More Than Superhuman Read online

  However, murder of his only Edith had one unpleasant possibility. Though he had analyzed that she was the orientation, if it should happen that she was not, then, in destroying her he would remove his source of information for tracing other Ediths.

  It was a chance he was resolved to take. But, as a precaution, he had already removed the crystal from the nutrient soil on which it fed. He was not certain how long it would be before the stone was deactivated by starvation, but he deduced not more than two weeks. Whereupon it would orient to whoever reactivated it. To himself, of course.

  Now that he had a special barrier-penetrating weapon, he firmly believed that before this day was over he would be in sole possession of the remarkable machine of all time and space — the crystal.

  * *

  The Harkdale Hotel was a summer resort hostelry. Its prices were high, and as a result it had made money. Wisely, some of the money had been spent on decoration, fine furniture, and a sophisticated staff.

  The clerk on day duty had his own definition of a sophisticated desk clerk: a person with a memory so good that he can forget with discretion.

  He was such a clerk. He described himself as an import from fine hotels. His name, he said, was Derek Slade. He had — he always explained — asked for an assignment to a small resort town, because he had a certain childhood nostalgia for village life. So discreet, however, was Derek, that on this fateful day he allowed four Seth Mitchells to register. Each time he believed it was the same man but with a different woman; and he was just beginning, he told himself, to enjoy the situation, when Seth Mitchell arrived for the fifth time; only this time he had no woman with him.

  Yet it took Derek only a moment to figure it out This smooth male, Seth Mitchell, had four women in different rooms, and evidently he wanted a separate room for himself. Why? Derek didn't try to analyze the matter further, Life — he had often said — was full of surprises. He would observe the fact, not speculate about it.

  Derek spoke in a low tone, 'You may count on my discretion, Mr. Mitchell.'

  The Seth Mitchell across the desk from him raised his eyebrows, then nodded with a faint smile.

  Derek was pleased. The remark ought to be good for a twenty-dollar tip.

  He was still congratulating himself when the elevator door opened and another Seth Mitchell stepped out and walked toward the desk. As he came up, the Seth Mitchell who had just registered turned to follow the bellboy carrying his bags to the elevator.

  The two Seth Mitchells almost bumped into each other. Both took evasive action. Both murmured polite nothings, and were about to pass each other when Derek recovered.

  It was one of his perfect moments. He raised his voice, spoke with that exact right note of authority: 'Mister Mitchell.'

  The two Seth Mitchells were already in a mildly confused state. Their name, uttered in that peremptory tone, stopped them.

  Derek said, 'Mr. Seth Mitchell, I want you to meet Mr. Seth Mitchell. Gentlemen, please wait there a moment'

  He let them kill their own time — one of them seemed to recover quickly, the other remaining bewildered — while he phoned the rooms of the previously registered Seth Mitchells. He had to call all four rooms, but presently there in front of him stood five Seth Mitchells.

  Of all the people present, the one most completely unnoticed was Derek Slade. He wouldn't have had it any other way, for he could watch.

  Four of the five Seths were gulping and stuttering at each other. The fifth had stepped off to one side with a faint smile. Almost as one, the four suddenly became embarrassed, and so Derek's cool voice caught them again at the right moment: 'Gentlemen, why don't you go into the conference room over here and talk this whole matter over?'

  As they started for the conference room, Marge Aiken entered the hotel — in time to catch a profile view of the last Seth Mitchell to enter the room. She became very pale and then rushed forward.

  'Seth!' she cried out tearfully. 'For God's sake, I thought you were dead!'

  She stopped. She had grabbed the nearest man by the arm. He turned, and the something different about him flustered her.

  * *

  Afterward, when everybody had been told what Marge knew, and after they had heard about Edith, the woman detective suggested that she call Edith at the library and have her come over at once, instead of later.

  Three of the Seth Mitchells objected. Listening to each in turn, Marge glanced along the line of sensationally familiar faces, and saw in all but one man's eyes a haunting apprehension. Yet there was in all of them the same bright intelligence that she had seen so often in her own employer.

  The Seth from Montreal said, 'Our first act must be to protect ourselves from that young woman's automatic judgments, such as she rendered on farmer Mitchell and detective Mitchell.'

  A second, slightly deeper-voiced Seth was concerned about Athtar. 'In killing Edith Price Number Two, Athtar must have got the crystal, and then discovered that the dead Edith was not the orientation. Therefore,' he said, 'our initial act must be to protect the Edith who is the orientation.'

  So the first real problem was getting her safely to the hotel, not what she would do when she got here.

  The third Seth said the problem was not so much Edith's judgment of men; it was her stereotyped thoughts about how a woman should be. Presumably, the crystal had dutifully created a long list of Edith Prices who were simply ordinary human beings with varying moral standards, or with slightly different beliefs about how to get along in the drab world of the twentieth century.

  'As an example of how differently I would want her to handle her control of the crystal, one of the first Edith Prices I wish her to create is one that has ESP. Why? So that she can understand this whole situation and what to do about it.'

  His words brought a hopeful reaction. It was an obviously good idea - if it could be done.

  A fourth Seth, who had sat gray and silent, now spoke up: 'It would be interesting if such ESP ability included being able to spot the Seth Mitchell who' — he nodded at Marge — 'paid your boss a thousand dollars to locate the crystal.'

  The Seth who had arrived at the hotel without a wife — and who had reflected none of the fear that the others felt — stirred, and smiled cheerfully. 'You need look no further. I'm he.'

  When the chorus of questions and excitement finally died down, he continued, 'To answer your basic question, I also dreamed, as you all did. And just as the worst Athtar found himself with the address of one of the Seth Mitchells in his mind, in the same way the morning after the dream the address of detective Mitchell in mine.'

  'But why didn't you come for the crystal yourself? Why pay a thousand dollars?'

  The bachelor Mitchell smiled again. I hate to tell you people this, and it is to your advantage not to let Miss Price know, but according to the thoughts I had after my dream, I am the best of all possible Seth Mitchells.'

  Many minutes chattered by before his audience was again calmed down, and he was able to answer the substance of all the words they had projected: 'I don't know why I'm best. But I hired someone to come here in my place because I sensed danger, and I came here today believing that this was the crisis. I can't tell you what I'll do about it. I don't even have the feeling that my role is decisive I simply believe that something will present itself, and I'll do it.'

  He finished simply, 'I don't think we should devote any more time to me. We have many vital things to do, and only until Edith Price comes off the job to do them. Let's get started.'

  They were law-abiding people; so they now contacted the police, who checked the motel where the Seth Mitchell of the gold Cadillac had registered. Then they phoned his office in New York on the basis of his license-plate number and found that the car was there, the man missing for many days. A warrant was accordingly issued against a squat man whose only known name was Athtar.

  * *

  Since the police of Harkdale were few in number, after dark Athtar was able to drive into town and into the lib
rary parking lot without being observed. He had timed his arrival for about a minute after the library officially closed.

  Dimness. A lingering twilight that had barely transformed into night: A few library patrons were still maneuvering in the library parking lot when Edith emerged from the rear door.

  She noted with a vague surprise that a town fire truck, engine riming, was standing near the door. But she was already having qualms about the forthcoming journey to the hotel — so far away, it seemed to her suddenly. And so the sight of the big truck was reassuring instead of astonishing.

  To get to her own car, she had to go around the fire truck. As she started forward to do so, the big machine surged into motion with a gigantic thunder of its engine. Edith stopped, teetered, then leapt back out of the way — barely in time.

  As it came abreast of her, the truck jammed on its brakes and screeched to a halt directly in front of her.

  Somewhere beyond the big machine, a purple flash lighted the sky.

  X

  Though Edith did not see it, the purple light had its origin in one of the maneuvering cars. Like a tracer bullet, the light flashed from the auto to the fire truck. As it hit, it made a sound of a pitch never before heard on earth: a deep, sustained, continuing spat of chemical bonds by the quadrillion snapping in metal.

  The tiny bullet penetrated the thick steel frame of the fire truck, and reformed itself a micromillimeter at a time from the steel molecules. It did not slow as it passed through the heavy machine. Indeed, there was no thickness of metal of the twentieth century that could have held it back by even one foot a minute of its forward speed. Not the armor plate of a battleship, nor the solid mass of the earth itself.

  It was a rifle bullet, and so its path was straight — through air and through metal. It also would have been straight through Edith, except that its speed was that of a bullet, immense but finite.

  And so it transited the fire truck while the truck was still in motion. The bullet carried along inside the moving vehicle during a measurable time of several split seconds and missed Edith by twenty inches.

  Unchecked, it struck the library wall, moved on through, emerged from the far side, and zipped off into the night. Its kinetic energy being a precise quality, it bored forward another hundred yards, and then rapidly fell.

  Moments later, two plainclothes police officers discharged their rifles at the figure that was dimly visible inside the car from which the purple-glowing bullet had been fired.

  The screech of bullets striking his own machine, startled Athtar. But he had a molecular reinforcing unit putting out a field that hardened the glass and the metal of the auto; and so the bullets failed to penetrate.

  What bothered him was that he had only a few bullets, and in the dark he couldn't gauge the extent of the trap that had been set for him. So now, hastily, he put his car into drive, stepped on the gas, and drove rapidly out of the parking lot.

  A police car fell in behind him, flashing its red lights at him. Though it or its weapons were no danger to him, he feared a roadblock. He turned up several side streets, and in only a few minutes of driving lured the police car onto a street near the lake on the far side of the Harkdale Hotel, an approach that he had thoroughly explored on foot earlier.

  Satisfied, he opened the car window on the driver's side, slowed, leaned Out, looked back, took quick aim at the engine of the other machine, and put a purple-glowing bullet through the crankcase. There was a shattering crash. The stricken motor almost tore itself apart, screaming metallically. The auto itself came to a bumpy halt.

  Athtar hurriedly circled back to the Harkdale Hotel. A first queasy doubt had come that for a reason that was not clear his time was running out. Yet it still seemed true to him that all he need do was sneak into the hotel and discharge a single bullet at one, and only one, beating heart.

  Minutes later, after squeezing through a kitchen window of the hotel, he found himself in a shadowy storeroom on a concrete floor. As he fumbled his way to a door, he had a fleeting mental image of his colleagues of the great Science Guild viewing him in such a lowly action. Of course, Athtar told himself scornfully, what they thought would not matter after he got control of the crystal. There would be dramatic changes after he got back to his own time: a few hundred Guild members were scheduled for extermination.

  Cautiously he pulled open the door. It was as he started through the hallway beyond that he became aware of a faint sound behind him. He spun around and jerked up his gun.

  Instant, unbearable pain in his arm forced the gun back down and his finger away from the trigger. Almost at once the gun dropped from his nerveless hand, clattering to the floor. Even as he recognized that thirty-fifth-century technology was being used against him, he saw that a short, squat man was standing in the doorway of the storeroom from which he himself had just emerged

  Athtar's arm and hand were now inexorably forced by intolerable pain to reach into his inside breast pocket, take out the crystal, and hold it out to the other man.

  The second Athtar did not speak. He drew the door behind him shut, accepted the crystal, and bending down, picked the gun up from the floor. Then he edged past his prisoner, stepped through the door beyond, and closed it behind him also.

  At once, all the muscle pressures let go of the worst Athtar. Instantly desperate, he tried to jerk open the storeroom door, intending to escape by the same window he had entered. The door was locked, and it had an unnervingly solid feel to it Athtar whirled toward the other door.

  When he found it locked also, and with that same solid resistance to his tug, he now finally recognized that he was trapped by molecular forces from his own era. There was nothing to do, as the minutes lengthened, but to sit down on the concrete floor and wait.

  Sitting there, he had the partly mixed reaction that the drama of the crystal would now play on without him. What seemed good about it was the distinct conviction that perhaps he was well out of it; perhaps this was a more dangerous situation than he had let himself be aware of. Would it have been dangerous for him? The intuition wasn't that definite.

  He had recognized his assailant as the best of all possible Athtars. So now he told himself he was glad it was the best Athtar and not himself who would be present while these twentieth-century human beings tried to save themselves.

  The Price woman was being cleverer than he had anticipated. Which meant that the automatic programming of the crystal to uncreate all but the best would force her to the most desperate actions. Or so it seemed to the worst Athtar.

  Better not to be around when such extreme events were transpiring.

  * *

  The best of all possible Athtars walked through the hotel lobby to the conference room. The five Seth Mitchells were grouped outside the door, out of the line of vision of Edith, who was inside. Athtar gave the agreed-on signal and handed the worst Athtar's automatic pistol to one of the Seths. They were thorough. They searched him, and then passed him on to Marge Aikens, who stood in the doorway.

  To Marge, Athtar gave another agreed-on signal. Having thus established his identity as the friendly Athtar, whom Edith had re-created as a first step, he was now admitted inside the room.

  Athtar placed the crystal on the conference table in front of Edith. As her fingers automatically reached toward it, he placed a restraining hand on her wrist.

  'I have a feeling,' he admonished, 'that this time when you pick it up — when the true orientation, you, picks it up — that will be the moment of crisis.'

  His voice, and his words, seemed far away. She had — it seemed to her — considered those thoughts, and had those feelings, in approaching the decision to re-create him — the best Athtar. That, also, had been a crisis..

  As she nevertheless hesitated out of respect for his knowledge and awareness, Edith noticed two impulses within herself. One was to go into a kind of exhaustion, in which she would act on the basis that she was too tired to think all that through again.

  The second imp
ulse was a clearer, sharper awareness, which had come to her suddenly at the library after she realized that the worst Athtar had tried to kill her.

  Abruptly, then, the problems that had disturbed her earlier faded. Whether it was better to be tough and be able to shoot, or be soft and feminine, had no meaning. The real solution was infinite flexibility, backed by unvarying intention.

  One handled situations. That was all there was to it.

  As she remembered that perfect thought, the impulse toward exhaustion went away. She turned to Marge and said matter-of-factly, 'Shall I tell him what we discussed while he was down in the storeroom?'

  Marge nodded tensely.

  Athtar listened with what appeared to be an expression of doubt, then said, 'Having the crystal re-create one of its makers could be exactly what those makers are waiting for you to do.'

  'That's exactly what we thought,' said Edith. And still she felt no fear. She explained, 'Our thought is that, since the crystal is programmed to find the best of each person, and the best Athtar turned out to be a reasonable person and not a criminal, then the makers of the crystal understand the difference. We may therefore assume that the society of the future is normal and will not harm us.'

  She added, 'That's why we re-created you — as a check.'

  'Good reasoning,' said Athtar, cautioning, 'but I sense there's something wrong with it.'

  'But you have no specific thought?' she asked.

  'No.' He hesitated, then shrugged. 'As a start,' he said, why not pick up the crystal — just pick it up — and see if my feeling about that being sufficient has any substance?' He explained, 'If I'm wrong there, then we can dismiss my doubts.'

  'You don't want me to look at the design?'

  The Seths had discovered that that was the key to her control of the stone. By questioning her closely, by eliciting from her the thoughts she had had on the three occasions that it had performed its miracle for her, it had became apparent that when she mentally or visually traced the interior picture and gave a command, it happened — literally.