The Overlords of War (25 page)

Another question he thought about long and hard was the durability of the personalities. Too short a life might endanger his plan. On the other hand the idea of giving these undead women an over-long existence . . . Even though he was treating them as mere machines, he was repelled by the thought of their lasting long enough to be exposed to the tender mercies of Veran’s men. He ended up by settling for personalities with a probable duration of forty-eight hours plus or minus ten percent. After that time Veran’s recruits would lose all semblance of life and without adequate supportive facilities would die beyond recall. If the situation worked out as he hoped, it would all be over in a few hours, if not in a matter of minutes. If it didn’t proceed that quickly, Veran would have time to regain control over his men even if it meant ruthlessly wiping out his “recruits,” and the plan would fail.

At this point Corson was wondering how many bodies to revive. Too limited a number might lead to arguments among the men, who would probably appeal to their leader for arbitration. Too large an invasion, apart from posing problems of transportation which Corson had not yet solved, might excite suspicion among Veran’s little army.

He estimated that it must comprise about six hundred men. Accordingly he decided to revive about two thousand women. But that was too many for him to tackle by himself in reasonable time. Unenthusiastically he endowed a score of bodies with personalities which would enable them to act as his assistants, turning them into docile, painstaking, tireless instruments. He had trouble stopping himself from bullying them, for their dumbness and their unchanging smiles got on his nerves.

What it came down to, he told himself, was that no industrialist had ever owned so many slaves, no conqueror had ever led such a horde of Amazons, no sultan had ever boasted such a harem, as he now had at his disposal.

But it was simply not his style.

When he was certain he could revive the whole two thousand in a few hours, he turned his attention to clothing them. Not a single garment was to be found in the mausoleum; as he thought bitterly, butterflies don’t wear clothes. He reconnoitered a nearby planetary system and, by shuttling back and forth in time, eventually located a military supply depot which he robbed without compunction. He hoped his depredations would not unleash a timequake in the planet’s history, but he thought it unlikely. From experience he knew that despite computerized records large stocks vanished from the stores of all armies now and then without entraining untoward aftereffects. Some clerk would spend a few sleepless nights inventing a more or less convincing explanation for the discrepancy in his stock of overalls. At worst he would be court-martialed. But that wasn’t the sort of person who made history.

Transportation was another matter. He almost appealed to Aergistal. But he put off that ultimate solution. The idea of asking advice from the gods was unbearable. He retained too clear a recollection of the scorn in that great voice. He was willing enough to be a pawn, but by the seven circles of hell he would not let himself become a robot! Perhaps that was a childish attitude, but it was his own.

At last he hit on a solution which though inelegant was nonetheless practicable. With the help of his assistants he dismantled several of the internal fitments of the mausoleum and obtained enough metal plates to build a reasonably airtight container. After all, he himself had traveled from Aergistal to Uria in a sort of coffin. A pegasone could carry a good deal of material across space-time provided the journey was not too long. That was how Veran transported his equipment. He had had to come to Uria from the far end of the universe, and twenty-five men plus their gear was as much as his pegasones could manage. Corson established with a few trials that between here and Uria he might shift two hundred women at one go.

When he gave the signal for departure, he had spent a little more than two weeks on the mausoleum world. He had long ago used up the rations he had brought with him, but he had obtained plenty of extra provisions from the warehouses on the neighboring planet. For lack of anything better he had kept his helpers going on serum and glucose drawn from the life-support system.

He was almost at the end of his resources. He would dearly have liked to rest awhile, but he preferred to spend no longer than he had to on this dismal planet.

With close attention he supervised the revival of the first batch and the implantation of their artificial personalities. A tired smile crossed his face when he saw the two hundred women leave their couches, parting the sterile mist which had served them for shrouds, assemble in the central aisle, and line up as though on parade. Then nausea turned him inside out like a glove.

One of his helpers took a step toward him. He waved her—it?— aside.

“It’s okay,” he said. As he would have done to a human being.

But he could read nothing in the splendid violet eyes trained on him, neither comprehension nor pity; they were like soft stones. Reflex, not surprise, had provoked the motion. These creatures could hear, they obeyed his voice, they even possessed a limited vocabulary which he had carefully worked out and included in their programing, but they had no understanding. They did not exist as people. Each time he was tempted to forget their nature, those eyes would remind him, and the overprecise movements they made among the shadows. They were no more than crude projections of his own mind. Behind their eyes there was no one else for him to meet.

The door control at the exit was not deceived. It would not open for the procession of the undead. He had to stand on the threshold while they filed past him, picked up the overalls he had dumped in piles on the grass, and put them on. Then, on his word of command, they drew hoods over their heads and entered the rough metal box he had fashioned where, at another order, they sank into a hypnotic trance. He fastened its door and attached the pegasone’s traces and climbed into his saddle and plunged into time with his cargo of ghosts.

He set down on Uria, near Veran’s camp, in a secluded spot and at a time not long after he had set out on his embassy to the future. He would not be away from here again more than a few seconds, although the return, the revival of another contingent and the second trip would take him several hours. He made ten trips, which took up whole days of his subjective time. The third day he broke down in tears and fell asleep. The fifth day the pegasone showed signs of exhaustion and he had to wait until it recovered, his mind empty and dry. At the moment when he left the mausoleum world for the last time he called his helpers together and pronounced a single word. They collapsed, still smiling.

He aroused the recruits and marched them in a long column toward the encampment. A good distance from the perimeter defenses he halted them in plain sight and hailed one of the sentries. A moment later Veran showed himself.

“You look tired, Corson,” he said. “What have you brought us?”

“Recruits,” Corson said.

Veran made a sign. Gunners trained their weapons on the veiled forms standing in a curve around the camp. Others activated scanners.

“No trickery, I hope, Corson! Otherwise your collar—”

“None of us is armed,” Corson interrupted. “Except myself.”

“No weapons,” a technician confirmed.

“Good,” Veran said. “So you found out how to convince them, up there in the future. I approve of efficiency, Corson. Perhaps even they felt themselves touched by ambition. Advance the first rank. And tell them to take their hoods off so I can get a sight of them.”

Everyone in the camp had gathered behind him, except the pickets on guard duty. Corson noted with satisfaction that the men seemed less alert, less rigidly organized than when he saw them for the first time. Weeks of inactivity on Uria had taken their toll. It was not so much that discipline had slipped as that the atmosphere had changed. Corson’s practiced eye picked out the almost imperceptible evidence: one soldier who had hooked his thumbs in his pockets, another placidly sucking a little metal tube.

He strained to identify by their security collars the members of Veran’s personal bodyguard. He counted just under a dozen of them.

He uttered a single meaningless command. The front rank advanced. Veran made a sign. The defensive wire ceased to glow. Two soldiers rolled a section of it aside. Veran seemed to have lost all suspicion. But Corson knew how crafty the warlord’s mind was. He would not let anyone enter the camp without checking for himself.

After a pause, the second rank followed the first, and the third, and the fourth, their clothing making a rustling sound. Corson shouted another order. He was sure no one in the camp had guessed the true nature of these recruits. They were all tall, and their loose-cut military overalls hid the shape of their bodies. At his voice, in a unison movement, the first rank threw back their heads and let their hoods slip down.

Now there was no sound, not even footfalls or the brushing of cloth on cloth, except for the distant whistling and grunting of a pegasone having a dream.

In the camp someone stifled a sneeze, or a laugh. Then someone else began to shout.

“Women! They’re only women!”

“There are two thousand of them,” Corson said with deliberation. “They are strong and obedient.”

Veran did not react. His head did not turn by the least fraction of a degree. Only his eyes moved. He studied the faces of the women. Then he bent his gaze on Corson.

“Strong and obedient,” he echoed.

Yonder in the camp the men had started to fidget, leaning forward, craning their necks, their eyes popping from their sockets.

“Well,” Veran said without raising his voice, “you can just take them back where they came from.”

An unarmed soldier, who must have been off duty, jumped the fence at a point where it had not been rolled aside, and headed toward the women at a run. One of Veran’s personal guards took aim at him, but Veran struck the gun aside. Corson understood and admired his quick thinking. He was afraid, but he wasn’t showing it. He hoped this was a trap, that the soldier would fall into it and his fate would serve as a lesson to the others.

But this was no trap, or at least not of the kind he was hoping for. When the soldier was halfway to the women, Corson uttered a key word, clearly but quietly. He did not want the men in the camp to mistake what he said for an order to attack.

The front rank undid their overalls and took a half pace forward. The garments slid to the ground. They wore nothing else. They stood among the tall dense grass, haloed by the sunlight. Their hair fell around their shoulders and over their breasts. They scarcely moved but for their slow deep breathing, and kept their empty hands open, palms to the front.

There was a sort of roar from the camp, not a cry or a call, but a dull groan like a monstrous bellows, a unison gasp from hundreds of lungs.

A score of soldiers rushed forward. Others dropped their guns and gave chase, uncertain whether they were running after the others to bring them back or because they were afraid of getting there last. One of Veran’s guards made to open fire, but his neighbor pushed him off balance. Some of the soldiers took the precaution of breaking the power packs on their weapons before likewise making for the women.

Corson had thought of saying something, addressing the soldiers over Veran’s head despite the risks. But it was no longer necessary. The camp was emptying. Veran was fighting his own men. Bodies fell. Someone was trying to reactivate the perimeter fence, not without trouble, for it was blinking on and off. Clearly Veran was still trying to avoid more than minimal bloodshed. But he had no one around him now except his personal guards. A few other men, demoralized, were fighting with little enthusiasm.

It looked as though Veran was going to give in; Corson saw him raise his hand. The shots grew fewer. Then night came down. It swallowed up women, camp, soldiers, and all.

Irresolutely Corson took a few steps backward. Then he dropped to the ground. Veran had played his master card, the light-inhibitor. Now perhaps he would turn his guns loose at random on the neighborhood of the camp. Corson tried simultaneously to burrow into the earth and to crawl away. Over the muffled uproar that filled the darkness he heard the sound of a footfall. He rolled over, folded into a ball, straightened like a spring, jumped up, almost lost his balance, struggled to retain it while flailing the air with his hands.

A grip on his arm spun him around. An arm tilted back his chin and crushed his throat. He heard Veran pant in his ear.

“You fooled me, Corson. You were tougher than I thought. I could kill you for getting me in a mess like this! But I’m leaving you the key—the key to your collar. Think of the others.”

Something fell between Corson’s feet. The grip relaxed. His skull seemed to swell up as though it would burst. He dropped on all fours, gasping for breath. Somewhere in the darkness behind him Veran was running into the forest, in search of the pegasone Corson had not taken the trouble to hide. Corson heard him shout in a mocking voice half muffled by the inhibition field, “I’ll get back on my feet, Corson! You’ll see!”

There came the fierce howl of a heat beam, shrunk by the field to a wasp-like buzz. Corson ducked. Eyes closed, he waited. Smells rose to his nostrils: smoke, burning wood, scorching meat. Beyond his lids the universe glowed.

He opened his eyes. Day had returned. Still in a crouch, he looked around. More than a hundred of the women had been killed, and a score of soldiers. A dozen more would never be good for anything again. Part of the camp was in flames.

Rising, he turned in the direction of the forest and saw what remained of Veran. The pegasone had vanished.

Veran had played his last card, and lost. He had managed to get himself killed in two ways at once. The heat beam—possibly aimed at him—had touched him just as he was mounting the pegasone. A fraction of a second earlier the beast, alert to the danger, had shied through time without caring what was nearby. It had taken half of Veran with it, and his light-inhibitor.

Somewhere in the universe, Corson thought, there must be a pegasone drowning in night and silence, struggling in unfathomable darkness at the bottom of a well which no energy could reach until the inhibitor’s power pack ran out or until it managed to shake off the device during one of its frantic time leaps. But why should Veran have taken his pegasone, when his camp was full of the beasts? Then Corson realized. He must have wanted access to the memory of that particular pegasone, to find out how and by whom he had been outwitted.