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36: Balesso Strikes
When we arrived at the surface, Balesso was eager to see the images from inside the Anomaly. Seeing the sleeping Laars, he exclaimed: "As I told you. They are in suspended sleep."
I understood the Laars awaited a time far in the future when they would be safe from their enemies who had defeated their empire and driven them out of our system. What I did not understand was how Balesso would neutralize the freeze the City of En had put on the Anomaly.
Balesso turned out to be a man of surprises. He turned to Tuttle and held out a plastic transfer, a portable electronic document resembling a sheet of paper. "Do you understand this?"
Tuttle glanced over the paper. "Is this genuine?"
Balesso grinned. "Contact your friends uptime."
"What is it?" I asked.
Tuttle told me: "They have authorization to fry the people inside that vessel."
"How?"
"Using an energy exchange between the underverse and the location inside the Anomaly, focusing several 3D masers on a distant spot at the center of their space and making the converging waves re-amplify each other, using go-dot energy from the underverse, so that there all matter inside there breaks down. In plain language, they and all their artifacts turn to dust. If you were to open the Anomaly in your time period, you'd find nothing alive in there—just a layer of dust on the floor."
Balesso laughed. "This is what I love about the City of En. They are fighting for their survival, and absolutely ruthless. It's beautiful. I showed them that, if the Laars were allowed to pop up in, say 9000 CC, and start a new civilization, the historic effect on the City of En would be catastrophic."
I snapped my finger. "Is that how the Faraos who conquered the human race were defeated?"
Balesso shrugged, and he and Voreill both grinned. Voreill said: "We haven't been there to witness it from the Temporale, but so they tell us."
I wondered which caused the pulse that fried Earth civilization around 3000 CC—the City of En, or the Faraos, or the humans who then went on to annihilate each other. I didn't ask, and it was a lost opportunity. But I knew I'd find out eventually and probably wouldn't like the answer. My guess was that it was 'all of the above.'
Tuttle said: "I'd better get started then. I have some machinery to set up, some calibration to do, some tests to run, and some aliens to fry."
The procedure took several days to set up, and only a few seconds to complete. We stood on the tracks as the machines Tuttle had borrowed from other Temporale stations did their stuff. He had assembled an array of rectangular machines that hung suspended in a circular pattern overhead in the lifeless Temporale sky. At a precise moment in time, several terrific pulses ran through local space. I felt my teeth vibrate in my jaws, and my nervous system tingled with unpleasant energy. The very ground seemed to throw up dust as the energy waves from the pulses of destruction below rolled outward.
Balesso seemed pleased. "Our work here is done. The City of En promised to lift the freeze, and the Anomaly will be ours when we return to the future." I began to get a funny feeling about his intentions when he did not look at me but turned away with a dark smurk.
He said to Tuttle: "Your work is almost done, also. Just take us back to our time so that I can get on with my work."
We traveled forward in the transport, passing many Temporale stations including those on Earth in time periods including that of H. G. Wells, and that point in 2600 CC when Taylor had shown us around, and the era of destruction around 3000 CC when othermen walked about the ruins, and then finally our moment in the sun around 5000 CC.
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