A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Ashton, or his client, had thought of everything. They stopped once at a park bench to rest and enjoy some sandwiches and regain their breath. When at last they reached the Museum, neither felt any the worse for the unaccustomed exercise.

  They walked together though the gates of the Museum—unable, despite logic, to avoid speaking in whispers—and up the wide stone steps into the entrance hall. Ashton knew his way perfectly. With whimsical humour he displayed his Reading Room ticket as they walked, at a respectful distance, past the statuesque attendants. It occurred to him that the occupants of the great chamber, for the most part, looked just the same as they normally did, even without the benefit of the accelerator.

  It was a straightforward but tedious job collecting the books that had been listed. They had been chosen, it seemed, for their beauty as works of art as much as for their literary content. The selection had been done by someone who knew his job. Had they done it themselves, Ashton wondered, or had they bribed other experts as they were bribing him? He wondered if he would ever glimpse the full ramifications of their plot.

  There was a considerable amount of panel-smashing to be done, but Ashton was careful not to damage any books, even the unwanted ones. Whenever he had collected enough volumes to make a comfortable load, Steve carried them out into the courtyard and dumped them on the paving stones until a small pyramid had accumulated.

  It would not matter if they were left for short periods outside the field of the accelerator. No one would notice their momentary flicker of existence in the normal world.

  They were in the library for two hours of their time, and paused for another snack before passing to the next job. On the way Ashton stopped for a little private business. There was a tinkle of glass as the tiny case, standing in solitary splendour, yielded up its treasure: then the manuscript of Alice was safely tucked into Ashton’s pocket.

  Among the antiquities, he was not quite so much at home. There were a few examples to be taken from every gallery, and sometimes it was hard to see the reasons for the choice. It was as if—and again he remembered Albenkian’s words—these works of art had been selected by someone with totally alien standards. This time, with a few exceptions, they had obviously not been guided by the experts.

  For the second time in history the case of the Portland Vase was shattered. In five seconds, thought Ashton, the alarms would be going all over the Museum and the whole building would be in an uproar. And in five seconds he could be miles away. It was an intoxicating thought, and as he worked swiftly to complete his contract he began to regret the price he had asked. Even now, it was not too late.

  HE FELT the quiet satisfaction of the good workman as he watched Steve carry the great silver tray of the Mildenhall Treasure out into the courtyard and place it beside the now impressive pile. “That’s the lot,” he said. “I’ll settle up at my place this evening. Now let’s get this gadget off you.”

  They walked out into High Holborn and chose a secluded side street that had no pedestrians near it. Ashton unfastened the peculiar buckle and stepped back from his cohort, watching him freeze into immobility as he did so. Steve was vulnerable again, moving once more with all the other men in the stream of time. But before the alarm had gone out he would have lost himself in the London crowds.

  When he re-entered the Museum yard, the treasure had already gone. Standing where it had been was his visitor of—how long ago? She was still poised and graceful, but, Ashton thought, looking a little tired. He approached until their fields merged and they were no longer separated by an impassable gulf of silence. “I hope you’re satisfied,” he said. “How did you move the stuff so quickly?”

  She touched the bracelet around her own wrist and gave a wan smile. “We have many other powers beside this.”

  “Then why did you need my help?”

  “There were technical reasons. It was necessary to remove the objects we required from the presence of other matter. In this way, we could gather only what we needed and not waste our limited—what shall I call them?—transporting facilities. Now may I have the bracelet back?”

  Ashton slowly handed over the one he was carrying, but made no effort to unfasten his own. There might be danger in what he was doing, but he intended to retreat at the first sign of it.

  “I’m prepared to reduce my fee,” he said. “In fact I’ll waive all payment—in exchange for this.” He touched his wrist, where the intricate metal band gleamed in the sunlight.

  She was watching him with an expression as fathomless as the Gioconda smile. (Had that, Ashton wondered, gone to join the treasure he had gathered? How much had they taken from the Louvre?)

  “I would not call that reducing your fee. All the money in the world could not purchase one of those bracelets.”

  “Or the things I have given you.”

  “You are greedy, Mr. Ashton. You know that with an accelerator the entire world would be yours.”

  “What of that? Do you have any further interest in our planet, now you have taken what you need?”

  There was a pause. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. “So you have guessed I do not belong to your world.”

  “Yes. And I know that you have other agents besides myself. Do you come from Mars, or won’t you tell me?”

  “I am quite willing to tell you. But you may not thank me if I do.”

  ASHTON looked at her warily. What did she mean by that? Unconscious of his action, he put his wrist behind his back, protecting the bracelet.

  “No, I am not from Mars, or any planet of which you have ever heard. You would not understand what I am. Yet I will tell you this. I am from the Future.”

  “The Future! That’s ridiculous!”

  “Indeed? I should be interested to know why.”

  “If that sort of thing were possible, our past history would be full of time travellers. Besides, it would involve a reductio ad absurdum. Going into the past could change the present and produce all sorts of paradoxes.”

  “Those are good points, though not perhaps as original as you suppose. But they only refute the possibility of time travel in general, not in the very special case which concerns us now.”

  “What is peculiar about it?” he asked.

  “On very rare occasions, and by the release of an enormous amount of energy, it is possible to produce a—singularity—in time. During the fraction of a second when that singularity occurs, the past becomes accessible to the future, though only in a restricted way. We can send our minds back to you, but not our bodies.”

  “You mean,” said Ashton, “that you are borrowing the body I see?”

  “Oh, I have paid for it, as I am paying you. The owner has agreed to the terms. We are very conscientious in these matters.”

  Ashton was thinking swiftly. If this story was true, it gave him a definite advantage.

  “You mean,” he continued, “that you have no direct control over matter, and must work through human agents?”

  “Yes. Even those bracelets were made here, under our mental control.”

  She was explaining too much too readily, revealing all her weaknesses. A warning signal was flashing in the back of Ashton’s mind, but he had committed himself too deeply to retreat.

  “Then it seems to me,” he said slowly, “that you cannot force me to hand this bracelet back.”

  “That is perfectly true.”

  “That’s all I want to know.”

  She was smiling at him now, and there was something in that smile that chilled him to the marrow.

  “We are not vindictive or unkind, Mr. Ashton,” she said quietly. “What I am going to do now appeals to my sense of justice. You have asked for that bracelet; you can keep it. Now I shall tell you just how useful it will be.”

  For a moment Ashton had a wild impulse to hand back the accelerator. She must have guessed his thoughts.

  “No, it’s too late. I insist that you keep it. And I can reassure you on one point. It won’t wear out. It will last you”—again t
hat enigmatic smile—“the rest of your life.

  “Do you mind if we go for a walk, Mr. Ashton? I have done my work here, and would like to have a last glimpse of your world before I leave it forever.”

  She turned toward the iron gates, and did not wait for a reply. Consumed by curiosity, Ashton followed.

  THEY walked in silence until they were standing among the frozen traffic of Tottenham Court Road. For a while she stood staring at the busy yet motionless crowds; then she sighed.

  “I cannot help feeling sorry for them, and for you. I wonder what you would have made of yourselves.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just now, Mr. Ashton, you implied that the future cannot reach back into the past, because that would alter history. A shrewd remark, but, I am afraid, irrelevant. You see, your world has no more history to alter.”

  She pointed across the road, and Ashton turned swiftly on his heels. There was nothing there except a newsboy crouching over his pile of papers. A placard formed an impossible curve in the breeze that was blowing through this motionless world. Ashton read the crudely lettered words with difficulty:

  SUPER-BOMB TEST TODAY

  The voice in his ears seemed to come from a very long way off.

  “I told you that time travel, even in this restricted form, requires an enormous release of energy—far more than a single bomb can liberate, Mr. Ashton. But that bomb is only a trigger—”

  She pointed to the solid ground beneath their feet. “Do you know anything about your own planet? Probably not; your race has learned so little. But even your scientists have discovered that, two thousand miles down, the Earth has a dense, liquid core. That core is made of compressed matter, and it can exist in either of two stable slates. Given a certain stimulus, it can change from one of those states to another, just as a seesaw can tip over at the touch of a finger. But that change, Mr. Ashton, will liberate as much energy as all the earthquakes since the beginning of your world. The oceans and continents will fly into space; the sun will have a second asteroid belt.

  “That cataclysm will send its echoes down the ages, and will open up to us a fraction of a second in your time. During that instant, we are trying to save what we can of your world’s treasures. It is all that we can do; even if your motives were purely selfish and completely dishonest, you have done your race a service you never intended.

  “And now I must return to our ship, where it waits by the ruins of Earth almost a hundred thousand years from now. You can keep the bracelet.”

  The withdrawal was instantaneous. The woman suddenly froze and became one with the other statues in the silent street. He was alone.

  Alone! Ashton held the gleaming bracelet before his eyes, hypnotised by its intricate workmanship and by the powers it concealed. He had made a bargain, and he must keep it. He could live out the full span of his life—at the cost of an isolation no other man had ever known. If he switched off the field, the last seconds of history would tick inexorably away.

  Seconds? Indeed, there was less time than that. For he knew that the bomb must already have exploded.

  He sat down on the edge of the pavement and began to think. There was no need to panic; he must take things calmly, without hysteria. After all, he had plenty of time.

  All the time in the world.

  DISJECTA MEMBRA

  Bill Wesley

  For a while, Hank Ryerson rebelled at the thought that the electronic brain had set out his entire life for him. Then the director of Bubble 14 assured him that the brain was merely a tool—not a master. Hank, and everyone else here, was free to disregard the brain’s recommendations. He could even leave whenever he wished . . .

  FOR THREE hours, the big land cruiser had been racing through the wasteland, passing the villages and isolated farm houses of the Ordinary Men; now it eased over to the edge of the freeway and glided down an exit ramp.

  “Everybody out for Fourteen,” the driver called.

  Hank Ryerson began gathering his things. As he joined the line of young men shuffling toward the door, he glanced around to see how many were going on to Bubble IS—to the PPS bubble, as the students called it. The home of philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. “Where nobody does anything, and everyone knows why not,” some wit had said.

  He counted five students staying on the bus. That meant fifty physicists and engineers getting off at 14. Instinctively he went on the defensive. Ten to one! It didn’t mean a thing. Just the ratio of the work load. Had nothing to do with caste, or any such monkey business. No reason for the PPS men to be so snooty; they didn’t have any more idea of what to expect at Bubble 15 than Hank did at 14.

  Nevertheless, when he was on the ground, Hank’s eyes followed that land cruiser as it curved back onto the freeway and sped on toward Bubble 15. Most of the other students did the same, he noticed. There was something eerie about the PPS men. Well, not eerie, exactly—but strange. As if they shared some important secret . . .

  “Through the green doors, then to your right,” a voice droned from a speaker set in the wall of the bubble. “Leave your baggage where it is—it’ll be taken care of.”

  THE STUDENTS—or exstudents, as they now were—entered a large, bare lobby, and, following directions from another loudspeaker, began shedding their coveralls. Next they passed through a shower, a drying chamber, and finally into a supply room. There they were weighed and measured, then outfitted with new coveralls.

  “All right, gentlemen, through the green doors please,” another loudspeaker instructed them.

  Hank joined the parade again and heard exclamations of disappointment from the first ones through the doors. The next room was large and bare, too, except for the control desks and indicator panels set around the walls, and the familiar plastic-covered stools placed in front of each control desk. It was a duplicate of the Academy’s examination hall where Hank and his classmates had been quizzed and graded every two weeks for the past twenty years.

  “Find a stool quickly, gentlemen,” the unseen guide said. “Close the Ready switch when you’re comfortable. This will be an eighteen minute session.”

  Hank shrugged and took his place before a control desk. He adjusted the headphones, then flipped a lever before him, and the quiz was on.

  “On the panel you see a row of colored lights,” a recorded voice said over the headphones, “corresponding to the switches on the desk in front of you. As the following words are spoken, blink the color which seems most appropriate to you. Power.”

  HANK PRESSED a button that caused a yellow light to blink. He had always thought of yellow for power. The sun, he supposed. He had never given it much thought.

  “Race.”

  Hank blinked the brown light. What other color was there? Everybody was brown . . .

  “Space.”

  He blinked the green light.

  On and on the words came, and almost automatically Hank pressed buttons before him. For twenty years, since his fifth birthday, he had been conditioned to this type of examination. Sometimes the quizzes had been true or false tests; sometimes multiple-choice; and sometimes subconscious suggestion quizzes, such as this one. Whatever the technique of the exam, he knew that it was futile to try to catch the significant questions—the traps. The electronic brain would sneak them in no matter how cautious he was, and when it did, he would give an honest answer—his natural instinct would see to that.

  AFTERWARD, he realized that such words as psychologist and wasteland had been thrown at him, and he guessed that he was being tested for proper conditioning to his new environment. At the time, however, before these words could register effectively on his consciousness, he went on to others and couldn’t remember later which lights he had blinked. It was the same with the number fifteen. He didn’t connect it with Bubble IS until later, and by that time he had no idea what his instinctive reaction had been. If anyone had wanted to know what he thought of the PPS men, they should have asked him, Hank muttered to himse
lf. He thought they were snooty—and strange, that was all. He wasn’t suspicious of them, and he certainly wasn’t jealous. He wouldn’t have traded one of his pure science courses for their entire curriculum . . .

  Finally the session was over and Hank laid aside his headphones. When the others had done the same a different voice addressed them over the speaker system.

  “Welcome to Bubble 14, gentlemen, the home of the nuclear sciences. This is your personal director speaking.”

  There was a pause and Hank found himself wondering if the personnel man was a psychologist. If so, he probably lived in Bubble 15. Maybe they worked out on assignments—like doctors and entertainers . . .

  “You have just taken your last exam,” the personnel director said, and his words were greeted by an enthusiastic cry from the ex-students.

  HE WAITED until the demonstration had subsided, then said, with a touch of good humor in his voice, “I thought you might welcome that announcement. We assume that if the electronic brain doesn’t know you after all this time’, it never will.”

  There was another, milder shout of approval. Then the director’s voice became slightly more serious.

  “I can assure you, however, that the electronic brain does know you. It knows every facet of your character and of your intellect. It knows your ambitions, your prejudices, your subconscious drives, your potentialities, and, perhaps most important, it knows your limitations. In short, it knows you even better than you know yourself.”

  For some reason, Hank felt a little uneasy at the thought of an artificial brain having the psychological drop on him. He glanced around to see if any of the others felt the same. They all seemed satisfied—eager, in fact.

  Must just be me, he thought.