John D. MacDonald

Escape to Chaos

Chapter One

The third son of Sham, the rebel son, the traitor to Empire, was pursued thrice across the Galaxy, was trapped five times and five times he escaped. Now he stood in the blue and eternal dusk of a cobalt city on Zeran, one of the old planets, a planet of many histories, of many peoples, of the sadness of things lost beyond regaining. Zeran kept its face always toward the vast pink-orange sun that bore it, a half billion miles away.

Three years before, Shain had listened to the reports of the activities of his third son, Andro. Shain lay on the couch and ate of the fruit the women had brought him. He listened. “Andro said to Telka of Vereen, ‘How long will you permit my father to oppress you?’ Andro said to Clangaron of Lell, ‘When the uprising comes, you must be ready to join us.’ ”

“Enough!” Shain said in the voice of Empire. He dropped seeds to the soft amber floor, selected another fruit. There was a small wet sound as he bit into it. He chewed, swallowed, yawned. “Have him killed,” he said languidly.

Three years later Andro stood alone in the dusk of the city of endless blue. He stood alone with heavy shoulders braced against the wall at the end of a forgotten alley. His burns suppurated and they weakened him, but his hand was firm on the grip of the weapon. Forty ships there were, and now there were none. Seven thousand had pledged their loyalty beyond death, and of the seven thousand the last one, the girl, Daylya, had died as he dragged her from the ruin of the last ship.

He was a big man and he waited with a big man’s patience. He waited and it was hate that gave him the strength to stand against his hurt. Once he smiled as he thought of what it had cost them. Four times seven thousand. Five times forty ships. Rumor among all the planets of Empire would make those totals greater. The deeds of Andro would be whispered in quiet places. And one day another one would dare, and win. Andro had shown them, shown all of them that revolt, even unsuccessful revolt, was possible, and to many it would seem a good way to die.

The wars of nations on ancient earth had been the rationalization for the founding of what had become galactic empire. For centuries as man had exploded across the star wastes, Empire had been weak. And then when the galactic wars began, star against star, cluster against cluster. Empire had regained its old strength merely by seeming necessary.

And the House of Galvan had ruled Empire for several thousand years. Shain of Galvan was no better and no worse than the average, Andro knew. The House of Galvan had not permitted itself to become weak. The men went to the far wild planets to find the strong-thighed mothers of Empire. The men of the House of Galvan were big. But the House had ruled too long. They had ruled from a time of enlightenment through to a time of superstition and stagnation. Andro, the youngest son, had not been as cleverly and carefully indoctrinated into the mores of Empire as his eldest brother, Larrent, as the middle brother, Masec. He had read much, of the olden times. Then, steeped in the rich traditions of early days, he had looked around him.

He had seen the prancing perfumed artists, claiming an ultimate reality in incomprehensible daubs. He had visited the slave markets of Simpar and Chaigan, and had been sickened. He had seen that the ships were old ships, the weapons old weapons, and the old songs forgotten. He had seen the dusty rotting machines that had been the hope of man, while ten thousand laborers built, by hand and whip, a temple to the glory of the House of Galvan.

And he had said, “This is the dark age of Empire. We have had enough.”

Even as youngest son in the great palaces and fortifications of the heart of Empire, on the green and gold planet called Rael at the heart of the Galaxy, he had only to raise a languid hand to acquire forty slave women, the rarest of wines, or the tax-tribute of a dozen planets for a hundred years.

And he said, “We have had enough.”

And Shain said, “Have him killed.”

And Larrent and Masec said, “Have him killed.”

Death was close. The last ship had crashed near the wall of the empty blue city. The burns on his left side were deep enough to hold his doubled fist, and each time the wave of weakness lasted a bit longer. He wanted to take one more, or two, or three or even a dozen with him. Another fragment to add to the legend, to be said in an awed whisper, “And when they finally trapped him alone, on Zeran, he...”

Andro coughed and it was a cat-weak sound in the eternal dusk. Deralan, Chief of Empire Police, had personally headed this final, successful chase. And Andro knew that wiry, dour Deralan was a cautious man. Andro had felt the streets shudder as the ships had landed in a circle around the blue city. The ring of Deralan’s men would be advancing toward the heart of the city, searching each building with care, the ring growing closed, tighter as they neared the center.

When he breathed there was a bubbling in the deepest part of the highest wound on his left side. His legs started to bend. He braced them once more, lifted his heavy head in time to see a flicker of movement at the end of the alley. All weakness was forgotten as he raised the weapon a trifle.

There was hard amusement in him as he thought how the pursuers must feel. Each one of the previous five escapes had bordered on the miraculous. Now they would be expecting a further miracle.

“No miracles this time,” he said, and knew that the borderline of delirium had caused him to speak aloud.

A shadow appeared at the end of the alley. He lifted the weapon, sighted carefully. The firmness on which his feet were braced opened with an oiled abruptness. It wrenched his wounds so that he screamed out in agony. As he fell he saw the vast rim of the orange star directly overhead before the opening clapped shut far above him and he fell through an emptiness that was blacker than deep space.

Sarrz, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Socionetics, was a round little man with squirrel-bright eyes and a face like a plaster death mask. It was situations exactly like this which made him realize that his EC — Emotional Conditioning — was getting a bit frayed around the edges. He could not prevent a thalamic reaction to such... stupidity. There was really no other word for it.

He turned in his chair so that he would not have to look at the two of them, so that he could regain some of his control. Framed in the window, thirty yards across and fifteen yards high, was most of the City of Transition. It looked, Sarrz sometimes thought, like several thousand bridal cakes with raspberry frosting. Beyond the ten thousand foot towers which marked the four corners of the city was darkness.

In the name of energy conservation Transition was now resting on a .8 gravity planet in Era Middle 6 in a high index probability. Transition was imitating a mountain, hence the opacity beyond the slip towers.

Sarrz realized that his pride in the Field Teams was possibly a bit unreasonable. He spoke without turning toward the two members of the team.

“The quality of your indoctrination is questionable,” he said softly. “I shall conduct this on a primer basis. What is Transition?”

He knew by the voice that the younger of the two, the female, had spoken. She was the atavistic type — a throwback to a higher index of sensuality and emotional sway. A mistake to have ever let her go out.

“Transition,” Calna said, “is an operational station in probability space-time. There are three such stations. This one operates on the socionetic level through the medium of Field Teams.” She used the exact words of the basic manual.

“Excellent,” he said with a trace of irony. “Please continue, Agent.”

Her voice faltered a bit. “There are twenty-six known galactic civilizations with a high probability index, and many thousand more... distant.”

He turned and stared at her. With her sturdy figure and overlong hair she looked like one of the old prints. “Is that the right word?”

“Not distant. Less available,” she corrected.

Sarrz leaned back in his chair. “Much better. Continue, please.”

The male agent was obviously uncomfortable. He kept fingering the tunic insignia. Calna said, rapidly, “With the discovery and application of the Oxton Effect, it became apparent that there was no need to limit any galactic civilization to the space-time rigidity previously known. With easy slip between the twenty-six civilizations with high probability index, it was believed that a unification on twenty-six space-time levels could be accomplished. Research had shown that only three space-time levels could be unified immediately. This was done. The unified civilization of three space-time aspects set itself the task of bringing the social level of the remaining twenty-three up to the point where unification could be undertaken.”

“And how could this be done?” Sarrz asked in silky tone.

The girl flushed. “Field Teams, trained in Socionetics, and based at Transition, were assigned to the twenty-three lagging cultures. It was discovered that if the Field Teams acted openly, as agents from a parallel space-time, their efforts caused a deviation in probability of the culture development so that the civilization resulting became less probable, and hence could not be kept within slip range. It could still be reached, of course, as can the several thousand less probable ones, but only with exorbitant power expenditure.”

“I see,” said Sarrz, as though he were hearing of it for the first time. He leaned forward a bit. “And have we ever lost one of these parallel space-time cultures through too obvious meddling?”

“One,” the girl said, “Several years ago. It was number seventeen on the program chart.”

Sarrz was ready for the kill. He leaned forward a fraction of an inch more. “How can you be certain that it isn’t two that we have lost. Agent? How can you be certain that your violation of all standing instructions hasn’t lost us number four as well?”

The girl flushed and then turned pale. “You sit here in Transition and lose touch with the Field Team problems,” she said boldly. “Solin and I have been on the case for over five years. As soon as we were well enough educated in language and customs to walk among them as subjects of the Empire, we found out that our hope was Andro, youngest son of the ruler. You do not know, Deputy Director, how hard we tried to get close enough to Andro to control him, control his rashness, so as to improve his timing. He led the revolt against Empire when his followers were too few, his resources too slim. Five times we managed to save him. I could not stand by and see him killed in an alley. I could not face beginning again. And let me absolve Solin here, my teammate, from any responsibility. He made the strongest protest possible. I went ahead on my own authority. And I do not think we have forced number four out of range into a low probability index.”

Sarrz closed his eyes for long seconds, opened them suddenly and stared at the girl. “You were trained, Agent. You were told the danger of obvious meddling. You were told how long these things can continue. You knew that it may be two thousand years before we can steer that culture to the point where acceptance and unification can be considered. Knowing all these things about you, Agent, you leave me with but one conclusion. That you became personally and emotionally so involved with this Andro savage that you lost your head and tried, very sentimentally, to save him. Is that not true?” She turned her eyes from him. “Answer me!” he said softly.

“I... I don’t know. Possibly it is true.”

“Agent, there are seven hundred teams operating in that parallel culture. Most of them are attempting to activate a technistic renaissance. Others are directing the subjects of that Empire in equally necessary paths. Other teams, such as the one you two form, have been operating on the socio-political level. Up until now there has not been one violation of security.”

Sarrz stood up and walked to the window. He whirled “Think of it once! Think of what you’ve done! One tiny little push and a galaxy of two billions of habitable planets is pushed forever out of our reach! What did you do with him?”

Solin said in a low tone, “We cut the passage and as he fell, we resealed it. He was unconscious by the time we floated him down to the chamber He was badly hurt. Calna stayed with him and I set up the field, returned to our ship and activated the field, removing both of them from the city. He was almost gone. We rebuilt the tissues took him in deep sleep to the dark side of that planet, to one of the dead cities which they have lost the skill to visit, and placed him on the zero metabolic level Then we grew worried and came back.”

“So you grew worried, did you?” Sarrz said with acid sweetness. “What am I to tell the Director?”

“If only they hadn’t spotted him as he escaped from the ship.” Solin said.

“I’ve been going over your detailed reports,” Sarrz said, with a sudden note of hope in his voice. “This Deralan, he who headed the pursuit, isn’t he a very ambitious one?”

“Very,” Solin said.

“Then there’s our chance! This sixth escape by Andro will ruin Deralan. Shain will probably have him shot. Shain will want proof of Andro’s death. Is there any distinctive mark on this Andro?”

“A tattoo of the royal House of Calvan on the upper portion of the right arm.”

“Go into slip at once, Solin. Take a square of the skin with the tattoo on it. Use your finder to contact the Field Team on Rael. Give the little trophy to either Agent of the team. It will be placed in Deralan’s hand before he has his audience with Shain. I don’t think Deralan will ask any questions.”

“But then,” said Calna, in a thin voice, “when Andro reappears...”

“He won’t reappear. He’ll sleep there for ten thousand years, if it seems necessary.”

The girl stood up, one hand at her throat. “You can’t do that!”

“You have no hand in any more discussion of either policy or procedure, girl. You are no longer an Agent. You will receive all the usual pensions. Report to field five at once. They’ll have orders on you. You are being sent back to our own space-time. Any planet preference?”

“Earth,” the girl said softly.

For a moment Sarrz forgot his irritation with her. “Indeed! I guess I never noticed origin on your card. Do you know, this is the first time I have ever actually met anyone from our planet of origin.”

She lifted her chin, with a look of pride. “It is a good place,” she said. “It is a good place to know, and a good place to go back to.”

“I am sorry,” Sarrz said with gentleness. “Possibly you were never right for this sort of work. I am truly sorry.”

“Why can not Andro be released to recruit new personnel for his revolt?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it save time?”

The irritation came back into Saarz’ voice. “Release him and he knows that he did not escape through his own powers. He knows he was helped, and to him it would be help through the good offices of the supernatural. He would at once relate this last escape to the previous five, and become, through his new convictions, a son of the gods rather than a revolutionary. Rebellion would change from a social to a quasi-religious basis, and we know that in order to keep number four within the high probability index range, we must hasten development along the same lines as would normally occur. We have plotted their culture curve. We can accelerate it without affecting probability, but we cannot redraw the curve on a new basis without losing them forever, or at least until slip becomes possible for lesser probabilities, and our technicians in symbolics say that will never occur.”

“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?”

“I had ordered Agent Solin to go to Era 4 and destroy the body of Andro. I thought she would immediately try to... you see, there’s an emotional attachment... seemed logical that...”

“Do you remember your history, Sarrz? What in its simplest sense, was cancer?”

“Why... uncontrolled cell growth, starting with one rebel cell and—”

“Any Agent, Sarrz, equipped with an Agent’s ship, is very, very close to being impregnable. We are dealing with an unbalanced Agent, for the first time in socionetic history. You would have fixed it so that she would have returned to that place and found this Andro destroyed. Revenge is a typical emotion in an unbalanced mind. What, then, would keep her from using the ship and her mobility to intrude in the most destructive possible way on all probability frames within our reach?”

Sarrz blanched. “But...”

“One rebel cell in our structure, Sarrz Remember that. If we are not to lost twenty-two sister galaxies, we must eliminate her. Possibly you think this is an alarmist reaction. Agent Calna ceased to be predictable when she prejudiced the entire operation in Era four. Angered and hurt she can force twenty-two cultures off their extrapolated pattern. Saying that she retains enough loyalty to refrain from doing that is mere wishful thinking. I want every available Field Team briefed and assigned to the planet Era four calls Zeran. I want a trap that she won’t see on the way in, and can’t slip out of. Is that clear?”

“It is clear,” Sarrz said with an effort.

“In the meantime proceed with your plan of presenting Shain, through Solin and the team on Rael, with proof of the death of his youngest son. But warn Solin not to kill Andro. Not under any circumstances. Once we have the girl, Andro can be safely killed.”

When Deralan had been young, he had not feared space flight. He stood as a guest on the bridge of the flagship of the police fleet returning to Rael. He was returning to report to Shain the utter destruction of the remnants of Andro’s rebel force. And the sixth escape of Andro himself.

Deralan was a realist. The execution would be swift, and relatively painless. For a time he had considered lying to Shain. But lying led straight to the rooms of evil repute under the main palace, and there Deralan would scream until Shain found the truth and permitted him to die.

In his youth he had accepted the great, roaring, shuddering, thundering ships as a part of life that would never change. Now he knew of the great fields where tens of thousands of the ships moldered away, as no one had the skill to repair them. If the drive failed in flight, the crew and passengers were dead. It was that simple.

And many had failed. Abilities had been lost, somehow. He could see the sign of those lost abilities in the puffy face of the captain of the flag ship now standing before the vast control board, watching his officers complete the intricate procedure for landing. Deralan felt a vast bitterness. They were like monkeys firing a gun. The monkey pulled the trigger and the gun went bang. Ask the monkey to explain the principle of expansion of gasses. The officers pulled switches in the order prescribed in the space flight manuals. The ship landed. It was that simple. If one switch was pulled and somewhere in the guts of the ship a coil failed, that was too bad, and very very fatal.

Routine repairs could be made. New tubes, oxygenation equipment — things on that level. But what made the ship take off, accelerate to ten lights, deaccelerate and land — what induced the normal gravity under any acceleration — what force adapted the view screens to the acceleration — all those things were mysteries, lost in the ancient past when men were wiser, stronger.

Deralan thought sourly that Andro had not been very farsighted. All he had to do was wait. He could die knowing that within a thousand years there would be no more ships that would function. With no more ships, the House of Galvan would rule one planet rather than a galaxy. Each inhabited planet would be isolated, left to go its own way, find its own answers, maybe win its way back to space. The ships would die and Empire would die with them.

Now the face of Rael was so close that it filled all of the view screen, the tiny drift of cloud appearing flat against the surface. Deralan’s mind kept returning to the report the three men had given him. He could not suppress a thin eerie feeling of awe and concern. “I saw him. He seemed to be hurt. He had a weapon. As I aimed, he dropped out of sight. We went back there. There was no place for him to get out. There was no hole for him to drop through. He was just... gone.”

Shain would not be amused by that story. Three of them had seen it. Deralan had isolated the three who had seen it happen. After considering all sides of the question he had killed them. His power over his men was that of life and death, with no questions asked. Their eye-witness account was an embarrassing factor, an unnecessary factor in the equation. Deralan felt no regret, and no satisfaction over it.

He knew that he did not dare lie to Shain, and yet he wished to continue to live. It was impasse.

The fleet landed, a far smaller fleet than had set out in pursuit of Andro. A guard of honor awaited Deralan as he disembarked. They formed a hollow square around him. Deralan smiled. Shain hadn’t been thinking of honor when he sent the guard. Shain had been thinking of escape.

Metal-clad heels struck the paving in harsh cadence as the twelve guards escorted Deralan down the center of the Avenue of Kings. The once-proud street had become a place of bazaars. Rael was a wise and sour old planet. To it had come the dregs of a thousand planets, the sycophants, the cheats, with their smell of depravity, their swaggering insolence. One did not walk alone at night on Rael.

The aimless crowds opened to let the guard through. Some of them jeered at the guards and then fell suddenly silent as they recognized Deralan, feared almost as much as Shain himself and his elder sons.

A drunk reeled too close to the guard. The man at the front left corner of the hollow square reversed his ceremonial short-sword with a practised gesture and smashed the man’s skull with the heavy grip.

They marched through the stink of the bazaars, past the crones that vended remedies for every ill, past the street girls in their rags, past men who turned with jerky quickness to hide a wanted face from the keen eye of Deralan. The main palace towered at the end of the Avenue of Kings. They marched through three gates so huge that the men did not have to change formation. Only the fourth gate was so narrow that they shifted to a column of twos. Deralan was midway along the column.

Just as he passed through the gate a screaming girl came racing from the side, her eyes wide with panic. A bearded man chased her. In her fright she ran directly into Deralan, staggering him. The guards cursed and shoved her roughly back into the grasp of the bearded man. Deralan fingered the object the girl had thrust into his hand. It had a soft texture. In the great main hall of the palace he risked a glance at it. For a moment he did not know what it was. When he at last understood what it was, his mind reeled with the shock, and his mouth went dry.

But Deralan was a realist and an opportunist. They took him back through the corridors to the private apartments of Shain. Shain was a ruin of what had been an enormous, powerful man. Years of debauch had left him looking like a pig carved of cold lard.

“Your report told me nothing,” Shain said.

Deralan straightened up from the ceremonial bow. “Forgive me,” he said. “I possibly took a childish pleasure in anticipating this moment.”

“I have some childish pleasures waiting, if I don’t like your report.”

Deralan bowed again, advanced and handed the object to Shain. “My proof, your imperial majesty.”

Shain unfolded the soft square. He stared at it. Then he threw back his great head and began to laugh. He laughed until tears squeezed out of the small eyes and rolled down the white heavy cheeks: Deralan took a deep breath. He knew that he was out of danger.

“How did you do it?” Shain demanded.

“We searched the city. I found him myself, and killed him. It was your wish.”

“You did well. Tonight we shall celebrate your victory... and... and the death of the best of my three sons, the death of the only one fit to be Emperor.”

Always, in a limited world, the machines grew more powerful. Machines were a form of inbreeding. Man turned his attentions onto his own pleasures and comforts and the machines grew, giving sage electronic attention to the complexities of equations with a thousand variables. And man grew softer within his limitations.

But now, with multiple realities waiting to be merged, the machines were of little help. Properly guided, the machines had indicated the possibility of multiple space-time frames, had assisted in finding a way to reach them. But once reached, it was once again up to man to work with hands and eyes and heart to achieve that unity which would weld twenty-five conditional realities into one world.

The Agents were recruited from those who, in less pressing times, would be termed malcontents, would be difficult to control, manage. All of them were, in one sense atavistic.

The Agent was man. His tools were provided by the machines. And no tools in history equaled the golden pyramidal agent ships. They were the extension of the Agent, the way the stone ax fitted the horny palm of the Neanderthal. On SL drive they could span the galaxy in a mouth. The webbed forces, interlocked and convoluted like the surface of a brain, shimmered constantly along the five planes of the ships. They were very close to being invulnerable. They could dive into a planet crust, protecting the Agent in much the way an insect would be protected while held in the palm of an iron fist as the fist was driven into loam. They could move in any direction except time, and at speeds beyond contractive effects. Yet it was the Man and not the Ship.

Calna entered Era 4 at the galactic rim. She was lost. It took long hours of feeding data into the computors to arrive at exact position. Since exact position was only exact in relation to any known object, she calculated her speed in relation to Zeran’s sun in the invisible distance. She established course corrections. The ship flickered once and was gone. Twenty hours later the alarm brought her out of deep sleep a hundred million miles from Zeran. She had set the protective web so that light was bent around the tiny ship. She risked observation, in three-second intervals, returning to objective invisibility each time. She knew that she could be detected only by a chance intersection of her path from the galactic rim. It was a risk she had to take.

She stretched the weakness of sleep from her body and tried to think clearly. She was afraid. She suspected weakness in herself that implied an eventual failure. The rescue of Andro was, in Sarrz’ terms, weakness. Emotionality. In all probability it would make her reactions predictable. And so she had to fight for a cold objectivity. What made it most difficult was that thoughts of Andro made her heart pound and her face flush. Agents were taught to consider the peoples of backward frames as pawns to be moved at will, sacrificed for the sake of socionetic gambits. But she thought of Andro in the way of a woman rather than an agent. Yet, even if she were to rescue Andro and take him out of reach of the Field Teams who were undoubtedly waiting, what would he think of her? What would he see in this strong-bodied woman of a more mature culture? This woman with the grey-bright eyes and the hair like ripened grain in a September sun.

She remembered the harsh and shameful joy with which she had seen the death of the woman, Daylya whose beauty had been like a warm cry in the night.

Andro was, above all else, a strong proud man. He would not react kindly to being aided by a woman who, in all except brute muscle, equaled or surpassed his own strength.

The possibility that they had already killed him was like the first rasp of the knifeblade against her throat. She knew how she would plan it were she in charge of those attempting to intercept her. She would make the path to Andro’s black and quiet tomb very simple. And escape impossible. By a focus of power five other Agent ships could hold her ship in stasis. She sensed that they were waiting.

She knew the exact location of Andro’s body. It was in a crypt in the small room of the highest tower in a frozen city abandoned for half of time. The body would be hard and tough as granite. If there were some way to snatch it up on the run...

Anything could be transferred from planet to ship providing the proper field were built around the item to he transferred. A field was created by a tiny generator no larger than a plum. It could he set to create a field a foot across, or five miles across. But it had to be placed in position.

The item could he received inside the ship, or received within any given range of the ship She made her plan. If was dependent on deceiving them through apparently descending to land near the crypt. Their reaction times would be trigger-fast. It would be close, and with no possibility of fumbling.

She boldly dropped the ship’s screens and streaked toward the dark side of Zeran. She came down through the blackness with her view screens adjusted so that the ruined city stood out as though bathed in a great light. The adjusted generator lay in the small disposal port. The port switch was hooked in with the computor which in turn was hooked up with the aiming screen. She waited without breathing, her hands on the lower panel, fingertips moist on the controls. The interval of drop was to be twenty seconds. The instant she heard the click, she chopped the ship into SL drive and winked away into space She felt for a fractional part of a second the drag of the focused power of the other Agent ships. It was as though, for that moment, her ship flew through molten lead. For the moment there was nothing for her to do. She had set the ship to come out of SL at exactly twenty seconds from the moment of the drop. The port was ready and skin-gravity set to hold any air that would escape, heat screen ready to combat the cold of space.

She put her hand on the main port control. The moment she felt the tiny, twisting dislocation that meant the end of SL, she tripped the control and the port yawned. The receiving area was set outside the open port. With the suddenness of an explosion the entire top of the tower appeared in the receiving area, swung over and thudded against the ship. Using the top panel she slipped ship and tower into Era 20 to give her a few more moments of grace.

The rough stone of the tower was flat against the open port. Using the hand blower she crumbled a hole through the stone, exposing one corner of the black crypt. She widened the hole, caught the crypt with the focused beam of the attractor, angled it through the port. Ignoring the crumbled stone that had drifted in, she shut the port and tried to flee.

The ship did not move. She cried out, and fought the controls. Her hands flashed across the panels as she tried combinations of controls. Higher and higher rose the thin whine of the ship’s screens, fighting the holding force. She applied all power to a straight SL drive, feeling the heat rising within the ship. The ship grew hotter and she waited, her jaw set, until she could scent the acrid odor of the scorched tendrils of her hair. Then, with one fast motion, she cut off everything in the ship. The pursuers were in the position of a man who runs to break down a door when the door opens just before his shoulder touches it. Calna’s ship gave a tiny lurch and she was ready to take advantage of it. She slipped to Era 1, and immediately to Era 25, and applied full SL drive the moment the new frame had been attained.

The ship whipped off into freedom, and she laughed aloud with a note of hysteria. She used a completely random pattern of slip and direction, taking no chances, working for long hours on the twin panels until she knew that pursuit was impossible. She knew the danger of awakening Andro in too unfamiliar an environment. The chance of madness was too great.

In Era 11, one of the most backward ones, she found the planet she wanted. In more sophisticated probability frames, it had been turned into a rest planet for Agents. It was uninhabited in all frames except the basic three. The best aspect of it was that it was not the last place they’d look for her. Anticipating her reaction, they would look at once in the last place. It was neither the best nor the worst, thus a median chance in several billion.

She drifted low across the springtime face of the planet and selected a place where a crystal stream came down across rocks to form a pool beside a slant of lush green grass. She tucked the ship between the mighty roots of a fairyland tree so tall that clouds brushed its crown. This was a planet on which one felt elfin. Small and wild and free. The vastness of the trees and the boulders and the utter stillness were the artifacts of magic.

She opened the purloined crypt and laid her fingers against the marble coldness of Andro’s cheek. All body functions were suspended She moved quickly and lightly as she prepared the twin injections that would bring him slowly up to the threshold of life once again. The tips of the needles had to be heated before she could put them into the vein on his inner arm.

She made the injections and then laid her head against his broad chest. It was like listening to a stone. It was the coldness of death and she felt small and afraid. With no circulation of the blood, with the blood itself as still and hard as the red veins in marble, it took a long time for the effect to spread from the point of innoculation.

The heart, at last, gave a slow thud. She counted to thirty before she heard the next thud. Each time the interval decreased by a full second. Body warmth began to return. When he took his first fluttering, shallow breath, she straightened up and smiled down at him. There was color in his face again.

With the help of the small attractor she unhooked from her belt, she lifted him effortlessly and carried him through the port and placed him on the fresh-scented grass at the edge of the deep blue pool.

Then, motivated by a force that was strange to her, she used the cleansing chamber of the ship, webbed fresh garments for herself in a brighter color than ever before.

Chapter Three

Revolt on Simpar!

The slip towers glowed, grew misty and indistinct. The City of Transition gave a delicate shrug of raspberry shoulders and slipped from Era 6 to Era 4. The risk of thus hastening the deviation from plotted culture line was great. But the Director felt that coordination could better be obtained within the target era than from outside. As yet no method of direct communication between eras had been devised. Field Team reports could be received at Transition and orders could go out only if the city were in the era which ex-Agent Calna had made so critical.

Sarrz felt lost. The Director had stepped in to handle direct coordination of Field Teams. Sarrz was left without a function. Though it irked him, it did give him a chance to review the entire picture. As with all directing heads in Socionetics, Sarrz had a good background in Symbolic Probability. With the idle and aimless feeling of mental doodling, he decided to equate the index of probability of the loss of further space-time frames.

He took the small table which held the computor and swung it around within easy reach. He put it on alphabetic scale and ignored, as he fed in the data, the glow of the ‘insufficient data’ light. He had the direct loss of one era, the pending loss of a second, plus areas of disturbance in three more.

He read off the index and it startled him. He cleared the computor and tried again. Same result. He sat and listened to the quickening thud of his heart. The index of probability of all sister space-time frames being lost was almost grotesquely high, so high that complete data would have to be within itself improbable in order to level off the result based on incomplete data.

The inference was that some outside factor was at work, some unequated factor. There was a parallel in astronomy. Find the deviation and then look for the cause.

Suddenly Sarrz realized that this matter was of highest importance. The Director must be informed, and at once.

He reached for the switch that would enable him to communicate with the Director.

And that was the way they found him. His heart had stopped as his fingertips had touched the switch.

Animal caution did not desert Andro as he recovered consciousness. He neither stirred nor opened his eyes. He remained quite still and concentrated on bringing all senses up to peak awareness. Hearing — the soft rush and babble of water, a crackling stir, as of wind in leaves. Scent — the spiced smell of brush and forest and wild places. Touch — brush of grass against his arm. Warm air against his body. He remembered the deepness of the burn wounds. He concentrated his sensory attention on the wounded areas and could find no message of pain from the scorched nerve ends. He increased the depth of his respiration and could not detect the quick knives that had stabbed him with each breath as he stood in the blue shadows of the alley.

He remembered those who had joined him, and who had lost. Grief was deep and slow and still. Daylya and all the others. His fault. And born of impatience. Had he waited, grown a bit stronger, planned more thoroughly...

His ear picked up the whisk of grass against an approaching foot. Fingertips touched his chest over his heart. He opened his eyes just enough to see the figure outlined against the sky, bending over him. The equation was simple. Once all your allies are dead, all who remain are enemies.

Andro struck with clenched fist, with a roll that brought the heavy muscles of shoulder and back into the blow. He rolled onto hands and knees and jumped up onto his feet, weaving a little from weakness. He stood under a strange sky near the mightiest tree he had ever seen and looked down on the crumpled unconscious figure of a woman. She wore a toga-like garment of lime yellow, a wide belt from which small unknown devices dangled. Her hair had the clarity and purity of the white fall of water into the deep blue pool a few yards away. On the angle of her jaw was the spreading stain of the force of the blow. He stood and waited and listened for others. There was no sound but the water and the wind. He bent over and fingered her jaw clumsily. The bone did not feel loose and broken under his fingers.

It was then that he remembered his wounds. He looked at his side, and found a strange thing. The skin was clear, firm, healthy over the wounds, and he would have thought he had dreamed the wounds were it not for the untanned pallor of the new skin.

He looked at the woman again, and he frowned. The alley floor had given way under him and he had fallen into darkness. The woman was connected with that phenomenon in some way. At the moment she was helpless. Yet the devices on the belt she wore were a promise that she might not remain helpless. He rolled her over and looked for a place to unhook the belt. It seemed to have no fastening and it fitted too tightly around her slim waist to be slipped down over her hips. He contented himself with unhooking the small devices. He could not guess their uses. Yet they had a gleam that spoke of efficiency, utility. There were six of them. He carried them carefully in his cupped hands and placed them behind a stone. It taxed his strength to tear a strip from the hem of the lime yellow toga. With the strip he bound her hands tightly behind her, placing the knot out of the reach of her fingers. As he tightened the knot, his right arm extended, he saw that the tattoo was gone from his upper arm. It was replaced with another area of that pallid healthy skin.

Andro sat a few feet from the woman and waited for her to regain consciousness. He tried to guess what had happened. He still wore the leather and metal battle skirt, but his cape was gone. He remembered tearing it off as it had started to flame, throwing it aside as he picked up the dying girl and carried her through the great smashed place in the hull of his ship. The battle skirt showed signs of having been scorched. The thongs that bound his sandals were blackened, crisped and the hair had been burned from his calves and ankles. The holster at his right side was empty.

The woman’s face was toward him as she opened her eyes. Her eyes were a clear grey and they saw nothing. They focused on him and he did not like the look of intelligence that came into them. In face and body he found her pleasing, but the eyes alarmed him. They spoke too clearly of knowledge beyond his own — knowledge that made him feel like a child. He saw her test the strength of the strip that hound her wrists, then sit up awkwardly, throw her head back to swing a heavy strand of her hair away from her face. She smiled at him as a conspirator would smile.

“Who are you?” he asked heavily.

She moved her underjaw from side to side and grimaced. “You are strong, Andro.”

“Who are you?”

“Your friend. Your very good friend. My name is Calna.”

“Calna,” he said, tasting the word carefully. “I was dying. Now I am whole again. I was trapped, and now I am free. If you did that, it is evidence that you are a friend. But your purposes in doing that may make you enemy rather than friend.”

She glanced down at her belt. “Untie me, Andro. The bonds are too tight.”

He untied her. She stood up, flexing her hands, rubbing her wrists. The top of her shining head was on a level with his eyes. She smiled at him and there was something in the smile he didn’t like.

She said, “I’m helpless now because you took the things from my belt?”

“Of course.”

She put her hands on him and he tried to strike her again. He cried out in sudden agony as her fingers found pressure points. She did not cease smiling. She touched his elbows in what could have almost been a caress and both arms hung slack and useless. Her hand swept across the side of his throat and he fell heavily. He tried to move and though his effort made the sweat stream from his face, he could not move.

She sat beside him and said softly, “It will go away in a few moments, Andro. And do not let your pride be hurt. Those are methods in which I was, carefully trained.” She stood up and glanced around. She went unerringly to the stone behind which he had hid the shining things. She picked them up and hooked them casually onto the belt.

Some of the weakness had left him. He sat up and glared at her. She laughed. “Don’t look so fierce, Andro. You see, I know you very well. I’ve known you for four long years. There were five escapes before this last one. Probably you thought they were good luck, or even good judgment. I was helping you, Andro. Six times you should have died, and I helped you. The seventh time occurred while you were unconscious and that was the worst time of all, the most dangerous.”

“Why did you help me?”

“I am not from your world, Andro.”

“I have guessed that.”

“My world was interested in your revolt against Shain. It was to our advantage to help you succeed- We helped in many ways, but not enough. I was following orders given to me. When it was seen that our help was not enough, I was ordered to let you die on Zeran. I disobeyed orders.”

“Why?”

Calna frowned. “I... I don’t really know. I knew that I was becoming emotionally interested in you, but that in itself should not have been strong enough to enable me to act counter to my training. It just became something I... I had to do, Andro. Now I am being hunted by my world.”

“As I am being hunted by mine?”

“No. Your world believes you are dead.”

He stood up as the last increment of his strength flooded back. He looked around.

“Is this your world or mine?”

“Neither.”

He stared at her. “What are we to do? How did we come here? I wish to go back to my own world. I left... many things unfinished.”

“You cannot go back. There is no way.”

Andro watched her for a moment. “Until that moment, I believe you told the truth. Now why do you start to lie?”

“Listen carefully and understand, if you can. I will say it as simply as I possibly can, Andro. We tried to help your world without making our presence known. If we did it too obviously, your world would grow out of our reach and we could no longer visit it. If you should go back now, the mere fact of your returning from the dead will put your world out of our reach. So I cannot permit that.”

He studied her. “That seems odd, Calna. You say you are being hunted by your world. Can they hunt for you here?”

“Of course.”

“Then why not return me to my world. You say it will place my world out of reach. Then wouldn’t that mean safety for you, in my world?”

“Yes, but it is against all my training, all I believe in, and...”

He saw her indecision and for the first time he felt that his strength equaled hers. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders, felt her tense under his touch. He looked into her grey eyes until her glance wavered, dropped. She came into his arms with a small cry in her throat that was like a confession of weakness, that was the sign of the transfer to him of the authority for whatever path they would take into the unknown future.

“We will go to my world,” he said. He felt her acquiescence. “And before we return,” he said, “you will teach me how to use the devices of your world. When I return I shall be stronger than Shain and Larrent and Masec, even with no followers.”

She stood a little apart from him then, her head lowered. “My people will be looking for us in your world. They will want to stop us, before the effects of your return have made sufficient change in your world to move it out of their reach.”

At a place which was the essence of no-place, and in a time which, in stasis, was no-time, there was a record of progress in the analysis of paradox, where directed thought maintained the record, where a billion eras moved the record one half-step nearer the point where at last all infinities would become finite. It could not be done on the basis of a controlled experiment, because there is a flow in that theory. The mere factor of control is an alien factor, a newness added to the other components. Without control, all things must be weighed and all factors considered. The measured counting of high value infinities can only be performed in no-time, and only no-place is vast enough to hold the records.

A child awakens and cries in the night. In its simplest sense the impact of that occurrence can be measured through a thousand generations, given all factors for weighing. What complicates it is that cause and effect are expressions of the same factor. It is more delicate to trace the child’s awakening backward for a thousand generations, but still finite and feasible — given enough time and enough space for the keeping of records. Where it becomes paradoxical is when worlds are bridged and all probabilities assume equal values, and in ten thousand co-existent fields of probability where the child awoke at the same instant, the same track can be plotted backward for a thousand generations and be identical for ninety-nine hundred and ninety-nine probabilities, only to diverge at the next to the last generation in the very last of the ten thousand coexistent webs in the matrix. So go back and make that last one similar, and the result will be an increment of divergence which results, most probably, in no child at all, and, less probably, in a night of unbroken rest for the child.

The labor involved makes it essential that the computations be made in no-time, and the records kept in no-space.

And one facet of the endless computation can be — as one range of probabilities begin to gain mutual access, what happens if such access is denied?

The finite computation of infinities is possible because infinity is merely a function of time and space. Only nothingness becomes endless.

Ever since the dreaded audience with Shain that had been so miraculously saved from disaster, Deralan was obscurely troubled. It was his nature and his profession to learn the background of all events and incidents. Long search for the girl who had handed him the object which had bought his safety was fruitless. He was almost glad that he could not find her. They had returned to Rael from Zeran with all haste possible. Either the object had been brought back on the pursuit ships, or it had arrived at Rael by faster means. And Deralan did not see how it was possible for the object to have been smuggled onto one of the ships. As to faster means of transport — there were none.

As he tried to pick up the threads of his responsibilities that had been disrupted by the revolt of Andro, third son of Shain, he found himself suffering from an inability to give his complete attention to his duties. The capital city was very much like a cage of wild animals. The animals detected the faint inattention of the trainer and crouched a bit lower on their haunches, ready to spring.

When two of his most trusted assistants were torn to bits by a mob, Deralan did not feel the old raw fury with which he had avenged similar previous incidents. His identification, capture and execution of the leaders of the mob was quick and effective, but without heat. His villa, protected almost as well as the very palaces of Shain, no longer was a place of revelry by night. He ceased the entertainment of those close to Shain, and knew that by so doing he was prejudicing his influence at court. He spent more and more time alone, and his thoughts were dark. Many times there was fear in him, but fear of something not quite understood.

He felt that somewhere in the city he would find an answer to all that troubled him. He began to listen more carefully to the talk of odd happenings in the empire. It seemed to be a time of strange occurrences that bordered on the supernatural.

On one sultry afternoon when most of the city slept, Deralan questioned a frightened girl who had been brought to him by his agents. She was a dirty, half-wild creature, seemingly poised on the very edge of flight. Her dark red hair was matted with filth and her tip-slanted eyes were of that distinctive lavender shade of the women of Vereen. Her rags barely covered her body. In her left armpit was the telltale gouge where the mark of the slave had been recently removed. Very recently removed.

Though she was frightened to the very borderline of unconsciousness, she would not speak. And such was her emaciation that it was immediately obvious to Deralan she would die at once if force were used. What intrigued him most was the freshness of the blisters along the calf of her left leg. Those were the distinctive blisters carried by one who has traveled in one of the old ships with their defective shielding.

Several isolated bits of information clicked into place in Deralan’s mind and convinced him that this girl held a clue to his own bafflement. The increasing numbers of escaped slaves on Rael — the fresh blisters — the girl’s obvious fright — the two month delay in customary reports from slave marts — all these things pointed to Simpar, from his agents on that planet of something only she could give him.

Her teeth were small and even and pointed. “Kill me and watch how a Vereen woman can die!” she whispered to him.

“What made you slave?” he asked, forcing a gentleness into his tone.

“I stabbed my husband. The court sentenced me. They said it was without cause. I was shipped to Simpar with hundreds of others.”

“And you escaped. How?”

She moved restlessly in the thongs which bound her, and turned her head from him, affecting casualness, though the cords stood out like wires in her lean throat.

“How would it feel,” he asked softly, “to be clean once more. To be scrubbed and cleaned and scented again. To feel the touch of silk. To recline beside a spiced fountain and have rich foods brought to you. Fine fruit from Vereen. Wines from Lell.”

She did not move. He saw a tear cut a channel of whiteness through the grime of her cheek.

He called the bored attendants and told them to free her and bring her to his villa. He turned his back on their knowing sneers and left. By the time the girl was brought through the innermost gates of the villa all was ready for her. The maids took her in hand. It was dusk in the wide gardens before she was brought to him. She stood with a new pride, tall and silent and quite lovely.

He watched her eat with the precise, almost vicious hunger of a half-starved animal. The wines were brought. She was wary but after a time she lost wariness and her lips grew swollen and her eyes grew vague and she emptied the glass each time he filled it from the flagon. Night came and he sat with her. She laughed with an empty sound as he caressed her.

“It wasn’t hard to escape, was it?” he asked.

“No. Not hard. Not with the gates broken and the guards dead and the ships waiting. Not hard.”

“Who broke the gates and killed the guards?”

She giggled. “Oh, but I am not supposed to tell anyone that, yet. Not until he is ready. Not until we receive word.”

“You can tell me, Leesha. You will stay here with me in comfort and in peace. There will be no secrets between us. You can tell me.” His tone was wheedling.

She giggled emptily again. Her eyes shuttered and she slumped out of the circle of his arm. He grasped her shoulders and shook her hard. “Tell me!” he shouted.

Her head wobbled loosely. He let her fall to the edge of the fountain. She lay on her hack and her breathing was loud between her parted lips.

At noon the next day, heavily guarded, Deralan shuffled up the ramp and through the port of the waiting ship. His face was deeply pocked and scarred, unrecognizable. Around him was the wailing of the newly enslaved. The inner door clanged shut. In the confined space Deralan’s nose wrinkled with distaste. At take off there was no warning. They slid into a tangled heap at one end of the lightless room.

As he fought free of the others, found a clear space on the floor, Deralan wondered what would become of him if he could not prove his true identity on Simpar.

Once Calna had committed herself to Andro’s plan, she resolutely forgot how far she had veered from the paths of her training. The only remaining indication of the extent of the conflict within her was the splitting headaches which blinded her at times, without warning.

Andro had showed surprising aptness as a pupil. At times she felt that he had taken all of her knowledge and combined it with his own to create a strength beyond anything she had ever before experienced. It was he who had selected Simpar as the symbol of everything he detested about Empire.

They had driven the golden ship deep into the planet crust and waited there for the thrum of directed energy which would tell them that they had been detected. Andro, using the device which collapsed the orbital electrons in matter without releasing the energy, had driven the long slanting corridor to the surface. The ship, completely shielded, lay behind them, deep in the skin of Simpar, utterly undetectable.

Together, disguised by his suggestion as slave buyers from Lell, they had visited the pens, the auction blocks. Though inured through training to the misery on savage planets, Calna felt emotionally staggered by the mere weight of the suffering around her.

Andro, his face altered by her careful surgery, stalked through the open slave marts with an unforgiving grimness in his eyes, in the clamp of his jaw. They knew their danger. Were he to announce his presence too quickly, they would be over-powered by Field Teams before his influence could spread enough to cause a probability deviation.

Calna sensed that Simpar, as well as the other main planets of Empire, was under constant, wary scrutiny. She explained to Andro, saying, “We must free them in such a way that it will appear to be a natural revolt. I have been trained in that sort of thing. Yet if I do it too cleverly my presence here will be suspected.”

He thought it over. “Then why not take this step? As we free them, give them ships and send them away to other planets. And. as they leave, tell them that Andro of Galvan has released them, and to keep that information secret until the word is passed. That will give this influence you talk about, the widest possible chance to operate.”

The Director received the report in person. He immediately beamed it to all Field Teams in Era 4, saving. “Slave revolt on Simpar indicates help being given by Ex-Agent Calna. Request immediate Team concentration at Simpar.”

Within twenty hours the suspicion was verified by direct report from Simpar The Field Team reported, “Ex-Agent Calna and Andro can be immediately eliminated. However, escaped slaves have gone to other planets with information re Andro Request verification of present probability index, as ship power less responsive than before.”

“Index sagging. Approaching danger point. Immediate elimination ordered. Verify. Verify.”

There was no verification. The Director waited until the last possible moment before ordering the slip back to a stable era. The city slipped back and communication with all Field Teams was thus cut.

It was night on Simpar. The triple moons, blood red, arced across the night sky. There were no more ships. The freed slaves, eyes wide and wild in the torchlight raced through the plundered streets. Throughout Solom, the capitol city of Simpar, Andro and Calna could hear distant crashes, faint screams as the last of the traders and buyers were hunted down and murdered. They had underestimated the unreasoning fury of the slaves, and thus found themselves in danger Slaves dressed in the fineries of the traders and buyers and were themselves killed by their fellows.

Thrice Andro had to stand and fight and kill in order to clear their path through the city. The first scattered revolts on the planet had been orderly, and the freed slaves had been spirited away on the captured ships without incident Rut this past night when the last of the fortified marts and pens and mansions of the traders and the government had fallen completely was nightmare.

Andro found a grim humor in having to stand and do battle with slaves who died screaming his name, as though it were a magic incantation.

At last they were out of the city Fires burned unchecked in the heart of the city. At one place flames rose hundreds of feet into the air. The dark plain was ahead of them, and in the darkness they meant to find the slanting tunnel down to the hidden ship

“Now have we won?” Andro demanded as be hurried along beside her.

“I’ll know when we reach the ship. If we’ve won, we cannot reach any other known era.”

The hidden entrance to the tunnel was less than a mile ahead. They ran on, and the night seemed endless as the clamor of the city faded behind them.

Solin’s ship, containing the other agent who had replaced Calna, hung poised and-invisible fifty feet above the mouth of the tunnel. The screens were adjusted to make the plain that stretched out toward the city as bright and clear as though it were bathed in sunshine.

He watched the tiny figures approaching. He knew who the first two were. The third one, the one who followed them, was unknown to him.

Solin felt the tiny shudder and turned almost in anger to Arla, the woman Agent who had replaced Calna. “It’s pointless to keep trying,” he said, “we’re beyond the point where we can return.”

The woman dropped her hands from the panel and turned toward him. Her expression was bleak and hopeless. Her shoulders sagged. She glanced at the screen. “Soon they’ll be near enough.”

“There seems to be no point in killing them now,” Solin said.

Arla gasped. “But it was an order! Your service with that Calna has made you a poor Agent, Solin. You heard the order.”

“We’re trapped here in Four. They can’t reach us and we can’t reach them. So why kill them? The damage is already done.”

“It was an order,” the woman said.

Solin sighed. He sometimes wondered if the male-female teams were not a mistake. According to Field Team theory, it made for a more flexible unit, increased the time that could be spent by any single Team on any single assignment. But it did give rise to a great many petty irritations.

“We took so long finding the tunnel,” the woman said. “That’s what trapped us here. We can make it worth while now by following orders.”

Chapter Four

The Might of Deralan

Deralan, on arrival at Simpar, had been clapped into one of the feeding pens for fattening. He listened to the rumors that brightened the eyes of the one who had been in the pen before his shipment had arrived. Rumors of freedom. Rumors of revolt. They heard violence in the city for many days and nights and at last they were released. The guards were slain and the walls broken down and the gates smashed and the great house where the trader and pen-owner had lived set afire.

Deralan trotted into the city with the rest of them and there he heard the word that he had suspected, that he had not wanted to believe.

“Andro!” they shouted. “Andro of Galvan!” It was rallying cry, battle cry, blood scream. “Andro!”

With sickness in his throat, Deralan dodged into the mouth of an alley and waited until the running steps had thudded into the distance. Dusk had changed slowly to night before he found a lone slave he could overpower.

“What of this Andro? Quick, while you live!”

“Please! He is said to be in the city. He has come back. His face is changed, but he has come back.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t know!”

Deralan made a quick and practiced gesture and then flung the body from him. He joined another wolf pack, snatched a torch, held it high, looked endlessly for a man with the huge strong body of Andro of Galvan.

He found a knife with a blade that suited him. He looted and burned and shouted with the others, but always he searched for Andro. He lost track of the hours. And at last he found a big man who stood with a fair-haired girl behind him and fought well, fought with the skill to be expected of any noble of the House of Galvan. He seemed about to be overpowered when the girl stepped to the side and something gleamed in her hand. The three who still faced the big man folded and dropped into absurdly small heaps on the paving stones.

As the big man turned, the torchlight touched his upper arm. Deralan sucked in his breath as he saw the pale rectangular patch. As they hurried on, Deralan looked at the three bodies. He swallowed hard. Something that swept across them, something the girl had used, had apparently completely removed whole sections of the men’s torsos. That was why the huddled bodies looked so small.

He flung the torch aside to gutter out and followed the man and the girl through the smoke drift of the streets, his fingers hard and tight on the haft of the knife.

Deralan followed them out of the city and across the dark plain. The three dark moons stretched three vague shadows of his crouched body as he followed them. As the ground grew more uneven, he shortened the distance between them. He reversed the knife in his grasp. It had a good balance. Andro’s back was broad. Deralan raised the knife. He poised it. He hurled it with all his strength. In the fractional part of a second before he released it, a great light bathed the entire plain in green-white brilliance. During the last six inches of the swing of his arm it seemed to Deralan that some great outside force had taken his arm and had given it a whip and power beyond anything any man should possess. The odd power snapped the bones of his arm and hurled him screaming into blackness.

Solin sat with his hand on the port control, completely frozen by an astonishment so vast that he could not move. Arla had asked to perform the actual execution. Solin had been glad to comply as he had no heart for it. He opened the port for her and when she had the hand weapon readied, he lighted the target area for her. Andro and Calna were in perfect range, a hundred yards away and fifty feet below them. In the instant of touching the lights he had seen the third figure in the act of hurling what seemed to be a knife at the pair leading him.

The unknown man had hurled the knife. There had been a keening whistle indicative of high velocity and a full-throated chunk. Arla had fallen dead with the knife blade in her brain, the guard of the haft flat against her forehead.

No person could throw a knife that way. Yet they had. He had seen it. The thrower lay crumpled on the ground with both Andro and Calna staring at him.

Solin dropped the ship to the ground beside the hidden tunnel entrance. He stepped over Arla’s body and out into the now restricted area of green-white light.

Transition rested in Era 3 beside the endless thunder of the space port.

The Socionetics Board had launched a full scale investigation of the circumstances surrounding the loss of Era 4, and the loss of the thirty-odd Field Teams who had been trapped there when the index of probability dropped below the point where Agent ship power could accomplish the return.

The Board was exercising its prerogative of interviewing the staff members, one at a time. The Board met in the huge central chamber with the luminescent mural depicting the eventual merger of twenty-six co-existent worlds. Though now, of course, there were only twenty-four and thus the mural was, in that sense, a rather wry joke.

After three weeks of review and deliberation, the Director was called in to hear the decision of the Board.

The decision was very simple and very direct. It was given to him in the form of an order. Improper controls and criminal laxness have lost us two complete spheres of eventual cultural expansion. There will no longer be a continuing effort to accelerate the extrapolated cultural pattern of all backward eras simultaneously. All Field Teams will be concentrated on one era. All existing equipment will be immediately altered to make only that era, plus the basic three, available to Agent ships. Era 20 is closest to unity status. All effort is to be concentrated there. If, by any chance, Era 20 should be lost to us, all Field Team activities will be cancelled. No further acceleration of cultures will be attempted. All equipment except one master ship will be altered so as to permit only slip between basic eras. Periodic surveys with the master ship will be made. When each peripheral culture has attained proper probability status, then unity will be undertaken, but it will achieve that status in its own way and in its own time.

“And if unity is achieved with Era 20 without trouble?” the Director asked in a low voice.

“Then all effort will be concentrated on the next era closest to a possible unity status.”

The Director was permitted to leave. He gave the orders he was required to give. He gave an additional one of his own. He called all remaining Field Teams in for complete indoctrination on Era 20, for retraining, for re-analysis.

Thirty-three Field Teams trapped in Era 4. Count Andro and Calna, and subtract Arla. Sixty-seven persons. So few. So very few.

The golden pyramidal ships sat in a closed circle in such a way that the shields combined to form a cone of silence. The cone rose black and tall near the palaces of Rael.

In the streets they said, in hushed tones, “The Great Ones speak again together.”

Andro had matured in the past months. Authority was stamped on his face, and dignity was imprinted on each movement.

“It is time to speak,” he said after a long silence. “I do not pretend to know how you are trapped here. It has been explained to me. I have been told that my activities caused this era to diverge from some pattern or other. You say that this era has become less probable, in relation to your basic eras. Be that as it may. The damage was done. You were trapped. Through the urging of Solin and Calna, you consented to help me impose my will on what is left of Empire. That has been done. There is no more resistance. We are the object of superstitious awe on every inhabited planet of Empire. Now you must feel that your task is ended. I say to you that it is not ended. With your consent, I wish to make you my agents, give each of you an area to govern until such time as self-government is possible. You have been told the things in which I believe. You do not need specific orders. It is not easy to be considered a god, as I now am. If you do your assigned tasks properly, there will come a time when I am no longer considered to be a god. That time will come long after all of us have died. I am urging this course because it seems to me that in this way this era can be gently guided back toward a point where eventually your own people will once again be able to make contact.”

The trapped Agents showed no great enthusiasm.

Calna took Andro’s place and spoke. “I urge you to accept. Through the incident of Arla’s death, we have a piece of knowledge that they do not have back at Transition. We know now that while we were attempting to build backward eras up to the point where unity could be achieved, a stronger force was seeking to make all frames divergent. We do not know what that stronger force is. In my own case, I know I was guided when I set this entire pattern in motion. I suspected it then. I know it now. One thing is puzzling. Why was Deralan made the agent of saving Andro and myself from certain death? Divergence had already been achieved. Why was it done in such a way that we would learn of this outside force which interferes with the achievement of unity for our co-existent eras? There is one possible answer. We were saved so that we could be the focal point of this successful effort of the past few months. We were advised of outside interference so that we should be able to content ourselves with these new limitations.”

Solin spoke. “Content ourselves? How is that meant?”

“Through knowledge that we are part of a master plan guided by some race, some civilization whose abilities make ours look like the efforts of children,” Calna replied

“What sort of master plan is it which keeps the basic eras from achieving unity with all sister probability frames? That seems like progress in the wrong direction,” another Agent said with a note of anger.

“I say,” said Solin, “that now that we have given Andro the assistance he asked, we should concentrate on using what skills and talents we have to devise a power source ample enough to enable us to slip back to our own era.”

There was a mutter of agreement. Andro turned to Calna and shrugged.

He said to all of them, “I see that Solin’s suggestion is your wish. So be it.” He looked at Calna. “You will work with them?”

“I made my choice quite a long time ago,” she said. Together they went back to the palaces where new laws were being written for a galactic race.

Deralan knew at last that the madness was leaving him. It began to leave when he was willing to admit to himself that he had been mad. Something had swept across his brain, twisting it, convulsing it. At last he recognized his environment, knew with a sense of shock that he was in a cell deep under the main palace, a cell that he had filled and emptied many times in what now seemed like a previous incarnation.

Co-mingled with his weariness and lethargy was a new, odd sense of mental power, as though the twisting force had also liberated areas of his brain that had previously been dormant. Throughout the uncounted days of torment he had heard a constant shrill chorus of thin voices, as though he lay in the midst of a vast throng of children at play. Now he could bring back the voices at will, merely by reaching to hear them.

When food, was brought, one of the shrill voices separated itself from the others and became so distinct that he could understand scattered phrases, “—should be executed — Andro will decide — so many things changed — the Great Ones—”

And slowly Deralan came to know that he was listening to the thoughts of those near him. For a long time he listened. With practice he grew more acute, more certain of this new power. Once, when food was brought on an earthen dish, he willed the movement of opening the fingers of his right hand, not opening them, but willing the movement to open them with all his strength. The guard stared stupidly down at the smashed dish and scattered food. He massaged his fingers for a few moments.

With this start, Deralan began to practice with great care, making sure that what he was doing remain undiscovered. He found he could trip those who walked by the cell. At times he wondered if it was merely madness, but there was the evidence of his eyes and ears to be considered.

When he was certain of himself he caused a guard to leave the cell door unlocked. Deralan walked out. It was simplicity itself to cause every other guard to look the other way. He walked through as though invisible. He climbed the flights of stairs up to ground level and went out through all the gates into the streets of the city. He found a man of his own general build and guided the man into a narrow place between two buildings and caused the man to strip and don the prison garments. The man obeyed with an utterly blank expression, with no sign of confusion or fear.

Suddenly Deralan realized how pointless this attempt at escape was. This inexplicable gift which had been thrust upon him at the moment of hurling the knife was too powerful to be used for such a petty affair as escape. He turned soberly and walked back toward the main palace.

He found Andro and the fair-haired girl of the dark plain in the apartments that had once belonged to Shain. He sent the guards striding woodenly down the corridor and entered through the arched doorway.

Andro stared at him, his eyes widening. “Deralan!” he gasped.

“Where is Shain?”

“Shain is dead by his own hand. Larrent and Masec are in exile.”

“You are Emperor?”

“The last one, Deralan. How did you get by the guards?”

“How do you plan to dispose of me?”

“By trial. You’ll receive justice.”

He stood and listened to their thoughts, first sorting out Andro’s, then the woman’s. Andro was merely puzzled, not afraid. The woman intrigued him. Two voices seemed to come from her. One from here and now. Another background voice that spoke of far places and wondrous things and skills beyond imagining, of others like her who were nearby. He related it immediately to the thoughts of the guards who had spoken of the Great Ones. He changed his plan immediately. He had intended to kill them both, setting them against each other to kill. But these two were not the real opposition.

“Take me to your people,” he said aloud to the woman. She reached for a glittering object which hung from her wide belt. He remembered the three who died so quickly and strangely on Simpar. He made her fling the glittering object into a corner. Her eyes widened with fear and then assumed the familiar blankness. She came with him as he willed her to walk. Andro gave a hoarse cry of alarm and Deralan forced him back into a far corner, left him standing there.

The woman guided him to a place just outside the city where a ring of golden pyramidal objects stood around a building that was new, oddly constructed, covered with hoods and twisted screens of wire.

The woman took him into the building where there were scores of people at work. They stared at him oddly. These were the enemy.

In the center of the floor was the cube on which they worked. Cables as big around as a man’s thigh writhed away from the cube. A shining metal column rose upward from the cube through the roof high overhead.

Deralan looked at the cube and he was puzzled. He had a feeling of wrongness. He stared at it and saw wrongness, and an obscure clumsiness, and a childish ineffectuality. He walked closer to it and in his mind saw the image of the way it should be. The people were forgotten. Only the power cube was important. He brushed by those who tried to bar the way and reached into the cube where tiny tubes glowed and relays chattered. Slowly at first, and then with increasing dexterity he began to take down circuits. As they tried to pull him away, he turned with impatience and smote them back with a careless easy power of the mind which sent them sprawling. Soon he noted that they were helping him, and he heard his own voice giving instructions that sounded meaningless and yet had a sound of rightness as opposed to the wrongness he was eliminating.

After fifty hours of ceaseless labor the work was done. The blue cube was like nothing any of the exiled Agents had ever seen before. It utilized only a fractional part of the power they had hooked up to lead into it. It had ceased to be a cube and had become a geometric form which dizzied them as they looked at it. It had nine sides, yet only ten edges. The effect was mildly hypnotic, and the attempt to relate visual evidence to known geometric forms gave it the look of being in constant flux.

Deralan had collapsed the moment the work was finished. They had taken him to a couch. His eyes were wide and he babbled endlessly and sucked at his fingers.

The cables led to one of the Agent ships which had been brought as close as possible to the main entrance to the building.

Calna looked at them all in anger. “Are we to be superstitious children? Are we to be afraid of this? He was used before, by ‘them’. Now he has been used again. Once he had fulfilled his purpose, he was discarded.”

“What will it do?” Solin asked.

“I say it will do just what it was intended to do. Take us back to our own era,” she said.

Hesitation faded. Two Agents stepped into the ship and port folded shut behind them. The others watched, expecting the mistiness which would indicate that the ship had slipped properly. Instead the ship was just... gone. The heavy cables fell to the ground and the air, rushing into the place where the ship had been, made a sound like the cracking of a great whip.

One by one they departed. Solin was last. He left alone in the ship which he had shared with Arla. There was one golden ship left. And Calna. Andro had come. He watched her thoughtfully.

“You may go,” he said.

“I shall stay here, Andro. I belong now.”

She went back to the palace with him.

The long days went by. Often she went to a high window from which she could see the building in which the cube throbbed and shifted. Many times she walked to that place and watched the cube and touched her fingers lightly to the side of the small golden ship.

Andro sensed her discontent. He was busy with the new structure of government which he was building carefully. There was little that they could share.

She remembered other days, and other times, and realized more strongly each day how savage and primitive an era this was.

In a place that was no-place and in a time that was no-time, the thought record halted and waited. It waited, not in the sense of elapsing time, hut in the sense of an endless interruption. Impatience was not known to the intelligence directing the record. Other endless computations continued. But the directing intelligence, which did exist in a finite, though variable, space time, felt a subtle irritation.

This particular phase of this particular problem had been completed. The basic questions had been answered. An unseen hand had reached into the remote past, had twisted probabilities to the ultimate degree of distortion. In its simplest sense, false worlds had been created. The historical derivations had been weighed. Cause-effects had been measured in all temporal directions.

And now the ultimate step in the problem was held in stasis, merely because of the almost unpredictable whim of a female who, being a structural portion of an experiment in improbability, was herself improbable...

He came to her as she stood at the high window, and he said, “You must return. I know that. Come back, if it can be done, and if you have the desire. I can keep you a prisoner no longer.”

“Not a prisoner, Andro.”

“You must go back.”

“I will return if I can. But you’re right.”

They went to the golden ship where the cables were already attached, waiting.

She turned as she entered the port, and lifted her hand slowly. Her eyes were misted. She turned quickly to the controls. The port folded shut.

And thus, with the whip crack of her departure, the universe itself, Andro’s time and place and cities and suns and planets and wars and history — snapped out as though a quick finger had touched the light switch, leaving a room in darkness. The webs of probability had been pulled tight, twisted. And now the pressure was released. The record had been kept. The experiment was over.

Probability is like a plastic which is formed with a molecular “memory.” It can be distorted, but once released, it will revert.

The reversion will be a function of time, rather than space. Tangential worlds can be artificially created. So long as the artificial pressure is maintained, they will seem to “exist.” But with the release of that pressure...

The Agent Ship had plunged into the crust of Zeran in Era 4, powerless to save the sole remaining ship, the flagship of Andro’s fleet. The crippled flagship swung lower, out of control. Solin, at the controls of the Agent ship, picked up the crippled ship in his screens and swung up through the planet crust in order to be within close range in case anything might be done. He halted the Agent ship twenty feet below ground level just as the crippled ship landed with a tremendous jarring crash.

Calna moved up behind him and watched the screen over Solin’s shoulder. A powerful man staggered out through the huge rent in the skin of the ship, dragging an unconscious dark-haired girl. They saw him glance up at the dark skies, his face twisted with fury and anger. He fumbled for a pulse in the girl’s throat, then stood silently, shoulders slumped, in stoic grief. Again he searched the blackness overhead, and ran into the city. His wounds had weakened him. He weaved as he ran, but he tugged a weapon from his holster.

“Can we save him once more?” Calna asked calmly.

“Not this time. They’ve seen him run into the city.”

“At least we could follow. Report the end of it.”

They took the portable screen from the rack, left the ship standing there, sliced through the depths of the city, following Andro in his blundering run. They saw him take refuge in a blind alley, shadowed by the eternal blue dusk. They saw him brace his shoulders against the wall, waiting for them to find him.

Calna and Solin waited directly below him.

Soon the dying man was spotted. He used the weapon well. His last shot was fired from within the boundary of death itself, the finger tightening in the last convulsion. Deralan came and cautiously inspected the body. He signaled to the others to take the body away.

Solin started back along the fresh tunnel, but Calna did not follow. He turned and stared at her. “What is it?”

“I... I don’t know. A very odd feeling. As though somehow we have made a mistake that we could not predict. We should have cut up through to him, saved him.”

“And turn a decent rebellion into a pseudo-religious revival?” Solin said.

“I know all that. It was just an odd feeling. But strong, Solin. Very strong.”

Sarrz, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Socionetics, turned in his chair so that he would not have to look at the face of the female Agent who had asked to speak with him after she and Solin had made a rather disappointing, but unavoidable, report on the demise of one Andro, rebel of Era 4.

“You say you are troubled.”

She chose her words carefully. “I wish to request EC, Deputy Director. I have had odd imaginings. Possibly the strain of the last few months in Era 4.”

“Do you care to tell me any of them?”

She shrugged. “They are all a bit ridiculous. It seemed that in some other existence we had saved Andro rather than permitting him to be killed. I know how unfortunate a mistake it would have been to save him again. Also, I found myself thinking that we had lost some of the eras by permitting too great a probability divergence from our basic eras. And during the last sleep I dreamed that we have a power source which can cause slip to any era, no matter how divergent.”

“Those are concrete examples. But what is your attitude toward them?”

“Awe, I would say. Foreboding. And a feeling of having led other existences.”

Sarrz said, “All of us have dreams. I dreamed of dying at this desk. I have dreamed of losing all the worlds.”

“And you feel fear?”

“Tension. Doubt. But those, I feel, are the result of our primitive heritage. It is in our blood and our bones to think of only one space and one time. Now we know that there are twenty-six available space-times contiguous to our own which we can reach, and an infinite number of others that we cannot yet reach. I would not worry too much, Agent Calna. We live in a day of oddness, of new philosophic evaluations, of invisible doors which have opened so that we can step through. The first wild dogs that joined savage man in his caves must have had uneasy dreams by the fires of night. And maybe, Agent Calna, we are no higher in our possible evolutionary scale than those dogs were in relation to the man they joined. Even now, at this moment, some inconceivable intelligence from our remote future may be tampering with our acts and the consequences of our acts. Such tampering would leave elusive traces in your mind, in my mind. Possibly every time we enter a strange room and have the feeling that we have been in that room before, it is because we actually have been in that room, in some fragmentary part of a vast experiment which was later abandoned. Our present actions, this very conversation, this room... it could all be part of an artificially induced environment merely in order to test your reaction and mine. In fact, you may not even exist in the ordinary sense of the word, but only as a manufactured entity thrown into my personal equation as some portion of a test for a solution.”

The girl smiled uncertainly. “This begins to sound like one of the conversations planned to disprove the existence of everything except the mind of the beholder.”

“I will approve EC if you insist.”

“I think I must insist.”

“You can report to EC at once, if you wish. I will reassign Solin, and give you a new partner when you return.”

The girl left. Sarrz sat in utter stillness for a long time. The girl’s request had crystallized some of his own weary doubts as to the rightness of the entire program on which they had embarked.

He sat and felt a sour yearning for the days gone by, the days when man could concern himself with only one environment — back in the functional simplicity of the third atomic era.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Escape to Chaos

Chapter One

Chapter Two Calna

Chapter Three Revolt on Simpar!

Chapter Four The Might of Deralan