careless attitude of the Entropites threatened to slow him down, even though they didn't deliberately try to curtail him.

'Who runs the planet?' he asked Kol Manage as the group began to straggle towards the city.

'We all do. I guess you'd call Ragner Olesson boss. That's where we're going now - he wants to see you. He likes to see all newcomers.'

'Can't we get there faster? I'm in a hurry.'

'Well, stop hurrying, man - you've come to the end of the track. Ease up - there's nowhere to hurry to.'

'What do you mean?' Renark's tense mouth was grim.

'What do you think? You didn't like it there - you'll have to like it here. Simple.' And Kol Manage refused to answer any further questions.

They reached the suburbs of the city and were watched incuriously by some of the inhabitants, human and unhuman.

The population and the buildings comprised a disordered rabble which Renark found distasteful.

They walked through dirty streets which didn't seem to lead anywhere and it was nearly dark before they got to a square skyscraper, alive with light in its many windows.

The peculiar apathetic atmosphere of the city was as strong here as anywhere, but Renark hoped that at least some answers to his questions would be forthcoming. The atmosphere, he noted, was similar to Migaa's - only ten times worse.

The youth's companions dispersed but Manage led Renark and the others into the skyscraper and up a couple of nights of grubby stairs. They came to a door and Manage pushed it open.

The four people stayed uncertainly in the entrance to the big chamber, which was an untidy combination of control room and living quarters. Manage walked across it.

Two men looked up coolly at his approach. Both were middle-aged. One was rugged and handsome.

Renark glanced in distaste at the place. Computers and other equipment lined one wall of the room. The floor was littered with carpets of clashing designs, papers, clothing and various objects - a couple of rifles, a flower vase, cups, files and books. Tables, chairs and couches were placed here and there in apparent disorder. The two men sat on a long couch near the largest computer. A door behind them opened onto another room.

'Enter,' said the handsome man casually to the four. 'We watched you come in - you made the quickest start I've ever seen. The rest shouldn't be here for a little while yet.'

'They're probably having trouble with a police patrol,' Renark said, entering with a degree of caution.

'I'm Ragner Olesson,' said the big man. He looked hard at Renark, obviously seeing something unfamiliar in the Guide Senser's stern expression - perhaps, erroneously, sensing a rival to his leadership.

'Renark,' said the ex-warden, 'these are my friends.' He didn't introduce them.

'Well, Mister Renark, all you need to know is this. Don't try to change things here. We like it as it is. You can do what you want in Entropium, anything you want at all - but don't interfere with us.'

Renark frowned, feeling himself growing increasingly angry. This wasn't the reception he'd expected, and casualness and disorder of the kind he saw was annoying in his present frame of mind. His whole being was geared to one thing, one object.

He said 'Are you the boss of Entropium?'

'If you like. But I don't push anyone around as long as they keep to themselves any ideas they've got of taking over or changing things radically. Get it?'

'Now, listen,' said Renark. 'I'm looking for information, that's all. Maybe you can help me.'

The man laughed, then sneered. He got up and swaggered closer to Renark, seeming a trifle agitated, however, as if Renark's statement was unprecedented.

'What kind of information, mister? We've got plenty of space to move around here, so go and look for it somewhere else. I don't like being disturbed. If you try to make troubles you can get off the planet' - he smiled sardonically - 'or get killed. Your choice.'

Controlling himself, Renark said calmly: 'So what's expected of us now?'

'Look, you do what you like - so long as you don't bother anyone. Right now you're bothering me.'

'Aren't you interested in why we're here? You helped us fight off the fleet that attacked us. Why did you do that?'

'You're here like everyone else, who comes, because you don't like it where you came from. Right? We sent our fleet to help you because the more of us there are and the more ships we've got, the less chance the Thron - it was their ships that attacked you - have of invading us. Simple.'

'I'm here,' said Renark impatiently, 'to discover the nature of this system - what makes it work. I'm not a criminal on the run and I'm not just a casual explorer. The very future of humanity may well hang on what I discover or fail to discover here. Is that clear?'

Olesson's companion got up. He was an intelligent looking man with a tired face. His whole attitude was one of weariness and boredom.

'I'm Klein - I used to be a scientist of sorts. You won't find out anything about the Shifter, my friend. There's no line of enquiry you can follow that leads anywhere. Every fact you uncover is a contradiction of anything you've learned previously.'

Renark's voice was savage. 'I'm going to force the truth out of this system, Mister Klein.' - His companions moved uncomfortably and Asquiol's slender right hand rested on the butt of his anti-neutron beamer. They were well aware that they were outnumbered here. They didn't feel Renark's anxiety and were therefore less ready to alienate their hosts.

But Klein smiled slightly, showing no annoyance.

'There have been many who've tried - and all failed. The concept is too alien for us to grasp, don't you understand? It isn't a question of your capacity for reasoning or anything else. Why not just accept the fact that you're safe from the cares of the universe - the multiverse. Find yourself a niche and settle down. You can be quite comfortable here - nobody expects anything of you.'

'There must be some questions you can answer to give me a clue, a starting point?'

'Harry,' Olesson said impatiently, 'forget these bums, will you? Let them do what they like so long as they stop worrying us. Let them make their "investigations". They won't get anywhere.'

'I'm easy,' Klein said to Renark, ignoring his companion. 'But there's not much I can tell you. What do you want to know?'

'For a start, tell me something about the Shifter as you know it from living on it.'

Klein shrugged and sighed. 'We pick up all kinds of intelligent life forms as we travel. Usually fugitives, sometimes explorers. They've settled on planets - if you can call it settled - that suit them best. Once on a planet, only a fool leaves it.'

'Why?'

'Because if the planets are wild, then space outside is wilder. A trip outside the atmosphere sends anyone quite mad. Why do you think nobody leaves the planets? Only the Thron are insane enough already to do it. You've seen it at its best - when it's been calmer. That's why we had to wait so long before sending out help - not many people dare to risk travelling in space most of the time. It's usually worse near the perimeter, too. You were lucky to get help at all.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'Nobody knows - but most of the time space out there is filled with chaos. Things appear and disappear, time becomes meaningless, the mind breaks…'

'But it wasn't too bad most of the time while we were coming here.'

'Sure. The Thron had something to do with that, I guess. They seem to know a bit more about controlling whatever it is.'

'Then, if that's so, there must be some means of discovering the real nature of the Shifter.'

'No. I reckon the Thron have just been lucky.'

Klein stared with curiosity at Renark.

'What exactly do you want to know - and why?'

'That's my business.'

'You've got a bigger reason than mere curiosity. You said so. You tell me and maybe I'll decide to go on. If not, I don't want to bother. I want to see what you're leading up to.'

'You can tell us now, Renark, surely,' urged Talfryn.

The ex Warden sighed.

'All right. About two years ago I made contact with the crew of an intergalactic spaceship. Though it had come from another galaxy, it wasn't so very different from ours - and the crew was human. This in itself was astonishing. They had not knowledge of our history, just as we had none about theirs. They landed on Gouland, a backwater planet under my jurisdiction. I went out to meet them. We learned one another's language and we talked. One of the things they told me was that, in their galaxy, human beings were the only intelligent life-form.'

'Just like ours,' Klein nodded.

'And, I suspect, just like any other galaxy in our particular universe. Tell me, Klein, where do the aliens we've seen come from?'

'Different space-time-continua. Every STC seems to have only one dominant, intelligent life form. I can't explain it.'

'It must mean something. That's what I suspected, anyway. A phenomenon natural to every STC universe. But what isn't happening, I hope, in every STC, is what is happening in our particular universe.'

'Happening?' Talfryn spoke.

'The visitors from the other galaxy came to warn us. Their news was so terrible that I had to keep it to myself. To have released it would have been to start galaxy-wide panic.'

'What the hell is happening?' Even Olesson became interested.

"The end of the universe,' Renark said.

'What!' Talfryn gasped.

'The end of the universe - so far as humanity's concerned, at any rate.'

'And the Gee-lords don't know?' Asquiol said. 'You didn't tell them - why?'

'Because I was counting on the Shifter to offer a clue that might save us.'

'Not just the end of a galaxy,' Klein said softly, 'but an entire universe. Our universe. How do you know, Renark?'

'The visitors gave me proof - my own space-sensing ability did the rest. I'm convinced. The universe has ceased to expand.'

'That's a problem?' Olesson said.

'Oh, yes - because, not only has it ceased expanding, it is now contracting. All matter is falling back to its source. All the galaxies are rapidly drawing together - and at a far greater speed than they expanded. And the speed increases as all matter is drawn back to the hub of our universe! Soon all the galaxies will exist as a single mote of matter in the vastness of space. Then even that mote may vanish, leaving - vacuum. So far this inward movement is restricted to the galaxies, but, soon, when they all come together, it will involve the stars, the planets - everything.'

'This is theory,' Klein spoke softly.

'Fact,' said Renark. 'My visitors' experiments are conclusive. They have tested the theory in their laboratories and found that when the matter has contracted as much as it can - and it forms a pellet of astounding density - it just disappears. They believe that when it reaches the final stage it enters other dimensions as a photon, possibly in some greater universe - the one encompassing the multiverse, itself, perhaps.'

'So it disappears - like the shifter?'

'That's right.'

'I still don't know why you came here,' Klein said. 'Because it's safe? We are safe, aren't we?'

'I came here,' said Renark, more calmly now, 'in the hope of discovering a means of travelling into another universe.'

'You think because the Shifter travels through the multi-verse that you can find out how it works and build some kind of machine that will do the same - is that it?' Klein seemed interested, even enthusiastic.

'That's it. If I can discover the Shifter's secret, I may be able to return to our universe. As a Guide Senser I could probably find it - and warn them of what's happening and offer them a means of escaping into a universe which isn't undergoing this change.'

Olesson put in: 'Whatever happens, we're all right eh?'

Renark nodded. 'Yes. But that doesn't appeal much to me.'

The others didn't reply. Although horrified, they also seemed relieved.

Renark sensed this. 'You're still with me?' he said to his friends.

'We've nothing to lose,' Talfryn said uncomfortably.

'Nothing,' agreed Asquiol.

The equipment beside them squealed. Olesson moved ponderously towards it, tuned in the receiver, got sound and a picture. 'Yes.'

The face on the screen said: 'More visitors, Ragnar - a big load from Migaa are coming in now.'

'The usual routine,' said Olesson, shutting off the receiver.