The Overlords of War

Chapter 27

“Every man has an objective in life,” Veran mused. “Even if he doesn’t realize it. What I don’t understand, Corson, is what you’re after. Some people are driven by ambition, like me, some by fear, others still—in certain epochs—by a lust for money. And whether they make out well or badly, their actions are like arrows all pointing toward their target. But I can’t see your target, Corson, and I don’t like that. I don’t enjoy dealing with someone whose objective I can’t comprehend.”

“Say that I’m motivated by both ambition and fear, then,” Corson answered. “I want to become important, with the help of the Urians. And I’m scared because I’m a war criminal, a hunted man. Like you, Veran.”

“Colonel Veran, if you please!”

“Like yon—Colonel. I have no special wish to go back to Aergistal, to live out an endless stupid war. Does that make sense?”

“You do know, then,” Veran said slowly, “that at Aergistal wars never have any point? That there’s nothing to conquer up there?”

“I did get that impression.”

“Your attitude is overlogical. When an enemy wants to make you believe he’s going to execute a certain maneuver, he provides good solid reasons for doing it. He hides behind them, and does something else. And there you are walking into a trap.”

“You want me to break down and cry? Because I’m a poor devil lost in space and time, dragged off Aergistal by a slave dealer and sold to a bunch of fanatical birds? Sorry!”

“That message!” Veran snapped.

Corson laid his hands flat on the table and with an effort compelled his muscles to relax.

“You said you sent it to me with the help of the Urians. I’ve mislaid it. Can you remind me of what it said?”

“I made a date with you here, Colonel. I told you how to get away from Aergistal. I—”

“The actual words, Corson!”

Corson stared down at his hands. It looked as though the blood was drawing back from under the nails, leaving the flesh chalk-white. “I’ve forgotten the exact words, Colonel.”

“I think you don’t know them, Corson,” Veran said. “I don’t believe you’ve sent that message yet. If you were working for someone who had sent it using your name, you’d know what was in it. That message must belong to your future, and I don’t know if I can believe in your having any.”

“Assuming your theory is correct, doesn’t it follow that in the future I shall perform a great service for you?”

“You know very well what it implies.”

There was a silence. At length, staring at Corson, Veran said, “I can’t kill you. Not before you’ve sent that message. Oh, it’s not the idea of being prevented from killing you that bothers me. It’s the idea of not being able to make you afraid. I don’t like that. I don’t like to make use of someone I can neither understand nor frighten.”

“Stalemate,” Corson said.

“What?”

“A term from the game of chess. It means there can be neither winner nor loser.”

“I don’t gamble,” Veran said. “I’m too fond of winning.”

“Oh, it’s not a gambling game. More of an exercise in strategy.”

“A sort of war game? With time as an unknown factor?”

“No, without involving time.”

Veran laughed. “Then it would be too simple for me. No fun at all.”

Time, Corson thought. Here’s a neat bit of clockwork. I’m protected by a message that I shall probably send, whose phrasing I don’t know and whose very existence was news to me an hour ago. I’m putting my feet in my own tracks to avoid traps that I don’t even know are there!

“And what will happen if I am killed, and don’t send the message?”

“You’re worried about the philosophical aspect of the matter. I don’t know anything about that. Maybe someone else will send me an identical message. Or some other message. Or I’ll never get a message at all and stay there and get chopped to bits.”

For the first time he smiled, and Corson saw that he had no teeth, only a bar of white and sharpened metal.

“I may already be a prisoner, or worsel”

“One doesn’t stay dead for long at Aergistal,” Corson said.

“You know that too!”

“I told you I’d been there.”

“Hmm! But the worst thing isn’t being killed—it’s losing a battle.”

“But here you are.”

“And here I mean to stay. When you’re juggling with possibilities, the important thing is the present. One discovers that sooner or later. I have a fresh chance. I intend to take advantage of it.”

“Just so long as you don’t kill me,” Corson said.

“I’m sorry I can’t,” Veran answered. “Not because I particularly want to, but on principle.”

“You can’t even hold on to me. At a moment which I shall choose, you’ll have to let me go so that I have the chance to send the message.”

“I’ll go with you,” Veran said.

Corson had the impression the man’s confidence was waning.

“Then I won’t send it.”

“I’ll make you send it.”

A question which epitomized the problem sprang to Corson’s mind. He realized he had found the flaw in Veran’s argument.

“Then why don’t you send it yourself?”

Veran shook his head. “You must be joking. Aergistal is at the other end of the universe. I wouldn’t even know what direction to send it in. Without the coordinates you gave me, I’d never have found the way to this planet in a billion years. Besides, consider the Law of Non-regressive Information.”

“What sort of law is that?”

“A transmitter cannot be its own receiver,” Veran said patiently. “I can’t warn myself. That would unleash a series of oscillations in time which would eventually damp each other out to get rid of the disturbance. The space between the point of origin and the point of arrival would be annulled along with everything contained in it. That’s why I haven’t shown you the text of your message. I haven’t lost it—it’s here under my elbow. But I don’t want to reduce your chances of sending it.”

“The universe won’t tolerate contradictions,” Corson said.

“That’s a sadly anthropomorphic point of view. The universe tolerates anything. You can even show mathematically that it’s always possible to construct systems of propositions that are rigorously contradictory and mutually exclusive, no matter how powerful the systems may be.”

“I thought mathematics was self-consistent,” Corson said softly, “From a logical standpoint. The theory of continuity—”

“You surprise me as much by what you don’t know as by what you do, Corson. The theory of continuity was undermined three thousand years ago, local time. Besides, it doesn’t have much application to your case. What is true is that any theory based on an infinite number of postulates must always contain its own contradiction. It destroys itself, it dissolves into nothing, but that doesn’t stop it from existing. On paper.”

So that’s why I have to grope my way down the alleys of time, Corson thought. My counterpart in the future can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do. Yet there are gaps, and scraps of information leak through that help me to find my bearings. There must be another kind of physics which takes no account of such disturbances. If I tried to get that paper away from him and force the future to—

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Veran said, as though he had read Corson’s mind. “Personally I don’t set too much store by the theory of non-regressive information, but I’ve never dared infringe the law.”

Yet, as Corson knew, in the very far future the gods would be doing it all the time. They would play with possibilities. The threshold of their interference would be so high the entire universe would be affected. With all barriers down, it would open up, liberate itself, multiply, putting an end to compulsion, making nonsense of what the moving finger writes. Man would cease to be imprisoned in a tunnel linking birth to death.

“Don’t sit there mooning, Corson,” Veran cut in. “You told me that these birds have fantastic weapons they will put at my disposal. You’ve said I’ll never catch the wild pegasone which you claim is at large on this planet without the Urians’ help. And they need me to wreak their revenge for them, they need a trained fighting man to undertake conquests on their behalf and also to tame the pegasone before it breeds and probably brings down on their heads the Security Office, in which case their guns will be well and truly spiked. Maybe you’re right. It all fits together so neatly, doesn’t it?”

He shot out his hand far too quickly for Corson to ward it off or even to dodge back. The mercenary’s fingers brushed his neck. But Veran wasn’t trying to strangle him. He caught hold of the chain on which Corson’s transmitter hung, no larger than a lucky charm. He shut it in a small black shell which he had concealed in the palm of his hand. Corson seized his wrist, but Veran disengaged with a crisp movement.

“We can talk openly now. They won’t hear us any more.”

“They’ll be worried by our silence,” Corson said, at once relieved and alarmed.

“You underestimate me, friend,” Veran said coldly. “They will go on hearing our voices. We shall be chatting about the weather, the art of war, the value of an alliance… Our voices, the tempo of our conversation, the length of our pauses, and even the sound of our breathing have been analyzed. Why do you think I went on gossiping for such a long time? Now a little gadget will send them a conversation which may be a trifle boring but as educational as you could wish. There remains one more precaution I must take. I’m going to give you another bit of jewelry.”

He made no sign, but Corson felt himself grasped by strong hands. Fingers he did not see forced his head back. For a moment he thought he was going to have his throat cut. Why kill him now—and in such a messy fashion? Did Veran enjoy being spattered with the blood of his victims?

He felt cold metal at his throat even as he reminded himself Veran had said he could not be killed because of the message.

A tiny catch clicked. The hands let go. Corson felt his neck. A collar had been put on him, light but bulky, like those he had seen some of Veran’s men wearing.

“I hope it doesn’t inconvenience you,” Veran said. “You’ll get used to it. You’re likely to wear it a long time, perhaps all your life. It’s fitted with two separate fuses. It will explode if you try to remove it, and believe me the bang will be big enough to blow you back to Aergistal along with anyone else who’s around at the time. And it will inject a very efficient poison into you if you ever try and use any kind of weapon against me or my army, from a club to a transfixer, which is the nastiest gadget I’ve ever run into. It will even do that if you give orders which might lead to someone else using a weapon against me, even if you get involved in planning a battle with me on the other side. The whole beauty of the thing is that you will trigger it yourself wherever you may be in space or time. It’s set to register a specific conscious aggression. You can hate me as much as you like, destroy me in your dreams a hundred times a night, and you will run no risk. And you can fight like a lion. But not against me or my men. You might conceivably try sabotage, but leave me to worry about that. You see, Corson? You can be my ally or stay neutral, but you can’t be my enemy. And if you think that’s an insult to your dignity, console yourself with the thought that all my personal guards wear the same device.”

He gave Corson a satisfied look.

“Is that what you said was called a stalemate?”

“Something of the sort,” Corson admitted. “But it’s going to surprise the Urians.”

“They’ll see the point of it. Moreover they’ve already received a censored version of our chat. And their little transmitter isn’t as innocent as it looks. At a suitable signal it can release enough heat to kill you. But if they were a bit cleverer they would use an automatic fuse. Well! I imagine you could use a drink?”

“I certainly could,” Corson said.

From a drawer in the table Veran produced a flagon and two crystal goblets. He half filled them, gave Corson a friendly nod, and took a swig.

“I hope you don’t resent what I’ve done to you. I like you, Corson, and I need you, too. But I can’t trust you. Everything fits together too neatly. And the only reason it fits is because you are here, you were there, you will be wherever else. I don’t even know what game you’re playing, what drives you, deep inside. What you’re suggesting to me is treason against humanity. You want me to put myself at the disposal of fanatical birds whose only dream is to destroy mankind, in exchange for my personal safety and ultimately a hell of a lot of power. Take it that I am capable of accepting. But what about you, Corson? You don’t seem like a traitor to your species. Are you?”

“I have no alternative,” Corson said.

“For a man acting under compulsion you’re singularly enterprising. You manage to persuade these birds to make an alliance with me and come and negotiate the deal yourself. More to the point, you bring me here to make it possible. Fine. Assume you were to catch me in a trap. I disappear. You stay with the birds. You’ve betrayed your species once, by handing me over to beings who from your point of view are worth no more than I am, who aren’t even human, and you know you’ll have to start again. That doesn’t sound like you. The birds wouldn’t notice because they don’t really know humans, because they think of you as a wild beast which is likely to rob their nests but which can be tamed, or rather cowed. But I’ve seen thousands of soldiers like you, Corson. Quite incapable of betraying their species, their country, even their generals. Oh, it’s not the result of inbred virtue, even though they may be led to believe so, but of conditioning.

“So? One other possibility remains. You’re trying to save mankind. You think that Uria, and later on this sector of space, would be better conquered by a man than by one of these feathered fanatics. So you bring me here. You propose an alliance with the Urians because you guess that it will be unstable, that a quarrel will break out sooner or later when the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, and that I’ll exterminate the Urians. Maybe then you could get rid of me? You don’t even have to say so aloud. It’s useless to invoke my help against the Urians if there’s a risk of my betraying you. You know the union is potentially explosive.”

“Don’t forget the wild pegasone,” Corson said coldly.

“I shan’t. I need it, so at one blow I can deliver Uria from this other danger as well. Am I wrong, Corson?”

“Will you accept my terms?” Corson said.

Veran gave a crooked smile.

“Not before I’ve taken some precautions.”