The Paradox Men

by Charles L. Harness

  Haze-Gaunt looked at the Mind, grim-mouthed. “Do I understand that you want me to believe that someone will leave in the T-twenty-two tonight, jet backward in time, crash into the Ohio River five years ago and swim ashore as Alar?”

  The Mind nodded.

  “Fantastic—yet it has the elements of possibility,” mused the chancellor. “Assuming for the moment that I believe you, who is the person who will enter the T-twenty-two and become Alar?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the Mind coolly. “He is undoubtedly someone in the metropolitan area, because the T-twenty-two jets in ten minutes. He might be—you.”

  Haze-Gaunt shot him a hard, calculating glance.

  Keiris felt light-headed, dizzy. Haze-Gaunt become Alar? Did that account for her pseudo-recognition of the Thief? Intuitively she rejected the suggestion.

  But—

  “That hypothesis really becomes intriguing when we examine your relations thus far with Alar,” said Haze-Gaunt. “Only a few weeks ago you yourself, with excessive modesty, warned us that Alar was the man most dangerous to the Imperial Government. After his several escapes you told us immediately where to find him and several times, through information you furnished, we nearly succeeded in killing him.

  “We might be justified in concluding that you considered Alar a bitter personal enemy, a category that could easily include me—as Alar, of course—except for a serious difficulty. I have no intention of entering the T-twenty-two. Therefore, I am not your Mr. X, and your motive in persecuting Alar stands unexplained. I must warn you to be explicit.” He raised the dart-gun again.

  “An old method of teaching children to swim was to throw them in the water,” said the Mind.

  Haze-Gaunt looked down at him sharply. “You are suggesting that it was your intention to cause Alar to develop his remarkable gifts—whatever they are—by making it necessary that he either discover them or die. Rather a striking educational technique. But why did you suspect that he had such latent possibilities in the first place?”

  “For a long time we weren’t sure. Alar seemed just an ordinary man except for one thing—his heartbeat. Dr. Haven reported that Alar’s heartbeat rose to the medically unheard of rate of one hundred and fifty a minute and more in times of danger. I then decided that if Alar were homo superior his superiority was latent. He was like a child adopted by a pack of wild animals.

  “Unless he were forced to realize his superior origin, he would be doomed to run about on his metaphoric all fours for the rest of his life—with us other animals. Yet, if I could get him to his feet, he might point the way out of the devastation that is even now overwhelming us.

  “So when, some six weeks ago, you were about to decide on the date of Operation Finis, I had to act, possibly prematurely. By means of unusually violent persecution, I forced Alar to develop an extraordinary photic ability, whereby he could project a scene in much the same way as a holo projector.

  “Later, under the stimulus of ecstatic pain, ably administered by Shey, he became acquainted with the time axis of his four-dimensional body. Unfortunately he was unable to travel in time without this stimulus, and I can’t say that I blame him for not indulging in the experience voluntarily. Yet it was an accomplishment that he had to master as we master speech—by repetition. I am certain that he finally used it again in the very act of dying on Solarion Nine.

  “I next led Alar first to the moon, where he was forced to learn something of himself and the backward flight of the T-twenty-two, then to the sun station, with Shey and Thurmond on his trail. He had to emerge triumphant and fully enlightened as to his superiority and mission. The alternative was death. I gave him no choice.”

  Haze-Gaunt arose and began striding up and down the stone flagging, sending his pet into a chattering fright from one shoulder to the other and back again. Finally he stopped and said, “I believe you. Small wonder then that we couldn’t kill Alar. On the other hand, you too must admit defeat, for your protégé seems to have abandoned both you and your cause.”

  “You have not understood me,” the Mind said bluntly. “In Aristotelian terms, Alar is dead.”

  There was a shocked silence in the room that was quickly broken by two simultaneous sounds. Chancellor Haze-Gaunt burst out with, “Good!” as Madame Haze-Gaunt cried, “No!”

  Keiris was collapsing slowly against the chair arm. Her skin had so blanched that two terrible dark circles appeared under her eyes. The Mind had predicted Alar’s fate, but she had never reconciled herself to it becoming a fact. There was no thought in her head that the Mind could be mistaken. No, it was true. And though the horrible realization weighed her down, she couldn’t quite grasp the naked, irrefutable fact that he was dead. Alar couldn’t be gone forever from their lives. No, he couldn’t be gone, would never be gone. That had to be true. The Mind had said, what was it? “Alar had attained a semi-godhood.” Then there was no conflict. Alar was dead and lived. Even as he lost his life, he had triumphed.

  Keiris didn’t fully understand, but the color began to seep back into her face.

  Haze-Gaunt had paid no attention to Keiris’s cry. He had permitted himself a wide grin and a smack of closed fist into open palm. Then, within seconds, he had sobered and scowled at the Mind who so imperturbably sat there and watched him.

  “Then your protégé,” he said, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice, “hasn’t deserted you. He has merely died. Hardly a situation which should make you confident of your own success.”

  Somewhere behind him an elevator door opened and shut—and then there was the sound of running and stumbling feet.

  It was the Minister of War, Eldridge. His uniform was disheveled and it was a darker color at the throat and armpits. Bloodshot eyes punctuated an ashen face.

  Haze-Gaunt caught the man as he collapsed. “Speak, damn you!” he cried, holding the shuddering creature under the arms and shaking him.

  But Eldridge’s eyes merely rolled crazily and his jaw dropped a little farther. Haze-Gaunt let him fall to the floor. The War Minister moaned softly when Haze-Gaunt kicked him in the stomach.

  “He was trying to tell you,” observed the Mind, “that satellites and coastal radar have picked up vast swarms of west-bound rockets. This area will be utterly destroyed to a depth of several miles within five minutes.”

  Not a muscle in the chancellor’s face changed in the long silence that followed. Even the tarsier on his shoulder seemed paralyzed.

  They look like twins, thought Keiris.

  21

  The Eternal Cycle

  FINALLY, HAZE-GAUNT said, rather pensively, “It is an occupational risk of the aggressor that the victim may grow impatient and strike the first blow. But this preemption of the initiative is immaterial and actually foolish, for in such event our launching areas are under standing orders to resort to total destruction patterns instead of the one-third destruction originally planned.”

  “Might I suggest, excellency,” came the dry grave voice of Juana-Maria, who had just rolled in, “that Shimatsu has anticipated the scale of your retaliation? That his own destruction pattern for the Imperium is similarly unrestricted?”

  Keiris’s face slowly grew white as she watched a terrible smile-like thing transform Haze-Gaunt’s mouth. But it couldn’t be a smile. In the ten years she had known him he had not smiled.

  He said, “That, too, was a calculated risk. So civilization must really disappear, as the Toynbeeans have so widely and fearsomely proclaimed. But I shall not remain to mourn over it. And this latest development, I believe, forcibly solves the identity of Mr. X, and hence of Alar.”

  He turned savagely to the Mind. “Why do you think I permitted you and your Thieves to build the T-twenty-two? Research? Exploration? Bah! The weak, futile human race vanishes, but I shall escape and live! And I shall escape beyond my wildest dreams, for I shall become that invincible conqueror of time and space, Alar the Thief!”

  He was sneering now at the scarred but peaceful face of th
e Mind. “What a simpleton you were! I know that you yourself hoped to escape in the T-twenty-two. That’s why you had it built. And you even had a passageway, super-secret, so you thought, constructed from your dome to the T-twenty-two hangar. You may be interested to learn, impostor, that the tunnel has been sealed.”

  “I know it,” smiled the Mind. “The ‘secret’ passageway was merely a decoy. I intend to reach the T-22 by a much more efficient route. Since you have driven your ablest scientists underground to the Thieves, you probably have never had an adequate explanation of Thief armor. It actually consists of a field of negative acceleration and a necessary consequence is its strong repellence of rapidly approaching bodies, such as I.P. bullets.

  “You probably know that acceleration is synonymous with space curvature, and the alert Haze-Gaunt intellect has now doubtless deduced the fact that this projection mechanism before me is actually capable of controlling the space surrounding anyone wearing Thief armor. In an earlier age such a phenomenon might have been called teleportation.

  “Haze-Gaunt, I hope that you will not enter the T-twenty-two—that you will not become Alar. A few hours ago Alar recovered his memory and is by now completely integrated into an intelligence beyond our conception. In fact, it probably makes no sense to think of him as Alar any longer. If he remembered his past as you, humanity has lost its last hope. If he remembered his past as me, I think something still may be salvaged from the shambles you have made.”

  The orange light on the projection reader had turned a bright yellow and grew momentarily more luminous.

  “The potential stored so far is sufficient to deposit me within the pilot room of the T-twenty-two,” said the Mind calmly, “but I must wait another thirty seconds, because this time I am taking my wife with me.”

  He smiled at Keiris, whose soundless lips were forming, “Kim!” over and over again.

  “There is only one thing remaining, one thing that puzzles me,” continued the Mind. “The matter of your tarsier, Haze-Gaunt—”

  A low, grinding rumble rolled through the room. From somewhere came the crash of falling masonry.

  The yellow pilot light on the projector flickered, then died away.

  Keiris stood up in a slowly rising cloud of dust, through which she could see her husband tinkering feverishly with the teleportation machine. Juana-Maria had her handkerchief to her mouth and was blinking her eyes wildly. Haze-Gaunt coughed, then spat and looked about for Keiris. She gasped and hobbled backward a step.

  Then several things happened at once. Haze-Gaunt leaped toward her, tossed her dizzily over his shoulder, then faced Kennicot Muir—the Meganet Mind—who had burst through the door of the plastic dome.

  The great man seemed to fill the room.

  Haze-Gaunt shrank away, with Keiris on one shoulder and the tarsier on the other. “I’ll shoot you if you move!” he shouted at Muir, waving his dart-pistol. He began to back toward the elevators.

  Keiris, remembering the deaths of Gaines and Haven, tried desperately to voice a similar warning, but her voice was paralyzed. She managed to loosen and drop her right sandal, and the long toes of her right foot were closing around the long knife in her thigh scabbard when Muir replied:

  “I am immune to the poison. I developed it myself. Therefore, I will accompany you down your private, battery-operated elevator. I don’t believe the others—”

  He was interrupted by a high-pitched, terrified chattering. It was the tarsier, who had scrambled down the chancellor’s leg and was trying vainly to halt the man by clutching at both legs.

  “Don’t go! Don’t go!” it cried in a tiny, inhuman voice. It was the most chilling sound Keiris had ever heard. The beastling had joined the drama as a full-fledged member of the troupe, with lines to speak, and a death to die. Little creature, she thought, who are you?

  Haze-Gaunt said something under his breath. His leg flung out. The little animal sailed through the air and crashed into the marbled wall. It lay motionless where it fell, with its body bent backward queerly.

  Muir was running swiftly toward them when Haze-Gaunt cried, “Is your wife immune?”

  Muir stopped precipitately. Haze-Gaunt, grinning viciously, continued his deliberate retreat toward his elevator door.

  Keiris craned her neck from her awkward and painful position and looked at her husband. The anguish on his face turned her heart to water. It was the first time in ten years that his fire-born disguise had relaxed its frozen, toneless immobility.

  The elevator doors opened. Haze-Gaunt carried her inside.

  “It is finished,” groaned Muir. “So he is Alar. I let you suffer ten years for this—my poor darling—poor humanity.” His voice was unrecognizable.

  In her awkward position Keiris could not inflict a vital wound on Haze-Gaunt. She knew then what she must do.

  The elevator door was closing as she heaved herself sideways off Haze-Gaunt’s shoulder. The weight of her body twisted his arm and she dropped across the doorway. As she fell, she cried, “He is not Alar!”

  Her knee doubled under her and the knife between her toes flashed in the light. She dropped heavily upon the upturned blade, driving it into her heart.

  The woman’s body had blocked the sliding panel. Haze-Gaunt tugged the corpse frantically into the elevator as there was a blur of movement toward him.

  The elevator door clanged shut, and Juana-Maria was alone in the room.

  The three of them, Kennicot Muir, Haze-Gaunt, and Keiris, the living and the newly dead, were joined in their own weird destiny and had left her to hers.

  For a long time the fine brown eyes were lost in thought. Her revery was finally penetrated by a shrill, painful piping.

  The tarsioid, despite its broken back, was still breathing limply, and its eloquent saucer-like eyes were turned up pleadingly to her. Their piteous message was unmistakable.

  Juana-Maria reached into the side pocket of her chair and found the syringe and vial of analgesic. Then she hesitated. To kill the little beast would perilously deplete the vial. There would be pain enough for herself in the next few minutes. Damn Haze-Gaunt anyway. Always bungled his murders.

  She filled the syringe quickly, rolled the chair over to the little creature, bent over slowly to pick it up.

  The injection was done quickly.

  She retracted the needle and the dying animal lay raglike in her lap, staring at her face with fast-glazing eyes. And then she knew it was dead and that she was exhausted. The titular ruler of one and a half billion souls could not even move her own hands. The syringe dropped to the tiles and shattered.

  How easy now to slide into an unwaking revery, forever. So Muir was to become Alar and attain something akin to immortality. That was just. It seemed to her that the man was simply following a natural development to its logical conclusion. And by the same token Haze-Gaunt would have to change, too.

  She wondered what Muir-Alar could do that would avoid Operation Finis. Perhaps he would go back in time and cause Haze-Gaunt to be still-born. But then another dictator, even more ruthless, might arise and destroy civilization. Of course, the god-man might prevent Muir from discovering muirium, or even stop the classic nuclear physicists, Hahn, Meisner, Fermi, Oppenheimer and the rest, from splitting the uranium atom.

  But she suspected the discoveries would be made in due time by others. Perhaps the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had proved the contraction of matter in its line of motion and started Einstein off on his theory of the equivalence of matter and energy, could be doctored so that Michelson would actually get the interference image he sought.

  But then there would be Rutherford’s work on the suspiciously heavy electrons, and an infinity of allied research. And human nature being what it was, it would again be just a question of time.

  No, the main difficulty would be in the mind of man. He was the only mammal hell-bent on exterminating his own species.

  She was glad it was not her task to humanize humanity or to be a god-mother to Toyn
bee Twenty-two.

  She peered down at the furry lump in her lap and wondered if Muir had ever divined its identity. Perhaps she alone understood.

  Two living beings would emerge from the ship when the trip had ended. Kennicot Muir would by then have evolved into Alar. The other would be Haze-Gaunt—a changed Haze-Gaunt… All as predicted by John Haven’s Geotropic Project. When two specimens are subjected to speeds faster than light, one evolves, the other devolves.

  The darkened chamber was slowly whirling around and around. She could no longer move her lips, but she could move her eyes to stare at the tiny corpse of the tarsier. With a great effort she marshaled her last clear thought:

  “Poor Haze-Gaunt. Poor tiny animal Haze-Gaunt. To think that you always wanted to finish killing me.”

  A moment later the chamber was vaporized.

  22

  Toynbee Twenty-two

  THE LEADER, GRAY, grizzled and cold-eyed, paused and sniffed the air moving up the valley. The old Neandertal smelled reindeer blood a few hundred yards down the draw, and also another unknown smell, like, yet unlike, the noisome blend of grime, sweat and dung that characterized his own band.

  He turned to his little group and shook his flint-tipped spear to show that the spoor had been struck. The other men held their spears up, signifying that they understood and they would follow silently. The women faded into the sparse shrubbery of the valley slope.

  The men followed the reindeer path on down the gully, and within a few minutes peered through a thicket at an old male Eoanthropus, three females of assorted ages and two children, all lying curled stuporously under a windfall of branches and debris that overhung the gully bank.