“So,” Calna said in a dead tone, “you will leave him there. A living death.”
“There is no room for sentimentality in our work,” Sarrz said.
Calna turned and left the Deputy Director’s headquarters. The door orifice folded softly shut behind her.
Earth was always the origin. Symbolics made that clear. Ten thousand times ten thousand, Earth was the planet of origin. In the beginnings of the science of Symbolic Probability, it was thought all deviations were of equal value. The result would be, if it could be vizualized at all, in the shape of a fan, with an infinity of lines diverging from a fixed point, lines equally spaced.
This concept did not take into account the limitations on culture deviation. Always it was humankind, and reactions — social reactions — are limited, so it became a problem or dividing infinity by the finite. The result is infinity also, but the lines were no longer equally spaced from the common point. They were bundled. Each space-time frame was thus co-existent with its sister probabilities. And as long as they were bundled, grouped, you could slip from one sister probability into the next.
The space-time frame in which the conception originated had tried to jump extra-galactic space and had been burled back. It was a rigid boundary to further expansion, until, of course, it was found that there were twenty-six superimposed home galaxies in the probability grouping. The small golden pyramidal ships quivered, shimmered, became milky and disappeared in one frame to reappear in the next. So mated were three of the probability frames that the languages, the mores, even the fads and fashions were co-existent. Had it not been possible to slip to one of the other two, the slip would have been accomplished in the other direction within a matter of months rather than years. Three were ready for unification. Twenty-three needed acceleration in their own charted culture line. One was lost. One day it would be twenty-five times two billion planets. Symolic Probability indicated that there were other bundles of space-time frames in which complete unity and cross-travel had been achieved, but their probabilities were so divergent, and on so low an index that slip could not be accomplished.
Slip was the only word that would fit the mode of travel. Travel in a dimension for which there was no name. A dimension folded upon itself, so that the little golden ships were neither up nor down nor sideways. They neither shrank nor expanded. They “slipped” across a probability matrix into a sister reality without positional change. So close were the co-existences that it explained everything that had ever gone bump in the night, shadows half-seen out of the corner of the eye. You left your own frame and entered the sister frame which had been brushing at the sensory tendrils through generations of superstitution. And the frame you left behind was the frame which, through its very closeness, had appeared to rap on tables and speak through trumpets.
Calna stepped from the express strip onto a local strip and then across the increasingly slower strips to the platform of field five. The planet on which Transition rested, was in Era 6, a frame not ready for unification. She had been assigned to Era 4. Eras one, two and three were the unified ones, and, with her loss of Agent standing, the only ones available to her. Possibly, in her lifetime, another would be unified. Era twenty, she had heard, was almost ready. Transition rested in Era 6, next to space stations constructed in Eras one, two and three.
She turned and looked back across the city she would never see again. To the great mass of peoples in Eras one, two, and three, the three great cities constructed to slip across probability lines were more rumor than actuality. Only trained minds could comprehend the enormity of the task the three unified cultures had set themselves. Only highly specialized people could aid in the task.
To the average man and woman of the three basic eras, it was merely a new and wondrous and inexplicable advantage to be able to enjoy three contiguous environments. Those with ample means arranged title to the same piece of property co-existent on three probability levels. The slip field was installed in a central doorway with minimal controls. Each room was three rooms. For the very wealthy, proper positioning of the co-existent homes could result in three climates to be enjoyed. The ideal was a tropic warmth in one, eternal springtime in the next, and a crisp and endless October in the third.
She turned her back on Transition. There was a thickness in her throat. She knew that she should feel shame at the enormity of her mistake — and yet she could not. She knew that her identification with Andro had been too intense, and yet she did not wish it any other way.
“Ex-Agent to Era One,” she said crisply to the routing clerk. He eyed her curiously. Ex-Agents were rare. Dead Agents were not so rare. Resignation was unheard of. And so the routing clerk knew that the change of status had been disciplinary.
The customary respect shown to Agents was markedly lacking. He stared at her until she flushed. “Why the delay?” she asked angrily.
He winked. “Are your pensions going to be big enough for two of us?” he asked, leering.
“I can still put you on report,” she said.
“But you won’t.” He yawned. “Take the one at the end of the platform.”
She walked out and down the platform. She saw it and felt lost. It was one of the rooted ships, built only for the slip between frames. Unlike the Agent ships, it could not leap like a golden arrow from planet to planet within any frame. It would contain no survival equipment. The minimal controls would be no more complex than the buttons in an elevator.
Once she was in that stodgy ship there would be no turning back. She slowed her pace as she neared it. The ship beyond was a true Agent’s ship, with its double control panel, one for probability change, one for positional change. She could see the new seal beside the insignia and knew that this ship had just been completely checked and re-equipped.
She turned and glanced back. The routing clerk had his back to her. She moved quickly then. It had to be done in seconds. She darted into the Agent’s ship. In her mind was the great stabbing pain that came with disobedience. It was the same pain she had felt when overruling Solin and rescuing Andro. Conditioning caused that pain, and should have made disobedience impossible. But, as in the rescue of Andro, there was something in her that fought the pain, made it endurable.
She knew that to slip to Era 4 would mean capture within seconds. She picked Era 18 at random. As she hit the lever with the base of her palm, she heard the suck-snap of the port behind her. As the ship began to fade around her she heard the clangor of the alarm. In thirty seconds they could track her. As the ship shimmered hack into life in Era 18. she dropped her hands to the lower panel and shot it straight up at maximum takeoff. As the planet dwindled in the screen, she chopped the ship over onto SL drive, counted slowly to ten, swung it out of SL twenty light-years from the planet, slipped over into Era 22. picked a random course change, put it back into SL for a twenty count. After nine Era shifts in which she kept away from the basic eras and from Era 4, she knew that pursuit was out of the question.
The strain of escape had kept her from thinking of the consequences of her act. Now that she was safe for a time, she felt slack, exhausted. She wept for the first time since she was a child. When there were no more tears, she slept.
Chapter Two
Calna
Sarrz stood at attention facing the Director. The words that had lashed out at him made feel faint and dizzy. There was contempt on the Director’s gaunt face.
Sarrz tried again. He said, “But no Agent has disobeyed a—”
“Be still! What order had you started to give when I put you under arrest?”