Collected Short Fiction, page 578
“How’s that?”
“The mind works in time,” Messenger said. “The flow of consciousness shows a time-factor, and nearly every datum of parapsychology points the same way. With that for a start, Madge had come up with a new explanation of the electrical brain waves recorded by the electroencephalograph.”
He had to gasp for air, as if exhausted by that word.
“Those waves are rapid pulsations of voltage in the brain tissue,” he continued. “Her idea was that the voltage changes are caused by the rhythmic vibration of atoms or electrons in the plane of time.”
Dane leaned nearer, not quite sure what he had heard.
“In time—not space.” The faint voice was difficult to hear, but Dane had a sense of the vigorous mind behind it, striving robustly to reach him. “You can see that the electrical effect of such a vibrating particle would fall to zero as it swings away in time, and then increase again as it returns.
“Enough such particles, vibrating in unison, would cause the voltage pulsations we find. The duration of one wave, Madge thought, determines the instant that is now. Each new wave creates a new now and carries the consciousness on from the old, leaving it a part of the past.”
MESSENGER stopped to rest again, limp and almost lifeless on his pillows.
“A simple notion,” he toiled on at last. “But it, seems to explain many things. The simplest living molecules— the viruses and genes—must be built around single particles vibrating in time. And fission must begin when another particle begins vibrating in unison.”
“An exciting idea!” Dane whispered breathlessly. “But—if mental energy can affect physical particles—don’t you have trouble about the conservation of energy?”
“That energy in time is still physical,” Messenger answered. “I’ve no time to write the equations, but mind is a function of the energy-flow, back and forth, between space and time. The oldest proof of that is the temperature drop that accompanies any massive psychophysical effect—when heat is drawn from the air to become the literal force of mind.
“The same sort of transfer is going on all the time, in every human brain and every living cell, although it’s usually harder to detect, because the amount of heat absorbed is exactly balanced, in the long run, by the new heat generated as the vital energy is spent.”
Dane nodded, in awed comprehension.
“So you did prove her theory?”
“A little of it—though the vibration in time is far more rapid than she first thought, and the brain waves seem to be due to a sort of ebb and flow between the spatial and temporal states of energy. Most of the theory is still debatable, as useful theories generally are. But it has served us pretty well.”
Messenger closed his eyes to rest again, and it seemed a long time to Dane before he resumed:
“That energy of life obeys its own special laws. Its dual nature gives it a limited independence from both space and time. Though it usually comes from the transformation of heat in our own nerve cells, a receptive brain can sometimes draw it from another—that is telepathy.
“Or a trained and gifted mind can absorb it from any sort of objects at nearly any distance—that is the basis of direct extrasensory perception.
“Usually, we spend it to operate our own nervous systems, but it can be spent on distant objects—that’s psychokinesis, if you wish to use the word. A difficult trick, for Homo sapiens.”
The maker lay back to rest again, watching Dean with a look of speculation in his faded eyes. He smiled at last wistfully.
“It ought to be easier for you,” he whispered. “But it’s so hard for us that Madge had given up proving her theory, before I met her. Even after we tackled it together, it took us years to learn how to apply that actual force of mind to a few atoms in one molecule at a time. And that’s all we could ever do.”
DANE had been listening too desperately to breathe. He straightened when Messenger paused, and they both gasped for air. He nodded slowly.
“So that’s the way you made us?”
“It wasn’t quite that simple.” Messenger gave him a wry little grin. “There’s only a brief critical time, you see, when the genes can be rearranged to make a successful human mutation. That is just after the moment of conception, when the fertilized ovum is ready to begin development.”
“I can see that.” Dane nodded quickly. “With all the millions of different male gametes competing to reach the egg cell, you couldn’t know the combination of available genes until one of them has entered it. And soon afterwards, the cleavage of the fertilized cell would form more genes than you could change.”
“Exactly,” Messenger panted. “The act of mutation must be completed before the cell division begins. But that crucial time is far too short for all the work that must be done to shape such a complex being as you or Nan. It takes days, or even weeks, to chart all the significant genes involved and discover what traits they carry and work out all the changes to be made.”
“But you did it.” Wonder quickened Dane’s low voice. “How?”
“With training, we were able to focus our new perceptions on a living germ cell,” the old man whispered laboriously. “That selected cell could remain undisturbed in the mother’s body, because we didn’t have to be near it in space. And we were able at last to get around that problem of time, when we learned how to look a little way into the future.”
“Prevision?” Dane stiffened with astonishment.
“That follows logically enough from the temporal factor we had already found in life and mind,” Messenger insisted patiently. “You and Nan should be better at it, when you grow up, but Madge and I could never see more than just one cell, as it would be no longer than a few weeks ahead.
“In that limited time, we had to complete all our studies of the genetic possibilities of the cell we had chosen, and plan the gene-shifts that would remove all the old hereditary faults and replace them with the gifts of the new race. When the crucial instant came, we had to be ready for the few hours of concentrated effort that would make the coming child Homo excellens.”
“So you could plan the work ahead?” Dane nodded, frowning. “But you had to wait for the crucial moment, before you did it?”
“Right,” Messenger murmured feebly. “We could see that little way into the future, but we could never reach into it, not even to move one atom. Perhaps we had run into some undiscovered natural law.”
“But that must have been a wonderful thing,” Dane insisted, still grave with his awe. “Reaching out with just your mind to explore and shift the genes to shape a new species! And all, I suppose, without our parents knowing that anything was happening?”
“It had to be that way.” The maker’s bloated face was suddenly tired and sad. “Madge taught me that, when she turned against me and tried to wreck our great experiment. I’m afraid the old race is too intolerant to accept the new.”
DANE nodded bleakly, thinking of Gellian’s campaign of extermination and the military forces of Operation Survival closing in upon them now. He didn’t want to fight the mother race, but he could see no promise of any sort of truce. Genetic engineering seemed to be the only hope for those it had created, and he turned his mind back to that.
“How did Nan come to be looking for the mutants, at the Sanderson Service?” he asked abruptly. “Didn’t you already know who we were?”
Laboriously, Messenger shook his head.
“Don’t forget the difficulties I had to work against,” he panted huskily. “I was forced to work with strangers, I had to guess about too many traits and their linkages. I knew that blunders were inevitable. But I didn’t expect the imperfect mutations to be quite so dangerous, and I wasn’t prepared to have their twisted gifts turned against me by such men as Gellian.”
He had to pause again, panting noisily, but at last he continued: “Because of all those dangers, I nearly always had to move along again, before the mutant children were born. I couldn’t follow them up, to help with their care or even to check the results of my work, without too much risk of exposing them. Nan is one of the few I was able to keep with me.”
“Because her parents were your friends?” Dane’s breath caught, and he leaned forward suddenly. “I wonder—did you know my mother, too?”
“Before your father ever saw her.” The old man smiled fondly. “In the Manila hospital where she worked. When I was there for plastic surgery—getting some of Charles Kendrew’s scars erased, to smooth the way for J.D. Messenger.”
“You must have known I was a mutant. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me—or why Nan gave me that test I failed to pass.”
“But I didn’t know,” Messenger protested. “I knew only that you might be. I couldn’t keep any records, you see, for fear of men like Gellian, and usually I had no way of learning the circumstances of the birth. When the mutant cell failed to develop, the next ovulation was likely to produce a human child. In many cases—in your own—I had no way of knowing which had happened until Nan could run her tests. When you failed, I was forced to assume that you were Homo sapiens. In reality, your psi capacity was still too much retarded to let you call those cards.”
He lifted his head to blink weakly at Dane.
“But you say it is awakening now?”
“I have this feeling of danger—” Dane caught his breath and stiffened, for that fitful awareness had come back when he thought of it, overwhelmingly intense. Sudden peril burned his tongue like acid, and it hung like some fuming poison in the air. It chilled him like a sudden wind and it throbbed in his brain like a warning gong. It was a glare of darkness, flaming over everything around him.
“I feel it now!” His breath and voice were gone, leaving his agitated whisper as faint as Messenger’s. “I can taste it and smell it and hear it and see it—coming closer every second.”
He felt the room door open, and he saw that dreadful glare strike through it and fall upon the maker.
Van Doon came in.
XV
MESSENGER seemed unaware of any danger from Van Doon. He turned stiffly on his pillows, and his watery eyes blinked hopefully at the man in the doorway.
“Well, Vic?” he whispered anxiously. “How are we doing, with Operation Survival?”
“We’re still surviving.” The stocky man grinned easily. “I think we’ve got away from Gellian. Since we crossed the mountains, the radar shows no aircraft behind. Nan has been telling me what course to fly, but she says she doesn’t know our final destination.”
The sick man studied him shrewdly. “I’ll tell you when the time comes,” he murmured softly. “Until I do, just fly the course Nan gives you. That will bring us in sight of a certain mountain peak. When we get there, I’ll come to the cockpit and show you where to land.”
Van Doon protested, with an air of slight impatience, “Hadn’t you better just tell me where we’re going, so you can relax while I fly us in?”
Messenger shook his head weakly—and Dane shivered to another chill of danger. He could feel the veiled violence behind Van Doon’s sunburned smile, and his muscles tightened to meet some murderous attack.
“Our destination’s too well hidden for that,” the maker was whispering. “I’ll have to point it out.”
“If you say so.” Van Doon nodded casually—too casually, it seemed to Dane. “I was just trying to save trouble for you. I’ll have Nan call you, when we see that mountain.”
He glanced at Dane, too carelessly, and smiled at Messenger too openly, and slowly turned to go. That icy feel of danger went with him. The glare of darkness faded from around the maker, and Dane gulped for air that now was clean enough to breathe again.
“I’m glad you didn’t tell him anything,” he whispered impulsively. “I don’t trust him—even if he is a mutant.” Messenger stiffened against the pillows.
“Vic Van Doon?” His small eyes blinked painfully beneath the folds of swollen flesh. “What makes you think he’s a mutant?”
“The way he behaves.” Dane frowned uncertainly, groping for his evidence. “He isn’t relaxed, like all the men who’ve really had that synthetic brain fever. He’s desperate—and trying to hide his desperation. I first noticed it when I was pretending to be a lotus-eater, the way I think he is.”
“So that’s all?” Messenger grinned with relief. “You had me frightened.”
“I’m still frightened,” Dane insisted. “Since you didn’t know he’s a mutant, I’m afraid he’s working against you. Maybe he isn’t grateful for being mutated!”
“You’re just worn out and upset.” Messenger seemed as cheery as Van Doon had been. “Nan used to imagine all sorts of things, when her psi capacity was beginning to awake. Yours will do you more harm than good, until you learn how to use it. Better forget about Van Doon.”
“Could he be a mutant?” Dane looked at the maker, searchingly. “Nan ought to know, if she investigated all your efforts at human mutation.”
“She trusts him,” Messenger said. “As completely as I do.”
“But would she know?”
Messenger shook his head, with a mild impatience. “There were a good many of the older ones she failed to trace. In all those years, the parents had often moved or died, and her methods of search were limited by the danger of leaving clues for Gellian—”
He paused when he saw Nan at the door, beckoning.
“Please, Dane,” she whispered: “Mr. Messenger needs rest.”
“But I’m not tired at all.” The maker turned stiffly on the pillows to face her. “I’m feeling unusually fine,” he gasped faintly. “We’ve been having a talk.” He winked solemnly at Dane. “A very interesting talk, about creation.”
“It’s over now,” she told him. “And you both need sleep.”
Reluctantly, Dane helped Messenger to his cabin and went back to the lounge. He glanced at the windows, but they were filmed with rain and all he could see outside was dense cloud driving past the wings. He sat down wearily, because there was nothing else to do. For a time he fought his aching weariness, but at last he must have fallen asleep.
“Well, Dane!” Nan’s voice aroused him. “Here we are.”
She stood near him in the lounge, looking outside. The strong light from the windows found all the red in her hair, and it made her fine skin a kind of pink, translucent ivory. She looked flushed and lovely with elation.
“We’ve got away from Gellian,” she said. “This is our refuge, and now I think we’re safe from men.”
HE HURRIED to her side, and looked out eagerly. Far below them, he could see tangled mountains, all covered with the crowded tufts of great trees which made them seem deceptively soft, like a wrinkled rug. Ahead of the plane, above the vivid green of the sunlit forest, a dark wilderness of tumbled boulders lifted to the foot of a sheer basalt precipice. Above the cliffs, a great peak stood far away, shining against the deep-blue sky of this high altitude with the dazzle of new snow.
“That is Mt. Carstensz.” She pointed at the white mountain. “In the Snow Range. Mr. Messenger went to the cockpit, when we sighted it. He’ll show Vic where to land.”
Dane had caught her sense of victory. He stood watching with a breathless expectation, while the plane climbed to fight the gusts of a windy pass above the cliffs, and skimmed low across new fields of equatorial snow, and wheeled down again over naked boulder slides and patches of sparse grass and lower slopes splashed red and yellow and white with rhododendrons. Something made him clutch her hand, when they saw the canyon.
It was a narrow gorge, cut back into the same dark basaltic formation they had seen below the pass. A glacial stream made a white plume of falling water at its head, plunging into a thin blue fleck of lake, and its foot was guarded by an enormous, solitary tree.
“That’s it!” Nan pointed into the canyon. “I know it, from what Mr. Messenger has told me about it. It’s the hiding place he found, when he first came to New Guinea to get away from men. It’s ours, now.”
The plane was diving between the cliffs, and he leaned anxiously to watch. He saw vertical rusty streaks washed down from iron deposits, and a wide black vein that shone with the dull luster of pitchblende, and a yellow patch that must be carnotite.
“That rock looks rich with minerals,” His voice was hurried, husky with his wonder. “There are even signs of uranium. But I don’t see any buildings.”
She faced him, her eyes candidly probing. A frown drew troubled lines across her tawny forehead, but her quick smile erased them.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, but I’m going to,” she moved toward him impulsively. “After all, it’s our secret. . . . Mr. Messenger has a space ship waiting.”
Dane gasped. “A space ship—”
“We won’t know how good it is until we try it, but it ought to be better than the rockets men are building, because it has atomic power—there is uranium in those cliffs.”
“Atomic power? A space ship—” He shook his head, unbelievingly. “It would take hundreds of experts and millions and millions of dollars worth of equipment to build any sort of fission-driven space ship,” he protested. “I didn’t see any shops, or any signs of such a project.”
“Mr. Messenger’s the maker,” she reminded him, gently. “He doesn’t need shops to make machines.”
“How else—” Dane gulped, suddenly voiceless with an awed surmise. “You mean that he built a space ship by shifting genes? That he—grew it?”
HE TURNED abruptly back to the windows, looking for that enormous tree at the mouth of the gorge. All he saw now was dazzling snow and dark naked rock and the white billows of cumulus clouds building against the windward slopes far below. He couldn’t find that tree, and he turned blankly back to Nan.
“It isn’t so difficult to grow a machine as you might imagine,” she said. “Most living things are a good deal more intricate, when you come to think of it, than most machines. Mr. Messenger says the space ship was an easier problem than you and I were. In fact, he once had me try one, just for practice.”
