He made no sign, but Corson felt himself grasped by strong hands. Fingers he did not see forced his head back. For a moment he thought he was going to have his throat cut. Why kill him now—and in such a messy fashion? Did Veran enjoy being spattered with the blood of his victims?
He felt cold metal at his throat even as he reminded himself Veran had said he could not be killed because of the message.
A tiny catch clicked. The hands let go. Corson felt his neck. A collar had been put on him, light but bulky, like those he had seen some of Veran’s men wearing.
“I hope it doesn’t inconvenience you,” Veran said. “You’ll get used to it. You’re likely to wear it a long time, perhaps all your life. It’s fitted with two separate fuses. It will explode if you try to remove it, and believe me the bang will be big enough to blow you back to Aergistal along with anyone else who’s around at the time. And it will inject a very efficient poison into you if you ever try and use any kind of weapon against me or my army, from a club to a transfixer, which is the nastiest gadget I’ve ever run into. It will even do that if you give orders which might lead to someone else using a weapon against me, even if you get involved in planning a battle with me on the other side. The whole beauty of the thing is that you will trigger it yourself wherever you may be in space or time. It’s set to register a specific conscious aggression. You can hate me as much as you like, destroy me in your dreams a hundred times a night, and you will run no risk. And you can fight like a lion. But not against me or my men. You might conceivably try sabotage, but leave me to worry about that. You see, Corson? You can be my ally or stay neutral, but you can’t be my enemy. And if you think that’s an insult to your dignity, console yourself with the thought that all my personal guards wear the same device.”
He gave Corson a satisfied look.
“Is that what you said was called a stalemate?”
“Something of the sort,” Corson admitted. “But it’s going to surprise the Urians.”
“They’ll see the point of it. Moreover they’ve already received a censored version of our chat. And their little transmitter isn’t as innocent as it looks. At a suitable signal it can release enough heat to kill you. But if they were a bit cleverer they would use an automatic fuse. Well! I imagine you could use a drink?”
“I certainly could,” Corson said.
From a drawer in the table Veran produced a flagon and two crystal goblets. He half filled them, gave Corson a friendly nod, and took a swig.
“I hope you don’t resent what I’ve done to you. I like you, Corson, and I need you, too. But I can’t trust you. Everything fits together too neatly. And the only reason it fits is because you are here, you were there, you will be wherever else. I don’t even know what game you’re playing, what drives you, deep inside. What you’re suggesting to me is treason against humanity. You want me to put myself at the disposal of fanatical birds whose only dream is to destroy mankind, in exchange for my personal safety and ultimately a hell of a lot of power. Take it that I am capable of accepting. But what about you, Corson? You don’t seem like a traitor to your species. Are you?”
“I have no alternative,” Corson said.
“For a man acting under compulsion you’re singularly enterprising. You manage to persuade these birds to make an alliance with me and come and negotiate the deal yourself. More to the point, you bring me here to make it possible. Fine. Assume you were to catch me in a trap. I disappear. You stay with the birds. You’ve betrayed your species once, by handing me over to beings who from your point of view are worth no more than I am, who aren’t even human, and you know you’ll have to start again. That doesn’t sound like you. The birds wouldn’t notice because they don’t really know humans, because they think of you as a wild beast which is likely to rob their nests but which can be tamed, or rather cowed. But I’ve seen thousands of soldiers like you, Corson. Quite incapable of betraying their species, their country, even their generals. Oh, it’s not the result of inbred virtue, even though they may be led to believe so, but of conditioning.
“So? One other possibility remains. You’re trying to save mankind. You think that Uria, and later on this sector of space, would be better conquered by a man than by one of these feathered fanatics. So you bring me here. You propose an alliance with the Urians because you guess that it will be unstable, that a quarrel will break out sooner or later when the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, and that I’ll exterminate the Urians. Maybe then you could get rid of me? You don’t even have to say so aloud. It’s useless to invoke my help against the Urians if there’s a risk of my betraying you. You know the union is potentially explosive.”
“Don’t forget the wild pegasone,” Corson said coldly.
“I shan’t. I need it, so at one blow I can deliver Uria from this other danger as well. Am I wrong, Corson?”
“Will you accept my terms?” Corson said.
Veran gave a crooked smile.
“Not before I’ve taken some precautions.”
Chapter 28
This time, they were creeping along the corridors of the cosmos. Through the perceptions of the pegasone Corson could actually see time. The beast’s tendrils were coiled around his wrists and stroking his temples. Now and then he felt a pang of nausea. Veran, who was hanging on the other side of the pegasone and controlling it, had insisted that Corson must learn to stare time in the face. He hoped that Corson would be able to guide him not only through the maze of the underground city but also through the labyrinth of Ngal R’nda’s life.
They were stealing among the crevasses of reality, in a present that was always new. A creature with very acute senses might have noticed a shadow move, possibly blurred colors, or—with a lot of luck—a vast and dreadful phantom. Before it had blinked, brushed away a nonexistent grain of dust, they would have melted into air or through a wall. And if the light were bright enough to show details, it would have revealed no more than a flat transparent outline. The pegasone never remained synchronized with the present for more than a fraction of a second, just long enough to let Veran and Corson get their bearings. For them walls, pillars, furniture, were a mere mist. Living creatures and anything that moved remained invisible. It was the other side of the coin. One can scarcely spy without the risk of being seen, nor hide without becoming blind.
“It’s a pity you didn’t get to know this base properly,” Veran had said.
“I asked for a week or two,” Corson had protested.
A shrug. “Some risks I take, others I don’t. I’m not going to hang around for a week while you and these birds rig traps for me.”
“What if someone spots us?”
“Hard to say. Maybe nothing. Maybe a timequake. Ngal R’nda may realize what’s going on and no longer trust you when you meet him again. Or he might decide to forestall you and launch his attack right away. We’d better not be seen. We mustn’t introduce random factors and change history in ways that might affect us. We’ll go alone. No escort. No heavy weapons. To use a gun in a past that one derives from is suicidal. I hope you realize that.”
“So it’s impossible to set traps in the past.”
Veran had smiled broadly, displaying the spiked bar which had replaced his teeth.
“I’ll be satisfied to introduce a tiny modification, a sub-threshold change which won’t be noticed but which I can exploit at the proper moment. You’re a valuable man, you know, Corson. You’ve shown me Ngal R’nda’s weak point.”
“And I have to come along?”
“Think I’m fool enough to leave you behind? Besides, you know the place we’re going to.”