The Regiments of Night Read online

  Danecki heaved the pod into a rain-ditch.

  He recognized it as such in spite of the silt and the small trees which almost concealed it. The depression ran along what had once been a large field, now a coppice of beech and willow. This place had never been subjected to radiation bombardment. It was an unlikely spot in which to die.

  The end should have come in one appalling cataclysm of white-hot vapor as a sungun tore his ship into its component molecules. Not here, not in this friendly place where even the rain was soft and warm.

  Earth.

  He had never thought of visiting it, though it had been the ambition of a number of his friends to make planetfall on that shattered place. They spoke of the remains of a hundred empires which a man could investigate. But somehow they never went. He could not recall a single instance of anyone he had known having been to Earth.

  It was a focus-point for a dream. A place you would always say to yourself you’d make the effort of visiting when you had time. Meanwhile the Totex gave you an approximation of what it was like. And you never troubled to put the total-experience simulators on either.

  He ate what could be his last meal. The heavy pod had contained little that would help an officially licensed criminal. Enough canned air to take him to the surface of a planet if his ship blew up under him, and enough canned food to give him a day’s grace. Nothing else. Nothing that could even remotely help him to hinder his officially licensed pursuers.

  If they followed the ship and destroyed it without investigating what it held, he had escaped. But the Jacobis wouldn’t do that. They had made a binding and solemn oath that they would return with him. Or enough of him to show that they had completed their grim task.

  A beetle inspected the synthetic crumbs at his feet. It raised antennae at him as he changed position to give it a clear run to the sodden flecks of food. Danecki realized he hadn’t thought of things like fields and the beetles in them for over twenty years. There hadn’t been time. A good practical navigator who could also do some quick fixing of the systems that powered the hyperspace ships was always in demand.

  “Not my field,” he said to the beetle.

  It brought a friend to evaluate the crumbs.

  Thus Danecki missed the long, quiet, looping flight of the searching vessel. Its heat sensors picked him out unerringly. He watched a consultation between the two black shiny insects. It was they that picked out the alien slurred sound.

  Danecki saw the ship. He had spent the few precious minutes of anonymity looking at this patch of greenness. The Jacobis were playing with him. They could have finished him off with any one of a dozen minor holocausts.

  The beetles went back to the crumbs. The last Danecki saw of them as he made his run was a puzzled wiggling of antennae. A land-bug whistled out from a port in the side of the black scout.

  Danecki ran.

  Why? asked Danecki, lungs bursting and heart smashing at his rib cage as it sought to cope with the huge exertions the body demanded.

  “I never wanted anything like this!” he gasped aloud.

  “Danecki!”

  He jinked across the ditch, between clutching branches which whipped wetly across his face, over tussocks that sent him from side to side like a crippled spider; and the land-bug sawed its way through the undergrowth, keeping in station behind him in grim and relentless pursuit.

  “You’re nearly finished, Danecki!”

  And he had seen only one Jacobi face to face, one of the dozen or more pursuers who had hunted him clear across the Galaxy, and who had left their distended corpses or their ringing dust-motes in four different planetary complexes. Not one of them had been prepared to listen.

  The boys wouldn’t. And now they were hunting him to his death.

  Danecki knew his trouble. Quite suddenly it came to him that he was tired of using that edge of honed skill to destroy the others. And yet he couldn’t stop and turn to face the little craft. Not yet.

  “I do hope you enjoyed your lunch, Miss?”

  Khalia thanked the attendant robot. She liked the excursion ship. It spun down through the gaseous envelope of Earth in a bright ring of flames. Small, fast, somehow quite antique. She reached for the guidebook.

  “Would you like me to hook you into a sensory frame?” the robot asked deferentially.

  “I’d rather read,” she said. Again, it was more appropriate to read than to use the machines. She opened the book.

  Mrs. Zulkifar’s voice rang out in the small cabin: “I’m not sure this is a good idea, Brigadier! Are you positive this is a suitable excursion?”

  “Quite—ah—Emma!”

  In a loud whisper, the woman went on: “I wonder he’s allowed to come!”

  Khalia sighed. Mrs. Zulkifar was nodding her firm jaw at the strange figure of Mr. Moonman. She herself had never quite overcome her dread of the long, gaunt figure. It wasn’t enough to be reassured by Wardle that he was a perfectly normal human being; not when the face was slightly luminous, when the eyes were like round white pebbles, and the long hands like something out of a grave.

  She tried, however. In the loose union that kept some sort of order in the Galaxy, there was room even for the Revived. They, as much as anyone else, were entitled to use the tourist ships.

  Mrs. Zulkifar thought not. “It isn’t nice!” she said. “He should stay on the ship.”

  Mr. Moonman could not ignore the woman. When he spoke, it was like listening to a voice from a hole in the ground. “Madam, I hear you. I understand your attitude. You fear me, I know.” He inspected his ghastly hands. “You know what it is to see me. I am me!” Then he called: “Steward!”

  The attendant robot rushed forward. “Anything you require, sir? The trip takes another few minutes. We serve drinks. Your comfort is assured. Dr. Dross has been informed of your impending arrival.”

  “Put a screen round me,” Mr. Moonman said.

  Mrs. Zulkifar glowered. “I should think so too.” She had expressed her detestation of the Revived Man across the Galaxy.

  To some extent Khalia could understand it. The Revived constituted a minority group that all could sympathize with, but whose appearance aroused only deep, half-submerged feelings of horror. They were the zombies of myth, the dead brought back from the grave into which unhappy chance had thrown them.

  “They should be decently buried,” Mrs. Zulkifar had once grated to the Brigadier. “I shouldn’t be expected to travel—eat—breathe the same air—as a dead man!”

  On that occasion Khalia had answered the woman: “Leave Mr. Moonman alone,” she had snapped, amazed at herself. “He’s every right to be here. And you’ve no right at all to say that about him!” She had wanted to ask the Revived Man to sit with her. But she had seen the cold, dead hands. He had understood, she thought. Mrs. Zulkifar had ignored her after that.

  Khalia dismissed the others from her mind. The excursion brought her to a feeling of delicious anticipation— of a kind that she could not remember since she was a child. Why?

  The guidebook was almost banal: “You have chosen to visit one of the wonders of All Time! You will not be disappointed with your excursion! You will see the ruins of the mightiest fortification conceived in those far-off days when the entire empire of the Second Interplanetary Confederation stood like a proud ship amongst the storms of war and riot. A thousand years have gone by since the fort was sundered by fire and fission. Once there, the eminent archaeologist, Dr. Dross, will personally conduct you around the ruins. You will be thrilled by your contact with the great civilization that was to perish in such appalling instantaneous catastrophe! You will thrill to hear of the legend of the Lost Fort, and the even stranger legend of the infamous Black Army!”

  In spite of the over-enthusiastic prose, Khalia again sensed the excitement that had gripped her so strongly when Sol and its attendant planets had appeared from among the jangling hypercubes of the unreal dimensions. Was it fear that made her tingle so, she wondered? Was it the frightened, zany pleasu
re of a child’s nightmares that excited her?

  “Your tour will be conducted in perfect safety,” the prose glowed. “Although most of the land-surfaces may not be visited without protection, the ruins were subject to short-lived radiation only. There is positively no danger for a hundred miles around the Ancient Monument.”

  Mrs. Zulkifar’s voice cut in on her thoughts: “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of this Dross before, whatever you say, Brigadier.”

  “Perhaps not, madam,” the soldier answered, somewhat put out. “Nevertheless, I happen to believe that the Doctor is the proponent of the most exciting of all theories in connection with the Second Interplanetary Confederation and the way it met its end!”

  He caught Khalia’s eye. “Remarkable man, young lady! Foremost authority in the Galaxy! Not everyone agrees with him—I’d go so far as to say that in some quarters he’s regarded as a crank—but he has his followers.”

  “You among them, I see,” Mr. Moonman put in.

  “Yes—ah—sir, yes!” the Brigadier wheezed. He had barely acknowledged the presence of the Revived Man during the long voyage. Yet he could hardly avoid him in the confined space of the small craft.

  He turned back to Khalia. “Lot of blah in the guidebooks. They don’t tell you anything of the real mystery, my dear. They don’t!”

  He had engaged the girl’s interest. “No?” she asked.

  “No! Not a bit. Greatest exponents of the art of manufacturing robots ever! Remarkable people! They lived, breathed, warred, loved for all I know, with robots. Supreme cyberneticists. And if Dr. Dross says there’s a hidden fort somewhere hereabouts, I’m prepared to believe him!”

  Mrs. Zulkifar chirped up disdainfully: “I thought you’d had enough of playing soldiers, Brigadier! Wasn’t your little army disbanded?”

  Wardle was quietly furious: “It was! It was! Put out to grass! Thought we’d seen enough of action! A mistake! I told them—my planetary system isn’t ready for peace yet!”

  “Aren’t you?” asked Khalia.

  Wardle stared at her. He seemed to be considering her as a person for the first time, instead of a background phenomenon. “Never thought of it,” he said. “Never thought of it.”

  “You’re still playing soldiers,” said Mrs. Zulkifar.

  Wardle could say nothing to ease the situation. He smiled his familiar ingratiating smile, the one that Khalia found so pitiful after it had ceased to be amusing.

  Mr. Moonman pointed to the ruins below. “Their emblem,” he said. “The Crest of the Second Interplanetary Confederation.”

  In spite of the passing of the centuries, it had survived. Three sunbursts still glowed along one intact radiation shield, the proud emblem of the ancient Empire.

  “One for each of the planets they held,” said Wardle.

  “They ruined this one,” Khalia said. “See what it says about the legend.” She felt a cold edge of menace in the warm craft. It chilled her.

  Wardle read out the words with a connoisseur’s pride. “Powerful words! Listen! It’s just a line, but it’s survived for a thousand years. A promise and a threat: ‘The Regiments of Night shall come at the end.’ ”

  The little ship hovered over the ancient base.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  I refuse!” Dross bawled. “Emphatically, no! No!”

  The green-bronze robot eyed him placidly. “It’s in our contract, sir. Center might believe you were too busy to attend to the last party. And the one before that, Doctor. But not three in a row.”

  “I’m sick, Batty!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sick of interruptions. Sick of malicious pedants in their tight, tiny offices at Center! And sick beyond measure of the buffoons and meddlers! Look at that young fool who came with his asinine parents—was it three months ago? Early summer. The one who found the land-bug we’d sealed off. Why, he could have wiped us all out with that machine! It was still working—a thousand years gone, and it still could have blown us all apart!”

  The gnomish thin little man behind the robot grinned. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” Knaggs said. “I’ve defused all the active stuff. How would you like me to show our visitors the remains of the war-robot we found? The prototype you got so excited about, Doctor. Three times the size of Batty, and all weapons and armor—nasty bit of work! Shall we let them see it—give them an extra thrill?” He smiled innocently at Dross, but Dross did not rise to the bait.

  “You’ll be ready, sir?” the robot asked.

  “I’m sure Dr. Dross will,” said Knaggs.

  “Then I’ll escort the visitors to the reception lounge, sir,” mumbled the robot.

  “No!” grunted Dross. “Take them straight to the main observation deck. Let’s get it over.” To Knaggs he said, “Have you got that humanoid apart yet?”

  Knaggs raised his hands in mock shame. “I forgot it. I had to clean up, Doctor, so that our guests wouldn’t be offended. I’ll pick the headpiece up later. Another hour or two won’t hurt, anyway. It’s been lying there for a thousand years.”

  Danecki was finished. But still he kept to his feet, and still he moved instinctively towards shelter. The trees here were heavier, stronger growth, the ground was carpeted with the first fallen leaves of autumn. And there might be hollows where a man might hide for a few moments, not with any idea of escaping the sensors that could follow any warm-blooded life across whole worlds, but with the instinctive urge to conserve energy—to gain a breathing-space so that he could manage one more stumbling run.

  “We’re coming, Danecki!” called the light young voice.

  How old were the last men of the Jacobi clan? Twenty? Eighteen? They were the best, regardless of their age. They gave him no chance.

  The bug snapped trees aside. And then it ground to a halt.

  Danecki moved again, for the boys would come out now. They were allowed personal arms, but they would probably want to finish him by hand. He caught at a dead branch but it flaked away in his hand, too rotten to support its own weight. And the unending plunging run continued, though now the trees were hazy and outlined in red. It wasn’t the morning sun, however, that caused the film of redness about the trees and undergrowth. It was blood in his eyes from the scratches on his face.

  He stopped, unable to move. It seemed right to wait.

  There was no noise of pursuit. The familiar crashings of the powerful bug had not resumed. And there was nothing but the quiet murmur of raindrops in the trees.

  A bird yipped at him and startled a flock of wood-pigeons which whirred away in fright. Then Danecki looked back. Still the Jacobis had not left the bug.

  He found fresh strength in his lean body. He ran towards the blackness of the woods with long thrusting strides. One of the Jacobi boys yelled out angrily, though Danecki could not hear what he said. For the second time since leaving the wildness of hyperspace, he began to hope. There was a fault in the bug. Only that could explain its immobility, for the Jacobis should have been out of it and at his heels by now.

  He pitched into a heap of soft black earth as a root caught him. Ignoring the wrench of pain in his right ankle, he bored through nettles and brambles until he was deep in the gloom of the big trees—at the top of the steep escarpment he had been making for. And still the Jacobis were not behind him.

  Over the rise he stopped, for the woods were at an end. He stared in despair and amazement at the vast bowl that lay beyond the woods. Before and below him was the ruin of a titanic military base. Its towers were tangled black skeletons of metal. Open to the sky, its series of layered decks were split apart in heaps. A few pockets of stunted trees had somehow contrived an existence here and there amongst the ruins, but most of the fort lay as it must have been left when the last of the colossal bombs had sent it juddering into chaos.

  A weapon, was his next thought. And where should you look for a weapon but in an armory?

  “You’d think they’d have some sort of shelter,” complained Mrs. Zulkifar. �
��I mean, it’s not as though there’s any pleasure in waiting around with weather being hurled at you from all directions. I wish I’d gone out to the asteroids.”

  “Most inconsiderate,” agreed Brigadier Wardle. “As an old campaigner, you know, I’m used to roughing it. But you ladies should have some protection.”

  “I like the rain,” said Khalia.

  “And I,” the Revived Man said. But no one looked his way.

  Brigadier Wardle looked at his watch. “There should be a guide or something,” he announced. “We’ve been here for five minutes already.”

  “What time is it?” asked Mrs. Zulkifar.

  Khalia remembered that the middle-aged woman was a creature of habit. She segmented her day into stretches of useful endeavors.

  “Time?” The Brigadier was happy to answer. “Ten-zero-one, local time. Galactic Time’s taken from a spot not far from here. Now, on your planet, dear lady, it would be—let me see—zero-two-four-one.” He began a lecture on Terran Time. The lost days. Sidereal periods. The Julian Calendar.

  Khalia found it fascinating. The concept of time held them still, while the rain tumbled in gusts over their bare heads. They caught the eeriness of the deserted fort as Wardle went on to describe the time-keeping procedures of Earth.

  No ships raced across the sky, no flicker of light showed the passage of high-speed land-craft; the only sounds were birdcalls and, once, a crashing in the woods that could have been a clumsy animal.

  “That’s all very well,” said Mrs. Zulkifar, “but when I come to see an official Ancient Monument, I expect service.”

  “And you shall have it, if I’ve anything to do with it!” said Wardle.

  Mr. Moonman turned to Khalia. “Why did you come?” he asked, as the Brigadier and Mrs. Zulkifar talked about other excursions.