The Empire of Isher Read online

McAllister was conscious of a chill. Then, suddenly, he felt a surge of impatience at the fear that showed in the girl's face. "Now look," he began, "I want to get things clear. We can talk here without danger, providing I don't touch, or come near you. Is that right?"

  She nodded. "The floor, the walls, every piece of furniture—in fact the entire shop is made of non-conducting material."

  McAllister had a sense of being balanced on a tight rope over a bottomless abyss. He forced calm onto his mind. "Let's start," he said, "at the beginning. How did you and your father know that I was not of—” he paused before the odd phrase, then went on—”of this time?"

  "Father photographed you," the girl said. "He photographed the contents of your pockets. That was how he first found out what was the matter. You see, the sensitive energies themselves become carriers of the energy, with which you're charged. That's what was wrong. That's why the automatics wouldn't focus on you, and—"

  "Energy—charged?" said McAllister.

  The girl was staring at him. "Don't you understand?" she gasped. "You've come across seven thousand years of time. And of all the energies in the universe, time is the most potent. You're charged with trillions of trillions of time-energy units. If you should step outside this shop, you'd blow up Imperial City and half a hundred miles of land beyond.

  "You—" she finished on an unsteady, upward surge of her voice—”you could conceivably destroy the Earth!"

  III

  He hadn't noticed the mirror before. Funny, too, because it was large enough, at least eight feet high, and directly in front of him on the wall where, a minute before (he could have sworn) had been solid metal.

  "Look at yourself," the girl was saying soothingly. "There's nothing so steadying as one's own image. Actually, your body is taking the mental shock very well."

  He stared at his image. There was a paleness in the lean face that stared back at him. But his body was not actually shaking as the whirling in his mind had suggested. He grew aware again of the girl. She was standing with a finger on one of a series of wall switches. Abruptly, he felt better. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I certainly needed that."

  She smiled encouragingly; and he was able now to be amazed at her conflicting personality. There had been on the one hand her inability a few minutes earlier to get to the point of the danger, an incapacity for explaining things with words. Yet obviously her action with the mirror showed a keen understanding of human psychology. He said: "The problem now is, from your point of view, to circumvent this Isher woman and get me back to 1951 before I blow up the Earth of ... of whatever year this is."

  The girl nodded. "Father says that you can be sent back, but as for the rest, watch!"

  He had no time for relief at the knowledge that he could be returned to his own time. She pressed another button. Instantly, the mirror was gone into metallic wall. Another button clicked. The wall vanished. Before him stretched a park similar to the one he had already seen through the front door, obviously an extension of the same gardenlike vista. Trees were there, and flowers, and green, green grass in the sun.

  One vast building, as high as it was long, towered massively dark against the sky and dominated the entire horizon. It was a good quarter mile away; and incredibly, it was at least that long and that high. Neither near that monstrous building, nor in the park, was a living person visible. Everywhere was evidence of man's dynamic labor, but no men, no movement. Even the trees stood motionless in that breathless sunlit day.

  "Watch!" said the girl again, more softly.

  There was no click this time. She made an adjustment on one of the buttons, and the view was no longer so clear. It wasn't that the sun had dimmed its bright intensity. It wasn't even that glass was visible where a moment before there had been nothing. There was still no apparent substance between them and that gemlike park. But the park was no longer deserted.

  Scores of men and machines swarmed out there. McAllister stared in amazement; and then as the sense of illusion faded, and the dark menace of those men penetrated, his emotion changed to dismay.

  "Why," he said at last, "those men are soldiers, and the machines are—”

  "Energy guns!" she said. "That's always been their problem. How to get their weapons close enough to our shops to destroy us. It isn't that the guns are not powerful over a very great distance. Even the rifles we sell can kill unprotected life over a distance of miles, but our gunshops are so heavily fortified that, to destroy us, they must use their biggest cannon at point-blank range. In the past, they could never do that because we own the surrounding park, and our alarm system was perfect-until now. The new energy they're using affects none of our protective instruments: and, what is infinitely worse, affords them a perfect shield against our own guns. Invisibility, of course, has long been known, but if you hadn't come, we would have been destroyed without ever knowing what happened."

  "But," McAllister exclaimed sharply, "what are you going to do? They're still out there, working—”

  Her brown eyes burned with a fierce, yellow flame. "My father has warned the guild. And individual members have now discovered that similar invisible guns are being set up by invisible men outside their shops. The council will meet shortly to discuss defenses."

  Silently, McAllister watched the soldiers connecting what must have been invisible cables that led to the vast buildings in the background; foot thick cables that told of the titanic power that was to be unleashed on the tiny weapon shop. There was nothing to be said. The reality out there overshadowed sentences and phrases. Of all the people here, he was the most useless, his opinion the least worthwhile. He must have said so, but he did not realize that until the familiar voice of the girl's father came from one side of him.

  "You're quite mistaken, Mr. McAllister. Of all the people here you are the most valuable. Through you, we discovered that the Isher were actually attacking us. Furthermore, our enemies do not know of your existence, therefore have not yet realized the full effect produced by the new blanketing energy they have used. You, accordingly, constitute the unknown factor. We must make immediate use of you."

  The man looked older, McAllister thought. There were lines of strain in his lean, sallow face as he turned to his daughter, and his voice, when he spoke, was edged with sharpness: "Lystra, No. 7!"

  As the girl's fingers touched the seventh button, her father explained swiftly to McAllister, "The guild supreme council is holding an immediate emergency session. We must choose the most likely method of attacking the problem, and concentrate individually and collectively on that method. Regional conversations are already in progress, but only one important idea has been put forward as yet and—ah, gentlemen!"

  He spoke past McAllister, who turned with a start. Men were coming out of the solid wall, lightly, easily, as if it were a door and they were stepping across a threshold. One, two, three-thirty.

  They were grim-faced men, all except one who glanced at McAllister, started to walk past, and then stopped with a half-amused smile.

  "Don't look so blank. How else do you think we could have survived these many years if we hadn't been able to transmit material objects through space? The Isher police have always been only too eager to blockade our sources of supply. Incidentally, my name is Cadron—Peter Cadron.'"

  McAllister nodded in a perfunctory manner. He was no longer genuinely impressed by the new machines. Here were the end-products of the machine age; science and invention so advanced that men made scarcely a move that did not affect, or was not affected by, a machine. A heavy-faced man near him said: "We have gathered here because it is obvious that the source of the new energy is the great building just outside this shop—”

  He motioned toward the wall which had been a mirror and then the window through which McAllister had gazed at the monstrous structure in question. The speaker went on: "We've known, ever since the building was completed five years ago, that it was a power building aimed against us; and now from it new energy has flown out to engulf the
world, immensely potent energy so strong that it broke the very tensions of time, fortunately only at this nearest gunshop. Apparently, it weakens when transmitted over distance."

  "Look, Dresley," came a curt interruption from a small, thin man, "what good is all this preamble? You have been examining the various plans put forward by regional groups. Is there, or isn't there, a decent one among them?"

  Dresley hesitated. To McAllister's surprise, the man's eyes fixed doubtfully on him, his heavy face worked for a moment, then hardened. "Yes, there is a method, but it depends on compelling our friend from the past to take a great risk. You all know what I am referring to. It will gain us the time we need."

  "Eh?" said McAllister, and stood stunned as all eyes turned to stare at him.

  IV

  It struck McAllister that what he needed again was the mirror to prove to himself that his body was putting up a good front. His gaze flicked over the faces of the men. The gunmakers made a confusing pattern in the way they sat, or stood, or leaned against glass cases of shining guns; and there seemed to be fewer than he had previously counted. One, two-twenty-eight, including the girl. He could have sworn there had been thirty-two. His eyes moved on, just in time to see the door of the back room closing. Four of the men had gone to whatever lay beyond that door.

  He shook his head, puzzled. And then, consciously drawing his attention back, stared thoughtfully at the faces before him. He said: "I can't understand how any one of you could even think of compulsion. According to you, I'm loaded with energy. I may be wrong, but if any of you should try to thrust me back down the chute of time, or even touch me, that energy in me would do devastating things—”

  "You're damned right!" chimed in a young man. He barked irritably at Dresley: "How the devil did you ever come to make such a psychological blunder? You know that McAllister will have to do as we want to save himself; and he'll have to do it fast!"

  Dresley grunted. "Hell," he said, "the truth is that we have no time to waste in explanation and I just figured that he might scare easily. I see, however, that we're dealing with an intelligent man."

  McAllister's eyes narrowed over the group. This was phony. He said sharply, "And don't give me any soft soap about being intelligent. You fellows are sweating blood. You'd shoot your own grandmothers and trick me into the bargain, because the world you think right is at stake. What's this plan of yours that you were going to compel me to participate in?"

  It was the young man who replied. "You are to be given insulated clothes and sent back to your own time—”

  He paused. McAllister said: "That sounds okay so far. What's the catch?"

  "There is no catch!"

  McAllister stared. "Now, look here," he began, "don't give me any of that. If it's as simple as that, how the devil am I going to be helping you against the Isher energy?"

  The young man scowled blackly at Dresley. You see," he said, "you've made Him suspicious with that talk of yours about compulsion." He faced McAllister. "What we have in mind is an application of a sort of an energy lever and fulcrum principle. You are to be the weight at the long end of a kind of energy 'crowbar,' which lifts the greater weight at the short end. You will go back five thousand years in time; the machine in the great building, to which your body is tuned and which has caused all this trouble, will move ahead in time several months."

  "In that way," interrupted another man before McAllister could speak, "we should have time to find another counter agent. There must be a solution, else our enemies would not have acted so secretly. Well, what do you think?"

  McAllister walked slowly over to the chair that he had occupied previously. His mind was turning at furious speed, but he knew with a grim foreboding that he hadn't the technical knowledge necessary to safeguard himself. He said slowly:

  "As I see it, this is supposed to work something like a pump handle. The lever principle, the old idea that if you had a lever long enough, and a suitable fulcrum, you could move the Earth out of its orbit."

  "Exactly!" It was the heavy-faced Dresley who spoke. "Only this works in time. You go five thousand years, the building goes—”

  His voice faded, his eagerness drained from him as he caught the expression in McAllister's face.

  "Look!" said McAllister. "There's nothing more pitiful than a bunch of honest men engaged in an act of dishonesty. You're strong men, the intellectual type, who've spent your lives enforcing an idealistic conception. You've always told yourselves that if the occasion should ever require it, you would not hesitate to make drastic sacrifices. But you're not fooling anybody. What's the catch?"

  V

  It was startling to have the suit thrust at him. He had noticed the men emerge from the back room; and it came as a shock to realize that they had gone for the insulated clothes before they could have known that he would use them. McAllister stared grimly at Peter Cadron, who held the dull, grayish, limp thing toward him, and said in a tight voice:

  "Get into this, and get going! It's a matter of minutes, man! When those guns out there start spraying energy, you won't be alive to argue about our honesty."

  Still he hesitated. The room seemed insufferably hot. Perspiration streaked down his cheeks and he felt sick with uncertainty. Somewhere in the background a man was saying:

  "Our first purpose must be to gain time, then we must establish new shops in communities where they cannot be easily attacked. Simultaneously, we must contact every Imperial potential who can help us directly or indirectly, and finally we must—”

  The voice went on, but McAllister heard no more. His frantic gaze fell on the girl, standing silent and subdued near the front door. He strode toward her; and either his glare or presence was frightening, for she cringed and turned white.

  "Look!" he said. "I'm in this as deep as hell. What's the risk in this thing? I've got to feel that I have some chance. Tell, me, what's the catch?"

  The girl was gray now, almost as gray and dead looking as the suit Peter Cadron was holding. "It's the friction," she mumbled finally, "you may not get all the way back to 1951. You see, you'll be a sort of 'weight' and—”

  McAllister whirled away from her. He climbed into the soft almost flimsy suit, crowding the overall-like shape over his neatly pressed clothes. "It comes tight over the head, doesn't it?"

  "Yes!" It was Lystra's father who answered. "As soon as you pull that zipper shut, the suit will become completely invisible. To outsiders, it will seem just as if you have your ordinary clothes on. The suit is fully equipped. You could live on the moon inside it."

  "What I don't get," complained McAllister, "is why I have to wear it. I got here all right without it." He frowned. His words had been automatic, but abruptly a thought came. "Just a minute," he said, "what becomes of the energy with which I'm charged when I'm bottled up in this insulation?"

  He saw by the stiffening expressions of those around him that he had touched on a vast subject.

  "So that's it!" he snapped. "The insulation is to prevent me losing any of that energy.. That's how it can make a 'weight.' I have no doubt there is a connection from this suit to that other machine. Well, it's not too late."

  With a desperate twist, he tried to jerk aside, to evade the clutching hands of the four men who leaped at him. But they had him instantly, and their grips on him were strong beyond his power to break. The fingers of Peter Cadron jerked the zipper tight, and Peter Cadron said:

  "Sorry, but when we went into that back room, we also dressed in insulated clothing. That's why you couldn't hurt us. And remember this: There's no certainty that you are being sacrificed. The fact that there is no crater in our Earth proves that you did not explode in the past, and that you solved the problem in some other way. Now, somebody open the door, quick!"

  Irresistibly, he was carried forward. And then—

  "Wait!"

  It was the girl. Her eyes glittered like dark jewels and in her fingers was the tiny, mirror-bright gun she had pointed in the beginning at McAllister. The li
ttle group hustling McAllister stopped as if they had been struck. He was scarcely aware. For him there was only the girl, and the way the muscles of her lips were working and the way her voice suddenly cried: "This is utter outrage. Are we such cowards—is it possible that the spirit of liberty can survive only through a shoddy act of murder and gross defiance of the rights of the individual? I say no! Mr. McAllister must have the protection of the hypnotism treatment; surely so brief a delay will not be fatal."

  "Lystra!" It was her father; and McAllister realized by his swift movement how quickly the older man grasped every aspect of the situation. He stepped forward and took the gun from his daughter's fingers—the only man in the room, McAllister thought, who could dare approach her in that moment with the certainty she would not fire. For hysteria was in every line of her face; and the tears that followed showed how dangerous her stand might have been against the others.

  Strangely, not for a moment had hope come. The entire action seemed divorced from his life and his thought; there was only the observation of it. He stood there for a seeming eternity, and, when emotion finally came, it was surprise that he was not being hustled to his doom. With the surprise came awareness that Peter Cadron had let go of his arm, and stepped clear of him.

  The man's eyes were calm, his head held proudly erect. He said, "Your daughter is right, sir. At this point we rise above our fears, and we say to this unhappy young man: 'Have courage! You will not be forgotten. We can guarantee nothing, cannot even state exactly what will happen to you. But we say, if it lies in our power to help you, that help you shall have.' And now—we must protect you from the devastating psychological pressures that would otherwise destroy you, simply but effectively."

  Too late, McAllister noticed that the others had turned their faces away from that extraordinary wall—the wall that had already displayed so vast a versatility. He did not even see who pressed the activating button for what followed.