The Beyonders

by Manly Wade Wellman

  There lay the chunk of gold, and beside it lay another, with a damp glow to it. Then they had fetched out the bribe Gander Eye had thrown into the water days ago. He looked down at them. He could make out the scraped place where he had pried off a flake to test. That gold, where had it come from?

  "You want me, but I don't want you," he growled, just loud enough to be heard by himself and by anything else that might be prowling under cover close enough to tune in on him.

  Returning to the house, he boiled an egg hard and ate it with the last of his cold corn bread. He went to the drawer where his pistol lay, took it out, but then put it back, shaking his head to banish the idea of carrying it in his pocket to Crispin's. He was in Sky Notch, his own town. He could go up Main Street without being all weighted down with shooting irons.

  At least, he hoped so.

  Looking out at the side window again, he remembered how he had been glad to be alone at this end of Main Street, with only empty houses to either side. It had made him feel a sense of privacy; now it gave him a sense of isolation.

  It was the way it must have been in old days, alone on the frontier; in just your own cabin, in a clearing away from neighbors. Nothing was apt to come to your door except wolves or Indians, and a good man with a gun could handle those. But in Gander Eye's case, it was those Behinders or Beyonders or whatever they were that had been at the door. Right at it, putting a singed mark on his door log.

  He cursed to himself, wondering what a smart man ought to do and not coming up with any answer. At last he went out and locked his front door behind him.

  As he stepped out on Main Street, he heard a stealthy roll of thunder away to his left, up there above Dogged Mountain. He stopped where he was and peered into the cloudless sky. Thunder on your left was some kind of prophetic sign, he'd been told when he was a boy. Good luck or bad luck, it meant one or the other. Gander Eye hoped it meant good luck—that was what he needed now, carload lots of good luck. On he trudged, turned past Doc Hannum's house to cross the old iron bridge, and went on to knock at Crispin's door.

  "Come in, Gander Eye," Crispin greeted him, coffee cup in hand. "Before we go to work, let me pour you some of this."

  "None for me, I thank you," said Gander Eye, stepping into the front room. "I had me some at home." He looked straight at Crispin. "Jim," he said, "them's right pretty flowers you got out in your yard."

  Crispin drank coffee. "I think so," he said cheer-folly. "I don't know the names of all of them. I ought to get myself some sort of guidebook to flowers in this region."

  "I can give you the names," said Gander Eye. "I recollect how them flowers began to jump up, the very first day you moved in here. Since then, you've got wake-robins and cucumber root, the sort of stuff that grows up mostly in wet woods. But dry-ground ones, too—pinky-blue spider flower and Turk's cap and three-bird and grass-pink. Them and some chinquapin, though I never thought that come up 'round about here. It's a right much of a flower garden."

  "Thank you," said Crispin. "Well, take off your shirt and let's go to work on the painting."

  He drained his cup, set it down, and took his palette from a chair.

  "Slowly will be coming in about an hour," he said. "I want to work a little with you before then."

  Gander Eye dragged out his shirttails and stripped to the waist. His muscles bunched as though to get ready for an effort.

  "I don't recollect no place in town where the flowers grow the way they do for you," he said. "Derwood Ballinger works hard in his yard, all the time. And he ain't got nothing like what you got, no way whatever."

  Crispin smiled as he squeezed out dabs of color on the palette and blended them with the point of a knife.

  "You know what they say about that," he said. "There's quite a literature on the subject, as a matter of fact. Talk to plants, they say; get their confidence and make them grow. There may be something to the notion."

  He worked judiciously at mixing several blobs of paint, studying his model with an expert eye.

  "You may not be as big as Captain Kimber, but you're exactly the sort of physical specimen I want for this figure," he said, as though changing the subject. "I'll give you a white beard, but I'll leave those swelling young muscles in. There now, I got a pretty good effect there. You'll loom up out of that dark pool like—"

  "I just might could learn to talk to my flowers from you, Jim," Gander Eye interrupted bleakly. "My own yard ain't a-putting out none to amount to much." He kept gazing at Crispin. "The way I might could learn to talk to a car motor, the way you did up at Duffy's station to fix it."

  "There may be a lot in what you say," nodded Crispin, busy with one brush, then another. "Listen, Gander Eye, you look all bunched up and tense. You're supposed to be baptising a beautiful girl, not setting yourself to throw a punch."

  "I'm just a-thinking about something," said Gander Eye, his voice going utterly toneless. "In my yard I ain't got no flowers. But I got some scorched-out grass and all like that. It looks like as if somebody's been a-using around my place with a big hot iron, some such matter."

  Crispin looked up nervously. "What do you think caused that?"

  "I wonder myself if you might could tell me, Jim. Because I think you know already."

  Gander Eye's lips were dry as he spoke, hut he kept from licking them.

  "I know a thing or two already," he went on. "I know about a right much of great big rocks, piled up above the road to the Kimber settlement. I had some talk with Struve, and how he wants to take over here. And I know something about them things that look like big old machines a-sliding round on their tails, a-giving off' steam and a-making a little purry sound at you."

  Crispin stepped back from his easel. "You made me smear what I was trying to do," he said, and reached for his palette knife. Carefully he scraped at the canvas. He acted as if he wanted to change the subject, but Gander Eye refused to let him.

  "I say I know about all them things," he repeated, "and I reckon so do you."

  Crispin stepped clear of the easel. "I've really wanted to talk plainly about these matters to you," he said in a low, sad voice.

  "All right, start talking now." Gander Eye left his pose and picked up his shirt. "I don't much reckon we're a-going to do any more with that picture for the time being. Maybe we ain't a-going to do much more with it from this on, not unless you can fill me in on a few things, show me what they mean."

  Carefully Crispin deposited his palette on the chair and slid his brushes, handle first, into a vinegar bottle. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets and faced Gander Eye.

  "You've got to understand, first of all, that this place is fated to change," he began. "That what happens at Sky Notch is going to change the whole world." He furrowed his brow unhappily. "Gander Eye, change of some sort is needed in this world."

  "Amen, but what sort of change you got in mind?" inquired Gander Eye, putting on the shirt and buttoning it up.

  "You spoke just now of some little things," said Crispin. "Of growing flowers—or maybe particularly good crops, like the Kimbers. Of making machines run better. Those are scientific advances, Gander Eye. Science means wisdom. It means method. A new age is coming. It's ready to begin, right here in Sky Notch."

  "How come?"

  Crispin looked at him earnestly. "The greatest scientists on earth will gather here to help it happen," he said. "This change will mean a new way of living, here and everywhere. Better food for people, better places to live in. You know as well as I do how the whole country, all the countries of the world, have been made poor by exploitation. Now the air and water will be clean. Work won't be so miserably hard."

  "I recollect hearing something like all this from your friend Struve."

  Crispin threw back his head. Unhappiness came back to his face.

  "Struve isn't any friend of mine, Gander Eye."

  "No, but you and him's together in this here business. He done told me about how well dogs live, how they eat better and sleep warm
er than a wolf, and they do it by wearing a collar for their master. And a wolf, Struve was a-going on to say, is always a-getting himself killed off." Gander Eye tucked in his shirttails. "All right, Jim, if I was by God a-going to be a dog, or a steer to butcher, or a horse to get myself worked to death, I'd a-been born that. I was born one of the wolves, you see."

  "And you may die like a wolf," said Crispin.

  "Sure, that might could happen. But if I die like a wolf, I'll die with my teeth in a throat. I didn't like no part of what Struve talked about, nor yet how he said it. Nor I don't like it when you say it to me."

  Crispin stepped toward him, spreading out his hands as though in appeal. "I'm only trying to help you, Gander Eye," he said. "I'm your friend. I say that when this thing happens, people everywhere must fall in line and go along with things. If they don't—"

  "If they don't, they'll be treated like wolves," Gander Eye broke in. "You done already said that, Jim. And I told you I was born a wolf. Maybe I won't have to die with my teeth in a throat. Watch and see if I can be trapped or shot or hunted down." He glared. "No, sir, I ain't buying your proposition a nickel's worth."

  He made two heavy strides to the door, dragged it violently open, and stepped out among all the flowers in the yard. His nostrils flared violently to drag air into his lungs. He felt as if he had been running hard.

  Slowly was coming along the path toward him. "Hello, Gander Eye," she greeted him in her soft voice, and, "Hello," he half snapped back at her. His hand came halfway out as though to seize her arm, make her wait while he said something—

  Said what? Where did Slowly fit into this? On which side?

  He walked along, more wearily now. He almost turned in at Doc's front door, but he remembered how Doc had laughed at him. Where did Doc fit in, when it came to that? Was Gander Eye Gentry Sky Notch's only holdout in whatever deal was being offered, take it or leave it, and no luck if you left it?

  He looked back once at Crispin's cabin, into which Slowly had gone to pose naked, maybe to talk and be talked to, maybe to be courted. Looking backward at the door through which he had gone, he reached Main Street and almost bumped into somebody.

  "I been a-looking for you, Gander Eye," said the wrathful voice of Captain Kimber.

  The Captain towered where he stood on the pavement. He hunched his huge old shoulders, as though he tried to look taller still. His great snowdrift of a beard stirred and bristled.

  "I reckon just a few words will do us," he said deeply. "I come into town today to tell you, stay out of our place on the mountain."

  "What you a-talking about, stay out?" Gander Eye demanded. "I ain't been nowheres near your settlement."

  "You know right well what I mean. You been a-using round where we baptize. That's private, Gander Eye. If we'd a-wanted you there, we'd a-bid you come."

  "Who says I been there?" Gander Eye challenged.

  "Now, don't make it no worse by lying me a lie," growled the Captain.

  Gander Eye swelled with new fury. "I ain't a-lying no lie. I inquired you, who says I been there? Maybe a fellow by the name of Struve, is that right?"

  "Just you never worry your mind about Struve," snapped Captain Kimber, his teeth showing like pebbles in his beard. "We're a-talking about you. I said, you stay out of our part of this country. We'll stay off the land you own. We won't work your land no more, you can have the crop that's a-growing on it now."

  "Well, thanks a heap," snarled Gander Eye. "I wouldn't touch a thing you put the seed down for."

  Captain Kimber drew up his shoulders again, as though to focus power in them. "If I was thirty years younger—" he began.

  "Oh, stop with such talk!" exploded Gander Eye. "You're bigger than I am, but you ain't never seen the day you could whip me. Go get some other Kimber fellow to try it on with me. And quit your trying to get me told, I ain't a-harking to one mumbling word you say."

  He stepped away, walking on his toes, ready if the fierce old man should jump on his back. That didn't happen, though he heard a deep, gruff curse behind him. He looked toward Doc's house, toward the bridge across the creek, beyond it to Crispin's cabin.

  Somebody was coming out of Crispin's door in a hurry.

  Gander Eye came to a quick halt and stared. It wasn't Crispin, it wasn't Slowly. Struve, that was who it was. Gander Eye drew in his breath to yell, but Struve ran, swiftly for all his squatness of body, and plunged into the thicket on the far side of the yard.

  Gander Eye turned and began to walk swiftly toward Crispin's. Slowly, too, came hurrying out. She ran across the bridge to Doc's house and knocked frantically on the door. The door opened and Slowly breathlessly shouted something through the opening. She turned away and saw Gander Eye. She came running to him.

  "What's a-coming off?" he flung at her. "Was Struve in there with you and Jim? A-looking at you without no clothes on?"

  "He wants to see you," she said between gasps.

  "Struve? Next time I catch up to him—"

  "No, no, Mr. Jim's the one who wants to see you. He wants to tell you something."

  "Maybe I should ought to tell him something."

  Doc came out. "Come on, Gander Eye," he called out evenly. "Let's go see what this is all about."

  He headed for Crispin's door.

  Gander Eye waited only a moment. He saw Slowly run up to the edge of Main Street. She beckoned to Captain Kimber and started telling him something. She gestured wildly, and the Captain stood tense and amazed. Gander Eye couldn't hear, and he wouldn't go back, not now. He quickened his pace to catch up with Doc.

  Crispin stood in the open door. He leaned against the jamb. He looked as if he would fall down if he didn't lean. Gander Eye strode past Doc and confronted Crispin.

  "Just what in the hell are you a-doing round here?" he blazed. "Did you get Struve in here so he could look at Slowly while she was posing? How'd you like me to just kill you?"

  Crispin looked at him wearily. "You needn't bother to do that," he said in a husky voice. "I'm going to be killed anyway."

  "What are you talking about, Jim?" asked Doc, coming up beside Gander Eye. "Who's going to kill you, and why?"

  "Just wait an hour or so and you can see it happen," said Crispin. "Come inside, both of you."

  The painting of the baptism had been taken from the easel. It leaned against a wall. The canvas was ripped from end to end and across, as though by raking slashes of a knife.

  "Whoever done that to your picture?" Gander Eye asked him.

  "I did it." Crispin swayed on his feet, and his mouth worked nervously. "When a man dies, his work usuaily dies with him. I just anticipated the process a trifle."

  "You don't look up to your usual self at that, Jim," said Doc with concern in his voice. "Better tell me what it is, and maybe I can fix up whatever's ailing you."

  "No," and Crispin shook his head heavily from side to side. "I'm the only one who can fix anything. I was talking to Slowly, and she talked to me. I told her some things, and she said she refused to listen to them."

  "What things was those?" flung out Gander Eye. "Maybe you talked to her about the Beyonders?"

  "About the Beyonders—yes. About what they're getting ready to make happen in this world."

  "You're travelling several laps ahead of me," said Doc, "but I gather that, whatever you told Slowly, she didn't believe you."

  "Oh," Crispin half moaned, "she believed me, all right. But she refused me—refused when I said I was going to save her from what will happen to lots and lots of others, here and elsewhere."

  "I don't like none of this kind of talk no way," Gander Eye burst out angrily. "I want to know what the hell it means."

  "All right," said Crispin, and he gestured tremblingly to some chairs. "Sit down there, both of you. Let me try to tell you all about it."

  XIII

  They went to the chairs Crispin pointed out. Gander Eye sat down tensely, scowlingly. Doc took his seat in quiet relaxation, his hands folded in his lap, his spectac
led eyes waiting. A moment of silence, while Crispin took two slow paces across the floor. Then he turned to face them. His feet were planted wide apart, as though he sought to brace himself erect.

  "I'm going to have to start out with some sort of astronomical talk," he said heavily. "About this universe we live in—the sun, the planets, the stars—all of it. The astronomers sometimes tell us it's finite, really; that there's an end to space. I mean the space we know. It's like a great big soap bubble, expanding and growing all the time."

  "I don't get that," confessed Gander Eye, still surly.

  "I do, more or less," said Doc. "I've read James Jeans and Alfred North Whitehead, I have their books at home. And I have other books that disagree with this theory of the expanding universe. But what's the point you're making Jim?"

  "This expanding universe is like a bubble," said Crispin again. "The whole space we comprehend, the space that contains this world and all the other planets and galaxies, is the film of the bubble. And nobody knows what may be inside or outside, nobody can imagine it or offer any theories about it." He looked at them, as though choosing his words. "Maybe all the past is inside, and we're constantly expanding out into the future."

  Gander Eye blinked and shifted his body as he sat. Doc waited motionlessly.

  "But if our universe is a gigantic swelling bubble, expanding all the time—" Crispin broke off and made a helpless gesture. "Oh, let me get to the point somehow. This isn't the only bubble universe in existence."

  "No, Jim," agreed Doc evenly. "The moment you said that, it made sense."

  "Let me ask you two," said Crispin, "are you able to imagine this bubble universe, picture it in your minds?"

  "I can, sort of," said Gander Eye. "It takes some heavy thinking. "

  "All right." Crispin raised his voice. "What if another bubble universe was swelling and expanding, too, what if it got to where it touched our universe at some point?"