The Corridors of Time

15

There was no full-dress fighting in this era, or there would have been no Earth. Somewhere, sometime, when one side or the other believed it had grown strong enough, the great onslaught would be launched; but its nature was unguessable by the combatants themselves. Meanwhile the hemispheres were fortresses and skirmishes were incessant.

The Warden spaceship screamed on a long curve, westward and downward across an ocean where a storm had been generated for this night. At the end of that trajectory, a voice said, “Now,” and Lockridge’s capsule was ejected. Meteor-like, it streaked through wind and rain, aflame with the violence of its transit. The ship came about and raked for altitude.

Lockridge lay amidst incandescence. Heat buffeted him; his skull rang with vibration. Then the weakened pod burst open and he cast himself free on his gravity belt.

So fast was he still going that the force field was barely able to shield him from a stream that would have torn him asunder. The hurricane raved about his screen, blackness, lightning, and a wall of rain. Waves grabbed upward at him, spindrift smoking off their crests. As his speed dropped below the sonic, he heard the wind skirl, thunder crash, waters roar. A blue-white flare cut through the weather and left him dazzled for minutes. The explosion that followed struck his ears like a hammer. So they detected us, he thought stunned, and shot a firebolt at the ship. I wonder if she got away.

I wonder if I will.

But so small an object as a man was engulfed by the tempest Nor were the Rangers likely to be on the alert for him. They would only expect their enemies to take this much trouble for a major operation and could not know that the sending of a single agent was indeed one.

History said he was going to reach Brann’s castle.

Climate control fields pushed the storm away from the coast. Lockridge broke into clear air and saw Niyorek.

Monstrous it gloomed on the shore, and inland farther than his vision went. Maps and diaglossa had told of an America webbed from end to end with megalopolis. Little broke that mass of concrete, steel, energy, ten billion slaves jammed together, save here and there a desert which had once been green countryside. The gutting of his land seemed so vast a crime that he needed no drug to cast out fear. Oh, Indian summers along the Smokies, he thought, I’m comin’ to get revenge for you.

North, south, and ahead, the city raised ramparts where nothing but a few wan lamps, and the spout from a hundred furnaces, relieved the lower murk. A sound came over the sea, humming, throbbing, sometimes shrilling so high it was pain to hear: the voice of the machines. On the upper levels, individual towers lifted a mile or more, the first dawn-glow pallid on their windowless sides. Cables, tubes, elevated ways meshed them together. The spectacle had a certain grandeur. They were not small-minded, the men who dreamed those vertical caverns into the sky. But the outlines were brutal, bespeaking a spirit whose highest wish was the unrestrained exercise of unlimited power, forever.

Lockridge’s helmet vibrated with a call. “Who comes yonder?” Black-uniformed like himself, two sentries stooped on him. Below, rafted weapons raised their snouts.

He had been schooled. “Guardsmaster Darvast, household troops of Director Brann, returning from a special mission.” The Ranger language was harsh on his tongue. He must admit its grammar and semantics were closer to English than the Warden speech, in which he could not even say some things with any precision. But here, the closest word to “freedom” meant “ability to accomplish,” and there was none for “love” at all.

Since he was going to identify himself to Brann anyway, he had suggested doing so at the start. But Hu vetoed the idea. “You would have to go through too many layers of bureaucracy.” Perforce, that last phrase was a Ranger one. “While you would reach him eventually, the interrogation processes would reveal too much to them, and leave you too crippled.”

“Land at Gate 43 for identification,” the radio voice commanded.

Lockridge obeyed, setting down on a flange that jutted over the water. It was naked metal, as was the immense portal in the wall before him. A guard stepped from an emplacement. “Your ego pattern,” he said.

Warden agents had done their job well. Against a day of need, an identity had been planted in that machine which recorded the life of each person in the hemisphere. Lockridge went to the mind scanner and thought a code word. The circuits took it for the entire biogram of Darvast 05-874-623-189, bred thirty years ago, educated in Crèche 935 and the Academy of War, special service appointee to Director Brann, politically reliable and holder of several decorations for hazardous assignments successfully carried out. The guard saluted with an arm laid across his breast. “Pass, master.”

The gates opened, eerily quiet for such ponderosity. The city’s pulse came through, and a gust of foul air. Lockridge went in.

There had been no time to give him more than a general idea of the layout; he must concentrate on learning what was known about the castle. Play by ear, he thought. I’ve got my direction, more or less.

Brann’s tower had been unmistakable, sheathed in steel and topped by a ball of blue flame. It must be a couple of miles from here. Lockridge began walking.

He found he had entered at the bottom of human habitation. The city went deep below ground, but only machines housed there, with a few armoured engineers and a million convict attendants who did not live long amidst the fumes and radiation. Here, walls, rusted and grimed, enclosed a narrow pedestrian passageway. High overhead, girders and upper-level structures shut out the sky. The air throbbed and stank. Around him pullulated the half-skilled, the useless, the uncaught criminals, with sleazy clothes over fish-belly skins. No one looked hungry—machine-produced food was issued free at one’s assigned refectory—but Lockridge felt as if his lungs were being contaminated by the smell of unwashed bodies. Raucousness:

“So I said to him, I said, you can’t do this to me, I said, I know the apartment proctor personal, I said, and—”

“—where y’ can get the real thing, yuh, ’s true, a real happy, jolt right ’n y’ head—”

“Better leave him alone. He don’t act like nobody else. One of these nights they’ll come get him, you mark my words.”

“If she wants t’ get rid o’ her brats b’fore they’re registered, well, that’s between her and the proctors, I don’t want no part of it, but when she throws ’em down my unit’s waste chute, well!”

“Last I heard, he’d been transferred to, uh, I don’t know exactly but might be disposal detail in, uh, the south somewhere.”

“Nah, they won’t investigate. She wasn’t filling her quota. Why should they care if somebody cuts her throat? Saves them trouble, in fact.”

“Shhh! Look out!”

The stillness spread in rings around Lockridge’s uniform. He didn’t have to push through the crowd like everyone else; folk pressed themselves against the walls, away from him, looked down at the pavement and pretended they were nowhere near.

Their ancestors had been Americans.

He was glad to reach an upward shaft where he could use his gravity belt. Above were levels of wide hallways, painfully clean. The doors were shut and few were abroad, for the technician class need not scrabble around the clock for a livelihood.

Those people he glimpsed wore uniforms of good material and walked with a puritan purposefulness. They saluted him.

Then a file of grey-clad men passed by, with one soldier for

guard Their heads were shaven and their faces dead. He knew them for convicted unreliables. Genetic control did not yet extend to the whole personality, nor was indoctrination always successful. That these men might be trusted among the machines down below, their brains had been seared by an energy field. More efficient would have been to automate everything, rather than use such labour; but object lessons were needed. Still more important was to keep the population busy. Behind a poker face, Lockridge struggled not to retch.

He reminded himself, somewhat wildly, that no state could long endure which had not at least the passive support of a large majority. But that was the final abomination. Nearly everyone here, on every level of society, took the Rangers’ government for granted, could not imagine living in any other way, often enjoyed their existence. The masters fed them, sheltered them, clothed them, educated them, doctored them, thought for them. A gifted, ambitious man could rise high, as technician, scientist, soldier, impresario of ever more elaborate and sadistic entertainments. To get anywhere, one must kick others in the teeth; and that was fun, that gave release. One did not, of course, aspire to the ultimate masterships. Those were assigned by machines, taken to be wiser than any mortal, and if a man was fortunate enough to serve close to such a person, he did so in the spirit of a watchdog.

Like Darvast, Lockridge thought. I’ve got to remember who I’m s’posed to be. He hurried on.

The sun was just rising, through carcinogenic clouds, when he left the roofs behind and flitted toward Brann’s stronghold. Patrolmen swarmed about the walls, flies against a mountain. Guns crouched on every flange, and warcraft circled the burning globe at the spire. This high, the air was clean and cold, the city’s growl subdued to a whisper, the westward view a sierra of towers.

Lockridge landed as ordered and identified himself again.

There followed three hours of hurry-up-and-wait, partly because he must go through the chain of command, partly because the master was not yet ready to see anyone. An officer, of sufficiently elevated rank to be daring, explained with a leer, “He was busy till late last night with his new playmate. You know.”

“No, I’ve been away,” Lockridge said. “Some girl, eh?”

“What?” The Ranger looked shocked. “A female—for pleasure? Where have you been?” His lids drew together.

“In the past, and spent several years,” Lockridge said hastily. “You forget your own world, back then.”

“Ye-e-es . . . I understand that’s quite a problem. Agents who are gone too long, ego time, can develop some nasty deviant notions.”

Being still under close watch, Lockridge said, “You needn’t tell me. I’ve met such cases. Also among the enemy, luckily.”

“It balances out,” the officer nodded, and relaxed. “Well, what’s so urgent about your own report that you can’t wait for an appointment?”

“For his ears only,” Lockridge said in sheer automatism. Most of him was too astonished at the casual acceptance of his lie. How could a Warden be subverted? Surely nothing in the past was better than what he had seen in today’s Europe.

The anti-worry chemical in him suppressed puzzlement. He settled back in the austere little room and composed his ideas. First, speak to Brann; then break loose. There was a time gate, open on this year, in the foundations of the tower. He’d go back to a period before the rise of the Rangers. They might chase him the whole way, kill him, and somehow fail to return until after their lord had departed. On the other hand, he might elude them, flit to Europe, find one of the several corridors he had been told about, and get home free. Perhaps, at this very moment, he was greeting Auri in Storm’s palace. That was a thought to cherish here.

A voice from the air said: “Guardsmaster Darvast. The Director will see you.”

Lockridge went through a wall, which dilated for him, to an antechamber armoured in steel and force. The soldiers there made him strip, and searched clothes and person respectfully but most thoroughly. When he dressed again, he was allowed to keep his diaglossas—not, though, his gravity belt or weapons.

A double door beyond opened on a wide, high-ceilinged chamber, draped and carpeted in grey, airily furnished. A viewer showed the immense spectacle of Niyorek. On one wall, a Byzantine ikon glittered gilt and bejewelled. After the crampedness everywhere else, Lockridge had an odd brief sense of homecoming.

Brann sat next to a service machine. The lean black-clad body was at ease, and the face might have belonged to a statue. He said quietly, “You must have realised that no such person as you is close enough to me to be known by name. However, the fact that you could get by identification is so significant that I decided to interview you as requested. Only my Mutes are overseeing us. I assume you have no ridiculous assassination scheme in mind. Speak.”

Lockridge looked upon him, and the drug must be wearing off, because the fact struck shatteringly: My God, I met and fought this man six thousand years ago, and yet this is the first time he’s ever seen me!

The American gulped for air. His knees wobbled and his palms grew wet. Brann waited.

“No,” Lockridge got out. “I mean . . . I’m not a Ranger. But I’m on your side. I have something to tell you that, well, that I believe you’d want kept secret.”

Brann studied him, sharp features unmoving. “Take off your helmet,” he said. Lockridge did. “Archaic type,” Brann murmured. “I thought so. Most would never notice, but I have encountered too many races in too many times. Who are you?”

“Malcolm . . . Lockridge . . . U.S.A., mid-twentieth century.”

“So.” Brann paused. All at once a smile transfigured him. Be seated,” he said, as host to guest. He touched a light on me machine. A panel opened, a bottle and two goblets appeared. “You must like wine.”

“I could use some,” Lockridge husked. Remembrance came to him, how he had drunk with Brann before, and made him toss off his glass in two swallows.

Brann poured afresh. “Take your time,” he said leniently.

“No, I have to—Listen. The Koriach of the Westmark. You know her?”

Brann’s calm was not broken, but the mask slid back over him. “Yes. In age after age.”

“She’s mounting an operation against you.”

“I know. That is, she disappeared some time ago, undoubtedly on a major mission.” Brann leaned forward. His look grew so intent that Lockridge’s eyes must seek escape in the stern serenity of the Byzantine saint. The deep voice cracked forth: “You have information?”

“I . . . I do . . . master. She’s gone into my century—my country—to drive a corridor here.”

“What? Impossible! We would know!”

“They’re working under cover. Native labour, native materials, starting from scratch. But when they’re finished, the Wardens will come through, with everything they’ve got.”

Brann’s fist rang on the machine. He bounded to his feet. “Both sides have tried that before,” he protested. “Neither has succeeded. The deed isn’t possible!”

Lockridge made himself regard the figure towering over him and say: “This time the operation looks likely to work. It’s masterly well hidden, I tell you.”

“If anyone could, then she—” Brann’s voice sank. “Oh, no.” His mouth twisted. “The final thrust. Firebolts loosed on my people.”

He began to pace. Lockridge sat back and watched him. And it came to the American that Brann was not evil. In Avildaro he had spoken—he would speak—well of his Yuthoaz because they were not needlessly cruel. His anguish now was real. Evil had created him, and he served it, but behind those grey eyes lay a tiger’s innocence. When he demanded facts, Lockridge spoke with near pity:

“You’re going to stop her. I can tell you just where the corridor is. When its gate here opens, you will strike down it. She’ll only have a few helpers. You won’t get her then, she’ll escape, but you’ll have another chance later.”

More or less truthfully, he related his own experiences until he came to his arrival at Avildaro with Storm. “She claimed to be their Goddess,” he went on, “and presided over a mighty vicious festival.” As expected, the Ranger was not aware that the Tenil Orugaray, far outside his own field of cultural manipulation, did not practice ceremonial cannibalism like their neighbours. Also, perhaps, he assumed Lockridge disapproved of orgies, which was untrue but useful.

“That was what began to change my mind about her. Then you came, at the head of an Indo-European war band, and captured the village and us.” Brann’s fingers opened and closed. “I escaped. At the time, I thought that was luck, but now I reckon you kept me loosely guarded on purpose. I made my way to Flanders and found an Iberian trading ship that took me on as a deckhand. Eventually I got to Crete and contacted the Wardens there. They sent me to this year. Mainly I wanted to get home. This isn’t my war. But they didn’t let me.”

“They wouldn’t,” Brann said, self-controlled again. “The primary reason is superstitious. They think her sacred, you know, an actual immortal incarnation of the Goddess, like her colleagues. You, the last to meet her, are now too holy yourself to be profaned by becoming an ordinary citizen of an era they despise.”

Lockridge was jarred at how smoothly the story the Wardens had concocted was going over. Could Brann’s idea be true?

“They treated me pretty well otherwise,” he said. “I got, uh, very friendly with a high-ranking lady.” Brann shrugged.

She told me a lot about their intelligence operations, showed me the gear and everything. Showed me too damned much of their civilization, in fact. It’s not fit for a human being. In spite of the propaganda I was fed about the Rangers, I began to think you were more my kind of people. At least, you might send me home; and mercy—” Lockridge had to use English there—“but I’m homesick! Got obligations as well, back yonder. So finally I wheedled her into letting me go along on a survey mission last night, even dress in one of your uniforms. Since I knew about the fake Darvast identity—” He spread his hands. “Here I am.”

Brann had stopped prowling. He stood utterly still for a minute, before he asked, “What is the precise geographical location of that corridor?”

Lockridge told him. “After my story,” he said, “I wonder why the Wardens didn’t go back a few months and warn her.”

“They can’t,” Brann replied absently. “What has been, must be. In practical terms: a Koriach, even more than a Director like myself, has absolute authority. She does not divulge her plans to anyone she does not choose. For fear of spies, this one probably told no person except the few technicians she took along. Time enough to do that when the corridor was ready. Now, with so little advance notice and so much to occupy them elsewhen, there is no time to organise a substantial force of Wardens capable of operating efficiently in the past. Such as could be sent have doubtless been baffled by the uncertainty factor; they emerged too early or too late. That is, if any were sent at all. She has rivals who would not be sorry to lose her.” He considered Lockridge for a while that grew. Finally, slowly, he said: “Assuming your account true, I am grateful. You shall indeed be returned and well rewarded. But first we must establish your bona fides with a psychic probe.”

Fear rose in Lockridge. He was getting very near the moment beyond which his future was unknown. Brann stiffened. Sweat, pallor, a pulse in the throat—what was the stranger so nervous about?

“No,” Lockridge said feebly. “Please. I’ve seen what happens.”

He had to give a reason for his flight which would not make Brann too wary to watch for Storm’s gate and lead his troop through it. But the terror in his guts was real. He had indeed seen that darkened part of the Long House.

“Have no fear,” Brann said with a touch of impatience. “The process will not go deep unless something suspicious emerges.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Lockridge rose and backed away.

“You must take my word. And, perhaps, my apology.” Brann gestured.

The door opened. Two guards came in. “Take this man to Division Eight and have the section chief call me,” Brann said.

Lockridge stumbled from the room. Remote as the heaven they watched from, the saint’s eyes followed him out.

The men in black led him down an empty hallway. Sound was muffled, footfalls came dull, and never a word was spoken. Lockridge drew a breath. Okay, boy, he thought, you know you’re goin’ to make it as far as the time corridor. His dizziness left him.

The shaft he wanted came into sight, its opening an oblong in the blank wall, its depths whistling with forced air. The soldiers led Lockridge past.

Their energy guns were drawn, but not aimed at him. Prisoners never gave much trouble. He stopped short. The blade of his hand hewed into the Adam’s apple on his right. A helmet jerked back, a body went to all fours. Lockridge spun to the left. He threw a shoulder block, his full weight behind. The guard toppled backward. Lockridge got a grip on him and hurled them both into the shaft.

Downward they tumbled. An alarm shrieked. That many-eyed machine which was the building had seen the unusual. In a voice nearly human, it cried what it knew.

Featureless, walls converging on a bottomward infinity, the tube fled by. Lockridge clung to the Ranger, arm around the throat, fist pounding while they fell. The guard went loose, his mouth slackened in the bloody face and the gun left his fingers. Lockridge fumbled at his belt controls. Where the furious hell—?

Door after door whizzed upward. Twice, energy bolts sizzled from them. And now the bottom leaped at him. He found the plaque he wanted and pushed. Unbalanced force nearly tore him from his grip on the Ranger. But they were slowed, they were saved from that bone-spattering impact, they were down.

The base of the shaft fronted on another hallway. An entry stood opposite, to show a room whose sterile white made the rainbow shimmer of a time gate all the more lovely. Two guards gaped across levelled weapons. A squad was dashing down the passage.

“Secure this man!” Lockridge gasped. “And let me by!”

He was in uniform, with potent insignia. The castle had not seen details. Arms snapped in salute. He sprang into the anteroom.

Around him, the air woke with Brann’s voice, huge as God’s. “Attention, attention! The Director speaks. A man dressed as a guardsmaster of the household has just entered the temporal transit on Sublevel Nine. He must be captured alive at any cost.”

Through the gate! The twisting shock of phase change made Lockridge fall. He rolled over, his bare head struck the floor, pain burst through him and for an instant he lay stunned.

The fear of the mind machine brought him awake. He hauled himself erect and onto the gravity sled which waited.

Half a dozen men poured through the curtain. Lockridge flattened. Pale stun beams splashed on the bulwarks around him. He lifted a palm and covered the acceleration control light. The sled got into motion.

Away from the Rangers, yes. But they were on his pastward side. He was headed into the future.

The wind rasped in his lungs. His heartbeat shook him as a dog shakes a rat. With his last reserves, he mastered panic enough to risk a look aft. The black shapes were already dwindling. They milled about, uncertain, and he remembered Storm Darroway, seated by a fire in a wolf-haunted forest: “We ventured ahead of our era. There were guardians who turned us back, with weapons we did not understand. We no longer try. It was too terrible.”

I served you, Koriach, he sobbed. Goddess, help me!

As from far away, echoing down the vibrant whiteness of the bore, he heard Brann’s command. The guards assumed formation. Their gravity units raised them and they gave chase.

The corridor reached on beyond sight. Lockridge saw no gate ahead, only emptiness.

The sled halted. He flailed the control panel. The machine sank inert. The flyers swooped near.

Lockridge jumped off and ran. A beam struck the floor behind, touched his heels and left them numb. Someone shouted victory.

And then the Night came, and the Fear.

He never knew what happened. Vision went from him, hearing, every sense and awareness; he was a disembodied point whirled for eternity through infinitely dimensioned space. Somehow he knew of a presence, which was alive and not alive. Thence radiated horror: the final horror, the negation of everything which was and had been and would be, cold past cold, darkness past darkness, hollowness past hollowness, nothing save a vortex which sucked him into itself, and contracted, and was not.

He was not.