Part 8
One of the gray panels high in the Opal Cross sector came to life. As if through a window, a young man with a square face and crisply cropped blond hair peered out. The emptiness of the Sky Room seemed to startle him. He looked around for a moment, then switched to high amplification and called down to Shielding,
"Physical Research Headquarters reporting. A slight variation in spatio-temporal constants has been noted in this immediate locality. The variation is of a highly technical nature, but the influence of unknown spy-beams or range-finding emanations is a possible, though unlikely, explanation."
Shielding called sharply, "Didn't you receive the order countermanding all activities?"
"Yes, but I thought--"
"Sorry," called Shielding, "but the order applies to Research Headquarters as much as any others."
"I see," said the young man and, with a vague nod, blanked out.
There was no particular reaction to this dialogue, except that the studied composure of Conjerly and Tempelmar became, if anything, more marked--almost complacent.
Shielding turned back. "We now come to the question of who engineered this criminally irresponsible hoax, which," he added somberly, "has already cost the lives of more than a hundred individuals, victims of defense-preparation accidents." Firemoor winced and went a shade paler. "Unquestionably a number of persons must have been in on it, mainly members of the Extraterrestrial Service. It couldn't have been done otherwise. But we are more interested in the identity of the main instigators. I am sorry to say that there can be no question as to the identity of at least two of these. The confession of three of the accomplices make it--"
"Co-ordination Center 3 reporting." Another of the Opal Cross panels had flashed on and its perplexed occupant, like the other, was using high amplification to call his message down to Shielding. "Local Power Station 4 has just cut me off, in the midst of a message describing an inexplicable drain on their power supply. Also, the presence of an unknown vehicle has been reported from the main rotunda."
"We are not receiving reports," Shielding shouted back. "Please consult your immediate superior for instructions."
"Right," the other replied sharply, immediately switching off.
"There you see, gentlemen," Shielding commented bitterly, "just how difficult it is to halt a hoax of this sort. In spite of all our efforts, there undoubtedly will be more tragic accidents before minds get back to normal." He paused, turned. "Clawly and Firemoor, what do you have to say for yourselves in justification of your actions, beyond a confession of wanton mischievousness, or--I must mention this possibility too--an attempt to create confusion for the furtherance of some treasonable plot? Remember it is not a matter of accomplices' confessions alone, who might conceivably perpetrate a hoax and then attempt to shift the blame onto blindly gullible and negligent superiors. There is also the testimony of two members of our own committee, who can for the moment remain anonymous--"
"I see no reason for that," drawled Tempelmar.
"Thank you." Shielding nodded to him. "Very well, then. The testimony of Conjerly and Tempelmar." And he turned again toward the accused.
* * * * *
Firemoor looked down at the table and twisted miserably. Clawly returned Shielding's gaze squarely. But before either of them could reply--
"Co-ordination Center 4! Reporting the presence of a group of armed individuals in black garments of an unfamiliar pattern proceeding--"
"Please do not bother us!" Shielding shouted irritably. "Consult your superior! Tell him to refer all communications to Co-ordination Center 1!"
This time the offending panel blanked out without reply.
Shielding turned to a master control board behind him and rapidly flipped off all the beams, insuring against future interruption.
Clawly stood up. His face had the frozenness of pent tension, an odd mixture of grim seriousness and mocking exasperation at men's blindness, suggestive of a gargoyle.
"It was a hoax," he said coolly, "and I alone planned it. But it was a hoax that was absolutely necessary to prepare the world for that other invasion, against which I tried to warn you three days ago. The invasion whose vanguard is already in our midst. Of course Conjerly and Tempelmar testified against me--for they are part of the vanguard!"
"You're psychotic," said Shielding flatly, lowering his head a little, like a bull. "Paranoid. The only wonder is how it escaped the psychiatrists. Watch him, some of you"--he indicated those nearest Clawly--"while I call the attendants."
"Stay where you are, all of you! And you, Shielding, don't flip that beam!" Clawly had danced back a step, and a metal tube gleamed in his hand. "Since you believe I planned the Martian hoax--and I did--perhaps you'll believe that I won't stop at a few more deaths, not accidental this time, in order to make you see the truth. Idiots! Can't you see what's happening under your very noses? Don't you see what those reports may have meant? Call Co-ordination Center 1, Shielding. Go on, I mean it, call them!"
But at that instant Firemoor spun round in his chair and dove at Clawly, pinioning his arms, hurling them both down, wrenching the metal tube from his hand, sending it spinning to one side. A moment later he had dragged Clawly to his feet, still holding him pinioned.
"I'm sorry," he gasped miserably. "But I had to do it for your own sake. We were wrong--wrong to the point of being crazy. And now we've got to admit it. Looking back, I can't see how I ever--"
But Clawly did not even look at him. He stared grimly at Shielding.
"Thank you, Firemoor," said Shielding, a certain relief apparent in his voice. "You still have a great deal to answer for. That can't be minimized--but this last action of yours will certainly count in your favor."
This information did not seem to make Firemoor particularly happy. The pinioned Clawly continued to ignore him and to stare at Shielding.
"Call Communications Center 1," he said, deliberately.
Shielding dismissed the interruption with a glance. He sat down.
"The attendants will remove him shortly. Well, gentlemen," he said, "it's time we considered how best to repair the general dislocations caused by this panic. Also there's the matter of our position with regard to the trial of the accomplices." There was a general pulling-in of chairs.
"Call Communications Center 1," Clawly repeated.
Shielding did not even look up.
But someone else said, "Yes. I think now you'd better call them."
Shielding had started automatically to comply, before he realized just who it was that was speaking--and the particular tone that was being used.
It was Conjerly and the tone was one of command.
* * * * *
Conjerly and Tempelmar had risen, and were standing there as solidly as two obelisks--and indeed there was something unpleasantly monumental in their intensified, self-satisfied composure. Before anyone realized it, the center of attention of the meeting had shifted from Clawly and Firemoor to these new figures--or rather to these old and familiar figures suddenly seen in a new and formidable guise.
Shielding blinked at them a moment, as if he didn't know who they were. Then, with a haste that was almost that of fear, he swung around and flipped a beam on the board behind him.
Halfway up the terraced banks of gray squares, a panel came to life.
A man in black uniform looked down from it.
"Communications Center 1 seized for the Servants," he announced crisply in a queerly accented though perfectly intelligible voice.
Shielding stood stock-still for a moment, then flipped another beam.
"The soldiers of the Servants are in control at this point," said the second black-uniformed individual, speaking with equal crispness.
With a stifled, incredulous gasp, Shielding ran his hand down the board, flipping on all the panels in the Opal Cross sector.
Most of them showed black-uniformed figures. Of the remainder, the majority were empty.
And then it became apparent that not all the black-uniformed figures were merely televised images. Some of them were standing between the panels, in the Sky Room itself, holding weapons trained.
By a psychological illusion, the figures of Conjerly and Tempelmar seemed to grow taller.
"Yes," Conjerly said, soberly, almost kindly, "your government--or, rather, that absence of all sane control which you call a government--is now in the capable hands of the Servants of the People. Clawly's assertions were all quite correct, though fortunately we were able to keep you from believing them--a necessary deception. There is an invasion going on--an invasion that is in the best interests of all worlds, and one from which yours will benefit greatly. It is being made across time, through a region that has become common to both our worlds. That region is our transtime bridgehead. And, as is plain to see, our bridgehead coincides with your headquarters."
* * * * *
Clawly was not listening. He was watching a figure that was striding down the paneled terraces, its smilingly curious eyes fixed upon him. And as he watched, Firemoor and Shielding and some others began to watch too, slack-faced, dully amazed at this secondary impossibility.
The approaching figure was clad in black military flying togs whose sleek cut and suavely gleaming texture marked them as those of an individual of rank. But so far as physique and appearance were concerned, down to the last detail of facial structure, including even a similarity of expression--a certain latent sardonic mockery--he was Clawly's duplicate.
There was something very distinctive about the way the two eyed each other. No one could have said just when it started, but by the time they were facing each other across the control table, it was very plain; the look of two men come to fight a duel.
Clawly's face hardened. His gaze seemed to concentrate. His duplicate started, as if at a slight unexpected blow. For an instant he grinned unpleasantly, then his face grew likewise grim.
Neither moved. There was only that intense staring, accompanied by a silent straining of muscles and a breathing that grew heavy. But none of those who watched doubted but that an intangible duel was being fought.
Conjerly, frowning, stepped forward. But just then there grew a look of sudden desperate terror in the contorted face of Clawly's black-clad duplicate. He staggered back a step, as if to avoid falling into a pit. An unintelligible cry was wrenched out of him, and he snatched at his holster.
But even as he raised the weapon, there flashed across the first Clawly's features a triumphant, oddly _departing_ smile.
XIII.
Yggdrasil shakes, and shiver on high The ancient limbs, and the giant is loose;
Elder Edda
In the black, cramping tunnel Thorn could only swing his knife in a narrow arc, and the snarl of the attacking dog was concentrated into a grating roar that hurt his eardrums. Nevertheless, knife took effect before fangs, and with an angry whimper the dog backed away--there was no room to turn.
From the receding scuffle of its claws Thorn could tell that it had retreated almost to the beginning of the tunnel. He relaxed from the crouch that had put his back against the rocky roof, sprawled in a position calculated to rest elbows and knees, and considered his situation.
Of course, as he could see now, it had been an inexcusable blunder to enter the tunnel without first building a fire to insure his being able to get back to a place from which he could use his slingshot. But coming down the ravine he hadn't seen a sign of the devils, and there was no denying it had been necessary to revisit the cave to see if Thorn III had any extra food, weapons, or clothing stored there. The need for food was imperative, and yesterday he and Darkington had completely failed in their hunting.
He wondered if Darkington would attempt a rescue. Hardly, since it would be late afternoon before the gnarled little man returned from his own hunting circuit. With night coming on, it was unlikely that he would risk his life venturing down into the ravine for the sake of a man whom he believed to be half-crazy. For Thorn had tried to tell him altogether too much about alternate worlds in which Civilization had not perished. Darkington had dismissed all this as "the dreams," and Thorn had shut up, but not until he realized he was forfeiting all Darkington's confidence in him as a hard-bitten and realistic neo-savage.
Besides, Darkington was a little crazy himself. Long years of solitary living had developed fixed habit patterns. His hunger for comradeship had become largely a subjective fantasy, and the unexpected appearance of an actual comrade seemed to make him uncomfortable and uneasy rather than anything else, since it demanded readaptation. A man marooned in a wilderness and trying to get back to civilization is one thing. But a man who knows that civilization is dead and that before him stretch only dark savage eons in which other creatures will have the center of the stage, is quite a different animal.
Something was digging into Thorn's side. Twisting his left hand back at an uncomfortable angle--his right still held the knife or cutter--he worked the pouch from under him and took out the offending article. It was the puzzling sphere that had stayed with him during all his passages between the worlds. Irritably he tossed it away. He had wasted enough time trying to figure out the significance or purpose of the thing. It was as useless as ... as that graveyard of skylons up there.
He heard it bound up the tunnel, roll back a way, come to rest.
Evidently his captors heard it too, for there came a sharp mewing and growling, which did not break off sharply, but sank into a confused palaver of similar sounds, strongly suggestive of some kind of speech. Once or twice he thought he recognized human words, oddly telescoped and slurred to fit feline and canine palates. It was not pleasant to be cramped up in a tunnel and wondering what cats and dogs were saying about you in a half-borrowed, quasi-intelligent jargon.
* * * * *
And then, very softly, Thorn thought he heard someone calling his name.
His almost immediate reaction was a sardonic grimace at the vast number of unlikely sounds a miserable man will twist into a resemblance of his name. But gradually the fancied sound began to exert a subtle pull on his thoughts, dragging them away toward speculations which his present predicament did not justify.
But who is to say what thoughts a trapped and doomed man shall think? As Thorn told himself with some calmness, this was probably his last stretch of reflective thinking. Of course, when death came sufficiently close, the fear of it might enable him to escape into another body. But that was by no means certain or even probable. He reflected that every exchange he had made had been into a worse world. And now, presumably, he was at the bottom, and like energy that has reached the nadir of its cycle of degradation, unable to rise except with outside help.
Besides, he did not like the idea of dooming any other Thorn to this predicament, although he was afraid he would do it if given the chance.
Again he dreamily fancied he heard his name called.
He wondered what was happening to those other Thorns, in their hodgepodged destinies. Thorn III in World II--had he died in the instant of his arrival there, or had the Servants noted the personality-change in time and perhaps spared him? Thorn II in World I. Thorn I in World III. It was like some crazy game--some game devised by a mad, cruel god.
And yet what was the whole universe, so far as it had been revealed to him, but a mad, cruel pageantry? The Dawn myth was right--there were serpents gnawing at every root of the cosmic ash Yggdrasil. In three days he had seen three worlds, and none of them were good. World III, wrecked by subtronic power, cold battlefield for a hopeless last stand. World II, warped by paternalistic tyranny, smoldering with hate and boredom. World I, a utopia in appearance, but lacking real stamina or inward worth, not better than the others--only luckier.
Three botched worlds.
He started. It was as if, with that last thought, something altogether outside his mind had attached itself to his mind in the most intimate way imaginable. He had the queerest feeling that his thoughts had gained power, that they were no longer locked-in and helpless except for their ability to control a puny lever-assembly of bones and contractile tissue, that they could reach out of his mind like tentacles and move things, that they had direct control of a vastly more competent engine.
A faint sound up the tunnel recalled his altered mind to his present predicament. It might have been a tiny scrape of claws on rock. It was not repeated. He gripped his knife. Perhaps one of the beasts was attempting a surprise attack. If only there were some light--
* * * * *
A yellowish flame, the color of the woodfire he had been visualizing, flared up without warning a few feet ahead, casting shafts of ruddy glare and shadow along the irregular tunnel. It lit up the muzzles of a gaunt gray dog and a scarred black cat that had been creeping toward him, side by side. For an instant surprise froze them. Then the dog backed off frantically, with a yelp of panic. The cat snarled menacingly and stared wildly at the flame, as if desperately trying to figure out its _modus operandi_.
But, with Thorn's thought, the flame advanced and the cat gave ground before it. At first it only backed, continuing to snarl and stare. Then it turned tail, and answering in a great screech the questioning mews and growls that had been coming down the tunnel, fled as if from death.
The flame continued to advance, changing color when Thorn thought of daylight. And as Thorn edged and squirmed along, it seemed to him that somehow his way was made easier.
The tunnel heightened, widened. He emerged in the outer chamber in time to hear a receding rattle of gravel.
The flame, white now, had come to rest in the middle of the rocky floor. Even as he stooped, it rose to meet him, winking out--and there rested lightly on his palm the gray sphere, cool and unsmirched, that he had tossed away a few minutes before.
But it was no longer a detached, external object. It was part of him, responsive to his every mood and thought, linked to his mind by tracts that were invisible but as real as the nerves connecting mind with muscle and sense organ. It was not a machine, telepathically controlled. It was a second body.
Relief, stark wonder, and exulting awareness of power made him weak. For a moment everything swam and darkened, but only for a moment--he seemed to suck limitless vitality from the thing.
He felt a surge of creativeness, so intense as to be painful, like a flame in the brain. He could do anything he wanted to, go anywhere he wanted to, make anything he wanted to, create life, change the world, destroy it if he so willed--
And then--fear. Fear that, since the thing obeyed his thoughts, it would also obey his foolish, ignorant, or destructive ones. People can't control their thoughts for very long. Even sane individuals often think of murder, of catastrophes, of suicide--
Suddenly the sphere had become a gray globe of menace.
And then--after all, he couldn't do _anything_. Besides any other limitations the thing might have, it was certainly limited by his thoughts. It couldn't do things he didn't really understand--like building a subtronic engine--
Or--
For the first time since he had emerged from the tunnel, he tried to think collectedly, with more than the surface of his mind.
He found that the depths of his mind were strangely altered. His subconscious was no longer an opaque and impenetrable screen. He could see through it, as through a shadowy corridor, sink into it, hear the thoughts on the other side, the thoughts of the other Thorns.
One of them, he realized, was instructing him, laying a duty upon him.
The message dealt with such matters as to make the imagination shiver. It seemed to engulf his personality, his consciousness.
His last glimpse of World III was a gray one of dark, snow-streaked pines wavering in a rocky frame. Then that had clouded over, vanished, and he was in a limitless blackness where none of the senses worked and where only thought--itself become a sense--had power.
It was an utterly alien darkness without real up or down, or this way or that, or any normal spatial properties. It seemed that every point was adjacent to every other point, and so infinity was everywhere, and all paths led everywhere, and only thought could impose order or differentiate. And the darkness was not that of lightlessness, but of thought itself--fluttering with ghostly visions, aflash with insight.
And then, without surprise or any consciousness of alteration, he realized that he was no longer one Thorn, but three. A Thorn who had lived three lives--and whether memory pictured them as having been lived simultaneously or in sequence seemed to matter not at all. A Thorn who had learned patience and endurance and self-sufficiency from harsh World III, who had had ground into the bedrock of his mind the knowledge that man is an animal in competition with other animals, that all human aspirations are but small and vaunting and doomed things--but not necessarily worthless therefore--in a blind and unfeeling cosmos, and that even death and the extinguishing of all racial hopes are ills that can be smiled at while you struggle against them. A Thorn who had seen and experienced in World II the worst of man's cruelty to man, who had gained a terrible familiarity with human nature's weaknesses, its cowardly submissiveness to social pressure, its capacity for self-delusion, its selfishness, its horrible adaptability, who had plumbed to their seething, poisoning depths the emotions of hate and resentment and envy and fear, but who in part had risen superior to all this and learned humility, and sympathy, and sacrifice, and devotion to a cause. A Thorn who, in too-easy World I, had learned how to use the dangerous gift of freedom, how to fight human nature's tendency to go evil and foul itself when it is not being disciplined by hardship and adversity, how to endure happiness and success without souring, how to create goals and purposes in an environment that does not supply them ready-made.
All these experiences were now those of one mind. They did not contradict or clash with each other. Between them there was no friction or envy or guilt. Each contributed a fund of understanding, carrying equal weight in the making of future decisions. And yet there was no sense of three minds bargaining together or talking together or even thinking together. There was only one Thorn, who, except for that period of childhood before the split took place, had lived three lives.
* * * * *
This composite Thorn, sustained by the talisman, poised in the dimensionless dark beyond space and time, felt that his personality had suddenly been immeasurably enriched and deepened, that heretofore he had been going around two-thirds blind and only now begun to appreciate the many-sidedness of life and the real significance of all that he had experienced.
And without hesitation or inward argument, without any sense of responding to the urgings of Thorn II, since there was no longer a separate Thorn II, he remembered what the death-resisting Oktav had whispered to him in the Blue Lorraine, syllable by agonized syllable, and he recalled the duty laid upon him by the seer.