Earth's Last Fortress Page 4

  His voice was suddenly sharp as steel. “And now, Professor Garson, I assure you that you have already condemned yourself. The Observer is located in that metal building across the street because the impact of energy from the great primary time machine would affect its sensitive parts if it were any nearer. I can think of no other explanation that you require, and I certainly have no desire to remain in the company of a man who will be an automaton in half an hour., Come along!”

  Garson did not argue. He was aware again of this monstrous city, and he thought bleakly, It’s the same old, old story of the aristocrat justifying his black crime against his fellow man. Originally, there must have been deliberate physical degradation, deliberate misuse of psychology. The very, name by which these people called themselves, the Glorious, seemed a heritage from days when enormous efforts must have been made to arouse hero worship in the masses.

  Dr. Lell’s dry voice said, “Your disapproval of our slaves is shared by the Planetarians. They also oppose our methods of depersonalizing our recruits. It is easy to see that they and, you have many things in common, and if only you could escape to their side…”

  With an effort, Garson pulled himself out of his private world. He was being led on, not skillfully. It was apparent now that every word Dr. Lell spoke had the purpose of making him reveal himself. For a moment, he was conscious of impatience; then puzzlement came. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What you’re doing cannot be bringing forth any new facts. I’m the product of my environment. You know what that environment is, and what type of normal human being it must inevitably produce. As I’ve said, my whole case rests on cooperation.”

  A difference in the color of the sky at the remote end of the street snatched his attention. It was a faint, abnormal, scarlet tinge like a mist, an unnatural, unearthly sunset, only it was hours yet before the sun would set. He felt himself growing taut. He said in a tense voice, “What’s that?”

  “That,” Dr. Lell’s curt, amused voice came at him, “is the war.

  Garson laughed. He couldn’t help it. For weeks, speculation about this gigantic war of the future had intertwined with his gathering anxiety about Norma. And now this red haze on the horizon of an otherwise undamaged city—the war!

  The dark flash of laughter ended as Dr. Lell said, “It is not as amusing as you think. Most of Delpa is intact because it is protected by a local time-energy barrier. Delpa is actually under siege, fifty miles inside enemy territory.” He must have caught the thought that came to Garson. He said good-humoredly, “You’re right. All you have to do is get out of Delpa, and you’ll be safe.”

  Garson said angrily, “It’s a thought that would occur to any intelligent person. Don’t forget you have Miss Matheson.”

  Dr. Lell seemed not to have heard. “The red haze you see is the point where the enemy has neutralized our energy barrier. It is there that they attack us unceasingly day and night with an inexhaustible store of robot machines.

  “We are unfortunate in not having the factory capacity in Delpa to build robot weapons, so we use a similar type manned by depersonalized humans. Unfortunately, again, the cost in lives is high; one hundred percent of recruits. Every day, too, we lose about forty feet of city, and, of course, in the end Delpa will fall.” He smiled, an almost gentle smile. Garson was amazed to notice that he seemed suddenly in high good humor as he said, “You can see how effective even a small time-energy barrier is. When we complete the great barrier two years hence, our entire front line will be literally impregnable.

  “As for your co-operation argument, it’s worthless. Men are braver than they think, braver than reason. But let’s forget argument. In a minute, the machine will give us the truth of this matter.”

  7

  At first sight, the Observer Machine was a solid bank of flickering lights that steadied as they surveyed him. Garson waited under that many-faceted gaze, scarcely breathing. He didn’t think that the wall of black metal machine and lights was very impressive, and found himself analyzing the lack. It was too big and too stationary. If it had been small and possessed of shape, however ugly, and movement, there might have been a suggestion of abnormal personality. Here were a myriad lights on a metal wall. As he watched, the lights began to wink again. Abruptly, they blinked out, all except a little colored design of them at the bottom right-hand corner.

  Behind Garson, the door opened, and Dr. Lell came into the silent room. “I’m glad,” her said quietly, “that the result was what it was. We are desperately in need of good assistants. To illustrate,” he went on as they emerged into the brightness of the unpleasant street, “I am, for instance, in charge of that recruiting station in the twentieth century, but I’m there only when an inter-time alarm system has warned me. In the interim, I am employed on scientific duties of the second order—first order being work which, by its very nature, must continue without interruption.”

  They were back at the same great building from which they had come, and ahead stretched the same gray-blue, familiar corridor, only this time Dr. Lell opened the first of several doors. He bowed politely. “After you, Professor.”

  A fraction too late, Garson’s fist flailed the air where that dark, strong face had been. They stared at each other, Garson tight-lipped, his brain like a steel bar. The superman said softly:

  “You will always be that instant too slow, Professor. It is a lack you cannot remedy. You know, of course, that my little speech was designed to keep you quiet during the trip back here, and that actually you failed the test. What you do not know is that you failed startlingly, with a recalcitrancy grading of six, which is the very worst, and intelligence AA plus, almost the very best. It is too bad because we really need capable assistants. I regret—”

  “Let me do the regretting!” Garson cut him off roughly. “If I remember rightly, it was just below here that your beast men were forcing a man into the depersonalizing machine. Perhaps, on the staircase going down, I can find some way of tripping you up, and knocking that little gun you’re palming right out of your hand.”

  There was something in the smile of the other that should have warned him, a hint of sly amusement. Not that it would have made any difference. He stepped warily through the open doorway and headed toward the gray-blue, plainly visible stairway. Behind him, the door clicked with an odd finality.

  Ahead, the staircase was gone—a vanished illusion. Where it had been was a large boilerlike case with a. furnace-shaped door. Half a dozen beast men came forward. A moment later they were shoving him toward that black hole of a door.

  The second day, Norma took- the risk. The windows of the recruiting station still showed the same blank interior; walls stripped by the police of Calonian slogans, and signs and newspaper clippings trampled all over the floor. The door of the back room was half closed, and it was too dark to see the interior.

  It was noon. With drummed-up courage, Norma walked swiftly to the front entrance. The lock clicked open smoothly. She stepped inside and a moment later was pushing at the back door. The machine was not there. Great dents showed in the floor where it had stood for so many months. But it was gone as completely as Dr. Lell, as completely as the beast men and Jack Garson.

  Back in her rooms, she collapsed onto the bed, and lay quivering from the dreadful nervous reaction of that swift, illegal search.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day, as she sat staring at the meaningless words of a book, there was an abrupt tingling in her body. Somewhere a machine—the machine— was vibrating softly. She climbed to her feet, the book forgotten on the window sill where, freakishly, it had fallen. But the sound was gone. Not a tremor touched her taut nerves. The thought came: Imagination! Her tension was really beginning to affect her.

  As she stood there, stiff, unable to relax, there came the thin squeal of a door opening downstairs. It was the back door that led into the vacant lot which her window overlooked. The back door opening and shutting! As she watched, fascinated, Dr. Lell stalked into view. Her awaren
ess of him was so sharp that he must have caught it, but he did not turn. In half a minute he was gone, out of her line of vision.

  On the fifth day, there was hammering downstairs, carpenters working. Several trucks came, and she heard the mumbling sound of men talking. But it was evening before she dared venture down. Through the window, then, she saw the beginning of the changes that were being wrought. The old bench had been removed. The walls were being redone. There was no new furniture yet, but a rough, unfinished sign leaned against one wall. It read: Employment Bureau-Men Wanted.

  Men wanted! So that was it. Another trap for men! Those ravenous armies of the future must be kept glutted with fodder. The incredible war in that incredible future raged on.

  She watched dumbly as Dr. Lell came out of the back room. He walked toward the front door, and she waited helplessly as he opened the door, looked in, and meticulously closed the door again. Then, a moment later, he stood beside her, as silent as she, also staring into the window. Finally, he said:

  “I see you’ve been admiring our new set-up.”

  His voice was matter-of-fact, and lacking in menace. She made no reply. He seemed to expect none, for he said almost immediately, in that same conversational tone, “It’s just as well that it all happened as it did. Nothing I ever told you has been disproved. I said that investigation had shown the machine to be here several years hence. Naturally, we could not examine every day or week of that time. This little episode accordingly escaped our notice, but did not change the situation.

  “As for the fact that it will be an employment bureau henceforth, that seemed natural at the period of our investigation because this Calonian War was over then.”

  He paused, and still there was no word that she could think to say. In the gathering darkness, he seemed to stare at her. He said, “I’m telling you all this because it would be annoying to have to train someone else for your position, and because you must realize the impossibility of further opposition. Accept your situation. We have thousands of machines similar to this, and the millions of men flowing through them are gradually turning the tide of battle in our favor. We must win; our cause is overwhelmingly just. We are Earth against all the planets; Earth protecting herself against the aggression of a combination of enemies armed as no powers in all time have ever been armed. We have the highest moral right to draw on the men of Earth of every century to defend their planet.

  “However”—his voice lost its objectivity, grew colder—“if this logic does not move you, the following rewards for your good behavior should prove efficacious. We have Professor Garson. Unfortunately, I was unable to save his personality. Definite tests proved that he would be a recalcitrant. But there is your youth. It will be returned to you on a salary basis. Every three weeks you will become a year younger. In short, it will require two years for you to return to your version of twenty.”

  He finished on a note of command. “A week from today, this bureau will open for business. You will report at nine o’clock. This is your last chance. Good-by.”

  In the darkness, she watched his shape turn. He vanished into the gloom of the building.

  She had a purpose. At first it was a tiny mind-growth that she wouldn’t admit into her consciousness. But gradually embarrassment passed, and the whole world of her thought began to organize around it.

  It began with the developing realization that resistance was useless. Not that she believed in the rightness of the cause of this race that called itself the Glorious, although his story of Earth against the planets had put the first doubt into her brain. As, she knew, he had intended it should. The affair was simpler than that. One woman had set herself against the men of the future. What a silly thing for one woman to do!

  But there remained Jack Garson…

  If she could get him back—poor, broken, strange creature that he must be now with his personality destroyed—somehow she would make amends for having been responsible. She thought: What madness to hope that they’d give him back to her, ever! She was the tiniest cog in a vast war machine. Nevertheless, the fact remained. She must get him back!

  The part of her brain that was educated, civilized, thought: What an elemental purpose, everything drained out of her but the basic of basics, one woman concentrating on one man.

  But the purpose was there, unquenchable.

  The slow months dragged, and once gone, seemed to have flashed by. One night she turned a corner and found herself on a street she hadn’t visited for some time. She stopped short, her body stiffening. The street ahead was swarming with men but their presence scarcely touched her mind.

  Above all that confusion of sound, above the catcalls, above the roar of streetcars and automobiles, above the totality of the cacophonous combination, there was another sound, an incredibly softer sound—the whisper of a time machine. She was miles from the employment bureau with its machine, but the tiny tremor along her nerves was unmistakable.

  She pressed forward, blind to everything but the attention of the men. A man tried to put his arm through hers. She jerked free automatically. Another man simply caught her in an embrace, and for brief seconds she was subjected to a hard hug and a hard kiss. Purpose gave her strength. With scarcely an effort, she freed one arm and struck at his face. The man laughed good-humoredly, released her, but walked beside her. “Clear the way for the lady!” he shouted.

  Almost magically, there was a lane; and she was at the window. There was a sign that read:

  WANTED

  RETURNED SOLDIERS

  FOR DANGEROUS ADVENTURE GOOD PAY!

  She felt no emotion as she realized that here was another trap for men. In her brain she had space for only an impression. The impression was of a large square room, with a dozen men in it. Only three of the men were recruits. Of the other nine, one was an American soldier dressed in the uniform of World War I. He sat at a desk pounding a typewriter. Over him leaned a Roman legionnaire of the time of Julius Caesar, complete with toga and short sword. Beside the door, holding back the pressing throng of men, were two Greek soldiers of the time of Pericles.

  The men and the times they represented were unmistakable to her, who had taken four college years of Latin and Greek and acted in plays of both periods in the original languages. There was another man in an ancient costume, but she was unable to place him. At the moment, he was at a short counter interviewing one of the three recruits. Of the four remaining men, two wore uniforms that could have been developments of the late twentieth century. The cloth was of a light-yellow color, and both men had two pips on their shoulders. The rank of lieutenant was obviously still in style when they were commissioned.

  The remaining two men were simply strange, not in face, but in the cloth of their uniforms. Their faces were of sensitive, normal construction. Their uniforms consisted of breeches and neatly fitting coats all in blue, a blue that sparkled as from a million needlelike diamond points. In a quiet, blue, intense way, they shone.

  As she watched, one of the recruits was led to the back door. It was her first awareness that there was a back door. The door opened; she had the briefest glimpse of a towering machine and a flashing picture of a man who was tall and dark of face, and who might have been Dr. Lell. Only he wasn’t. But the similarity of race was unmistakable.

  The door closed, and one of the Greeks guarding the outer entrance said, “All right, two more of you fellows can come in.”

  There was a struggle for position, brief but violent. And then the two victors, grinning and breathing heavily from their exertion, were inside. In the silence that followed, one of the Greeks turned to the other, and said in a tangy, almost incomprehensible version of ancient Greek:

  “Sparta herself never had more willing fighters. This promises to be a good night’s catch.”

  It was the rhythm of the words, and the colloquial gusto with which they were spoken, that almost destroyed the meaning for her. After a moment, however, she made the mental translation. And now the truth was clear. The me
n of Time had gone back even to old Greece, probably much further back, for their recruits. And always they had used every version of bait, based on all the weaknesses and urgencies in the natures of man.

  Fight for Calonia!— an appeal to idealism. Men Wanted!—the most basic of all appeals, work for food, happiness, security. And now, the appeal variation was for returned soldiers—Adventure With Pay!

  Diabolical! And yet so effective that they could use as recruiting officers men who had been caught by the same propaganda. These men must be of the non-recalcitrant type, who fitted themselves willingly into the war machine of the Glorious. Traitors! Abruptly ablaze with hatred for all non-recalcitrants who still possessed their personalities, she whirled away from the window.

  She was thinking: Thousands of such machines. The figures had been meaningless before, but now, with just one other machine as a measurable example, the reality reared up into a monstrous thing. To think that there had been a time when she had actually set herself, single handed, against them.

  There remained the problem of getting Jack Garson out of the hell of that titanic war of the future!

  At night she walked the streets, because there was always the fear that in the apartment her thoughts, her driving, deadly thoughts, would be tapped. And because to be enclosed in those narrow walls above the machine that had devoured so many thousands of men was intolerable. She thought as she walked, over and over she thought of the letter Jack Garson had written her before he came in person. The letter was long destroyed, but every word was recorded on her brain. And of all the words in it, the one sentence that she kept returning to was: In your position, I would ask myself one question: Was there anything, any metal, anything upon my person that might have been placed there?

  One day, as she was wearily unlocking the door of her apartment, the answer came. Perhaps it was the extra weariness that brought her briefly closer to basic things. Perhaps her brain was simply tired of slipping over the same blind spot. Or perhaps the months of concentration had finally earned the long-delayed result. Whatever the reason, she was putting the key back into her purse when the hard, metallic feel of it against her fingers brought realization.