The Chalice of Death (44 page)

Ewing frowned, trying to work out the intricacies of the problem. Well, it didn't matter, he thought. The step had been taken.

For better or for worse, the time-track had been altered.

Chapter Thirteen

Ewing checked out of the Grand Valloin Hotel that next afternoon. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that the management had awarded him that week's free rent; otherwise, thanks to the kidnaping, he would never have been able to settle up. He had only ten credits, and those were gifts from his phantom rescuer, now dead. The bill came to more than a hundred.

The desk-robot was distantly polite as Ewing signed the forms severing him from relationship with the hotel, waiving right to sue for neglected property, and announcing notification of departure from Valloin. “I hope you have enjoyed your stay in this hotel,” the robot said in blurred mechanical tones as Ewing finished.

Ewing eyed the metal creature jaundicedly and said, “Oh, yes. Very much. Very much indeed.” He shoved the stack of papers across the marbled desktop and accepted his receipted bill. “You'll have my baggage delivered to the spaceport?” he asked.

“Of course, sir. The voucher guarantees it.”

“Thanks,” Ewing said.

He strolled through the sumptuous lobby, past the light-fountain, past the relaxing-chairs, past the somewhat battered area of the energitron booth, where robots were busily replastering and repainting the damage. It was nearly as good as new. By the end of the day, there would scarcely be an indication that a man had died violently there only three days before.

He passed several Sirians on his way through the lobby to the front street, but he felt oddly calm all the same. So far as Rollun Firnik and the others were concerned, the Corwinite Baird Ewing had died under torture last Twoday. Anyone resembling him resembled him strictly by coincidence. He walked boldly through the cluster of Sirians and out onto the street level.

It was late afternoon. The street-glow was beginning to come up. A bulletin transmitted via telestat had informed the hotel patrons that eighteen minutes of light rain was scheduled for 1400 that Fiveday, and Ewing had delayed his departure accordingly. Now the streets were fresh and sweet-smelling.

Ewing boarded the limousine that the hotel used for transporting its patrons to and from the nearby spaceport, and looked around for his final glance at the Grand Valloin Hotel. He felt tired and a little sad at leaving Earth; there were so many reminders of past glories here, so many signs of present decay. It had been an eventful day for him, but yet curiously eventless; he was returning to Corwin with nothing concrete gained, nothing learned but the fact that there was no help to be had.

He pondered the time-travel question for a moment. Obviously the Earther machine—along with other paradoxical qualities—was able to create matter where none had existed before. It had drawn from
somewhere
the various Ewing bodies, of which at least two and possibly more had existed simultaneously. And it seemed that once a new body was drawn from the fabric of time, it remained in existence, conterminous with his fellows. Otherwise, Ewing thought, my refusal to go back and carry out the rescue would have snuffed me out. It didn't. It merely ended the life of that “Ewing” in the torture-chamber on Twoday.

“Spaceport,” a robot voice announced.

Ewing followed the line into the Departures shed. He noticed there were few Earthers in Departures; only some Sirians and a few non-humanoid aliens were leaving Earth. He joined a line that inched up slowly to a robot clerk.

When it was Ewing's turn, he presented his papers. The robot scanned them quickly.

“You are Baird Ewing of the Free World of Corwin?”

“That's right.”

“You arrived on Earth on Fiveday, seventh of Fifthmonth of this year?”

Ewing nodded.

“Your papers are in order. Your ship has been stored in Hangar 107-B. Sign this, please.”

It was a permission-grant allowing the spaceport attendants to get his ship from drydock, service it for departure, store his belongings on board, and place the vessel on the blasting field. Ewing read the form through quickly, signed it, and handed it back.

“Please go to Waiting Room Y and remain there until your name is called. Your ship should be ready for you in less than an hour.”

Ewing moistened his lips. “Does that mean you'll page me over the public address system?”

“Yes.”

The idea of having his name called out, with so many Sirians in the spaceport, did not appeal to him. He said, “I'd prefer not to be paged by name. Can some sort of code word be used?”

The robot hesitated. “Is there some reason—”

“Yes.” Ewing's tone was flat. “Suppose you have me paged under the name of … ah … Blade. That's it. Mr. Blade. All right?”

Doubtfully the robot said, “It's irregular.”

“Is there anything in the regulations specifically prohibiting such a pseudonym?”

“No, but—”

“If regulations say nothing about it, how can it be irregular? Blade it is, then.”

It was easy to baffle robots. The sleek metal face would probably be contorted in bewilderment, if that were possible. At length the robot assented; Ewing grinned cheerfully at it and made his way to Waiting Room Y.

Waiting Room Y was a majestic vault of a room, with a glittering spangled ceiling a hundred feet above his head, veined with glowing rafters of structural beryllium. Freeform blobs of light, hovering suspended at about the eight-foot level, provided most of the illumination. At one end of the room a vast loud-speaker had been erected; at the other, a screen thirty feet high provided changing kaleidoscopic patterns of light for bored waiters.

Ewing stared without interest at the whirling light-patterns for a while. He had found a seat in the corner of the waiting room, where he was not likely to be noticed. There was hardly an Earther in the place. Earthers stayed put, on Earth. And this great spaceport, this monument to an era a thousand years dead, was in use solely for the benefit of tourists from Sirius IV and the alien worlds.

A bubble-headed creature with scaly purple skin passed by, each of its claw-like arms clutching a smaller version of itself.
Mr. XXX from Xfiz V
, Ewing thought bitterly.
Returning from a family outing. He's taken the kiddies to Earth to give them an instructive view of dying civilization
.

The three aliens paused not far from where Ewing sat and exchanged foamy, sibilant sentences.
Now he's telling them to take a good look round
, Ewing thought.
None of this may be here the next time they come
.

For a moment despair overwhelmed him, as he realized once again that both Earth and Corwin were doomed, and there seemed no way of holding back the inexorable jaws of the pincer. His head drooped forward; he cradled it tiredly with his fingertips.

“
Mr. Blade to the departure desk, please. Mr. Blade, please report to the departure desk. Mr. Blade
…”

Dimly, Ewing remembered that they were paging
him
. He elbowed himself from the seat.

“
Mr. Blade to the departure desk, please
…”

“All right,” he murmured. “I'm coming.”

He followed a stream of bright violet lights down the center of the waiting room, turned left, and headed for the departure desk. Just as he reached it, the loud-speaker barked once more, “
Mr. Blade to the departure desk
…”

“I'm Blade,” he said to the robot he had spoken with an hour before. He presented his identity card. The robot scanned it.

“According to this your name is Baird Ewing,” the robot announced after some study.

Ewing sighed in exasperation. “Check your memory banks! Sure, my name is Ewing—but I arranged to have you page me under the name of Blade. Remember?”

The robot's optic lenses swiveled agitatedly as the mechanical filtered back through its memory bank. Ewing waited impatiently, fidgeting and shifting his weight from foot to foot. After what seemed to be a fifteen-minute wait the robot brightened again and declared, “The statement is correct. You are Baird Ewing, pseudonym Blade. Your ship is waiting in Blast Area Eleven.”

Gratefully, Ewing accepted the glowing identity planchet and made his way through the areaway into the departure track. There he surrendered the planchet to a waiting robot attendant who ferried him across the broad field to his ship.

It stood alone, isolated by the required hundred-meter clearance, a slim, graceful needle, golden-green, still bright in the late-afternoon sunlight. He climbed up the catwalk, sprang the hatch, and entered.

The ship smelled faintly musty after its week in storage. Ewing looked around. Everything seemed in order: the somnotank in which he would sleep during the eleven-month journey back to Corwin, the radio equipment along the opposite wall, the vision-plate. He spun the dial on the storage compartment and opened it. His few belongings were aboard. He was ready to leave.

But first, a message.

He set up the contacts on the subetheric generator, preparatory to beaming a message via subspace toward Corwin. He knew that his earlier message, announcing arrival, had not yet arrived; it would ride the subetheric carrier wave for another week yet, before reaching the receptors on his home world.

And, he thought unhappily, the second message, announcing departure, would follow it by only a few days. He twisted the contact dial. The
go-ahead
light came on.

He faced the pickup grid. “Baird Ewing speaking, and I'll be brief. This is my second and final message. I'm returning to Corwin. The mission was an absolute failure—repeat,
absolute failure
. Earth is unable to help us. It faces immediate domination by Terrestrial-descended inhabitants of Sirius IV, and culturally they're in worse shape than we are. Sorry to be delivering bad news. I hope you're all still there when I get back. No reports will follow. I'm signing off right now.”

He stared reflectively at the dying lights of the generator a moment, then shook his head and rose. Activating the in-system communicator, he requested and got the central coordination tower of the spaceport.

“This is Baird Ewing, in the one-man ship on Blasting Area Eleven. I plan to depart under automatic control in fifteen minutes. Can I have a time check?”

The inevitable robotic voice replied, “The time now is sixteen fifty-eight and thirteen seconds.”

“Good. Can I have clearance for departure at seventeen thirteen and thirteen?”

“Clearance granted,” the robot said, after a brief pause.

Grunting acknowledgment, Ewing fed the data to his autopilot and threw the master switch. In fourteen-plus minutes, the ship would blast off from Earth, whether or not he happened to be in the protective tank at the time. But there was no rush; it would take only a moment or two to enter the freeze.

He stripped off his clothes, stored them away, and activated the tap that drew the nutrient bath. The autopilot ticked away; eleven minutes to departure.

So long, Earth
.

He climbed into the tank. Now his subliminal instructions took over; he knew the procedure thoroughly. All he had to do was nudge those levers with his feet to enter the state of suspension; needles would jab upward into him and the thermostat would begin to function. At the end of the journey, with the ship in orbit around Corwin, he would automatically be awakened to make the landing manually.

The communicator chimed just as he was about to trip the footlevers. Irritated, Ewing glanced up. What could be the trouble?

“Calling Baird Ewing … Calling Baird Ewing …”

It was central control. Ewing glanced at the clock. Eight minutes to blast off. And there'd be nothing left of him but a pool of jelly if blasting time caught him still wandering around the ship.

Sourly he climbed from the tank and acknowledged the call. “Ewing here. What is it?”

“An urgent call from the terminal, Mr. Ewing. The party says he must reach you before you blast off.”

Ewing considered that. Firnik, pursuing him? Or Byra Clork? No. They had seen him die on Twoday. Myreck? Maybe. Who else could it be? He said, “Very well. Switch over the call.”

A new voice said, “Ewing?”

“That's right. Who are you?”

“It doesn't matter just now. Listen—can you come to the spaceport terminal right away?”

The voice sounded tantalizing familiar. Ewing scowled angrily. “No. I can't! My autopilot's on and I'm due for blasting in seven minutes. If you can't tell me who you are, I'm afraid I can't bother to alter flight plans.”

Ewing heard a sigh. “
I could
tell you who I am. You wouldn't believe me, that's all. But you mustn't depart yet. Come to the terminal.”

“No.”

“I warn you,” the voice said. “I can take steps to prevent you from blasting off—but it'll be damaging to both of us if I do so. Can't you trust me?”

“I'm not leaving this ship on account of any anonymous warnings,” Ewing said hotly. “Tell me who you are. Otherwise I'm going to break contact and enter suspension.”

Six minutes to blast.

“All right,” came the reluctant reply. “I'll tell you. My name is Baird Ewing, of Corwin. I'm
you
. Now will you get out of that ship?”

Chapter Fourteen

With tense fingers Ewing disconnected the autopilot and reversed the suspension unit. He called the control tower and in an unsteady voice told them he was temporarily canceling his blasting plans and was returning to the terminal. He dressed again, and was ready when the robocar came shuttling out across the field to pick him up.

He had arranged to meet the other Ewing in the refreshment room where he had had his first meeting with Rollun Firnik after landing on Earth. A soft conversational hum droned in the background as Ewing entered. His eyes, as if magnetically drawn, fastened on the tall, conservatively-dressed figure at the table near the rear.