“I’ll expect the same rate of progress, namely a twelve per cent increase over projected output – plus your current output – during the next identical period.”
“That represents an exponential increase in production, Leader. But if the materials and components arrive as ordered—”
“They will,” Limnich told him curtly. He’d found that demanding the near-impossible frequently produced miracles.
Followed by his entourage, he went with the manager the length of the gallery and passed through a tunnel to an adjoining series of caverns: one of the training grounds of the Legions of Kronos. They walked past row after row of sleek time-travelling war machines, each projecting from its launcher as if eager to depart for the future.
From ahead came hoarse shouts and stamping of feet as men were put through the drill designed by psychologists to bring the nervous system to a peak of alertness. Titan-Colonel Brask met Limnich at the entrance to the drill cavern, saluted, and then turned to bellow commands, forming the squads into open-order ranks and standing them to attention. Limnich took his time over the inspection, pausing at nearly every man to look him over, glancing at the special gadgets of the time-combat kits they wore. Meanwhile, from yet another cavern came a massive fuzzy roaring noise: the sound of scores of time travellers warming up.
Finally he pronounced himself satisfied. Brask escorted him to the third cavern where the crews stood by their machines in readiness for the demonstration. At a signal from Brask they filed aboard. Moments later the fuzzy racket intensified and the time travellers all vanished together, fading away to go hurtling in formation through non-time.
“Impressive,” said Limnich. “Very impressive.”
“It will be even more impressive when they arrive in enemy time loaded to capacity with hydrogen bombs,” Brask said with incisive satisfaction.
Brask took the Planetary Leader to his office to discuss various details. While they were there the vidcom rang with a message for Limnich.
The yellow face of the dev Chink, Hueh Su-Mueng, came up on the screen. Only a faint habitual expression of distaste came to Brask’s features, and none at all to Limnich’s.
“It appears that your ploy has worked, leader,” Su-Mueng said. “My instruments tell me Retort City’s ship sent down a lighter to the Amhrak reservation, and now has left orbit.”
“So soon?” mused Limnich. “But my tip-off can’t even have reached Heshke yet. There must be other information pipelines at work—either that or he couldn’t stomach life on the reservation!” He smiled unpleasantly.
“I presume that nothing further need delay the expedition?”
“No, I’ll issue the requisite orders.” The remaining work to be done should only take a week or two, he thought. The drive-units had already been constructed to the Chink’s design, and now could be ferried into space to be fitted to the interplanetary spaceships that had been prepared to take them. The men, the weapons, the organisation, were all ready.
It should be a grand adventure, Limnich told himself. He almost wished he could go along.
Herrick had brought in a tape that had appeared on the reconstituted network somehow.
“It shows the closing down of the Bugel reservation,” he said to Heshke, a little apologetically. “You needn’t watch it if you’d rather not.”
“Please go ahead,” Heshke told him, though with a tightening in his stomach.
Herrick put the tape on the playback. “This didn’t come through the usual channels,” he said. “In fact it looks as if it might be a plant.”
“A plant?”
“Yes. The Titans might have wanted us to see it.”
The tape came to life, feeding the screen a long, roughly edited succession of sequences from the cameras of the official recordists, without any proper order or commentary. After a few minutes Heshke found himself wanting to close his eyes.
The landscape was not unlike the one outside his door: dusty and bare. As the Titan units advanced into it their half-tracks sent up clouds of dust which drifted in from the horizon.
The Bugels were a copper-skinned, pigmy-like people of a comparatively low cultural standing – little more than savages, in fact. Never very numerous, their reservation was a small one. They ran hither and thither before the implacable Titan vehicles, facing their end without dignity but with much excitement and terror.
The Titans herded the Bugels into compounds. They were given injections or else shot, and buried in lime pits.
Heshke imagined the same happening here – the clouds of dust as the exterminators rolled forward (during the wars, when operating behind the lines in dev-populated territory, they’d been known as SMD’s – Special Measure Detachments), the compounds, the clerks checking off names against endless lists (though with the Bugels those lists covered only the noble families), the medics giving the injections and the doctors signing death certificates.
From the looks on their faces, the Titans plainly didn’t relish their work. They regarded it as unpleasant, distressing – but necessary. It would have been worse if they’d been killing people; but these were only verminous animals.
Why on Earth had the Titans sent the tape into the Amhrak reservation, Heshke wondered? – if in fact they had, as Herrick suspected. To taunt? To strike fear? Perhaps it was an act of nastiness on the part of some hate-filled official.
Herrick was watching the tape placidly, smoking a tobacco roll, as if he were thinking of something else.
13
Shiu Kung-Chien and his able assistant Leard Ascar had nearly finished setting up the all-sense transmitter when the vidphone at the other end of the observatory tinkled. A cybernetic servitor rolled forward with the screen, on which the face of Prime Minister Hwen Wu looked out.
“Forgive the intrusion,” Hwen Wu apologised, “but a matter of greatest urgency has arisen. Evidently our posting that young man Hueh Su-Mueng to Earth, so as to end his ‘awkward presence’ here, so to speak, has misfired. He has returned with an invasion fleet.”
“I take it you refer to those lumpish vessels which have been hovering outside my observatory window for the past hour,” Shiu replied with a trace of exasperation. “I had thought they were part of your own improvident plans. Fortunately they appear to rely on reaction motors for close manoeuvring and are no longer jamming our instruments.”
“They’re entirely the work of Hueh Shao’s son and his new friends,” Hwen Wu assured him. “That family seems capable of endless mischief. The invaders have discharged four ship-loads of men through the dock, which they now control, and are rapidly discharging the rest. Haven’t you heard the rumpus? They’re proving quite destructive.”
“Yes, I’ve been aware of an undignified amount of noise and have several times sent out requests for it to be diminished,” Shiu said acidly. “Why are you calling me about it?”
“Well, you’re a cabinet minister,” Hwen Wu pointed out. “I feel we should meet to dicuss the situation. Hueh Su-Mueng has sent a message demanding our unconditional surrender.”
The Prime Minister’s words were punctuated by a low, distant roar: the sound of an explosion.
“Very well,” Shiu consented resignedly. “I’ll come at once.”
He turned to Ascar as the servitor rolled away with the vid-phone. “This really is tiresome,” he complained. “Are your countrymen accustomed to behaving like this?”
“I’m afraid so,” Ascar said laconically.
“Barbarians!” muttered Shiu.
“May I continue in your absence?” Ascar asked politely.
“Yes, of course… you understand everything?”