Dimension of Miracles

by Robert Sheckley

  ‘Nope, Mr Maudsley never wanted to fool around with that really small stuff. We get our subatomic particles from subcontractors.’

  Carmody laughed and the foreman looked at him suspiciously. They continued to walk until Carmody’s feet began to hurt him.

  He felt tired and dull, and this annoyed him. He ought to be fascinated, he told himself. Here he was, in a place that actually manufactured atoms, and had separate facilities for creating antimatter! Over there was a gigantic machine that extracted cosmic rays from raw space, and purified them, and bottled them in heavy green containers. Beyond that was a thermal probe, used for doctoring up old stars; and just to the left of it …

  It was no use. Walking through Maudsley’s factory elicited in Carmody the same sensations of boredom he had experienced during a guided tour through a Gary, Indiana, steel foundry. And that wave of sullen fatigue, that sense of mute rebellion – he had felt just the same after walking for reverent hours through the hushed corridors of the Louvre, the Prado, the British Museum. One’s sense of wonder, he realized, is only capable of a small amount of appreciation. Men remain inexorably true to themselves and their interests. They stay in character, even if that character is suddenly transported to Timbuktu or Alpha Centauri. And, being ruthlessly honest about it, Carmody realized that he would rather ski the Nosedive at Stowe or sail a Tahiti ketch beneath Hell Gate Bridge than see most of the marvels of the Universe. He was ashamed of this, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  ‘I guess I’m just not particularly Faustian,’ he said to himself. ‘Here are the secrets of the Universe spread around me like old newspapers, and I’m dreaming about a nice February morning in Vermont before the snow has got carved up.’

  He felt bad for a while, but then he began to feel rebellious: ‘After all, not even Faust had to walk through this stuff like it was an exhibition of Old Masters. He had to work his ass off, if I remember correctly. If the devil had made it too easy for him, Faust would have probably given up knowledge and taken up mountain-climbing or something.’

  He thought for a while. Then he said, ‘Anyhow. What’s such a big deal about the secrets of the Universe? They’ve been overrated, just like everything else. When you come right down to it, nothing’s as good as you think it’s going to be.’

  All of that, even if it were not true, at least served to make Carmody feel better. But he was still bored. And Maudsley still did not come out of his seclusion.

  * * *

  Time passed with apparent slowness. It was impossible to judge its true rate; but Carmody had the impression that it dragged on and on, and could have been subdivided into days and weeks, perhaps even a month. He also had the feeling – or the premonition – that Maudsley was not finding it easy to do what he had promised so lightly. Perhaps it was simpler to build a new planet than to find an old one. Becoming aware of the complexity of the task and its many unexpected dimensions, Carmody grew disheartened.

  One day (to speak conventionally) he watched Orin and Brookside construct a forest. It had been ordered by the primates of Coeth II, to replace their old forest, which had been struck by a meteor. This new one had been paid for entirely out of schoolchildren’s donations; a sufficient sum had been raised to purchase a first-class job.

  When the engineers and workmen had left, Carmody wandered alone through the trees. He marvelled at how good a job Maudsley and his team could do when they put their minds to it, for this forest was a marvel of creative and considerate planning.

  There were natural glades for walking, with a leafy arbour above and a springy, dappled loam below – enticing to the foot and restful to the eye. The trees were not Earth species, but they were similar. So Carmody chose to ignore the differences and name them after the trees he had known.

  That forest was all prime first-growth timberland, with just enough underbrush to keep it interesting. It was landscaped here and there with bright, rushing streams, none deeper than three feet. There was a shallow, intensely blue little lake, flanked by ponderosa pine or its equivalent. And there was a miniature swamp, dense with mangrove and cypress, studded with blackgums, magnolias and willows, and liberally sprinkled coconut palms. Farther back from the water’s edge, on drier land, was a grove in which could be found wild plum and cherry trees, and chestnuts, pecans, oranges, persimmons, dates and figs. It was a perfect place for a picnic.

  Nor had the arboreal potentialities of the forest been overlooked. The young primates could race up and down the straight-backed elms and sycamores, play follow-the-leader in the many-branched oaks and laurels, or teeter precariously across the tangled network of vines and creepers that interconnected the treetops. Nor had the needs of their elders been ignored; there were giant redwoods for them, where they could doze or play cards, high above the screaming children.

  But there was much more than this; even an untrained person like Carmody could see that the little forest had been given a simple, pleasant and purposeful ecology. There were birds, animals, and other creatures. There were flowers, and stingless bees to cross-fertilize them and gather the pollen, and jolly fat little bears to steal the bees’ honey. There were grubs to feast on the flowers, and bright-winged birds to feast off the grubs, and quick red foxes to eat the birds, and bears to eat the foxes, and primates to eat the bears.

  But the primates of Coeth also die, and are buried in the forest in shallow, coffinless graves, reverently but without undue fuss, and are fed upon by grubs, birds, foxes, bears and even one or two species of flowers. In this way, the Coethians have an integral place in the forest cycle of life and death; and this pleases them very much since they are born participants.

  Carmody observed all of this, walking alone with the Prize (still a cauldron) under his arm, and thinking tremulous thoughts about his lost homeland. Then he heard a branch rustle behind him.

  There was no wind, and the bears were all bathing in the pond. Carmody turned around slowly, knowing something was there but wishing it weren’t.

  There was indeed something there. There was a creature wearing a bulky, grey plastic space suit. Frankenstein-type shoes, a transparent bubble helmet and a belt from which dangled a dozen or more tools, weapons and instruments.

  Carmody immediately recognized this apparition as an Earthman; no other creature could dress that way.

  Behind and to the right of the Earthman was a slighter, similarly clad figure. Carmody saw at once that this was an Earthwoman, and a very attractive one.

  ‘Good lord!’ Carmody said. ‘How did you people happen to come here, of all places?’

  ‘Not so loud,’ the Earthman said. ‘I just thank God we arrived in time. But now, I’m afraid, the most dangerous part is ahead of us.’

  ‘Do we have any chance at all, Father?’ the girl asked.

  ‘There is always a chance,’ the man said, with a grim smile. ‘But I wouldn’t bet any money on it. Still, maybe Dr Maddox can figure something out.’

  ‘He’s very good at that, isn’t he, Dad?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Sure he is, Mary,’ the man replied in a gentle voice. ‘Doc Maddox is the finest there ever was. But he – all of us – may have overreached ourselves this time.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find a way,’ the girl said, with heartbreaking serenity.

  ‘Maybe,’ the man said. ‘Anyhow, we’ll show ’em there’s still a few pounds of thrust in the old brain-jets.’ He turned to Carmody, and his expression hardened. ‘I just hope you’re worth it, Mac,’ he said. ‘Three lives are going on the line for you.’

  It was a difficult proposition to respond to, and Carmody didn’t even try.

  ‘Single file quick-step back to the ship,’ the man said. ‘We’ll get Doc Maddox’s assessment of the situation.’

  Drawing a bulb-nosed gun from his belt, the man turned into the woods. The girl followed, giving Carmody an encouraging look over her shoulder. Carmody fell into line behind her.

  CHAPTER 15

  ‘Hey, wait a minute
, what is all this?’ Carmody asked as he followed the space-suited people through the forest. ‘Who are you people? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Criminy!’ the girl said, flushing with embarrassment. ‘We’ve been rushing around so, we haven’t even introduced ourselves! A fine lot of fools you must take us for, Mr Carmody!’

  ‘Not at all,’ Carmody said courteously. ‘But I would like to know – well, to know, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course, I know what you mean,’ the girl said. ‘I am Aviva Christiansen, and this is my father, Professor Lars Christiansen.’

  ‘You can knock off that “Professor” stuff,’ Christiansen said gruffly. ‘Just call me Lars, or Chris, or anything else that comes to mind.’

  ‘All right, Dad,’ Aviva said, with a mock show of fond petulance. ‘Anyhow, Mr Carmody –’

  ‘The name’s Tom.’

  ‘Tom, then,’ Aviva said, colouring prettily. ‘Where was I? Oh yes, Dad and I are connected with the Terran Interstellar Rescue Association (TIRA), which has its offices in Stockholm, Geneva, and Washington, DC.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of your organization,’ Carmody said.

  ‘There’s nothing surprising about that,’ Aviva said. ‘Earth has just entered upon the threshold of interstellar exploration. Even now, in laboratories all over the earth, new sources of power far exceeding the crude atomic devices to which you have been accustomed are now in the experimental stage. And very soon indeed, spacecraft piloted by men of Earth will probe to the farthest corners of the galaxy. And this will, of course, usher in a new period of international peace and co-operation upon our tired old planet.’

  ‘It will?’ Carmody asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there will no longer be anything significant to fight about,’ Aviva said, somewhat breathlessly since all three were trotting through low underbrush. ‘There are countless worlds out there, as you may have noticed,’ she continued, ‘and there is room for all kinds of social experiments, and adventures, and everything you could possibly imagine. So man’s energies will be directed outward instead of dissipated inward in the form of disastrous internecine warfare.’

  ‘The kid’s giving you the straight dope,’ said Lars Christiansen, in his deep, gruff, friendly, no-nonsense voice. ‘She may sound like a scatterbrain, but she’s got about eleventy-seven Ph.Ds and Doctorates to back up her line of gab.’

  ‘And my pop may sound like a roughneck,’ Aviva flashed back, ‘but he’s got three Nobel prizes in his footlocker!’

  Father and daughter exchanged looks which were somehow threatening and affectionate at the same time. ‘So anyhow,’ Aviva said, ‘that’s how it is, or I should say, how it’s going to be in a couple of years. But we got a head start on it all due to Dr Maddox, whom you will meet shortly.’ Aviva hesitated a moment, then said in a lower voice, ‘I don’t think I’ll be betraying a confidence if I tell you that Dr Maddox is a – a – mutant.’

  ‘Rats, there’s no need to be nervous about the word,’ Lars Christiansen growled. ‘A mutant can be every bit as good as we are. And in the case of Dr Maddox, he can be about a thousand times better!’

  ‘It was Dr Maddox who really put this project into orbit,’ Aviva went on. ‘You see, he made a projection of the future (how he does it I don’t know!) and he realized that soon, with the imminent discovery of cheap, unlimited power in a safe, portable form, there were going to be spaceships all over the place! And a lot of people would just rush into space without proper equipment or navigational instruments or stuff –’

  ‘A lot of half-baked fools,’ Christiansen commented drily.

  ‘Dad! Anyhow, these people were going to need help. But there would be no organized Galactic Rescue Patrol (he computed this figure very carefully) for 87·238874 years. Do you see?’

  ‘I think so,’ Carmody said. ‘You three saw the problem and – and you stepped in.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘We stepped in. Dad’s very keen on serving others, though you could never tell it from the grouchy way he talks. And what’s good enough for my dad is good enough for me. And as for Dr Maddox – well, he’s just the utter maximum top realized-potential of any human being of my acquaintance.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s that all right, in spades, doubled,’ Lars Christiansen said quietly. ‘The man has had quite a history. Mutations are usually of negative value, you know. Just one or two out of a thousand pan out gold instead of pyrites. But in Dr Maddox’s case, there is a family history of massive mutation, most of it favourable, all of it inexplicable.’

  ‘We suspect benevolent alien intervention,’ Aviva said, almost in a whisper. ‘The Maddox family can only be traced back for two hundred years. It’s a strange story. Aelill Madoxxe, Maddox’s great-grandfather, was a Welsh coal miner. He worked for nearly twenty years in the notorious Auld Gringie Mine, and was one of the few labourers to retain his health. That was in 1739. Recently, when Auld Gringie was reopened, the fabulous Scatter-wail uranium deposits were found adjacent to it.’

  ‘It must have begun there,’ Christiansen said. ‘We pick up the family next in 1801, in Oaxaca, Mexico. Thomas Madoxxe (as he styled himself) had married the beautiful and imperious Teresita de Valdez, Contessa de Aragon, owner of the finest hacienda in southern Mexico. Thomas was out riding herd on the morning of April 6th, 1801, when La Estrella Roja de Muerto – Red Star of Death (subsequently identified as a large, highly radioactive meteorite) – fell within two miles of the ranch. Thomas and Teresita were among the few survivors.’

  ‘Next we come to the 1930s,’ Aviva said, picking up the tale. ‘The next Maddox generation, much reduced in wealth, moved to Los Angeles. Ernest Maddox, the doctor’s grandfather, was selling a new-fangled contraption, to doctors and dentists. It was called an “X-ray machine.” Maddox demonstrated the machine twice weekly for at least ten years. He used himself as subject. Despite the massive overdose of hard radiation, or perhaps because of it, he lived to a very respectable age.’

  ‘His son,’ Lars said, ‘moved by we know not what compulsion, travelled to Japan in 1935 and became a Zen monk. He lived in a tsuktsuri, or corner of an abandoned basement, throughout the war years, never once uttering a word. The local people left him alone, thinking he was an eccentric Pakistani. Maddox’s basement was in Hiroshima, just 7·9 miles from the epicentre of the atomic explosion of 1945. Immediately after the explosion, Maddox left Japan and went to the Hui-Shen monastery, situated on the most inaccessible peak in northern Tibet. According to the story, of an English tourist who was there at the time, the lamas had been expecting him! He settled there, devoting himself to the study of certain Tantras. He married a woman of royal Kashmiri blood, by whom he had one son: that was Owen, our doctor. The family left Tibet for the United States one week before the Red Chinese launched their invasion. Owen was educated at Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Heidelberg. How he found us is quite a strange story in itself, which you shall hear upon a more propitious occasion. For now we have reached the ship, and I think we dare not waste any more time in palaver.’

  Carmody saw it in a little clearing, a majestic spaceship which rose upwards like a skyscraper. It possessed vanes, jets, hatches, and many other protuberances. In front of it, seated in a folding chair, was a man somewhat above middle age, with a benevolent, deeply creased face. It was immediately apparent that this man was Maddox the Mutant, for he had seven fingers on each hand, and his forehead bulged hugely to make room for the extra brain behind it.

  Maddox rose in a leisurely manner (on five legs!) and nodded in welcome. ‘You have come only just in time,’ he said. ‘Lines of inimical force have very nearly reached the intersection point. Come into the ship quickly, all of you! We must erect the force-shield without delay.’

  Lars Christiansen marched forward, too proud to run. Aviva took Carmody’s arm, and Carmody perceived that she was trembling, and that the shapeless grey cloth of her suit could not conceal the lissome lines of the b
eautiful girl, though she seemed unaware of it.

  ‘It’s a nasty situation,’ Maddox muttered, folding his canvas chair and putting it within the ship. ‘My calculations allow for this sort of nodal point, of course, but by the very nature of interminable combination one cannot predict their configuration. Still, we do our best.’

  At the wide entrance hatch, Carmody hesitated. ‘I really think I should say goodbye to Mr Maudsley,’ he told Maddox. ‘Perhaps I should even ask his advice. He’s been very helpful, and he’s working on a way to get me back to Earth.’

  ‘Maudsley!’ Maddox cried, exchanging significant glances with Christiansen. ‘I suspected he was behind this!’

  ‘It looked like his damned handiwork,’ Christiansen grated.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Carmody asked.

  ‘I mean,’ Maddox said, ‘that you have been victim and pawn in a vast conspiracy involving no fewer than seventeen star-systems. I cannot explain it all now; but believe me, not only your life and ours is at stake, but also the life of several dozen billion humanoids, most of them blue-eyed and fair-skinned!’

  ‘Oh Tom, hurry, hurry!’ Aviva cried, pulling at his arm.

  ‘Well, all right,’ Carmody said. ‘But I shall want a complete and satisfactory explanation.’

  ‘And you shall have it,’ Maddox said as Carmody stepped through the hatch. ‘You shall have it right now.’

  Carmody turned quickly, detecting the note of menace in Maddox’s voice. He looked at the mutant intently and experienced a wave of shock. He looked again, at his three rescuers, and really saw them for the first time.

  The human mind is adept at constructing gestalts. A few curves suffice for a mountain, and half a dozen broken lines can produce a passable wave. The gestalt was breaking down now under Carmody’s particularizing gaze. He saw that Aviva’s lovely eyes were stylized and suggestive rather than functional – like the design of eyes on the wings of a moth. Lars had a dark red oval in the lower third of his face, divided by a darker line; this was supposed to be a mouth. Maddox’s fingers, all seven of them, were painted on his body at thigh level.