Complete Short Fiction, page 46
“Look!” said McAllister, “there’s nothing more pitiful than a bunch of honest men engaged in their first act of dishonesty. You’re strong men, the intellectual type, who’ve spent your lives enforcing an idealistic conception. You’ve always told yourself that if the occasion should ever require it, you would not hesitate to make drastic sacrifices. But you’re not fooling anybody. What’s the catch?”
IT WAS quite startling to have the suit thrust at him. He hadn’t observed the men emerge from the back room; and it came as a distinct shock to realize that they had actually gone for the insulated clothes before they could have known that he would use them.
McAllister stared grimly at Peter Cadron, who held the dull, grayish, limp thing toward him. A very flame of abrupt rage held him choked; before he could speak, Cadron said in a tight voice:
“Get into this, and get going! It’s a matter of minutes, man! When those guns out there start spraying energy, yon won’t be alive to argue about our honesty.”
Still he hesitated; the room seemed insufferably hot; and he was sick—sick with the deadly uncertainty. Perspiration streaked stingingly down his cheeks. His frantic gaze fell on the girl, standing silent and subdued in the background, near the front door.
He strode toward her; and either his glare or presence was incredibly frightening, for she cringed and turned white as a sheet.
“Look!” he said. “I’m in this as deep as hell. What’s the risk in this thing? I’ve got to feel that I have some chance. Tell me, what’s the catch?”
The girl was gray now, almost as gray and dead-looking as the suit Peter Cadron was holding. “It’s the friction,” she mumbled finally, “you may not get all the way back to 1941. You see, you’ll be a soil of ‘weight’ and—”
McAllister whirled away from her. He climbed into the soft, almost flimsy suit, crowding the overall-like shape over his neatly pressed clothes.
“It comes tight over the head, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes!” It was Lystra’s father who answered. “As soon as you pull that zipper shut, the suit will become completely invisible. To outsiders, it will seem just as if you have your ordinary clothes on. The suit is fully equipped. You could live on the Moon inside it.”
“What I don’t get,” complained McAllister, “is why I have to wear it. I got here all right without it.” He frowned. His words had been automatic, but abruptly a thought came: “Just a minute. What becomes of the energy with which I’m charged when I’m bottled up in this insulation?”
He saw by the stiffening expressions of those around him that he had touched on a vast subject.
“So that’s it!” he snapped. “The insulation is to prevent me losing any of that energy. That’s how it can make a ‘weight.’ I have no doubt there is a connection from this suit to that other machine. Well, it’s not too late. It’s—”
With a desperate twist, he tried to jerk aside, to evade the clutching hands of the four men who leaped at him. Hopeless movement. They had him instantly; and their grips on him were strong beyond his power to break. The fingers of Peter Cadron jerked the zipper tight, and Peter Cadron said:
“Sorry, but when we went into that back room, we also dressed in insulated clothing. That’s why you couldn’t hurt us. Sorry, again!
“And remember this: There’s no certainty that you are being sacrificed. The fact that there is no crater in our Earth proves that you did not explode in the past, and that you solved the problem in some other way. Note, somebody open the door, quick!”
Irresistibly, he was carried forward. And then—
“Wait!”
IT WAS the girl. The colorless gray in her face was a livid thing. Her eyes glittered like dark jewels; and in her fingers was the tiny, mirror-bright gun she had pointed in the beginning at McAllister.
The little group hustling McAllister stopped as if they had been struck. He was scarcely aware; for him there was only the girl, and the way the muscles of her lips were working, and the way her voice suddenly flamed:
“This is utter outrage. Are we such cowards—is it possible that the spirit of liberty can survive only through a shoddy act of murder and gross defiance of the rights of the individual? I say no! Mr. McAllister must have the protection of the hypnotism treatment, even if we die during the wasted minutes.”
“Lystra!” It was her father; and McAllister realized in the swift movement of the older man, what a brilliant mind was there; and how. quickly the older man grasped every aspect of the situation.
He stepped forward, and took the gun from his daughter’s fingers—the only man in the room, McAllister thought flashingly, who could dare approach her in that moment with the certainty she would not fire. For hysteria was in every line of her face; and the racking tears that followed showed how dangerous her stand might have been against the others.
Strangely, not for a moment had hope come. The entire action seemed divorced from his life and his thought; there was only the observation of it. He stood there for a seeming eternity, and, when emotion finally came, it was surprise that he was not being hustled to his doom.
With the surprise came awareness that Peter Cadron had let go his arm, and stepped clear of him.
The man’s eyes were calm, his head held proudly erect; he said: “Your daughter is right, sir. At this point we rise above our petty fears, and we say to this unhappy young man: ‘Have courage! You will riot be forgotten. We can guarantee nothing, cannot even state exactly what will happen to you. But we say: ‘if it lies in our power to help you, that help you shall have.’ And now—we must protect you from the devastating psychological pressures that would otherwise destroy you, simply but effectively.”
Too late, McAllister noticed that the others had turned faces away from that extraordinary wall—the wall that had already displayed so vast a versatility. He did not even see who pressed the activating button for what followed.
There was a flash of dazzling light. For an instant he felt as if his mind had been laid bare; and against that nakedness the voice of Peter Cadron pressed like some ineradicable engraving stamp:
“To retain your self-control and your sanity—this is your hope: this you will do in spite of everything! And, for your sake, speak of your experience only to scientists or to those in authority whom you feel will understand and help. Good luck!” So strong remained the effect of that brief flaring light that he felt only vaguely the touch of their hands on him, propelling him. He must have fallen, but there was no pain—He grew aware that he was lying on a sidewalk. The deep, familiar voice of Police-Inspector Clayton boomed over him:
“Clear the way; no crowding now!”
MCALLISTER climbed to his feet. A pall of curious faces gawked at him; and there was no park, no gorgeous city. Instead, a bleak row of one-story shops made a dull pattern on either side of the street.
He’d have to get away from here. These people didn’t understand. Somewhere on Earth must be a scientist who could help him. After all, the record was that he hadn’t exploded. Therefore, somewhere, somehow—
He mumbled answers at the questions that beat at him; and then he was clear of the disappointed crowd. There followed purposeless minutes of breakneck walk; the streets ahead grew narrower, dirtier—
He stopped, shaken. What was happening?
It was night, in a brilliant, glowing city. He was standing on the boulevard of an avenue that stretched jewellike into remote distance.
A street that lived, flaming with a soft light that gleamed up from its surface—a road of light, like a river flowing under a sun that shone nowhere else, straight and smooth and—
He walked along for uncomprehending minutes, watching the cars that streamed past, strange, dark shapes that streaked past—and wild hope came!
Was this again the age of the Isher and the gunmakers? It could be; it looked right, and it meant they had brought him back. After all, they were not evil, and they would save him if they could. For all he knew, weeks had passed in their time and—
Abruptly, he was in the center of a blinding snowstorm. He staggered from, the first, mighty, unexpected blow of that untamed wind, then, bracing himself, fought for mental and physical calm.
The shining, wondrous night city was gone; gone too the glowing road—both vanished, transformed into this deadly, wilderness world.
He peered through the driving snow. It was daylight; and he could make out the dim shadows of trees that reared up through the white mist of blizzard less than fifty feet away.
Instinctively, he pressed toward their shelter, and stood finally out of that blowing, pressing wind.
He thought: One minute in the distant future; the next—where?
There was certainly no city. Only trees, an uninhabited forest and winter—
THE BLIZZARD was gone. And the trees. He stood on a sandy beach; before him stretched a blue, sunlit sea that rippled over broken, white buildings. All around, scattered far into that shallow, lovely sea, far up into the weed-grown hills, were the remnants of a once tremendous city. Over all clung an aura of incredible age; and the silence of the long-dead was broken only by the gentle, timeless lapping of the waves—
Again came that instantaneous change. More prepared this time, he nevertheless sank twice under the surface of the vast, swift river that carried him on and on. It was hard swimming, but the insulated suit was buoyant with the air it manufactured each passing second; and, after a moment, he began to struggle purposely toward the tree-lined shore a hundred feet to his right.
A thought came; and he stopped swimming: “What’s the use!”
The truth was as simple as it was terrible. He was being shunted from the past to the future; he was the “weight” on the long end of an energy seesaw; and in some way, he was slipping farther ahead and farther back each time. Only that could explain the catastrophic changes he had already witnessed. In a minute would come another change and—It came! He was lying face downward on green grass, but there was utterly no curiosity in him. He did not look up, but lay there hour after hour, as the seesaw jerked on: past—future—past—future—
Beyond doubt, the gunmakers had won their respite; for at the far end of this dizzy teeter-totter was the machine that had been used by the Isher soldiers as an activating force; it too teetered up, then down, in a mad seesaw.
There remained the gunmakers’ promise to help him, vain now; for they could not know what had happened. They could not find him ever in this maze of time.
There remained the mechanical law that forces must balance.
Somewhere, sometime, a balance would be struck, probably in the future—because there was still the fact that he hadn’t exploded in the past. Yes, somewhere would come the balance when he would again face that problem. But now—
On, on, on the seesaw flashed; the world on the one hand grew bright with youth, and on the other dark with fantastic age.
Infinity yawned blackly ahead. Quite suddenly it came to him that he knew where the seesaw would stop. It would end in the very remote past, with the release of the stupendous temporal energy he had been accumulating with each of those monstrous swings.
He would not witness, but he would cause the formation of the planets.
1942
RECRUITING STATION
They recruited with a time machine—across twenty thousand years of human history. “Men Wanted” their signs read; if it was a station set up in an era of peace, it was for work, so they said. But it led to the greatest war of all time—
She didn’t dare! Suddenly, the night was a cold, enveloping thing. The edge of the broad, black river gurgled evilly at her feet as if, now that she had changed her mind—it hungered for her.
Her foot slipped on the wet, sloping ground; and her mind grew blurred with the terrible senseless fear that things were reaching out of the night, trying to drown her now against her will.
She fought up the bank—and slumped breathless onto the nearest park bench, coldly furious with her fear. Dully, she watched the gaunt man come along the pathway past the light standard. So sluggish was her brain that she was not aware of surprise when she realized he was coming straight toward her.
The purulent yellowish light made a crazy patch of his shadow across her where she sat. His voice, when he spoke, was vaguely foreign in tone, yet modulated, cultured. He said:
“Are you interested in the Calonian cause?” Norma stared. There was no quickening in her brain, but suddenly she began to laugh. It was funny, horribly, hysterically funny funny. To be sitting here, trying to get up the nerve for another attempt at those deadly waters, and then to have some crackbrain come along and—
“You’re deluding yourself, Miss Matheson,” the man went on coolly. “You’re not the suicide type.”
“Nor the pickup type!” she answered automatically. “Beat it before—”
Abruptly, it penetrated that the man had called her by name. She looked up sharply at the dark blank that was his face. His head against the background o,f distant light nodded as if in reply to the question that quivered in her thought. “Yes, I know your name. I also know your history and your fear!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a young scientist named Garson arrived in the city tonight to deliver a series of lectures. Ten years ago, when you and he graduated from the same university, he asked you to marry him, but it was a career you wanted—and now you’ve been terrified that, in your extremity, you would go to him for assistance and—”
“Stop!”
The man seemed to watch her as she sat there breathing heavily. He said at last, quietly:
“I think I have proved that I am not simply a casual philanderer.”
“What other kind of philanderer is there?” Norma asked, sluggish again. But she made no objection as he sank down on the far end of the bench. His back was still to the light, his features night-enveloped.
“Ah,” he said, “you joke; you are bitter. But that is an improvement. You feel now, perhaps, that if somebody has taken an interest in you, all is not lost.”
Norma said dully; “People who are acquainted with the basic laws of psychology are cursed with the memory of them even when disaster strikes into their lives. All I’ve done the last ten years is—”
She stopped; then: “You’re very clever. Without more than arousing my instinctive suspicions, you’ve insinuated yourself into the company of an hysterical woman. What’s your purpose?”
“I intend to offer you a job.”
Norma’s laugh sounded so harsh in her own ears that she thought, startled: “I am hysterical!” Aloud, she said: “An apartment, jewels, a car of my own, I suppose?”
His reply was cool: “No! To put it frankly, you’re not pretty enough. Too angular, mentally and physically. That’s been one of your troubles the last ten years; a developing introversion of the mind which has influenced the shape of your body unfavorably.”
The words shivered through the suddenly stiffened muscles of her body. With an enormous effort, she forced herself to relax. She said: “I had that coming to me. Insults are good for hysteria; so now what?”
“Are you interested in the Calonian cause?”
“There you go again,” she complained. “But yes, I’m for it. Birds of a feather, you know.”
“I know very well indeed. In fact, in those words you named the reason why I am here tonight, hiring a young woman who is up against it. Calonia, too, is up against it and—” He stopped; in the darkness, he spread his shadowlike hands. “You see: good publicity for our recruiting centers.”
Norma nodded. She did see, and, suddenly, she didn’t trust herself to speak; her hand trembled as she took the key he held out.
“This key,” he said, “will fit the lock of the front door of the recruiting station; it will also fit the lock of the door leading to the apartment above it. The apartment is yours while you have the job. You can go there tonight if you wish, or wait until morning if you fear this is merely a device—now, I must give you a warning.”
“Warning?”
“Yes. The work we are doing is illegal. Actually, only the American government can enlist American citizens and operate recruiting stations. We exist on sufferance and sympathy, but at any time someone may lay a charge; and the police will have to act.”
Norma nodded rapidly. “That’s no risk,” she said. “No judge would ever—”
“The address is 322 Carlton Street,” he cut in smoothly. “And for your information, my name is Dr. Lell.”
Norma had the distinct sense of being pushed along too swiftly for caution. She hesitated, her mind on the street address. “Is that near Bessemer?”
It was his turn to hesitate. “I’m afraid,” he confessed, “I don’t know this city very well, at least not in its twentieth century . . . that is,” he finished suavely, “I was here many years ago, before the turn of the century.”
Norma wondered vaguely why he bothered to explain; she said, half-accusingly: “You’re not a Calonian. You sound—French, maybe.”
“You’re not a Calonian, either!” he said, and stood up abruptly. She watched him walk off into the night, a great gloom-wrapped figure that vanished almost immediately.
She stopped short in the deserted night street. The sound that came was like a whisper touching her brain; a machine whirring somewhere with almost infinite softness. For the barest moment, her mind concentrated on the shadow vibrations; and then, somehow, they seemed to fade like figments of her imagination. Suddenly, there was only the street and the silent night.
The street was dimly lighted; and that brought doubt, sharp and tinged with a faint fear. She strained her eyes and traced the numbers in the shadow of the door; 322! That was it!
The place was dark. She peered at the signs that made up the window display:
“FIGHT FOR THE BRAVE CALONIANS” “THE CALONIANS ARE FIGHTING FREEDOM’S FIGHT—YOUR FIGHT!” “IF YOU CAN PAY YOUR OWN WAY, IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED; OTHERWISE WE’LL GET YOU OVER!”
