The planet was Terra, capitol of the UFW—he recognized it from pictures. Sirens screamed Bahweeeee! Bahweeeee! and everywhere was chaos. People ran helter-skelter through the streets, convening on the giant central square in front of the senate building. There, metal doors, installed in anticipation of this moment, had opened to reveal the mouth of a well nearly a mile in diameter. Without hesitating millions hurled their children and loved ones into that black abyss and leapt in after them. For a few hundred feet they fell like stones: then some force broke their momentum and they drifted gently. Seconds later the doors clanged shut; those who had not reached the well in time, the aged, the infirm and the crippled, crawled on top of the doors and banged with hands and heels. But the doors were shut and sealed for all of time to come.
Meanwhile at the edge of the solar system a drone warship of alien origin, using powerful tractor beams, dragged a black hole into orbit. This was the ultimate weapon, this primordial black hole, no larger than a proton yet with a mass of a billion tons. It had been emitting antiparticles ever since the dawn of the universe; now, however, the process would be accelerated. The warship began to drain off antiparticles at a fabulous rate and the black hole evaporated almost instantly, exploding with an energy equivalent to ten million one-megaton hydrogen bombs, and flooding that entire sector of the galaxy with high-energy gamma rays.
As Nick watched, the surface of Terra—and of a thousand neighboring planets—was leveled. The shock wave did most of the damage, knocking moons out of orbit, blowing away buildings as though they were paper and uprooting whole forests of trees. Then came the heat, igniting what vegetation was left, cremating flesh, boiling the oceans and turning the earth to molten lava. Finally the whole planet glowed like a lump of steel in a furnace. Yet deep in the core of the world, mankind survived. . . .
Nick yanked his consciousness away. Each image in the flow told a story, and it was all too easy to become involved—the stories seemed so real.
He continued along the flow of colors, keeping an even pace and counting his steps. At five thousand steps he spied three figures far ahead, examining the flow. They looked like finely detailed dolls posed on a bed of gray cotton. He breathed more easily; they were Lifestylers.
When he was closer they waved to him with bittersweet smiles. There was Squire Stolid, a forty-foot obelisk of flesh, legless, but with arms emerging from his smooth side walls and a kindly bas-relief face near his summit; and Lady Lovelorn, whose great saucer eyes could show you pictures of the one you loved; and Captain Cranium, his tiny body dwarfed by a supercephalic head, like a visitor from some distant future.
Lady Lovelorn greeted him with an outstretched hand.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Nicholas Harmon.”
Her eyes were gray holes, little transdimensional windows in which images swam like silverfish. Her hair was long, silky, silver. She was nearly two feet taller than Nick—all the Lifestylers were larger than life—and emaciated; the skin cleaved beneath her cheekbones and her ribs became prominent whenever some gesture pulled the gossamer gown tight across her chest.
“How did you know?” Nick said. His own voice sounded tiny, flat. There were no surfaces anywhere to give it resonance.
“We knew from the instant you decided to use Althea Clinger as a hostage.” As she spoke, Hali’s face appeared deep within Lady Lovelorn’s eyes. Nick felt a pang, missing her. “It made a new stochastic stream,” she continued, “and a possibility of salvation for the galaxy.” Lady Lovelorn smiled. “It was brave of you to come.”
“Excuse me,” Nick said, “but what’s a stochastic stream?”
“This,” she said, pointing to the flow of colors. “They tell the future—in that direction”—she pointed in the direction Nick had just come from—“and the past if you follow it the other way.”
Nick looked puzzled.
“I think I’d better explain,” Captain Cranium said. “Here on the other side, time has a physical parameter. These streams of color—stochastic streams, we call them—are actually sequences of events that will happen, or may happen. Usually several alternative futures are possible so there are several streams running parallel. Actually there are an infinite number of streams, but only the most probable ones are bright enough to be visible.
“Now, you must understand, even the visible streams are mutable. A casual decision by somebody in the real world may cancel the brightest stream out of existence, or create a whole new branching. That’s what happened when you de-
cided to use Althea Clinger as a hostage. One particular stream seemed so bright we didn’t think anything could change it, and the next instant a new stream had sprung into view, just as bright.”
“You mean I'm going to change history?” Nick asked.
“I mean you may change history.”
“We hope you will change history,” Squire Stolid rumbled, from high above them.
“And what is this history I’m going to change?”
“It’s the stream you followed to meet us,” Captain Cranium said.
“You mean that stuff I saw, the people in the life-preserver jars and the robots wandering around?”
“Yes, that is the distant future of that particular stream.”
“And not one I look forward to,” Squire Stolid boomed.
“And the people jumping down the well?” Nick asked. “The exploding black hole?”
“The same future, a more recent view. You see, you were following the stream backward through time. The explosion made Terra—and most of the other planets in this sector— uninhabitable. The people who were hiding at the core immortalized themselves in life-preserver jars and built robots to be surrogates for them on the surface.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Nick asked incredulously, “that this is really a possible future?”
Captain Cranium nodded his huge skull.
For a time Nick was speechless. Finally he demanded, “But how? How could it happen?”
“Look here,” Captain Cranium said, pointing a delicate finger to a certain point in the stochastic stream.
Nick’s eyes singled out an image. . . .
The giant central square in front of the senate building, yet now the streets were packed with cheering crowds. Plasma fireworks exploded high above the planet while battalions of police marched back and forth in formation to the beat of an electric Bucla band. The biggest hologram Nick had ever seen hung from the facade of the senate building; the face on it jutted its chin almost to the middle of the square. That face—Nick recognized it, the crinkly eyes and the toothsome smile. He wasn’t surprised that Johnny Quog had been elected president of the Federation; what did surprise him was the size of the inaugural celebration. If it was an inaugural celebration. . . .
A young man stepped out on the balcony of the senate building and the crowd fell silent. “I now present to you,” he said in solemn tones, ‘‘Johnny Quog, Imperial Emperor of the Universe!”
The cheer was deafening.
“Imperial Emperor of the Universe?” Nick said. “Is that a joke?”
Captain Cranium shook his head. ‘‘I’m afraid not. He seized total power two months after the election. This is his official ‘coronation.’ The man is a paranoid schizophrenic. Listen to what comes next.”
Nick returned his attention to the sequence. Johnny Quog was standing on the balcony, smiling his famous smile. He acknowledged the crowd with outstretched arms.
“The glorious human race,” he began, ‘‘has spread its seed throughout the Milky Way and we have even visited the Greater Magellanic Cloud! We have achieved what no other planetary civilization has approached—freedom from our birthplace world. And why were we given the ingenuity, the resources and the ambition to perform this miraculous feat? Because we were destined, I say we were destined to rule the universe and bring Terran civilization to all the savage and downtrodden creatures of the cosmos! We must unite the galaxy! We must bring all sentient beings under a common rule—only then can there be lasting peace.”