Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  They didn’t respond immediately. They were watching the screen now, and Azard was able to shift his head far enough to watch it too. After, a moment the rim of a glowing yellow formation came drifting into the screen. He realized it was a spawning swarm of billions of tiny sea creatures such as the one they’d seen earlier that night.

  Griliom said without looking around at him, “Down there is an endless supply of bodies which have neither elds nor intelligence. I’ve set the controls on these cases so that the Raceel elds will be released within a minute after the cases strike the surface of the water. They’ll emerge and enter host bodies in which they can live for something less than a standard year—the life span of these creatures. And then they’ll die with them. That’s the way were settling this.”

  Odun added, “But you’re mistaken in one basic respect, Azard. We’re preserving the stored Raceel ova, and a new generation will be raised from them under our supervision. Only some terrible necessity would force us to destroy a species. So your species will not die. Its history, its traditions and its attitudes will die.”

  Azard asked, “And what are we if not our history, our traditions, and our attitudes?”

  The humans didn’t reply, and he wasn’t certain then whether he’d asked the question aloud. He discovered he was indifferent about the matter, and that the question itself had been an indifferent one. Then he noticed that the cruiser had moved close to the surface of the sea, and that someone was opening a hatch. The eld cases were dropped out, and the hatch closed again.

  It occurred to Azard that he had no emotional feeling about this or about anything else. By their skills, they’d drained his emotions from him. He realized next that his senses were dimming and that he was dying. But he remained indifferent to that, too. He decided that in their way they were merciful.

  Then he died.

  Down below, the open eld cases bobbed in the glowing water. The elds, conscious and terribly hungry for physical existence, discovered abruptly that they had been released. They flashed out of the cases and found life in abundance about them. They entered, took possession, affixed themselves. Perhaps for an instant some of them retained awareness enough to understand they had become joined to a form of life which provided no vehicle for consciousness. But then, with nothing to give it support, their own consciousness drained away.

  However, they would live on for a while. For something less than a standard year.

  WOULD YOU?

  After dinner Markus Menzies suggested he might show Geoffrey about the chalet. Geoffrey agreed. The place had belonged previously to some Liechtenstein, and Marcus had bought it five years ago. What a man like Menzies could want with an expensive antique in the heart of the Alps, Geoffrey couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t the proximity of the ski slopes which had drawn Geoffrey into the area for the season. Markus always had looked on sporting activities involving physical exertion or risk as an occupation for lunatics. And he was an old man now. Though, Geoffrey reminded himself, only fifteen years his senior.

  And what, for that matter, had induced Markus to invite him here for dinner tonight? It had been eight years since they last met, considerably longer than that since they’d had any significant dealings with each other. There’d been a time, of course, when Markus Menzies and Geoffrey Bryant had made a great team . . . in aircraft, in textiles, in shipping, in one thing and another, legitimate for the most part, occasionally not quite so legitimate. They’d both made their pile in the process; and then they’d split up. Markus went on to become extremely wealthy; Geoffrey remained as wealthy as he wanted to be or saw any use in being. It made sense to start to enjoy what he had rather than continue maneuvering for more. He wasn’t married, had no intention of getting married, had no dependents of any kind. The world waited to be savored at leisure.

  He’d accepted the telephoned invitation to dinner mainly out of curiosity. Markus wasn’t prone to nostalgic sentimentality; he should have something in mind, and it might be interesting to find out what it was. But nothing was said over dinner to give Geoffrey a definite clue. The talk ranged widely but comfortably. Markus had acquired a variety of hobbies; the chalet might be one of them. He seemed completely relaxed, which meant nothing. If he had a purpose, it would show when he intended it to show, not before.

  “I had quite a start the other day,” he was remarking. “I was coming through the village, and there was a tall slender woman who . . . well, for an instant I actually believed I was looking, over a space of not more than twenty feet, at Eileen Howard.”

  After a moment Geoffrey said soberly, “I’ve made similar mistakes more than once.”

  Markus glanced across the table at him. Briefly his face looked worn and tired, more so than his age indicated. “Not at all like seeing a ghost,” he said, as if to himself. “A compellingly vivid impression of Eileen as she was then. All life, warmth!” He shook his head. “Immediately afterwards, I was unable to understand what could have given me the idea. There was some general resemblance, of course.” His voice trailed off.

  Something in a motion or gesture could be enough, Geoffrey thought. The glimpse of a finely drawn profile, the inflection in a laugh. It hadn’t happened to him in some time. They’d both wanted Eileen; probably they’d both loved her. And because of that, between them in their maneuverings, they shared in a way the responsibility for her accidental death. They’d never talked about it, rarely mentioned Eileen again. But the other’s presence soon became a growing irritation. It was a relief when their informal partnership ended.

  It might have been simply that chance incident in the village which caused Markus to extend his invitation, some sudden urge to speak of Eileen. But he did not seem to want to pursue the subject farther. Geoffrey was glad of it.

  The talk shifted to impersonal things. It was after the brandy that Markus suggested a tour of the chalet. For a while they moved unhurriedly about the big hall downstairs, along corridors, in and out of rooms. Markus had taken the house with its furnishings and left most of those untouched. Landscapes and portraits shared the walls with formidably antlered and horned heads. Markus kept up a line of talk about the chalet’s history and the affairs of previous owners. Geoffrey found himself getting bored.

  “Where’s the mysterious chair you mentioned?” he asked.

  Markus nodded towards the stairway. “Upstairs.” He smiled. “I was saving it for the last. Would you like to see it now?”

  Geoffrey said he would, hoping that would end the tour. He followed his host up a narrow flight of stairs to the third floor of the chalet. Markus stopped before a door, took out a key. Geoffrey looked at him curiously. “You keep the room locked?”

  “Some of the servants know the story,” Markus said. “They have a superstitious feeling about the chair. I think they’re a little afraid of it. So the room remains locked mainly for their peace of mind.” He opened the door, switched on overhead lights. “There it is.”

  The room was not large and the chair dominated it. It stood on a low dais, evidently constructed for the purpose. A sizable chair of smoothly polished wood, rather heavily built but in lines of flowing grace. The carvings were restrained, barely more than indicated, except for an animal head at the end of each broad armrest. The heads lifted out from the chair, pointing into the room. They were oblong and flattened, somewhat like the heads of lizards or snakes.

  Well, it’s a chair, Geoffrey thought. He realized Markus was watching him. “Markus,” he said, “do you expect me to be impressed?”

  Markus smiled. “Why not? You’re looking at a mystery. Do you recognize the period?”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “Period furniture isn’t one of my interests.”

  “The chair is at least two hundred years old,” Markus said. “Records show it was acquired that long ago. They don’t show from whom it was acquired. But it belongs to no definable period.”

  He moved towards the chair, Geoffrey following him. “What would you call that wood?” Marku
s asked.

  Geoffrey shrugged. “Oak, possibly.” Markus stroked a finger along the armrest. “Touch it,” he suggested.

  Geoffrey laid the palm of his hand on the chair, moved it tentatively back and forth, frowned, and pressed down with his fingers.

  “That’s very odd!” he said.

  “What impression do you get?”

  “A smoothness, almost like velvet. Not only that. I had the feeling it was soft, that it was giving a little under my touch. But it obviously is quite solid.”

  He drew his hand away, looked at Markus with increased interest. “What was that story again? That anyone who sits in this chair can change his past life?”

  “That’s it. One sits in the chair. One places his hands”—Markus nodded at the armrests—“on those carved heads—”

  “—and makes a wish, eh?” Geoffrey concluded.

  “No. Not a wish. One is then able, quite literally, to edit the events in his past. Say you made a wrong decision twenty years ago. You can now undo that mistake, and remake the decision. Lost opportunities can be regained, and your life up to the present will have been changed correspondingly. Anything can be changed. Anything. That’s the story.”

  Geoffrey smiled uncomfortably. “You sound almost as if you believed it!”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  Now this was getting eerie. Geoffrey stared at his host. Had Markus gone out of his mind? “You’ve tried it?” he asked.

  “Should I want to change my life? I have my health, my hobbies, my money.”

  “Isn’t there anything you’d like to have done differently?”

  Markus said slowly, “I’m not sure there is.”

  “How did the people who are supposed to have used the chair make out?” Geoffrey asked, smiling to indicate he wasn’t taking this seriously.

  Markus shook his head. “Whoever has tried it evidently preferred not to put the fact on record. Would you?”

  “Probably not.” Geoffrey laughed. “Well, it’s a good story, Markus. And perhaps I’m a little sorry it isn’t true. Because there might be things in my life I would prefer to be otherwise. That wood—it must be wood—is certainly odd! I can’t imagine what kind of treatment was given it to produce that effect.”

  “Put your hand on one of the reptile heads,” Markus said.

  Geoffrey looked at him, then cupped his palm over the carved head nearest him. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Leave it there a moment.”

  Geoffrey shrugged mentally, let his hand rest on the wood. After some seconds his expression changed. Perhaps a minute later, he removed his hand. “This is very curious!” he remarked.

  “What did you experience?” Markus asked.

  “Something like a current of energy. It built up gradually, then held at a steady level. Almost electric. But not at all unpleasant. I gather you’ve felt it.”

  “Yes, I’ve felt it.”

  “While I was sensing this,” Geoffrey said. “I found myself beginning to believe that I could change the past. If I wanted to.”

  “If you’d like to experiment,” Markus told him, “the chair is yours.”

  “How does it work?”

  “The way it’s been described,” said Markus, “you will be in contact with your past as long as you are seated in the chair and keep your hands on the carved heads. You’ll begin to remember past events in all detail and find yourself a part of them again. And if you wish to change them then, turn them into something other than you recall as having happened, you’ll be able to do it. When you’re ready to stop the process, simply lift your hands from the heads. That’s all there is to it . . .”

  So Geoffrey sat in the chair. He gave Markus, standing near the center of the room, watching him, a final probing glance. Then he clasped his hands firmly about the snakelike or lizardlike heads.

  For a few seconds there was nothing. Then came the sense of flowing power, faint and far away, but growing stronger as if he were being drawn towards it, until it seemed all about him and streaming through him.

  Like a great recording tape unreeling in all his senses, the past burst in.

  It was a swift blur of impressions at first. Glimpses of color and motion, the ghostly murmuring of voices, flicks of smell and taste, a sense of shifting physically, a jerking in the muscles. It all rushed past him, or he was rushing, being rushed, through it. There remained some awareness of the room dimly about, of the motionless shadowy shape of Markus Menzies. Emotions began to wash through Geoffrey, a hurrying tide of anxieties, grief, furious anger, high delight, changing from moment to moment . . .

  And then, somewhere in darkness, it all stopped. As if he’d touched a button or switch on a machine, bringing it to a standstill. The awareness arose that he could control this.

  At that point he was caught midway between apprehension—because of the strangeness of the experience—and fascinated interest. Something in him kept insisting that his sensations had been simply sensations, without further significance. That the chair, whatever strange machine the chair might be, was stirring up memories and drawing on them to produce such effects, and that there was nothing else to it, no preternatural connection at all with the realities of the past. But there was also the growing sense of power, of almost godlike power, and of being in control of what occurred here.

  So all right, he thought, let’s try it out. Let’s select some occasion when something went wrong, some very minor thing for a start, and see if I can edit out the mistakes I made.

  And he found such an occasion.

  And then another, and another—

  Until presently he discovered he was sitting in the chair again. His hands were still closed on the carved heads, but the feeling of the flow of power was gone. Markus Menzies stood staring at him, his face set and tense.

  Geoffrey pushed himself rather stiffly to his feet and stepped down from the dais.

  “Well?” Markus said harshly. “What happened?”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “Oh, I was back there all right,” he said. “At least, that was my impression.”

  He smiled carefully. “This is some kind of trickery, I think, Markus. But very clever trickery.”

  “It’s no trick, you fool! Did you change anything?”

  “No, I didn’t change anything. Though I admit I was tempted. Oh, yes! Strongly tempted—” To Geoffrey’s surprise, his voice shook for an instant. “In particular,” he went on, “in that series of events which ended, as you recall, in Eileen’s death.”

  Markus’s face was white now. “You were there—and you did nothing?”

  “I changed nothing,” Geoffrey said irritably. “I felt I could do it. I believe now that feeling was part of the deception. But if it wasn’t deception, if it would have been possible, then I think I was wise not to make the attempt.”

  “You wouldn’t save Eileen?”

  “Markus. Eileen is dead. Quite dead. How could she be made alive again? And assuming she still were alive, had never died, the recent years would not have been at all what they were. That was a consideration. I realized during this that I’ve been very fortunate. The decisions I made, right and wrong, brought me safely to this point in life and into not unfavorable circumstances. In retrospect I know now that the odds were against that, though day by day, as I lived it, I never was fully conscious of them. Think of the countless opportunities each of us is given to turn unawares into the wrong path, the less satisfactory path, even the fatal path . . . no, I don’t care to gamble deliberately against those odds, to place what I am and have now at stake again. And if I had acted in any way, that’s what I would have done. To force change on the past, even in one minor aspect, might alter all the subsequent past in unforeseeable ways. That very well could be disastrous.”

  Markus said, with intense bitterness, “You’re a coward!”

  “Aren’t you?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Yes. I am,” Markus said. “I once sat in that chair as you have done.”

 
; “I was sure you had,” Geoffrey said. “And I don’t blame you entirely for trying to get me to do something for which you didn’t have the courage. But to do it was quite out of the question. Perhaps I might have modified the past without affecting the present external world in any noticeable way. Even that would have brought an element of intolerable uncertainty into my personal existence. As things are, I believe I understand the world and its realities well enough. My life has been based on the feeling of understanding it and being able to deal with it. I want to retain the feeling. And I would have lost it if I had attempted to change the past and succeeded. If I knew that was possible, I could never be sure of the reality of anything about me again. The world would have become as insubstantial and meaningless as a madman’s dream.

  “I don’t want that. I couldn’t live that way. So I won’t put your device to the test. If I haven’t proved that it can do what it is supposed to do, I can continue to believe that it’s impossible. I prefer to believe it.” He added, after a moment, “And so, I think, do you.”

  Markus shrugged heavily. “Did you have the feeling that this was the one opportunity you would be given—that if you didn’t change the past now, you wouldn’t have another chance?”

  “Yes, I had that feeling,” Gregory said. “It was part of the temptation.” He looked over at the dais, and his gaze stayed for a moment on the carved animalic heads lifting silently into the room. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “whether it was a valid feeling or not. Because nothing would induce me to sit in that chair again.”

  He started out of the room. Markus followed and locked the door behind them. As they went down the stairs, Geoffrey said, “I imagine that was your purpose in inviting me here tonight.”

  “Of course it was,” Markus said.

  “When did you have the experience?”

  “Shortly after I bought this place. Almost five years ago.”

  “Have you ever tried to repeat it?”