Abruptly he saw the reason for it. One termite, larger than the others, was alone on the red soil. Carson gazed at it with smouldering eyes, the innermost thoughts of the tiny thing probing his brain.
‘I understand, he whispered. ‘Yes, I understand! Your thoughts are being bared to me. You are Hart Cranshaw. You are the Hart Cranshaw of this age. You gained your end. You stole my invention – yes, became the master of science, the lord of the’ Earth, just as you had planned. You found that there was a way to keep on the normal plane after each death, a way entirely successful if death did not come by electrocution. That was what shattered my plan – the electric chair.
‘But you went on and on, dying and being born again with a different and yet identical body. An eternal man, mastering more and more each time!’ Carson’s voice had risen to a shriek. Then he calmed. ‘Until at last Nature changed you into an ant, made you the master of even the termite community. How little did I guess that my discovery would hand you the world. But if I have broken cosmic law, Hart Cranshaw, so have you. You have cheated your normal time action, time and again, with numberless deaths. You have stayed on this plane when you should have moved on to others. Both of us are transgressors. For you, as for me, death this time will mean the unknown.’
A power that was something other than himself gave Blake Carson strength at that moment. Life surged back into his leaden limbs and he staggered to his feet.
‘We have come together again, Hart, after all these quintillions of years. Remember what I said long ago? To everything there is an appointed time? Now I know why you don’t want to save me.’
He broke off as with sudden and fantastic speed the lone termite sped back towards the mass of his departing colleagues. Once among them, as Carson well knew, there would be no means of identification.
With this realization he forced himself into action and leaped. The movement was the last he could essay. He dropped on his face, and his hand closed round the scurrying insect. It escaped. He watched it run over the back of his hand – then frantically across his palm as he opened his fingers gently.
He had no idea how long he lay watching it – but at last it ran to the tip of his thumb. His first finger closed on his thumb suddenly – and crushed.
He found himself gazing at a black smear on thumb and finger.
He could move his hand no further. Paralysis had gripped his limbs completely. There was a deepening, crushing pain in his heart. Vision grew dim. He felt himself slipping –
But with the transition to Beyond he began to realize something else. He had not cheated Time! Neither had Hart Cranshaw! They had done all this before somewhere – would do it again – endlessly, so long as Time itself should exist. Death – transition – rebirth – evolution – back again to the age of the amoeba – upwards to man – the laboratory – the electric chair…
Eternal. Immutable!
WHY I SELECTED THE INN OUTSIDE THE WORLD
The Inn Outside the World seems to me the best science fiction story I have done in the shorter length, for several reasons. One reason is that it is of the type I like most, a story of wonder.
By “wonder,” I mean the emotional glamour that still attaches to the prodigies of the Arabian Nights, to the old Celtic legends of enchanted islands, to the Spanish dreams of El Dorado. It has always been my belief that this element is a basic necessity in science fiction.
Once, legends and fairy tales satisfied the reader’s innate hunger for wonder. In this modern day they do not, for the world is all charted now and we no longer believe in the powers of magicians and enchanters.
But there are uncharted worlds out beyond Earth for us to dream about—a universe of them. And instead of magic, the expanding potentialities of science can supply that “temporary suspension of disbelief” without which a fantastic romance fails.
Because such “wonder” stories were always my own favorite, I have in past years written a great many of them. But it happens that in this one of them I had the chance to say something in which I thoroughly believed, and believe. That, I think, is why I consider this short story my best.
EDMOND HAMILTON
The Inn Outside The World - Edmond Hamilton
If is Not the Reward, But the Struggle that Matters.
MERRILL felt discouraged tonight, though not for himself. His despondency was for the old man in the next room of this dingy Balkan hotel, the thin, gray, spectacled old man who was one of the four most important people in post-war Europe.
Carlus Guinard had come back from exile to lead a stricken nation out of its chaotic misery, and he was the only statesman who could do it. But, tonight, even Guinard had been so crushed by defeat that he had admitted his helplessness to hold back his people from the abyss.
“Too much intolerance, too many old grudges, too many ambitious men,” he said wearily to Merrill when his last conference of the day was over. “I fear it is hopeless.”
Merrill was only an unimportant Lieutenant, assigned by U. S. Military Intelligence to guard Guinard, but he and the old statesman had become friends in these last weeks.
“You’re tired, sir,” he had said, awkwardly encouraging. “Things won’t look so black in the morning.”
“I fear that the night over this part of Europe is to be a long, long night,” murmured Guinard. His thin shoulders were sagging, his ordinarily twinkling, friendly eyes now dull and haggard.
He whispered, “Perhaps they could help me. It is against our laws, but—” Then, aware of the staring Merrill, he broke off. “Good night, Lieutenant.”
Merrill had been worried and restless ever since. He liked and respected the world-famous old statesman, and was downcast by the others defeat and despair. He knew what a herculean task the tired old man was attempting.
He went to the open window. Across the dark, bomb-shattered city out there moaned a chill wind. Away northward, the river glistened beneath the stars. Few lights had yet come back on in this land, though the war was over. Perhaps the lights would never come back, if Guinard failed?
What had the old man whispered, about “they” helping him? Something that was against the “laws”? Was Guinard planning a secret conference of some kind? Did he intend to slip out without his American bodyguard for that purpose?
Merrill felt sudden alarm. And it wasn’t because he might lose his commission if he failed to guard the statesman. It was because he liked Guinard, and knew there were many out in that dark city who would assassinate him if they could. Guinard mustn’t try to go out alone—
He went to Gurnard’s door and listened. And he heard a soft step inside the bedroom. It increased his apprehensions. Guinard had retired an hour before. Then he was trying to slip out secretly?
Merrill softly opened the door. What he saw was so unexpected and amazing that for a moment he just stood and stared.
Guinard stood, his back toward the American, in the center of the room. The old man was holding his watch above his head, and was fingering its heavy, jeweled case.
Had Guinard suddenly gone crazy from strain? It seemed so to Merrill. Yet there seemed sober purpose in Guinard’s madness.
He’d noticed the old statesman’s watch, before this. It was a curious, massive gold one, with a complex pattern of big jewels inset on its back.
Guinard was pressing the jewels, one after another, as he held the watch above his head. There was something so oddly suggestive of the ominous about it, that Merrill impulsively strode forward.
Guinard turned, startled, as Merrill reached his side. The old man yelled in sharp alarm.
“Get back, Lieutenant—don’t—”
It all happened together. As he shouted, as Merrill reached him, from the upheld watch there dropped toward the two men a thin, wavering thread of blinding light.
It struck them and Merrill was dazed and blinded by a shock of force. It seemed to him that the floor beneath his feet vanished and that he was falling—
Merrill did not lose consciousne
ss. But the world seemed to disappear from around him as he plunged through bellowing blackness. And then there was a sharp shock, and he was standing staggering on firm footing again.
But the hotel room was gone. The walls, the floor, the lights, had vanished as by witchcraft. The only thing remaining of all that was Carlus Guinard, whose thin arm he had been clutching.
“What—” choked Merrill. He couldn’t form or speak more words than that one.
He was standing on grassy ground in a strange misty darkness. He was in the open air, but there was nothing to see. Nothing but a swirling mist through which filtered a faint green glow of light.
In that green glow, Gurnard’s thin face was close to him and was staring at him aghast.
“You came through with me!” Guinard exclaimed, thunderstruck. “But this—it’s never happened before. It’s forbidden! You don’t belong!”
“Guinard, what happened?” Merrill asked hoarsely. He looked wildly around the greenish, silent mists. A gruesome possibility shook him. “Was it an explosion? Are we—dead?”
“No, no!” the old statesman hastily denied. His face was a study in perplexity and anxiety. He seemed to ignore their surroundings entirely in his concentration on Merrill. “But you, Lieutenant—you should not be in this place. Had I known you were behind me—”
Then Guinard pulled himself together. “I shall have to take you to the others,” he muttered distractedly. “It’s all I can do now. And they will have to decide about you. If they don’t understand—”
Distress came into his fine, haggard face at some thought that he did not voice, as he looked at Merrill.
The American could not understand. He wanted to say something but he couldn’t. It was too sudden, too overwhelming.
He could only stand, staring stupidly about him. There was not a sound. Nor any movement. Nothing but the curling, greenish mists whose cool, damp tendrils silently caressed their faces.
Guinard spoke urgently. “Lieutenant, you must understand me! You have inadvertently blundered into a place where you have no right to be, into the greatest and most closely guarded of secrets.”
“What is this place?” Merrill asked hoarsely. “And how did we get here like that? How?”
Guinard spoke slowly, trying to penetrate his dazed mind. “Listen, Lieutenant. I must tell you, since you are here. This is not our Earth. This is another world.”
Merrill’s brain groped for understanding. “Another world? You mean, we’re on one of the other planets?”
Guinard shook his gray head quickly. “No, not any planet of any universe known to science. A different universe, a different space-time continuum, entirely.”
He looked baffled. “How shall I tell you? I am a statesman, not a physicist. I only know myself what Rodemos and Zyskyn and the others have told me.
“But listen. This world, in its other space-time frame, is always close to Earth, contiguous. Held there—what did Zyskyn say?—by inter-dimensional gravitation. Meshed forever with Earth, yet forever invisible and untouchable to Earthmen.”
Merrill’s throat was dry, but his heart began to beat faster. A little of this, at least, he could understand.
“I’ve read speculations on such an interlocking world,” he said slowly. “But if that’s what it is, how did we get here?”
Guinard showed his watch, with its curious pattern of big jewels on the back. “This brought us through, Lieutenant. It isn’t a watch, though it looks like one. It is a compact instrument which can project enough force to thrust matter from Earth into this world.”
The old man talked rapidly. “This world, and the way into it, have been known for thousands of years. A scientist of ancient Atlantis found the way first. He passed the secret down to a chosen few of each generation.”
“You mean”—Merrill struggled to comprehend—“you mean that in every stage of the world’s history, there have been a few people who knew about this?”
And he made a wild gesture toward the unearthly landscape of solemn green mists that surrounded them.
Gurnard’s gray head bobbed. “Yes. A few of the greatest men in each age have been admitted into the secret and have been bequeathed the jeweled Signs which are the key to entrance here. I don’t claim to be worthy of belonging to the world’s greatest—but they thought me so and admitted me to their brotherhood.”
He went on: “And all the members of our secret brotherhood, the greatest men of every age of Earth in past and future, come often into this world and gather at our meeting-place here.”
Merrill was stunned. “You mean, men of the past, present and future meet in this world? But—”
Guinard reminded, “I told you that this world is outside Earth’s space-time. A thousand years on Earth is but a few days here. Time is different.”
He elaborated hastily. “Think of the different ages of Earth as rooms along a corridor. You can’t go from one room into another, from one age into another. But the occupants of all the rooms, of all the ages, can, if they have the key, come out and meet together in the corridor which is common to them all.”
The old statesman’s face was haggard as he concluded. “I came here tonight to seek help from the others of our brotherhood! Help that could enable me to pull my people and nation out of the abyss of anarchy. It’s the only hope I have left, now. Always, it’s been against the laws of our brotherhood to give each other such help. But now—”
He clutched Merrill’s wrist and pulled him forward. “I can’t delay here longer. You will have to come with me, even though you are not of the initiated.”
Merrill found himself being hurried along by the old statesman, through the greenish mists. The grassy ground rolled in low swales, and they crossed little streams. They could see little but the enfolding mists, and there was no sign or sound of life.
The American felt as though he walked in a weird dream. His brain was staggering at the implications of what Guinard had just told him.
A secret brotherhood of the world’s greatest men of all ages, an esoteric tradition that held the key to entrance into an alien world where all those men of many ages could mix and meet! Incredible, surely—
A clear voice called suddenly from close behind them. “Est Guinard? Salve!”
Guinard stopped, peering back into the mists. “Salve frater! Quis est?”
He murmured rapidly to Merrill. “We have to have some common language, of course. And we use Latin. Those who didn’t know it, learned it. You know it?”
Merrill mumbled numbly, “I was a medical student before the war. But who—”
A figure emerged from the mists, overtaking them, and gave cheerful greeting.
“I hoped to see you this visit, Guinard,” he said in rattling Latin, “How go things in that strange century of yours?” “Not well, Ikhnaton,” answered the old statesman. “It’s why I’ve come. I’ve got to have help.”
“Help? From us others?” repeated the man called Ikhnaton. “But you know that’s impossible—”
He broke off suddenly, staring at Merrill. And Merrill in turn was gazing at him with even more wonder.
The man was young, with a thin, dark, intellectual face and luminous eyes. But his costume was outlandish. A linen cloak over a short tunic, a snake-crested gold fillet around his dark hair, a flaming disk hanging around his neck with the curious jeweled pattern of the Sign in its face.
“Ikhnaton, King of Egypt in the 14th Century, B.C.,” Guinard was explaining hurriedly. “Even if you don’t know much history you must have heard of him.”
Ikhnaton! Merrill stared unbelievingly. He’d heard of the Egyptian ruler who had been called the first great man in history, the reformer who had dreamed of universal brotherhood, back in time’s dawn.
The Egyptian was frankly puzzled. “This man doesn’t belong to us. Why did you bring him?”
“I didn’t intend to, it was all a mistake,” Guinard said hastily. “I’ll explain when we reach the inn.”
“T
here it is,” Ikhnaton nodded ahead. “And it sounds like a good gathering this time. I hope so—last time I came, there was nobody here but Darwin and that stiff-necked Luther, and our argument never ended.”
Warm, ruddy light glowed in the mists ahead, beckoning to them. The light came from the oblong windows of a low, squat building.
It was a curious structure, this place they called “the inn.” One-storied and built of dark stone, with timber gables, it looked dreamlike and unreal here in the silent mists. There were vineyards and gardens around it, Merrill saw.
Guinard opened the door. Ruddy light and warmth and the clamor of disputing voices struck their faces. Men hailed them in Latin.
“Ho, Guinard! Come in and listen to this! Zyskyn and old Socrates are at it again!”
Merrill stood and stared. Most of the inn was a big common-room, stone-flagged, with heavy, timbered walls. A huge fireplace at one side held a leaping blaze, and its flickering light joined the reddish glow of torches in wall-sockets to illuminate the room.
There were long tables down the center. Grouped around-the longest table, with their wine-cups standing unheeded upon it now, were the most motley group of men possible to imagine.
A tall Roman in bronze sat beside a man in super-modern zipper garments, a grave, bearded man in Elizabethan rufi and hose beside a withered, ancient Chinese, a merry fellow in the gaudy clothes of 16th Century France beside a stout, sober man in the drab brown of- an American Colonial. At the far end of the table, silent and brooding, sat a man wrapped in dark robe and cowl-like hood, a man with a pale, young-old face.
All this fantastically variegated company, except that brooding, cowled listener, were eagerly joining in an argument. The two chief disputants were a handsome young man in a strange, glittering garment of woven metal and a bald, stocky Greek with shrewd eyes and a broken nose. Then, Merrill thought numbly, these two disputants were Zyskyn and—Socrates?
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 22