Planet Probability

by Brian N Ball

  “Miss Hassell!” shrilled a high-pitched voice. “Miss Hassell—stop! Stop!”

  Liz turned as she ran, recognizing the urgency of the robot’s yell. She caught a glimpse of the red-gold skeletal figure bursting through the copse; she knew why the birds were quiet; in the same instant she knew that the planet that Spingarn had filled with his Time-outers was not harmless as it had seemed in the dawn mist; and she was aware too that something below the ground was heaving her aside just as she reached the slow-running brook. A ripple in the wet grass, a sudden increase in the wind’s strength, a shuddering of even the crisp morning air, all told her that electromagnetic forces had become aware of her presence.

  “Marvell!” she called, as the ground fell away below her.

  “Grasers!” Horace was shrilling. “Graser-mines, Miss Hassell!”

  Liz scarcely heard, for the air was bending into its constituent atoms and molecules; bright flashes sparkled in front of her eyes; brighter gleams smashed inside her head as space was warped to allow the passage of her body. Suddenly she was a hundred feet above the makeshift night-shelter. There was no sign of Marvell, she told herself numbly as a mighty force tore at her body and spun her in a new direction. End over end she tumbled, her thoughts scattering away from her in the complex, gyrating patterns she was describing high above the surface of Talisker; she saw, in the distance, the ruined towers of a city of some kind. Again, when she had been shot high into the thin air she saw that the little patch of greenery below her was a parkland set in a patchwork of arenas; there was a village, a couple of hamlets, and outlying buildings, little more. And all around the parkland was a great, shimmering swath of blackness. If she could have made sense of the situation, she would have found it intriguing. Graser-mines? And then she had to fight for breath as a lurching, sideways movement shot her higher still, into the rarefied regions where the atmosphere was almost at an end; she could see the curve of Talisker’s horizon distinctly, for the sun was climbing beyond the disc’s edge. Clouds swam below her, and still the thrust of—grasers?—took her. Liz gasped and felt particles of ice in her eyelids. Was the bloody thing trying to force her into orbit over this mad planet? Grasers—she had heard of grasers, but what did that matter when she was swept down in the grip of this titanic force? Down, down, she went, drawing great lungfuls of breath and closing her eyes against the speed of the descent. The ground lurched below her, the greenery of that deceptive bit of Talisker. And then she was on the ground again, shaking still, eyes stinging and lungs heaving.

  Horace bent over her.

  “I must apologize for my lapse in failing to warn you of the possibility of graser-mines,” he was saying. “I was unable, however, to give you such a warning since the terms of my commission don’t allow advance information about the various probabilities—”

  Marvell emerged from the shelter rubbing his eyes. Automatically he smoothed the large black moustache and placed the battered top hat on his bald head.

  “ ‘Morning, Liz,” he called. “Sleep well?” To the robot he said: “Now have you located some real food?”

  Liz could not speak, for she was still panting.

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “Get up, Liz,” ordered Marvell. “I want something to eat. It looks as though we’re here for a day or two—we’ll have to make some effort to find what’s happening, enough to satisfy the Director. Come on, Liz!”

  Liz recovered. She realized that it was of little use showing indignation. Calmly she said:

  “Don’t try to get water. The brook’s mined.”

  “Mined?” he said, alert now.

  “Graser-mine,” Liz told him. “It caught me. Horace couldn’t warn me—us.”

  Marvell inspected the robot, which wore a look of apology.

  “It gets worse,” he said at last. “You, Liz, you trod on a graser?” He looked up at the dawn. “It got you?”

  “Not for long.”

  “I was able to cut off the power-source,‘’ Horace said modestly. ”A small application of energy at the right moment.“

  Marvell shivered with cold.

  “You were lucky, Liz. Grasers get you and hold you— but grasers! Here! I thought this was a bit of Primitive! And the place is mined? It doesn’t fit in with the Frame factors—grasers are advanced technology, certainly post-Steam Age.”

  Liz remembered. “Grasers,” she said. “Lasers, grasers. Gravity—grasers. The planet’s force-fields—yes. Twenty-first or twenty-second century maybe, or later still. They were the basis of the first Phase ships.”

  “Interesting toys,” said Marvell. “Mines! Lucky you weren’t flipped into orbit.”

  “I nearly was.” Liz shivered. She was annoyed with the robot, irrationally of course, because it could do no other than let them make mistakes. It was clear enough about its orders. It could not interfere with any decisions either of them made: clear up the mess afterward, not move to avoid their making one. “I’m thirsty,” she complained. “And I feel foul!”

  “Yes, miss,” said the robot. Was it laughing at her? Liz had no time for anger, for Marvell was fastening his frock coat. He bent to adjust the bright yellow spats.

  “Come on,” he told Liz. “We’re not staying here.”

  “We’re not—” she said, surprised. It was the first time that Marvell had given an order. She got to her feet.

  “We move!” Marvell said, fumbling in his pocket for cigar-case and matches. “You don’t think they planted the grasers for fun?” He looked about the fields, where the mist was clearing. “Horace—get us clear! No, Liz,” he said, turning to her, “whatever this Frame’s about, it’s nasty. Tricky—I feel it here,” he said, placing a hand on his swelling stomach. “Minefields—there’ll be minefields under the minefields! That’s how I’d build a Frame around the grasers!”

  Liz speculated hurriedly. It was obvious that Marvell took the little patch of territory to be some kind of arena. She would not ask him, since he had almost ignored her late predicament.

  “I want to eat,” she told him. “Eat, bathe, drink.”

  “Later!”

  He walked away, with Horace leading. The robot adjusted his skeletal limbs so that they formed the interstices of a parabolic scanner; twice during the long trek it avoided a beaten path. Liz was careful to walk where Marvell and Horace had trodden. She was still shaky after her abrupt ascent into the blue-violet haze above the planet, though she would not have admitted it to Marvell; the robot she discounted. Marvell seemed to have found reserves of energy from somewhere; he was more like his familiar, braggart and overconfident self. White-gray smoke curled back to Liz, rich and pungent, from his cigar; he looked like some bedraggled dignitary fallen on hard times but aware of his intrinsic importance.

  Horace stopped after they had been walking for over an hour.

  “Buildings,” the robot said. “It’s a large farm, sir.” He concentrated, and Liz could almost feel the probing scanners that searched the ground. “Nothing here, sir, nothing that could cause you and Miss Hassell any danger.”

  Liz saw whitewashed interiors, a stone-tiled roof, high windows and gray stone outbuildings. There were simple machines, clearly horse-drawn, in the yard. Chickens watched with interest. There was a growling sound from one side of the house. A white and black bitch sidled toward them.

  “A dog!” announced Marvell. “Here, ah, boy!”

  The bitch bounded forward at the invitation.

  “It’s a deserted farm,” Liz said aloud, but really to herself. “It’s a farm! There’ll be water—water!”

  She patted the collie bitch and walked on faster.

  “If there’s any real food, Liz—” called Marvell.

  “Find it yourself!” she shouted, running.

  Inside, there was brass and clean whitewash, heavy oak beams, solid pine furniture, an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling—a wonderful recreation of some lost farming setting. Liz found a bathroom. There was a shower, with cold, clea
r water from a tub on a shelf. She stripped, bathed, drinking from the showering water as she soaped herself. As she scrambled through a linen closet for towels, she caught the first scents of the breakfast Horace was cooking.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Food!”

  They were on the road again an hour later. Walking, for there was no transport. Liz wanted to wring the necks of a couple of chickens so that they would be able to eat later, but Marvell had turned green at the idea. And so, carrying a small hamper filled with the tinned foodstuffs they had found at the farm (“You can’t call it stealing,” Marvell had said, helping himself. “We’re trying to find what happened to them, and they won’t argue if they feed us in the process.”), Horace led them to the edge of the little arena that was some kind of recreation of an earlier reality.

  They knew it was the end of the Frame, because their way was blocked.

  “I saw it!” Liz exclaimed as they topped a steep rise and faced the unreal black, glittering barrier before them.

  “Horace?” invited Marvell.

  It rose sheer into the sky. Higher than Liz had realized, it dominated the terrain, oscillating gently in the breeze, and stretching from one side of the small horizon to the other. Impossibly, it was grounded in a mist-like vapor, so that the whole structure seemed to hang a little above the ground on a frill of lace.

  “I know,” said Liz. “It’s a Frame boundary.”

  “And beyond?”

  “I can’t remember—I only caught glimpses. I thought a ruined city complex, maybe not.”

  Marvell pushed his hat back.

  “They’d have parceled the whole surface of the planet out,” he mused. “Used the entire land and water area by the time they’d worked through all the material they wanted to try out. You know, they kept Talisker going for nearly two centuries as a proving ground, before it got Ancient Monument status. Spingarn was Curator, did you know?”

  “Yes,” said Liz.

  “Horace?” said Marvell again.

  “Sir?”

  Marvell pointed. “This. I’m not going back there,” he said, indicating the inviting green terrain behind them. “I’m not being batted about in graser-mazes. You never can tell with these old force-fields,” he went on. “Get a kink in them, and they can separate you into bits you wouldn’t know yourself as.” He smiled as Liz tried not to shiver. She still felt moments of vertigo at the memory of those frantic seconds above Talisker. “Now, Horace, we’re stuck here till Center realizes we can’t help. Get us over that.”

  Horace seemed to ponder the matter for a few seconds.

  “You’re quite sure that you wish to do so, sir?” he asked. Liz looked back and saw the collie bitch.

  Marvell nodded.

  “Over. Through. Beyond. Now.”

  “Wait,” said Liz. She waved to the bitch which came nearer. “Give us a run-down on the probabilities of finding the Alien if we do,” she told Horace.

  “Good dog,” Marvell said as the bitch came up to them. “Horace?”

  Horace frowned.

  “I have a dim feeling I’ve encountered this situation before, sir. I may be wrong. Memory-erasure is fairly efficient in such cases as my treatment, but there can be hints locked up in the circuits.”

  “Well?”

  “My best guess is that Miss Hassell is both right and wrong.”

  “That’s Liz,” agreed Marvell complacently.

  “The right first,” Liz said, fondling the bitch. It looked sleek and well-fed, but it was frightened. She thought suddenly of the absence of people. It was lonely. The robot interrupted her speculations.

  “Yes, miss,” said Horace. “I’d estimate that we’re at the junction of two separate Frames, as Miss Hassell suggests. On one side we have a reenactment of reality based on an agricultural community, which had some odd sidelights. And on the other side of the barrier, there will be quite a different area of recreation. Originally, there would have been a complete physical separation between the Frames, with this barrier as a cordon sanitaire.”

  “Now the wrong,” said Marvell. “There’s interaction?”

  “Oh, yes, sir! Graser-mines wouldn’t be appropriate to a pre-Steam Age Frame! My guess, considering the Probability Quotients and plotting them on a full probability curve, is that where Frames touch one another they’ve at some time been subject to Frame-Shift.”

  “No,” said Marvell, who was in fact agreeing. “Graser-mazes are an early Third-Millennium game. Frame-Shift, eh?”

  “I’m not sure what that is,” said Liz.

  Marvell smiled.

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “You’re the one that knew Spingarn. Maybe he told you more than you admitted to the Director.”

  Marvell reacted with a sullen impatience.

  “So why should I put myself up a tree? Spingarn did tell me about Frame-Shift!”

  Liz waited, but it was the robot who explained.

  “I think, sir—I establish from my readings of the probability curve—that if you, ah, we, tried to get over the barrier, it would move us along.”

  “Go on,” said Marvell.

  “We’re intruders, sir, and the barriers are programmed to apprehend intruders. Normally, if anyone in a particular Frame tried to get over the barrier, he’d be picked up for interrogation and possible return to his own environment.”

  “And if we tried it?” asked Liz.

  “Interrogation centers won’t be operational on a museum-planet,” said Marvell. “Horace?”

  The robot was allowed to continue.

  “If Frame-Shift occurs when we’re on the barrier, miss, it would be exceedingly dangerous.”

  “Yes, Horace?”

  “Frame-Shift means that any one or more of the Frames could crumble at any time. And if you and Mr. Marvell are on the barrier at such a moment, it would be regrettable.”

  Marvell was intrigued.

  “It really could happen, Liz. Spingarn said—” He stopped.

  “I thought you knew,” she said.

  Marvell shrugged.

  “He was a bastard, but he did things! He said he’d seen a mountain chain, ice caps and all, reduced to a flat desert in seconds. Total destruction. Total shift of strata. You have to keep away from the barriers—that’s where you get maximum risk.”

  Liz gulped.

  “It could happen here?”

  “You heard Horace. Now do you see why I wasn’t going to be a hero?”

  Liz patted the bitch.

  “Well, what can we do?”

  Marvell watched the great black mass shimmering in the morning sunlight. Then he grinned.

  “Horace!”

  “Sir?”

  “You said you could use local resources in our service?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get us over the barrier.”

  “I’m not permitted to use my own energy-fields—”

  Liz felt her heart begin to pound with excitement. She knew that Marvell’s complex and tortuous imagination had been at work.

  “The grasers! Dig a graser-mine up and program it for limited range—but get us over!”

  Liz admired the dexterity of the robot in the next few minutes. It was easy enough to locate the fairly simple devices buried at intervals about the farm, but it took considerable ingenuity to redesign their antique controls. Long coils of entrail-like tubes that emitted a phosphorescent-like radiation hung about Horace’s great gaunt arms; yards of the stuff had to be knitted into a trelliswork of branches he had put together; yet with some speed the work went forward. The bitch watched with interest.

  At last Horace said: “The conveyance is ready, sir.”

  “It’s a safe ride?” Marvell said, apprehensive again.

  “Almost a hundred percent,” Horace said. “There could be a small uncertainty element, but it’s very slight.”

  Marvell smiled greasily at Liz. She noticed that he had neither washed nor shaved at the farm.

  “Y
ou first, Liz!”

  “No!”

  Marvell noticed the black and white collie bitch.

  “We could try him.”

  “Her!”

  “Her then.”

  “No!” snarled Liz, angry now. “You!”

  “Christ, what an assistant I have!”

  He gestured to Horace. The robot pointed to a slight dip in the ground a few yards from the barrier. “If you would stand there, sir?”

  “Grasers! That I’ve lived to get caught up in early Third-Millennium technology!” Marvell complained. “Liz, don’t say I didn’t warn—”

  Horace had thrown circuits together, and Marvel’s bulk was pitched upward with incredible speed.

  “Miss?” suggested Horace.

  The bitch struggled as she urged it forward. Liz felt confused. All she could think of was the collie’s fears. What sort of people had been living in this dangerous, green bit of recreated reality? How had Spingarn’s Time-outers existed among the minefields of the Primitive Frame? Who would wish to live in momentary expectation of a sudden lift into the stratosphere? The collie growled at her. She released it and then the ground fell away as bright sparks banged into her eyes and she was hurtling upward, the bitch watching her in panic, her brain full of tiny arrows as force-fields rang around her. The descent was as unpleasant as before.

  Marvell was already on his feet, eyes shining with awed incredulity.

  “Liz! Christ, let’s go back! Liz, it’s not for us!”

  Liz looked and saw that Talisker had played another grim trick on them. Beyond this barrier was a fearsome sight. By some bizarre trickery, they were about to descend into a shimmering desert land, flat and frightening. What lay in the desert was worse.

  Liz understood Marvel’s yell. The haunted planet showed itself in its eerie strangeness. There would be no more waiting, no more playfulness.

  Liz and Marvell knew that Spingarn had met the Alien.

  The evidence was before them.

  This was nothing to do with the Frames, experimental or otherwise. The Frames were only a realization of the ultimate form of escape. Books—films—sensors—complete total experience—and finally the Frames. The Savior of Civilization, whose dress Marvell copied as a tribute, had shown the way: move the tribes of the Americans to Europe, the tribes of the Germans to Spain, the tribes of the English to Switzerland and permutate the combinations endlessly. Always move people into different experiences, though. Use trains, then aircraft, then spaceships.