Worlds of the Imperium

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2There was a scratching sound which irritated me. I tried unsuccessfully to weave it into a couple of dreams before my subconscious gave up. I was lying on my back, eyes closed. I couldn’t think where I was. I remembered a frightening dream about being followed, and then as I became aware of pain in my shoulder and head, my eyes snapped open. I was lying on a cot at the side of a small office; the scratching came from the desk where a dapper man in a white uniform sat writing. There was a humming sound and a feeling of motion.

I sat up. At once the man behind the desk looked up, rose, and walked over to me. He drew up a chair and sat down.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” he said in a clipped British accent. “I’m Chief Captain Winter. You need merely to assist in giving me some routine information, after which you will be assigned comfortable quarters.” He said all this in a smooth lifeless way, as though he’d been through it before. Then he looked directly at me for the first time.

“I must apologize for the callousness with which you were handled; it was not my intention. However,” his tone changed, “you must excuse the operative; he was uninformed.”

Chief Captain Winter opened a notebook and lolled back in his chair with pencil poised. “Where were you born, Mr. Bayard?”

They must have been through my pockets, I thought; they know my name.

“Who the hell are you?” I said.

The chief captain raised an eyebrow. His uniform was immaculate, and brilliantly jewelled decorations sparkled on his chest.

“Of course you are confused at this moment, Mr. Bayard, but everything will be explained to you carefully in due course. I am an Imperial officer, duly authorized to interrogate subjects under detention.” He smiled soothingly. “Now please state your birthplace.”

I said nothing. I didn’t feel like answering any questions; I had too many of my own to ask first. I couldn’t place the fellow’s accent. He was an Englishman all right, but I couldn’t have said from what part of England. I glanced at the medals. Most of them were strange but I recognized the scarlet ribbon of the Victoria Cross, with three palms, ornamented with gems. There was something extremely phoney about Chief Captain Winter.

“Come along now, old chap,” Winter said sharply. “Kindly cooperate. It will save a great deal of unpleasantness.”

I looked at him grimly. “I find being chased, grabbed, gassed, stuffed in a cell, and quizzed about my personal life pretty damned unpleasant already, so don’t bother trying to keep it all on a high plane. I’m not answering any questions.” I reached in my pocket for my passport; it wasn’t there.

“Since you’ve already stolen my passport, you know by now that I’m an American diplomat, and enjoy diplomatic immunity to any form of arrest, detention, interrogation and what have you. So I’m leaving as soon as you return my property, including my shoes.”

Winter’s face had stiffened up. I could see my act hadn’t had much impression on him. He signalled, and two fellows I hadn’t seen before moved around into view. They were bigger than he was.

“Mr. Bayard, you must answer my questions, under duress, if necessary. Kindly begin by stating your birthplace.”

“You’ll find it in my passport,” I said. I was looking at the two reinforcements; they were as easy to ignore as a couple of bulldozers in the living room. I decided on a change of tactics. I’d play along in the hope they’d relax a bit, and then make a break for it.

One of the men, at a signal, handed Winter my passport from his desk. He glanced through it, made a number of notes, and passed the booklet back to me.

“Thank you, Mr. Bayard,” he said pleasantly. “Now let’s get on to particulars. Where did you attend school?”

I tried hard now to give the impression of one eager to please. I regretted my earlier truculence; it made my present pose of co-operativeness a little less plausible. Winter must have been accustomed to the job though, and to subjects who were abject. After a few minutes he waved an arm at the two bouncers, who left the room silently.

Winter had gotten on to the subject of international relations and geopolitics now, and seem to be fascinated by my commonplace replies. I attempted once or twice to ask why it was necessary to quiz me closely on matters of general information, but was firmly guided back to the answering of the questions.

He covered geography and recent history thoroughly with emphasis on the period 1879-1910, and then started in on a biographic list; all I knew about one name after another. Most of them I’d never heard of, a few were minor public figures. He quizzed me in detail on two Italians, Cocino and Maxoni. He could hardly believe I’d never heard of them. He seemed fascinated by many of my replies.

“Niven an actor?” he said incredulously. “Never heard of Crane Talbot?” and when I described Churchill’s role in recent affairs, he laughed uproariously.

After forty minutes of this one-sided discussion, a buzzer sounded faintly, and another uniformed man entered, placed a good-sized box on the corner of the desk, and left. Winter ignored the interruption.

Another twenty minutes of questions went by. Who was the present monarch of Anglo-Germany? Winter asked. What was the composition of the royal family, the ages of the children? I exhausted my knowledge of the subject. What was the status of the Viceroyalty of India? Explain the working of the Dominion arrangements of Australia, Northern America, Cabotsland…? I was appalled at the questions; the author of them must have been insane. It was almost impossible to link the garbled reference to non-existent political subdivisions and institutions to reality. I answered as matter-of-factly as possible. At least Winter did not seem to be much disturbed by my revision of his distorted version of affairs.

At last Winter rose, moved over to his desk, and motioned me to a chair beside it. As I pulled the chair out, I glanced into the box on the desk. I saw magazines, folded cloth, coins—and the butt of a small automatic protruding from under a copy of the World Almanac. Winter had turned away, reaching into a small cabinet behind the desk. My hand darted out, scooped up the pistol, and dropped it into my pocket as I seated myself.

Winter turned back with a blue glass bottle. “Now let’s have a drop and I’ll attempt to clear up some of your justifiable confusion, Mr. Bayard,” he said genially. “What would you like to know?” I ignored the bottle.

“Where am I?” I said.

“In the city of Stockholm, Sweden.”

“We seem to be moving; what is this, a moving van with an office in it?”

“This is a vehicle, though not a moving van.”

“Why did you pick me up?”

“I’m sorry that I can tell you no more than that you were brought in under specific orders from a very high-ranking officer of the Imperial Service.” He looked at me speculatively. “This was most unusual,” he added.

“I take it kidnapping inoffensive persons is not in itself unusual.”

Winter frowned. “You are the subject of an official operation of Imperial Intelligence. Please rest assured you are not being persecuted.”

“What is Imperial Intelligence?”

“Mr. Bayard,” Winter said earnestly, leaning forward, “it will be necessary for you to face a number of realizations; the first is that the governments which you are accustomed to regard as supreme sovereign powers must in fact be considered tributary to the Imperium, the Paramount Government in whose service I am an officer.”

“You’re a fake,” I said.

Winter bristled. “I hold an Imperial Commission as Chief Captain of Intelligence.”

“What do you call this vehicle we’re in?”

“This is an armed TNL scout based at Stockholm Zero Zero.”

“That tells me a lot; what is it, a boat, car, airplane…?”

“None of those, Mr. Bayard.”

“All right, I’ll be specific; what does it travel on, water, air…?”

Winter hesitated. “Frankly, I don’t know.”

I saw it was time to try a new angle of attack. “Where are we going?”

“We are presently operating along coordinates zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-six, zero-ninety-two.”

“What is our destination? What place?”

“Stockholm Zero Zero, after which you’ll probably be transferred to London Zero Zero for further processing.”

“What is the Zero business? Do you mean London, England?”

“The London you refer to is London B-I Three.”

“What’s the difference?”

“London Zero Zero is the capital of the Imperium, comprising the major portion of the civilized world—North Europe, West Hemisphere, and Australia.”

I changed the subject. “Why did you kidnap me?”

“A routine interrogational arrest, insofar as I know.”

“Do you intend to release me?”

“Yes.”

“At home?”

“No.”

“Where?”

“I can’t say; at one of several concentration points.”

“One more question,” I said, easing the automatic from my pocket and pointing it at the third medal from the left. “Do you know what this is?”

“Keep your hands in sight; better get up and stand over there.”

Winter rose and moved over to the spot indicated. I’d never aimed a pistol at a man point-blank before, but I felt no hesitation now.

“Tell me all about it,” I said.

“I’ve answered every question,” Winter said nervously.

“And told me nothing.” Winter stood staring at me.

I slipped the safety off with a click. “You have five seconds to start,” I said. “One … two….”

“Very well,” Winter said. “No need for all this; I’ll try.” He hesitated. “You were selected from higher up. We went to a great deal of trouble to get you in particular. As I’ve explained, that’s rather irregular. However,” Winter seemed to be warming to his subject, “all sampling in this region has been extremely restricted in the past; you see, your continuum occupies an island, one of a very few isolated lines in a vast blighted region. The entire configuration is abnormal, and an extremely dangerous area in which to maneuver. We lost many good men in early years before we learned how to handle the problems involved.”

“I suppose you know this is all nonsense to me,” I said. “What do you mean by sampling?”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Winter said. I took a long brown cigarette from a box on the desk, lit it, and handed it to him. “Sampling refers to the collection of individuals or artifacts from representative B-I lines,” he said, blowing out smoke. “We in Intelligence are engaged now in mapping operations. It’s fascinating work, old boy, picking up the trend lines, coordinating findings with theoretical work, developing accurate calibrating devices, instruments, and so on. We’re just beginning to discover the potentialities of working the Net. In order to gather maximum information in a short time, we’ve found it expedient to collect individuals for interrogation. In this way we quickly gain a general picture of the configuration of the Net in various directions. In your case, I was directed under sealed orders to enter the Blight, proceed to Blight-Insular Three, and take over custody of Mr. Brion Bayard, a diplomat representing, of all things, an American republic.” Winter spoke enthusiastically now. As he relaxed, he seemed younger.

“It was quite a feather in my cap, old chap, to be selected to conduct an operation in the Blight, and I’ve found it fascinating. Always in the past, of course, I’ve operated at such a distance from the Imperium that little or no analogy existed. But B-I Three! Why it’s practically the Imperium, with just enough variation to stir the imagination. Close as the two lines are, there’s a desert of Blight around and between them that indicates how frightfully close to the rim we’ve trodden in times past.”

“All right, Winter. I’ve heard enough,” I said. “You’re just a harmless nut, maybe. But I’ll be going now.”

“That’s quite impossible,” Winter said. “We’re in the midst of the Blight.”

“What’s the Blight?” I asked, making conversation as I looked around the room, trying to pick out the best door to leave by. There were three. I decided on the one no one had come through yet. I moved towards it.

“The Blight is a region of utter desolation, radiation, and chaos,” Winter was saying. “There are whole ranges of A-lines where the very planet no longer exists, where automatic cameras have recorded nothing but a vast ring of debris in orbit; then there are the cinder-worlds, and here and there dismal groups of cancerous jungles, alive with radiation-poisoned mutations. It’s frightful, old chap. You can wave the pistol at me all night, but it will get you nothing. In a few hours we’ll arrive at Zero Zero; you may as well relax until then.”