Collected Short Fiction, page 305
The bright eyes lifted to Lanning. “Just keep in mind, Denny, that the logical laws of causation are still rigid—but removed to a higher dimension. The absolute sequence of events, in the fifth dimension, is not parallel with time—although our three-dimensional minds commonly perceive it so. But that inviolable progression is the unalterable frame of all the universe.”
His gnarled hand reached out to touch the rusty magnet in Lanning’s hand.
“The march of that progression, higher than Time,” his hushed whisper ran on solemnly, “has now forever obliterated Sorainya, the queen. The sequence of events has not yet settled the fates of Jonbar and Gyronchi. But still the odds are all with Gyronchi.”
The thin hand gripped Lanning’s arm. “The last play is near,” he breathed. “The hope—the probability—of Jonbar is all in you, Denny. And the outcome will soon be engraved forever in the fifth dimension.”
He turned to grasp the Wheel of Time.
XVII.
WIL McLAN lived to nurse his failing converters, although Lanning was stricken to see his pallor and his ebbing strength. He drove the Chronion, still ahead of pursuit in her shimmering abyss, back down her geodesic track until the dials stood at 5:49 P. M., August 12, 1921. He raised his hand in a warning signal, and his whisper rasped down through the speaking tube. “Ready, Denny! They’ll be waiting to guard the spot.”
Lanning was standing on the foredeck, peering alertly into the flickering blue. As a desperate ruse that might win a precious moment, he had donned Sorainya’s armor. It fitted without discomfort. Her black plume waved above his head. One hand clutched her golden sword—the device in the hilt which made it also an electron gun was either broken or exhausted. The other moistly gripped the rusty magnet—which must be returned to the path of a barefoot boy, to save his namesake world.
His weary brain, as he waited, dully pondered a last paradox: that, while the Chronion had outrun the black ship of Glarath in the long race backward through Time, no possible speed could bring her to the goal ahead of the other ship. He gripped the sword, at the warning from McLan, and his body went tense in the borrowed mail.
And the Chronion flashed out of the blue again, into the lonely hush of that valley in the age-worn Ozarks. Everything was exactly as Lanning had seen it in the shining block of the chronoscope: the idle, tattered boy, indiligently driving the two lean cows down the rocky slope toward the dilapidated farm, with the gaunt, yellow dog roving beside him.
Everything—except that the great, squarish, black mass of the time ship from Gyronchi lay beside the trail, like a battleship aground. Glarath was a haggard, black pillar on his lofty deck. Ugly projectors of the gyrane’s blasting atomic energy beam frowned from their ports. And scores of the great ants had been disembarked, to make a bristling, hideous wall about the spot where the magnet must be placed.
Whistling, the dawdling boy had come within twenty yards of the spot. But he gave no evidence that he saw either ship or monsters. One of the red-spotted cows, ahead, plodded calmly through a giant black ant.
Back to Lanning, already tensed to leap from the deck, came a whispered explanation of McLan. “No, the boy John Barr won’t be aware of us at all—unless we should turn the temporal field upon him. For his life is already almost completely fixed by the advancing progression in the fifth dimension. In terms of his experience, we are no more than phantoms of probability. Travelers backward into time can affect the past only at carefully selected nodes, and then only at the expense of the terrific power required to deflect the probability-inertia of the whole continuum. It required the utmost power of the gyratie merely to lift the magnet from John Barr’s path.”
Gripping the magnet and the sword, Lanning flung himself to the ground. He stumbled on a rock, fell to his knees, staggered back to his feet, and ran desperately toward the great black ship and the horde of ants ahead of the loitering boy.
He waved the golden sword, as he ran, in Sorainya’s familiar gesture. And Glarath, on his bridge, waved a black-swathed arm to answer—and then, as Lanning’s tired feet tripped again, he went rigid with alarm.
For Lanning’s weary gait lacked all Sorainya’s grace, and the black priest marked the change. A great hoarse voice croaked a command. The wall of giant ants came to attention, bristling with the crimson and yellow of arms. And a thick, black tube swung down in its port.
THE FIRST BLAST of the atomic ray struck a rock beside Lanning. It exploded in a blaze of white. Molten stone spattered the red mail. A hot fragment slapped his cheek with white agony, and blinded him with the smoke of his own flesh burning.
The boy, meantime, had already walked into the unsuspected ranks of ants. A cold desperation clutched at Lanning’s heart. In a few moments more, John Barr would have picked up the pebble instead of the magnet, and the fate of two worlds settled forever—unless he broke through.
Strangled with bitter white smoke, Lanning caught a sobbing breath, and sprinted. Twin blinding lances of the gyrane’s fire fused the soil to a smoking pool of lava, close behind him. He was now safe beneath their maximum depression. But the ants were waiting ahead.
Thick crimson guns were leveled, and a volley battered Lanning. The bullets failed to pierce the woven mail. But the impacts were bruising, staggering blows. And one raked his unprotected jaw and neck, beneath the helmet. A sickening pain loosened his muscles. Red gouts splashed down on the crimson mail. He gritted broken teeth, spat fragments and blood, stumbled on.
Yellow axes flamed above the ebon ranks. He whirled the yellow sword, and leapt to meet them. For an instant he thought the ants would yield, in awe of Sorainya’s very armor. But Glarath croaked another command from above, and they fell upon him furiously.
Golden blades ripped and battered at his mail. He drove Sorainya’s sword into an armored, jet thorax. And a clubbed red gun smashed against his extended arm. The bone gave with a brittle snap, and his arm fell useless in the sleeve of mail. He clutched the precious magnet close to his body, and leapt ahead.
Blows rained on him. The helmet was battered stunningly against his head. A cleaving axe half severed his neck, at the juncture of helmet and mail, and hot blood gushed down in the shirt.
Yet some old terror of their queen repelled the ants from any actual contact with her mail. So Lanning, even wounded and beaten down, pushed through their close ranks to the hollow square they guarded.
He saw the ragged boy John Barr stroll unawares through the farther ranks, the hungry dog at his heels. He saw the gleam of the pebble, the triangular print where the magnet had lain, but two paces from the boy. Another second——
But he was falling. His strength was rushing out in the foaming red stream from his neck. Another merciless blow smashed his shoulder, numbed the arm that held the magnet, crushed him down.
Lanning’s eyes were dim with weakness and pain. But, as he fell, he saw beside him, or thought he did, a splendid figure. The grave, majestic head and mighty shoulders of a towering man rose above a mantle of shimmering opalescence. Deep and wide and clear, the eyes of the stranger struck Lanning with a power that was unforgettable, supernal.
A bare, magnificent arm reached out of the flaming veil and touched his shoulder. That cold touch tensed Lanning’s body with a queer, shocking force. A deep, hushed voice said: “Courage, Denny Lanning! For mankind.”
AND THE STRANGER was gone. Numbed with awe, Lanning knew that he had been one of the dynon, the further heirs of Jonbar.
His hand had given Lanning a mysterious new strength, cleared the red mist from his head. And the visitation meant, Lanning knew dimly, that Jonbar still was—possible!
Glarath had bellowed another command, and an avalanche of ants was falling on his body. And the aimless boy was already stooping for the pebble.
Lanning hurled himself forward, his good arm thrust out with the magnet. A yellow blade of pain slashed down at his sleeve. The horde crushed him to the earth. But the magnet, flung with the last effort of his fingers, dropped into the triangular print.
A bright curiosity—the very light of science—was born in the eyes of the stooping boy. His inquisitive fingers closed on the V of steel. And then the warrior ants, piling themselves upon Lanning’s body, were suddenly gone.
The black ship flickered like a wing of shadow, and vanished.
John Barr picked up the magnet, wonderingly discovered a clinging rusty nail that it had drawn from the dust, and went on down the slope, driving his two spotted cows through the unseen hull of the Chronion.
Dennis Lanning was left alone beside the trail. He knew that he was dying. But the slowing, fading throb of his pain was a triumphant drum. For he knew that Jonbar had won.
His failing eyes looked down toward the Chronion. He wondered if Wil McLan had been hurt again, in the battle. Puzzled dimly, he saw the little time ship flicker also, and vanish. And he lay quite alone in the sunset on the slope of that Ozark hill.
XVIII.
IT WAS a dream, all a delirium of death, a thing that could not have been. But Lethonee had been standing beside him. Tall and straight in the same simple white, with the great splendid jewel of the chronotron held in her hands.
Her white face, under her coronal of shimmering mahogany, was beautiful, and in her violet eyes shone a tender, joyous light.
“I thank you, Denny Lanning!” her breaking silver voice had whispered. “I bring you the thanks of all Jonbar, for a thing that no other could have done.” Lanning struggled against a terrible inertia, to speak to her. But all his desperate effort could utter not even one word of his love. For he was held in the leaden hands of death.
But he saw the violet eyes turn soft with tears, and he heard her trembling breath, “Live, Denny Lanning! Get well again. And come back to me!” Her full lips quivered, and the tears sprang glistening into the jewel’s soft glow. “For I’ll be waiting, Denny Lanning, whenever you come to Jonbar.” He fought again the rigor of death, but in vain. And darkness blotted out the jewel and Lethonee.
As if all his life swirled in brief review, through the last hallucination of death, he thought that he was once again lying in a clean bed in the little green-walled hospital aboard the Chronion. The brisk, efficient surgeons of Jonbar had been attending him for a long time in the dim, drowsy intervals of sleep. The wondrous agencies of the dynat, he dreamed, had made his body whole again.
It had to be a dream. For Willie Rand was sitting up on the opposite bed, grinning at him with clear, seeing eyes. Willie Rand who had been slain—blind and alone—in that fantastic, hopeless charge against the ants before Sorainya’s diamond throne. He blew an expanding silver ring, watched it happily. “Howdy, Cap’n Lanning. Smoke?” Numbed with bewilderment, Lanning reached automatically to catch the cigarette he tossed. There was no pain in the arm that the great ant’s clubbed gun had broken. He tried the fingers again, incredulously, and stared across at Willie Rand.
“What’s happened?” he demanded. “I thought you were—were killed! And I was cashing out——”
Rand exhaled a white cloud, grinned through it.
“That’s right, cap’n,” he drawled cheerfully. “I reckon we’ve all died twice. And I reckon we’ll all get another stack of chips—all but poor Cap’n McLan.”
“But——?” gasped Lanning. “How were——?”
“Well, cap’n, you see——”
But then there was a clatter on the stair. Barry Halloran and bull-like Emil Schorn came down from the deck, carrying a stretcher. It bore a sheeted form, and behind came two of the surgeons from Jonbar, in their tunics of gray and green. A third rolled in a table of instruments. They laid the bandaged figure gently on a bed. Lanning caught the gleam of a hypodermic, glimpsed the little shining needles that gave off a healing radiation of the dynat.
“That’s the little limey, Duffy Clark,” Willie Rand was informing him. “He was the last one. He was put overboard on the flight back from Gyronchi, and sort of lost in probability and time. Took days to untangle the geo—geodesics. But they found him! He was burned with the gyrane—the same cussed ray that put my lights out. But I reckon that dynat will tune him up in good shape again, now that Gyronchi never was.”
LANNING was sitting up on the side of his bed, a little shakily at first. And now Barry Halloran discovered him. The rugged, freckled face lit with a joyous grin. He strode swiftly to grip Lanning’s hand.
“Denny, old man! I knew you’d be coming round!”
“Tell me, Barry!” Lanning clung to the powerful hand. He shuddered to a sudden burning agony of hope. “How did all this happen? And can we—can we——?” He gulped, and his desperate eyes searched Barry’s broad, cheerful face. “Can we go back to Jonbar?”
A shadow of pain blotted the smile from Barry Halloran.
“Wil did it.” His voice was deep with a sober regret. “Wil McLan. The last thing he did. After you had settled with Gyronchi, he left you and drove the Chronion back down to Jonbar. He was dead when he got there—dead beyond the power of the dynat to revive him. For even it can’t make men immortal, not until the dynon come.
“They are building a tomb for Wil, there in Jonbar.”
The big tackle looked away for a moment, with a new huskiness in his voice.
“Wil knew he was going down,” he went on suddenly. “He had rigged an automatic switch to stop the Chronion when it came to Jonbar, and Lethonee’s time. And she sent the doctors back with it, to haul us out of Time and probability, and resurrect us with the dynat, as they did before. Quite a hunt, I gather, through the snarl of broken geodesics.”
“Lethonee?” whispered Lanning, urgently.
“Ach!” It was a bellow greeting from Emil Schorn. He smashed Lanning’s fingers in a great ham of a hand. “Ja, Herr Lanning! Jonbar is der Valhalla der old sagas promised us, where men fight and die and are restored to fight again. Und Sorainya——”
An awed admiration deepened the bellow.
“Der red queen of war! Ach, Sorainya was a Valkyrie—one of Odin’s maids of battle, terrible and beautiful. There will be none like her in Jonbar, nein! Though the maiden waiting for you there is fair enough, and kind.”
“Jonbar? Are we going back?”
“Ach, ja! Our own time is closed to us forever—unless we choose to perish there. We exiles of time, ja. But der white girl has promised to make a place for us in Jonbar. And der herr doktors with us say that it need not be an idle, useless one. For mankind, marching forward under der dynat, will meet new enemies. We may even fight again, for Jonbar.” A stern eager blue flashed in his eyes. “Ach, heil, Valhalla!”
Lanning was standing on the deck, aglow once more with the mystical strength and elation that came from the dynat, when the Chronion slipped again from her blue shimmering bourn into the clear sky over Jonbar.
Genial sunlight of a calm spring morning burned dazzling upon lofty, silver pylons. Gay-clad multitudes thronged the vast green parks and broad viaducts and the terrace gardens of the towers, eager to greet the Chronion.
The battered little time ship drifted down slowly above them. The men out of the past, radiantly fit, but still—as Barry Halloran commented—a trampish-looking lot in their ragged, faded, oddly assorted uniforms, were leaning on the rail, waving in answer to the welcome of Jonbar.
ALL THE LITTLE Legion alive again: Schorn and Rand and Duffy Clark, swarthy Cresto and grave-eyed Barinin and grinning Lao Meng Shan. The two lean Canadians, Isaac and Israel Enders, standing silently side by side. Tall Courtney-Pharr, and grim Von Arneth, and Barry Halloran. And dapper little Jean Querard, perched perilously on the rail, making a speech of thanks into space.
But it was one of the scientists from Jonbar who held the bright wheel under the dome. And the Chronion floated over a slim, new shaft of pure white that soared alone from a wooded hill. Standing on its crown, both arms reaching skyward, Lanning saw the statue in hard white metal of a small weary man—Wil McLan.
All the Legion saluted, as they passed, and a silence stilled the humming of the multitudes below.
A wide valve had opened ahead in the argent wall of a familiar tower on a hill. The Chronion nosed through, dropped gently upon the same platform in the great hangar, where a smiling crowd was waiting, cheering noisily.
Jean Querard strutted and inflated his chest. Teetering on the rail, he waved for silence.
“C’est bon,” his high voice began. “C’est tres bon——”
Trembling with a still incredulous eagerness, Lanning leapt past him, over the rail. He pushed his way through the crowd, and found the elevator. It flung him upward, and he stepped out into that same terrace garden of his most poignant memory.
Amid its fragrant, white-flowered greenery, he paused for a moment to catch his breath. His eyes fell to the wide, verdant parklands that spread smiling to the placid river, a full mile beneath. And he saw a thing that probed his heart with a queer little needle of pain.
For this great river, he saw, was the same river that had curved through Gyronchi! Great pylons soared where miserable villages had stood. The lofty monument to Wil McLan, he saw, leapt up from the very hill that had been crowned by the squat, black temple of the gyrane, beneath the awful funnel of black.
But where was the other hill, where Sorainya’s red citadel had been?
His breath shuddered and caught, when he saw that it was this same hill.
that now bore the tower of Lethonee. His hands gripped hard on the railing, and he looked down at the little table where he had dined with Lethonee, on the dreadful night of Jonbar’s dissolution.
And Sorainya, glorious on her golden shell, rose again to mock him, as she had done that night. Tears dimmed his eyes, and a haunting, sudden ache gripped his pausing heart.
