The first pang of nausea had passed and Jan Prentiss said, “Damn it, you’re an insect.”
It was a statement of fact, not an insult, and the thing that sat on Prentiss’ desk said, “Of course.”
It was about a foot long, very thin, and in shape a farfetched and miniature caricature of a human being. Its stalky arms and legs originated in pairs from the upper portion of its body. The legs were longer and thicker than the arms. They extended the length of the body, then bent forward at the knee.
The creature sat upon those knees and, when it did so, the stub of its fuzzy abdomen just cleared Prentiss’ desk.
There was plenty of time for Prentiss to absorb these details. The object had no objection to being stared at. It seemed to welcome it, in fact, as though it were used to exciting admiration.
“What are you?” Prentiss did not feel completely rational. Five minutes ago, he had been seated at his typewriter, working leisurely on the story he had promised Horace W. Browne for last month’s issue of Farfetched Fantasy Fiction. He had been in a perfectly usual frame of mind. He had felt quite fine; quite sane.
And then a block of air immediately to the right of the typewriter had shimmered, clouded over and condensed into the little horror that dangled its black and shiny feet over the edge of the desk.
Prentiss wondered in a detached sort of way that he bothered talking to it. This was the first time his profession had so crudely affected his dreams. It must be a dream, he told himself.
“I’m an Avalonian,” said the being. “I’m from Avalon, in other words.” It’s tiny face ended in a mandibular mouth. Two swaying three-inch antennae rose from a spot above either eye, while the eyes themselves gleamed richly in their many-faceted fashion. There was no sign of nostrils.
Naturally not, thought Prentiss wildly. It has to breathe through vents in its abdomen. It must be talking with its abdomen then. Or using telepathy.
“Avalon?” he said stupidly. He thought: Avalon? The land of the fay in King Arthur’s time?
“Certainly,” said the creature, answering the thought smoothly. “I’m an elf.”
“Oh, no!” Prentiss put his hands to his face, took them away and found the elf still there, its feet thumping against the top drawer. Prentiss was not a drinking man, or a nervous one. In fact, he was considered a very prosaic sort of person by his neighbors. He had a comfortable paunch, a reasonable but not excessive amount of hair on his head, an amiable wife and an active ten-year-old son. His neighbors were, of course, kept ignorant of the fact that he paid off the mortgage on his house by writing fantasies of one sort or another.
Till now, however, this secret vice had never affected his psyche. To be sure, his wife had shaken her head over his addiction many times. It was her standard opinion that he was wasting, even perverting, his talents.
“Who on Earth reads these things?” she would say. “All that stuff about demons and gnomes and wishing rings and elves. All that kid stuff, if you want my frank opinion.”
“You’re quite wrong,” Prentiss would reply stiffly. “Modern fantasies are very sophisticated and mature treatments of folk motifs. Behind the facade of glib unreality there frequently lie trenchant comments on the world of today. Fantasy in modem style is, above all, adult fare.”
Blanche shrugged. She had heard him speak at conventions so these comments weren’t new to her.
“Besides,” he would add, “fantasies pay the mortgage, don’t they?”
“Maybe so,” she would reply, “but it would be nice if you’d switch to mysteries. At least you’d get quarter-reprint sales out of those and we could “‘even tell the neighbors what you do for a living.”
Prentiss groaned in spirit. Blanche could come in now at any time and find him talking to himself (it was too real for a dream; it might be a hallucination). After that he would have to write mysteries for a living-or take to work.
“You’re quite wrong,” said the elf. “This is neither a dream nor a hallucination.”
“Then why don’t you go away?” asked Prentiss.
“I intend to. This is scarcely my idea of a place to live. And you’re coming with me.”
“I am not. What the hell do you think you are, telling me what I’m going to do?”
“If you think that’s a respectful way to speak to a representative of an older culture, I can’t say much for your upbringing.”
“You’re not an older culture-” He wanted to add: You’re just a figment of my imagination; but he had been a writer too long to be able to bring himself to commit the cliché.
“We insects,” said the elf freezingly, “existed half a billion years before the first mammal was invented. We watched the dinosaurs come in and we watched them go out. As for you man-things-strictly newcomers.”
For the first time, Prentiss noted that, from the spot on the elf’s body where its limbs sprouted, a third vestigial pair existed as well. It increased the insecticity of the object and Prentiss’ sense of indignation grew.
He said, “You needn’t waste your company on social inferiors.”
“I wouldn’t,” said the elf, “believe me. But necessity drives, you know. It’s a rather complicated story but when you hear it, you’ll want to help.”
Prentiss said uneasily, “Look, I don’t have much time. Blanche-my wife will be in here any time. She’ll be upset.”
“She won’t be here,” said the elf. “I’ve set up a block in her mind.”
“What!”
“Quite harmless, I assure you. But, after all, we can’t afford to be disturbed, can we?”
Prentiss sat back in his chair, dazed and unhappy.
The elf said, “We elves began our association with you man-things immediately after the last ice age began. It had been a miserable time for us, as you can imagine. We couldn’t wear animal carcasses or live in holes as your uncouth ancestors did. It took incredible stores of psychic energy to keep warm.”
“Incredible stores of what?”
“Psychic energy. You know nothing at all about it. Your mind is too coarse to grasp the concept. Please don’t interrupt.”
The elf continued, “Necessity drove us to experiment with your people’s brains. They were crude, but large. The cells were inefficient, almost worthless, but there were a vast number of them. We could use those brains as a concentrating device, a type of psychic lens, and increase the available energy which our own minds could tap. We survived the ice age handily and without having to retreat to the tropics as in previous such eras.
“Of course, we were spoiled. When warmth returned, we didn’t abandon the man-things. We used them to increase our standard of living generally. We could travel faster, eat better, do more, and we lost our old, simple, virtuous way of life forever. Then, too, there was milk.”
“Milk?” said Prentiss. “I don’t see the connection.”
“A divine liquid. I only tasted it once in my life. But elfin classic poetry speaks of it in superlatives. In the old days, men always supplied us plentifully. Why mammals of all things should be blessed with it and insects not is a complete mystery. . . . How unfortunate it is that the men-things got out of hand.”
“They did?”
“Two hundred years ago.”
“Good for us.”
“Don’t be narrow-minded,” said the elf stiffly. “It was a useful association for all parties until you man-things learned to handle physical energies in quantity. It was just the sort of gross thing your minds are capable of.”
“What was wrong with it?”
“It’s hard to explain. It was all very well for us to light up our nightly revels with fireflies brightened by use of two manpower of psychic energy. But then you men-creatures installed electric lights. Our antennal reception is good for miles, but then you invented telegraphs, telephones and radios. Our kobolds mined ore with much greater efficiency than man-things do, until man-things invented dynamite. Do you see?”
“No.”
“Surely you don’t expect sensitive and superior creatures such as the elves to watch a group of hairy mammals outdo them. It wouldn’t be so bad if we could imitate the electronic development ourselves, but our psychic energies were insufficient for the purpose. Well, we retreated from reality. We sulked, pined and drooped. Call it an inferiority complex, if you will, but from two centuries ago onward, we slowly abandoned mankind and retreated to such centers as Avalon.”
Prentiss thought furiously. “Let’s get this straight. You can handle minds?”
“Certainly.”
“You can make me think you’re invisible? Hypnotically, I mean?”
“A crude term, but yes.”
“And when you appeared just now, you did it by lifting a kind of mental block. Is that it?”
“To answer your thoughts, rather than your words: You are not sleeping; you are not mad; and I am not supernatural.”
“I was just making sure. I take it, then, you can read my mind.”
“Of course. It is a rather dirty and unrewarding sort of labor, but I can do it when I must. Your name is Prentiss and you write imaginative fiction. You have one larva who is at a place of instruction. I know a great deal about you.”
Prentiss winced. “And just where is Avalon?”
“You won’t find it.” The elf clacked his mandibles together two or three times. “Don’t speculate on the possibility of warning the authorities. You’ll find yourself in a madhouse. Avalon, in case you think the knowledge will help you, is in the middle of the Atlantic and quite invisible, you know. After the steamboat was invented, you man-things got to moving about so unreasonably that we had to cloak the whole island with a psychic shield.
“Of course, incidents will take place. Once a huge, barbaric vessel hit us dead center and it took all the psychic energy of the entire population to give the island the appearance of an iceberg. The Titanic, I believe, was the name printed on the vessel. And nowadays there are planes flying overhead all the time and sometimes there are crashes. We picked up cases of canned milk once. That’s when I tasted it.”
Prentiss said, “Well, then, damn it, why aren’t you still on Avalon? Why did you leave?”
“I was ordered to leave,” said the elf angrily. “The fools.”
“Oh?”
“You know how it is when you’re a little different. I’m not like the rest of them and the poor tradition-ridden fools resented it. They were jealous. That’s the best explanation. Jealous!”
“How are you different?”
“Hand me that light bulb,” said the elf. “Oh, just unscrew it. You don’t need a reading lamp in the daytime.”
With a quiver of repulsion, Prentiss did as he was told and passed the object into the little hands of the elf. Carefully, the elf, with fingers so thin and wiry that they looked like tendrils, touched the bottom and side of the brass base.
Feebly the filament in the bulb reddened.
“Good God,” said Prentiss.
“That,” said the elf proudly, “is my great talent. I told you that we elves couldn’t adapt psychic energy to electronics. Well, I can! I’m not just an ordinary elf. I’m a mutant! A super-elf! I’m the next stage in elfin evolution. This light is due just to the activity of my own mind, you know. Now watch when I use yours as a focus.”
As he said that, the bulb’s filament grew white hot and painful to look at, while a vague and not unpleasant tickling sensation entered Prentiss’ skull.
The lamp went out and the elf put the bulb on the desk behind the typewriter.
“I haven’t tried,” said the elf proudly, “but I suspect I can fission uranium too.”
“But look here, lighting a bulb takes energy. You can’t just hold it-”
“I’ve told you about psychic energy. Great Oberon, man-thing, try to understand.”
Prentiss felt increasingly uneasy; he said cautiously, “What do you intend doing with this gift of yours?”
“Go back to Avalon, of course. I should let those fools go to their doom, but an elf does have a certain patriotism, even if he is a coleopteron.”
“A what?”
“We elves are not all of a species, you know. I’m of beetle descent. See?”
He rose to his feet and, standing on the desk, turned his back to Prentiss. What had seemed merely a shining black cuticle suddenly split and lifted. From underneath, two filmy, veined wings fluttered out.
“Oh, you can fly,” said Prentiss.
“You’re very foolish,” said the elf contemptuously, “not to realize I’m too large for flight. But they are attractive, aren’t they? How do you like the iridescence? The lepidoptera have disgusting wings in comparison. They’re gaudy and indelicate. What’s more they’re always sticking out.”
“The lepidoptera?” Prentiss felt hopelessly confused.
“The butterfly clans. They’re the proud ones. They were always letting humans see them so they could be admired. Very petty minds in a way. And that’s why your legends always give fairies butterfly wings instead of beetle wings which are much more diaphanously beautiful. We’ll give the lepidoptera what for when we get back, you and I.”
“Now hold on-”
“First think,” said the elf, swaying back and forth in what looked like elfin ecstasy, “our nightly revels on the fairy green will be a blaze of sparkling light from curlicues of neon tubing. We can cut loose the swarms of wasps we’ve got hitched to our flying wagons and install internal-combustion motors instead. We can stop this business of curling up on leaves when it’s time to sleep and build factories to manufacture decent mattresses. I tell you, we’ll live. . . . And the rest of them will eat dirt for having ordered me out.”
“But I can’t go with you,” bleated Prentiss. “I have responsibilities. I have a wife and kid. You wouldn’t take a man away from his-his larva, would you?”
“I’m not cruel,” said the elf. He turned his eyes full on Prentiss. “I have an elfin soul. Still, what choice have I? I must have a man-brain for focusing purposes or I will accomplish nothing; and not all man-brains are suitable.”
“Why not?”
“Great Oberon, creature. A man-brain isn’t a passive thing of wood and stone. It must co-operate in order to be useful. And it can only co-operate by being fully aware of our own elfin ability to manipulate it. I can use your brain, for instance, but your wife’s would be useless to me. It would take her years to understand who and what I am.”
Prentiss said, “This is a damned insult. Are you telling me I believe in fairies? I’ll have you know I’m a complete rationalist.”
“Are you? When I first revealed myself to you, you had a few feeble thoughts about dreams and hallucinations but you talked to me, you accepted me. Your wife would have screamed and gone into hysterics.”
Prentiss was silent. He could think of no answer.
“That’s the trouble,” said the elf despondently. “Practically all you humans have forgotten about us since we left you. Your minds have closed; grown useless. To be sure, your larvae believe in your legends about the ‘little folk,’ but their brains are undeveloped and useful only for simple processes. When they mature, they lose belief. Frankly, I don’t know what I would do if it weren’t for you fantasy writers.”
“What do you mean we fantasy writers?”
“You are the few remaining adults who believe in the insect folk. You, Prentiss, most of all. You’ve been a fantasy writer for twenty years.”
“You’re mad. I don’t believe the things I write.”
“You have to. You can’t help it. I mean, while you’re actually writing, you take the subject matter seriously. After a while your mind is just naturally cultivated into usefulness. . . . But why argue. I have used you. You saw the light bulb brighten. So you see you must come with me.”
“But I won’t.” Prentiss set his limbs stubbornly. “Can you make me against my will?”
“I could, but I might damage you, and I wouldn’t want that. Suppose we say this. If you don’t agree to come, I could focus a current of high-voltage electricity through your wife. It would be a revolting thing to have to do, but I understand your own people execute enemies of the state in that fashion, so that you would probably find the punishment less horrible than I do. I wouldn’t want to seem brutal even to a man-thing.”
Prentiss grew conscious of the perspiration matting the short hairs on his temple.
“Wait,” he said, “don’t do anything like that. Let’s talk it over.”
The elf shot out his filmy wings, fluttered them and returned them to their case. “Talk, talk, talk. It’s tiring. Surely you have milk in the house. You’re not a very thoughtful host or you would have offered me refreshment before this.”
Prentiss tried to bury the thought that came to him, to push it as far below the outer skin of his mind as he could. He said casually, “I have something better than milk. Here, I’ll get it for you.”
“Stay where you are. Call to your wife. She’ll bring it.”
“But I don’t want her to see you. It would frighten her.”
The elf said, “You need feel no concern. I’ll handle her so that she won’t be the least disturbed.”
Prentiss lifted an arm.
The elf said, “Any attack you make on me will be far slower than the bolt of electricity that will strike your wife.”
Prentiss’ arm dropped. He stepped to the door of his study.
“Blanche!” he called down the stairs.
Blanche was just visible in the living room, sitting woodenly in the armchair near the bookcase. She seemed to be asleep, open-eyed.
Prentiss turned to the elf. “Something’s wrong with her.”
“She’s just in a state of sedation. She’ll hear you. Tell her what to do.”
“Blanche!” he called again. “Bring the container of eggnog and a small glass, will you?”
With no sign of animation other than that of bare movement, Blanche rose and disappeared from view.
“What is eggnog?” asked the elf.
Prentiss attempted enthusiasm. “It is a compound of milk, sugar and eggs beaten to a delightful consistency. Milk alone is poor staff compared to it.”
Blanche entered with the eggnog. Her pretty face was expressionless. Her eyes turned toward the elf but lightened with no realization of the significance of the sight.
“Here, Jan,” she said, and sat down in the old, leather-covered chair by the window, hands falling loosely to her lap.
Prentiss watched her uneasily for a moment. “Are you going to keep her here?”
“She’ll be easier to control. . . . Well, aren’t you going to offer me the eggnog?”
“Oh, sure. Here!”
He poured the thick white liquid into the cocktail glass. He had prepared five milk bottles of it two nights before for the boys of the New York Fantasy Association and it had been mixed with a lavish hand, since fantasy writers notoriously like it so.
The elf’s antennae trembled violently.
“A heavenly aroma,” he muttered.
He wrapped the ends of his thin arms about the stem of the small glass and lifted it to his mouth. The liquid’s level sank. When half was gone, he put it down and sighed, “Oh, the loss to my people. What a creation! What a thing to exist! Our histories tell us that in ancient days an occasional lucky sprite managed to take the place of a man-larva at birth so that he might draw off the liquid fresh-made. I wonder if even those ever experienced anything like this.”
Prentiss said with a touch of professional interest, “That’s the idea behind this business of changelings, is it?”
“Of course. The female man-creature has a great gift. Why not take advantage of it?” The elf turned his eyes upon the rise and fall of Blanche’s bosom and sighed again.
Prentiss said (not too eager, now; don’t give it away), “Go ahead. Drink all you want.”
He, too, watched Blanche, waiting for signs of restoring animation, waiting for the beginnings of breakdown in the elf’s control.
The elf said, “When is your larva returning from its place of instruction? I need him.”
“Soon, soon,” said Prentiss nervously. He looked at his wristwatch. Actually, Jan, Junior, would be back, yelling for a slab of cake and milk, in something like fifteen minutes.
“Fill ‘er up,” he said urgently. “Fill ‘er up.”
The elf sipped gaily. He said, “Once the larva arrives, you can go.”
“Go?”
“Only to the library. You’ll have to get volumes on electronics. I’ll need the details on how to build television, telephones, all that. I’ll need to have rules on wiring, instructions for constructing vacuum tubes. Details, Pren-tiss, details! We have tremendous tasks ahead of us. Oil drilling, gasoline refining, motors, scientific agriculture. We’ll build a new Avalon, you and I. A technical one. A scientific fairyland. We will create a new world.”
“Great!” said Prentiss. “Here, don’t neglect your drink.”
“You see. You are catching fire with the idea,” said the elf. “And you will be rewarded. You will have a dozen female man-things to yourself.”
Prentiss looked at Blanche automatically. No signs of hearing, but who could tell? He said, “I’d have no use for female man-th-for women, I mean.”
“Come now,” said the elf censoriously, “be truthful. You men-things are well known to our folk as lecherous, bestial creatures. Mothers frightened their young for generations by threatening them with men-things. . . . Young, ah!” He lifted the glass of eggnog in the air and said, “To my own young,” and drained it.
“Fill ‘er up,” said Prentiss at once. “Fill ‘er up.”
The elf did so. He said, “I’ll have lots of children. I’ll pick out the best of the coleoptresses and breed my line. I’ll continue the mutation. Right now I’m the only one, but when we have a dozen or fifty, I’ll interbreed them and develop the race of the super-elf. A race of electro-ulp-electronic marvels and infinite future. ... If I could only drink more. Nectar! The original nectar!”
There was the sudden noise of a door being flung open and a young voice calling, “Mom! Hey, Mom!”
The elf, his glossy eyes a little dimmed, said, “Then we’ll begin to take over the men-things. A few believe already; the rest we will-urp-teach. It will be the old days, but better; a more efficient elfhood, a tighter union.”
Jan, Junior’s, voice was closer and tinged with impatience. “Hey, Mom! Ain’t you home?”
Prentiss felt his eyes popping with tension. Blanche sat rigid. The elf’s speech was slightly thick, his balance a little unsteady. If Prentiss were going to risk it, now, now was the time.
“Sit back,” said the elf peremptorily. “You’re being foolish. I knew there was alcohol in the eggnog from the moment you thought your ridiculous scheme. You men-things are very shifty. We elves have many proverbs about you. Fortunately, alcohol has little effect upon us. Now if you had tried catnip with just a touch of honey in it ... Ah, here is the larva. How are you, little man-thing?”
The elf sat there, the goblet of eggnog halfway to his mandibles, while
Jan, Junior, stood in the doorway. Jan, Junior’s, ten-year-old face was moderately smeared with dirt, his hair was immoderately matted and there was a look of the utmost surprise in his gray eyes. His battered schoolbooks swayed from the end of the strap he held in his hand.
He said, “Pop! What’s the matter with Mom? And-and what’s that?”
The elf said to Prentiss, “Hurry to the library. No time must be lost. You know the books I need.” All trace of incipient drunkenness had left the creature and Prentiss’ morale broke. The creature had been playing with him.
Prentiss got up to go.
The elf said, “And nothing human; nothing sneaky; no tricks. Your wife is still a hostage. I can use the larva’s mind to kill her; it’s good enough for that. I wouldn’t want to do it. I’m a member of the Elfitarian Ethical Society and we advocate considerate treatment of mammals so you may rely on my noble principles if you do as I say.”
Prentiss felt a strong compulsion to leave flooding him. He stumbled toward the door.
Jan, Junior, cried, “Pop, it can talk! He says he’ll kill Mom! Hey, don’t go away!”
Prentiss was already out of the room, when he heard the elf say, “Don’t stare at me, larva. I will not harm your mother if you do exactly as I say. I am an elf, a fairy. You know what a fairy is, of course.”
And Prentiss was at the front door when he heard Jan, Junior’s, treble raised in wild shouting, followed by scream after scream in Blanche’s shuddering soprano.
The strong, though invisible, elastic that was drawing Prentiss out the house snapped and vanished. He fell backward, righted himself and darted back up the stairs.
Blanche, fairly saturated with quivering life, was backed into a corner, her arms about a weeping Jan, Junior.
On the desk was a collapsed black carapace, covering a nasty smear of pulpiness from which colorless liquid dripped.
Jan, Junior, was sobbing hysterically, “I hit it. I hit it with my school-books. It was hurting Mom.”
An hour passed and Prentiss felt the world of normality pouring back into the interstices left behind by the creature from Avalon. The elf itself was already ash in the incinerator behind the house and the only remnant of its existence was the damp stain at the foot of his desk.
Blanche was still sickly pale. They talked in whispers.
Prentiss said, “How’s Jan, Junior?”
“He’s watching television.”
“Is he all right?”
“Oh, he’s all right, but I’ll be having nightmares for weeks.”
“I know. So will I unless we can get it out of our minds. I don’t think there’ll ever be another of those-things here.”
Blanche said, “I can’t explain how awful it was. I kept hearing every word he said, even when I was down in the living room.”
“It was telepathy, you see.”
“I just couldn’t move. Then, after you left, I could begin to stir a bit. I tried to scream but all I could do was moan and whimper. Then Jan, Junior, smashed him and all at once I was free. I don’t understand how it happened.”
Prentiss felt a certain gloomy satisfaction. “I think I know. I was under his control because I accepted the truth of his existence. He held you in check through me. When I left the room, increasing distance made it harder to use my mind as a psychic lens and you could begin moving. By the time I reached the front door, the elf thought it was time to switch from my mind to Jan, Junior’s. That was his mistake.”
“In what way?” asked Blanche.
“He assumed that all children believe in fairies, but he was wrong. Here in America today children don’t believe in fairies. They never hear of them. They believe in Tom Corbett, in Hopalong Cassidy, in Dick Tracy, in Howdy Doody, in Superman and a dozen other things, but not in fairies.
“The elf just never realized the sudden cultural changes brought about by comic books and television, and when he tried to grab Jan, Junior’s mind, he couldn’t. Before he could recover his psychic balance, Jan, Junior, was on top of him in a swinging panic because he thought you were being hurt and it was all over.
“It’s like I’ve always said, Blanche. The ancient folk motifs of legend survive only in the modern fantasy magazine, and modem fantasy is purely adult fare. Do you finally see my point?”
Blanche said humbly, “Yes, dear.”
Prentiss put his hands in his pockets and grinned slowly. “You know, Blanche, next time I see Walt Rae, I think I’ll just drop a hint that I write the stuff. Time the neighbors knew, I think.”
Jan, Junior, holding an enormous slice of buttered bread, wandered into his father’s study in search of the dimming memory. Pop kept slapping him on the back and Mom kept putting bread and cake in his hands and he was forgetting why. There had been this big old thing on the desk that could talk . . .
It had all happened so quickly that it got mixed up in his mind.
He shrugged his shoulders and, in the late afternoon sunlight, looked at the partly typewritten sheet in his father’s typewriter, then at the small pile of paper resting on the desk.
He read a while, curled his lip and muttered, “Gee whiz. Fairies again. Always kid stuff!” and wandered off.
We’re never going to have space travel. What’s more, no extraterrestrials will ever land on Earth-at least, any more.
I’m not just being a pessimist. As a matter of fact, space travel is possible; extraterrestrials have landed. I know that. Space ships are crisscrossing space among a million worlds, probably, but we’ll never join them. I know that, too. All on account of a ridiculous error.
I’ll explain.
It was actually Bart Cameron’s error and you’ll have to understand about Bart Cameron. He’s the sheriff at Twin Gulch, Idaho, and I’m his deputy. Bart Cameron is an impatient man and he gets most impatient when he has to work up his income tax. You see, besides being sheriff, he also owns and runs the general store, he’s got some shares in a sheep ranch, he does a bit of assay work, he’s got a kind of pension for being a disabled veteran (bad knee) and a few other things like that. Naturally, it makes his tax figures complicated.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d let a tax man work on the forms with him, but he insists on doing it himself and it makes him a bitter man. By April 14, he isn’t approachable.
So it’s too bad the flying saucer landed on April 14, 1956.
I saw it land. My chair was backed up against the wall in the sheriff’s office, and I was looking at the stars through the windows and feeling too lazy to go back to my magazine and wondering if I ought to knock off and hit the sack or keep on listening to Cameron curse real steady as he went over his columns of figures for the hundred twenty-seventh time.
It looked like a shooting star at first, but then the track of light broadened into two things that looked like rocket exhausts and the thing came down sweet, steady and without a sound. An old, dead leaf would have rustled more coming down and landed thumpier. Two men got out.
I couldn’t say anything or do anything. I couldn’t choke or point; I couldn’t even bug my eyes. I just sat there.
Cameron? He never looked up.
There was a knock on the door which wasn’t locked. It opened and the two men from the flying saucer stepped in. I would have thought they were city fellows if I hadn’t seen the flying saucer land in the scrub. They wore charcoal-gray suits, with white shirts and maroon four-in-hands. They had on black shoes and black homburgs. They had dark complexions, black wavy hair and brown eyes. They had very serious looks on their faces and were about five foot ten apiece. They looked very much alike.
God, I was scared.
But Cameron just looked up when the door opened and frowned. Ordinarily, I guess he’d have laughed the collar button off his shirt at seeing clothes like that in Twin Gulch, but he was so taken up by his income tax that he never cracked a smile.
He said, “What can I do for you, folks?” and he tapped his hand on the forms so it was obvious he hadn’t much time.
One of the two stepped forward. He said, “We have had your people under observation a long time.” He pronounced each word carefully and all by itself.
Cameron said, “My people? All I got’s a wife. What’s she been doing?”
The fellow in the suit said, “We have chosen this locality for our first contact because it is isolated and peaceful. We know that you are the leader here.”
“I’m the sheriff, if that’s what you mean, so spit it out. What’s you trouble?”
“We have been careful to adopt your mode of dress and even to assume your appearance.”
“That’s my mode of dress?” He must have noticed it for the first time.
“The mode of dress of your dominant social class, that is. We have also learned your language.”
You could see the light break in on Cameron. He said, “You guys foreigners?” Cameron didn’t go much for foreigners, never having met many outside the army, but generally he tried to be fair.
The man from the saucer said, “Foreigners? Indeed we are. We come from the watery place your people call Venus.”
(I was just collecting up strength to blink my eyes, but that sent me right back to nothing. I had seen the flying saucer. I had seen it land. I had to believe this! These men-or these somethings-came from Venus.)
But Cameron never blinked an eye. He said, “All right. This is the U.S.A. We all got equal rights regardless of race, creed, color, or nationality. I’m at your service. What can I do for you?”
“We would like to have you make immediate arrangements for the important men of your U.S.A., as you call it, to be brought here for discussions leading to your people joining our great organization.”
Slowly, Cameron got red. “Our people join your organization. We’re already part of the U.N. and God knows what else. And I suppose I’m to get the President here, eh? Right now? In Twin Gulch? Send a hurry-up message?” He looked at me, as though he wanted to see a smile on my face, but I couldn’t as much as fall down if someone had pushed the chair out from under me.
The saucer man said, “Speed is desirable.”
“You want Congress, too? The Supreme Court?”
“If they will help, sheriff.”
And Cameron really went to pieces. He banged his income tax form and yelled, “Well, you’re not helping me, and I have no time for wise-guy jerks who come around, especially foreigners. If you don’t get the hell out of here pronto, I’ll lock you up for disturbing the peace and I’ll never let you out.”
“You wish us to leave?” said the man from Venus.
“Right now! Get the hell out of here and back to wherever you’re from and don’t ever come back. I don’t want to see you and no one else around here does.”
The two men looked at each other, making little twitches with their faces.
Then the one who had done all the talking said, “I can see in your mind that you really wish, with great intensity, to be left alone. It is not our way to force ourselves or our organization on people who do not wish us or it. We will respect your privacy and leave. We will not return. We will girdle your world in warning and none will enter and your people will never have to leave.”
Cameron said, “Mister, I’m tired of this crap, so I’ll count to three-”
They turned and left, and I just knew that everything they said was so. I was listening to them, you see, which Cameron wasn’t, because he was busy thinking of his income tax, and it was as though I could hear their minds, know what I mean? I knew that there would be a kind of fence around earth, corralling us in, keeping us from leaving, keeping others from coming 1 in. I knew it.
And when they left, I got my voice back-too late. I screamed, “Cameron, for God’s sake, they’re from space. Why’d you send them away?”
“From space!” He stared at me.
I yelled, “Look!” I don’t know how I did it, he being twenty-five pounds heavier than I, but I yanked him to the window by his shirt collar, busting every shirt button off him.
He was too surprised to resist and when he recovered his wits enough to make like he was going to knock me down, he caught sight of what was going on outside the window and the breath went out of him.
They were getting into the flying saucer, those two men, and the saucer sat there, large, round, shiny and kind of powerful, you know. Then it took off. It went up easy as a feather and a red-orange glow showed up on one side and got brighter as the ship got smaller till it was a shooting star again, slowly fading out.
And I said, “Sheriff, why’d you send them away? They had to see the President. Now they’ll never come back.”
Cameron said, “I thought they were foreigners. They said they had to learn our language. And they talked funny.”
“Oh, fine. Foreigners.”
“They said they were foreigners and they looked Italian. I thought they were Italian.”
“How could they be Italian? They said they were from the planet Venus. I heard them. They said so.”
“The planet Venus.” His eyes got real round.
“They said it. They called it the watery place or something. You know Venus has a lot of water on it.”
But you see, it was just an error, a stupid error, the kind anyone could make. Only now Earth is never going to have space travel and we’ll never as much as land on the moon or have another Venusian visit us. That dope, Cameron, and his income tax!
Because he whispered, “Venus! When they talked about the watery place, I thought they meant Venice!”
Clarence Rimbro had no objections to living in the only house on an uninhabited planet, any more than had any other of Earth’s even trillion of inhabitants.
If someone had questioned him concerning possible objections, he would undoubtedly have stared blankly at the questioner. His house was much larger than any house could possibly be on Earth proper and much more modern. It had its independent air supply and water supply, ample food in its freezing compartments. It was isolated from the lifeless planet on which it was located by a force field, but the rooms were built about a five-acre farm (under glass, of course), which, in the planet’s beneficent sunlight, grew flowers for pleasure and vegetables for health. It even supported a few chickens. It gave Mrs. Rimbro something to do with herself afternoons, and a place for the two little Rimbros to play when they were tired of indoors.
Furthermore, if one wanted to be on Earth proper; if one insisted on it; if one had to have people around and air one could breathe in the open or water to swim in, one had only to go out of the front door of the house.
So where was the difficulty?
Remember, too, that on the lifeless planet on which the Rimbro house was located there was complete silence except for the occasional monotonous effects of wind and rain. There was absolute privacy and the feeling of absolute ownership of two hundred million square miles of planetary surface.
Clarence Rimbro appreciated all that in his distant way. He was an accountant, skilled in handling very advanced computer models, precise in his manners and clothing, not much given to smiling beneath his thin, well-kept mustache and properly aware of his own worth. When he drove from work toward home, he passed the occasional dwelling place on Earth proper and he never ceased to stare at them with a certain smugness.
Well, either for business reasons or mental perversion, some people simply had to live on Earth proper. It was too bad for them. After all, Earth proper’s soil had to supply the minerals and basic food supply for all the trillion of inhabitants (in fifty years, it would be two trillion) and space was at a premium. Houses on Earth proper just couldn’t be any bigger than that, and people who had to live in them had to adjust to the fact.
Even the process of entering his house had its mild pleasantness. He would enter the community twist place to which he was assigned (it looked, as did all such, like a rather stumpy obelisk), and there he would invariably find others waiting to use it. Still more would arrive before he reached the head of the line. It was a sociable time.
“How’s your planet?” “How’s yours?” The usual small talk. Sometimes someone would be having trouble. Machinery breakdowns or serious weather that would alter the terrain unfavorably. Not often.
But it passed the time. Then Rimbro would be at the head of the line; he would put his key into the slot; the proper combination would be punched; and he would be twisted into a new probability pattern; his own particular probability pattern; the one assigned to him when he married and became a producing citizen; a probability pattern in which life had never developed on Earth. And twisting to this particular lifeless Earth, he would walk into his own foyer.
Just like that.
He never worried about being in another probability. Why should he? He never gave it any thought. There were an infinite number of possible Earths. Each existed in its own niche; its own probability pattern. Since on a planet such as Earth there was, according to calculation, about a fifty-fifty chance of life’s developing, half of all the possible Earths (still infinite, since half of infinity was infinity) possessed life, and half (still infinite) did not. And living on about three hundred billion of the unoccupied Earths were three hundred billion families, each with its own beautiful house, powered by the sun of that probability, and each securely at peace. The number of Earths so occupied grew by millions each day.
And then one day, Rimbro came home and Sandra (his wife) said to him, as he entered, “There’s been the most peculiar noise.”
Rimbro’s eyebrows shot up and he looked closely at his wife. Except for a certain restlessness of her thin hands and a pale look about the corners of her tight mouth, she looked normal.
Rimbro said, still holding his topcoat halfway toward the servette that waited patiently for it, “Noise? What noise? I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s stopped now,” Sandra said. “Really, it was like a deep thumping or rumble. You’d hear it a bit. Then it would stop. Then you’d hear it a bit and so on. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
Rimbro surrendered his coat. “But that’s quite impossible.”
“I heard it.”
“I’ll look over the machinery,” he mumbled. “Something may be wrong.”
Nothing was, that his accountant’s eyes could discover, and, with a shrug, he went to supper. He listened to the servettes hum busily about their different chores, watched one sweep up the plates and cutlery for disposal and recovery, then said, pursing his lips, “Maybe one of the servettes is out of order. I’ll check them.”
“It wasn’t anything like that, Clarence.”
Rimbro went to bed, without further concern over the matter, and wakened with his wife’s hand clutching his shoulder. His hand went automatically to the contact patch that set the walls glowing. “What’s the matter? What time is it?”
She shook her head. “Listen! Listen!”
Good Lord, thought Rimbro, there is a noise. A definite rumbling. It came and went.
“Earthquake?” he whispered. It did happen, of course, though, with all the planet to choose from, they could generally count on having avoided the faulted areas.
“All day long?” asked Sandra fretfully. “I think it’s something else.” And then she voiced the secret terror of every nervous householder. “I think there’s someone on the planet with us. This Earth is inhabited.”
Rimbro did the logical things. When morning came, he took his wife and children to his wife’s mother. He himself took a day off and hurried to the Sector’s Housing Bureau.
He was quite annoyed at all his.
Bill Ching of the Housing Bureau was short, jovial and proud of his part Mongolian ancestry. He thought probability patterns had solved every last one of humanity’s problems. Alec Mishnoff, also of the Housing Bureau, thought probability patterns were a snare into which humanity had been hopelessly tempted. He had originally majored in archeology and had studied a variety of antiquarian subjects with which his delicately poised head was still crammed. His face managed to look sensitive despite overbearing eyebrows, and he lived with a pet notion that so far he had dared tell no one, though preoccupation with it had driven him out of archeology and into housing.
Ching was fond of saying, “The hell with Malthus!” It was almost a verbal trademark of his. “The hell with Malthus. We can’t possibly overpopulate now. However frequently we double and redouble, Homo sapiens remains finite in number, and the uninhabited Earths remain infinite. And we don’t have to put one house on each planet. We can put a hundred, a thousand, a million. Plenty of room and plenty of power from each probability sun.”
“More than one on a planet?” said Mishnoff sourly.
Ching knew exactly what he meant. When probability patterns had first been put to use, sole ownership of a planet had been powerful inducement for early settlers. It appealed to the snob and despot in every one. What man so poor, ran the slogan, as not to have an empire larger than Genghis Khan’s? To introduce multiple settling now would outrage everyone.
Ching said, with a shrug, “All right, it would take psychological preparation. So what? That’s what it took to start the whole deal in the first place.”
“And food?” asked Mishnoff.
“You know we’re putting hydroponic works and yeast plants in other probability patterns. And if we had to, we could cultivate their soil.”
“Wearing space suits and importing oxygen.”
“We could reduce carbon dioxide for oxygen till the plants got going and they’d do the job after that.”
“Given a million years.”
“Mishnoff, the trouble with you,” Ching said, “is you read too many ancient history books. You’re an obstructionist.”
But Ching was too good-natured really to mean that, and Mishnoff continued to read books and to worry. Mishnoff longed for the day he could get up the courage necessary to see the Head of the Section and put right out in plain view-bang, like that-exactly what it was that was troubling him.
But now, a Mr. Clarence Rimbro faced them, perspiring slightly and toweringly angry at the fact that it had taken him the better part of two days to reach this far into the Bureau.
He reached his exposition’s climax by saying, “And I say the planet is inhabited and I don’t propose to stand for it.”
Having listened to his story in full, Ching tried the soothing approach. He said, “Noise like that is probably just some natural phenomenon.”
“What kind of natural phenomenon?” demanded Rimbro. “I want an investigation. If it’s a natural phenomenon, I want to know what kind. I say the place is inhabited. It has life on it, by Heaven, and I’m not paying rent on a planet to share it. And with dinosaurs, from the sound of it.”
“Come, Mr. Rimbro, how long have you lived on your Earth?”
“Fifteen and a half years.”
“And has there ever been any evidence of life?”
“There is now, and, as a citizen with a production record classified as A-I, I demand an investigation.”
“Of course we’ll investigate, sir, but we just want to assure you now that everything is all right. Do you realize how carefully we select our probability patterns?”
“I’m an accountant. I have a pretty good idea,” said Rimbro at once.
“Then surely you know our computers cannot fail us. They never pick a probability which has been picked before. They can’t possibly. And they’re geared to select only probability patterns in which Earth has a carbon dioxide atmosphere, one in which plant life, and therefore animal life, has never developed. Because if plants had evolved, the carbon dioxide would have been reduced to oxygen. Do you understand?”
“I understand it all very well and I’m not here for lectures,” said Rimbro. “I want an investigation out of you and nothing else. It is quite humiliating to think I may be sharing my world, my own world, with something or other, and I don’t propose to endure it.”
“No, of course not,” muttered Ching, avoiding Mishnoff’s sardonic glance. “We’ll be there before night.”
They were on their way to the twisting place with full equipment.
Mishnoff said, “I want to ask you something. Why do you go through that There’s no need to worry, sir’ routine? They always worry anyway. Where does it get you?”
“I’ve got to try. They shouldn’t worry,” said Ching petulantly. “Ever hear of a carbon dioxide planet that was inhabited? Besides, Rimbro is the type that starts rumors. I can spot them. By the time he’s through, if he’s encouraged, he’ll say his sun went nova.”
“That happens sometimes,” said Mishnoff.
“So? One house is wiped out and one family dies. See, you’re an obstructionist. In the old times, the times you like, if there were a flood in China or someplace, thousands of people would die. And that’s out of a population of a measly billion or two.”
Mishnoff muttered, “How do you know the Rimbro planet doesn’t have life on it?”
“Carbon dioxide atmosphere.”
“But suppose-” It was no use. Mishnoff couldn’t say it. He finished lamely, “Suppose plant and animal life develops that can live on carbon dioxide.”
“It’s never been observed.”
“In an infinite number of worlds, anything can happen.” He finished that 1 in a whisper. “Everything must happen.”
“Chances are one in a duodecillion,” said Ching, shrugging.
They arrived at the twisting point then, and, having utilized the freight twist for their vehicle (thus sending it into the Rimbro storage area), they entered the Rimbro probability pattern themselves. First Ching, then Mishnoff.
“A nice house,” said Ching, with satisfaction. “Very nice model. Good taste.”
“Hear anything?” asked Mishnoff.
“No.”
Ching wandered into the garden. “Hey,” he yelled. “Rhode Island Reds.”
Mishnoff followed, looking up at the glass roof. The sun looked like the sun of a trillion other Earths.
He said absently, “There could be plant life, just starting out. The carbon dioxide might just be starting to drop in concentration. The computer would never know.”
“And it would take millions of years for animal life to begin and millions more for it to come out of the sea.”
“It doesn’t have to follow that pattern.”
Ching put an arm about his partner’s shoulder. “You brood. Someday, you’ll tell me what’s really bothering you, instead of just hinting, and we can straighten you out.”
Mishnoff shrugged off the encircling arm with an annoyed frown. Ching’s tolerance was always hard to bear. He began, “Let’s not psychothera-pize-” He broke off, then whispered, “Listen.”
There was a distant rumble. Again.
They placed the seismograph in the center of the room and activated the force field that penetrated downward and bound it rigidly to bedrock. They watched the quivering needle record the shocks.
Mishnoff said, “Surface waves only. Very superficial. It’s not underground.”
Ching looked a little more dismal, “What is it then?”
“I think,” said Mishnoff, “we’d better find out.” His face was gray with apprehension. “We’ll have to set up a seismograph at another point and get a fix on the focus of the disturbance.”
“Obviously,” said Ching. “I’ll go out with the other seismograph. You stay here.”
“No,” said Mishnoff, with energy. “I’ll go out.”
Mishnoff felt terrified, but he had no choice. If this were it, he would be prepared. He could get a warning through. Sending out an unsuspecting Ching would be disastrous. Nor could he warn Ching, who would certainly never believe him.
But since Mishnoff was not cast in the heroic mold, he trembled as he got into his oxygen suit and fumbled the disrupter as he tried to dissolve the force field locally in order to free the emergency exit.
“Any reason you want to go, particularly?” asked Ching, watching the other’s inept manipulations. “I’m willing.”
“It’s all right. I’m going out,” said Mishnoff, out of a dry throat, and stepped into the lock that led out onto the desolate surface of a lifeless Earth. A presumably lifeless Earth.
The sight was not unfamiliar to Mishnoff. He had seen its like dozens of times. Bare rock, weathered by wind and rain, crusted and powdered with sand in the gullies; a small and noisy brook beating itself against its stony course. All brown and gray; no sign of green. No sound of life.
Yet the sun was the same and, when night fell, the constellations would be the same.
The situation of the dwelling place was in that region which on Earth proper would be called Labrador. (It was Labrador here, too, really. It had been calculated that in not more than one out of a quadrillion or so Earths were there significant changes in the geological development. The continents were everywhere recognizable down to quite small details.)
Despite the situation and the time of the year, which was October, the temperature was sticky warm due to the hothouse effect of the carbon dioxide in this Earth’s dead atmosphere.
From inside his suit, through the transparent visor, Mishnoff watched it all somberly. If the epicenter of the noise were close by, adjusting the second seismograph a mile or so away would be enough for the fix. If it weren’t, they would have to bring in an air scooter. Well, assume the lesser complication to begin with.
Methodically, he made his way up a rocky hillside. Once at the top, he could choose his spot.
Once at the top, puffing and feeling the heat most unpleasantly, he found he didn’t have to.
His heart was pounding so that he could scarcely hear his own voice as he yelled into his radio mouthpiece, “Hey, Ching, there’s construction going on.”
“What?” came back the appalled shout in his ears.
There was no mistake. Ground was being leveled. Machinery was at work. Rock was being blasted out.
Mishnoff shouted, “They’re blasting. That’s the noise.”
Ching called back, “But it’s impossible. The computer would never pick the same probability pattern twice. It couldn’t.”
“You don’t understand-” began Mishnoff.
But Ching was following his own thought processes. “Get over there, Mishnoff. I’m coming out, too.”
“No, damn it. You stay there,” cried Mishnoff in alarm. “Keep me in radio contact, and for God’s sake be ready to leave for Earth proper on wings if I give the word.”
“Why?” demanded Ching. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Mishnoff. “Give me a chance to find out.”
To his own surprise, he noticed his teeth were chattering.
Muttering breathless curses at the computer, at probability patterns and at the insatiable need for living space on the part of a trillion human beings expanding in numbers like a puff of smoke, Mishnoff slithered and slipped down the other side of the slope, setting stones to rolling and rousing peculiar echoes.
A man came out to meet him, dressed in a gas-tight suit, different in many details from Mishnoff’s own, but obviously intended for the same purpose-to lead oxygen to the lungs.
Mishnoff gasped breathlessly into his mouthpiece, “Hold it, Ching. There’s a man coming. Keep in touch.” Mishnoff felt his heart pump more easily and the bellows of his lungs labor less.
The two men were staring at one another. The other man was blond and craggy of face. The look of surprise about him was too extreme to be feigned.
He said in a harsh voice, “Wer sind Sie? Was machen Sie hier?”
Mishnoff was thunderstruck. He’d studied ancient German for two years in the days when he expected to be an archeologist and he followed the comment despite the fact that the pronunciation was not what he had been taught. The stranger was asking his identity and his business there.
Stupidly, Mishnoff stammered, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”and then had to mutter reassurance to Ching whose agitated voice in his earpiece was demanding to know what the gibberish was all about.
The German-speaking one made no direct answer. He repeated, “Wer sind Sie?” and added impatiently, “Hier ist fiir ein verriickten Spass keine Zeit.”
Mishnoff didn’t feel like a joke either, particularly not a foolish one, but he continued, “Sprechen Sie Planetisch?”
He did not know the German for “Planetary Standard Language” so he had to guess. Too late, he thought he should have referred to it simply as English.
The other man stared wide-eyed at him. “Sind Sie wahnsinnig?”
Mishnoff was almost willing to settle for that, but in feeble self-defense, he said, “I’m not crazy, damn it. I mean, “AufderErde woher Sie gekom-”
He gave it up for lack of German, but the new idea that was rattling inside his skull would not quit its nagging. He had to find some way of testing it. He said desperately, “Welches fahr ist es jetzt?”
Presumably, the stranger, who was questioning his sanity already, would be convinced of Mishnoff’s insanity now that he was being asked what year it was, but it was one question for which Mishnoff had the necessary German.
The other muttered something that sounded suspiciously like good German swearing and then said, “Es ist dock zwei tausend drei hundert vier-und-sechzig, und warum-”
The stream of German that followed was completely incomprehensible to Mishnoff, but in any case he had had enough for the moment. If he translated the German correctly, the year given him was 2364, which was nearly two thousand years in the past. How could that be?
He muttered, “Zwei tausend drei hundert vier-und sechzig?”
“Ja, fa,” said the other, with deep sarcasm. “Zwei tausend drei hundert vier-und-sechzig. Der ganze fahr long ist es so gewesen.”
Mishnoff shrugged. The statement that it had been so all year long was a feeble witticism even in German and it gained nothing in translation. He pondered.
But then the other’s ironical tone deepening, the German-speaking one went on, “Zwei tausend drei hundert vier-und-sechzig nach Hitler. Hilft das Ihnen vielleicht? Nach Hitler!”
Mishnoff yelled with delight. “That does help me. Es hilft! Horen Sie, bitte-” He went on in broken German interspersed with scraps of Planetary, “For Heaven’s sake, urn Gottes willen-”
Making it 2364 after Hitler was different altogether.
He put German together desperately, trying to explain.
The other frowned and grew thoughtful. He lifted his gloved hand to stroke his chin or make some equivalent gesture, hit the transparent visor that covered his face and left his hand there uselessly, while he thought.
He said, suddenly, “Ich heiss George Fallenby.”
To Mishnoff it seemed that the name must be of Anglo-Saxon derivation, although the change in vowel form as pronounced by the other made it seem Teutonic.
“Guten Tag,” said Mishnoff awkwardly. “Ich heiss Alec Mishnoff,” and was suddenly aware of the Slavic derivation of his own name.
“Kommen Sie mit mir, Hen Mishnoff,” said Fallenby.
Mishnoff followed with a strained smile, muttering into his transmitter, “It’s all right, Ching. It’s all right.”
Back on Earth proper, Mishnoff faced the Sector’s Bureau Head, who had grown old in the Service; whose every gray hair betokened a problem met and solved; and every missing hair a problem averted. He was a cautious man with eyes still bright and teeth that were still his own. His name was Berg.
He shook his head. “And they speak German: but the German you studied was two thousand years old.”
“True,” said Mishnoff. “But the English Hemingway used is two thousand years old and Planetary is close enough for anyone to be able to read it.”
“Hmp. And who’s this Hitler?”
“He was a sort of tribal chief in ancient times. He led the German tribe in one of the wars of the twentieth century, just about the time the Atomic Age started and true history began.”
“Before the Devastation, you mean?”
“Right. There was a series of wars then. The Anglo-Saxon countries won out, and I suppose that’s why the Earth speaks Planetary.”
“And if Hitler and his Germans had won out, the world would speak German instead?”
“They have won out on Fallenby’s Earth, sir, and they do speak German.”
“And make their dates ‘after Hitler’ instead of a.d.?”
“Right. And I suppose there’s an Earth in which the Slavic tribes won out and everyone speaks Russian.”
“Somehow,” said Berg, “it seems to me we should have foreseen it, and yet, as far as I know, no one has. After all, there are an infinite number of inhabited Earths, and we can’t be the only one that has decided to solve the problem of unlimited population growth by expanding into the worlds of probability.”
“Exactly,” said Mishnoff earnestly, “and it seems to me that if you think of it, there must be countless inhabited Earths so doing and there must be many multiple occupations in the three hundred billion Earths we ourselves occupy. The only reason we caught this one is that, by sheer chance, they decided to build within a mile of the dwelling we had placed there. This is something we must check.”
“You imply we ought to search all our Earths.”
“I do, sir. We’ve got to make some settlement with other inhabited Earths. After all, there is room for all of us and to expand without agreement may result in all sorts of trouble and conflict.”
“Yes,” said Berg thoughtfully. “I agree with you.”
Clarence Rimbro stared suspiciously at Berg’s old face, creased now into all manner of benevolence.
“You’re sure now?”
“Absolutely,” said the Bureau Head. “We’re sorry that you’ve had to accept temporary quarters for the last two weeks-”
“More like three.”
“-three weeks, but you will be compensated.”
“What was the noise?”
“Purely geological, sir. A rock was delicately balanced and, with the wind, it made occasional contact with the rocks of the hillside. We’ve removed it and surveyed the area to make certain that nothing similar will occur again.”
Rimbro clutched his hat and said, “Well, thanks for your trouble.”
“No thanks necessary, I assure you, Mr. Rimbro. This is our job.”
Rimbro was ushered out, and Berg turned to Mishnoff, who had remained a quiet spectator of this completion of the Rimbro affair.
Berg said, “The Germans were nice about it, anyway. They admitted we had priority and got off. Room for everybody, they said. Of course, as it turned out, they build any number of dwellings on each unoccupied world. . . . And now there’s the project of surveying our other worlds and making similar agreements with whomever we find. It’s all strictly confidential, too.
It can’t be made known to the populace without plenty of preparation. . . . Still, none of this is what I want to speak to you about.”
“Oh?” said Mishnoff. Developments had not noticeably cheered him. His own bogey still concerned him.
Berg smiled at the younger man. “You understand, Mishnoff, we in the Bureau, and in the Planetary Government, too, are very appreciative of your quick thinking, of your understanding of the situation. This could have developed into something very tragic, had it not been for you. This appreciation will take some tangible form.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But, as I said once before, this is something many of us should have thought of. How is it you did? . . . Now we’ve gone into your background a little. Your co-worker, Ching, tells us you have hinted in the past at some serious danger involved in our probability-pattern setup, and that you insisted on going out to meet the Germans although you were obviously frightened. You were anticipating what you actually found, were you not? And how did you do it?”
Mishnoff said confusedly, “No, no. That was not in my mind at all. It came as a surprise. I-”
Suddenly he stiffened. Why not now? They were grateful to him. He had proved that he was a man to be taken into account. One unexpected thing had already happened.
He said firmly, “There’s something else.”
“Yes?”
(How did one begin?) “There’s no life in the Solar System other than the life on Earth.”
“That’s right,” said Berg benevolently.
“And computation has it that the probability of developing any form of interstellar travel is so low as to be infinitesimal.”
“What are you getting at?”
“That all this is so in this probability! But there must be some probability patterns in which other life does exist in the Solar System or in which interstellar drives are developed by dwellers in other star systems.”
Berg frowned. “Theoretically.”
“In one of these probabilities, Earth may be visited by such intelligences. If it were a probability pattern in which Earth is inhabited, it won’t affect us; they’ll have no connection with us in Earth proper. But if it were a probability pattern in which Earth is uninhabited and they set up some sort of a base, they may find, by happenstance, one of our dwelling places.”
“Why ours?” demanded Berg dryly. “What not a dwelling place of the Germans, for instance?”
“Because we spot our dwellings one to a world. The German Earth doesn’t. Probably very few others do. The odds are in favor of us by billions to one. And if extraterrestrials do find such a dwelling, they’ll investigate and find the route to Earth proper, a highly developed, rich world.”
“Not if we turn off the twisting place,” said Berg.
“Once they know that twisting places exist, they can construct their own,” said Mishnoff. “A race intelligent enough to travel through space could do that, and from the equipment in the dwelling they would take over, they could easily spot our particular probability. . . . And then how would we handle extraterrestrials? They’re not Germans, or other Earths. They would have alien psychologies and motivations. And we’re not even on our guard. We just keep setting up more and more worlds and increasing the chance every day that-”
His voice had risen in excitement and Berg shouted at him, “Nonsense. This is all ridiculous-”
The buzzer sounded and the communiplate brightened and showed the face of Ching. Ching’s voice said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but-”
“What is it?” demanded Berg savagely.
“There’s a man here I don’t know what to do with. He’s drunk or crazy. He complains that his home is surrounded and that there are things staring through the glass roof of his garden.”
“Things?” cried Mishnoff.
“Purple things with big red veins, three eyes and some sort of tentacles instead of hair. They have-”
But Mishnoff and Berg didn’t hear the rest. They were staring at each other in sick horror.
They drank beer and reminisced as men will who have met after long separation. They called to mind the days under fire. They remembered sergeants and girls, both with exaggeration. Deadly things became humorous in retrospect, and trifles disregarded for ten years were hauled out for airing.
Including, of course, the perennial mystery.
“How do you account for it?” asked the first. “Who started it?”
The second shrugged. “No one started it. Everyone was doing it, like a disease. You, too, I suppose.”
The first chuckled.
The third one said softly, “I never saw the fun in it. Maybe because I came across it first when I was under fire for the first time. North Africa.”
“Really?” said the second.
“The first night on the beaches of Oran. I was getting under cover, making for some native shack and I saw it in the light of a flare-”
George was deliriously happy. Two years of red tape and now he was finally back in the past. Now he could complete his paper on the social life of the foot soldier of World War II with some authentic details.
Out of the warless, insipid society of the thirtieth century, he found himself for one glorious moment in the tense, superlative drama of the warlike twentieth.
North Africa! Site of the first great sea-borne invasion of the war! How the temporal physicists had scanned the area for the perfect spot and moment. This shadow of an empty wooden building was it. No human would approach for a known number of minutes. No blast would seriously affect it in that time. By being there, George would not affect history. He would be that ideal of the temporal physicist, the “pure observer.”
It was even more terrific than he had imagined. There was the perpetual roar of artillery, the unseen tearing of planes overhead. There were the periodic lines of tracer bullets splitting the sky and the occasional ghastly glow of a flare twisting downward.
And he was here! He, George, was part of the war, part of an intense kind of life forever gone from the world of the thirtieth century, grown tame and gentle.
He imagined he could see the shadows of an advancing column of soldiers, hear the low cautious monosyllables slip from one to another. How he longed to be one of them in truth, not merely a momentary intruder, a “pure observer.”
He stopped his note taking and stared at his stylus, its micro-light hypnotizing him for a moment. A sudden idea had overwhelmed him and he looked at the wood against which his shoulder pressed. This moment must not pass unforgotten into history. Surely doing this would affect nothing. He would use the older English dialect and there would be no suspicion.
He did it quickly and then spied a soldier running desperately toward the structure, dodging a burst of bullets. George knew his time was up, and, even as he knew it, found himself back in the thirtieth century.
It didn’t matter. For those few minutes he had been part of World War II. A small part, but part. And others would know it. They might not know they knew it, but someone perhaps would repeat the message to himself.
Someone, perhaps that man running for shelter, would read it and know that along with all the heroes of the twentieth century was the “pure observer,” the man from the thirtieth century, George Kilroy. He was there!