by Jerry
“Just missed a couple of low peaks,” he told himself, fear gripping him. “No need to get panicky, though. There’s still a chance.”
He saw the same patrolman approaching him, and turned and walked the other way. He was staggering a bit because of the unaccustomed drinking bout; but looking back he saw that the patrolman had stopped to watch a helicab, which was coming down in a restricted parkway. He moved off purposefully towards it, and Timothy began to run towards the edge of the Level. Without any hesitation this time he threw himself over the low parapet and fell, turning over and over, to a projecting lower Level.
Then, miraculously, he was walking away unhurt. It had happened after all. He had been just too late, and he was between the peaks, a reluctant immortal. He felt the hard laughter inside him. Nothing could kill him now.
After this he just seemed to wander about in a soundless world, which came to noisy life in occasional burst when he hit an exceptionally long peak. He had a sense of timelessness, and was conscious of being everywhere at once: outside the Rejuvenation Clinics; looking up at his apartment; gazing at strange people, whom he felt he should know, and seeing only vague recognition mixed with fear in their faces; walking along all the Levels; standing in all the bars, and peering at everyone from everywhere in the city. This awful ubiquity filled him with black horror.
Sometimes he was aware of being outside the solar system altogether, journeying through the galaxy with the ice-cold radiance of the unblinking stars his only company, and this was worse. His personality was reduced to shards and then to dust, and the dust scattered over the cosmic wastes, and along the star trails. He saw the myriad planets teeming with strange life forms, experienced the impact of a million alien cultures, and was afraid in every part of him.
The last enemy was not that which he had expected. It was an awareness of the white hot hate of Truth. Not man’s truth; but the truth that was the original Chaos. The truth that he had always rejected with all of his being; for man had risen above this, molding it to his own image and burying, in his subconscious, what wouldn’t fit.
Suddenly, and quite without warning, he beheld the real. It was like the lifting of a third curtain, the truth behind the truth behind the truth. The glimpse that he had was of pure beauty, terrible to behold. He fled across the galaxies and, with each screaming mote of his being, prayed that it would end. Nothing now to be added or taken away, oh Lord, he prayed, except awareness. Let me not be forever and forever . . .
Yet, somehow, it was borne upon him that it could not end like this. It was the final disintegration before the ultimate integration. Gradually, as the realization came, the fear went, and then he knew. He was an integral part of a multidimensional pattern; a part of everyone who had gone before and who would come after, before man even and after man. That terrifying ubiquity, fading now that he had become orientated to something greater than self, was a manifestation of the many facets of that part of the universal mind that he had occupied as an entity, and enclosed.
After the first death there can be no other; only the scattered light returning to its source. He felt a drawing-in of his fragmented personality, and he was content. Somewhere at the center of this spiritual lodestone, serene and ineffable, would be the Word before it was made flesh . . . the healing Word . . . the world’s end, and a new beginning . . .
COUNTER FOIL
George O. Smith
The trouble with teleportation was that it was run by a computer, and computers can count on their fingers, have an enormous number of digits to count on . . . and no sense whatever! They simply can’t see the obvious fact that one and one make three.
It was near the close of a normal day in late July, if a day in late July can properly be called normal. The temperature and the humidity were tied in the mid-nineties; a reporter from the News fired the usual egg on the pavement while his photographer snapped the picture that would adorn tomorrow’s front page. There had been three flying saucer sightings reported, and the Loch Ness monster had made his appearance right on schedule. The cases of heat prostration were running at par, and nerves in the un-airconditioned areas were fraying short. Still, the clock displayed hope as it crawled on toward the end of the work day and promised freedom from bondage and the right to pursue both internal and external liquid happiness.
Gertrude, the videophone receptionist, still looked crisp in her office. Her voice as she responded with the singysongy, “Tele-por-TRAN-sit,” had not lost its lilt. But it was obvious to the caller that Trudy sat in air-conditioned splendor. And either she loathed the idea of leaving her comfort and going home, or she despised him who called. For after the lilting greeting, her voice dropped to a flat, “Oh, it’s you again.”
Johnny Peters smiled. “Show?”
“No.”
“Swim?”
“No.”
“Dinner?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing!”
“Trudy, I’m not poison, you know.”
“Johnny, I know you’re not poison. But you’re not very ambitious, either.”
“Now listen,” he said sharply, “I’m only asking for a date. I’m not offering to have you share my frugal life, bed, and board as a lowly technician. A date I can afford; a wife I can’t.”
“You could try to get ahead.”
“I’ve made my bid. I asked my illustrious leader for advanced training and an accelerated course so I could move along faster, and he said that moving too fast was bad for a young man. Shall I quit now and go elsewhere?”
“Where would you go?”
“That’s the trouble, Trudy. I majored in teleportonics, and it’s either teleportonics or I go back to school and start something new. Think the boss-man will move me faster in Greater Chicago? I doubt it. So I might as well stay right here in Megapolis.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“All right, let’s start over again. Show?”
“Johnny, not tonight. I’m busy.”
“Tomorrow?”
“If we’re not all cooked by then. Call me, Johnny.”
“Will do,” he said with a growing smile.
Johnny Peters broke the connection and checked his instrument panel. The primary powerline from Con Edison was running a tenth of a volt low; with bored, routine gesture he twitched a knob, watched the voltage rise, and then he settled back with little more to do until the end of his shift of duty.
In the distant reaches of the city, the uneasy slumber of a napping woman was broken by a wave of pain. A gush of body-warm wetness brought a flash of things to mind that came and went as fast as thought, far too rapidly to reproduce in any electromechanical medium of expression. She thought, in turn: It was her firstborn. The doctor said there was little point in predicting the arrival of a firstborn because they had no record upon which to base an estimate. The women in her family were prone to deliver in taxicabs and ambulances on the way to the hospital.
A second wave of pain assailed her, interrupting the rapid flow of thought. Then as the pain subsided, she went on: That was fast!
She struggled to her feet and duckwalked heavily on her heels to the videophone. She pressed the button for one of the stored-program numbers and immediately a crisp, cool voice responded, “Tele-port-TRAN-sit,” in the lilt with all four clear tones sounding in order.
“Trudy, this is Irma Fellowes. Can you connect me with Joe?”
“Sure thing. Half a mo’ and you’re on. How’s things?”
“Baby’s on the way.” The simple statement was emphasized by a smothered groan and the grimace of pain on Irma Fellowes’ face.
Trudy gulped and lost her cool, crisp, composure. “Whoops! I’ll give Joe the double-whammy ring.”
The muted wail of a siren came, and almost instantly the scene on the videophone switched to a man, seated at his desk. His face was still changing to a look of puzzled concern. He barked, “Where’s the emergency and wha . . . oh! Irma. Wh . .
. er . . .?”
“Baby’s on the way, Joe.”
“Fine,” he said. “Have you called Maternity?”
“Not yet.”
“Irma, I can’t do you any good at all. I appreciate the information, but it could have waited until you got to the hospital.”
“Joe! It’s your child!”
“Sure. And you’re my wife. Now buzz off here and call the hospital. Get going.”
He hung up; reluctantly because he hated the harshness of the act, but deliberately because it was the only way he could get her to move in the right direction.
Irma Fellowes stared at the videophone as though it should resume operation after a brief interruption. It didn’t. Whatever she started to think at that moment was stopped by another wave of agony. When it subsided, she pressed another button, one that had been set up for a temporary emergency. It connected her with the maternity ward of City Hospital; the plate showed an elderly woman in nurse’s uniform, who said, “Maternity, Nurse Wilkins speaking.”
“This is Mrs. Fellowes. Baby’s on the way.”
“Just how frequent are your pains, Mrs. Fellowes?”
“Rapid. And coming faster all the time.”
Irma was interrupted by another pain, through which, faintly, she heard the muted siren. Nurse Wilkins read off some detailed instructions from a card, speaking unhurriedly to someone that could not be seen on the videophone. When she finished, Nurse Wilkins said to Irma Fellowes, “Take it easy now, there’s a resident doctor, an interne, and a nurse on their way.”
Irma closed the circuit, waddled to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, returned to the living room and paced a bit. Perhaps two minutes passed, then came a rap on the door. She opened it to admit doctor and nurse, followed by the interne pushing a wheeled stretcher. “Hop on,” said the intern.
“I can’t,” groaned Irma.
The doctor scooped her up and deposited her on the stretcher. He applied stethoscope, then palpated her abdomen gently. “O.K.,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go. No problem.”
Irma said, “But I was born in an ambulance, and—”
The doctor laughed. “Mrs. Fellowes, from what little I know of the process, teleportation flips you from entry to exit at the speed of light. Now, even if it were from here to Alpha Centauri, your baby couldn’t be born en route simply because at the speed of light all timing processes come to a quiet standstill. And by ‘timing processes’ I mean things like clocks, and biochemical reactions, births, aging, and death. O.K.?”
“That’s what Joe always says, but—”
“Well, let’s find out if he’s right.”
The corridor was partly cooled from leakage from the air-conditioned apartments, but by contrast it was stifling enough to make Irma gasp. The interne had used foresight; the elevator door was blocked open so that no one could call it away and tie it up. He held the “No Stops” button as the elevator dropped them smoothly to the stage below the first floor. Here the full heat of the city hit them as they made their way along a short corridor to the teleportransit booth.
The signal light turned green as soon as the interne inserted the credit key in the lock-register. He pressed the buttons with a practiced hand, then paused to check the number in the address readout carefully.
“Pays to be careful,” he said.
“Ever goof?” asked the nurse.
“Not really bad,” he replied turning the credit key. The green light changed to orange, which started the circuit-computer on its faster-than-lightning task of selecting the route from this entry station to the address in the read-out panel. The orange turned to red. “Um-m-m. Maternity seems to have another customer,” he said. “We’ll be on our way as soon as they get her out of the booth and close the door.” He looked at the number again.
“Worried?” asked the nurse.
“Not really worried,” he replied. “But I’ve been thoughtful ever since I watched a hapless, well-dressed citizen trying to walk on air back to the diving exit they have over the ocean at Jones Beach. He was still protesting and waving his brief case as he disappeared beneath the billowy wave.”
“I hear you can watch about one per hour on a busy day,” chuckled the doctor.
“Yeah,” said the interne. He looked at the red light. “All right, all ready. Let’s get cutting, huh?”
Two men whose names are legion paused and stood in momentary indecision halfway between Father’s Bar and Grill on Eighth Avenue and the kiosk that led down to the 14th Street Teleportransit Station. Habit clashed with common sense; there was also the reluctance to part company.
“Fast one?”
“In this heat?”
“Father’s is air-conditioned.”
“So’s my apartment. And there I can have the Little Woman construct me a cool, tall one whilst I get out of these clothes and into something comfortable. Then I can sit on the terrace in shorts and have my drink in comfort.”
“You’ve got a point. No sense in leaving the office early if we don’t take advantage of it.”
They turned and headed for the kiosk. Down below, where the subway once rumbled, 14th Street Station was lined with booths, and before each booth was the start of a line-up of people. The big rush hour hadn’t started yet, but there were enough citizens in this area who had the kind of job they could leave early to avoid the big jam. There were quite a number who didn’t have that kind of job, but they left anyway, hoping their dereliction would either be overlooked or forgotten by Monday morning.
The legion of citizens who left their jobs early to avoid the rush were not being watched by Big Brother, but by an impersonal peg-count that drove a dial that indicated the number of completed transits per minute. Beside the dial was a series of animated graphs that compared the day’s traffic against yesterday’s traffic, the same day a year ago, the maximum and minimum for this day any year, and the grand maximum and minimum for any day any year. All of the statistical graphs showed a sudden upsurge at the line denoting five o’clock, and the animated graph-line that displayed today’s traffic was approaching a record.
Today’s traffic had surpassed yesterday’s for the past half hour, but this was not surprising because the rush-hour and just-before-rush traffic was heavier on Friday afternoons. It would undoubtedly repeat itself on Monday morning.
But as the moving finger wrote on toward the critical hour, it approached an all-time record. This would ring no bells nor toot any whistles. It would be duly noted, and a memorandum would be issued authorizing a survey to determine the possible future expansion of facilities; the probable cost of such an expansion; and above all, how much more income would pour into the coffers of Teleportransit, Incorporated.
Walter Long said, “I appreciate your interest, Harry, but I simply can’t go out of line for your Johnny Peters.”
“Is it out of line?” asked Harry Warren.
“Yes, and it is also obvious to us in this section. Or, rather, it would be obvious if I did it.”
“I should think you’d jump at a chance to reward someone who asked for advancement.”
“I would. And I could justify jumping Peters over a number of his seniors if he were outstanding in just one department. But he isn’t outstanding in anything but his ability to lolly-gag with Trudy.”
“You make him sound like a washout.”
“Oh, Peters is no washout,” said Walter Long. “He’s just not sufficiently outstanding to warrant special attention.”
“Well, you must admit that maintaining a monitor over a function-panel for a system that’s adjusted and operated by a computer is not a job that provides an opportunity to be outstanding. There’s just so much verve and vigor with which an ambitious man can turn a small knob to twitch the incoming line voltage by a couple of tenths. This operation gets pretty dull, especially when the computer will twist the knob itself if the line gets more than about a quarter of a volt off.”
“I suppose you’ve a point.”
&
nbsp; “I think I do. But why not ask Johnny’s boss? Joe knows him better than either of us.”
“All right.” Walter Long pressed a button; the intercom on his desk came to life.
Trudy, her composure regained, said, “Yes, Mr. Long?”
“Trudy, connect me with Joe Fellowes, will you?”
“Mr. Fellowes took off a few minutes ago.”
“Where, for the love of Pete?”
“Mrs. Fellowes called and said that her baby was on the way. Joe took off for the maternity ward right after that. I could call him.”
“No, don’t bother right now. Just ask him to see me when he gets back. You’ve no word from the hospital yet, have you?”
“No, but from the way things looked, we won’t have long to wait.”
“O.K. Trudy. Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir.” She closed the circuit; contact died in the middle of her lilting response, “Tele-por-TRAN-sit,” to some incoming caller.
The clock hit five. The dial registering transits per minute rose sharply, and so did the graphs that displayed today’s traffic compared to statistics. The increased load ran the incoming line down, the computer compensated for the drop before Johnny Peters could react. Somewhere down in the power distribution frames, a fuse blew; the local emergency power took over with no interruption while the blown fuse was replaced by a device that had neither nerves to twitch nor fingers to fumble.
The first inkling that something was wrong was given to Joe Fellowes.
Down in the computer, Joe’s emergency trip from the Teleportransit Building to the maternity ward of City Hospital was racked up by the peg count circuits and added to the statistics being compiled in the Accounting Department. The computer also registered the awaiting trip of Mrs. Fellowes, the doctor, the interne, and the nurse. Being a machine, it did not understand about birth and life or death, so it can’t be blamed for not registering the unborn Fellowes infant, alive and a passenger though he be.
Machinelike, it awaited the closing of the booth door that exited in the maternity ward, and when the signal came it promptly processed the party—people, stretcher, and unborn—into the system.