Robert Lionel, page 6
Perhaps he had come across a hidden village in the moun-tains whose people had developed a strange tedtnology of their own. Perhaps-for even to an educated man in the nineteenth century, witchcraft and magic were not im-possibilities-there was some supernatural power behind this weird mist. . . . And yet to Bathurst's brilliant mind, this hardly seemed a genuine possibility; it was one of the wild semi-civilized thoughts that lurk at the back of so-phisticated minds. Before he had time to ponder any longer, the stranger had gone and the horses were gone.
And strange red markings appeared on a curved surface
which was gradually solidifying out of the mist in front of him. Cautiously Ben put out his hand and touched the surface. It felt for all the world like thick glass. He was aware, too, that his feet were no longer on the cobbles of the inn yard. He stooped and looked down at them. He found that he was standing 00 a surface that looked like highly polished quartz, cut in strange prismatic formations. The effect made him think of the strange experiments of Dr. Mesmer, of which he had heard. It seemed to him that the weird prismatic glow was almost alive and looked back at him with a thousand wicked eyes of its own. He felt like a bird, captivated and charnled by a snake. He felt for the pistols he was never without, and found that both they, his powder horn, and his stock of balls were still intact. At least, wherever they were taking him or whatever had happened to him, he would sell his life dearly. He wondered if he would be able to destroy this strange machine, or whatever it was; he wondered if it would respond to the impact. . . . The red markings on the walll had cleared and solidified,' until they now formed a date, November 25th, 1809. As he watched, the solidifica-tion gave place to an amorphous change. The letters melted as though they had been made of wax; now even the red coloring had gone. He was surrounded by nothing but a grey mist, which grew rapidly deeper in shade, tinged with purple. Translucence gave place to opacity, and he found himself surrounded by darkness; the purple gave way to blackness, a blackness such as he had seen tains whose people had developed a strange tedtnology of their own. Perhaps-for even to an educated man in the nineteenth century, witchcraft and magic were not im-possibilities-there was some supernatural power behind this weird mist. . . . And yet to Bathurst's brilliant mind, this hardly seemed a genuine possibility; it was one of the wild semi-civilized thoughts that lurk at the back of so-phisticated minds. Before he had time to ponder any longer, the stranger had gone and the horses were gone.
And strange red markings appeared on a curved surface which was gradually solidifying out of the mist in front of him. Cautiously Ben put out his hand and touched the surface. It felt for all the world like thick glass. He was aware, too, that his feet were no longer on the cobbles of the inn yard. He stooped and looked down at them. He found that he was standing 00 a surface that looked like highly polished quartz, cut in strange prismatic formations. The effect made him think of the strange experiments of Dr. Mesmer, of which he had heard. It seemed to him that the weird prismatic glow was almost alive and looked back at him with a thousand wicked eyes of its own. He felt like a bird, captivated and charnled by a snake. He felt for the pistols he was never without, and found that both they, his powder horn, and his stock of balls were still intact. At least, wherever they were taking him or whatever had happened to him, he would sell his life dearly. He wondered if he would be able to destroy this strange machine, or whatever it was; he wondered if it would respond to the impact. . . . The red markings on the walll had cleared and solidified,' until they now formed a date, November 25th, 1809. As he watched, the solidifica-tion gave pl3£e to an amorphous change. The letters
melted as though they had been made of wax; now even the red coloring had gone. He was surrounded by nothing but a grey mist, which grew rapidly deeper in shade, tinged with purple. Translucence gave place to opacity, and he found himself surrounded by darkness; the purple gave way to blackness, a blackness such as he had seen tom. He got his fingers under it and raised the glass without difficulty. He found himself in what was obviously a cement-lined cellar, rather like the wine cellar you would expect to find boo.eath a house of the period. Yet some..
thing about the concrete was not familiar. It was not like the mortar of his own day. It was harder, tougher, and somehow gave the impression of being much more durable. He slid out from under the glass with a feeling of great thankfulness. . . . He felt as an insect must feel when it has been imprisoned in an upturned glass.
He crossed the cement-floored cellar in four quick strides, his hands never straying far from the butts of his pistols. He noticed that the walls were blotched and darkened in places as though they had recently been subjected to intense heat. . . . He touched one of them, which was still warm, and his fingers tingled as they came in contact with the stone. He drew back, wondering what had caused the strange burnings on the concrete. The only exit was a flight of stone steps leading upward, and with a final quick glance around the small chamber, Bathurst set his foot upon the lowest step. He ascended quietly and stealthily, every sense on the alert for the first sign of attack. Apart from the fact that he was in what looked like an adapted wine cellar, he had no idea at all of his where-abouts. At the top of the steps he noticed an iron shutter, twisted as though it had also been subjected to the same tremendous heat that had blackened the walls. Beyond the broken shutter were the remains of a door. He had just set foot across the threshold when he heard footsteps slowly approaching.
He froze motionless where he was and heaved the pistol from his belt. He could hear voices, and his keen ears told him that there were two men approaching the underground room. He cocked the pistols with grim determination, and pressed his back flat into the dark recess beside the doorway. The footsteps grew closer. The air was electric with expectancy. Around the corner walked two figures dressed in grey. He had never seen either before, but there was something decidedly odd about them, he felt. They looked perfectly normal in many respects, yet something in the contour of face and head showed that though they were men, they were men of a type he had never encountered before. Just as racial characteristics are noticeable in every day and generation, so they are noticeable in every epoch and era of time. Five centuries cannot roll by without making a physiological difference in the appearance of homo sapiens. The faces were cruel, cold and hard, and Bathurst felt an instinctive dislike of these grey-uniformed newcomers. He listened intently and heard their speech. To his ears it seemed fast, almost vulgar and uncouth in its use of words, and yet he had little difficulty, linguist that he was, in making sense out of it. That it had been derived from at least one of the European languages which he knew, he had no doubt, but
its variation was wide, and here and there an occasional word flew by him uncomprehended.
"The old man will tell us everything of importance in time," said Dr. Korblenz, "but I have an impatient tendency; that is why I left the interrogation room early. I wish to see the room in which you tell me that the man you suspect was Grafton made his miraculous disappearance. I have studied many faculties of science besides that of pure medicine, and' I have a suspicion that I may know at least part of the answer to the mystery."
"The room is down here, Doctor," said the security guard beside him. "It is just around the corner. You will see the remains of the door which we had to break." The footsteps were almost on top of Bathurst now; he drew back still further into the shadow, his pistols leveled. The figures came within four feet of him as they rounded the corner of the doorway. He knew that these were not men with whom he could take chances. For if the man who had just addressed the other as "doctor" had indeed broken through that steel door, then he must have considerable power at his fingertips. Bathurst was a man of brave intellect and swift, decisive action. He could, when the necessity arose, be ruthless. It was him or they. His piSctols barked simultaneously, and both men fell without a sound.-
For like most English gentlemen of his day, Benjamin Bathurst was an expert shot. He stooped swiftly over his fallen adversaries, stooped long enough to be quite satisfied that they were both dead, and as he did so his eyes fell interestedly upon the strange weapoos both men carried at their belts. It was obvious to him that they were some form of firearm, for they were roughly pistol-shaped.
And the projection under the hand guard could be nothing less than a trigger. How they worked, and by what principle, of course, he had no idea. But it occurred to him that there must be a connection between those hand weapons and the melting of the steel door. He decided that, effective as his pistols were, it would not be amiss to arm himself with the weapons of this strange race among whom he had fallen. He withdrew the blasters from the dead men's belts and thrust them into his own. Pausing only long enough to reload his own pistols, he continued on his way along tOe corridor. He had no sooner reached the door than he decided that, in the daylight outside, his clothing would single him out a mile away. . . . He stood undecided for a second, looking out into the street beyond.
Everybody was wearing the same kind of tunics, though of different colors. The two grey uniformed men he had just dispatched were obviously in the militia of the power into whose territory he had come. He ran swiftly back down the corridor and stripped off the dead men's uniforms. He noticed that the one addressed as "doctor" had been car": rying a bag, and although he did not understand the purpose of half the surgical instruments or the drugs within it, he decided it might be a useful asset in case of emergency.
The bag was by no means full, and he had no difficulty in stuffing the uniform-which was constructed of some light materials, whose basic component he could only guess at-in with the surgical implements. Five minutes later he emerged, wearing one uniform and carrying the bag. His pistols were secured inside the tunic jacket, and the pair of
hung one on either side of his belt. He knew that bluff and braveness were far better than timidity; nobody thinks twice about a man in the uniform of the period, walking swiftly and decisively across the street, as. though bound on some errand. On the other hand, a timid man in strange outdated clothes would attract immediate attention. . . .
Bathurst made his way across the narrow cobbled street, wondering what his next objective should be. More than anything else he longed to find some place of security, where the comparatively uninterrupted peace and quiet would enable him to sit and try to work out what had happened. The experiences which had recently been his were whirling round inside his mind like an enormous, disjointed jigsaw puzzle. He had to find an answer, or he felt that his brain would burst. Yet without long, careful reflection, there did not seem to be any answer. He had remembered walking out of the inn yard, around the heads of the horses, and next minute--phutl-the grey mist, the glass cylinder, and all that had happened since. It made no kind of logic or material sense. Bathurst was intelligent enough to realize that there was far more to the universe than the straightforward, scientific, material side of things.
Science was. beginning to realize that it probably held the key to most problems, and yet it was a key which as yet was only being tentatively tried in the lock; while he himself had more of a romantic turn of mind, preferring the intrinsic glories of rinspoilt creation to the mechanical enormities that were blotting the fair escutcheon of earth.
He tried to work out a logical sequence of events, in which humanity might have developed since his own time. For it was. obvious to him, deep down in his subconscious, although the higher levels of his mind were unwilling to accept the fact that he had, in some miraculous way, transcended both time and space when he passed through the weird grey mist.
There had been a cess~tion of movement during that period, when he lay paralyzed upon the crystalline quartz floor and yet knew that the movement was by no means through any of the physical dimensions. He had traveled neither up nor down, sideways nor back. He had moved along a path; that path could not be described geometrically-at least not in the geometry which Bathurst had learnt. He moved a hand inside his jacket and rested it on the pistol butt. There was a certain comfort in the hard cold touch of the polished wood. He tried to make his mind grasp and realize the faCt that he had been, in some miraculous way, transported either forward or backward through time. It must have been forward, he was muttering to himself; it must have been. He was so engrossed with his thoughts that he did not see the gnome-like little man who had suddenly appeared on the cobbled pavement beside him. He just suddenly glanced down, and the man was there. He wore a loose-fitting cloak of brown, unlike the other citizens that Bathurst had seen, and this brown cloak obviously disguised an unpleasantly twisted and malformed body. Yet the man's eyes were bright and kindly. They reflected a soul that looked bigger and taller than the twisted vessel in which it was stored.
"Are you lost?" said the little gnome suddenly. Bathurst
looked down at him.
"Why do you ask?" he inquired suspiciously. He slackened his pace as he realized the little creature was having difficulty keeping up with him. The little man could not have been more than about four feet eight inches tall, and yet, by the bulges beneath the cloak, it looked as if that twisted spine had once been much straighter and taller. His shoulders were still quite broad, although they were twisted and sloping now. Bathurst had the sickenmg impression that this gnome-like creature with the bright eyes had once been as tall and erect as he himself, perhaps even taller. The creature was quite hairless; and its scalp bore evidence of several long-healed scars. It occurred to Bathurst that the man had been in some kind of terrible accident in the distant past. . . .
The gnome was regarding him again, intently. It seemed that the bright eyes were boring into his very soul.
"Why do you ask?" repeated Bathurst.
"I'm a very curious little chap," replied the gnome.
"Very curious indeed, you see. There's something just a little bit 'wrong' about you, and I want to know why, I want to know, whether perhaps it is because you aren't what you seem. You see, if you are what you seem, then you had better go away quietly. But if you aren't what you seem I will stay and talk to you. We may be able to help each other. Let me just take a guess. H what I say means nothing to you," he chuckled, "then perhaps we shall find that you are not what you seem and I am not what I seem, and that nothing is what it really seems." Bathurst shook his head-this was strangely bewildering. "You see, you mustn't take too much notice of me because," the gnome laughed a strangely frightening laugh, "my brain isn't all there. They took parts of it away, you know, in the Big House. It was a doctor just like you who did it. They thought I was in the liberation movement, Funny things people think. but of course, they've got all the new truth drugs now; they don't need to take people's brains away."
He twiddled his fingers as a child would play "cat's cradle," "They tried several ways to make me give them information. I wish they'd had the truth drugs ready. It took a long time the old way, but since they did things to my head I don't really mind, It's just that I wonder if you are what you seem." Obviously the unhappy creature had difficulty concentrating, Bathurst looked down at him with a mixture of wonder and pity. "What would you be able to tell me if I wasn't what I seemed?" he asked smilingly, and quite suddenly the twinkling mischief had gone from the gnome's eyes, and they were the cold, sober, earnest eyes of a highly intelligent mind. "I could take you to a place where you'd be given all the information you need to orientate yourself to this strange environment. I'll ask you one thing only, and I warn you now, if you are a doctor in the security Guard, which your uniform tells me, then I shall shoot you down in cold blood. I have a power blaster under this cloak. H you are not, then you mayt:ome with us."
This was no village idiot, decided Bathurst; this was something completely inexplicable. "H you don't respond to the key word, you're dead," said the gnome. Bathurst noticed one of the bulges under the brown cloak had the
sinister appearance of a pistol barrel, and he realized that it was a weapon similar to the two which hung at his own belt. "The thing I noticed about you," said the little man, his voice stilI deadly serious, "is, of course, that your face isn't quite like ours. I don't mean there's anything wrong with it-it's just different. The shape of your head is different. It's only a little thing, but one has to be trained to look for little things. You carry a doctor's bag and you wear a doctor's uniform, but you carry two blasters-Now, why? No one ever carries more than one. . . it's not necessary. It's like a man driving two cars at once. The only explanation is that you're pretending to be something different, in order to worm your way into the inner cham-bets, or you genuinely are something else. Here are the key words: "Mist, glass, darkness." He spat them out one after tlte other. "Well?" Bathurst could see the bulge under the brown cloak, pointing straight at his chest. He remembered the blackened heat stains on the way. . . the little man's eyes were fixed unshakably on the blasters.
Bathurst's hand rested on the butt of his reloaded pistol.
He edged round a trifle sideways, wondering whether he could pull the trigger before the otlter. He decided that they could both bargain from a position of strength.
"I notice tlte bulge under your cloak," he said, "and before I give you the reaction to your key words, I'd like you to notice there's a bulge under my tunic. I don't carry only the two blasters you see at my waist. My hand is resting on the hilt of a weapon which is rather older, but equally deadly. I can pull the trigger just as fast as you can, so the slight tremor from beneath the folds of that cloak and we shall both be dead. . . ."
"You're cool," said the little man suddenly, "If you are what I hope you are, and not what you look like, I think we shall get on extremely well together, but I can't afford to take chances. Now then, as I see that the cards aren't all qn my side of the table, you'd better tell me what the key words mean to you. Then we can decide what we are going to do afterwards, if you give me the right answer."
