Robert Lionel, page 13
That heartless regime has produced a wonderful crop of brilliantly practical scientists. But they are scientists who lack the one vital spur, inventiveness. They are analytical scientists ratheJ: than researchers. They have ability, but it
is directionless, purposeless, vague and amorphous. We, on the other hand, lack nearly all their resources, but the few scientists we had-for many of them have been ferreted out and destroyed-were men with a flair of inventiveness. They could solve problems which the Eurasian scientists hadn't even thought up."
Bathurst made a gesture which indicated all the complicated machinery in the underground cavern. "All this
. . . how did a handful of resistance workers do this?"
The leader smiled. "Where everything was once done by hand, in the 24th century, practically nothing is done by hand except in the slave labor camp. We have machines for raising edifices and constructions that make it almost possible for one man to build a city in the space of a single day and night." He paused to let the effect of this stupendous announcement sink in. "These caverns and this whole mass of machinery are entirely my own work. I dug them, I blasted them, I cleared them, and I built both the time machine and this dimensional transverser alone and unaided in complete secrecy. For the first essential thing that I learned about resistance work is that not even your most trusted companion should be allowed to know too much. For example, there is the unfortunate case of the old scientist Eric Rhinegow, with whom I collaborated on the time machine. It was necessary for me to mke certain precautions with regard to that; I am so glad now that I did take those precautions. When Mike Grafton, who was a liberationist escaping into Perleberg, was thrust backward into time by my late colleague, Rhinegow was unfortunately caught and arrested, shortly after Grafton made his escape."
"Then Grafton would be the man who passed me in the grey mist, " said Bathurst, snapping his fingers.
"Exactly," said the tall stranger. "As I was saying, the liberationist scientist who jettisoned him through the vortex was interrogated by means of truth drugs. I have agents even inside security headquarters, and I have learned that Rhinegow told everything he knew and was-then destroyed. He knew almost as much as I do, but that almost is very important. Therein lies the difference between life and death, between victory and defeat." He weighed the words carefully and thoughtfully as an orator weighs words. "I knew that if he did not appear to know a great deal about the time machine, they would suspect the existence of another power and come looking for me.
There is no man so well hidden as the man whose existence is not known," he said sagely. "As long as they do not know of my existence there is no logical reason they should search for me. If they believe Rhinegow was the leading scientific mind of the liberation forces, and poor Rhinegow is dead, they have destroyed" their enemy-or so they think.
"The information which I had given Rhinegow was comprehensive, thorough, and up to a point complete.
One of the most effective methods of telling lies is to tell a half-truth, a fallacious extension, if you wish, a slight divergence. It's like twisting the sights of a gun by just a fraction. The further the bullet traveJs the further it will be off course. So it was with Rhinegow. Poor Eric, I feel sorry to think that he himself was deluded, for he was
such a good and faithful companion, such a loyal old ser vant. But I am sure that, wherever he is, he will understand that it was necessary."
He sighed deeply, reached in the pocket of the brown cloak for a cigarette and proffered one to Bathurst, who took it and, inhaling deeply, found that he had never tasted tobacco refined to such a point. It must be, he thought, one of the compensations for living in the age of '
the Eurasian dictator.
"Very good," he remarked.
"What? The cigarettes?" said the leader. "These are only cheap ones; the good ones-now, that's what I call a smoke, but you can't get them unless you're a member of the inner party." He shrugged his broad shoulders with a wry, cynical grin. "There soon won't be any inner party if we have our way. No Rajak, either. I hadn't quite finished telling you about Eric Rhinegow, and it's pretty important.
He gave them all the information he had about the machine and its operation, but-here's the essential point-every time Rhinegow manipulated the machine, as he thought, on his own, I was observing him, by means of a closed circuit stellar vision, from the depths of the subterranean chamber we have just left. The two machines are different facets of the same power factor, and when Rhinegow operated the time machine, I pulled in a safety switch whicll prevented the power output in the time machine sector of the whole construction from reaching a critical mass and causing a flashback. through that vortex.
Every time Rhinegow operated the time machine, it was necessary for me to throw in the safety device. Rhinegow had no idea this device was necessary or that it was in operation. Therefore when he told the security guards .
everything he new, he obvioUsly ,couldn't tell them about the safety device. That is the point about which their truth drugs break down. They can't extort information from a man who hasn't got the information. As the victim willingly co-operates, there is no necessity to verify the facts. Besides," again that wry grin crossed his face, "I don't think their scientists are so very capable, in spite of all that propaganda which they are continually shooting out. So now we have our beloved enemies operating the time machine while I deliberately don't operate the safety device. So far as I am aware from my recording instruments in the-other chamber, they have so far used the machine twice." He paused thoughtfully, "There is another way of looking at it, though. The building up of the kinetic energy potential within the time machine facet of this large power factor will mean that, ultimately, the whole mechanism ~ going to be deitroyed or hopelessly warped an4
no longer usable." .
"Does that mean the enemy will no longer be able to .
make use of it? I thought they had copied all the plans. I assumed from what you were telling me that what Rhinegow told them enabled them to build a duplicate machine."
"No, not at all Rhinegow just gave them the outward machinations. It looked good on paper, and remember that we are dealing with analytical scientists, not researchers. While they had the machine tllere in front of them, they had enough knowledge to operate it minus the safety
factor. But if the machine was not in existence, it would be very doubtful if they would be able to proouce another.
They think they have a machine with which they can scour the past and the future, and their phrase. 'The secret police are everywhere,' will, they believe, be true. But they are living in a fool's paradise," he said with a roar that was half humor and half vehemence, "for they will never know what caused the blow-up of the time facet of the machine, and the cross reaction will also probably disinr-tegrate the machine that we ourselves are traveling on.
Bathurst looked at him with a trace of apprehension on his face. "Does that mean that whatever it is that is going to happen to the time machine will destroy us as well?"
The other laughed, "No; we shall be vibrations away when that happens, and that's better thJIn being mile, away. We shall be so far away, and yet in another sense so close, that the whole world could disintegrate, this suit could discharge into a super nova, so I believe; a chain reaction of atomic explosions could destroy the entire solar system, in their world, and we &hould be completely untouched. Such is the power of this machine, and such is the divergence between the probability tracks. It makea me think of the old phrase: so near and yet so far, it's never been truer than this. We are occupying geometrically practicaJIy the SmIle space, and yet we are so utterly separated from them that nothing they do can affect us in any way whatsoever. At least I hope so.
Nothing we do can possibly affect them."
The sensation of vibrating had increased considerably as the car continued to hurtle round its circular track inside the triangular framework. Faster and faster they whirled, higher and higher grew the pitch of the vibrations, and then Bathurst had the feeling that he had said, "We have taken the step. We are now on the other side of the tracks. We have crossed over the great gulf that is fixed.
We have walked between the worlds; we have stepped between the dimensions." It was just like slipping across a step. It was like stumbling over an unseen obstacle in the gloom. There was no more to it than that; just a feeling that things had somehow gotten out of gear, that they weren't quite what they had been a little while ago. It was rather, he felt, like crawling through a fence and finding yourself in a different field on the other side. Yet he knew that the change was a far more radical one than that. As he watched the madly spinning panorama through the visiports of the car, he became aware that the motion was gradually slowing down. They were decelerating quite fast.
His companion was smiling at him reassuringly. "We have made it," he said. "We have explored the mysteries of space and another time, and yet the only difference is one of vibratory frequency. We are still jn the same space and time geometrically, yet we are less manifest than ghosts, or spirits, or the ether that the scientists of a long-dead, mistaken age used to talk about. We are as invisible as radio waves; we are as sightless as the wind. Our former neighbors are as completely unaware of us as we are of them. As far as their world is concerned, we have vanished and left no trace, and as far as we are concerned, t11at world has gone as though it had never been." There came a sudden reverberating rumble, and the smile froze on the
liberationist's lips. "It's the time power aspect," he said; "it must have reached its critical velocity. H the machine disintegrates before we get clear-" He broke off and made an expressive movement with his forefinger across his throat. It was a universal gesture which Bathurst understood perfectly. The tall stranger leaned down and pulled on an emergency brake. "We've got to get out," he said, "and get out fast. Whatever you do, stay with me, because I forgot to warn you that when we get into this new realm, you will find everything terrifyingly strange. You will find that the old co-ordinates and the old physical senses don't make sense any more. You will find that the old laws of matter and energy no longer hold good. You will find that all the survival data you have learned, even the simple things," he shrugged his broad shoulders, "like down is down and up is up don't make sense herel-at least they don't necessarily make sense. There was a book written not long after your time, entitled 'Alice in Wonderland.' It's a pity you weren't able to read it. I was. It's still a classic," he went on, smiling, "and we're certainly in Wonderland now, the wonderland of the probability tracks.
And when we descend from this carriage and get out here into this world, believe me, we can expect anything."
Just one question framed itself in Bathurst's mind,
"Have you been here before?" he asked. The tall resistance leader shook his head. "No," he said softly,
"but at least I have studied the theory enough to know What we may have to encounter. We are in a cOO1pletely new world." His vOice, usually so confident, almost brash, had sunk to a subdued murmur. "A completely new world. "
Chapter Nine
The Realm of Insanity
The first thing that Ertzmann became aware of was the difference in the grey mist. He was just aware that Grafton was still in sight, but apart from that nothing was quite the same. The grey had not given place to purple on this occasion. Instead there had been an uncanny vibration, a vibration which pervaded his whole being from head to foot, a vibration which gave him the uncanny sensation of not belonging. It was like the shake-up a man got when riding in an atomic oar. It was not the kind of vibration to which prisoners had once been subjected in the days before the perfection of the truth drugs. It was something horribly different. . . . Grafton had obviously noticed it, too, for although both men found themselves unable to speak, their eyes met in a look that spoke volumes. Suddenly a triangular aperture appeared ahead of them, an aperture through which they found themselves being carried, as though by some powerful and completely irresistible force.
There were not many things that scared Mike Grafron, and the disciplined mjnd of the ex-security captain was not a particularly fertile soil for seeds of terror, yet both men were aware of a growing apprehension as they found themselves being forced through the uncanny three..
cornered figure. Once they were through, they seemed to
be in some strange mechanical tunnel. How they bad come there neither of them knew, and yet, unless their senses were deceiving them completely, they were traveling in a kind of orbit around the twisted triangular circuit at ever-increasing speeds. And yet, apart from the sense of vibration that accompanied them, there Was no visible means of locomotion present. After they had been traveling for what seemed eons, they found that they were growing giddy. And an awful feeling of apathetic resigna-tion seized Gratton's mind. The monotony of the projection through that twisted triangular channel was broken by the sudden jolt. Their eyes met again, and Ertzmann knew that his companion had also felt it. Something seemed to have slipped, not something physical, but rather something cosmic. It was almost as though they themselves remained stationary while everything around them had moved slightly but swiftly. The universe seemed somehow to have changed gear. The rushing movement slowed down, imperceptibly at first, and gradually the decelera-tion grew more pronounced. And now, before their eyes, ghostly figures began to appear, very faint at first. But as they continued to slow down the figures grew clear; it was possible to recognize them as human beings. They decelerated still further. With a rolling, swirling motion, they found themselves outside the triangular tunnel. How it had happened neither of them knew; they were just aware of the change.
Two figures were walking toward them. . . .
The tall resistance leader lurched forward into the neW
panorama of the extra-dirnensional world. Ahead of him, growing more distinct with every passing moment, he could see the outline of strong human figures. As he and Bathurst approached, they stood up and seemed to be regarding the diplomat and himself.
With a start, he recognized both of them. He was a man on whom surprises normally had little effect, but even he was startled by what he saw. Instinctively he raised his arm in greeting, for one of the men was his erstwhile colleague, Mike Grafton, whose de.wription he knew perfectly from his role as resistance leader, although they had never met physically. The other he had seen many times in the flesh before. It was Captain Paul Ertzmann of the Eurasian security guards. Bathurst noticed that his companion was waving a greeting.
"Do you know these people?" he asked in astonishment.
"I certainly do," was the quiet reply. "One of them's a security captain of Rajak's secret police, and the othes is one of my own men. His name is Grafton. The captain's name is Ertzmann." The four men were walking toward each other as he spoke; the resistance leader's hand hovered over the butt of his hand blaster. He wondered whether Grafton was a prisoner, or whether the roles were reversed. He was puzzled that neither seemed to be acting the role of jailer to his companion. They were walking side by side in much the same way that he and Bathurst were walking. A man does not become leader of so skillful an organization as the resistance movement of Eurasia without being possessed of an extremely shrewd mind.
The third possibility occurred to the leader's quick in-
tellect in a matter of seconds. Had one or the other of the two men now approaching him undergone some change of heart? The thought that the devilish Ertzmann might have been converted to liberationism seemed highly improbable, but unless they had gone to work on Grafton with the truth drug, it was even more improbable that the rakish freedom fighter had changed his cause, unless he was playing some elaborate game with the security man.
The greatest problem of all was what they were doing there? As the gap closed and the four men stood facing each other, the answer presented itself to him. It had to be the machine. H they had been standing, he reflected, at the other end of the time vortex back in Bathurst's day when the time machine was actually in process of going into operation, then they would have been drawn up into that vortex. The time machine had never been used previously in conjunction with the dimensional transverser. In addition, the safety factor had not been employed. It could only mean that, having begun their journey through the time vortex, the fact of using the transverser had introduced a deviation into the power factor, a deviation which had dragged them from the past, not back into the future, back to their own generation, but sideways as well as forward and had thrown them from 1809 into the probability track on the vibrational frequency equivalent to 2309. The possibilities of the time vortex and the dimensional transverser became even more fantastic as the resistance leader thought about it. While the four men stood looking at each other speechlessly in those first moments of meeting, the liberationist raced over the complicated electro-mathematical formula in his fertile mind.
That had to be the answer, he reflected. He substituted one constant for another and changed the co-ordinates of his formula, and the pattern clicked into place. It was a rare occurrence, but then, so are many other scientific phenomena. And the evidence was plain before him.
These were not ghosts that he was looking at. The improbable had happened, and the operation of the dimensional transverser had swept the four men together as though it were some great cosmic broom and had brought them into the parallel world on the other frequency. His hand still hovered above the hilt of the hand blaster; his eyes never left Ertzmann's. The ex-captain returned his gaze stolidly.
"Don't shoot," said Grafton, as though he, too, although he had never met the resistance leader, knew that the brown cloak and the tall man were the symbols by which he was known.
Ertzmann and Grafton told their stories in a few swift words. The leader added a short explanation of the operation of the machine, but his hand still hovered above the hilt of the hand blaster. He had by no means made up his mind about Ertzmann. Perhaps the man could be trusted; perhaps not.
