Collected fiction, p.672
Collected Fiction, page 672
We could never kill it—but we had it helpless for the first instant in the history of the universe. One moment outside time was all we had—but one moment was enough.
From somewhere solidly at our backs, came the titanic pressure of the Face of Ea, an intoxicating flood of pure power flowing through us. One mighty burst of energy—it was enough.
The burning suns reeled around us again. They blurred—time blurred and space and the incredible infinite complexity of the universe shuddered and was divided.
That was the end.
THE suns flickered out around us. We were sinking into a dimness that swallowed up our senses as the darkness swallowed the fight. But I could not quite let go. There was trouble somewhere—a question unanswered.
“Have you finished with us now?” I wondered in the darkness. “Are you sending us back, double-minded, into worlds where only a single body can dwell? It was you who destroyed our bodies—”
The great calm Face that was the composite of so many faces took shape before my mind’s eye, perhaps tangibly before us in the thickening dark. The great, quiet voice said, “If Belem could divide matrices and I universes, do you need to doubt that your bodies can be divided too and each be duplicated exactly from a single matrix? It was done once, in Eden, before the first civilization rose. It shall be done again, by the power of this last civilization of all. Sleep, now—sleep.”
In the dimness that followed upon the darkening of the suns and the stilling of the voice I remembered Genesis, and Adam’s words. Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh . . .
The Face that watched drew further and further away, grew tinier and tinier in red-lit distances down a vista of diminishing temporal lanes . . .
I knew now that we must have swung far off around that other pole of time, the beginning, the wellspring of life and space and duration. We must have moved forward along the unchanging temporal axis toward our own world.
In which there was no nekron now, had never been, never would be.
But there were not even dreams in this slumber to hint at the stations of that journey.
* * * * *
So we returned.
So we woke.
It was Topaz whose eyes met mine when I sat up dizzily after that tremendous nightmare and found the rough walls of the cavern intact around us. Topaz? No—and yet not Letta Essen either. She smiled and it was Topaz’s smile—but the long, long aeons had changed her.
Letta Essen’s slumbering ego in the doubled body of the girl Topaz had wrought subtle alterations, pulling back that flexible flesh into a more fitting body for the woman who had been Letta Essen. It was an older and wiser Topaz, a younger Letta Essen, who met my first dazed glance when I awoke.
Murray was sitting up dizzily. De Kalb had already risen and was trying the flashlight that lay in the entry to our cavern, his face bewildered. I knew why. It seemed incredible that the battery should still be working after such millennia.
Only no millenniums had passed. We had been asleep no time at all as time is counted in this world.
We hardly spoke. We were still too stunned for clear thinking—it seemed only a moment ago that we had last looked into the Face of Ea. Unsteadily we made our way out of the cave. The low slanting sunlight of a summer evening still lay across the wooded mountain.
Instinctively I looked for the white building of the Kerry transmitter that opened upon the farthest worlds of the galaxy—but that was still a thousand years away. The mountains stretched in unbroken forests to the horizon.
At the foot of the slope, near the place where Murray’s plane still stood awaiting us, was the cabin where De Kalb had lived long ago—months ago, perhaps, as we count time here but aeons had passed just the same—when this cavern was first dug out of the mountainside.
De Kalb unlocked the door. The cabin was musty from long disuse but we didn’t care. Oddly enough we needed sleep more than anything else in the world. Oddly, because we had just now risen from a sleep of countless millions of years.
* * * * *
So that’s the story.
And now you know why I can say—and prove—that the whole thing never happened. This isn’t my world, now. Not any more. Not the world I left. This is a world in which no nekronic flash leaped from a box that Ira De Kalb opened and dropped to his hearthstone to infect the world, De Kalb and me. All that did happen once, in another world that hasn’t existed since the four of us, a doubled weapon wielded by the Face of Ea, wrought the cleaving apart of two universes.
Imponderable forces shifted when that cleavage took place. You and I know nothing about it, for it happened far beyond the perceptions of any sentient creature. But it happened. Oh yes, it happened.
Funny, how important the little changes are. It’s so hard to get used to the absence of so much I used to take for granted. And there are so many new things too, things that weren’t there when I went away. Nobody knows that except the four of us, of course. Everybody thinks these things have always been as they are now.
Well, it’s all right as a world—maybe.
BUT not as a world for me. Here I’ve always been on that roller-coaster, snatching as things rush by. Maybe I’d do the same in any world. You never can tell till you try.
So I’m going to try.
There are still sleepers in that cavern where the time-axis turns, you know. If De Kalb had looked deeper when he first brought out our images under ultra-violet, he’d have seen more than we ever guessed, at the time. He’d have seen more than our doubled images, still asleep, waiting for the world of the middle future which is the final station in their round-trip through time. Paynter, Belem, Topaz are sleeping there.
And so am I. And I mean myself, Jerry Cortland—twinned.
You see, I’ve looked. And I’m there. The other fellow, the one who came up the hill from the Kerry transmitter and blacked out and received my dominant mind, is asleep of course, waiting for his own time. But beside him is—Jerry Cortland. Two of us. Double images.
You realize what that means?
I’m going forward. I know—because I went. It was a wonderful world they had. I want to see more of it. I want to wake up in a time when the race of man is spreading through the galaxy, leaping across the gulfs between the stars, opening the gates to all the worlds. I want to and I will.
But I’ll never see Topaz again—unless I’m luckier than I expect to be. I’ll never see Belem or Paynter or the world where they’ll wake—finding it changed too, I suppose, and a little bewildering, as mine is now.
The trouble is, two identical matrices can’t exist in the same time. And that other fellow has priority. It’s his world, his time. He’ll wake with the others and go out. I’ll sleep on until the way is clear. That means, of course, until he dies.
I wish I knew more about him. He had no record in the vast files of the galactic government. He was dressed in ragged clothing when I saw him. That indicates he’s some wanderer of the outland planets, living a dangerous life—if he goes back to it. He may not. Waking with Paynter, Belem, Topaz, he may be drawn into another kind of career entirely. I’ll know someday. But not until he’s dead. Not until I wake again.
And when I wake, who knows how many years will have elapsed since Topaz stepped out of the time-axis into her own world again? She may be an old woman before I see her. She may be only a few years matured. She may have been fifty years dead. Perhaps I may never be sure. You see, I don’t even know her name.
She was Topaz that week in which I wakened Next week, and the week after and the year beyond that—do you think any records are kept of the whims of a girl like Topaz? Not even she will remember by the time I wake, if she’s alive then. Time moves too fast for that.
Well, all this belongs to the future. And so do I. Even before the cosmic cleavage altered all history I was a misfit in this civilization. And now it just isn’t my world anymore. I don’t belong here. So I think I’ll take my chances in that other place, where I won’t have to get used to the little things that keep bothering me here and bother nobody but me—
Like Washington being the capital of the United States—now!
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
It isn’t often a man gets hold of a slave like that! But John Fowler was just the man to use him hard, and to the last bit of his strength. Which, under the circumstances, was only justice . . .
He felt cold and weak, strangely, intolerably, inhumanly weak until a weakness of the blood and bone, of the mind and soul. He saw his surroundings dimly, but he saw—other things—with a swimming clarity that had no meaning to him. He saw causes and effects as tangible before him as he had once seen trees and grass. But remote, indifferent, part of another world.
Somehow there was a door before him. He reached vaguely—
It was almost wholly a reflex gesture that moved his finger toward the doorbell.
The chimes played three soft notes.
John Fowler was staring at a toggle switch. He felt baffled. The thing had suddenly spat at him and died. Ten minutes ago he had thrown the main switch, unscrewed the wall plate and made hopeful gestures with a screwdriver, but the only result was a growing suspicion that this switch would never work again. Like the house itself, it was architecturally extreme, and the wires were sealed in so that the whole unit had to he replaced if it went bad.
Minor irritations bothered Fowler unreasonably today. He wanted the house in perfect running order for the guest he was expecting. He had been chasing Veronica Wood for a long time, and he had an idea this particular argument might tip the balance in the right direction.
He made a note to keep a supply of spare toggle switches handy. The chimes were still echoing softly as Fowler went into the hall and opened the front door, preparing a smile. But it wasn’t Veronica Wood on the doorstep. It was a blank man.
That was Fowler’s curious impression, and it was to recur to him often in the year to come. Now he stood staring at the strange emptiness of the face that returned his stare without really seeming to see him. The man’s features were so typical they might have been a matrix, without the variations that combine to make up the recognizable individual. But Fowler thought that even if he had known those features, it would be hard to recognize a man behind such utter emptiness. You can’t recognize a man who isn’t there. And there was nothing here. Some erasure, some expunging, had wiped out all trace of character and personality.
Empty.
And empty of strength, too, for the visitant lurched forward and fell into Fowler’s arms.
Fowler caught him automatically, rather horrified at the lightness of the body he found himself supporting. “Hey,” he said, and, realizing the inadequacy of that remark, added a few pertinent questions. But there was no answer. Syncope had taken over.
Fowler grimaced and looked hopefully up and down the road. He saw nobody. So he lifted his guest across the threshold and carried him easily to a couch. Fine, he thought. Veronica due any minute, and this paper weight barging in.
Brandy seemed to help. It brought no color to the pale cheeks, but it pried the eyelids open to show a blank, wondering look.
“O.K. now?” Fowler asked, wanting to add, “Then go home.”
There was only the questioning stare. Fowler stood up with some vague intention of calling a doctor, and then remembered that the televisor instrument hadn’t yet been delivered. For this was a day when artificial shortages had begun to supplant real ones, when raw material was plentiful but consumers were wary, and were, therefore, put on a starvation diet to build their appetites and loosen their purse strings. The televisor would be delivered when the company thought Fowler had waited long enough.
Luckily he was versatile. As long as the electricity was on he could jury-rig anything else he needed, including facilities for first aid. He gave his patient the routine treatment, with satisfying results. Until, that is, the brandy suddenly hit certain nerve centers and emesis resulted.
Fowler lugged his guest back from the bathroom and left him on the bed in the room with the broken light switch to recuperate. Convalescence was rapid. Soon the man sat up, but all he did was look at Fowler hopefully. Questions brought no answer.
Ten minutes later the blank man was still sitting there, looking blank.
The door chimes sang again. Fowler, assured that his guest wasn’t in articulo mortis, began to feel irritation. Why the devil did the guy have to barge in now, at this particular crucial moment? In fact, where had he come from? It was a mile to the nearest highway, along a dirt road, and there was no dust on the man’s shoes. Moreover, there was something indefinably disturbing about the—lack in his appearance. There was no other word that fitted so neatly. Village idiots are popularly termed “wanting,” and, while there was no question of idiocy here, the man did seem—
What?
For no reason at all Fowler shivered. The door chimes reminded him of Veronica. He said: “Wait here. You’ll be all right. Just wait. I’ll be back—”
There was a question in the soulless eyes.
Fowler looked around. “There’re some books on the shelf. Or fix this—” He pointed to the wall switch. “If you want anything, call me.” On that note of haphazard solicitude he went out, carefully closing the door. After all, he wasn’t his brother’s keeper. And he hadn’t spent days getting the new house in shape to have his demonstration go haywire because of an unforeseen interruption.
Veronica was waiting on the threshold. “Hello,” Fowler said. “Have any trouble finding the place? Come in.”
“It sticks up like a sore thumb,” she informed him. “Hello. So this is the dream house, is it?”
“Right. After I figure out the right method of dream-analysis, it’ll be perfect.” He took her coat, led her into the livingroom, which was shaped like a fat comma and walled with triple-seal glass, and decided not to kiss her. Veronica seemed withdrawn. That was regrettable. He suggested a drink.
“Perhaps I’d better have one,” she said, “before I look the joint over.”
Fowler began battling with a functional bar. It should have poured and mixed drinks at the spin of a dial, but instead there came a tinkle of breaking glass. Fowler finally gave up and went back to the old-fashioned method. “Highball? Well, theoretically, this is a perfect machine for living. Rut the architect wasn’t as perfect as his theoretical ideas. Methods of construction have to catch up with ideas, you know.”
“This room’s nice,” Veronica acknowledged, relaxing on airfoam. With a glass in her hand, she seemed more cheerful. “Almost everything’s curved, isn’t it? And I like the windows.”
“It’s the little things that go wrong. If a fuse blows, a whole unit goes out. The windows—I insisted on those.”
“Not much of a view.”
“Unimproved. Building restrictions, you know. I wanted to build on the top of a hill a few miles away, but the township laws wouldn’t allow it. This house is unorthodox. Not very, but enough. I might as well have tried to put up a Wright house in Williamsburg. This place is functional and convenient—”
“Except when you want a drink?”
“Trivia,” Fowler said airily. “A house is complicated. You expect a few things to go wrong at first. I’ll fix ’em as they come up. I’m a jerk of all trades. Want to look around?”
“Why not?” Veronica said. It wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction for which Fowler had hoped, but he made the best of it. Pie showed her the house. It was larger than it had seemed from the outside. There was nothing super about it, but it was—theoretically—a functional unit, breaking away completely from the hidebound traditions that had made attics, cellars, and conventional bathrooms and kitchens as vestigially unfunetiorial as the vermiform appendix. “Anyway,” Fowler said, “statistics show most accidents happen in kitchens and bathrooms. They can’t happen here.”
“What’s this?” Veronica asked, opening a door. Fowler grimaced.
“The guest room,” he said. “That was the single mistake. I’ll use it for storage or something. The room hasn’t any windows.”
“The light doesn’t work—”
“Oh, I forgot. I turned off the main switch. Be right back.” He hurried to the closet that held the house controls, flipped the switch, and returned. Veronica was looking into a room that was pleasantly furnished as a bedroom, and, with tinted, concealed fluorescents, seemed light and airy despite the lack of windows.
“I called you,” she said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Fowler smiled and touched a wall. “Sound-absorbent. The whole house is that way. The architect did a good job, but this room—”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing—unless you’re inside and the door should get stuck. I’ve a touch of claustrophobia.”
“You should face these fears,” said Veronica, who had read it somewhere. Fowler repressed a slight irritation. There were times when he had felt an impulse to slap Veronica across the chops, but her gorgeousness entirely outweighed any weakness she might have in other directions.
“Air conditioning, too,” he said, touching another switch. “Fresh as a spring breeze. Which reminds me. Does your drink want freshening?”
“Yes,” Veronica said, and they returned to the comma-shaped room.
It was appreciably darker. The girl went to the window and stared through the immense, wall-long pane.
“Storm coming up,” she said. “The car radio said it’ll be a bad one. I’d better go, Johnny.”
“Must you? You just got here.”
“I have a date. Anyway, I’ve got to work early tomorrow.” She was a Korys model, much in demand.
Fowler turned from the recalcitrant bar and reached for her hand.
“I wanted to ask you to marry me,” he said.
There was silence, while leaden grayness pressed down beyond the window, and yellow hills rippled under the gusts of unfelt wind. Veronica met his gaze steadily.
“I know you did. I mean—I’ve been expecting you to.”
