Suddenly she was shaking all over, her naked limbs knocking uncontrollably against the altar table, and Stryne knew she was ready – in the state of terror required by the ritual. One that would multiply the natural death trauma a hundredfold.
To verify it he consulted one of the monitoring instruments that were arranged around the altar. Her fear index had passed the hundred mark.
Yet he knew that her obedience remained unconditional; her mind had given up believing in any kind of escape.
Finally he switched on an apparatus resembling a miniature radar set. From its concave scanner bowl a mauve effulgence crossed the room and bathed Inpriss Sorce in a pale flickering aura.
This device was probably the most essential of the sect’s secrets. The method of its manufacture had been imparted by the Minion himself, who was said to have received it direct from Hulmu. The gadget ensured that during the death trauma the soul would be detached altogether from the body it had clung to for so long. No longer would Inpriss Sorce return to the beginning of her life and live again. She would sink bewildered into potential time, to be seized by Hulmu and enjoyed by him.
Stryne nodded to Velen. They had already decided to accomplish Inpriss’s exit by means of slowly penetrating knives. They picked up the long shining weapons.
‘Arch your back. Lift your body upwards,’ he ordered.
Inpriss obeyed. Her belly and breasts strained up off the table to meet the downpointing knife points.
Slowly the knives descended.
In the prototype time-machine Aton and Dwight Rilke spoke little to each other until they approached the end of their journey. Rilke was meticulous about the final vectoring in. He knew to the minute where he wanted to go.
The laboratory they emerged into was the same one they had left, but less tidy, better equipped, and obviously a place of work rather than a carefully preserved museum. Its sole occupant sat at a workbench with his back to them, poring over some papers and oblivious of their arrival.
Aton viewed this on the time-machine’s external vidscreen. Rilke picked up his beamer. He was trembling and there was perspiration on his wrinkled face.
‘You’re afraid,’ Aton said quietly.
The other nodded. ‘Not for me. For him.’
‘How do you see your past self? Is he like someone else? Or is he still you?’
Rilke did not answer the question. ‘You stay in here, Captain,’ he said. ‘This is something I ought to do, nobody else.’ He paused, then opened a fascia panel beneath the control board. Another beamer was in the small compartment.
‘He has a gun too,’ he told Aton. ‘One shooting lead slugs. Maybe he’ll kill me instead. If so, you’d better finish it. Think you can?’
‘If I have to.’
Rilke opened the sheet metal door and stepped out. Hearing the sound, the young Rilke turned. Aton saw a steady-eyed young man in his thirties who was less confused than most would have been by the sudden appearance of the bulky cabinet.
‘Who are you?’ he said sharply after a long time. ‘How did you get here?’
The elder Rilke was close to collapsing with the emotion of the moment. ‘I am your elder self, Dwight,’ he cried in a shaking voice. ‘And I’m here to kill you!’
The other looked startled and then, surprisingly, laughed. ‘You lunatic!’ He leaned over and held down a switch. ‘Security? I have an intruder.’ Then he turned back to the old man. ‘Now why should you want to kill me?’
‘Because in a few years you are going to discover something that will turn the world inside out. Look at me, Dwight, don’t you recognise me?’
Aton was wondering why Rilke was prolonging the scene instead of getting it over with. Then he understood. Rilke could not bear to see his younger self die in ignorance. He had too much respect for himself.
And that self-respect was liable to prove fatal to his intentions. The young Rilke was astute. He glanced from Rilke to the time-machine as if prepared to take the old man’s words seriously. Then he suddenly stood and crossed to one of the cupboards lining the walls of the laboratory and produced from there a hand weapon made of a bluish metal.
Old Rilke, who had kept his beamer out of sight up to now, pointed it and fired. From his shaking hand the beam went wide. The younger man dodged out of the way, turned, pointed, and fired his own gun.
Two loud bangs shattered the air of the laboratory. There was no visible beam but something whanged off some metal support struts. Old Rilke, it seemed, hadn’t been hit. He took his beamer in both hands and held down the beam on continuous – a rarely used ploy since it exhausted the power pack. Before it faded the dull red ray scythed across the younger man, who toppled to the floor.
Aton came to the open door of the time-machine. Rilke let fall his beamer. His face sagged.
‘It’s done!’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s done!’
Aton stared with interest at the living paradox.
And then what life there was in Rilke’s eyes went out. He collapsed to the floor as if every string holding his body together had been cut. With amazing rapidity the flesh began to dry up and shrivel. In little more than a minute nothing remained but a skeleton covered with parchment-like skin.
The paradox was resolved. If the time element was taken out it was a simple suicide.
In moments the security men would be here. Aton gazed around himself once more, marvelling at his continued existence. Then he moved back to the control board.
Experimentally he depressed the automatic retrack stud.
The drive unit started up with a whine and instantly phased the time-machine into the strat.
He sat passively while it carried him back to the starting point, his thoughts subdued. Through the still-open door he could see the naked strat and the conjunction of that with the orthogonal interior of the cramped cabin was one of the oddest things he had ever seen. It occurred to him that there was a way he could control, to a limited extent, his time-travelling ability. He could take a timeship into the strat, open one of its ports, and jump out to go where he pleased – if his subconscious did not take over for him. He could jump out now if he liked. But he decided to see the thing through, and after a while closed the door. From time to time he did some navigational checking to make sure the automatic pilot wasn’t being blown off course by Chronotic vagaries, but everything seemed to be functioning normally.
When the machine phased back into orthogonal time San Hevatar was standing in the laboratory looking pensive. Aton stepped calmly out of the cabinet.
‘Where have you been?’ San Hevatar asked sombrely.
‘Trying to straighten out time,’ Aton said with a cynical twist of his lips, dispensing with the customary deferences. ‘Your assistant Rilke suddenly became one of my disciples and thought he could cancel out everything that happened since you and he worked together. But he was wrong.’
Concisely he related what had taken place. San Hevatar was not in the least embarrassed by the disclosure that it had been Rilke who discovered the basic principle behind the time-drive. He merely remarked that for purposes of religious mythology it was better that he, founder of the Church, should be the man to take the credit and that he, in his humility, should attribute it to a direct revelation from God.
‘I suspected it would turn out like this,’ Aton finished. ‘That’s one tenet of the Church that’s apparently true. Once invented, time-travel stays invented. Rilke’s sacrifice was unavailing because paradoxes don’t alter anything.’
San Hevatar nodded thoughtfully. ‘I always considered that the Historical Office’s protective attitude towards the crucial God-given event is unnecessary. Chronotic history is much too ravelled to be undone so easily. The very fact of time-travel weakens from the outset the unique relationship between cause and effect, even when movement is only from node to node. So now, we have time-travel without its ever being invented. Truly wondrous.’