by Robert Reed
“I can’t go on!” Baker cried . The terrors seemed to be swiftly
closing in .
“Take my hand a moment longer,” said Sam . “Inspect these more
distant paths . There are many of them that will be agreeable to you .”
Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins .
He passed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that
had seemed so bright . He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him
against it . Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark
ugliness that he had not seen before . He shuddered .
Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of
blazing brightness . Baker’s calmness increased as he approached .
“This one,” he said .
He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins’ smile, and nod of
approval .
He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to
die . It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued
through the dark corridor . All this had happened before, and he had
gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden . Somehow, like a circle,
it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for
which he had been willing to die rather than endure again .
It was very bewildering . He did not understand the meaning of
it . But he knew he had corrected a former error . He was back in the
world . He was alive again .
Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that
seemed all but dead . “He’s going to make it,” he said . “We can get
the car out and pick up Baker now .”
They used Sam’s panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and
mud tires . Nothing else could possibly get through . Fenwick left his
own car at Ellerbee’s .
It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through
the muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road . For an hour
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Sam fought the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle
of the brownish ooze that led them through the night . The three men
sat in the cab. Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been
rigged for Baker . Sam told them nothing would be needed except
soap and water, but Fenwick and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off
without some other emergency equipment .
After an hour, Sam said, “He’s close . Just around the next bend .
That’s where his car went off .”
Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car . He was standing
at the edge of the road . He waved an arm wearily .
Fenwick would not have recognized him . And for some seconds
after the car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly
in the beam of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all .
He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie . His
clothes were ripped almost completely away . Those remaining were
stained with blood and red clay, and soaked with rain . Baker’s face
was laced with a network of scars as if he had been slashed with
a shower of glass not too long ago and the wounds were freshly
healed . Blood was caked and cracked on his face and was matted in
his hair .
He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door .
“About time you got here,” he said . “A man could catch his death of
cold standing out here in this weather .”
Dr . William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitaliza-
tion, but he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway . He had
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some thinking to do, and he didn’t know of a better place to get it
done .
There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast
network of very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays
showed to have been only very recently knit, and the violent internal
injuries which gave some evidence of their recent healing . Baker
allowed the speculation to go on without offering explanations . He
let them tap and measure and apply electrical gadgets to their heart’s
content . It didn’t bother the thinking he had to get done .
Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him . The
two approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing .
“Pull up chairs!” he exclaimed . “Just because you saw me looking a
shade less than dead doesn’t mean I’m a ghost now . Sit down . And
where’s Sam? Not that I don’t appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but
Sam and I have got some things to talk about .”
Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected
the other to speak .
“Well, what’s the matter?” demanded Baker . “Nothing’s hap-
pened to Sam, I hope!”
Fenwick spoke finally. “We don’t know where Sam is. We don’t
think we’ll be seeing him again .”
“Why not?” Baker demanded . But in the back of his mind was
the growing suspicion that he knew .
“After your—accident,” said Fenwick, “I went back to the farm
with Ellerbee and Sam because I’d left my car there . I went back to
bed to try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up
again and kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of light-
ning seemed to strike Sam’s silo . Later, Jim went out to check on his
cows and help his man finish up the milking.
“By mid-morning we hadn’t heard anything from Sam and de-
cided to go over and talk to him about what we’d seen him do for
you . I guess it was eleven by the time we got there .”
Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement .
“When we got there,” Fenwick went on, “we saw that the front
door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in . We called
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Sam, but he didn’t answer, so we went on in . Things were a mess .
We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that draw-
ers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out .
Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was
just gone .
“It was that way all through the house . Sam’s bed hadn’t been
disturbed . He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble
of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess .”
“Sounds like the place might have been broken into,” said Baker .
“Didn’t you notify the sheriff?”
“Not after we’d seen what was outside, in back .”
“What was that?”
“We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it . Jim
said he’d always been curious about that silo . It was one of the best
in the county, but Sam never used it . He used a pit .
“When we went out, all the cows were bellowing . They hadn’t
been milked . Sam did all his own work . Jim called his own man to
come and take care of Sam’s cows . Then we had a close look at the
silo . It had split like a banana peel opening up . It hardly seemed
as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it . We climbed over the
broken pieces to look inside . It was still warm in there .
At least six
hours after lightning—or whatever had struck it, the concrete was
still warm . The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were
covered with a glassy glaze .”
“No lightning bolt did that .”
“We know that now,” said Fenwick. “But I had seen the flash
of it myself . Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that
morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning.
Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had
seemed like a thin thread of light striking upward . I thought I must
be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it . In the silo, I remem-
bered . I told Jim .
“We went back through the house once more . In Sam’s bedroom,
as if accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found
this . Take a look!”
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Fenwick held out a small book . It had covers and pages as did
any ordinary book. But when Baker’s fingers touched the book,
something chilled his backbone .
The material had the feel and appearance of white leather—yet
Baker had the insane impression that the cells of that leather still
formed a living substance . He opened the pages . Their substance
was as foreign as that of the cover . The message—printing, or what-
ever it might be called—consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-
head size, in color . It reminded him of computer tape cut to some
character code . He had the impression that an eye might scan those
pages and react as swiftly as a tape-fed computer .
Baker closed the book . “Nothing more?” he asked Fenwick .
“Nothing . We thought maybe you had found out something else
when he worked to save your life .”
Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling . “I found out a few things,” he
said . “I could scarcely believe they were true . I have to believe after
hearing your story .”
“What did you find?”
“Sam Atkins came from—somewhere else . He went back in the
ship he had hidden in the silo .”
“Where did he come from? What was he doing here?”
“I don’t know the name of the world he was from or where it is
located . Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from
my impressions. He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological
study . He was responsible for the crystals . I suppose you know that
by now?” Baker glanced at Ellerbee .
Jim Ellerbee nodded . “I suspected for a long time that I was being
led, but I couldn’t understand it . I thought I was doing the research
that produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a sugges-
tion every once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and
produce something fantastic . He knew where we were going, ahead
of time . He led me to believe that we were exploring together . Do
you know why he did this?”
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“Yes,” said Baker . “It was part of his project . The project con-
sisted of a study of human reaction to scientific processes which
our scientific culture considered impossible. He was interested in
measuring our flexibility and reaction to such introductions.”
Baker smiled grimly . “We sure gave him his money’s worth,
didn’t we! We really reacted when he brought out his little cubes .
I’d like to read the report he writes up!”
“Why did he leave so suddenly?” asked Fenwick . “Was he
through?”
“No, that’s the bad part of it . My reaction to the crystals was a
shock that sent me into a suicidal action—”
Fenwick stared at him, shocked . “You didn’t—”
“But I did,” said Baker calmly . “All very subconsciously, of
course, but I did try to commit suicide . The crystals triggered it .
I’ll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical
being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me . He had
to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me
to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again . He did
this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of
completing his program . When he gets back home, he’s really going
to catch hell for lousing up the works . It’s too bad .”
Jim Ellerbee let out a long breath . “Sam Atkins—somebody from
another world—it doesn’t seem possible . What things he could have
taught us if he’d stayed!”
Fenwick wondered why it had to have been Baker to receive this
knowledge . Baker, the High Priest of the Fixed Position, the am-
bassador of Established Authority . Why couldn’t Sam Atkins—or
whatever his real name might be—have whispered just a few words
of light to a man willing to listen and profit? His bowels felt sick
with the impact of opportunity forever lost .
“How did the crystals trigger a suicidal reaction?” asked Fenwick
finally, as if to make conversation more than anything else.
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Baker’s face seemed to glow . “That’s the really important thing I
learned from Sam . I learned that about me—about all of us . It’s hard
to explain . I experienced it—but you can only hear about it .”
“We’re listening,” said Fenwick dully .
“I saw a picture of a lathe in a magazine a few months ago,” said
Baker slowly . “You can buy one of these lathes for $174,000, if you
want one . It’s a pretty fancy job . The lathe remembers what it does
once, and afterwards can do it again without any instructions .
“The lathe has a magnetic tape memory . The operator cuts the
first piece on the lathe, and the tape records all the operations neces-
sary for that production . After that, the operator needs only to insert
the metal stock and press the start button .
“There could be a million memories in storage, and the lathe
could draw on any one of them to repeat what it had done before at
any time in its history .”
“I don’t see what this has got to do with Sam and you,” said
Fenwick .
Baker ignored him . “A long time ago a bit of life came into ex-
istence. It had no memory, because it was the first. But it faced the
universe and made decisions . That’s the difference between life
and nonlife . Did you know that, Fenwick? The capacity to make
decisions without pre-programming . The lathe is not alive because
it must be pre-programmed by the operator . We used to say that
reproduction was the criterion of life, but the lathe could be pre-
programmed to build a duplicate of itself, complete with existing
memories, if that were desired, but that would not make it a living
thing .
“Spontaneous decision . A single cell can make a simple binary
choice . Maybe nothing more complex than to be or not to be . The
decision may be conditioned by lethal circumstances that permit
only a ‘not’ decision . Nevertheless, a decision is made, and the cell
shuts down its life processes in th
e very instant of death . They are
not shut down for it .
“In the beginning, the first bit of life faced the world and made
decisions, and memory came into being . The structures of giant
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protein molecules shifted slightly in those first cells and became a
memory of decisions and encounters . The cells split and became
new pairs carrying in each part giant patterned molecules of the
same structure . These were memory tapes that grew and divided
and spread among all life until they carried un-numbered billions of
memories .
“Molecular tapes . Genes . The memory of life on earth, since
the beginning . Each new piece of life that springs from parent life
comes equipped with vast libraries of molecular tapes recording the
experiences of life since the beginning .
“Life forms as complex as mammals could not exist without
this tape library to draw upon . The bodily mechanisms could not
function if they came into existence without the taped memories
out of the ages, explaining why each organ was developed and how
it should function . Sometimes, part of the tapes are missing, and
the organism, if it endures, must live without instructions for some
function. One human lifetime is too infinitesimally small to relearn
procedures that have taken aeons to develop .
“Just as the lathe operator has a choice of tapes which will cause
the lathe to function in different ways, so does new life have a
choice . The accumulated instructions and wisdom of the whole race
may be available, except for those tapes which have been lost or
destroyed through the ages . New life has a choice from that vast
library of tapes . In its inexperience, it relies on the parentage for the
selection of many proven combinations, and so we conclude certain
characteristics are ‘dominant’ or ‘inherited,’ but we haven’t been
able to discover the slightest reason why this is so .
“A selection of things other than color of eyes, the height of
growth to be attained, the shape of the body must also be made . A
choice of modes of facing the exterior world, a choice of stratagems
to be used in attaining survival and security in that world, must be
made .
“And there is one other important factor: Mammalian life is cre-
ated in a universe where only life exists . The mammal in the womb