Something appeared at the mouth of the tube.
Stanley saw it, but, even as he saw it, the shadow-like substance vanished.
‘Who has a laser pistol?’ he said.
‘Get a laser pistol,’ Howard said. Evidently he had seen it, too. ‘It must have followed you. Come over from the other side. Before the power was turned off.’
‘It’s just an insect,’ Stanley said. ‘Some miserable thing that flew up out of that swamp.’ I know that’s all it is, he said to himself. It’s got to be. ‘For chrissakes, somebody kill it!’ he said, looking around. Where had it gone? Not back into the tube, but out into the room.
From within the tube, the senior engineer said loudly, ‘Mr Stanley, the rent never shut down.’
‘That’s absolutely impossible,’ Stanley said. ‘The power’s off.’ He ran back into the tube, found the engineer crouched down by the rent. Once more Stanley saw across, into the world of the swamp, the decaying landscape of doomed, collapsing ruin. His senior engineer was right; it was still there.
‘I can think of only one explanation,’ the engineer said to Stanley. ‘It must be that it’s maintained by a power source on the other side, because you know no power’s coming to it from here; that’s for sure.’
Stanley said, ‘Did you see something that slipped through just now? Something alive?’
‘Only for a second. But I thought it went back.’
‘It didn’t go back,’ Stanley said. ‘It’s out somewhere in the lab, in the TD building, on our side, and now more are going to come across because we can’t shut down this damn rent. Maybe we can block it somehow. Can you put a barrier right up? I don’t care what it’s made out of, just as long as it’s good and solid.’
‘We’ll get on it right away,’ the engineer said and scrambled to his feet.
What kind of power source could exist there on the other side? Stanley asked himself. There in that brackish, desolate swamp . . . it’s as if it were waiting. But how could it know we’d show up? How could it possibly have been expecting us?’
When he made his way out of the tube once more, Howard said to him, ‘It’s still somewhere in the room. I can feel it, but I’ll be darned if I can see it. It’s like it just merged with everything on this side, just sort of—you know. whatever it saw here.’
Don Stanley tried to remember when he had felt such fear. Not for a long time. Had he ever reacted this way to anything in his life before?
Once, he recalled. Years ago. He had felt the same fright when as he had felt now, seeing this dark, pervasive substance scuttle into his world from the other side. I was eighteen, he said to himself. Just a kid. It was my first visit to the Golden Door satellite.
It had been when he had first seen George Walt.
Since it was impossible to close the rent, Don Stanley decided, they were going to have to make the attempt to subject the dimly-lit swamp world to some kind of ordered scrutiny. Taking full responsiblity, he ordered a QB observation satellite brought to the lab with launching equipment. Before the barrier had been erected by TD’s engineers he had sent the satellite across and had watched as it shot up into the murky, ominous sky.
Reports from the orbiting satellite began to arrive almost at once, and he seated himself with Howard and started methodically to go over them. The time was five-thirty a.m. Much too early to awaken Leon Turpin, he realized. We’ll just have to go on as we are, for at least another two hours.
The planet—and he felt no surprise in learning this—was Earth. But the stellar chart which the satellite recorded on the dark side contained data which was totally unexpected. For a long time he and Howard sat together conferring, to be certain there had been no error. There had not. By six-thirty in the morning, Stanley was sure of the situation, sure enough to have Leon Turpin woken up at his home on Long Island.
The QB satellite, this time, was orbiting an Earth in what was, for their world, a century in the future.
‘You realize what this implies, don’t you?’ he said to Howard.
‘This could still be the same alter-Earth. The one we sent our colonists onto. Only we’re seeing it a hundred years later.’ Abruptly Howard shivered. ‘Then what became of their colonizing efforts? No trace at all? After all, the satellite is picking up lights on the dark side in exactly the same locations as before.’
‘I’ll be glad when Turpin gets here,’ Stanley said. The responsibility had become too much for him; he wanted out. Obviously, the colonization attempt had failed. But he simply refused to face it. It can’t be the same Earth, he repeated again and again to himself. It’s just got to be a totally different one.
Something terrible must have taken place between our colonists and the Pekes.
At seven fifteen a.m., Leon Turpin arrived, perfectly shaved, washed, dressed, and in absolute control of himself.
‘Have you sent dredging equipment across?’ he asked Stanley as the two of them stood by the partly-completed concrete barrier, looking out across the swamp.
‘What for?’ Stanely said.
Turpin’s face twitched. ‘To look for remains of our campsite. This is the same spot, isn’t it? There’s been no movement in space; this is where our colonists set up their base a century ago. There ought to be all kinds of junk, if we dig down far enough, down to the hundred-year level. Tell them to get started right away.’
It took only two hours for the dredges to locate and bring up an aluminum canteen and then a rusted, corroded, slime-drenched U.S. Army laser rifle. And, after that . . .
Skeletons. First one which they identified as a human male and then a smaller one, possibly that of a female.
Turpin signalled for the dredging to cease.
‘Beyond any reasonable doubt, this was our campsite,’ Turpin said, presently. ‘We’ve proved that, to my satisfaction at least.’ The others nodded; no one spoke, however, and they did not look directly at one another. ‘Perhaps it’s possible to view this as a tremendous break,’ Turpin said. ‘We know now not to send any more colonists across; we know what’s going to happen to them. They’re going to perish right here at the campsite without having even . . .’
‘They were slaughtered,’ Stanley interrupted, ‘because we didn’t send any more across. The first group wasn’t large enough to hold off the Pekes; it’s obvious that the Pekes are responsible for this massacre. What else could have happened to them?’
‘Disease,’ Howard said, after a pause. ‘We never took time to make thorough studies of viruses and protozoa over there, as we should have. We were in such a goddam hurry to rush them across.’
‘If we had kept sending them across,’ Stanley persisted, ‘in a steady flow, the Pekes wouldn’t have been able to mow them down. My god, those colonists suddenly found themselves cut off from us, stranded there with no way to get back, abandoned by us . . .’ He broke off. ‘We never should have tinkered with the power supply. That’s where we made our mistake.’
Howard said, ‘I wonder what we’ll find when we get the original power supply hooked back up.’ He jerked his head toward the group of TD engineers laboring to disconnect the larger source. ‘In a few more hours they’ll have it back the way it was. Presumably we’ll find ourselves facing the original rent, the original conditions; we’ll be back in contact with our campsite, then, and if necessary we can march them all back here to this side again. Every last one of them.’
‘But,’ Stanley said almost inaudibly, ‘you’re leaving a factor out. The nexus to this swamp world hasn’t gone away; it’s either self-maintaining or some force on the other side is underwriting it . . . in any case it seems to be there for good. Things are never going to be as they were; we can’t reestablish the original situation. We’ll never see those colonists again. And we might as well get used to that idea. I say, go ahead and hook up the first, smaller power source again, but don’t expect anything.’ To Leon Turpin, he said, ‘I’ve been here all night. Can I go home and go to bed for a few hours? I can’t keep my eye
s open.’
Turpin said raspingly, ‘Don’t you want to be here when . . .’
‘You’re just not facing it,’ Stanley said. ‘When I wake up, six or ten or fifteen hours from now, the situation’s going to be exactly as it is right now. We’ll be looking across at that swamp world, and it’ll be staring right back at us. I’ll tell you what we’ve got to do. Somebody—and I don’t mean just another atavistic, simple-minded robot-type dredge—some brilliant human individual has got to go across there into that swamp world and locate the power source that’s keeping this nexus alive. And then he’s got to blow it to bits or, at the very least, dismantle it.’ Stanley added, ‘And then—and this may be almost impossible—someone’s got to find out who established that power source in the first place. And how they knew we were coming.’
After a pause Leon Turpin said, ‘Howard tells me that in the first few moments of operation with the augmented power source, something came through, some living creature. Is that true?’
Don Stanley sighed wearily. ‘I thought so at the time. Now I think I was out of my mind; I was simply just too scared by what I saw. I must have realized right away that we had lost those colonists forever.’ He walked unsteadily toward the exit door of the lab. ‘I’ll see you a few hours from now. After I’ve had some sleep.’
‘But I saw it, too,’ Howard was saying, as Stanley shut the lab door after him.
I don’t care what came through, Stanley said to himself. I don’t care what you saw. I’ve done all I can. I haven’t got anything left to give to this situation.
But you better have, Turpin, he realized. Because it’s going to take a lot. What I’ve done disconnecting the augmented power source, getting the barrier erected, sending over the QB satellite, starting up the robot dredge—all that’s nothing. Just a way of finding out what confronts us.
He thought, I wish I could sleep forever. Never wake up again and have to face this.
But he knew he had to.
And he was not the only one. They would all have to wake up, one by one, to face this, President Schwarz involved in his deft political maneuverings to outrun Jim Briskin, hitting him with his own idea . . . Briskin, too, because no matter what Schwarz had done, no matter how hurriedly and recklessly he had acted, the idea behind the colonization had been Briskin’s. The responsibility remained essentially his, and Schwarz, now, would be quick to hand it back to him.
Having ascended to surface-level, Stanley passed through the wide front entrance of the TD building, down the steps and onto the morning sidewalk, the busy downtown Washington street of people and ‘hoppers and jet’abs. The motion, the familiar, reassuring activity, made him feel better. This world, with its everyday sights, had not been blotted out, by any means; it remained solid, thoroughly substantial. As always.
He looked about for a jet’ab to take to his conapt.
Far off, at the comer of TD’s administration building, a figure hurriedly disappeared.
Who was that? Don Stanley asked himself. He halted, forbore hailing the jet’ab. I know him, and I don’t like him; it’s somebody who in a day long past reminds me of things almost too repellent to recall, a part of my life that’s dim, cut out, deliberately and for adequate reason forgotten. Mud, he thought. Yes, oddly enough, he thought. That man makes me think of mud and twisted plants, deranged organisms that burst poisonously and silently under a weak and utterly useless sun. Where is this? What have I been seeing?
What just happened now, a few minutes ago, back there on level one in TD’s labs? He felt confused; standing on the sidewalk among the passing people he rubbed his forehead wearily, trying to rouse his mind. The swiftly-moving figure of course had been George Walt, but hadn’t he—or rather they—closed down the Golden Door satellite and disappeared ? He had heard that on TV or read it in the homeopapes. He was positive of it.
George Walt must be back, Stanley decided. From wherever they went.
Once more, a little dazedly, he began searching for a jet’ab to take him home.
THIRTEEN
At the breakfast table in the small kitchen of his conapt, Jim Briskin ate, and at the same time he carefully read the morning edition of the homeopape, finding in it, as a kind of minor melody in the momentous fugue which was playing itself out in heroic style, one item almost lost within the account of the migration of men and women to alter-Earth.
The first couple to cross over, Art and Rachael Chaffy, had been Cols. And the second couple, Stuart and Mrs. Hadley, had been white. It was exactly the sort of neat and tidy detail which appeared to Jim Briskin’s sense of proportion, and he relaxed a little, enjoying his breakfast. Sal would be pleased by this, too, he realized. I’ll have to remember to mention it to him when I see him later on this morning.
President Schwarz missed something, he reflected, by not noticing this minuscule fact at the time it was occurring. Schwarz could have made an extra-special superior speech to the two couples, presenting them with large gaudy plastic keys to the alternate universe, disclosing to them that they’re a symbol of a new epic era in racial relations . . . as arranged for, of course, by the State’s Rights Conservation Democratic Party in all its full and healthy glory. Some minion on Schwarz’ staff slipped up, there, and should be fired.
He turned on the TV, then, to see if there was any later news. Had TD’s engineering corps got the higher-yield power supply in operation yet, and if so, had the aperture been affected in the way anticipated? By now a lot more emigrants should have joined the Chaffys and the Hadleys there on the other side. He wondered if the Pithecanthropi-Sinanthropi people had taken notice already . . . had the crucial Augenblick, as the Germans put it, arrived by now? While he had slept?
On the TV screen the image gathered, became stable and fixed. But it was not what he had expected. The image had a certain grainy texture, familiar to him; it was emanating from a satellite which was still too far away. The sound, too, was distorted. It would, of course, clear up as the satellite moved closer, if it was moving in this direction and not away. What was going on? What was this peculiar program, anyhow? He leaned toward the speaker, trying to untangle the garble of words.
The video image became clarified, then. It was a head, the mutual head of the mutants George Walt. Its mouth opened and it spoke. ‘I am king, now,’ George Walt declared. ‘I have at my disposal up here an entire army of what you’d like to think of as "near" men but which are actually—as you are about to find out and not from me—the legitimate tenants of this world and every other alternative Earth running parallel to us. You’d be surprised at the type of scientific discoveries which the Peking race—and I call them that merely as a means by which to identify them—have made over the centuries. They can, for instance, warp time and also space to suit their needs. They’ve tapped sources of energy unknown to you Homo sapiens. I have with me here in the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite the wisest and kindest philosopher from among their great people. Just a moment.’ George Walt’s head disappeared from the screen.
Merciful lord, Jim Briskin thought. He sat staring at the TV set, unable to take his eyes from it. George Walt are back, and they’re out of their mind.
That’s all we need, Jim said to himself. A crazy George Walt up there in their satellite, spinning around us. Now we’ve really got troubles.
His vidphone rang; automatically, he made his way over to answer it. ‘Not just now,’ he murmured. ‘Call me later; I’m busy—’
‘Don’t hang up.’ It was Tito Cravelli, sweating and agitated. ‘I see you’ve got your TV set on. He . . . they have been broadcasting all morning, since about eight o’clock East Coast time. They’re going to bring that Peke sage back on again; this is a video tape, it’s running over and over again. Get a load of this so-called philosopher; you’ve never seen anything like it in your life. And then call me back.’ Tito hung up.
Jim Briskin numbly returned to the TV set to listen and watch.
‘I can walk through wood,’ the TV
set was saying, but it was not George Walt, now. It was as Tito had said, a Peking man, Sinanthropus telecasting from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. So George Walt . . . now you’re in politics, Jim Briskin said to himself. And in a big way, too.
And we thought we were bad off before.
‘Not only can I walk through wood,’ the white-haired, massive-browed, enormous-chinned, ancient-looking Sinanthropus said, in reasonably good but somewhat mumbled English, ‘but I can make myself invisible. The god of air empowers me wherever I go. He fills the sails of life with his magic breath, capable of accomplishing all things. Poor, puny Homo sapiens creatures! How could you conceivably expect to infest our world, with the Wind God himself present?’
By the Wind God, Jim Briskin realized with a sickened, enervating start, was meant George Walt.
He had never before quite thought of them that way, but there it was.
Let’s see how President Schwarz decides to handle this, he said to himself. A Wind God in a satellite over our heads millions of fossil men straining to get at us. Darius Pethel can have his defective Jiffi-scuttler back; it’s time we got rid of it, and by the quickest route possible. But how did this ancient Sinanthropus so-called philosopher get across to our world? Didn’t anybody at TD notice his coming through?
They must have opened their own nexus, he decided. Either that or what he says is actually true; he can make himself invisible.
It was a gloomy prospect, having to wake up in the early morning and face this, to say the least.
And somebody has really lost this election now, he decided. Either Bill Schwarz or myself, depending on whom the electorate, in its understandable frenzy, decides to blame.
Going back to the kitchen table he seated himself and resumed eating his breakfast, now cold. As he mechanically ate, he pondered the chances of successfully shooting down the Golden Door satellite; surely that was the most likely next move for President Schwarz. After all, the exact position of the satellite at any given moment was known; it was—or had been until recently—printed on the entertainment page of every homeopape.