«We’d best go,» muttered Belgotai. «We don’t belong heah.»
Saunders nodded. Civilization had gone too far for them, they could never be more than frightened pensioners in its hugeness. Best to get on their way again.
«I would advise you to leap ahead for long intervals,» said Arsfel. «Galactic civilization won’t have spread out this far for many thousands of years, and certainly whatever native culture Sol develops won’t be able to help you.» He smiled. «It doesn’t matter if you overshoot the time when the process you need is invented. The records won’t be lost, I assure you. From here on, you are certain of encountering only peace and enlightenment… unless, of course, the barbarians of Terra get hostile, but then you can always leave them behind. Sooner or later, there will be true civilization here to help you.»
«Tell me honestly,» said Saunders. «Do you think the negative time machine will ever be invented?»
One of the beings from Quulhan shook his strange head. «I doubt it,» he said gravely. «We would have had visitors from the future.»
«They might not have cared to see your time,» argued Saunders desperately. «They’d have complete records of it. So they’d go back to investigate more primitive ages, where their appearance might easily pass unnoticed.»
«You may be right,» said Arsfel. His tone was disconcertingly like that with which an adult comforts a child by a white lie.
«Le’s go!» snarled Belgotai.
In 26,000 the forests still stood and the pyramid had become a high hill where trees nodded and rustled in the wind.
In 27,000 a small village of wood and stone houses stood among smiling grain fields.
In 28,000 men were tearing down the pyramid, quarrying it for stone. But its huge bulk was not gone before 30,000 A.D., and a small city had been built from it.
Minutes ago, thought Saunders grayly, they had been talking to Lord Arsfel of Astracyr, and now he was five thousand years in his grave.
In 31,000 they materialized on one of the broad lawns that reached between the towers of a high and proud city. Aircraft swarmed overhead and a spaceship, small beside Arsfel’s but nonetheless impressive, was standing nearby.
«Looks like de Empire’s got heah,» said Belgotai.
«I don’t know,» said Saunders. «But it looks peaceful, anyway. Let’s go out and talk to people.»
They were received by tall, stately women in white robes of classic lines. It seemed that the Matriarchy now ruled Sol, and would they please conduct themselves as befitted the inferior sex? No, the Empire hadn’t ever gotten out here; Sol paid tribute, and there was an Imperial legate at Sirius, but the actual boundaries of Galactic culture hadn’t changed for the past three millennia. Solar civilization was strictly home-grown and obviously superior to the alien influence of the Vro-Hi.
No, nothing was known about time theory. Their visit had been welcome and all that, but now would they please go on? They didn’t fit in with the neatly regulated culture of Terra.
«I don’t like it,» said Saunders as they walked back toward the machine. «Arsfel swore the Imperium would keep expanding its actual as well as its nominal sphere of influence. But it’s gone static now. Why?»
«Ih tink,» said Belgotai, «dat spite of all his fancy mathematics, yuh were right. Nawthing lasts forever.»
«But—my God!»
Chapter 4
End of Empire
34,000 A.D. The Matriarchy was gone. The city was a tumbled heap of fire-blackened rocks. Skeletons lay in the ruins.
«The barbarians are moving again,» said Saunders bleakly. «They weren’t here so very long ago; these bones are still fresh, and they’ve got a long ways to go to dead center. An empire like this one will be many thousands of years in dying. But it’s doomed already.»
«What’ll we do?» asked Belgotai.
«Go on,» said Saunders tonelessly. «What else can we do?»
35,000 A.D. A peasant hut stood under huge old trees. Here and there a broken column stuck out of the earth, remnant of the city. A bearded man in coarsely woven garments fled wildly with his woman and brood of children as the machine appeared.
36,000 A.D. There was a village again, with a battered old spaceship standing hard by. There were half a dozen different races, including man, moving about, working on the construction of some enigmatic machine. They were dressed in plain, shabby clothes, with guns at their sides and the hard look of warriors in their eyes. But they didn’t treat the new arrivals too badly.
Their chief was a young man in the cape and helmet of an officer of the Empire. But his outfit was at least a century old, and he was simply head of a small troop which had been hired from among the barbarian hordes to protect this part of Terra. Oddly, he insisted he was a loyal vassal of the Emperor.
The Empire! It was still a remote glory, out there among the stars. Slowly it waned, slowly the barbarians encroached while corruption and civil war tore it apart from the inside, but it was still the pathetic, futile hope of intelligent beings throughout the Galaxy. Some day it would be restored. Some day civilization would return to the darkness of the outer worlds, greater and more splendid than ever. Men dared not believe otherwise.
«But we’ve got a job right here,» shrugged the chief. «Tautho of Sirius will be on Sol’s necks soon. I doubt if we can stand him off for long.»
«And what’ll yuh do den?» challenged Belgotai.
The young-old face twisted in a bitter smile. «Die, of course. What else is there to do—these days?»
They stayed overnight with the troopers. Belgotai had fun swapping lies about warlike exploits, but in the morning he decided to go on with Saunders. The age was violent enough, but its hopelessness daunted even his tough soul.
Saunders looked haggardly at the control panel. «We’ve got to go a long ways ahead,» he said. «A hell of a long ways.»
50,000 A.D. They flashed out of the time drive and opened the door. A raw wind caught at them, driving thin sheets of snow before it. The sky hung low and gray over a landscape of high rocky hills where pine trees stood gloomily between naked crags. There was ice on the river that murmured darkly out of the woods.
Geology didn’t work that fast; even fourteen thousand years wasn’t a very long time to the slowly changing planets. It must have been the work of intelligent beings, ravaging and scoring the world with senseless wars of unbelievable forces.
A gray stone mass dominated the landscape. It stood enormous a few miles off, its black walls sprawling over incredible acres, its massive crenellated towers reaching gauntly into the sky. And it lay half in ruin, torn and tumbled stone distorted by energies that once made rock run molten, blurred by uncounted millennia of weather—old.
«Dead,» Saunders voice was thin under the hooting wind. «All dead.»
«No!» Belgotai’s slant eyes squinted against the flying snow. «No, Mahtin, Ih tink Ih see a banner flying.»
The wind blew bitterly around them, searing them with its chill. «Shall we go on?» asked Saunders dully.
«Best we go find out wha’s happened,» said Belgotai. «Dey can do no worse dan kill us, and Ih begin to tink dat’s not so bad.»
Saunders put on all the clothes he could find and took the psychophone in one chilled hand. Belgotai wrapped his cloak tightly about him. They started toward the gray edifice.
The wind blew and blew. Snow hissed around them, covering the tough gray-green vegetation that hugged the stony ground. Summer on Earth, 50,000 A.D.
As they neared the structure, its monster size grew on them. Some of the towers which still stood must be almost half a mile high, thought Saunders dizzily. But it had a grim, barbaric look; no civilized race had ever built such a fortress.