by C. L. Moore
Equivalent. Ambiguous. Nothing I want to know about now. But maybe when I'm seventy, eighty, I won't think so. Without taste or teeth or vision, all senses dulled, I might remember the way—I might—
He was aware of a curious, secret shame, and shrugged the thought away. For a while. For a long while. For many years, perhaps.
-
They were silent after that. The night moved on.
And still the tension held. Held, and mounted. They smoked a great deal, but they did not leave the door. They could not begin to guess what it was they waited for, but the tension held them where they were. And the long hours of the night passed midnight and moved slowly toward dawn.
Dawn came, and they still waited. The house was tight and silent; the air seemed too taut to move through or draw into the lungs. When light began to come through the windows, Morgan got up with a great effort and said, "How about some coffee?"
"You make it. I'll wait here."
So Morgan went downstairs, moving with almost palpable difficulty that was perhaps wholly psychic, and measured water and coffee in the kitchen with hands that were all thumbs. The coffee had begun to send out its own particular fragrance, and the light was strong beyond the windows, when a sudden, perfectly indescribable sound rang through the house.
Morgan stood rigid, listening to that vibrating, ringing noise as it died slowly away. It came from upstairs, muffled by walls and floors between. It struck bewilderingly upon the ears and quivered into silence with perceptible receding eddies, like rings widening in water. And the tension of the air suddenly broke.
Morgan remembered sagging a little all over at that sudden release, as if it were the tautness in the atmosphere that had held him up during the long wait. He had no recollection at all of moving through the house or up the stairs. His next clear impression was of Bill, standing motionless before the opened door.
-
Inside it seemed quite dark. Also there appeared to be many small points of light, moving erratically, shining and fading like fireflies. But as they stared the lights began to vanish, so they may have been simply hallucinations.
But that which stood on the far side of the room, facing them, was not hallucination. Not wholly hallucination. It was—someone.
And it was a stranger. Their eyes and brains could not quite compass it, for it was not anything human. No one, confronted for one brief, stunned moment of his life with a shape so complex and so alien could hope to retain the image in his mind, even if for one evanescent instant he did wholly perceive. The perception must fade from the mind almost before the image fades from the retina, because there are no parallels in human experience by which to measure that which has been seen.
They only knew that it looked at them, and they at it. There was impossible strangeness in that exchange of glances, the strangeness of having exchanged looks with that which should not be looking at all. It was like having a building look back at one. But though they could not tell how it met their gaze—with what substitute for eyes, in what portion of its body—they knew it housed an individuality, an awareness. And the individuality was strange to them, as they were to it. There was no mistaking that. Surprise and unrecognition were instinct in its lines and its indescribable gaze, just as surprise and incredulity must have been instinct in theirs. Whatever housing the individual wears, it knows a stranger when it sees one. It knows—
So they knew this was not Rufus—had never been. But it was very remotely familiar, in a wrenchingly strange way. Under the complexity of its newness, in one or two basic factors, it was familiar. But an altered and modified familiarity which instinct rather than reason grasped in the moment they stood and saw it.
The moment did not last. Against the dark the impossible figure loomed for a timeless instant, its vision locked with theirs. It stood motionless, but somehow in arrested motion, as if it had halted in the midst of some rapid activity. The dark room was full of amazement and tense silence for one brief flash.
Then noise and motion swirled suddenly around it. As if a film had been halted briefly while the audience gazed, and now sprang back into life and activity again. For the fraction of a second they could see—things—in action beyond and around the figure. A flash into another world, too brief to convey any meaning. In the flash they looked back, unseeing, along the branching of the temporal track that leads from one line to another, the link between parallels along which alien universes go thundering.
The sound rang out again through the house. Heard from so near, it was stunning. The room shook before them, as if sound waves were visibly vibrating the air, and the four walls sprang suddenly to life as the curtains billowed straight out toward what might have been vacuum at the center of the room. The purple clouds threshed wildly, hiding whatever happened beyond them. For an instant the sound still quivered and rang in the air, the whipping of strained cloth audible below it, and the room boiled with stretched purple surges.
Morgan said, "Rufus—" and took a couple of unsteady steps toward the bed.
"No," said Bill in a gentle voice. Morgan looked back at him inquiringly, but Bill only shook his head. Neither of them felt capable of further speech just then, but Morgan after a moment turned away from the bed and shrugged and managed a slightly shaken,
"Want some coffee, Bill?"
Simultaneously, as if sensation had returned without warning to their numbed faculties, they were aware of the fragrance of fresh coffee rising up the stair well. It was an incredibly soothing odor, reassuring, a link to heal this breach of possibility. It bound the past to the stunned and shaken present; it wiped out and denied the interval they had just gone through.
"Yeah. With brandy or something," Bill said. "Let's ... let's go on down."
-
And so in the kitchen, over coffee and brandy, they finished the thing they had begun with such hopes six months before.
"It wasn't Rufus, you see." Bill was explaining now, Morgan the listener. And they were talking fast, as if subconsciously they knew that shock was yet to come.
"Rufus was—" Bill gestured futilely. "That was the adult."
"Why d'you think so? You're guessing."
"No, it's perfectly logical—it's the thing that had to happen. Nothing else could have happened. Don't you see? There's no telling what he went back to. Embryo, egg—I don't know. Maybe something we can't imagine. But—" Bill hesitated. "But that was the mother of the egg. Time and space had to warp to bring her to this spot to coincide with the moment of birth."
There was a long silence. At last Morgan said,
"The—adult. That. I don't believe it." It was not quite what he had meant to say, but Bill took up the argument almost gratefully.
"It was. A baby doesn't look like an adult human, either. Or maybe ... maybe this was a larva-pupa-butterfly relationship. How can I tell? Or maybe it's just that he changed more than we knew after we saw him last. But I know it was the adult. I know it was the ... the mother. I know, Pete."
Across the fragrant cups Morgan squinted at him, waiting. When Bill offered nothing further, he prompted him gently.
"How do you know, Bill?"
Bill turned a dazzled look at him. "Didn't you see? Think, Pete!"
Morgan thought. Already the image had vanished from outraged memory-centers. He could recall only that it had stood and stared at them, not with eyes, not even with a face, perhaps, as well as he could remember now. He shook his head.
"Didn't you recognize—something? Didn't it look just barely familiar to you? And so did I, to—it. Just barely. I could tell. Don't you understand, Pete? That was almost—very remotely almost—my own grandmother."
And Morgan could see now that it was true. That impossible familiarity had really existed, a distant and latent likeness, relationship along a many-times-removed line stretching across dimensions. He opened his mouth to speak, and again the wrong words came out.
"It didn't happen," he heard himself declaring flatly.
Bil
l gave a faint ghost of a laugh, quavering with a note of hysteria.
"Yes, it happened. It's happened twice at least. Once to me and once to ... Pete, I know what the code was now!"
Morgan blinked, startled by the sudden surprise in his voice. "What code?"
"Faust's. Don't you remember? Of course that's it! But they couldn't tell the truth, or even hint it. You've got to face the thing to believe it. They were right, Pete. Faustus, Rufus—it happened to them both. They—went. They changed. They aren't ... weren't ... human any more. That's what the code meant, Pete."
"I don't get it."
"The code for soul." Bill laughed his ghost of hysterical mirth again. "When you aren't human, you lose your soul. That's what they meant. It was a code word, and it wasn't. There never was a deeper meaning hidden in a code that isn't a code. How could they have hidden it better than to tell the truth? Soul meant soul."
Morgan, listening to the mounting hysteria in his laughter, reached out sharply to check him before it broke the surface, and in one last fleeting instant saw again the impossible face that had looked at them through the doorway of another world. He saw it briefly, indescribably, unmistakably, in the lineaments of Bill's laughter.
Then he seized Bill's shoulder and shook him, and the laughter faded, and the likeness faded, too.
The End
CAMOUFLAGE
Astounding Science Fiction – September, 1945
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Lewis Padgett))
A neat little tale of a man who was no longer a man—by reason of an atomic explosion, he'd become a brain in a can—who was hidden in plain sight. And of a gang of crooks who had to find and kill him, before he killed them!
-
Talman was sweating by the time he reached 16 Knobhill Road. He had to force himself to touch the annunciator plate. There was a low whirring as photoelectrics checked and O.K.'d his fingerprints; then the door opened and Talman walked into the dim hallway. He glanced behind him to where, beyond the hills, the spaceport's lights made a pulsating, wan nimbus.
Then he went on, down a ramp, into a comfortably furnished room where a fat, gray-haired man was sitting in an easy-chair, fingering a highball glass. Tension was in Talman's voice as he said, "Hello, Brown. Everything all right?"
A grin stretched Brown's sagging cheeks. "Sure," he said. "Why not? The police weren't after you, were they?"
Talman sat down and began mixing himself a drink from the server near by. His thin, sensitive face was shadowed.
"You can't argue with your glands. Space does that to me anyway. All the way from Venus I kept expecting somebody to walk up to me and say, 'You're wanted for questioning.' "
"Nobody did."
"I didn't know what I'd find here."
"The police didn't expect us to head for Earth," Brown said, rumpling his gray hair with a shapeless paw. "And that was your idea."
"Yeah. Consulting psychologist to—"
"—to criminals. Want to step out?"
"No," Talman said frankly, "not with the profits we've got in sight already. This thing's big."
Brown grinned. "Sure it is. Nobody ever organized crime before, in just this way. There wasn't any crime worth a row of pins until we started."
"Where are we now, though? On the run."
"Fern's found a foolproof hideout."
"Where?"
"In the asteroid belt. We need one thing, though."
"What's that?"
"An atomic power plant."
Talman looked startled. But he saw that Brown wasn't kidding. After a moment, he put down his glass and scowled.
"I'd say it's impossible. A power plant's too big."
"Yeah," Brown said, "except that this one's going by space to Callisto."
"Highjacking? We haven't enough men—"
"The ship's under Transplant-control."
Talman cocked his head to one side. "Uh. That's out of my line—"
"There'll be a skeleton crew, of course. But we'll take care of them—and take their places. Then it'll simply be a matter of unhitching the Transplant and rigging up manuals. It isn't out of your line at all. Fern and Cunningham can do the technical stuff, but we've got to find out first just how dangerous a Transplant can be."
"I'm no engineer."
Brown went on, ignoring the comment. "The Transplant who's handling this Callisto shipment used to be Bart Quentin. You knew him, didn't you?"
Talman, startled, nodded. "Sure. Years ago. Before—"
"You're in the clear, as far as the police are concerned. Go to see Quentin. Pump him. Find out ... Cunningham will tell you what to find out. After that, we can go ahead. I hope."
"I don't know. I'm not—"
Brown's brows came down. "We've got to find a hideout! That's absolutely vital right now. Otherwise, we might as well walk into the nearest police station and hold out our hands for cuffs. We've been clever, but now—we've got to hide. Fast!"
"Well ... I get that. But do you know what a Transplant really is?"
"A free brain. One that can use artificial gadgets."
"Technically, yeah. Ever seen a Transplant working a power-digger? Or a Venusian sea-dredge? Enormously complicated controls it'd normally take a dozen men to handle?"
"Implying a Transplant's a superman?"
"No," Talman said slowly, "I don't mean that. But I've got an idea it'd be safer to tangle with a dozen men than with one Transplant."
"Well," Brown said, "go up to Quebec and see Quentin. He's there now, I found out. Talk to Cunningham first. We'll work out the details. What we've got to know are Quentin's powers and his vulnerable points. And whether or not he's telepathic. You're an old friend of Quentin, and you're a psychologist, so you're the guy for the job.
"Yeah."
"We've got to get that power plant. We've got to hide, now!"
-
Talman thought that Brown had probably planned this from the beginning. The fat man was shrewd enough; he'd been sufficiently clever to realize that ordinary criminals would stand no chance in a highly technical, carefully specialized world. Police forces could call on the sciences to aid them. Communication was excellent and fast, even between the planets. There were gadgets—The only chance of bringing off a successful crime was to do it fast and then make an almost instantaneous getaway.
But the crime had to be planned. When competing against an organized social unit, as any crook does, it's wise to create a similar unit. A blackjack has no chance against a rifle. A strong-arm bandit was doomed to quick failure, for a similar reason. The traces he left would be analyzed; chemistry, psychology, and criminology would track him down; he'd be made to confess. Made to, without any third-degree methods. So—
So Cunningham was an electronics engineer. Fern was an astrophysicist. Talman himself was a psychologist. Big, blond Dalquist was a hunter, by choice and profession, beautifully integrated and tremendously fast with a gun. Cotton was a mathematician—and Brown himself was the co-ordinator. For three months the combination had worked successfully on Venus. Then, inevitably, the net closed, and the unit filtered back to Earth, ready to take the next step in the long-range plan. What it was Talman hadn't known till now. But he could readily see its logical necessity.
In the vast wilderness of the Asteroid Belt they could hide forever, if necessary, emerging to pull off a coup whenever opportunity offered. Safe, they could build up an underground criminal organization, with a spy-system flung broadcast among the planets—yes, it was the inevitable way. Just the same, he felt hesitant about matching wits with Bart Quentin. The man wasn't—human—any more—
-
He was worried on the way to Quebec. Cosmopolitan though he was, he couldn't help anticipating tension, embarrassment, when he saw Quent. To pretend to ignore that—accident—would be too obvious. Still—He remembered that, seven years ago, Quentin had possessed a fine, muscular physique, and had been proud of his skill as a dancer. As for Linda, he wondered wha
t had happened on that score. She couldn't still be Mrs. Bart Quentin, under the circumstances. Or could she?
He watched the St. Lawrence, a dull silver bar, below the plane as it slanted down. Robot pilots—a narrow beam. Only during violent storms did standard pilots take over. In space it was a different matter. And there were other jobs, enormously complicated, that only human brains could handle. A very special type of brain, at that.
A brain like Quentin's.
Talman rubbed his narrow jaw and smiled wanly, trying to locate the source of his worry. Then he had the answer. Did Quent, in this new incarnation, possess more than five senses? Could he detect reactions a normal man could not appreciate? If so, Van Talman was definitely sunk.
He glanced at his seat-mate, Dan Summers of Wyoming Engineers, through whom he had made the contact with Quentin. Summers, a blond young man with sun-wrinkles around his eyes, grinned casually.
"Nervous?"
"Could be that," Talman said. "I was wondering how much he'll have changed."
"Results are different in every case."
The plane, beam controlled, slid down the slopes of sunset air toward the port. Quebec's lighted towers made an irregular backdrop.
"They do change, then?"
"I suppose, psychically, they've got to. You're a psychologist, Mr. Talman. How'd you feel if—"
"There might be compensations."
Summers laughed. "That's an understatement. Compensations ... why, immortality's only one such ... compensation!"
"You consider that a blessing?" Talman asked.
"Yes, I do. He'll remain at the peak of his powers for God knows how long. There'll be no deterioration. Fatigue poisons are automatically eliminated by irradiation. Brain cells can't replace themselves, of course, the way ... say ... muscular tissue can; but Quent's brain can't be injured, in its specially built case. Arteriosclerosis isn't any problem, with the plasmic solution we use—no calcium's deposited on the artery walls. The physical condition of his brain is automatically and perfectly controlled. The only ailments Quent can ever get are mental."