“I’ll come back,” Corson said. “I hope very much to see you again.” Cid gave an equivocal smile. “Don’t hope for too much, my friend. But return as quickly as you can. There is a seat waiting for you on the Council of Uria. Good luck again.”
“Goodbye!” Corson cried, and the pegasone took off.
Chapter 36
He made a preliminary time jump to obtain two space suits. It would be best to organize the getaway in two stages. He decided to step in one minute before the moment of the actual escape. That would allow him to spy out the defenses and sow the confusion essential to the second phase. He had little trouble in slipping into one of the maintenance tents, but, as he had expected, night had brought no relaxation in the vigilance of Veran’s camp. He hardly had time to seize two suit packs and remount before the alleys were loud with alarms. The tent he had just raided was in a sector of the camp almost diametrically opposite where Corson and Antonella were imprisoned. The first movement of the guards would be to converge on the site of the robbery. They would have no time to rush back the other way.
He jumped a few days into the past, chose a lonely spot, and examined the suits. Satisfied, he decided to proceed to the second phase. He locked in on the proper moment and parked his pegasone next to Veran’s. Among all the commotion no one noticed him. He was wearing a regulation outfit and might have been coming back from patrol. He at once switched on the light inhibitor and ran along the alleys of the camp as quickly as the blurred image of his surroundings afforded by the ultrasound projector would permit. He estimated it would take at least ten seconds for the most quick-witted of the guards to think of doing the same. Which would not get them much further forward, because they had no idea where the attack was coming from. The range of their projectors was reduced and their beams interfered with each other, fogging the images that they did pick up. The officers would probably waste a minute or so convincing their men that they must shut them off because they were useless. That would be plenty of time, provided that Antonella, warned by her precog talent, managed to persuade Corson to cooperate. And he knew she had succeeded.
Everything worked out as he had foreseen. He had blacked over his faceplate so that the other Corson would not recognize him, and communicated only by signs. It was not the moment to introduce another element of confusion into his earlier mind.
They took off into space, now, then leaped across time. Corson made a few swerves to shake off their pursuers, but the other pegasone followed like a guardian angel. Veran’s soldiers did not know their destination and might wander forever through the continuum without chancing on the mausoleum world. What was more, Veran would call off the chase as soon as a patrol informed him that Corson was about to come back.
The mausoleum world… I wonder, Corson said to himself, when I first discovered it!
He had shown himself the way to it. It seemed he had managed to break the Law of Non-regressive Information; he had set up a closed loop. There must be a beginning to everything… or maybe that was simply an illusion? Perhaps, much later, he would come across this planet for the first time and arrange for the information to be fed into the loop. Or did some mysterious bond of which he was at present unaware unite all the possible Corsons? For the moment he dismissed the enigma; he did not possess the data to reach a solution.
At the right spot above the planet he gave instructions to the other pegasone and abandoned it along with Antonella and his double. He himself jumped into the future. He could discern no trace of his earlier visit. That was a good sign. He had been half afraid of meeting himself face to face, or of stumbling on two bleached skeletons.
He climbed down from his pegasone and—not without apprehension-entered the vast and dismal hall. Nothing had changed. He set to work with deliberation. Time was no longer of much account to him.
Cid had been right. Equipment for reanimating the women and endowing them with synthetic personalities was located in an underground annex to the great hall. But the entry was so well hidden that he had to explore the foundations with the help of his pegasone. Operating it was simpler than he had feared it might be. Much of the job was taken care of automatically. Whoever the warlords were who had assembled this monstrous collection, they must like quick work. Very probably they knew even less than Corson about the principles underlying reanimation.
His hands trembled nonetheless when he set about his first test. He had designed a synthetic personality intended to last five seconds. The woman blinked, opened her eyes, uttered a sigh and slumped back into immobility.
The result of the first more serious trial was very unpleasant. A huge statuesque blonde, almost a head taller than himself, leaped up, gave a wordless cry, hurled herself upon him, and caught him in such a bear hug he almost suffocated. He had to knock her out. Shaken, he concluded he had overdone the folliculin.
To give himself a respite he decided to go back and deposit, at the right moment, the ration bag and the metal plate he had left before the mausoleum door. Now, the bit of metal seemed completely smooth. A few experiments convinced him that it must be sensitive to displacements in time. Its component crystals tended to regain their original relationship after a time jump. So the problem was to engrave the key section of the message deeply enough for it to survive several time trips. He did some figuring and set about inscribing the plate. He wondered what would happen if, say, he changed one of the words. Probably nothing; it would be below the timequake threshold. But he preferred not to alter the wording which was so deeply impressed on his memory. The stakes were too high.
There remained the problem of conditioning the pegasone which would take Antonella and his earlier self to Aergistal. He decided on a substitution. He undertook as complete an exchange of data as he could with the beast. He made certain that it would take its riders not merely to Aergistal but to the precise point where he himself recalled being set down. Beyond that he could control the pegasone no further. However, he assumed that under identical conditions the creature would react in an identical manner. The chance of a slip-up would be negligible. Besides, he could doubtless rely on Those of Aergistal to take care of details like that. He conditioned the pegasone to the mere name of Aergistal shouted in a loud voice.
In return he obtained a great deal of information concerning the habits, behavior, and motivations of pegasones. Although the beast’s racial memory had been weakened by captivity, enough came across for Corson to form an impression of its home world. To his great surprise he found that the Monster he had learned to beware of—at least in its wild state—was almost as timid as a rabbit. The image it retained of its original masters, who had long disappeared, was not very clear; plainly, though, it both adored and feared them.
The substitution proceeded without difficulty. Corson took the trouble to swap the harnesses. He did not want the other Corson’s attention alerted by some unnoticed mark on the straps. He laid the ration bag alongside the road and in clear view of the door.
Then he returned to the period at which he had undertaken to revive the warlords’ trophies. He did not know what would happen if he misjudged by a few hours and met himself unexpectedly, but the pegasone’s instincts saved him any worry on that score. The beast refused to take the precise path it had already followed across the continuum; it seemed that it could detect its own presence from a few seconds away, and shied off. In one sense it displayed blind obedience to the Law of Non-regressive Information. Corson preferred not to make it go against its nature.
He resumed the preparation of Veran’s “recruits.” Now he worked frenziedly, eager to complete the job. He was also worried about the chance of being surprised by the warlords and having to settle his account with them. But a few patrols into the future and the near past set his mind partly at rest.