by Brian N Ball
The Frames were a logical extension of the Mechanical Age’s exploitation of the means of mass travel. Now, whole populations moved to new areas of experience. New worlds—new recreated worlds were manufactured for them. And it had all begun on Talisker.
Liz’s mouth was dry.
Whatever had left the monstrous blotch on the desert had not begun anywhere in the Universe. She was set down softly. “Marvell!” she called. “Christ!” Marvell groaned. “Dear Christ!”
* * *
CHAPTER SIX
There could be no doubt about it. Playtime was over. Liz Hassell could recall, with a shiver of fear, the effect produced on her by her first sight of the lost planet of Talisker when she had seen the desolation revealed by the scanners. The planet had seemed to be only the shade of a mausoleum, so remote had it been from humanity.
For miles around the flat desert, the irregular flowing lines of force radiated in unholy tendrils of fiery brilliance. It was alien, blankly and stupendously alien, through and through shot with whorls and schemes of powers that left the mind reeling in confusion; no human had had a hand in the exploitation of these dreadful bands of energy— whatever grotesque forces Talisker had hinted at paled into insignificance beside the promise of otherness here!
This was the reason for their long, hurried flight through interstellar space: the Guardians’ intention, the Director’s mysterious instructions. This was the goal.
“Christ, Liz,” said Marvell softly, shielding his eyes from the glare.
It was a living machine, so much Liz could work out. There was a wild tracery of creation, power and life, but it had all gone wrong! It was what the Alien had built out here at the Rim of the Galaxy, but not what the Alien had intended. The vast seas of power were in a tormented uncertainty of aim: where there should have been a central and overall design—however incomprehensible to the human mind—there was chaos. Liz felt that she was looking into the blackest reaches of uncreated space, far down a long tunnel where pre-creation writhed and struggled for birth, where universes struggled to erupt into the order of existence, where formless entities clawed for expression! It was the edge of black night!
She gasped in wonder at the hypnotic blast of powers; within the structure—it was a structure, it had been built and then demolished, but built, with a distinct purpose— there were schemes for transmuting matter. Liz could trace parts of purposeful activity in the subtle, confusing whorls of radiance. She watched the strange dance of molecular patterns and again she gasped as the chains of human existence were flailed into new shapes: gene-chains grew, flowered, were transmuted almost playfully.
Marvell was aghast. His face was red and serious, his neck and whole head pouring sweat; he had removed the rusty, battered top hat, with its grease stains and distinct hole. He was breathing fast. The cigar rolled around his wide lips, chewed to a rag. Liz could almost smell fear. His mouth worked with difficulty, but she could make out the words.
“Time-out!” Marvel was whispering. “For Christ’s sake. Time-out!”
And still Liz marveled at the eerie sight. There had been a center, it was clear. The shimmering remains of a square, monolithic building or mass of rock itself appeared in the midst of the tumult of forces; and there was a hint of effort, of continuity somewhere inside it, if only one could reach out to understand it. She was dimly aware too of Horace’s pedantic voice lecturing to Marvell: the alien presence was stronger.
“Time-out, sir?” Horace was saying to Marvell. “I’m afraid not, sir, not under any circumstances! As a former authority on Time-out rulings, I have to rule your request inadmissible!”
“It’s real!” Marvell was saying to himself. “It isn’t a part of this place—I can’t understand that—I’m no Spingarn! They’re mad to send me out here!” His voice rang out, and Liz could hear him. “Nobody can face a thing like that—no one! It doesn’t fit any Frame I’ve ever seen or heard of—why, it isn’t human! It could never be human!”
“No,” said Liz. “It belongs to the Alien.”
“There’s no such thing!” Marvell said, shaking his large head. “It was all Spingarn’s idea! He was lying! This thing—it’s something the machines made!”
He looked at Liz.
She had no help for him.
“No, Marvell. We’ve found it. Or it’s found us—I think we’ve come across what Spingarn called the Genekey. Horace?”
“Would you like me to plot the Probability Quotients?”
“Plot away!” said Marvell, groaning.
“It almost certainly was the Genekey, extrapolating from available evidence,” said Horace. “There are energy-fields warped in non-Universal combinations, sir. Nothing radiating from the epicenter relates to any data I have.”
“Christ!”
Liz looked again at Marvell and considered him with what she hoped was an unbiased eye. His coat was stained and torn. His large frame was somewhat hardened by a lack of the pulpy mess he normally lived on, and the exercise he had taken over the last couple of days; but what an unlikely figure to encounter the Alien presence on Talisker! Frock coat, striped trousers and stovepipe glossy hat: what sort of impact would such a figure have on Spingarn’s Alien?
“Liz!” Marvell said suddenly. “Liz, for Christ’s sake do something!”
Liz giggled, for her train of thought had extended to a meeting between Marvell and Spingarn’s Alien. How would it come off? A thing that had left its own universe perhaps a hundred million years ago, meeting an anachronistically-garbed Marvell!
“Do something?” She giggled helplessly. “Oh, God, Marvell, you really are too much!”
Marvell looked at her oddly.
He turned again to Horace.
“You’re sure about this?”
“As sure as one can be, sir. I believe that this was once the device that the Alien and Spingarn used to produce the effects of random cell-fusion.”
“Oh.” Marvell looked away.
“We’ve found it!” Liz said to him. “Marvell, it’s there! We’ve got to do something.”
Marvell looked about him, seeking for a way back to the Frame they had just left.
“Why?”
“Why? Why what?”
“Why do something, as you say, Liz? We’ve found it, we can report as much—I mean, look at it,” he said, pointing to the glittering ghost of a monolith that was now forming again in the center of the web of forces. “We can go away. When they know at Center we’ve located it, they’ll send expert help. You know,” he said, waving his arms, “the Disaster people. Experts.”
“Experts!”
“Qualified experts, Liz—there must be hundreds of bright Field Theorists jumping for a chance to make contact with all this new data! It’s time the amateurs made way for the pros!”
“If you’ll excuse the interruption, sir, I must point out that in these circumstances, you are the professional.”
“It’s gone mad,” said Marvell, groaning heavily. “These high-grades—they become unbalanced.”
“No, sir. On the contrary, my deductive, inductive and projective procedures are in excellent condition.”
Liz tore her sight away from the glittering center.
“Horace is right,” she said. “If they’d had anyone else to send, wouldn’t they have done so?”
“But—me!
He pushed the battered hat back.
“You,” said Liz puzzled. “Yes, you.” She saw the hurt and terrified eyes and thought of the collie bitch which had been too scared to leave the dangers of the graser-mines; Marvell was a pitiful creature. She took command, as she had once done before. “Horace!”
“Miss?”
“Where can we find shade and water?”
The sunlight burned her fair skin. She was uncomfortable in the furs, though the fact that she stank slightly no longer gave her much concern. It was Marvell who needed rest, food and reassurance before they could begin to carry out the plan that was gradually forming in L
iz’s mind. The robot’s antennas sprang from its carapace to a considerable height; thin wires glittered in the sunshine. The Genekey, or the fantastic whirlpool of incoherent energies that Horace said had been the Genekey, seemed to creep toward them; it was an illusion, however. The strip of red sand separating them from its eerie seas had not diminished in size. It was to the mind that the grotesque whorls reached out, numbing the brain, insidiously clamoring for dominion over the thought-processes.
Liz felt herself reeling.
“Well?” she snapped.
“About a mile, miss,” said Horace. “There is a small valley with a natural water spring. There.”
“Where?” asked Marvell, speaking for the first time in many minutes.
Liz looked hard against the sun’s glare. Then she saw it. A slight darkening of the level plain that might be the shadows of low trees peeping from a valley.
“Yes,” she said to Horace. “Meet us there in three hours’ time.”
“Yes, miss.”
“Grab the basket,” she told Marvell.
“Me!”
“You. And you, Horace, reconnoiter clear around the Genekey—get what data you can absorb. Especially see if there’s a way through to that.”
“What!” Marvell said, stopping in the midst of heaving the hamper of food onto his broad, stout back. “Liz, don’t even think—”
“Marvell, will you get it into your head that we’ve got to try?” Liz said. “There isn’t any way out of Talisker for us, not until we’ve done what we’ve been sent to do. Ask Horace.”
The furred robot turned an interested gaze to the man. There was something repellent about its curiosity regarding Marvell’s reactions; Liz had the feeling that it was in sympathy more with its robotic mentors than the humans they claimed to serve. It had an almost eager interest in Marvell’s fear.
Marvell stuttered: “Horace, she has to be wrong! Find the Alien, we were told—haven’t we found it? Isn’t that the mission completed? Didn’t we seek it out and find it?”
Horace smirked.
“The probabilities suggest, sir, that rather than your having found the Alien, it found you. And Miss Hassell.”
“Christ!”
Liz realized that the automaton was right. The Alien, engaged in whatever undertakings it had chosen, had left a pool of otherness for them. She could sense its presence now. A thing from the dawn of the Universe. Little lost Alien!
It seemed neither little nor lost.
“Look around,” she told the robot. “Now.”
“Yes, Miss Hassell.”
“Come on,” she ordered Marvell.
“Wait!”
Horace stopped at Marvell’s command.
“Sir?”
Marvell glared at Liz. He spoke, however, to Horace: “Just what do you think that—that over there—” he indicated, pointing to the swirling whorls of energy. “What do you think it’s for?”
Horace answered at once: “It’s quite beyond conjecture, sir, quite beyond all theorizing. You’ll recall, sir, that all previous data I acquired on my earlier visit to Talisker has been wiped out.”
Marvell insisted. “You must have an idea! If there aren’t any probabilities—or certainties, what about the possibilities?”
Horace was uncomfortable. Robots disliked conjecture. They wrapped it up with jargon and passed it off as probability theory; but they demanded a starting point that was not far removed from reality. And the sea of alien energies that lay beside them defined all reality, all that was possible; yet Horace had to obey.
“Did Spingarn do that?” asked Liz.
“No,” said Horace. “The Alien.”
“The Alien?” Marvell said, reluctant to admit that the entity they sought was before them to some degree.
“Yes, sir.”
“And what’s that for?”
“I guess, sir, I guess that it is part of some experiment.”
“Experiment?” stupidly said Marvell, annoying Liz.
“It could be,” she said. “Marvell, it could be.”
“For what?”
“The people are missing!” Liz said. “We know the planet’s deserted. There should be thousands of Time-outers here—Spingarn had the place going for years! They could all be in some kind of experiment! Why, it could be a kind of—extension!—of the things we try out!”
Marvell backed away physically from both the new idea and the surging eeriness of the shadowy white building that swam to the surface of the seas of energy.
“Then keep me out of it!” he snarled. “Get moving, Horace—see if you can’t find some way to get us out of the area!”
Horace strode away. Tiredly, Liz followed the hurrying Marvell across the sands. Grit rubbed her toes, sweat streamed down her dress. She slipped out of the silky furs, and the sun burned her back at once. Ahead, the fronds of palms gleamed like green spears.
They reached the crest of a mound of sand and saw green-blue water glinting through the lush undergrowth of a small oasis.
“Christ!” Marvell exclaimed. “Let me get into it! Liz, you carry the bloody picnic basket!”
He dropped the basket of tinned foods and began to slide down to the valley. He had plunged no more than a few feet when a snapping explosion split the peace of the still and silent valley.
“Hold still, ye poxy bastard!” roared a loud voice.
Liz had dropped the basket she was struggling with; Marvell fell backward with the shock of hearing the echoing report. Both saw a thin plume of black smoke coming from a stone rampart built near a widening of the small lake; it had been almost hidden from sight by the undergrowth, but now they saw clearly that it had been built by man. Marvell tried to retrieve his top hat which was sliding down the sandy slope.
“Surrender, you Frog!” bawled the harsh voice once more. “Move again and I put a ball in your addled brains!”
Liz froze. She saw a hint of movement behind the rampart, part of a red coat. But only one man. He spoke in archaic terms—poxy bastard? She tried a quick analysis and came up with a concept of supreme insult. Poxy was diseased, bastard an out-of-wedlock conception. Frog? It seemed unlikely that the concept reptile equated with an infection of the genitals and unmarried cohabitation.
She twitched as the sun struck hard at her back.
“And you, ye Frog baggage!”
“Me?” Liz said stupidly.
“Aye, ye shameless Frog whore—cover your bubbies, damn ye for an unchristian doxy! Bowels of God, woman, d’ye not respect common decency?”
“Mad!” groaned Marvell. “It’s someone gone mad from a Primitive Frame!”
Liz sighed with relief.
It could only be a Time-outer, someone who had yelled in an ecstasy of terror for relief from an environment he found too severe; obviously, the cell-fusion had held. They were faced with a man who had been conditioned to live in some early period of human history, and who believed himself to belong to it still. Liz struggled to place the period. It had to be early. There was the weapon—smoke? Black smoke meant gunpowder. The projectile—he had referred to it as a ball—was a lump of metal. There had been no repetition of shots, so the weapon was very simple. An early expansion principle, nonautomatic. It must be early Steam Age, she decided. What were bubbies?
“Cover your tits or he’ll keep us here all day!” Marvell yelled at her. “Liz, he’s reloaded!”
Liz caught the flash of a steel barrel pointing from a gap in the breastwork; the mouth of the primitive weapon was black, a dark eye. She knew that there was a real danger from the crazed Time-outer. Quickly she wrapped the bedraggled fur around her.
“Is that all right?” she called.
“Aye, ye shameless baggage! Now advance with a care, the pair of ye, advance and be recognized, ye Papist baby-eaters!”
Marvell peered into the sun’s glare.
“Dear Christ!” he said, catching a glimpse of a bottle-nosed, blotched, alcoholic’s face. “Liz, it’s that crazy Serg
eant Hawk!”
“What’s that?” bawled the cracked voice. “Ye have my name, ye Frog vagabonds? God’s bowels, ye’re deserters! But hold still, I have a grenado ready for ye both!”
“Who?” asked Liz.
“Advance ten paces!” commanded the man with the musket. Liz could see his uniform distinctly. There was an absurd three-cornered hat, a bright red jacket and cross-belts; the musket was real enough, though, and a small cylindrical object beside him on the breastwork looked dangerous. Grenado?
“Do as he says, or he’ll blow us up!” Marvell said. “He thinks we’re his enemies—Christ, Liz, walk slowly!”
Liz stepped forward with a care for the madman’s directions. Bubbies? Grenado? And Sergeant—
“Why, it’s Sergeant Hawk!” Liz exclaimed, unable to restrain a sweeping gesture of her arms.
The musket came up to the aim, and the sergeant’s grim face was squinting behind the cumbersome priming-pan and flintlock. Liz screamed.
“We surrender!” bawled Marvell. “Give quarter!”
But already the weapon was coming down from the aim.
“God’s boots, I can’t fire on a woman, even a doxy poxed-up French whore!” growled the madman. “Ye may sit!”
“Sit down!” ordered Marvell.
“But it’s Spingarn’s companion!” Liz said, amazed that she had not remembered the second of the party sent to investigate Talisker. “It’s the destroyed psyche that was with Spingarn in the Gunpowder Age Frame—the European Sieges Plot!”
Marvell groaned, eyes closed.
“I know! Try telling him you know Spingarn!”
“Spingarn! Spingarn!” roared the Sergeant. “D’ye say Spingarn—d’ye know Captain Devil Spingarn? Have ye an acquaintance with him? And—and ye said my name too, now I think on it! God’s bloody boots, who are ye two scavengers? And what d’ye know of a couple of soldiers from Good Queen Anne’s service? Speak now, or I’ll give ye a touch of the Spanish treatment!”