by E. C. Tubb
“And Kalgan?”
“Nothing. I told you that. I was small when he visited my father, very small, and....” She flushed and bit her lip. “No matter.”
“What was your father, Leedora?”
“A mathematician. Some say he was a brilliant man; I wouldn’t know. All I know is that he died in poverty. We lived on Eldris, the University there, and he was famous in his time. I remember....” She paused and shook her head. “Why ask me these things?”
“I want two things, Leedora,” said Tharg urgently. “One you know; the other? Well, no matter at this time, it is an old dream and one that I may outgrow. But Kalgan may be the key, and all I can learn about him will be of value.” He frowned. “Even now I don’t know why he brought me with him. This starship; where is the crew? Where are we bound?”
“I don’t know that, but what do you want to know?”
“Your father. There must have been some reason why Kalgan visited him. What was his speciality?”
“He was....”
“The finest brain ever produced.” They turned as Kalgan entered the room, Leedora flushing with something too near pleasure for the big man’s liking, and Tharg himself instinctively on the defensive. The tall man smiled down at them and slipped into a chair.
“Leedora’s father was a mathematician of the highest order, a man well acquainted with the paraphysical sciences and with a surprising grasp of its potentialities. I owe him much.”
“You have paid your debt, if debt it was,” murmured the girl, and flushed at the memory.
“Gold?” Kalgan shrugged. “What is money? No. Your father showed me a possible road to end this misery, and for that I would turn the planets into smouldering ruin for his or his daughter’s sake.” He stared at Tharg. “You wonder why you are here, and are wondering too how you can gain the double prize of both the woman and immortality.” He smiled at the big man’s expression. “Why be surprised? When you have lived as many centuries as I have, you will learn to read the minds of men.”
“Then you know what I want, Kalgan?”
“I know. The woman.” He looked at the girl. “Only she can decide, or perhaps it may be that it will be decided for her. The other?” He stared at the giant thews of the red-haired man. “How much does immortality mean to you, Tharg? Does it mean the chance to explore beyond the known frontiers, to turn your starship towards other galaxies and burn a path into unknown regions?”
“Yes,” whispered the big man, and sweat shone on his brow. “Always I have wanted that. To go a little further, explore a little deeper, to leave my footprints on alien universes.” He licked his lips. “With the prize you have and don’t seem to want, that would be possible.”
“And you think that, with Leedora, the life would be bearable?”
“I do.”
“And so also do I.” A shadow passed over the tall man’s face. “Once, how long ago now? I thought that I had found such a woman. She was to me as breath is to other men, a being of incarnate beauty of mind and flesh, of soul and understanding. We loved, she and I, and I dreamed great dreams.” Emotion tore the mask from the impassive features, and Tharg caught a glimpse of the hell within. “She died. She died, do you understand? Died while I lived and lived and kept on living! Gods! Was there any mockery so cruel in the worlds before? For I could not even die to be with her in the Great Beyond.”
“But....”
“Why did I not share my secret?” Kalgan stared at the rainbow hues on the visiscreen. “I could not. There was no time, for know this. Deep in space there is a planet that is not a planet, a world that is a machine. Once I found it, no matter how long ago now, found it by chance and never knew at the time what it was that I had discovered. When I did know, a long time afterwards, I had lost the co-ordinates and before I could locate that place again the woman who was my life had died.”
“I am sorry,” whispered Leedora, and Tharg felt quick jealousy as her slender fingers rested on the Golden One’s hand. He spoke quickly, sharply, breaking the unspoken bond between them.
“And now?”
“Now I have found another who could be to me as she was. Now we find that place again and now we test fate and, perhaps....” Kalgan let his voice fade into silence as he stared at the swirling colours of hyperspace. “Perhaps,” he whispered, “I shall find....” He sighed, and murmuring silence closed over the humming control room.
They broke out of hyperspace in a region in which no sun shone, no star glittered with cold but familiar light, only darkness and the coiling clouds of stardust bounding them in a private universe of their own. Kalgan spent long hours at the controls, checking, adjusting, guiding the sleek vessel to a rendezvous with a world that was a machine.
He found it, setting the starship down on a rolling plain luminous with its own light, smooth and metallic, bare and cold. A tower reared from that surface, a truncated cone, squat and massive, pierced by a huge door and glowing as the plain glowed, with the flaring light of dying atoms.
“Is this it?” Tharg stared at the tower, and naked hunger glowed in his grey eyes. “Is this the house of immortality?”
“It is.”
“And now?” Tharg stared at the tall figure, then at the woman, and his mouth turned dry as he dreamed incredible dreams. “Kalgan! Do you offer me this prize?”
“Immortality?” The golden figure stared sombrely at the big man. “Are you sure of what you ask? To live forever is not the thing you believe it is. To walk alone, never to know true friendship, to be hated and envied of all men—could you drink of that bitter cup?”
“Aye! I’ll drink and I’ll enjoy with Leedora to share the draught.” Tharg grinned with a flash of white teeth. “You have been too long alone, Kalgan,” he mocked. “You think too much and let your thoughts poison your mind. You are old.”
“Yes,” said the tall man. “I am old.” As he spoke his features relaxed and suddenly all youth had left him, all brightness and strength, so that he seemed an old, old man, dressed in the trappings of what he had once been. For a moment Tharg stared into blue eyes that had somehow lost their brilliance and now mirrored the compressed torment of countless years of frustration and blasted ambition, of thoughts which gnawed like rats at innermost peace, and a terrible, seething mass of thwarted desire and hopeless longing for that which could not be.
He saw it, and for a moment doubt seized him and deep within him a tongueless mouth screamed silent warning, then Leedora spoke and beneath the magic of her voice things snapped back to what they once had been. Almost, for Tharg could never quite forget what he had seen, and now a slow chill had dampened his ardour.
“I remember now,” she said slowly. “My father spoke of such a place as this. A gigantic probability machine he called it, a place wherein the tenuous threads of the paraphysical sciences could be manipulated.” She stared at Kalgan. “Did he learn that from you?”
“He did.” The tall figure stared bleakly at the truncated tower. “Much has happened since last I set foot on this world, and it has taken me long to understand just what this is and why it was built back in the days when other races than men ruled the galaxy. Long years. Bitter years. Years of waste.” He paused and his lips twisted with inner bitterness. “A golden chance some would call it, and so would I before the ship I rode ran from raiders with a dying crew and wrecked instruments to land on this place with myself as sole living member of a crew of thirty. Since then I have learned that immortality is not what men think it is. The Old Race knew that—for where are they now?—and men are weaker than they. Once, when I found my love, I hoped that with her I could be what I should, but she died—no more of that. Since then I have eaten the years, the centuries, fighting until battle became tedious, travelling until I saw all there was to see, toying with experiments, playing with destinies of men, wasting my gift. I am not proud of those years.
“Here then is the birthplace of Legend. Here is the machine that can grant to a man what he thinks he desires m
ost. For this planet is a machine built to assess and control the subtle forces which men call chance.” He stared at Tharg. “And now, if you will, you can gamble for the highest stake of all.”
“I don’t understand,” muttered the big man, and his hand fell to the skeel blade at his side. Kalgan smiled, a twist of the lips utterly without humour, and when he spoke his voice was as the whispering of wind.
“Probability,” he said. “Everything in the universe is governed by probability. For look you, what are the chances of a blaster misfiring at the critical moment when it is aimed at your skull? Would you gamble on it? And yet for me it will misfire every time. For there is always the chance that it will misfire, but for me it is no longer a chance but a certainty.”
“I begin to understand,” said Tharg slowly. “It is always possible for anything to happen, possible, but highly improbable.” He stared at the squat tower. “This machine then?”
“Alters the probability factor so that what is improbable becomes certain. It is tuned to me, and all the universe is directed by it so that nothing can harm me. As I told you immortality is not a drug or a positive thing, it is the avoidance of death and illness. This machine renders me impervious to dangerous onslaughts, alters the probability factor so that blasters will always misfire when aimed to harm me, influence others to intercede when I need protection, adjusts a million circumstances in a thousand ways so that always the incredible chance must happen in my favour.”
“So simple,” breathed Tharg. “And yet who would have dreamed that every man bears within himself the seeds of eternal life?”
“Every man does,” agreed Kalgan. “Some more than others, for you must have met those with charmed lives, men who appear to have fantastic escapes from what seemed certain death? In them the probability factor is higher in their favour than normal. Gamblers have it too, the ability to win and win and keep on winning. Fighters, warriors, rulers, all have it to a greater or lesser degree—but only I have it in full. Only I can claim to be immortal.”
“And yet if the machine could do that for you,” said Tharg slowly. “Why not for other men?”
“You, for example?”
“Aye, me and Leedora.”
“Forget the girl. If I offered you the chance to become immortal, would you take it?”
Tharg hesitated, feeling the woman’s eyes staring at him, torn between the desire for her and the older desire for eternal life. Dream against dream—and the older dream won.
“Aye,” he said huskily. “I would.”
“It is well, but it is not as simple as that.” Kalgan leaned forward and something hot and feral burned in his eyes. “You are strong, Tharg, that is why you are here. I offer you a gamble, immortality against death.”
“Death?”
“So I have said. Win all or lose all.” He stared at the big man. “Well?”
“I accept,” gasped Tharg, and sweat ran in thick stream over his face. “I will take the gamble.”
He did not look at the woman.
* * * *
The tower was bigger than Tharg had imagined; it soared from the bare metal plain and against it he felt dwarfed and insignificant. Impatiently he watched as Kalgan opened the huge doors, slipping after him into a lighted interior, and turning, one hand flashing to his blade as the door swung shut on soundless hinges.
“It is operated by mental control,” said Kalgan easily. “Concentrate on its opening—and it will open.” He smiled “Try it.”
Tharg tried, frowning as he thought, and the door swung silently open.
“Now try again,” said Kalgan after the portal had again closed. He smiled as the door refused to budge. “I an directing a counter summons,” he explained. “Our opposed thoughts conflict and are cancelled out. You will only leave here if I wish—or if I am dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, Tharg. Dead.” The golden figure strode to where a titanic helix rose from a shimmering bedplate and lifted its twisted coils to a bank of glowing lenses. “This is the machine, the control, of course; the rest of it is within the metal shell of the planet. It is automatic; stand on this plate and your life-line will be scanned, your paraphysical potential assessed, and the laws of probability adapted to safeguard you from all ills of all time.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, Tharg, that is all. But there is one other thing, a bargain you made, and a bargain that you must keep. You may enter the machine, but it will not be as easy to leave the tower.”
“No?”
“No.” Kalgan gestured to the soaring helix. “I think that you are a man of your word, Tharg, and even if you are not, yet there are things beyond your control. Outside lies the ship, Leedora, my gold. Here lies immortality which I have and which you may have if you wish. A gamble, Tharg. Step into the machine and become one with me.”
Tharg hesitated, biting his lip and staring at the tall figure. Then he shrugged and stepped within the glowing helix.
Nothing happened.
He grunted, made as if to step out again, then paused as Kalgan smiled.
“Have patience, Tharg. The machine is working, have no fear of that, but it takes a little time for your probability factor to be assessed.” The tall man stared at the intricate coils. “The Old Race must have touched Earth in their wanderings,” he mused. “How else to account for the Legends? The helmets, swords and shields of invulnerability, the wearing or using of which protected the user against all harm. Fragments perhaps of the Old Race’s armour? For both they and their equipment would have been steeped with a high probability factor against harm or damage.” He smiled as a red light shone and from a great distance a bell chimed a soft muting.
“It is done.”
“I am immortal?” Tharg stepped from the machine. “I feel no different, are you sure?”
“I am certain.”
“Then....” Steel whined as the skeel blade left its scabbard and Tharg rested the point against his throat. “If you are right I cannot die.” Slowly he began to press the needle tip against his skin. Kalgan shook his head.
“You will not kill yourself,” he said with conviction. “That would be too easy a solution. No. You will pause, hesitate, and try as you will, never will you be able to end your own life. That is the easiest probability factor to adjust, and the strongest to break.”
Tharg grunted and returned the blade to its scabbard.
“Then let’s go back to the ship. Leedora....”
“Even so,” said Kalgan, and smiled as the door refused to open. “Your bargain, Tharg,” he whispered. “Have you forgotten your bargain?”
“No, but you forget, I am immortal and so cannot die.”
“You are wrong, Tharg. It is true that you are immortal but so am I, and there we rest at a point of no-interference There is none to come between us, and we are equal in every respect. Both of us have been through the machine. And here, in the heart of the tower, the probability factors are isolated and unaffected by externals.” The tall man slipped his cloak from his shoulders and threw it into a corner. “Forget not what our immortality is, Tharg. It is not a positive thing, but a negative. There is nothing to save our lives; only an avoidance of things injurious.”
“They are surely the same.”
“No, Tharg, they are not.” Kalgan unstrapped his blaster and threw it on top of the cloak. “For if it is probable that a man can jump from a high tower and land unharmed, then it is equally probable that the tower itself could collapse in a pinch of dust. Leedora’s father showed me the road I intend to take. For here, Tharg, we are man to man, not immortal against mortal. Here we meet on even terms—and only one of us may leave this tower.”
“But why?” Tharg flexed his great hands as he stared at the tall figure of the Golden One. “What is it you intend?”
“I wish to die, Tharg,” said Kalgan, and a great bitterness weighed his voice. “In the normal universe I cannot die, and there you could not kill me or I you. Here it may be
possible, maybe I say, for I cannot be certain, but one thing I do know. Never will that door open while both of us remain alive.”
“So this is your gamble?” Tharg shook his head. “You must be insane.”
“Perhaps I am. Mad as you will be mad, your brain numbed by the slow passing of countless years. Enough! Outside this tower waits the ship, the girl, wealth and immortality. One of us will win them, Tharg—and one of us will die.”
* * * *
Outside on the empty plain Leedora waited in the control room of the starship and watched the tower, staring with enigmatic eyes, her mind writhing with a turmoil of thought. She thought of Kalgan, of his magnificent height and strangely old-young features. She thought of Tharg, of his youth and strength and gay indifference and bold admiration. Both men loved her, each after his own fashion, and she knew that she could love either were the other away.
And so she sat and waited.
Until the door of the tower opened and a man staggered out onto the plain.
Alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
English writer E. C. Tubb is internationally known, having been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a sixty-year writing career he published over 120 novels, and more than 200 science fiction short stories in such magazines as Astounding/Analog, Authentic, Fantasy Adventures, Galaxy, Nebula, New Worlds, Science Fantasy, and Vision of Tomorrow.
Tubb’s early science fiction novels were exciting adventure stories, written in the prevailing fashion of the early 1950s. Yet, from his very first novel, his work was characterized at all times by a sense of plausibility, logic, and human insight. These qualities were even more evident in his short stories, which were frequently anthologized.
By 1956 his output included adventure, detective stories, and westerns, but he remained best known for his numerous science fiction novels, of which Alien Dust (1955) and The Space Born (1956) were acknowledged classics. Tubb became famous for his long-running “Dumarest of Terra” series of novels, the galaxy-spanning saga of Earl Dumarest and his search to find his way back across the stars to the legendary lost planet where he was born—Earth. They eventually spanned thirty-three titles, the final one, Child of Earth, appearing in November 2008. Equally well known were his Space 1999 TV novelizations, and his “Cap Kennedy” novels. Some of his finest SF short stories were collected in The Best Science Fiction of E. C. Tubb (Wildside, 2003). Tubb continued to write dynamic science fiction novels right up to his death in October, 2010.