The Universe Maker Page 9

  It faded away. The sound and its echoes retreated into an abyss of tune and space. He grew aware that Ann Reece and a man were in the room. The man said: "Does that complete it?"

  "That completes it," said Ann Reece. The two of them went out.

  Cargill waited for he knew not what. Whatever had happened didn't feel complete inside him. He had the strange sensation that something basic at the heart of his being had been disturbed. "It's because of the thoughts I've had about reality," he decided. "Except for that—it would be complete."

  A geometrical design drifted past his inner eye. It had black areas in it; and there must have been grief emotion, for he felt suddenly depressed. The interesting thing was that he knew what the design meant. It was a fold in the time continuum. Even as he watched it, tensely, it altered almost imperceptibly. Various lines, like threads of a fabric, seemed to fray, and he had the uneasy feeling that something was being strained almost to breaking. It remained poised in delicate and dangerous balance.

  The picture in his mind's eye changed and became a scene. He seemed to be on a hill overlooking a lake that glittered at him with radioactive fluorescence. Except for the fiery blue lake, as far as he could see to every horizon was desolation. Without knowing where the knowledge came from, Cargill knew that the lake was a life-discard, dropped on the track of tune countless billions of years earlier.

  What was more interesting about his awareness was the distinct conviction that the lake was an experiment which he had started personally, and abandoned. The lake, thus casually treated, clung to its "life," and had maintained itself for almost the full period of the existence of the material universe. At the moment, it was in communication with another life-discard on the planet of a remote star. The communication was a kind of regeneration process whereby each furnished the other with energy elements essential to survival. The intricate interrelationship had strong love characteristics.

  Cargill watched the lake briefly, tuned in on the telepathy, and then—without effort—crossed, the void to where the other being existed. Here were craggy mountains, a plantless, treeless horizon of gray-brown soil; and high on a mountain peak was a giant statue. The statue was a dead black in color and had no resemblance to a human shape. And yet, Cargill knew, it was a try at form, an attempt to achieve life on a higher level than the lake.

  The idea of life that moved had not yet entered his thought. He himself did not move, as movement. There was no space, except what he imagined, and only the lake and the statue had time in them. It was a brilliant creative process, as he had originally conceived it. By imagining space, by having a high wave and low wave concept of space (thus setting up energy flows), by enforcing an energy slow-down to the point where it took on the appearance of matter, he deluded the lake and the statue into believing that they were something and possessed something. Thereafter, they fought desperately to sustain the illusion. It took up so much of their "energy" that they didn't have "time" to examine any other reality.

  The scene began to fade. He had a tendency to hold onto it, but he realized the pictures were a chance contact with an ancient memory, and important only in that a rigidity in his present beingness had been overcome; it signified that for a moment he had been free. He guessed, without having any detail, that there would be millions of scenes like that. . . elsewhere.

  He seemed to be back in the bed, and he was about to settle into a warm comfortable sleep when the realization dawned: He was not yet complete. The feeling of imbalance remained. He saw the geometric design again, and it looked less dangerous—the threads seemed not so frayed, the fabric appeared firmer. Except that it moved.

  As he watched, it swayed and wavered as if it were being blindly, fumblingly probed.

  His first fleeting awareness of something more concrete was of cool sheets and the clean, antiseptic smell of a hospital. He awakened as from a deep sleep, but with a total awareness of physical well-being that was startling. He lay motionless, with eyes closed, becoming aware of the unfamiliar sensation—a joy of being alive, he thought. He felt delighted that it could be so.

  He knew without particularly thinking about it that this was not the bedroom in Ann Reece's home. All that seemed far away, though not so far as a few minutes before . . . with the lake. That had been truly remote. This was—he couldn't decide.

  He was puzzling over the different feeling that this had, when a woman spoke. "How much longer?" she asked.

  It was not the voice of Ann Reece; and that was—so it seemed at first—what made him keep his eyes shut.

  Footsteps sounded on a carpeted floor, and then a pleasant baritone voice replied: "I'll call you when he wakes. After all, we took advantage of an opportunity here. Everything had to be spontaneously done without preliminary thought."

  Her answer seemed pettish. "Shouldn't our control of time have made it possible for us to do this better?"

  The man remained respectful but firm. "We don't have control beyond the second fold. The gap between our present era of 7301 a.d. and the twenty-fourth century is so vast that—"

  She cut him off. "I am familiar with these arguments. Notify me the instant he recovers."

  Cargill had the impression that she moved away, and he took the opportunity to cautiously slit one eyelid open. He closed it again immediately, but he had had a quick glimpse of a scantily arrayed woman pausing at a doorway and looking back. He had a dimmer impression that she had a cape thrown back over one shoulder. Evidently, she had paused for an anti-climactic remark, for she spoke again:

  "I feel uneasy about all this," she said, "as if everything is somehow out of our control."

  "Madam, this will continue to be true for some time to come."

  Cargill opened both his eyes slightly at that point, and cautiously kept them open. He saw that the woman was dressed in a bra that resembled what sometimes accompanied a bathing suit in the 1950's, and that her dark blue shorts gave a similar impression of belonging to the beach, or at least suggested that the climate was sub-tropical. She had an ankle-length cape of metallic gold net flung over her right shoulder. Her dark hair shimmered with a faint bluish light and framed a face with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. It was not a beautiful face but it was a distinctive, aristocratic one. It implied race pride, family pride, pride of position.

  Even as he looked at the woman, Cargill saw out of the corner of one eye that a gray-haired man with a young face was watching him with a guarded look that indicated consternation. Cargill somehow got the idea that he should pretend unconsciousness until after the woman departed. He started to sigh with resignation but caught himself in time and quietly closed his eyes. The woman must have chosen that moment to leave the room, for when he peeped again, she was in the act of walking through the open door. She did not look back.

  The man carefully closed the door and then came over to the side of the high, hospital-type bed. Giving Cargill a long, searching look, he seemed satisfied with what he saw, for he said with an understanding smile: "I'm Lan Bruch"—he pronounced it "brooch"—"and I want to assure you that you are in no danger. All your questions will be answered soon." He adjusted the dials of a small box on the table beside the bed.

  Instantly, Cargill's feeling of eager impatience was replaced by a comfortable lethargy. He yawned and closed his eyes.

  When he awakened the next time, the feeling of well-being seemed even greater than the first time. With it came a tremendous urge for action; he sprang straight over the foot of the bed, and landed in the center of the room with all the poise and grace of an acrobat. The leap astonished him. He had had the fleeting thought that he would like to do it, and the thought had been instantly converted into motion.

  He glanced down. He was naked and the tanned, smooth-muscled body he saw was certainly not his. A tiled bathroom adjoined the bedroom. He strode into it and studied the face in the mirror. At first, he decided it was not his. And then, he couldn't be sure. He certainly seemed younger, more serene; the countenance that
stared back at him resembled those in certain touched-up photographs he had had taken years before.

  Cargill showered rapidly, not entirely displeased, and only casually concerned about what had happened to him. He looked around presently for shaving materials, but finding none suddenly knew that he didn't have to shave, and also he had the odd sensation that he wouldn't even know how to shave. That startled him again. But the man had said he would explain everything.

  As Cargill emerged from the bathroom, Bruch came through the door from the hallway. He carried a toga-like raiment which he handed to Cargill, who examined it curiously. Then, since it was a simple enough design, he slipped it on. An ornamented cord fastened neatly around the waist, fitting the garment snugly against his skin. As he emerged from the bathroom—where he had gone to dress—Cargill saw that Lan Bruch had seated himself at a table near a window that had been curtained until this moment. It had been so cunningly curtained, indeed, he hadn't even noticed. He strode to the window in his flamboyant fashion, and felt immediately amazed. The window was ablaze with sunlight, but all around were mountain peaks. Below a mass of clouds he could vaguely make out the outlines of buildings.

  From behind him, Bruch said: "Sit down. Have some breakfast. Enjoy the view."

  Cargill turned automatically. Magically, the table had opened up. Steaming dishes were spread on its glittering surface. Two cups of what looked like coffee were already poured. A pitcher of cream, sugar, familiar tableware made the scene normal. Cargill seated himself, sniffed happily at the coffee, and put in his normal complement of cream. Across the table from him, Bruch said:

  "Just in case you're wondering, that's not Shadow City out there. It's Merlic, the capital city of Merlica. The year is 7301. You were brought here because we need your help and cooperation. As soon as you understand the situation you will be returned to the Tweener capital, and events will proceed as before, except that we hope you will understand that it is absolutely vital that the Tweeners be victorious over the Shadows." "

  He held up his hand, as Cargill made to interrupt. "Wait! Let me give you the facts in my own way. What the Shadows started in the twenty-second or twenty-third century had more implications than they realized. A civilization which would not normally have existed came into partial existence as a result of their work, and it has never quite become real. See that city down there—" He motioned at the mist below—"It's not really there yet. If you were to go down into it, you would find yourself coming presently to what is literally the edge of the world.

  "You, being more real than I, would probably be disturbed by it. I accept my tentative existence but I am very determined to make it real. You may ask, how can such a thing be? To begin with, I won't go into all the laws governing time. They're very complex, and to understand them would require a long period of conditioning—"

  Cargill silently disagreed. Whatever its value, his experience with the lake and the statue had given him an understanding of time that was not complex at all. You gave life-energy something to hold onto, and as soon as it started to cling and maintain and hold, there was time. Time was havingness. In handing the material universe the life-energy to hold onto, time had literally been created in the process. He didn't have to imagine how rigid that holding could be. He had lived it.

  Lan Bruch was continuing: "We have a fairly solid pattern of existence up to about the Shadow-Tweener war. At that point we have a fold, or a fault, or a flaw in the time-space continuum; and if anything goes on after that, we can't make contact with it. Captain, we've got to make Merlica real, and so establish a solid reality for this planet from the twenty-fourth century up to present time. This can only be done if the Tweeners win the war."

  Cargill glanced again out of the window at the clouds and the mountain peaks and the vaguely visible city. He shook his head, wonderingly, thinking: "They evidently haven't anything to hold onto as yet." Aloud, he said: "Just what do I have to do to insure the Tweener victory?"

  An amazing thing happened. He could see Lan Bruch's lips move, as the man replied. But he heard no sound. He leaned forward, straining. But the scene itself was fading. The table, and Bruch himself, and the room seemed to turn into mist that wavered and twisted—and darkened. In a flash, then, all was gone. .

  He was back in a bed. Only this time he knew it was the bed at Ann Reece's home. Cargill awakened with a start, and simultaneously realized three things: It was broad daylight; it was the bedroom in the Tweener Capital, and a voice was saying from the air just above his head: "The signal for you to act will be the phrase: 'Visit us some time.' "

  He felt briefly confused. Had all this been a dream, a fantasy-derivative of the hypnotic device that had been used against him by Ann Reece? As he dressed, he considered what had seemed to happen. The Merlica incident had been most disturbing. He recalled uneasily his first feeling that it was not really his face or his body. "I wasn't in that future," he thought. "Somebody was trying to sell me on a false notion."

  The reality of Merlica and of the radioactive lake and of the huge, black statue seemed suddenly less believable. Cargill grinned ruefully. When a man started to think about what the human soul might really be like, he could certainly conjure up some fanciful stuff. And yet—

  And yet, he found himself reluctant to abandon entirely the idea that briefly he had broken through the illusion of material things and looked on scenes as strange as anything ever conceived by the mind of man. He remembered the old human idea that God was in everyone; and he wondered: "Viewing the lake and the statue, was I a part of God?" It hadn't quite seemed that way. He had had a purpose in creating those two life-forms, but that purpose had been there from some immensely earlier "time." It was almost as if he had been given a mission to accomplish, with carte blanche powers. Around the mission there was an indefinable sense of deadly urgency.

  His speculations ended as a knock sounded. Cargill opened the door. Granger, the butler, stood there. He said formally: "Miss Reece wishes me to inform you that breakfast will be served in ten minutes."

  Cargill entered the breakfast room, scowling with the memory of the hypnotic device that had been used against him by Ann Reece and some man. He found the girl in a filmy white dress already seated at the table. He began irritably: "You don't think that kind of hypnotism is going to work on me."

  She was smugly triumphant. "It's not exactly hypnosis," she said. "The electronic tube used works on the principle I mentioned last night, where one tunes one etcetera equals a million or a billion, or whatever it's set for—in this case a million. When that tube was turned on last night it established a pattern in your brain that only another tube set differently could eradicate."

  She shrugged. "So you're trained. You can no longer communicate in any way to anybody the knowledge you have of the plan. And when you hear the cue your legs will carry you to the pyramid power house. Your hands will throw the switch. And you'll do all this exactly at twelve o'clock noon or midnight, Shadow City time—whichever comes next—after you've been given the signal."

  "Just a minute," said Cargill. He had been listening with a strained sense of unreality. Now abruptly he tried to snatch a shred of victory from the implacable fact.

  "What day," he asked grimly, "will this happen?"

  She was calm. "I don't think a date was set. I believe the pattern was established in your mind that would leave that flexible. Anyway, I was not given the information, the reason being that somehow you might force it out of me. You'll find out—when it happens." She broke off. "Better finish your breakfast. There'll be an air force floater here to pick you up in half an hour." Cargill had forgotten about the air force, and he was impressed. These people seemed determined. Things were moving fast.

  13

  There must be something he could say or do to make sure that things happened right for himself, Cargill thought as he stood among the volor pilots later that morning. It was obvious the attack couldn't take place for at least two months. That much he knew. He had l
ived slightly over two months with Lela Bouvy and had listened to a Shadow City radio-TV station right up to the last.

  Just for a moment, with Ann Reece, he had forgotten that. He'd never forget it again. He was living a time-paradox existence and for all he knew the paradox was even more intricate than he could hope to guess or imagine. But he'd have to make sure that there was delay. He'd have to force this situation to his will.

  Warily he looked around him. The day was perfect. It was good to be alive and standing on this verdantly green hillside. The fleecy white of the small cumulus clouds that floated lazily in the higher vault of the sky only served to emphasize its blueness. An occasional breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees and puffed against his cheeks, bringing the smell of growing things. In the distance he could see the slow yellow water of a broad river. The flats that spread between him and that wide expanse of water were covered with clumps of swamp willow and a kind of coarse stiff grass whose tall serrated blades looked sharp and forbidding even at this distance.

  Cargill wondered if he were looking down on the Mississippi River. The possibility excited him. He pictured himself standing here hi the twenty-fourth century, looking down at the great river, its muddy, sluggish water so little changed after all these centuries.

  From somewhere hi the rear of the group of pilots a man said curtly, "I still don't approve of this man Cargill being here as an adviser. It's a Shadow trick of some kind."

  Cargill turned stiffly and saw that the speaker was an intense-looking young man with dark brown eyes and a hawk-like nose. The officer, a full-fledged pilot, reminded him of Lauer. There was the same hard questioning tone, the same rebelliousness against the decisions of those higher hi authority.

  An older officer, who had been introduced to Cargill as Flight Commander Greer, said in a tone of mild reproof, "Withrow, the presence of Captain Cargill makes all our plans possible. Besides, he's here. We're committed. My own opinion is that if we learn even a little from him about air tactics and strategy of World War Two and after we'll be amply repaid in lives saved."