For his part San Hevatar had been a man with a vision. He had given a religious meaning to his discoveries and had found the past a fertile ground for his teachings. He had founded the Holy Church, thus giving the burgeoning Chronotic Empire a unifying culture.
Eventually the Ixians had realised that, once it was let loose on mankind, time-travel, which they had used so successfully, could also work against their interests. It would be particularly dangerous if time-travellers were to penetrate the empire’s rear, travelling into the past beyond the empire’s control and working changes there – changes which inevitably would influence the present in ways not planned by the Historical Office. They determined to fix a date in time beyond which time-travel could not be introduced. To this end the stupendous Stop Barrier had been built, consuming one-third of the imperial budget and rendering the past impenetrable to time-travellers. One day it would be moved back to bring yet more of history under the empire’s control, but for the moment it remained both the pastward limit on the empire’s expansion and its rearward protection.
Umbul, on the other hand, was much too close to the futureward frontier to be entirely safe from marauders from the future. A new imperial capital, Chronopolis, had been built close to the Stop Barrier, at what was designated Node 1 (although now another node, Node 0, lay between it and the barrier), protected by nearly the full extent of the empire.
So San Hevatar, prophet and God’s special servant, now lived a life of relative quietude away from the mainstream of events. But he continued, in each repetition of his life, to make the crucial discovery of how to move mass through time, paradoxically even while the evidence of that discovery was all around him before he had made it. It was as if his inner being performed this act as a sacred rite: the central, essential rite of the Church.
Captain Aton meditated on all this as Prince Vro’s yacht crossed Node 5. ‘Where in San Hevatar’s life cycle would you like to intervene?’ Prince Vro asked him politely.
It would be no use approaching the prophet when he was an eager young man, Aton thought. Someone on the verge of a momentous discovery would hardly be persuaded to abandon it. Aton needed to talk to a man who had had time to reflect, who would be old enough to make a sober judgment.
‘At about fifty years of age,’ Aton requested.
‘So late? That is a quarter of a century after the gift of time-travel. If your object is to annul the empire I would have thought, perhaps, a few decades earlier.’
‘That is not really my object,’ Aton said with a smile. ‘It would, after all, be asking too much. But if San Hevatar were, perhaps, to appear at Chronopolis and speak against the war, then I am sure his word would carry more weight than that of all the emperors put together.’
‘Maybe. If His Eminence Arch-Cardinal Reamoir does not declare him a heretic!’ Vro laughed caustically.
The cabin of Prince Vro’s yacht was not large (nearly all the vehicle’s mass being taken up by its powerful drive unit) and with six passengers, three of whom were Perlo Rolce’s assistants, Vro had been obliged to dispense with his crew and attend to both navigation and piloting himself. He typed some instructions into the yacht’s computer and made adjustments in accordance with the figures it gave.
Rolce and his men, trying not to appear inquisitive, kept glancing at Aton surreptitiously. They could hardly believe what was happening.
The yacht slowed down as it approached Aton’s target. Vro became fretful.
‘I am at a loss to know where to phase into ortho,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth I am reluctant to do so at all. As you know, civilian timeships are forbidden to materialise anywhere between nodes, and I am not keen to make myself conspicuous. I’m afraid I shall have to land you somewhere quiet, Captain, and that could put you many hundreds of miles from San Hevatar.’
A strange look came to Aton’s face. ‘There’s no need to phase in at all,’ he told Vro. ‘Just open the cabin door and let me out.’
Perlo Rolce surged to his feet, his hard face displaying most uncharacteristic shock.
‘Your Highness!’ He and his staff plainly thought Aton was insane. Prince Vro waved him back. ‘It’s all right, Rolce. We know what we’re doing.’ But even he looked at Aton in a puzzled, doubting way.
‘You’re sure of this?’ he asked.
‘As sure as a swimmer knows he can enter the water.’
Vro went to a cupboard and took out a flat box-like gadget attached to a belt. ‘You’d better take this orthophase.’
‘Thank you, although I’m not sure I shall need it.’
Aton strapped the device around his waist. Returning to the pilot’s seat, Prince Vro watched the computer countdown while glancing at a small strat screen. ‘Right. We’re about there.’
‘You’d all better face the wall,’ Aton advised. ‘Open the door, Your Highness.’
Vro tapped out the safety sequence on the computer keyboard. With a hum the door slid open. Beyond it, outside the ortho field, the strat billowed and swirled.
Aton steeled himself and leaped right into it.
After the door had closed again the five men remaining in the cabin turned and stared after him, not speaking.
The Manse of San Hevatar lay in a great park in the southwest of the city of Umbuclass="underline" a quieter, more sedate Umbul than it would be at Node 6 a hundred and twenty years hence. The park was dotted with shrines and religious monuments. The approach road that wound through the town was lined with churches, and that stretch of it that crossed the park was strewn every day with rose petals by order of the local bishop.
For all its magnificence the manse itself still bore traces of the research laboratory from which it had been converted. The limestone cupolas floated in places above rectilinear structures of glass and steel. An outhouse contained the powerful transformers, fed by underground cable, that had once provided energy for the scientists’ experiments.
Like a ghost Aton observed all this as he approached from the strat. He phased into orthogonal time in a circular lobby, paved with mosaics, surrounded by balconies, and surmounted by a dome of frosted yellow glass.
The murmur of voices came from one side. Padding towards the sound, Aton found himself peering through the open door of a chapel. Two figures knelt before the altar, one wearing the prophet’s mitre permitted to San Hevatar alone. The other was an older man, perhaps seventy, a small bent figure with a wrinkled face and bushy eyebrows.
Aton could not hear the words of the prayer or service which San Hevatar was intoning with feverish intentness. The older man was acting as his assistant, speaking the responses and holding a chalice of holy wine into which the prophet dipped his fingers, anointing both himself and the other.
Presently their business was finished. Both men stood, San Hevatar straightening his voluminous cope, and came away from the altar. It was then that San Hevatar saw Aton. He strode towards him.
‘An officer of the Time Service!’ he said wonderingly. ‘And may I ask how you got in here? No permissions were given for today, and I have been informed of no unwarranted intrusions.’
‘I made my own way here, Your Holiness, I have journeyed through time to see you. I feel that the information I have is so important that you must hear it.’
San Hevatar looked about him. ‘You came through time? I see no timeship. I still do not understand how you entered my manse unobserved.’
‘I came by my own power, Your Holiness. My brain has learned to propel me through the substratum.’