by C. L. Moore
"It won't close till Halison gets back. Or anyway it won't close too fast. I hope. Sing out if you see it starting to shut, though, Mac. I'll come diving back headfirst."
"Crazy fool," MacPherson said.
-
Gregg, rather pale around the lips, stepped into the future. The valve was more than four feet in diameter by now, its lower edge two feet from the carpet. Gregg had to duck. He straightened up, remembering to breathe, and looked back through the hole into MacPherson's white face.
"It's O.K.," he said.
"What's over there?"
Gregg flattened himself against the blue wall. The floor felt soft under his feet. The four-foot circle was like a cut-out disk, an easel set up in empty air, a film process shot. He could see MacPherson there, and his own room.
But he was in another room now, large, lit with a cool radiant glow, and utterly different from anything he had ever seen before.
The windows drew his attention first, oval, tall openings in two of the blue walls, transparent in the center and fading around the edges to translucence and then azure opaqueness. Through them he glimpsed lights, colored lights that moved. He took a step forward and hesitated, looking back to where MacPherson waited.
"What's it like?"
"I'll see," Gregg said, and circled the valve. It was invisible from the other side. Perhaps light rays were bent around it. He couldn't tell. A little frightened, he returned briefly to glimpse MacPherson again, and, relieved, continued his explorations.
The room was about thirty feet square, with a high-domed roof, and the lighting source was at first difficult to discover. Everything in the room had a slight glow. Absorption of sunlight, Gregg thought, like luminous paint. It seemed effective.
There wasn't much to see. There were low couches, functional-looking padded chairs, comfortable and pastel-tinted, and a few rubbery tables. A square glassy block as large as a small overnight bag, rubbery in texture, was on the blue floor. Gregg could not make out its purpose. When he picked it up gingerly, colors played phosphorescently for a few moments within it.
There was a book on one of the tables, and he pouched this for future reference. MacPherson hailed him.
"Manning? O.K. in there?"
"Yeah. Just a minute."
Where were the doors? Gregg grinned wryly. He was slightly handicapped by lacking even the basic technological knowledge for this unknown world. The doors might be activated by pressure, light, or sound. Or even odor, for all he knew. A brief inspection could tell him nothing. But he was worried about the valve. If it closed—
Well, no great harm would be done, Gregg supposed. This future world was peopled by humans sufficiently similar to himself. And they'd have enough intelligence to return him to his own time-sector—Halison's appearance proved that. Nevertheless, Gregg preferred to have an open exit.
He went to the nearest window and looked out. The constellations in the purple sky had changed slightly, not much in a few thousand years. The rainbow lights darted here and there. Aircraft. Beneath him, the dark masses of buildings were dimly visible in the shadow. There was no moon. A few towers rose to his own height, and he could make out the rounded silhouettes of their summits.
One of the lights swept toward him. Before Gregg could draw back he glimpsed a small ship—antigravity, he thought—with a boy and a girl in the open cockpit. There was neither propeller nor wing structure. The pair resembled Halison in their large craniums and pinched faces, though both had hair on their heads. They, too, wore togalike garments.
And they did not seem strange, somehow. There was no—alienage. The girl was laughing, and, despite her bulging forehead and meager features, Gregg thought her strangely attractive. Certainly there was no harm in these people. The vague fears of a coldly, ruthlessly inhuman super-race went glimmering.
They glided past, not twenty feet away, looking straight at Gregg—and did not see him. Astonished, the physicist reached out to touch the smooth, slightly warmish surface of the pane. Odd!
But there were no lights in the other buildings. The windows must be one-way only, to insure privacy. You could see out, but not in.
"Manning!"
Gregg turned hurriedly, recoiling the rope as he returned to the valve. MacPherson's worried frown greeted him.
"I wish you'd come back. I'm getting jittery."
"All right," Gregg said amiably, and crawled through the hole. "But there's no danger. I bagged a book. Here's some incunabula for you!" He drew the volume from his pocket.
MacPherson took it but didn't open it immediately. His pale eyes were on Gregg's.
"What did you find?"
Gregg went into detail. "Quite remarkable in its suggestions, you know. A tiny slice out of the future. It didn't seem so strange when I was in there, but now it seems funny. My drink's warm. Another?"
"No. Oh, well—yes. Short."
-
MacPherson examined the book while Gregg went into the kitchen. Once he glanced up at the valve. It was a little larger, he thought. Not much. Perhaps it had nearly reached its maximum.
Gregg came back. "Can you read it? No? Well, I expected that. Halison said he had to learn our language. I wonder what he's looking for—in his past?"
"I wonder who Ranil-Mens is."
"I'd like to meet him. Thank Heaven I've got a high I. Q. If I can get Halison—or somebody—to explain things to me, I ought to be able to grasp the rudiments of future technology. What a chance, Mac!"
"If he's willing."
"You didn't meet him," Gregg said. "He was friendly, even though he did hypnotize me. What's that?" He seized the book to examine a picture.
"Octopus," MacPherson suggested.
"Chart. I wonder. It looks almost like an atomic structure, but it's no compound I've ever run into. I wish I could read these infernal wiggles. They look like a combination of Burmese and Pitman. Even the numerical system's different from the Arabic. A whole treasure chest out there, and no key!"
"Hm-m-m. Could be. It still looks a bit dangerous to me."
Gregg eyed MacPherson. "I don't think so. There's no reason at all for anticipating trouble. Dime-novel stuff."
"What is life but a dime novel?" MacPherson asked moodily, rather bottle-dizzy from the unaccustomed liquor.
"That's your way of looking at it. And the way you live it." Gregg's tone was unpleasant, chiefly because he was allergic to MacPherson's casually hopeless philosophy. "Try being logical for a change. The race is advancing, in spite of dictators and professional reformers. The industrial revolution started speeding up social mutations. Natural mutations tie in with that. It's progressive. In the next five hundred years we'll have covered as much ground as we did in the last ten thousand. A snowball rolling downhill."
"So what?"
"So the ultimate result is logic," Gregg said, "and that doesn't mean a cold-blooded inhuman logic, either. Not when it's human logic. It takes emotions and psychology into account. It will, that is. There won't be Great Brains waiting to conquer universes, or enslaving the remnants of humans. We've seen that. Halison—he was willing to talk, but in too much of a hurry just then. He said he'd explain later."
"All I know is that there's a hole in the wall," MacPherson said. "It's one of those things that doesn't happen. Now it's happened. Sorry I've got my wind up."
"That's the way you're keeping your emotional balance," Gregg told him. "I prefer to do it along the lines of mathematics. Working out the equation, from what factors we've got. Induction won't tell us much, but it shows what a tremendous thing the whole must be. A perfect world—"
"How d'you know?"
Gregg was stumped. "Well, it seemed that way. In a few thousand years civilization will have time to apply technology and use the nuances. Physically and mentally. The best part of it is that they won't be snooty about it. They can't. Anyhow, Halison wasn't."
"That hole isn't getting any bigger," MacPherson said. "I've been watching a spot on the wallpaper."
"Well," Gregg said inconclusively, "it's not getting smaller, either. Wish I knew how to open the doors in there. So damn much I can't understand by myself!"
"Have another drink. That may help."
It didn't, much. Gregg didn't quite dare go through the valve again, for fear it might close suddenly, and he sat with MacPherson, smoking, drinking, and talking, while the night moved slowly on. From time to time they re-examined the book. That told them nothing.
Halison remained absent. At three a. m., the valve began closing. Gregg remembered what the man from the future had said; that the gap would open at night and remain closed by day. Presumably it would open again. If it didn't, then the chance of a hundred lifetimes had been muffed!
In half an hour the valve had shut completely, leaving no trace on the wallpaper. MacPherson, glassy about the eyes, returned to his own apartment. Gregg locked the book in a desk drawer and went to bed to snatch a few hours' sleep before the alarm roused him.
-
Later, dressing, Gregg phoned Haverhill Research to say he would not be in that day. In case Halison showed up, he wanted to be on hand. But Halison did not arrive. Gregg spent the morning crushing out cigarettes and thumbing through the book. In the afternoon he sent it by messenger to Courtney, at the university, with a brief note asking for information. Courtney, whose forte was languages, telephoned to say he was baffled.
Naturally he was curious. Gregg spent an awkward five minutes putting him off, and decided to be more wary next time. He was not anxious to release his secret to the world. Even MacPherson—well, that couldn't be helped now. But this was Manning Gregg's discovery, and it was only fair that he should have first rights.
Gregg's selfishness was completely unmercenary. Had he analyzed his motives, he would have realized that he was greedy for intellectual intoxication—that was the only suitable term. Gregg did have a really fine, keen-edged brain, and took an intense delight in using it. He could get positively drunk on the working out of technical problems, the same pleasure an engineer feels at sight of a beautifully executed blueprint, or a pianist confronted by an intricate composition. He was a perfectionist. And to be given a key to the perfect world of the future—
He was not certain of its perfection, of course, but later he felt more certain. Especially after the valve slowly began opening at 6:30 p. m. that evening.
This time Gregg went through as soon as the hole was large enough to admit him. He had plenty of time. His search for a door proved fruitless, but he did make another discovery—the blue walls were in reality the doors of immense cupboards, full of extraordinary objects. Books, of course—though he could read none of them. Some of the charts were tantalizingly on the edge of translation into his own focus of understanding, but not quite. Pictures, three-dimensional and tinted, proved fascinating in their dim glimpses of the life of the future. It was, he suspected, a happy sort of life.
The cupboards—
They held the damnedest things. No doubt they were all perfectly familiar to Halison, but what, for example, could Gregg make of a two-foot doll, modeled after a future human, that recited what seemed to be poetry in an unknown tongue? The rhyme scheme was remarkable, from what Gregg could understand of it—an intricate, bizarre counterpoint that had a definite emotional effect, even in the alien language.
And then there were more of the rubbery, glassy blocks, with moving lights inside; and metallic frameworks—one of which Gregg recognized as a model of the solar system; and a hydroponic garden with chameleon qualities; and plastics of possibly mythical animals that could be merged to produce other animals that were crosses or sports—an incredible demonstration of pure genetics, this; and more, and more, and more! Gregg got dizzy. He had to go to the windows to recuperate.
The rainbow lights still flashed through the dark. Far below he could make out intermittent blazes of radiance, as though star shells were bursting. For a shocked instant he thought of war. Another glow, fountaining up, relieved him; by craning his neck, he could see tiny figures posturing and dancing in mid-air in a tumultuous sea of color, perhaps a ballet without gravity. No, this was the perfect world.
He was, suddenly, overcome by an intense desire to emerge from this silent room into that blazing, joyous tumult outside. But he could find no way of opening the windows. And the springs that controlled the doors still eluded him. It had not been easy to discover the concealed buttons that operated the cupboards, Gregg remembered.
He thought, with grim amusement, of old Duffey at the Haverhill, and how the man would react to sight of all this. Well, the devil with Duffey. Later, the world could drink, but he wanted—and deserved—the first ecstatic sip from this bottle of vintage wine.
He hoped someone would come into Halison's apartment, perhaps Ranil-Mens. There might be some semantic difficulties at first, unless the visitor had troubled to learn archaic English—which wasn't likely—but these wouldn't be insurmountable. If only Ranil-Mens would appear, to point out how the gadgets in the cupboards worked! A fine spot for a physicist!
Nobody appeared, however, and, bearing booty, Gregg returned to his own time-sector, finding MacPherson sprawled in a chair drinking highballs and eying the valve skeptically.
"How'd you get in?" Gregg demanded.
"Walked in," MacPherson said. "The door was open. Halison was standing inside, so I stopped to see what was up. He's real, all right." Ice cubes clinked.
"Halison here? Mac, what—"
"Take it easy. I came in and asked him who he was. 'Halison,' he said. 'I just dropped in for a minute'—or words to the effect. 'Gregg wants see you,' I said. 'Haven't time yet,' he says. 'I'm looking for something. I'll be back by Thursday to see Ranil-Mens. I'll tell Gregg anything he wants to know then. I can tell him plenty, too—I'm labeled as a genius.' All this was in a sort of double talk, but I managed to understand it. After that he went out. I ran after him. 'Where's Gregg?' I yelled. He waved back toward the ... the valve, and scooted off downstairs. I stuck my head through the hole in the wall, saw you, and started to feel funny. So I fixed a highball and sat down to wait. That guy gives me the creeps."
Gregg dropped his burden on a couch. "Damn! So I missed him. Well, he'll be back, that's one consolation. Why the devil does he give you the creeps?"
"He's different," MacPherson said simply.
"Nothing human is alien. Don't tell me he's not human."
"Oh, he's human, all right, but it isn't our sort of humanity. Even his eyes. He looks right through you, as though he's seeing into the fourth dimension."
"Maybe he does," Gregg speculated. "I wish ... mph. He'll tell me anything I want to know, eh? I'll have a drink on that. What a chance! And he's a genius, even for his age. I suppose it'd take a genius to work out that space-time business."
MacPherson said quietly, "It's his world, Manning, not yours. If I were you, I'd stay out of it."
Gregg laughed, his eyes very bright. "Under other circumstances, I'd agree. But I know something about that world now. The pictures in the books, for example. It is a perfect world. Only just now it's a world beyond my comprehension. Those people have gone far beyond us in everything, Mac. I doubt if we're capable of understanding everything there. Still, I'm not exactly a moron. I'll learn. My training will help. I'm a technician and a physicist."
"All right. Suit yourself. I'm drunk now because I've been sitting looking at that hole in the wall and wondering if it'd snap shut forever."
"Nuts," Gregg said.
MacPherson got up, weaving on his feet. "I'm going to bed. Call me if you need me for anything. G'night."
"Night, Mac. Oh, say. You haven't mentioned this to anyone, have you?"
"No. I won't. And Halison's eyes scared me, even though they had a friendly look in them. Man and superman. Urp!" MacPherson floated away in a haze of Scotch mist. Gregg chuckled and closed the door carefully.
-
Whatever else he might be, Halison was no superman. He hadn't evolved to that ext
reme, or, obviously, there could have been no meeting ground between the two—Homo sapiens and Homo superior. There was much that was mysterious about the man from the future—his enigmatic quest through time, for example—but by Thursday, Gregg hoped, he'd know at least some of the answers. If he could only curb his impatience till then.
He didn't go to work the next day, either. That was Wednesday. He spent his time pondering over the gadgets he had brought back from the future, finding a cold sort of comfort in that.
He waited till hunger pangs could no longer be ignored, and then decided to step around the corner for a sandwich. On second thought, he changed his mind and ate across the street, at a fly-blown quick-lunch joint, where he could keep his eye on the apartment house.
He saw Halison go in.
Choking on a mouthful, Gregg flung a handful of change at the waiter and dashed out. On the steps he nearly stumbled and caught himself by clutching wildly at the surprised doorman. The elevator—
Gregg cursed its slowness. His apartment door was open. Halison was emerging.
"Tawnishly hello," Halison said. "I returned for a clean shirt."
"Wait," Gregg said desperately. "I want to talk to you."
"No time yet. I'm still searching marj entar—haven't found—"
"Halison! When will you talk to me?"
"Wednesday night. Tomorrow. I must be back then to see Ranil-Mens Thursday. Who is wiser than I, by the way."
"The valve won't shut permanently?"
"Sar no. Not till the mental power runs down. That will not be for zanentho nearly two weeks yet."
"I was afraid I might be caught on the other side—"
"The serving robots bring food by day; you would not go hungry. You could return the next night when the valve opened maronail again. No danger. None in my world harms another. To help and heal for commonweal—a bad translation. Your language—stinks sarkoment."
"But—"
Halison flicked away like a phantom and was gone down the stairs. Gregg started after him, but was easily outdistanced. Glumly he returned to his apartment. Tomorrow night, however—