Prince Vro’s chill and morbid apartment intensified still further Aton’s feeling of desperation. While looking over the yacht the prince had explained his great loss to him, describing the steps he was taking to recover his beloved.
Yet despite the prince’s bizarre preoccupation, Aton saw him for a man of rare intelligence by the standards of the Imperial Palace. It was a relief to be able to talk to him.
‘Hmm. This certainly explains the rule about the disposal of couriers,’ Vro remarked, lounging in an easy chair and dividing his attention between Aton and the empty sarcophagus in the wall hologram. ‘Evidently people exposed to the strat are liable to develop a natural time-travelling ability. The Church wouldn’t like that.’
‘Then that means I’m not the first,’ Aton pointed out. ‘The phenomenon must already be known. Where are the others?’
‘It is, no doubt, a closely guarded Church secret,’ Vro said. ‘Chronmen who are pulled out of the strat are generally put in the care of secluded monasteries and are never heard of again. Officially that’s because they’re mentally deranged. Now we know there’s more to it, eh, Captain? We can be sure care is taken to see they never realise their powers. You’d better watch your step or you might find yourself forcibly enlisted as a monk.’ Vro smiled faintly.
Aton reflected. ‘Did you mean what you said about the Imperator?’ he asked.
‘Of course. It’s a demented machine, no more. That’s why it’s only a figurehead. My father can’t quite believe it’s not rational, of course. He treats it as a totem and consults it from time to time. But it never says anything meaningful.’
‘Then will you help me, Your Highness?’ Aton pleaded earnestly. ‘You, at least, seem to understand what the present situation will lead to. Can you not try to persuade your father?’
‘I?’ Prince Vro chuckled. ‘Affairs of state are far from my interests.’
‘But how can you ignore them at a time this?’
‘I care only for my beloved Veaa,’ Vro said, gazing pitifully into the mausoleum. ‘Let the world perish, it’s nothing to me.’
Aton sighed deeply.
‘As for my father the emperor and his enterprise against the Hegemony,’ Vro went on, ‘that old lunatic could never be moved by anything I say to him anyway. I have not spoken to him for three years, yet he still expects me to command a wing of the armada! He will be disappointed. I shall not be here. I shall be away, into the future, to rescue my beloved and make her mine again!’
Without warning a change came over Vro’s face. He leaped to his feet and appeared to be listening intently.
‘What is it?’ asked Aton in alarm.
‘Can you not sense it?’
Aton became quiet and indeed did seem to sense something. A swelling that was inside him and outside him, in the air, in everything. Then he momentarily blacked out. When he came to, he was aware of a loss of consciousness lasting a split second.
Prince Vro went rushing about the room examining everything, peering into the mausoleum, studying his face in a mirror.
‘What happened?’ Aton asked in a subdued voice.
‘That’s the third time they’ve got through. Nothing’s changed here anyway. But then, I wouldn’t remember… not unless the change was discontinuous, perhaps not even then.’
‘The Hegemonics? They can strike even here?’
Vro nodded. ‘Usually they are beaten off, occasionally they manage to focus their projector for a second or two. Chronopolis has undergone a few minor changes, so the Achronal Archives tell us. I wonder what it is this time.’ His lips twisted wryly. ‘It could be for the best. Maybe my father has had some sense mutated into him.’
This revelation of how hard the Hegemonics were attacking was the most depressing thing Aton had met with so far. He laid his chin on his hands, thinking deeply. At length he decided upon something which had been brewing in his mind, but which he had not dared to think about up until now.
‘You can see why my father is so keen to get the armada under way,’ Vro remarked. ‘Much more of this and there won’t be any empire left.’
‘But once the armada is launched everything will get worse!’ Aton protested. ‘Both sides will let loose with everything they’ve got. The Hegemonics will use the time-distorter at full aperture!’
Vro did not seem interested. ‘What are you going to do now, Captain? You ought to give it some thought. It’s dangerous for you here. Once someone realises who you are they’ll make short work of you.’
‘I haven’t stopped trying yet. The emperor won’t listen to me. The Imperator won’t. There’s still someone left.’
‘Who?’
‘San Hevatar!’
Vro grunted. ‘Him! What do you expect him to do?’
‘I don’t know. The whole empire springs from him. Perhaps he can change everything. Perhaps he could even suppress the invention of time-travel.’
‘And wipe out the empire from the beginning?’ Vro’s voice was soft with awe.
There was a tight pain in Aton’s chest. When he spoke, his tone was leaden. ‘It sounds strange, doesn’t it? I, a committed servant of the empire, talking of annulling the empire. The ultimate in treachery. But I can see no other way. It is not just the empire that’s at stake now, it’s mankind, perhaps time itself. Mad the Imperator may be, but one thing it said is true: the enemy of the empire is the enemy of mankind. Perhaps madmen – or mad machines – can see clearly what saner men cannot.’
‘Your vision is certainly grandiose.’
‘With no communication through time each node would live separately, undisturbed. There would be no Chronotic Empire, but neither would there be any time-distorter, any Chronotic war, any strain on the fabric of time. Who can say what will remain when it finally rents open?’
‘And no Holy Church,’ Vro reminded him. ‘I wonder what San Hevatar will have to say to that.’
Aton turned to him. ‘You tell me you are heading for Node Six in the morning, Highness. Have you room for me aboard your yacht? Can you drop me off in the hinterland?’
‘I thought you could travel through time at will.’
‘Not quite at will. I have already tried. It seems my nervous system only asserts the ability during an emergency, or under certain kinds of duress.’
‘Well, it seems the least I can do,’ Prince Vro murmured, ‘to aid in the annihilation of the empire.’
NINE
The origin of the Chronotic Empire was, to some extent, obscured in the haze of recurrent time. It had taken place at a point in time that now lay between Node 5 and Node 6 – between Barek and Revere – about fifty years into the hinterland of Node 5. But two nodes had swept over the spot since the earth-shaking discovery attributed to San Hevatar. The empire had had three hundred years or more of nodal time, as apart from static historical or orthogonal time, in which to establish itself.
And during that nodal time the soul of San Hevatar had, of course, traversed his life several times, as had that of everyone around him. The world in which he lived had changed much in the course of those repetitions. The original San Hevatar would not have recognised it. Largely because of his own efforts, he was now born into a world where time-travel and the empire were already facts.
Most history books inferred that the Ixian family had already been the rulers of Umbul when San Hevatar placed the secret of time-travel at their disposal. Prince Vro told Aton, however, that he believed this to be a distortion of the truth. It was unlikely that the city of Umbul itself had existed in the beginning. As far as he could judge, the Ixians had not been kings or rulers, but the owners of a giant industrial and research conglomerate where San Hevatar had worked as a scientist. They had seized their chance to indulge their wildest ambitions, conquering past centuries, always moving pastward, where the technology was inferior to their own.