“Yes, it looks like Makrow will win after all,” I had to admit at last, and it depressed me to do so. But hope dies hard. “If the cavalry doesn’t arrive first, of course.” Then another terrible certainty began to emerge in my positronic circuits. How had I missed it earlier? If Slovoban had taken so long to get here from as nearby as Module 15, it meant that….
“Well, that’s was I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t think Vasily can expect help from anyone but us.” The Old Man’s words fell like a bucket of ice water on the flickering embers of my optimism. “Haven’t you figured out yet that something very weird is going on with time? I was less than a hundred yards away when the bomb went off, and I ran straight here with all the strength of my suit. But by my watch, it took me more than two hours to arrive. The funny thing is that I never had the impression that I had slowed my pace at all. And look at these two—”
“You mean they’re generating some kind of… temporal discontinuity? That’s nonsense! Outside of a hyperspace portal, it’s theoretically impossible. Time is relativistic,” I started to say, quite sure about the small bit of physics I knew. But when I looked where he was pointing, I shut up immediately: not at Makrow 34 and Vasily, but at one of the side entrances to the module’s transit hall.
Two survivors of the white-robed human-bomb were just about to leave the module, looking exactly like people who were running as fast as their legs could carry them.
Except that, from my perspective, they were practically motionless; one of them was even suspended impossibly in midair. Only with my acute electronic vision could I perceive that his legs and arms were indeed moving, infinitesimally.
I shouldn’t have been surprised—not after seeing the orange Pegasus, the hail, the flying ants, and all the rest, right? But all the same, it simply floored me.
“You’re right. This is a time acceleration zone. Time is passing at least ten thousand times faster than normal, and those two are the epicenter,” I heard myself say, in the pedantic, neutral tone I’ve always hated. “Remarkable. Very interesting.”
“Maybe, for a physicist. For us, and especially for Vasily, it’s terrible.” Looking at me sidelong, Old Man Slovoban again unsheathed his long sword and lowered the fierce Japanese war mask over his already masklike face. “Okay, buratino, what are you planning to do? This means that if we don’t help him ourselves… ” His voice was distorted by the metal sounding board inside the mask. “I still think we most likely have a bit of a chance, though. There’s a possible future which, from what I can tell, neither of them has taken into consideration.”
It took me nearly a second, but at last I understood what he was talking about.
Wow.
But I didn’t reply. There was no need.
All right, it seemed we had no choice. Everything for the good guys to win. To be on the winning side, even if we wouldn’t be around to enjoy it.
I wondered if Old Man Slovoban was also a chess player. Probably….
I drew my maser, checked the charge level, examined the few half-melted joints remaining in the shoulder of my detached right arm—all the little delaying maneuvers one does before facing up to the only possible course of action.
And then, together, with a savage war cry, the Romani and I went after Makrow 34.
Twelve
I’m telling the story, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it all turned out okay, right?
But don’t expect me to tell you exactly how it happened.
All I can say is that Slovoban and I ran full speed into the aurora. We both did what had to be done, and there was a bright flash of light, and another, and another, and then—a great darkness.
The next thing I remember are the faces of Sandokan Mompracem and Einstein leaning over me. “Good, he seems to be recovering; shouldn’t be any lasting brain damage.” The image I had of them was pretty blurry, and I realized that I was looking at them through a single eye.
It turned out, not only was my other eye missing along with nearly half my head, but also one leg from the hip down, and the foot and part of the calf of the other. All destroyed by a series of blasts from my own maser (my colleagues couldn’t understand that part), still gripped tight by my left hand, which had been welded nearly shut.
I had suffered inexplicably few wounds to my torso, though. My cerebral computer was returning to full capacity. The peculiar blackout I’d suffered—the first time any such thing had happened to a pozzie—had been caused by some sort of temporary sensory overload from my constant adjustments to the shifting realities generated by the two Gaussicals. Or so Einstein theorized—and who was I, barely an eyewitness, to contradict an astrophysics expert?
While my buddies were picking me up with care so that I didn’t fall apart completely, I looked down and saw, to my great satisfaction, that Makrow 34 would never again be a problem for Vasily, for me, for the Galactic Trade Confederation, or for anyone else.
A good twelve inches of dai-katana jutted from his left eye socket like an impossible steel pupil. His right eye was opened ridiculously wide, forever frozen along with the rest of his face in a curious, almost human expression of surprise. As if he couldn’t understand how such a thing had happened.
Good for the Old Man. At last he’d had his revenge.
A couple of Grodo volunteers from Public Health and Hygiene (real volunteers this time, not wolves in sheep’s clothing), also looking like they didn’t understand what had happened, were covering the Cetian’s body with a white blanket, preparing to cart it off on an antigrav stretcher.
Another pair of volunteers, Colossaurs this time, were huffing and puffing under the apparently immense weight of another stretcher, long and with no antigrav system. Bouncing and sticking out from under this white blanket were a pair of feet and a long stretch of leg. On top of the sheet lay a tray, from which a very familiar Japanese war mask jeered at me for the last time.
I turned around to ask Einstein about it, but he cut me off. “Don’t even try. Your thoracic compressor was the only part of your torso that got torn apart. I’m sorry, but that was Old Man Slovoban’s last battle—at least he fought well to the end. His… assistants have already been captured. Actually, most of them turned themselves in, and none offered much resistance. That was how we learned how he managed to escape the attack on the Estrella Rom: he had time to get himself into the suit of armor he was wearing.” He pointed at the long figure that the Colossaurs were just then carrying out the door. “Not only did the suit have enough servomotors to move an army, it was also a fully functioning space suit. He must have hidden out among the debris from the station and evaded the Chimera’s sensors. Later, his flunkies smuggled him aboard here, armor and all, in one of those long, narrow, heavy boxes. There were lots of them around today, didn’t you notice?”
Of course: heavy boxes, ten feet long. That was the detail I’d been missing. How hadn’t I seen it earlier? In front of my eyes the whole time.
Well, it didn’t matter now. All’s well that ends well.
But had it really ended well? What about Vasily?
“Vaaa… ” I managed to half croak and half stammer.