Viewpoint

by Randall Garrett

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net

  VIEWPOINT.

  BY RANDALL GARRETT

  Illustrated by Bernklau

  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  _A fearsome thing is a thing you're afraid of--and it has nothing whatever to do with whether others are afraid, nor with whether it is in fact dangerous. It's your view of the matter that counts!_

  There was a dizzy, sickening whirl of mental blackness--not trueblackness, but a mind-enveloping darkness that was filled with themulti-colored little sparks of thoughts and memories that scatteredthrough the darkness like tiny glowing mice, fleeing from somethingunknown, fleeing outwards and away toward a somewhere that was equallyunknown; scurrying, moving, changing--each half recognizable as itpassed, but leaving only a vague impression behind.

  Memories were shattered into their component data bits in that maelstromof not-quite-darkness, and scattered throughout infinity and eternity.Then the pseudo-dark stopped its violent motion and became still, nolonger scattering the fleeing memories, but merely blanketing them. Andslowly--ever so slowly--the powerful cohesive forces that existedbetween the data-bits began pulling them back together again as thenot-blackness faded. The associative powers of the mind began puttingthe frightened little things together as they drifted back in from vastdistances, trying to fit them together again in an ordered whole. Like avast jigsaw puzzle in five dimensions, little clots and patches formedas the bits were snuggled into place here and there.

  The process was far from complete when Broom regained consciousness.

  * * * * *

  Broom sat up abruptly and looked around him. The room was totallyunfamiliar. For a moment, that seemed perfectly understandable. Whyshouldn't the room look odd, after he had gone through--

  What?

  He rubbed his head and looked around more carefully. It was not justthat the room itself was unfamiliar as a whole; the effect was greaterthan that. It was not the first time in his life he had regainedconsciousness in unfamiliar surroundings, but always before he had beenaware that only the pattern was different, not the details.

  He sat there on the floor and took stock of himself and hissurroundings.

  He was a big man--six feet tall when he stood up, and proportionatelyheavy, a big-boned frame covered with hard, well-trained muscles. Hishair and beard were a dark blond, and rather shaggy because of the timehe'd spent in prison.

  Prison!

  Yes, he'd been in prison. The rough clothing he was wearing wascertainly nothing like the type of dress he was used to.

  He tried to force his memory to give him the information he was lookingfor, but it wouldn't come. A face flickered in his mind for a moment,and a name. Contarini. He seemed to remember a startled look on theItalian's face, but he could neither remember the reason for it nor whenit had been. But it would come back; he was sure of that.

  Meanwhile, where the devil was he?

  From where he was sitting, he could see that the room was fairly large,but not extraordinarily so. A door in one wall led into another room ofabout the same size. But they were like no other rooms he had ever seenbefore. He looked down at the floor. It was soft, almost as soft as abed, covered with a thick, even, resilient layer of fine material ofsome kind. It was some sort of carpeting that covered the floor fromwall to wall, but no carpet had ever felt like this.

  He lifted himself gingerly to his feet. He wasn't hurt, at least. Hefelt fine, except for the gaps in his memory.

  The room was well lit. The illumination came from the ceiling, whichseemed to be made of some glowing, semitranslucent metal that cast ashadowless glow over everything. There was a large, bulky table near thewall away from the door; it looked almost normal, except that theobjects on it were like nothing that had ever existed. Their purposeswere unknown, and their shapes meaningless.

  He jerked his head away, not wanting to look at the things on the table.

  The walls, at least, looked familiar. They seemed to be paneled in somefine wood. He walked over and touched it.

  And knew immediately that, no matter what it looked like, it wasn'twood. The illusion was there to the eye, but no wood ever had such ahard, smooth, glasslike surface as this. He jerked his fingertips away.

  He recognized, then, the emotion that had made him turn away from theobjects on the table and pull his hand away from the unnatural wall. Itwas fear.

  Fear? Nonsense! He put his hand out suddenly and slapped the wall withhis palm and held it there. There was nothing to be afraid of!

  He laughed at himself softly. He'd faced death a hundred times duringthe war without showing fear; this was no time to start. What would hismen think of him if they saw him getting shaky over the mere touch of awoodlike wall?

  The memories were coming back. This time, he didn't try to probe forthem; he just let them flow.

  He turned around again and looked deliberately at the big, bulky table.There was a faint humming noise coming from it which had escaped hisnotice before. He walked over to it and looked at the queerly-shapedthings that lay on its shining surface. He had already decided that thetable was no more wood than the wall, and a touch of a finger to thesurface verified the decision.

  The only thing that looked at all familiar on the table was a sheaf ofwritten material. He picked it up and glanced over the pages, noticingthe neat characters, so unlike any that he knew. He couldn't read a wordof it. He grinned and put the sheets back down on the smooth table top.

  The humming appeared to be coming from a metal box on the other side ofthe table. He circled around and took a look at the thing. It had leversand knobs and other projections, but their functions were notimmediately discernible. There were several rows of studs with variousunrecognizable symbols on them.

  This would certainly be something to tell in London--when and if he evergot back.

  He reached out a tentative finger and touched one of the symbol-markedstuds.

  There was a loud _click!_ in the stillness of the room, and he leapedback from the device. He watched it warily for a moment, but nothingmore seemed to be forthcoming. Still, he decided it might be best to letthings alone. There was no point in messing with things that undoubtedlycontrolled forces beyond his ability to cope with, or understand. Afterall, such a long time--

  He stopped, Time? _Time?_

  What had Contarini said about time? Something about its being like ariver that flowed rapidly--that much he remembered. Oh, yes--and that itwas almost impossible to try to swim backwards against the current or... something else. What?

  He shook his head. The more he tried to remember what his fellowprisoner had told him, the more elusive it became.

  He had traveled in time, that much was certain, but how far, and inwhich direction? Toward the future, obviously; Contarini had made itplain that going into the past was impossible. Then could he, Broom, getback to his own time, or was he destined to stay in this--place?Wherever and whenever it was.

  Evidently movement through the time-river had a tendency to disorganizea man's memories. Well, wasn't that obvious anyway? Even normal movementthrough time, at the rate of a day per day, made some memories fade. Andsome were lost entirely, while others remained clear and bright. Whatwould a sudden jump of centuries do?

  His memory was improving, though. If he just let it alone, most of itwould come back, and he could orient himself. Meanwhile, he might aswell explore his surroundings a little more. He resolved to keep hishands off anything that wasn't readily identifiable.

  *
* * * *

  There was a single oddly-shaped chair by the bulky table, and behind thechair was a heavy curtain which apparently covered a window. He couldsee a gleam of light coming through the division in the curtains.

  Broom decided he might as well get a good look at whatever was outsidethe building he was in. He stepped over, parted the curtains, and--

  --And gasped!

  It was night time outside, and the sky was clear. He recognized thefamiliar constellations up there. But they were dimmed by the light fromthe city that stretched below him.

  And what a city! At first, it was difficult for his eyes to convey theirimpressions intelligently to his brain. What they were recording was sounfamiliar that his brain could not decode the messages they sent.

  There were broad, well-lit streets that stretched on and on, as far ashe could see, and beyond them, flittering fairy bridges rose into theair and arched into the distance. And the buildings towered overeverything. He forced himself to look down, and it made him dizzy. Thebuilding he was in was so high that it would have projected through