The Seeds of Time
Page 17
The chief difficulty I foresaw was that the machine must remain. He had had to leave it, but never guessed, I suppose, that I should be able to use it. And if I were to use it, I should have to leave it there for him to use again. My object must be to stop him doing that. It would be risky to set the machine to destroy itself. The process is to some extent hypnotic, and by no means instantaneous. Something very queer indeed would be likely to happen if it were destroyed while the transmission was in progress. Besides, he would be able to build another. As long as he existed he would be able to build another … That made the answer fairly obvious …
When I had made my plan I tried the instrument several times, but he was well integrated and aware of himself. I saw that I should have to catch him asleep, as he had caught me, so I went on trying at intervals of four hours.
I don’t know whether he outguessed me or whether he was just lucky. I had got hold of the poison a year before, to keep by me in case things got too bad. My first idea was to swallow it in a capsule which would take some little time to dissolve. But then I got to thinking what would happen if something should go wrong and I could not make the transfer in time, so I scared myself off that scheme. Instead, I poured the poison into the dope bottle. The crystals were white, just like the dope itself, only a little larger.
Once I got a response from the instrument it was easier than I had expected. I took hold of the two handles, and concentrated all my attention on the lens. I felt giddy, the room swayed and blurred, when it cleared I was back in that green room, with Clytassamine beside me. I reached my hands towards her, and then stopped, for I could hear her quietly crying. I had never known her to do that before.
‘What is it, Clya? What is the matter?’ I asked.
For a moment she went absolutely quiet. Then she said, incredulously:
‘It’s – it’s not Terry?’
‘But it is. I told you I was not going to be sent back there,’ I assured her.
She drew in her breath. Then she started to cry again, but differently. I put my arm round her. After a while I asked:
‘Clya, what is it? What’s all this about?’
She sniffled. ‘It’s Hymorell. Your world’s done something dreadful to him. When he came back he was harsh and bitter. He kept on talking of pain and suffering, and he was – cruel.’
It did not greatly surprise me. They knew little or nothing of illness or physical discomfort. If a body became in the least defective, they transferred. They had never had to learn the hard way.
‘Why didn’t it do that to you, too?’ she asked.
‘I think it did at first,’ I admitted. ‘But one has to learn that that doesn’t help much.’
‘I was afraid of him. He was cruel,’ she repeated.
I kept myself awake for forty-eight hours, to make sure. I knew that one of the first things he would need when he woke was the dope, but there was no sense in taking chances. Then I let myself sleep.
When I opened my eyes, I was back here. It was no slow awakening. I knew in a flash that he had somehow suspected that dope, and avoided it. The instrument was beside me, and I saw a thin curl of smoke rising from it as though a cigarette had been left burning. I began to reach towards it, but then caution checked me. I caught the leads, and pulled them out. In among the wiring I found a small can with a glowing fuse attached. I flung the thing hastily through the window. He too, however, had had to allow a safety margin: it was half an hour before it went off.
I looked at the dope. I was needing it badly, but I didn’t dare to touch it. I trundled my chair over to the cupboard where the spare supply was kept. But when I took out the bottle, I hesitated. It looked like the real stuff, and intact – but, then, of course, it was essential that it should. Deliberately I threw it into the fireplace, smashing the bottle, and wheeled my chair to the telephone. The doctor was pretty short with me, but he came, bringing the stuff with him, thank God.
Various plans occurred to me. A poisoned needle, for instance, set strategically in the arm of the chair. Or some infection which would take a few days to develop – but that was too risky on account of possible delays. And over the former I was up against a problem which also baulked several other ideas. The disabled have so little privacy. It is difficult enough to get the deadlier poisons, anyway: when it has to be done by finding a third party ready to flout the law, it becomes virtually impossible. And if someone did do it for me he would later appear as an accessory to suicide. The same objection applied to my laying hands on a few sticks of dynamite. But I could buy a time switch without many questions – and I did.
It was, I thought, a neat arrangement. My old service pistol was trained on the exact position my head would occupy when I was at the instrument. Only if you were searching for it would you notice the muzzle looking out from the book-shelves. It was fixed to fire when the two handles of the instrument were grasped – but not until the time-switch had gone in. Thus I could set the switch and operate the instrument. Two hours later, for safe margin, the switch would go over, and the thing become lethal. If I tried and failed to make contact, I had only to set the switch again.
I waited three days, reckoning that Hymorell would be as chary of sleep as I had been, and uncertain whether his little grenade had been successful. Then I tried, successfully. But three days later I was back again in my chair.
Hymorell, damn him, was too cautious. He must have spotted the extra lead to the switch right away. It had been snipped off … But I found his little surprise-packet, too – I would have melted the instrument, and most likely myself, too, if I had touched it before disconnecting. (The switch was thermostatic this time, set to cut in as the room cooled down – very neat.) The pistol and the time-switch had vanished, and I set about looking for them everywhere within range of my chair. I didn’t find the pistol, but the switch was in the cupboard under the stairs. It was arranged to set off a percussion cap which would ignite a grey powder obviously taken from the pistol cartridges. There was paper and oily rag close by.
Once I had made sure there were no other booby traps around, I settled down to work out another little reception device of my own. There used to be a type of mine that the Germans used which didn’t go up until the seventh truck had passed over it. The idea had points. I spent a couple of days fixing that, and then turned to the transference instrument again.
I was getting sick of the game, but it seemed to be a duel which could only end with one of us outsmarting the other. But while I was keeping awake for a couple of days and trying to look ahead to what he might have laid for me if my present little gimmick failed to catch him, I had an idea. I took it to Clytassamine.
‘Look here,’ I said. ‘Suppose I were to transfer to one of the feeble-minded the way you people do. Then when he operates again, it will be the half-wit who will take my place in the chair. We’ll both be here and the whole thing will be solved.’
She shook her head. ‘You need some sleep, Terry. You’re getting fuddled. It’s your mind he’s working the exchange with. It wouldn’t make any difference what kind of body you were using.’
She was right, of course. I was fuddled. On the third day I just had to sleep, come hell or high water. I slept for about fourteen of their hours – and woke up in the same place.
That was great. I couldn’t believe he’d let that length of time pass without making an attempt if he were in a state to do so. There was justification for believing that my little gadget had brought it off this time, and at last I began to feel easier.
As the days went on, I began to grow sure. After the first half dozen times my dread of sleep diminished. At last I began to feel like a citizen of this other world, and to look for my place in it. With unlimited time ahead of me I didn’t intend to spend it hanging around the way the rest of them did.
‘Maybe there is only chance now,’ I said to Clytassamine, ‘but did you never hear of making chances?’
She smiled, but, it seemed to me, a little wearily.
Why the change should suddenly have come over me then, I can’t say. Maybe it wasn’t that sudden, and had been working up awhile, but as I looked back at her I found myself seeing her quite differently, and a cold feeling came over me. For the first time I saw beyond her perfect form and young loveliness. Inside, she was old – old and wearied – old, too, far beyond my reach. She thought of me as a child, and had been treating me as one. The vigour of my true youth had amused her – perhaps she had found that it revived her own for a while. Now she was tired of it – and of me. I saw that in the moment I fell out of love with her, in that moment when her charm turned to experienced sophistication, and every gesture showed as something practised and known. I knew that the freshness I saw was nothing but a sham. I must have stared at her quite a while.
‘You don’t want me any more,’ I told her. ‘I’ve ceased to be amusing. You want Hymorell.’
‘Yes, Terry,’ she said, quietly.
For the next day or two I pondered over what to do. I had never liked that world. It was effete and decaying. And now what pleasantness there had been had vanished. I felt imprisoned, stifled, appalled at the prospect of spending several lifetimes in it. Now that a return to my former torments seemed improbable, the prospect here looked, in another way, little, if any better. For the first time I began to wonder whether finiteness wasn’t one of life’s more important qualities. I quailed miserably at the prospect of an existence that was almost eternal …
But my worry was not necessary. I am in no danger of indefinite existence. I went to sleep despondent in the great green building, and when I woke I was in this place.
How Hymorell can have done it I don’t altogether understand. I guess he was equally tired of the game we’d been playing. I think he must have constructed a transference instrument of the ordinary type they use in that world of his. Then he must have used it in conjunction with the other to effect a kind of triangular transference – possibly in two stages. Assuming that the other part of it worked as well as mine, Hymorell returned to his own body, and a feeble-minded patient from this institution was transferred to my chair. It succeeded in its purpose of separating me from the transfer instrument.
When I realized what had happened I wrote at once under the name I have here inquiring about Terry Molton whom I claimed as an acquaintance. I learned that he was dead. He had apparently electrocuted himself with some experimental radio apparatus. The resulting fuse had started a fire in the room, but it had been discovered and put out before it could spread further. The time of its discovery was some three hours after I had woken to find myself in this place.
My position here is difficult. If I pretend to be Stephen Dallboy I am a moron committed for care; if I claim to be Terry Molton I am thought to have hallucinations. I see little chance that I shall be able to reclaim my rightful property, but I think I shall be able to show myself sufficiently normal to be released.
On balance that would not be too bad. I do at least have all the parts of a passable body now. And I reckon I ought to be able to use them profitably here in the kind of world where I do understand something of what’s going on. So I gain more than I lose.
Nevertheless, I am Terry Molton.
… It is, as you will realize, a well-integrated hallucination, but if there is nothing more serious we shall undoubtedly release the patient experimentally in due course.
However, we do feel that we should acquaint you with one or two discrepant points. One is that, although the two men appear never to have met, Stephen Dallboy is informed in remarkably intimate detail of Terence Molton’s affairs. Another is that when confronted for test purposes with two friends of Molton’s he immediately addressed them by name and seemed to know all about them – to their great astonishment, for they protest that in no way whatever – save, perhaps, in manner of speech – does he in the least resemble Terence Molton.
You will find herewith full legal proof that the patient is indeed Stephen Dallboy. Should there be any further developments we will keep you advised.
Yours truly,
Jesse K. Johnson
(Medical Director)
Dumb Martian
When Duncan Weaver bought Lellie for – no, there could be trouble putting it that way – when Duncan Weaver paid Lellie’s parents one thousand pounds in compensation for the loss of her services, he had a figure of six, or, if absolutely necessary, seven hundred in mind.
Everybody in Port Clarke that he had asked about it assured him that that would be a fair price. But when he got up country it hadn’t turned out quite as simple as the Port Clarkers seemed to think. The first three Martian families he had tackled hadn’t shown any disposition to sell their daughters at all; the next wanted £1,500, and wouldn’t budge; Lellie’s parents had started at £1,500, too, but they came down to £1,000 when he’d made it plain that he wasn’t going to stand for extortion. And when, on the way back to Port Clarke with her, he came to work it out, he found himself not so badly pleased with the deal after all. Over the five-year term of his appointment it could only cost him £200 a year at the worst – that is to say if he were not able to sell her for £400, maybe £500 when he got back. Looked at that way, it wasn’t really at all unreasonable.
In town once more, he went to explain the situation and get things all set with the Company’s Agent.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you know the way I’m fixed with this five-year contract as Way-load Station Superintendent on Jupiter IV/II? Well, the ship that takes me there will be travelling light to pick up cargo. So how about a second passage on her?’ He had already taken the precautionary step of finding out that the Company was accustomed to grant an extra passage in such circumstances, though not of right.
The Company’s Agent was not surprised. After consulting some lists, he said that he saw no objection to an extra passenger. He explained that the Company was also prepared in such cases to supply the extra ration of food for one person at the nominal charge of £200 per annum, payable by deduction from salary.
‘What! A thousand pounds!’ Duncan exclaimed.
‘Well worth it,’ said the Agent. ‘It is nominal for the rations, because it’s worth the Company’s while to lay out the rest for something that helps to keep an employee from going nuts. That’s pretty easy to do when you’re fixed alone on a way-load station, they tell me – and I believe them. A thousand’s not high if it helps you to avoid a crack-up.’
Duncan argued it a bit, on principle, but the Agent had the thing cut and dried. It meant that Lellie’s price went up to £2,000 – £400 a year. Still, with his own salary at £5,000 a year, tax free, unspendable during his term on Jupiter IV/II, and piling up nicely, it wouldn’t come to such a big slice. So he agreed.
‘Fine,’ said the Agent. ‘I’ll fix it, then. All you’ll need is an embarkation permit for her, and they’ll grant that automatically on production of your marriage certificate.’
Duncan stared.
‘Marriage certificate! What, me! Me marry a Mart!’
The Agent shook his head reprovingly.
‘No embarkation permit without it. Anti-slavery regulation. They’d likely think you meant to sell her – might even think you’d bought her.’
‘What, me!’ Duncan said again, indignantly.
‘Even you,’ said the Agent. ‘A marriage licence will only cost you another ten pounds – unless you’ve got a wife back home, in which case it’ll likely cost you a bit more later on.’
Duncan shook his head.
‘I’ve no wife,’ he assured him.
‘Uh-huh,’ said the Agent, neither believing, nor disbelieving. ‘Then what’s the difference?’
Duncan came back a couple of days later, with the certificate and the permit. The Agent looked them over.
‘That’s okay,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll co
nfirm the booking. My fee will be one hundred pounds.’
‘Your fee! What the – ?’
‘Call it safeguarding your investment,’ said the Agent.
The man who had issued the embarkation permit had required one hundred pounds, too. Duncan did not mention that now, but he said, with bitterness:
‘One dumb Mart’s costing me plenty.’
‘Dumb?’ said the Agent, looking at him.
‘Speechless plus. These hick Marts don’t know they’re born.’
‘H’m,’ said the Agent. ‘Never lived here, have you?’
‘No,’ Duncan admitted. ‘But I’ve laid-over here a few times.’
The Agent nodded.
‘They act dumb, and the way their faces are makes them look dumb,’ he said, ‘but they were a mighty clever people, once.’
‘Once, could be a long time ago.’
‘Long before we got here they’d given up bothering to think a lot. Their planet was dying, and they were kind of content to die with it.’
‘Well, I call that dumb. Aren’t all planets dying, anyway?’
‘Ever seen an old man just sitting in the sun, taking it easy? It doesn’t have to mean he’s senile. It may do, but very likely he can snap out of it and put his mind to work again if it gets really necessary. But mostly he finds it not worth the bother. Less trouble just to let things happen.’
‘Well, this one’s only about twenty – say ten and a half of your Martian years – and she certainly lets ’em happen. And I’d say it’s a kind of acid test for dumbness when a girl doesn’t know what goes on at her own wedding ceremony.’
And then, on top of that, it turned out to be necessary to lay out yet another hundred pounds on clothing and other things for her, bringing the whole investment up to £2,310. It was a sum which might possibly have been justified on a really smart girl, but Lellie … But there it was. Once you made the first payment, you either lost on it, or were stuck for the rest. And, anyway, on a lonely way-load station even she would be company – of a sort …