CONDEMNED TO THE FUTURE

Chapter 5.

 Through the tent, through the binocs, the Milky Way still flowed across the middle of the night sky, eddies of stars thick as talcum powder. But the constellations of nearer suns would need new names. The Big Dipper looked more like "The Big Frying Pan" now. Without instruments to give angular changes in these new configurations or tables of relative speeds, he couldn't calc the exact time. A rough guess made it 20 millennia plus! And Mars's freeze-thaw cycle could be forever broken. That would require such powerful tech! But then they'd had a long time to invent it.
The balance of his protective wall was swept away totally. To reawaken when everything he knew was the long-forgotten Past. Could there be a worse punishment? Common referents, language, culture, all gone. Humanity itself could be extinct, or altered totally beyond his recognition. Even HE might be inferior now. That would have to be proved to him, of course. Perhaps that was the plan.
Justice? Maybe. Cruel and unusual? Probably.
In the eyes of the norms what he had done, and caused, had been more than simply illegal. For him, it had all, nearly all, turned on the weaknesses and flaws of typical humans: he'd been the pivot of the inevitable. They'd chosen to ignore his good points. He'd not tried to obliterate the Hhronka-—they had probably self-destructed by now, anyway, with their Repository with nuclear missiles. And Director von Bok had tried to destroy them, and died in the attempt. Granted, he'd reckoned that attempt would surely fail, nor had he stopped it when he could have easily using his powers.
Yet, surprisingly, he now regretted his final attempt at revenge against the one person he'd too late taken seriously as a threat to his plans. His friend, at last the name was there, Alcyon Hermes Krieder, A.H., his fellow nhmbie. He'd had mind-linked with, become friends with him. He chuckled bitterly. Irony was, A.H. hadn't even known Georg's true nature or that he had been working with von Bok all along, until they'd smuggled in the missiles and had threatened the Repository. And then the Hhronka had come to attack in craft nearly invulnerable to human weapons. Time to retreat...all lost. Only trial and prison and his eventual murder by stealth had waited. He'd kidnapped his friend's new love, Joan, and had hidden while von Bok and his troops had been vaporized by his own nuke missile, along with one of the Hhronkan ships that had blocked it. And later, when Georg and Joan were also believed to be dead, he had come back...

*****
The apartment in the Repository was an abstract copy of the primitive Hhronkan nest-home, with entry at one end of the large window-wall facing the night-lit central shaft beyond the wall of the balcony. A.H. lay trapped within himself. Georg could sense it fully, although muffled by the wall's material between them, without A.H.'s even being aware of the telefield contact. He thought of Joan and that loving part of himself so untimely ripped away with her. The fresh wound would never heal.
Georg saw the stream of A.H.'s memories reel past once more, from the first sight of Joan in von Bok's office to the last in the shuttle. Already her face was maddeningly indistinct. There remained only a numb ache of longing, of deep loneliness already closing over him. And Georg knew joy in this pain. Yet A.H. willed it, the undying dream—and suddenly she was there! He fought against the insanity of telecontact with her ghost. Then he sat up to see her standing at his door!
Georg thrust her into the room with head-rocking force, made her stand motionless, expressionless, as he stepped in behind and locked the door. Now he let his friend feel his hatred; A.H.'s Self within the telefield was so typically weak and poorly focused Georg had to match and tailor it for him.
"That's right, tovarich! We're both still alive! As soon as I knew you'd escaped from von Bok's camp, I hid our Hhronkan flier over the next hill. I was sure you'd sell me out again and that Shree would use their repulsor-filmed ships if convinced of danger. When they showed, I took Joan and made a timely but unseen exit. Discretion and valor, eh?"
A.H.'s terror was like tinkling bells in the field. "Georg, please don't do this! You can surrender to me. All you've done so far is kill those in conspiracy with von Bok; only he launched the missiles. And I'll swear you acted in self-defense. You could probably serve just a short internment here on Mars."
Again Georg allowed A.H. to feel his fury and added a cold smile. "Very generous. But, thanks to you, I've failed to get the Hhronkan weapons, and control of Mars. I'd even hoped to bargain using Joan and get back aboard the freighter in orbit. Its missiles could have kept me in the game. Of course, I should have known my loyal Secpols would fold as soon as they thought both von Bok and I were dead. And now that the remaining missiles are disarmed...oh, I could grandstand awhile, but I couldn't hold out forever without someone I trusted to help!"
It was easy to condense his superior telefield into A.H.'s and use feedback to paralyze his brain's control of all voluntary muscles. "That and my collusion with von Bok means I won't live another year, here or on Earth. Only my death can ensure that the source of the missiles is never proved. We've both gambled and lost, tovarich; it's all played out. I told you we nhumbies owe only each other, but you will pay first."
Georg tightened his control till he felt A.H. fighting just to breathe. "Joan is now going to perform for us."
Also easily under his control, she had been standing inert by the door, sweating and white-faced but silent; her tears continued down her slack face and gathered along the tops of her booster hoses. He skipped along her simple, wide-open mind.
"She's also thinking about paying the price, for love. Very good; just like on holodramas. And so you will pay, for him."
When he drew out the shiny scalpel, A.H. actually was able to jerk once with the effort to rise before Georg tightened the inhibition another notch. Playing Joan like a marionette, he had her take the blade from his hand. While he watched A.H.'s eyes widen and rode on the waves of panic in his field, she drew it across her own upturned throat, ear to ear. The cut bled freely but was only skin-deep. The satisfaction made Georg giggle like a child. The bloom of A.H.'s rage that soared in his field made a deep draught of pleasure in himself. Now her mouth squared in a silent scream as her hand again rose with the scalpel. Its beveled tip thrust deeper this time.
He murmured, "The price, tovarich, the price..."
Another telefield of enormous power exploded into his own! His mouth fell open and he was himself inhibited. There was a hum that swelled at the door, and the locked panel ripped loose of its jamb while shredded pieces of its center blew inward.
Shree Shronk entered the apartment, sonic pistol in four-fingered hand. The giant was in a state no human had seen. His usual beige fluid skin was jet and shiny with rigidity in extreme wrath. His nose and ear pores were clamped shut; the horizontal slits of his purple irises had opened into wide empty circles. Breath and saliva rasped raggedly in and out of the slack full-lipped mouth as he stumbled forward, now blind to all before him. The normal grace in his snakelike limbs was gone. His power was diverted totally to mental capacity and aggression, to fit his natural baasa field to Georg's telefield and feed back the desired control irresistibly, exactly as Georg was doing.
He felt his control of the two blip momentarily, so A.H. was able to send out his own field and contact Shree, while Joan jerked her hand away and threw the scalpel. In pure reflex Georg regained control and shut them both down with a sleep command. They sagged to the floor.
The obsidian creature's field struck Georg's like a hammer; he had never known such skilled power. The shock of commingling made them both fall limp to the floor, the pistol dropping from Shree's hand.
Georg tried to dampen the other's field, to inhibit it and render loss of control. He knew at once they were too evenly matched. The Hhronkan was very adept, expressing skill and finesse in technique that equaled Georg's raw strength. As Georg approached a dynamic match, Shree's field would skitter away into a new configuration and reverse attack; he would do the same. Net effect was a draw.
It lasted only seconds, while Georg felt his heartrate zoom and his body soak with sweat. But he couldn't spare the energy to control it or distract himself from the battle. Shree was also ridged with effort, face a dry ebon mask.
Suddenly Georg felt the Hhronkan's resistance collapse! He let Georg match his field exactly. But before Georg could instill the sleep command, Shree forced a memory from his own Self, a memory of his long-dead wife, Feeahra, and the love they'd shared; a feeling truly alien to Georg throughout his entire life. He could not hold back the flood of sorrow and loneliness, the self pity that broke his concentration—the strategy A.H. had tele'd to Shree just before passing out. And Georg felt the Hhronkan's field deftly enthrall his and saw the gray wall bloom as the giant's python arms encircled his slumping body.
"Sleep, Georg Markov. Sleep deep and long and well..."