6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction

by Edited by Groff Conklin

  Brent, now forewarned, sipped at the liquor and found it cheerfully warming as he assimilated the new facts.

  ~ * ~

  In the middle of the twenty-fourth century, he learned, civilization had reached a high point of comfort, satisfaction, achievement—and stagnation. The combination of atomic power and De Bainville’s revolutionary formulation of the principles of labor and finance had seemed to solve all economic problems. The astounding development of synthetics had destroyed the urgent need for raw materials and colonies and abolished the distinction between haves and have-nots among nations. Schwarzwalder’s Compendium had achieved the dream of the early Encyclopedists—the complete systematization of human knowledge. Farthing had regularized the English language, an achievement paralleled by the work of Zinsmeister, Timofeov, and Tamayo y Sárate in their respective tongues. (These four languages now dominated the earth. French and Italian had become corrupt dialects of German, and the Oriental languages occupied in their own countries something the position of Greek and Latin in nineteenth-century Europe, doomed soon to the complete oblivion which swallowed up those classic tongues in the twenty-first.)

  There was nothing more to be achieved. All was known, all was accomplished. Nakamura’s Law of Spatial Acceleration had proved interplanetary travel to be impossible for all time. Charnwood’s Law of Temporal Metabolism had done the same for time travel. And the Schwarzwalder Compendium, which everyone admired and no one had read, established such a satisfactory and flawless picture of knowledge that it was obviously impossible that anything remained to be discovered.

  It was then that Dyce-Farnsworth proclaimed the Stasis of Cosmos. A member of the Anglo-Physical Church, product of the long contemplation by English physicists of the metaphysical aspects of science, he came as the prophet needed to pander to the self-satisfaction of the age.

  He was curiously aided by Farthing’s laws of regularity. The article, direct or indirect, Farthing had proved to be completely unnecessary—had not languages as world-dominant as Latin in the first centuries and Russian in the twenty-first found no need for it?—and semantically misleading. “Article,” he had said in his final and comprehensive study This Bees Speech, “bees prime corruptor of human thinking.”

  And thus the statement so beloved in the twentieth century by metaphysical-minded scientists and physical-minded divines, “God is the cosmos,” became with Dyce-Farnsworth, “God bees cosmos,” and hence, easily and inevitably, “God bees Cosmos,” so that the utter scientific impersonality became a personification of Science. Cosmos replaced Jehovah, Baal and Odin.

  The love of Cosmos was not man nor his works, but Stasis. Man was tolerated by Cosmos that he might achieve Stasis. All the millennia of human struggle had been aimed at this supreme moment when all was achieved, all was known, and all was perfect. Therefore this supernal Stasis must at all costs be maintained. Since Now was perfect, any alteration must be imperfect and taboo.

  From this theory logically evolved the State, whose duty was to maintain the perfect Stasis of Cosmos. No totalitarian government had ever striven so strongly to iron out all doubt and dissension. No religious bigotry had ever found heresy so damnable and worthy of destruction. The Stasis must be maintained.

  It was, ironically, the aged Dyce-Farnsworth himself who, in a moment of quasi-mystical intuition, discovered the flaw in Charnwood’s Law of Temporal Metabolism. And it was clear to him what must be done.

  Since the Stasis of Cosmos did not practice time travel, any earlier or later civilization that did so must be imperfect. Its emissaries would sow imperfection. There must be a Barrier.

  The mystic went no further than that dictum, but the scientists of the State put his demand into practical terms. “Do not ask how at this moment,” Stephen added. “I be not man to explain that. But you will learn.” The first Barrier was a failure. It destroyed itself and to no apparent result. But now, fifty years later, the fears of time travel had grown. The original idea of the imperfection of emissaries had been lost. Now time travel was in itself imperfect and evil. Any action taken against it would be praise to Cosmos. And the new Barrier was being erected.

  “But John knows all this,” Martha protested from time to time, and Stephen would shake his head sadly and smile sympathetically at Brent.

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” Brent said at last. “Oh, the historical outline’s all right. I trust you on that. And it works out sweetly by analogy. Take the religious fanaticism of the sixteenth century, the smug scientific self-satisfaction of the nineteenth, the power domination of the twentieth—fuse them and you’ve got your State. But the Barrier’s impossible. It can’t work.”

  “Charnwood claimed there beed no principle on which time travel can work. And here you be.”

  “That’s different,” said Brent vaguely. “But this talk of destroying the Barrier is nonsense. There’s no need to.”

  “Indeed there bees need, John. For two reasons: one, that we may benefit by wisdom of travelers from other ages; and two, that positive act of destroying this Barrier, worshiped now with something like fetishism, bees strongest weapon with which we can strike against State. For there be these few of us who hope to save mankind from this fanatical complacency that race haves failed into. George Starvel beed one,” Stephen added sadly.

  “I saw Starvel— But that isn’t what I mean. There’s no need because the Barrier won’t work.”

  “But you telled us that it haved to be destroyed,” Martha protested. “That it doed work, and that we—”

  “Hush,” said Stephen gently. “John, will you trust us far enough to show us your machine? I think I can make matters clearer to Martha then.”

  “If you’ll keep me out of the way of Stappers.”

  “That we can never guarantee—yet. But day will come when mankind cans forget Stappers and State, that I swear.” There was stern and noble courage in Stephen’s face and bearing as he drained his glass to that pledge.

  ~ * ~

  “I had a break when I landed here,” John Brent explained on the way. “Derringer equipped the machine only for temporal motion. He explained that it meant running a risk; I might find that the coast line had sunk and I’d arrive under water, or God knows what. But he hadn’t worked out the synchronized adjustment for tempo-spatial motion yet, and he wanted to get started. I took the chance, and luck was good. Where the Derringer lab used to be is now apparently a deserted warehouse. Everything’s dusty and there’s not a sign of human occupation.”

  Stephen’s eyes lit up as they approached the long low building of opaque bricks. “Remember, Martha?”

  Martha frowned and nodded.

  Faint light filtered through the walls to reveal the skeletal outlines of the machine. Brent switched on a light on the panel which gave a dim glow.

  “There’s not much to see even in a good light,” he explained. “Just these two seats—Derringer was planning on teams when he built it, but decided later that one man with responsibility only to himself would do better—and this panel. These instruments are automatic—they adjust to the presence of another machine ahead of you in the time line. The only control the operator bothers with is this.” He indicated the double dial set at 2473.

  “Why doed you choose this year?”

  “At random. Derringer set the outer circle at 2400—half a millennium seemed a plausible choice. Then I spun the inner dial blindfolded. When this switch here is turned, you create a certain amount of temporal potential, positive or negative—which is as loose as applying those terms to magnetic poles, but likewise as convenient. For instance if I turn it to here”—he spun the outer dial to 2900—”you’ll have five hundred years of positive potential which’ll shoot you ahead to 2973. Or set it like this, and you’ll have five centuries of negative, which’ll pull you back practically to where I started from.”

  Stephen frowned. “Ahead and back be of course nonsense words in this connection. But they may be helpful to Martha in visualizing
it. Will you please show Martha the back of your dial?”

  “Why?” There was no answer. Brent shrugged and climbed into the seat. The Roman matron moved around the machine and entered the other seat as he loosed the catch on the dial and opened it as one did for oiling.

  Stephen said, “Look well, my dear. What be the large wheels maked of?”

  “Aceroid, of course. Don’t you remember how Alex—”

  “Don’t remember, Martha. Look. What be they?”

  Martha gasped. “Why, they ... they be aluminum.”

  “Very well. Now don’t you understand—Ssh!” He broke off and moved toward the doorway. He listened there a moment, then slipped out of sight.

  “What does he have?” Brent demanded as he closed the dial. “The ears of an elkhound?”

  “Stephen haves hyper-acute sense of hearing. He bees proud of it, and it haves saved us more than once from Stappers. When people be engaged in work against State-”

  A man’s figure appeared again in the doorway. But its robes were white. “Good God!” Brent exclaimed. “Jiggers, the Staps!”

  Martha let out a little squeal. A rod appeared in the Stapper’s hand. Brent’s eyes were so fixed on the adversary that he did not see the matron’s hand move toward the switch until she had turned it.

  ~ * ~

  Brent had somehow instinctively shut his eyes during his first time transit. During, he reflected, is not the right word. At the time of? Hardly. How can you describe an event of time movement without suggesting another time measure perpendicular to the time line? At any rate, he had shut them in a laboratory in 1942 an d opened them an instant later in a warehouse in 2473.

  Now he shut them again, and kept them shut. He had to think for a moment. He had been playing with the dial —where was it set when Martha jerked the switch? 1973, as best he remembered. And he had now burst into that world in plastic garments of the twenty-fifth century, accompanied by a Roman matron who had in some time known him for fifty years.

  He did not relish the prospect. And besides he was bothered by that strange jerking, tearing sensation that had twisted his body when he closed his eyes. He had felt nothing whatsoever on his previous trip. Had something gone wrong this time? Had—

  “It doesn’t work!” said Martha indignantly.

  Brent opened his eyes. He and Martha sat in the machine in a dim warehouse of opaque brick.

  “We be still here,” she protested vigorously.

  “Sure we’re still here.” Brent frowned. “But what you mean is, we’re still now.”

  “You talk like Stephen. What do you mean?”

  “Or are we?” His frown deepened. “If we’re still now, where is that Stapper? He didn’t vanish just because you pulled a switch. How old is this warehouse?”

  “I don’t know. I think about sixty years. It beed fairly new when I beed a child. Stephen and I used to play near here.”

  “Then we could have gone back a few decades and still be here. Yes, and look—those cases over there. I’d swear they weren’t here before. After. Whatever. Then, when we saw the Stapper.” He looked at the dial. It was set to 1973. And the warehouse was new some time around 2420.

  Brent sat and stared at the panel.

  “What bees matter?” Martha demanded. “Where be we?”

  “Here, same like always. But what bothers me is just when we are. Come on; want to explore?”

  Martha shook her head. “I want to stay here. And I be afraid for Stephen. Doed Stappers get him? Let’s go back.”

  “I’ve got to check up on things. Something’s gone wrong, and Derringer’ll never forgive me if I don’t find out what and why. You stay here if you want.”

  “Alone?”

  Brent suppressed several remarks concerning women, in the abstract and the particular. “Stay or go, I don’t care. I’m going.”

  Martha sighed. “You have changed so, John—”

  ~ * ~

  In front of the warehouse was an open field. There had been buildings there when Brent last saw it. And in the field three young people were picknicking. The sight reminded Brent that it was a long time since he’d eaten.

  He made toward the trio. There were two men and a girl. One man was blond, the other and the girl were brilliantly red-headed. The girl had much more than even that hair to recommend her. She— Brent’s eyes returned to the red-headed man. There was no mistaking those deep brown eyes, that sharp and noble nose. The beard was scant, but still there was no denying—

  Brent sprang forward with an eager cry of “Stephen!”

  The young man looked at him blankly. “Yes,” he said politely. “What do you want?”

  Brent mentally kicked himself. He had met Stephen in advanced age. What would the Stephen of twenty know of him? And suddenly he began to understand a great deal. The confusion of that first meeting started to fade away.

  “If I tell you,” he said rapidly, “that I know that you be Stephen, that you have sister Martha, that you drink bond despite Stappers, and that you doubt wisdom of Barrier, will you accept me as a man you can trust?”

  “Cosmic eons!” the blond young man drawled. “Stranger knows plenty, Stephen. If he bees Stapper, you’ll have your mind changed.”

  The scantily bearded youth looked a long while into Brent’s eyes. Then he felt in his robe, produced a flask, and handed it over. Brent drank and returned it. Their hands met in a firm clasp.

  Stephen grinned at the others. “My childs, I think stranger brings us adventure. I feel like someone out of novel by Varnichek.” He turned back to Brent. “Do you know these others, too?”

  Brent shook his head.

  “Krasna and Alex. And your name?”

  “John Brent.”

  “And what can we do for you, John?”

  “First tell me year.”

  Alex laughed, and the girl smiled. “And how long have you beed on a bonder?” Alex asked.

  A bonder, Brent guessed, would be a bond bender. “This bees my first drink,” he said, “since 1942. Or perhaps since 2473, according as how you reckon.”

  Brent was not disappointed in the audience reaction this time.

  ~ * ~

  It’s easy to see what must have happened, Brent wrote that night in the first entry of the journal Derringer had asked him to keep. He wrote longhand, an action that he loathed. The typewriter which Stephen had kindly offered him was equipped with a huge keyboard bearing the forty-odd characters of the Farthing phonetic alphabet, and Brent declined the loan.

  We’re at the first Barrier—the one that failed. It was dedicated to Cosmos and launched this afternoon. My friends were among the few inhabitants not ecstatically present at the ceremony. Since then they’ve collected reports for me. The damned contrivance had to be so terrifically overloaded that it blew up. Dyce-Farnsworth was killed and will be a holy martyr to Cosmos forever.

  But in an infinitesimal fraction of a second between the launching and the explosion, the Barrier existed. That was enough.

  If you, my dear Dr. Derringer, were ever going to see this journal, the whole truth would doubtless flash instantaneously through your mind like the lightning in the laboratory of the Mad Scientist. (And why couldn’t I have met up with a Mad Scientist instead of one who was perfectly sane and accurate ... up to a point? Why, Dr. Derringer, you fraud, you didn’t even have a daughter!)

  But since this journal, faithfully kept as per your instructions, is presumably from now on for my eyes alone, I’ll have to try to make clear to my own uninspired mind just what gives with this Barrier, which broke down, so that it can’t protect the Stasis, but still irrevocably stops me from going back.

  Any instant in which the Barrier exists is impassable: a sort of roadblock in time. Now to achieve Dyce-Farnsworth’s dream of preventing all time travel, the Barrier would have to go on existing forever, or at least into the remote future. Then as the Stasis goes on year by year, there’d always be a Barrier-instant ahead of it in time, protecting it.
Not merely one roadblock, but a complete abolition of traffic on the road.

  Now D-F has failed. The future’s wide open. But there in the recent past, at the instant of destruction, is the roadblock that keeps me, my dear Dr. Derringer, from ever beaming on your spade beard again.

  Why does it block me? I’ve been trying to find out. Stephen is good on history, but lousy on science. The blond young Alex reverses the combination. From him I’ve tried to learn the theory back of the Barrier.

  The Barrier established in that fractional second, a powerful magnetic field in the temporal dimension. As a result, any object moving along the time line is cutting the magnetic field. Hysteresis sets up strong eddy currents which bring the object, in this case me, to an abrupt halt. Cf. that feeling of twisting shock that I had when my eyes were closed.