by Brian N Ball
“Not Talisker!” groaned Marvell. “Not me!”
“You!” the Director said harshly. “Why not? And you too, Miss Hassell, for your curiosity. I asked for anything that might impinge on Spingarn and Talisker, and Comp remembered at last that you’d been curious about Spingarn. You’ve been too inquisitive, Miss Hassell!”
Liz quailed. Whatever was terrifying Marvell, this senile old man’s hatred was worse.
The Head of Disaster Control tried to apologize. Reasonably, he said:
“If we could have sent our regular operatives in, we would have done so, miss. But they’re conditioned to eventualities that can take place. I mean, give them a Byzantine palace revolution that goes wrong, and they’ll go in with a knife or a spear or a well-designed bit of rabble-rousing and eliminate the trouble. They’ll even take over one of Marvell’s crazy fliers, six-inch howitzers and all, if they’re detailed. They’re trained! And good! Ask them to clean up a mess in a regular Plot, and they’ll do it. But what could anyone with a normal mind make of Talisker? And you did ask for Spingarn!”
“Oh dear!” the Director giggled hatefully. “Oh dear me! You don’t even know what Talisker is!”
“She does,” Marvell said in a hollow voice. “She’s a bright girl. Too damned bright! She said the fliers were crazy from the first.”
The Director’s cold eyes turned again to the girl. There was no word for Marvell, and no more mock amusement. “Talisker?”
“Yes,” said Liz Hassell, remembering with a fearful clarity what she had found in the recesses of one of the old memory-banks that no one troubled to use anymore now that Comp knew everything and was ready to oblige. “It was where the Frames began. They had to start somewhere. And in secret.”
Talisker!
A planet chosen for its remoteness. And it had to be remote, so that the secret of the new kind of human experience should not leak out too soon. It had to be secret, this ultimate development that could manufacture a complete new persona, a new self, for those bored to almost suicidal depression with the sameness, the safety, the security of modern life. But Talisker was hundreds of years old! It was a ruin, an abandoned museum!
Empty and eerie, full of ghosts and the echoes of past ringing Plots, it held only residual memories and ancient triumphs! Only the wreckage of a hundred experimental Frames served to mark the passage of man. It was a planetary museum, a mausoleum, nothing but a barren world! As Liz told it in her economical, measured voice, she was haunted by the sense of the past once more. And she was deathly afraid of what the evil old man would say.
“Excellent!” he murmured. “A credit to our selection procedures!”
“Don’t involve me in Talisker!” Marvell burst out. “I don’t want to—”
“Quiet!” the old man said viciously. “Marvell, there’s not the time for your imbecilic remarks! Look!”
He passed a skilled hand over the sensor-pads on his desk; they wavered toward him, eager to absorb instructions from his blue-veined strong hands; and the low, vast room was flooded with images of the lonely planet far out on the rim of the Galaxy, the lost planet of Talisker!
“You are there!” sneered the old man. “Live in one of a thousand worlds!”
The words burned into Liz Hassel’s mind. They were a warped parody of the mind-beamers’ cries. She shuddered again, and she looked at Talisker.
“Nothing,” Marvell said quietly. “It’s empty!”
The planet was truly a ghost world. Bleak rock, and the glittering wreckage of age-old Plots; fused steel, hanging towers, half-built ships; buildings buried under monstrous growths; and twin moons playing a twisting light uncertainly over the surface, graying the haunted places so that the writhing shadows were menacing and the ruins fearful.
“It should be empty!” Liz heard herself say. “It’s finished.”
“No,” said the Director.
“No?”
“No,” said Marvell. He was standing upright. He had regained his courage, and he feared for the girl as well as for himself. He took her hand, and she was glad.
“It was empty,” said Deneb, himself awed by the strange sight, “until about five years ago. But Spingarn set some of the Frames going. And filled them with Time-outers.”
“He used Talisker! Why!”
“You can work it out, Liz,” said Marvell. “He wanted to try his random principle.”
“I can’t—it’s crazy! Random principle?”
“Yes,” said Deneb.
“You’ll understand soon,” said the Director.
Already Liz could begin to grasp the cosmic scale of Spingarn’s genius. Experiments with random probabilities! It had been possible, theoretically. Why, they’d discussed it—only as a joke of course—one day in the pre-Plotting course. A joke? It had happened! It wasn’t enough for this hotshot Spingarn to manufacture Plots to make the Frames—not nearly enough! Somehow he had tied up the Time-outers with a random probability curve. And then used Talisker as a proving ground!
“So he should be on Talisker?” she said. “This Spingarn?”
“And a few thousand others,” agreed Deneb. “No one!” he grunted as the scanners picked out the past glories of Talisker, searching for a sign of human life. “No one at all! Our scanners can home in even if it’s just one man!”
“But where is he?” Liz exclaimed. “Is he back?”
The Director waved a hand and the screens were bland, blue and empty. Talisker was gone.
“His robot returned with information on the cell-structure contrivance that could reverse his experiments with the cassettes.”
“The cassettes too!”
The Director ignored her question.
It was bewildering to Liz Hassell. The memory-cassettes affected by some kind of random principle? How? Marvell’s mind was racing too.
“Spingarn sent the robot back? The Time-out Umpire he took with him? The one he found in the Time-out blip?”
“The same,” agreed the Director. “One robot. Returned with information about a so-called Genekey. And it worked.”
“But Spingarn! And the girl he took!”
“Missing,” said Deneb.
Liz waited, lost in the exchange. Spingarn she knew of. Talisker was where the Frames had begun. The rest was an enigma. Marvell had said something to the humanoid secretary outside the office about a cell-structure change in the Director. Bodily change—how? She could not begin to guess. And now she was listening to an account of a robot coming back from Talisker with obviously priceless data! Wait! she ordered herself. Wait until a clue emerges —and then examine it carefully before coming to a conclusion.
“And the robot’s back?” Marvell repeated.
“A year ago,” said Deneb.
“A year! So what’s Spingarn up to?” the Plot Director demanded. “What’s the robot got to say about him and the variables on Talisker?”
The Director didn’t answer directly.
“I wondered about you, Marvell,” he said, red wet lips pursed. “You make some maniacal blunders. But Comp says it’s you and how can I argue?”
“Me?” Marvell said faintly, and Liz Hassell wondered about his lack of imagination; she squeezed his hand reassuringly. Surely he knew that he was due for a change of career?
“You,” said the Director. “You, Marvell.”
Deneb again tried to be reasonable.
“Look at it this way, Marvell,” he said. “You’re helping us all! We need your special kind of skills, man! Why, you could be another Spingarn down on Talisker! Help wind down the random element—even get through to the Alien that’s causing all the—”
“Alien!”
Marvell gasped; Liz Hassell felt an emptiness inside her that was like reaching a hand through an open dark space and finding that the hand, the space beyond, and then the brain that directed the hand and the body too were somewhere beyond thought, beyond any framework of experience that she could think of. Alien! There had been no rumors, not the sh
adow of a hint! Wait!
“Get Spingarn’s robot,” ordered the Director.
Deneb moved.
“You mean me,” Marvell said, still openmouthed. “Me! Go to—”
“Talisker. Yes. With Miss Hassell.”
Liz Hassell felt the blood drain from her face. She turned, disengaged her hand from Marvell’s tight grip, and started to run: and stopped, for there, before her, was an elegant tall robot shimmering in opalescent red velvet. Bowing. Bowing for all the world like some exquisite from the Elegance Frame.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Marvell caught her as she fainted.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
Is she going to do this often?” Liz Hassell heard as she opened her eyes. Marvell was half-supporting her with an expression of concern on his fleshy face; but it was the Director who had asked the question.
“I don’t suppose she’s seen a Time-out Umpire before,” Marvell told him. “Horace must have been a shock.”
Liz gagged, trying to speak.
“Feminine weakness,” said the Director, with dislike. “Marvell, you’re not to be envied in your mission.”
“I’m all right!” Liz called, pushing Marvell’s arm away and getting to her feet. She smoothed down the luxurious fur. “This thing startled me.”
“Horace,” agreed Marvell. “Spingarn’s robot.”
“An Umpire,” the robot said, hurt. “It was my function to arbitrate on the niceties of Time-outs. I became involved in the Talisker affair purely by accident—”
“Quiet,” said Deneb.
The automaton was offended. Liz could see that it was both conceited and arrogant; incredibly, too, it was vain about its appearance, for it had adopted an outer covering of a fiery, fibrous material that glowed redly with a weird, hypnotizing effect. As she smoothed the rich fur she wore, it was doing much the same to its own covering. It radiated hurt pride at Deneb’s abrupt order. High-grade humanoids were temperamental beasts: so this was Spingarn’s companion!
Marvell had other concerns.
“You don’t need me for Talisker? You’re not serious, Director? Me and the girl? Us?”
Liz adapted more swiftly to the situation. For a flaring instant she could visualize the enigmatic Spingarn—the. Probability Man himself—against the haunted world of Talisker. And with this pompous, redly-glistening humanoid beside him! And to go to the lonely, deserted planet herself!
Marvell almost gobbled in dismay. The two men facing him listened to his incoherent spluttering, and then Deneb said crisply:
“All the possibilities have been worked on, Marvell. It isn’t a problem for Disaster Control. Comp hasn’t come up with a solution which can be sought after by any of the agencies. What it does say is that Talisker needs a man whose actions just might reflect those of Spingarn’s—”
“But Spingarn was a maniac! He didn’t act logically! He got Talisker’s obsolete Frames working again! He was outside the law—”
The Director regarded him with unamused black eyes. Liz Hassell watched Marvell’s expostulations die away. Marvell feared the Director.
“Listen to Horace,” he told Marvell. “Horace will be going with you.”
“Sir—” protested the humanoid.
Deneb glared once and it was silent.
Liz Hassell had to pinch herself surreptitiously to make sure that it was not all an involved nightmare; the pain was real enough. Yet the glistening humanoid still faced Deneb and the Director with an air of sullen rebellion, and Marvell—cigar mostly ash in his large, pudgy hand, cravat crumpled sadly, bald head covered in runnels of sweat—was almost in tears of disbelieving rage. Could it be that she was to be whirled through the spaceways far out to the Rim of the Galaxy with such unlikely companions? To a desolate, ruined mausoleum of a planet? Her? Liz Hassell?
“It goes by the name of Horace,” the Director announced, “since that was what the Probability Man chose to call it. Horace!”
“Sir?”
“Explain your function.”
A shallow mentality, thought Liz. It was amazing what they could do with machines these days. Had some saturnine engineer built its vapid, superficial arrogance into its circuits, or was that a natural development of the thing’s own electronic coils? She could smile as it postured.
“My function is to be your guide,” Horace announced importantly. “I had the honor of accompanying Mr. Spingarn on his venture to the Frames of Talisker, and it is now my pleasure to have been detailed to return to the planet with yourselves.”
“Dear God,” whispered Marvell. “It goes with us? That?”
The Director smiled a death’s-head’s grin.
“Ask it about Talisker.”
“No!” Marvell shuddered.
“Miss Haskell?”
Liz knew that she and Marvell were being played with. She could accept that too. Along with the terrifying information that she was to face the incredible emptiness of Talisker: and the thing they had called Alien. She was still trembling slightly, still in awe of the Director; but she would not fear him. Fear could come later.
“Why did Spingarn go to Talisker?” she asked the humanoid.
It shrugged elegant red shoulders.
“Why, to try to cancel the effects of random gene mutation.”
Liz knew that the rumors were true. There had been the terrible experiment.
“And you succeeded?”
The Director glared poisonously. He said nothing.
“Of course,” the humanoid said negligently.
“Horace brought back the Genekey specification,” Deneb put in. “Comp used the information to reverse all known mutations.”
There was a mystery she knew nothing of, she could see. It could be investigated later. For the moment, she would ask the important questions.
“What happened on Talisker?”
Deneb looked worried now.
“I accompanied Sergeant Hawk and Spingarn, with Spingarn’s assistant, a female, to the surface of the planet. I returned with the Genekey specif—”
“You’ve said that. I know that now. Where did you find the specifications?”
“On Talisker, Miss Hassell!”
The Director was deeply amused.
“Then how did you find them?”
Marvell muttered: “Don’t ask it any more. Who wants to know about Talisker? The hell with Talisker!”
“How?” Liz repeated.
The robot was piqued.
“I have no information.”
“No information! Why not?”
“Because it’s got more sense than you!” snarled Marvell at her. “Forget Talisker! Forget Spingarn, Liz!”
“Why no information?” persisted Liz.
The robot pointed to its furred headpiece.
“This was empty, miss. All it contained was the Genekey specification. Apart from that, nothing. I was returned to Center in a state of unknowingness, with my memory-circuits obliterated.”
“It gets worse,” Marvell whined. Liz felt all her dislike of him returning. “We go back to an empty planet, not knowing what to expect, with that!”
“What do you know?” Liz asked.
The robot shrugged.
“Before Spingarn was sent into Talisker, the most extreme of probability variables were plotted in an effort to determine what was happening there. The conclusion was that an extra-Universal agency was in operation.”
“And?”
“I have no direct memories, of course, but nothing in my experience runs counter to that prediction. I conclude that an extra-Universal entity allowed me to return with the information that could reverse all cell-mutation experiments.”
“Cell-mutation—” Liz began.
“You’ll be informed,” Deneb said abruptly. “They’re not your main concern, Miss Hassell.”
“Then what is my main concern?”
The Director extended his emaciated neck; his teeth shone overwhite, his black e
yes regarded her with detestation.
“It seems that our selection procedures are most extraordinarily good! An incisive intellect, a woman of determination—Marvell, how fortunate you are to have such a companion !”
Marvell spat a couple of Mechanical Age obscenities at Liz Hassell; they were quaint reminders of the overwhelming importance those long-lost people placed on their bowels. There would be time enough to remind Marvell of them. She could ignore his scared vulgarity, because she was so powerfully excited by the mission for which she was detailed. Spingarn, Talisker, and Alien! They held her entranced, their bizarre names summoning up a universe of associations.
Nevertheless, she spoke calmly:
“Do I understand,” she said, directing her question at the skinny, hating figure before her, “that we are detailed to locate Spingarn?”
There was a snarl of genuine viciousness.
“Spingarn you can bury! I don’t care about the Spingarns of this or any other world!”
“Then his woman?”
“Her too!”
Marvell nodded agreement. “Her too!”
“His companion—Sergeant Hawk?”
“A destroyed psyche,” Horace said. “It seems that his persona was totally overlaid by a conditioning process for use in a Gunpowder Age Plot! How it came—”
“Quiet,” Deneb said once more. The robot bowed in reply. Liz was tempted to giggle at its solemn, elegant, frustrated mannerisms; she recognized an unfamiliar lack of confidence in herself now. It had to be put down.
“Would you care to tell Marvell and myself precisely why we are being sent to Talisker?” she said loudly. “Why us, and why go at all, sir?”
The Director was in the grip of an icy fury.
“Why reactivate Talisker in the first place?” he snarled at her. “Why does a hell-maggot like Spingarn have to build himself into every Plot in the Frames? Why does he have to set up the random variables that let him crew Talisker with the Time-outers? And when he’s sent out to Talisker—to die, and quickly! Quickly!—does he have to survive? We have the Genekey, we’re rid of Spingarn— Talisker isn’t a danger—”