The Best of Lester del Rey

by Lester Del Rey

  them—PRESS-THESE TO RETURN TO YOURSELF THIRTY

  years—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn’t because there is only one of you this time.

  Instead, everything flashes off, and you’re sitting in the machine in your own back yard.

  You’ll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the machine hi front of your house, go to the future in the subbasement, land in your backyard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up yourself, landing hi front of your house. Just that. But right then, you don’t care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic generator and taking it inside.

  It isn’t hard to disassemble—but you don’t learn a thing; just some plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals. But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice something—everything in it is brand new, and there’s one set of copper wires «missing! It won’t work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.

  And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles, and 15 amperes, you get just that. You don’t need the power company any more. And you feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn’t insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of the makeshift job you’ve just done.

  But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and that the date of the patent application is 1991.

  Yeah. It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to~ yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to yourself.

  Who invented anything? And who built them? While your riches from the generator are piling in, and little kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the worst times in history for a few years—while your name becomes as common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital letter, you’re thinking of that.

  And one day, you come across an old poem—something about some folks calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine that’s waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you’ll be knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your view—and telling yourself all these things I’m telling you.

  But now…

  Well, the drinks are finished, you’re woozy enough to go along with me without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.

  Come on, let’s go.

  The Monster

  His feet were moving with an automatic monotony along the souncWeadening material of the flooring. He looked at them, seeing them in motion, and listened for the little taps they made. Then his eyes moved up along the rough tweed of his trousers to the shorter motion of his thighs. There was something good about the movement, almost a purpose.

  He tried making his arms move, and found that they accepted the rhythm, the right arm moving forward with the left leg, giving a feeling of balance. It was nice to feel the movement, and nice to know that he could walk so smoothly.

  His eyes tired of the motion quickly, however, and he glanced along the hall where he was moving. There were innumerable doors along it; it was a long hall, with a bend at the end. He reached the bend, and began to wonder how he could make the turn. But his feet seemed to know better than he, since one of them shortened its stride automatically, and his body swung right, before picking up the smooth motion again.

  The new hallway was like the old one, painted white, with the long row of doors. He began to wonder idly what might lie behind all the doors. A universe of hallways and doors that branched off into more hallways? It seemed purposeless to him. He slowed his steps, just as a series of sounds reached him from one of the doors.

  It was speech—and that meant there was someone else in this universe in which he had found himself. He stopped outside the door, turning his head to listen. The sounds were muffled, but he could make out most of the words.

  Politics, his mind told him. The word had some meaning to him, but not much. Someone inside was talking to someone else about the best way to avoid the battle on the moon, now that both powers had bases there. There was a queer tone of fear to the comments on the new iron-chain reaction bombs and what they could do from the moon.

  It meant nothing to him, except that he was not alone, and that it stirred up knowledge in his head of a world like a ball in space with a moon that circled it. He tried to catch more conversation, but it had stopped, and the other doors seemed silent. Then he found one where a speaker was cursing at the idea of introducing robots into a world already a mess, calling someone else by name.

  That hit the listener, sending shocks of awareness down his consciousness. He had no name! Who was he? Where was he? And what had come before he found himself here?

  He found no answers, savagely though he groped through his reluctant mind. A single word emerged—amnesia, loss of memory. Did that mean he had once had memories? Then he tried to reason out whether an amnesiac would have a feeling of personality, but could not guess. He could not even be sure he had none.

  He stared at the knob of the door, wondering if the men inside would know the answers. His hand moved to the knob slowly. Then, before he could act, there was the sudden, violent sound of running footsteps down the hall.

  He swung about to see two men come plunging around the corner and toward him. It hadn’t occurred to hfm that legs could move so quickly. One man was thicker than he was, dressed in a dirty smock of some kind, and the other was neat and trim, in figure and

  dress, in a khaki outfit he wore like a badge. The one in khaki opened his mouth.”

  “There he is! Stop him! You—Expeto! Haiti George…”

  Expeto… George Expeto! So he did have a name—unless the first name belonged to the other man. No matter, it was a name. George accepted it and gratitude ran through him sharply. Then he realized the senselessness of the order. How could he halt when he was already standing still? Besides, there were those rapid motions….

  The two men let out a yell as George charged into motion, finding his legs could easily hold the speed of a running motion. He stared doubtfully at another corner, but somehow his responses were equal to it. He started “to slow to a halt—just as something whined by his head and spattered against a white wall. His mind catalogued it as a bullet from a silent zep-gun, and bullets were used in animosity. The two men were his enemies.

  He considered it, and found he had no desire to kill them; besides, he had no gun. He doubled his speed, shot down another hall, ran into stairs and took them at a single leap. It was a mistake. They led to a narrower hallway, obviously recently blocked off, with a single door. And the man with the zep-gun was charging after him as he hesitated.

  He hit the door with his shoulder and was inside, in a strange room of machinery and tables and benches. Most of it was strange to his eyes, though he could recognize a small, portable boron-reactor and generator unit. It was obviously one of the new hundred-kilowatt jobs.

  But the place was a blind alley! Behind him, the man in khaki leaped through the busted door, his zep-gun ready. But the panting, older figure of the man in the smock was behind him, catching his arm.

  “No! Man, you’d get a hundred years of Lunar Prison for shooting Expeto. He’s worth his weight in general’s sta
rs! If he…”

  “Yeah, if! George, we can’t risk it. Security comes

  first. And if he isn’t, we can’t have another paranoiac running around. Remember the other?”

  Expeto dropped his shoulders, staring at them and the queer fear that was in them. “I’m not George?” he asked slowly. “But I’ve got to be George. I’ve got to have a name.”

  The older man nodded. “Sure, George, you’re George—George Expeto. Take it easy, Colonel Kallik! Sure, you’re George. And I’m George—George Enders Obanion. Take it easy, George, and you’ll be all right. We’re not going to hurt you. We want to help you.”

  It was a ruse, and Expeto knew it. They didn’t want to help—he was somehow important, and they wanted him for something. His name wasn’t George—just Expeto. The man was lying. But there was nothing else to do; he had no weapons.

  He shrugged. “Then tell me something about myself.”

  Obanion nodded, catching at the other man’s hand. “Sure, George. See that chart on the wall, there behind you… Now!”

  Expeto had barely time to turn and notice there was no chart on the wall before he felt a violent motion at his back, and a tiny catching reaction as the other’s hand hit him. Then he blanked out.

  He came back to consciousness abruptly, surprised to find that there was no pain in his head. A blow sufficient to knock him out should have left afterpains. He was alone with his thoughts.

  They weren’t good thoughts. His mind was seizing on the words the others had used, and trying to dig sense out of them. Amnesia was a rare thing—too rare. But paranoia was more common. A man might first feel others were persecuting him, then be sure of it, and finally lose all reality in his fantasies of persecution and his own importance. Then he was a paranoiac, making np fantastic lies to himself, but cunning enough, and seemingly rational at times.

  But they had been persecuting him! There’d been the man with the gun… and they’d said he was important! Or had he only imagined it? If someone important had paranoia, would they deliberately induce amnesia as a curative step?

  And who was he and where? On the first, he didn’t care—George Expeto would do. The second took more care, but he had begun to decide it was a hospital—or asylum. The room here was whitewashed, and the bed was the only furniture. He stared down at his body. They’d strapped him down, and his arms were encased in thin metal chains!

  He tried to recall all he could of hospitals, but nothing came. If he had ever been sick, there was no memory of it. Nor could he remember pain, or what it was like, though he knew the word.

  The door was opening then, cautiously, and a figure in white came in. Expeto stared at the figure, and a slow churning began in his head. The words were reluctant this time, but they came, mere surface whispers that he had to fight to retain. But the differences in the figure made them necessary. The longer hair, the softer face, the swelling at the breast, and something about the hips stirred his memories just enough.

  “You’re—woman!” He got the word out, not sure it would come.

  She jumped at his voice, reaching for the door which she had closed slowly. Fear washed over her face, but she nodded, gulping. “I—of course. But I’m just a technician, and they’ll be here, and… They’ve fastened you down!”

  That seemed to bring her back to normal, and she came over, her eyes sweeping over him curiously, while one eyebrow lifted, and she whistled. “Um, not bad. Hi, Romeo. Too bad you’re a monster! You don’t look mean.”

  “So you came to satisfy your curiosity,” he guessed, and his mind puzzled it over, trying to identify the urge that drove men to stare at beasts in cages. He was just a beast to them, a monster—but somehow important. And in the greater puzzle of it all, he couldn’t even resent her remark. Instead, something that had been puzzling him since he’d found the word came to the surface. “Why are there men and women—and who am I?”

  She glanced at her watch, her ear to the door. Then she glided over to him. “I guess you’re the most important man in the world—if you’re a man, and not pure monster. Here.”

  She found his hand had limited freedom in the chains and moved it over her body, while he stared at her. Her eyes were intent on him. “Well. Now do you know why there are men and women?” Her stare intensified as he shook his head, and her lips firmed. “My God, it’s true—and you couldn’t act that well! That’s all I wanted to know! And now they’ll take over the whole moon! Look, don’t tell them I was here—they’ll kill you if you do. Or do you know what death is? Yeah, that’s it, kaput! Don’t talk, then. Not a word!”

  She was at the door, Listening. Finally she opened it, and moved out….

  There was no sound from the zep-gun, but the splaatt of the bullet reached Expeto’s ears. He shuddered, writhing within himself as her exploding body jerked back out of sight. She’d been pleasant to look at. Maybe that was what women were for.

  Obanion was over him then, while a crowd collected in the hall, all wearing khaki. “We’re not going to kill you, Expeto. We knew she’d come—or hoped she would. Now, if I unfasten your chains, will you behave? We’ve only got four hours left. O.K., Colonel Kallik?”

  The colonel nodded. Behind him, the others were gathering something up and leaving.

  “She’s the spy, all right. That must make the last of them. Clever. I’d have sworn she was O.K. But they tipped their hand in letting Expeto’s door stay unbolted before. Well, the trap worked. Sorry about cutting down your time.”

  Obanion nodded, and now it was a group of men in white uniforms who came in, while the khaki-clad men left. They were wheeling in assorted machines, something that might have been an encephalograph, a unitary cerebrotrope, along with other instruments.

  Expeto watched them, his mind freezing at the implications. But he wasn’t insane. His thoughts were lucid. He opened his mouth to protest, just as Obanion swung around.

  “Any feeling we’re persecuting you, Expeto? Maybe you’d like to get in a few licks, to break my skull and run away where you’d be understood. You might get away with it; you’re stronger than I am. Your reaction time is better, too. See, I’m giving you the idea. And you’ve only got four hours in which to do it.”

  Expeto shook his head. That way lay madness. Let his mind feel he was persecuted and he’d surely be the paranoiac he’d heard mentioned. There had to be another answer. This was a hospital—and men were healed in hospitals. Even of madness. It could only be a test.

  “No,” he denied slowly, and was surprised to find it was true. “No, I don’t want to kill you, doctor. If I’ve been insane, it’s gone. But I can’t remember—I can’t remember!”

  He pulled his voice down from its shriek, shook his head again and tried to restrain himself. “I’ll cooperate. Only tell me who I am. What have I done that makes people call me a monster? My God, give me an anchor to hold me steady, and then do what you want.”

  “You’re better off not knowing, since you seem to be able to guess when I’m lying.” Obanion motioned the other men up, and they waited while Expeto took the chair they pointed out. Then they began clamping devices on his head. “You’re what the girl said—the spy. You’re the most important man in the world right now—if you can stay sane. You’re the one man who carries the secret of how we can live on the moon, protect Earth from aggressive powers, even get to the stars some day.”

  “But I can’t remember—anything!”

  “It doesn’t matter. The secret’s in you and we know how to use it. All right, now I’m going to give you some tests, and I want you to tell me exactly what comes into your mind. The instruments will check on it, so lying won’t do any good. Ready?”

  It went on and on, while new shifts came in. The clock on the wall indicated only an hour, but it might have been a century, when Obanion sighed and turned his work over to another.

  Expeto’s thoughts were reeling. He grabbed the breather gratefully, let his head thump back. There must be a way.

  “W
hat day is this?” he asked. At their silence, he frowned. “Cooperate means both working together. I’ve been doing my part. Or is it too much to answer a sun-pie question?”

  The new man nodded slowly. “You’re right. You deserve some answers, if I can give them without breaking security. It’s June eighth, nineteen ninety-one—eleven p.m.”

  It checked with figures that had appeared in the back of his mind, ruining the one theory he’d had. “The President is William Olsen?”

  The doctor nodded, killing the last chance at a theory. For a time, he’d thought that perhaps the aggressive countries had won, and that this was their dictatorship. If he’d been injured in a war… but it was nonsense, since no change had occurred in his time sense or in the administration.

  “How’d I get here?”

  The doctor opened his mouth, then closed it firmly. “Forget that, Expeto. You’re here. Get this nonsense of a past off your mind—you never had one, understand? And no more questions. We’ll never finish in less than three hours, as it is.”

  Expeto stood up slowly, shaking himself. “You’re quite right. You won’t finish. I’m sick of this. Whatever I did, you’ve executed your justice in killing the me that was only a set of memories. And whatever I am, I’ll find for myself. To hell with the lot of you!”

  He expected zep-guns to appear, and he was right. The walls suddenly opened hi panels, and six men with guns were facing him, wearing the oppressive khaki. But something hi him seemed to take over. He had the doctor in one arm and a zep-gun from the hand of a major before anyone else could move. He faced them, waiting for the bullets that would come, but they drew

  back, awaiting orders. Expeto’s foot found the door, kicked at it; the lock snapped.

  Obanion’s voice cut through it all. “Don’t! No shooting! Expeto, I’m the one you want. Let Smith go, and I’ll accompany you, until you’re ready to let me go. Fair enough?”

  Smith was protesting, but the doctor cut him short. “My fault, since I’m responsible. And the Government be damned. I’m not going to have a bunch of good men killed. His reaction’s too fast. We can learn things this way, maybe better. All right, Expeto—or do you want to kill them?”