Continuum 3, page 2
part #3 of Continuum Series
“I can’t guess at how they have sexual intercourse and have children with genes from male and female. Maybe they have a sexual-reproductive process that isn’t remotely like what we know on Earth. Anyway, these ufos, let’s call them that and not flying saucers, these ufos, originated on some planet or maybe in space. Their planet was long ago crowded, or else they have a drive to seed other planets. In any event, many leave their native world. They go to other planets that are like Earth. These have sentients. Some are humanoids. Some centauroids. Some are only God knows what.
“The pregnant female lands and releases the egg-bearing cloud. The microscopic eggs, or spores, or what have you, enter the tissues of sentients. Only one of the millions of eggs in a sentient’s body survives, just as only one sperm out of millions in an ejaculation survives to unite with an ovum in the womb. Whoever gets to the brain first is the winner.
“The egg and the sperm, that’s you, Paul, a bipedal thinking sperm, unite. The process is half-fusion, half-symbiosis. You think it’s parasitism because you’re an unwilling and very conscious host. A reluctant spermatozoan. Strange things happen. You have the power to cure or kill even when unconscious or sleeping. Only it’s not being done by you but by the ufo-egg, which goes all the way in its healing or its self-defense.
“Why does the symbiote kill those who threaten you? Obviously because it’s protecting itself and you, the host. Why does it heal nonthreatening humans? Obviously because it regards them as future hosts, or sperm.
“And so you’re shut up in a prison hospital for observation by scientists who can’t believe what they’re seeing but have to believe.
“Meanwhile, the zygote becomes embryo becomes an adult. The adult is, or will be, the ufo-egg plus the host. My analogies are, biologically speaking, mixed up. A symbiote, or parasite, and its host are not two gametes. But this doesn’t matter. You get the idea. You start to change shape. You resist, but you will eventually go all the way. You will become a saucerthing. What will happen to the brain in that saucer? I don’t know. I suspect you’ll become half-human, half-alien. You’ll grow to like your powers. After all, it’s only human to desire powers that other humans don’t have. Nor will you be bound to one shape. At times, maybe whenever you wish, you can change back to your original shape.
“That the saucer you saw changes into the shape of its original leocentaur form demonstrates that.
“Then, one day, you get out of this prison. You either stay on Earth to look for a male or go out into space for a male. You get fertilized, how, don’t ask me. You spread your seed. Other humans suffer the same strange space-change that you have suffered. And so on. Eventually, we have an Earth populated by ufo-humans. What happens then? I don’t know. I suspect that some will take off into space to seek virgin planets.”
Eyre said, “You don’t believe that.”
Tincrowder said, “Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know,” Eyre said. “I do know that I don’t like it.”
4.
That was not the end of the conversation. What about the ufos? Why had so many been sighted and why, if there were so many, hadn’t any man been affected by them, as Eyre now was?
“I don’t know that any have actually been sighted here,” Tincrowder said. “The Air Force investigation explained away all but about two percent as misinterpreted natural phenomena, delusions, hoaxes, or the result of mass hysteria. That an unexplainable two percent remains might be due to the investigators’ failure of rationalizing powers. Or perhaps the two percent were composed of actual ufos. These could have been males looking for females, which weren’t at that time on Earth.”
“But they weren’t all of the same type,” Eyre said. “Some were balls that acted more like electrical phenomena than anything. Some were cigar-shaped. Some had blinking lights. Almost all were much larger than the saucer I saw.”
Tincrowder shrugged and said, “If they existed in some place other than the observer’s mind, they may have belonged to different species or genera than your saucer. Or perhaps the males have different shapes. Maybe the differing types were hostile toward each other and expended their energies chasing each other. They may have exterminated each other in a secret unseen war or perhaps declared Earth a dangerous area and so avoid it from now on. Maybe they have a treaty that has declared Earth off-limits, and your saucer was here illegally. Or maybe she was sick or out of food and had to land here.
“You want me to explain all about them, and I can’t even tell you all about the how and why of human beings. Besides, everything I’ve said may be wrong.”
Tincrowder seemed to find this amusing. Eyre did not.
When the dialogue was ended, Eyre paced back and forth — he could not sit still long unless he was reading or watching TV — and wondered what the effect of the conversation would be on the authorities. Would they assume he was crazy? If they did, then they would do nothing. Things would proceed as they had been. They might want to give him therapy, but they would be afraid to try it. If they believed his story, then they might become so alarmed that they would try to kill him. They would justify murder as in the best interest of the majority. The majority: all humanity with the exception of Paul Eyre. Logically, he had to agree with them.
5.
The following morning, Tincrowder’s face appeared again on the screen. He looked pale and frightened.
“Paul,” he said, “you’ve been told that, if it looks as if you might escape, cyanide gas will be released in your room. It’s a terrible thing, but they can’t allow you even to get out into the hall. They’re afraid they couldn’t stop you, since you can kill with a glance. Well, last night…”
He paused and swallowed, then said, “Last night one of them made up his own mind to take action. Apparently, he believed what we said yesterday. He sneaked into the room in which the valves and the off-on button controlling the cyanide gas are located. This is guarded by one man, and an alarm is set off if any unauthorized person enters. He bludgeoned the guard and made a dash for the controls. He had to turn two valves before he could press the release button. He never got the first valve turned. As he touched it, he dropped dead. Now tell me. Did you somehow know all this was going on?”
Eyre was silent for a moment, then he said, “Not at all.”
Tincrowder swallowed again and said, “Well, you see the implications, don’t you?”
Eyre could not keep the exultation out of his voice.
“Yes, I — this thing in me, rather — can kill even if I can’t see the one who’s threatening us.”
A few seconds later, the shock hit him. He sat down trembling. People were actually trying to kill him. Yet he had done nothing except to defend himself. No, he had not done even that. It was the creature inside him. But even as he thought that, he knew that that was not true. There was no longer any clearly defined Paul Eyre or ufo-child. Their borders were dissolving; their identities were merging.
He had to get out and away, but to do that he had to experience something the thought of which terrified him.
“They,” Tincrowder said, “are divided. Half think you are telling the truth; half think you’re crazy. But the latter half isn’t certain. They saw the bright light emanating from under the bed, and they know that it wasn’t caused by fire. Your room is monitored for any change in temperature, and there was none then. That was a cold light.”
“Why aren’t Polar and Kowalski talking to me?” Eyre said. “Why have you suddenly become the spokesman?”
“I don’t have a degree in science, but I do have a free-wheeling imagination. This is a situation which requires a mind that is at ease with the fantastic. Set a thief to catch a thief. Put a science-fiction author in a science-fiction situation. Besides, I don’t think they trust me to keep my mouth shut. They can watch me while I’m working for them.”
“Are you actually going to help them to kill me?” Eyre said.
Tincrowder looked distressed. “I don’t think you can be killed.”
“But you’re willing to try,” Eyre said.
Tincrowder was silent.
Eyre said, “And you’re the one who was always raising hell because the U.S. was needlessly killing so many in Vietnam. You’re the one who was too tender-hearted to shoot deer.”
Tincrowder was obviously frightened. For all he knew, he might drop dead at this moment. Actually, Eyre thought, Tincrowder wasn’t as cowardly and soft-hearted as he had supposed him to be. He must have courage to be able to tell him all this and to chance making him angry.
Or perhaps Tincrowder wanted to be struck dead. He felt guilt because he had not made the public aware of what was being done to Eyre. This guilt was increased by his participation in the imprisonment of Eyre. Moreover, he could not keep from trying to figure out ways to kill the unkillable. It was a challenge to the intellect, which he had no doubt justified with all sorts of rationalization.
Suddenly Eyre realized that the face on the screen belonged to his most dangerous enemy.
That knowledge was followed by a slight shock. Why hadn’t Tincrowder fallen dead?
Could it be because Tincrowder was also secretly rooting for him? Tincrowder had once said that it would be a good thing if something did wipe out all of mankind. Insanity, grief, sorrow, greed, murder, rape, brutality, hopelessness, despair, prejudice, hypocrisy, and persecution would vanish from Earth. Tincrowder had admitted that poetry, art, and music would also disappear, but the price paid for a few worthwhile poems, dramas, paintings, sculptures, and symphonies wasn’t worth it. Besides, very few people appreciated art. According to him, money, power, and tearing other people apart, verbally and physically, were what most people cared about.
“On the other hand,” Tincrowder had said, “if man goes, love and compassion also go. Perhaps we’re just a stage in evolution toward a species all of whose members will be filled with love and compassion. But I ask our Creator why, if this is true, we stages have to suffer so? Don’t we count for anything?”
Tincrowder had once written a short story, What You See, in which visitors from the star Algol, as a parting gift, had spread an aerosol all over Earth. This covered all the mirrors in the world, and whenever anybody looked in one, he saw himself as he truly was. This did not have the desired effect of causing changes for the better in the viewers of self. Instead, all mirrors were smashed and a law passed making it a capital offense to manufacture mirrors. The law wasn’t necessary. Nobody except a few masochists wanted mirrors.
Eyre had asked Tincrowder why, if he felt that way, he didn’t commit suicide.
“I like to make myself and others miserable,” the writer had said.
And now Tincrowder was torn in two. He wanted to survive and hence wanted Eyre to die. He also wanted Eyre to survive, because he might be the next stage in man’s evolution.
That Eyre could perceive this meant that he had evolved in one respect. There was a time when he would have been too dull to see what was troubling Tincrowder. Eyre was, had been, an engineer who could analyze malfunctions in machines down to the last nut and bolt. But troubleshooting people had been beyond him. They were impenetrable and irrational.
6.
That night, Eyre awoke from a sleep untroubled by dreams. He rose, drank some water, and went to the single window to look at the night scene. The stars were out, the river beyond the walls and the city on both sides of the river were speckled and striped with lights. Like a zebra with the measles, he thought.
Between his building and the high stone walls was a paved area. This was bright with floodlights on the building and the wall. A tower at a corner of the walls to his left thrust up like the hand of a traffic cop signaling for a stop. It held two guards armed with rifles, and a machine gun.
He was surprised, though not shocked, to see the female leocentaur standing on the pavement below. The light gleamed whitely on her bare upper trunk, blackly on her long hair and tawnily on the leonine underbody. She was smiling up at him and waving with one hand.
The last time he had seen her, she had been a saucer-shaped thing hanging in the air outside his window. From her whirling body had come a sound that had seemed to him a farewell. But he had been mistaken. She was still around, still watching over him. Like a mother over her child.
Shouts came from the watchtower. She bounded to one side as rifle bullets struck the pavement and then she loped away out of Eyre’s sight to the right. A moment later, the machine gun opened up, but, after five bursts, it stopped. There were no more shots, but there was much excitement.
Three-quarters of an hour after the guards and the dogs had quit running around on the pavement, Tincrowder’s face filled the TV.
“Up to now I’ve been a sort of John the Baptist for a weird messiah,” he said. “Faith was noticeable only by its absence. But they believe now! They’ve not only got two eye witnesses, but they’ve got photographs! The watch-tower was equipped with a motion picture camera, you know. No, you wouldn’t. Anyway here are some stills.”
The first was of the leocentauress running away. The third showed her leaping high into the air. At least fifteen feet, Eyre estimated. The fifth showed an elongated blur. The next one was of a blurred but undeniably saucer-shaped object. The last showed the saucer as it shot by a floodlight.
“Apparently, she didn’t think she was really in danger,” Tincrowder said. “Otherwise, the guards would be dead. Of course, it may be that the adult isn’t capable of killing through ESP means or however it’s done. In which case, you, if you become an adult, may no longer be a danger. At least, not one kind of danger. You’ll always be a menace.
“One reason I think that the adult form may not be able to kill is that you didn’t kill the guards. You, that thing in you, anyway, must have wanted to protect its mother. So why didn’t it do it?
“Or is there something we don’t know?”
Eyre repressed any show of joy at the mother’s escape. He said, “So what happens now?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re going to let the White House in on what’s been going on. They’ve been very secretive so far. Very few officials know that a man is being held without any judicial processes at all and with no consideration of his civil rights. And fewer yet know the real reason why. But now that they have evidence that even the most unimaginative will have to accept, they will have to inform the highest authority. It may take some time to convince him, though.”
What you’re not saying, Eyre thought, is that everybody in the know is going to be scared to death. To my death.
And that morning, while it was still dark, he undressed and went under the bed. Sometime later he emerged, shaking, weak, and frightened. Halfway through, he had quit. For a long time, he lay in bed, tossing and turning, and cursing himself for a weakling. Yet he was glad that something in him, himself this time, had refused to become nonhuman. He finally fell asleep, waking at ten-thirty. He ate breakfast and read several pages of a book on a tribe in highland New Guinea. He had been reading much and widely of late, trying to make up for all the years when he had read only the daily local newspaper and sports magazines.
As he began pacing back and forth, the closed-circuit TV came on. Tincrowder said, “This’ll be the last time I’ll be seeing you, Paul. Here, anyway. I’m quitting. I don’t want anything more to do with these people. Or with you. I can’t take it any longer. I’m being ripped apart between my conscience and what I believe, logically, should be done with you. And this last incident is too much for me. It was my idea, I’ll admit, but I didn’t like it when it was put in practice.”
“What last idea?” Paul said.
Somebody out of sight said something to Tincrowder. He snarled, “What the hell’s the difference?” and turned back to Eyre. “I suggested a device to turn on the cyanide by a remote control machine. And they installed one. Two, rather. The light-sensing monitor on you was to send a radio signal to a machine in Washington, D.C., when it detected that glow from under the bed. This in turn would signal back to the automatic controller of the cyanide-release machine. The setup was arranged so that there would be no human agency involved in the actual operation of gas release. That way, no one would die, they hoped.”
He swallowed, looked contrite, and said, “I did it, Paul, because I’m human! I want humanity to survive! As humans. Better the devil you know, I thought. And anyway, I didn’t believe that you could be killed, and I wanted to find out if I was wrong. I hoped I was at the same time I hoped I wasn’t. Can you understand?”
“I suppose that if I were in your shoes, I’d do the same,” Eyre said. “But you can’t expect me to be very friendly with a man who’s been trying to kill me.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m not very friendly to myself just now. But here’s what happened. As soon as the light glowed, a signal was sent to the machine in Washington. That machine never got to send a signal back. Both it and the control device here burned up! The circuits apparently became overloaded and burst into flames. They had fused but it made no difference. Up they went!”
“You can keep on trying, and you’ll never succeed,” Eyre said.
He was startled. He had had no intention of saying that. Was the thing in him talking? Or was the merger, the fusion as Tincrowder called it, almost complete?
“Listen, Paul!” Tincrowder shouted. “That window is shatterproof, but you can get through it! Their plan…”
A hand clamped down on Tincrowder’s mouth. Polar and Kowalski appeared behind him and dragged him, struggling, out of sight.
Eyre wished Polar and Kowalski dead, but a moment later Polar appeared. Eyre was glad that he had not killed him. Perhaps it was better that he had no control over his powers. The responsibility and the guilt were not his.
