Heshke twisted around to look questioningly at Hueh Su-Mueng. But the Retort City technician merely shrugged. He turned back to Brask.
“If you’re letting off thousands of fusion explosions —”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Brask interrupted tonelessly.
“— if you’re doing that four centuries in the future, what happens when our time reaches that point? Aren’t we going to be headed into all those explosions?”
Brask smiled faintly. “That’s one of the peculiar things about time. By the ‘time’ we get there the effects will have died away – provided we do succeed in cancelling out the enemy time-front. If we don’t, it won’t matter anyway.” Noting Heshke’s incomprehension, he added: “I know it sounds odd, but that’s how time works, apparently.”
Heshke looked again at Hueh, who nodded. “He’s quite right – provided the reversed time-system were to be destroyed.”
“Can you now doubt our determination?” Limnich said in his low, fruity voice. “The coming struggle may be the acme of our glory. Let all who come against us know—” He clenched his fists spasmodically, and Heshke thought he actually saw him, as in fact Limnich had done many times, draw himself back from the edge of madness.
Are we an insane race? Heshke wondered darkly. Perhaps so. Perhaps it’s good that all is lost. And, in those very thoughts, he thought he detected then the emergence of the death-wish that Blare Oblomot had once claimed pervaded Titan mentality.
“Thank you for seeing us, Planetary Leader,” he said humbly.
“Your adventure has been so extraordinary that I could do no less,” Limnich responded with a touch of graciousness. He rang a little gold bell that lay on his desk. “Escort these two back to Bupolbloc,” he ordered to the extra guards who came in.
In the subterranean levels of Bupolbloc, as Heshke and Hueh were being taken to their adjacent cells, the archaeologist suddenly pulled up short. Coming along the corridor, also under escort, was someone who, after a momentary start of false recognition, he realised was a person he had met but once: Blare Oblomot’s brother, Sobrie.
“Oblomot!” he exclaimed.
The other looked at him for a moment, and then smiled bleakly. Their guards made to goad both of them along, but Heshke turned angrily. “I demand to be allowed to talk to this man! I’m not exactly a prisoner, you know!”
“True,” said one of the guards indifferently. “Citizen Heshke is in custodial detention only. And he has the ear of the Planetary Leader.”
The guards eyed one another for a moment, and then one of them pushed open a door. “In here.” And because they didn’t want to split the escort, Hueh Su-Mueng was prodded inside too. The guards stood by the door, eyeing their wards, swinging their batons.
Heshke found it easy to ignore them. After some diffidence he explained how he had seen Blare die, but Sobrie merely nodded dismally: he already knew.
In a rush of words Sobrie told him everything that had happened: his involvement with the Panhumanic League, his part-Amhrak girl friend, their arrest and how they’d been brought here to Bupolbloc in Pradna.
“They’re trying to make a deal with me,” he finished bitterly. “They want to mop up the Panhumanic League once and for all. If I put the finger on enough League members who haven’t so far defected they’ll let Layella live on the Amhrak reservation instead of… putting her down like a dog.”
“Could you do that?”
“I could, but… oh, God.…”
Heshke gave a sad sigh. “Well, at least they show a trace of civilised conduct,” he said gently. “They could have used third degree.”
Sobrie looked at him, startled, and then laughed incredulously. “You don’t think they have scruples, do you? It’s a matter of time, that’s all! They’re so busy now that the torture facilities at Bupolbloc Two are being overworked. They don’t want to wait while I stand in line!”
One other item of deference Heshke had wrung from the Titans was that he and Hueh were in connected cells, so that they could talk to one another. They held a brief conversation after leaving Sobrie Oblomot.
“I feel sorry for them both,” Heshke said. “They’re in a hopeless position… the Titans will do just what they like with them. This is an evil world, Su-Mueng.”
“All worlds have their evils,” Su-Mueng observed.
“Perhaps. At any rate, I’m too old for the kind of role I’ve been expected to play lately. I’ve done what I can; now I just want to be left alone.” Heshke was lying on his pallet. He closed his eyes.
“This plan your friends have won’t work,” Su-Mueng told him. “They make a basic mistake: the time-wave isn’t dependent on organic life, it’s the other way around. Biological organisation is a by-product of a time-system, not a cause of it.”
“So?”
“It will make no difference if they destroy an entire biosphere: the time-wave will come rolling on just the same.”
“Just so,” said Heshke faintly. “What can I do about it?”
Moments later he was asleep.
Although it was late into the night, Limnich was still at his desk, poring over the genealogical charts of Titan officers who had come under suspicion. Racial vigilance within Earth’s elite force was something in which he took a personal interest.
Outside, the murmur of traffic had lapsed into silence, broken only by the drone of an occasional car, and all was quiet. But suddenly Limnich jerked bolt upright and gasped with shock.
There, standing before him in the half-darkened office, was the dev Chink Heshke had brought back with him from space.
Limnich wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to penetrate the building uninvited; the Chink seemed to have materialised out of thin air. He snatched up a pistol that always lay on a shelf under the lip of his desk, and pointed it at the intruder’s stomach with trembling fingers.
“How in the Mother’s name did you get in here?” he rasped.
“By being fiendishly clever,” Su-Mueng said with a smile, remembering Limnich’s earlier remark.
In point of fact his entrance had been made without the least difficulty. For while the Titans had made a thorough search of his person, they had failed to find a number of gadgets which had been strapped to his body in past time. Phased one minute into the past, these had been quite undetectable. To make one available, Su-Mueng merely brought it forward into the present.
Chief among these gadgets was a compact personal time-displacer, like the larger, clumsier version he had used to escape from the Production Retort. He had phased himself one minute back in time, sprung the lock tumblers on the door of his cell, and simply walked out of Bupolbloc. He had made his way here to Limnich’s office, walked unseen past guards and secretaries, and once he was in Limnich’s presence phased himself back into normative time.
How to explain this to Limnich, to whom his sudden appearance must smack of magic? “I have a device which renders me invisible,” he offered casually. “Please don’t be alarmed, Planetary Leader – I’m not here to do you harm. I have a proposal to make, which I hope will work to our mutual advantage.”
Limnich kept his gun trained on the dev, trying to control the revulsion that being in the presence of the creature caused him. His free hand strayed to the golden bell that would summon help. But then his sense of calculation overcame his natural feelings. He withdrew his hand and leaned back, looking up into the svelte young Chink’s repugnantly inhuman face.