Much was already being said to that effect in his own time, Tack remembered, but there had seemed little genuine will to do anything about it. How could doctors refuse a dying man further treatment on the basis that this would eventually lead to the treatment itself becoming ineffective?
‘Weak humans?’ Tack nudged.
Saphothere stared at him, a faint smile twisting his features. ‘Not something entirely applicable to yourself, but you and those of your kind were a persistent exception.’ He did not explain further, but went on, ‘The ordinary people of your time were coddled in the extreme with drugs and medical treatments, and in your soft, malformed societies the weak and the stupid were allowed, even encouraged, to breed indiscriminately. As the centuries passed, the human gene pool became weaker, while plagues became more common. The second Dark Age began with a neurovirus—for most of humanity a plague contracted in the womb. Like syphilis it ate away at the brain and claimed its victims by the time they reached their thirties. That sorry age lasted a thousand years, until the rise of the Umbrathane.’
‘The Umbrathane preceded you then?’
Saphothere was now grinning openly in a way that could only be described as nasty. ‘Oh yes. They arose from a small interbred group who had managed to maintain a cerebral-programming technology that enabled them to live, individually, decades longer than anyone else on the planet. They spread out from their enclave and took control. Umbrathane: meaning those bringing the land out of shadow. But does any of this sound familiar to you?’
Tack was at a loss to know why it should. This all occurred in a future he would never have reached in his natural lifespan.
‘They came before you?’ Tack repeated, hiding his mounting irritation.
‘Before us, yet with us always. They bred the weakness out of the human race. The Nazis and the Stalinists of your own recent past were nothing in comparison to them: hundreds of millions of weaker beings were exterminated in their camps, and their own breeding programs lasted for centuries. They made the human race strong and succeeded in taking it out into the solar system — before fracturing into various sub-sects perpetually at each others’ throats.’
‘So when did the Heliothane come into being?’
‘There was a catastrophic war… millions killed on the surface of Mars, incinerated by sun mirrors originally used to heat the surface of that planet, but then turned into weapons by a sect which decided that the adaption of the human form to exist in those airless wilds was sacrilegious. Before we named ourselves Heliothane we controlled those mirrors, the giant energy dam in orbit between Io and Jupiter, and other energy resources in the solar system. We were engineers, on the whole, and finally became unable to countenance the destruction of our projects in these petty wars. Finally deciding to act, and with so many power sources at our disposal, we had outreached the Umbrathane technologically and industrially within a decade.’
‘And then?’
Saphothere drained his glass, then refilled it. Tack’s glass was still full, for though he was enjoying the buzz from the alcohol, he had forgotten to drink while this story unfolded.
‘Those who did not escape, and did not accede to our solar empire, we exterminated,’ Saphothere explained.
‘And when did time travel come into this equation?’
‘During that war. For centuries it was known to be a possibility, but that huge energies would be required. One of our own people finally worked out how it could be done, so it was used by us in a limited fashion as a weapon—shifts of a few hours or days only, for we understood how huge a threat this technology could pose to our very existence. Had we gone back to attack the Umbrathane at the period they destroyed the Mars mirrors, we would also have shoved ourselves far down the probability slope. Near the end the one who had first worked out how to use the tech gave it to the Umbrathane and they and he fled into the past. To pursue them, we needed larger energy resources and so laboured on the great project. Two centuries from the destruction of the Mars mirrors, we completed the sun tap.’
‘Cowl, you’re talking about Cowl? This is why you could not kill him in his own past because to do that you would lose the whole technology he was responsible for.’
Saphothere eyed him. ‘You’re not so stupid after all. Perhaps this whisky is loosening some of the knots in your brain. Now, have you worked out the origins of both the Umbrathane and the Heliothane?’
Tack said, ‘The Heliothane are direct descendants of the Umbrathane—if not Umbrathane themselves with a slightly different name and a different agenda.’
‘That is correct. Now consider the original Umbrathane maintaining a cerebral-programming technology for a thousand years. Tell me, how many of your genetically engineered and programmable kind exist in your own time?’
‘Hundreds… but not thousands,’ Tack replied, getting an intimation of what Saphothere was telling him.
‘Perhaps only ten or so years on from when you were pursuing that girl, your own kind break their thraldom to U-gov and become able to choose their own programming. They then become an independent organization, selling their skills to the highest bidders in the wars that follow—as mercenaries. The Umbrathane are the descendants of your own kind, Tack. I am, too. Which is why, for so long in our own period, even though we knew about you being dragged along in the wake of that torbearer, we dared not touch you. But now we are more frightened of what Cowl is doing.’ Saphothere abruptly stood up, drained his glass, and slammed it upside down on the table. ‘Now I must sleep, and build up my own resources for what is to come. One long leap will bring us to Sauros. Then will come the easy journey through the tunnel, back along and beyond all this way we have recently come, to New London.’
As Saphothere ensconced himself in one of the bunks, Tack drank another glass of whisky and tried to fathom all he had just been told. The whisky didn’t help though, so, after silently toasting Sauros and New London in whatever direction they lay, he headed for one of the bunks himself.
Thadus knew that, in the terms of the people here, he and Elone were untypically old. His hair was grey, yet he did not drool or fall over, and was not dying. Which was why, he supposed, the naked youth up in the oak tree behind them, had not fled and now watched them with fascination. The boy had also probably never seen clothing like this, or the devices they carried, unless in pictures found in the ruins below. Thadus raised his unclipped rifle sight to his eye and scanned the ancient city. He could see one or two cooking fires so some knowledge must survive, despite the fact that everyone here was moronic by the time they reached their twenties and did not live beyond their thirties.
Elone blinked down her nictitating membranes to mirror her eyes. ‘The census figures from the satellite put the population in the region of three thousand.’
‘No sign of anyone developing resistance?’ Thadus asked.
‘None; the opposite, in fact. The population has been dropping steadily over the last thirty years. And what with the new enclave being built a hundred miles north of here…’
Thadus snorted. It was, of course, sensible for those uninfected by the neurovirus, those umbrathants who just by living longer were becoming the rulers of the Umbrathane, to protect themselves from reinfection. He said, ‘I was just wondering if there were any who could be extracted before we cleanse.’ He stabbed his thumb over his shoulder towards the oak tree. ‘The boy there seems pretty well coordinated.’
Elone turned and gazed up into the tree. ‘He’s about twelve years old and malnutrition has delayed his puberty.’
‘Alpha strain, then?’