House of Many Worlds

by Sam Merwin Jr

"You mean to say this—flies?" he asked unbelievingly.

  "Oh, quite," said Elspeth. She punched Mack in the back and nodded toward the driver's seat. He came to with a start, regarded her resentfully, then got the idea and climbed in behind the wheel. Elspeth looked at Marshal Henry.

  "I'd like to try it," he said. Juana, to Elspeth's annoyance, said likewise and both of them got in, leaving her with Weston.

  He was studying the Pipit with a scowl. "It doesn't seem possible," he muttered. Mack started the motor, and the rebel leader darted forward and lifted the hood, regarding the engine within for a long moment. Then he shut and locked it and stepped back, motioned for Mack to go ahead.

  Mack ran it for a hundred and fifty feet, picking up speed, then extended the wings and took the Pipit up sharply from the ground. Reed Weston watched him, his frown gone, his eyes popping, his mouth half open in sheer surprise, as Mack proceeded to put the Pipit through her paces.

  ELSPETH felt different. "The crazy fool—the crazy damn fool!" she muttered, drawing an annoyed glance from the rebel leader. She knew what the photographer was doing—he was showing off, not for the benefit of Reed Weston and Marshal Henry but for Juana. She only hoped he wouldn't crack up and wreck the demonstration. At the moment she didn't care whether or not its passengers survived a crash. In fact, she rather hoped for the reverse.

  But Mack, after a five-minute flight, brought the little car-plane in easily, retracted its wings and pulled to a gentle stop directly in front of Reed Weston. At once the rebel leader was wrenching at the door handle and climbing into the vehicle.

  This time Elspeth watched with Marshal Henry beside her. He looked rather gray beneath the dark skin of his face and he shook his head slightly as the Pipit took off once more.

  "It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen," he murmured. "Think of it—an automobile that can fly—and is easily handled. Miss Marriner, I think you have saved a hemisphere—perhaps a world. What fuel do you say your—Pipit uses?"

  She told him that it flew on ordinary kerosene, like most of the non-jet vehicles in this alien world. He listened attentively but kept one eye on the Pipit while it was in the air. He was palpably relieved when it brought Reed Weston down safely.

  "What do you think?" the Marshal asked his chief as the latter emerged from the little vehicle.

  "Think!" cried the Rebel leader, his face aglow with a grin that threatened literally to split his cheeks. "Think? With this wonderful craft we have Columbia, the Empire, the World itself in our hands. Miss Marriner, I apologize for doubting you just now." He bowed briefly over her hand. "I am now a fervent believer."

  Mack climbed out then and assisted Juana from the Pipit—although, Elspeth thought uncharitably, the dark girl moved with the lithe strength and poise of a ballet dancer or perhaps a female hockey player.

  But he had little more time with Juana that day. Reed Weston was on top of him from then on—Weston and a small corps of hastily summoned engineers and other experts. The photographer needed all his knowledge of machinery to explain to them the principles upon which the Pipit was built and functioned.

  Some what to her surprise Elspeth found herself lunching in a woman's commissary with the glamorous Juana. Even more startling—and annoying—was the fact that she could not help liking the little brunette.

  "Perhaps," Juana said bluntly over an excellent charlotte russe, "we aren't very discreet about romance. But we have so little time for it we have to grab what we can. I shouldn't have let Mack lead me on or vice versa"—she dimpled charmingly and mischievously as she said this—"if it hadn't been plain that you and he were so poorly suited for one another."

  "Just a moment," said Elspeth, catching her breath and wits. "When you say 'we' I take it you're putting me sort of on the same team with yourself—with Mack also in the lineup?"

  "But of course!" exclaimed the dark girl, looking surprised. "There is no road back once you're in it—even if you want one, which I cannot believe. Mr. Horelle would not have summoned you unless you were with us. After all it is the most important and exciting work in all the worlds."

  It was on the tip of Elspeth's tongue to say that Mr. Horelle had not "summoned" Mack and herself but she thought better of the remark in time. After all, she still had but a small idea of what forces could have been at work, were still at work where she and Mack and—yes, Juana—were concerned.

  So she remarked instead, "And how long have you been doing this—sort of interworld hopping, Juana? You look awfully young."

  "Oh, I'm older than I look—even if I'm not as old as you," said the dark girl ingenuously. Elspeth winced.

  "Touché!" she said, "I suppose I asked for that."

  "Did I say something wrong?" Juana asked naively. Then, as Elspeth counted slowly to ten, "I don't come from this world, of course—or the world you come from. Mine's in a bit of a mess, too. I got into this work through Tod—he was my fiance."

  "Was?" Elspeth inquired, finding it difficult to associate any sort of tragedy with a person as young, as vibrantly alive, as comely as Juana.

  "Yes, Tod was called for this sort of work right after he got through college. We were going to be married but—well, he wasn't lucky. I was determined to find out what happened to him and bring whoever killed him to justice—oh, I was all ready to call in the cops, the G-men— everything."

  "Yes?" said Elspeth, faintly puzzled.

  "I guess Mr. Horelle was afraid I might upset the balance—you know, 'never underestimate the power of a woman'—so he had me brought to Spindrift Isle and explained what had happened to Tod and what the work was. He had a letter from Tod, a letter asking me to carry on for him if I didn't want to find another man to settle down with in my own world."

  "He must have been quite a fellow, your Tod," said Elspeth.

  JUANA nodded and her eyes filled unexpectedly. "Oh, he was—so much so that I've never found another man I wanted to marry on any of the worlds I've visited," she said. She laughed a little and tossed back her long dark red hair. "But I have my share of fun—and I really feel as if I'm doing something. It isn't a chance many girls get—or many men either."

  "You're quite a girl yourself, Juana," said Elspeth.

  "But I'm not really," the brunette replied earnestly. "I just run errands and fill in and entertain visiting firemen. I have no real gifts—like yours for poetry."

  ELSPETH thought that Juana had more gifts than she realized but forebore saying so. Instead she had coffee with the other-world girl and then went back with her to Marshal Henry's office. The Marshal smiled up from the papers at which he was working behind his big desk as she entered.

  "Miss Marriner," he said, rising and motioning her to a chair. "You and I seem to be deputed to do some negotiating. Mr. Weston has left the matter to me, and your Mr. Fraser is going to be very busy this afternoon. He informed me that you were qualified to handle things. You know time is of the proverbial essence."

  If the huge marshal had not modified the cliché with the word "proverbial" Elspeth might have graded him lower as a person—until he spoke she had been wrapped up in and a little befuddled by her absorption in her emotional life, in the strange new existence that had opened up for her since she had been given the Hatteras Keys assignment by Orrin Lewis less than a scant week before.

  She looked at him then, all at once aware of him as a man, a man of wisdom and bigness and gentleness and humor who had overcome the stigma of a black skin in a white man's world, who had risen to immense estate which he was smilingly sacrificing for an ideal. She smiled back at him, then frowned.

  "But, Marshal Henry, we have nothing to negotiate. We came here to turn the Pipit over to Reed Weston."

  He rose, towering above her from behind the desk, ran a big hand through his wiry curly white hair. "I don't mean to be dense," he told her, "but I don't understand. You and Mr. Fraser have come here at very considerable risk. You have brought with you a device that is little short of a miracle—a device that may en
able us to fulfill all our ideas as well as bring peace to Columbia. And you say there is nothing to negotiate.... Miss Marriner!"

  His voice sharpened, bringing her out of the reverie that had overcome her. It was, she thought, the Afro-American music of his voice, the rhythm of his every move, the—

  She had begun instinctively to put her thoughts into poetic phrasing, to seek the liquid meter that would fit the marshal, would be part of this ebony demigod, would put his essence—that word again—into singing lines. But for some reason words were failing her when the marshal's use of her name woke her up.

  "Are you ill?" he inquired, reaching for the water carafe in front of him. "Shall I send out for a drink?"

  "No," she said a trifle breathlessly. "No—I'm all right. I have a bad habit of wandering when what passes for my mind gets to working. You see, Marshal, I'm a poet."

  "Which is extremely interesting," he informed her with a dryness that was somehow not unsympathetic, "but doesn't get us a bit further with our negotiation. Surely you must expect something. After all, you may merely have won us a war—and a peace."

  "I'm sorry," she said and she knew the warmth that crept through her was dangerous. "We were sent here to deliver the Pipit and to await new orders. We were not told to demand a price."

  "You are unwordly, Miss Marriner," he said, regarding her solemnly as if he half-expected her to vanish where she sat. His smile reappeared. "But I think I like you very much."

  She had dinner with him that night and they drove out in one of his huge rocket cars to look at the immense and graceful spire of the space-ship, gleaming like some silver needle in the moonlight. Its vastness, larger than anything mobile in her experience, made her wonder at the genius of its creators.

  "Almost," she told the marshal, "it makes me wish we had not broken in today to change Reed Weston's plan— his dream."

  "His dream was already shattered or he would not have conceived such a plan," Marshal Henry told her. "Your arrival was the operation of Fate if ever I saw it."

  "You must have had some inkling of who we were—of our coming," she said softly. "When you spoke to us in the hotel lift the night before last, when you helped us to escape, when you smiled at us on the hotel balcony in New Orleans."

  "If you'll forgive a supposely responsible man for being a damned fool," he replied, his voice low, "I'm afraid it was you."

  "Oh my dear!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh my dear!"

  She slept alone that night in a small room in one of the buildings that made up the Reed Weston Headquarters. As she dozed off she realized happily that she had not thought of Mack and Juana since being taken to the marshal's office after lunch with the little brunette.

  WITH the coming of the next morning events moved swiftly in Columbia—and Reed Weston's Norman Headquarters was the focal point. There were rapid exchanges of messengers, not only with other detachments of his own rebel forces but with Columbian and Imperial leaders. It was a time of mounting excitement.

  Elspeth saw little of Mack. He seemed to be incessantly tied up either with technicians or Juana, who continued to play a silent but omnipresent role in the background. She was present, however, by request of Marshal Henry, at meetings with both Columbian and Imperialist deputies, who wished to know something of the qualities and uses of the Pipit.

  It was Marshal Henry who took over both meetings when the officials had finished questioning her. "Miss Marriner," he told them, "has given you some idea of the Pipit's uses as a means of peaceful transport. You will shortly see a demonstration of its possibilities in these lines for yourselves.

  "Our engineers, already engaged in preparing its manufacture on a larger scale than anything we have yet attempted, will show you estimates which will prove that this flying marvel can be made at a price far below that of existing ground locomotion.

  "It is my especial job to warn you that the Pipit's war uses are potentially even more effective. Armed with rocket weapons it can swoop down upon any desired point from above. It can destroy and escape unharmed and you have no weapons to stop it.

  "Orders have been issued," he concluded grimly, "to send the Pipit so armed to destroy the headquarters and headquarters personnel of either Columbian or Imperialist forces which again employ the illegal disintegrator—and rest assured we have agents who will quickly inform us of the use of that weapon. Now, gentlemen, if you will follow me—"

  When he had finished with the last of them and they had departed for their bases, a quiet, thoughtful and shaken group of men, Marshal Henry turned to Elspeth with a sudden smile and said, "Did I sound too preachy, Elly—do you think I put it over?"

  "You were wonderful, Johnny," she told him honestly. "Now what do we do?"

  The lines in his face deepened. "From now on all we can do is wait and keep on learning how to manufacture Pipits— and pray."

  "You sound as if you're worried," Elspeth said with concern.

  "I am—scared stiff," he admitted. "Actually, if the Empire and Columbian ministers are not overwhelmed by the thought of the Pipit, the very best we can hope for is a stalemate—and that's not good enough."

  "Why—what can go wrong?" Elspeth asked anxiously.

  "The disintgrator," he replied grimly. "It will still be effective—and against people in Pipits as anywhere else. We have no way of screening it out. We can drop bombs, of course, from a safe height—but within a thousand yards in any direction we are still vulnerable."

  "Glory!" said the poet, her optimism evaporating. "I never thought of that."

  "To date, neither have they," said the marshal in quiet tones. "But they will—and then we won't have things so easy, mark my words." He shook his great head, sighed and rose, adding, "But there's nothing we can do just now—and I know a very pleasant place where we can dine not far from here."

  X

  THREE more weeks went by while the negotiations dragged on inconclusively. For Elspeth these weeks were oddly dreamlike in essence, yet oddly satisfying. Whether the emotion she felt for Marshal John Henry was love or not she did not stop to analyze. Whatever it was, it pervaded her, filled her days and nights with an excitement her inner being had not felt since her first schoolgirl crush. And there was always the added stimulus of great events.

  Never in her comparatively obscure life on her own prosaic world had Elspeth known the glamour of importance. There she had been merely a girl—moderately attractive yet a bit odd because of her poetic leanings, a bit repellent to most men because of her intelligence.

  Here and now, thanks to Mr. Horelle, she was at the core of a bloodless revolution that was changing the face and fate of a world. She sat in on meetings with great scientists, with ambassadors, with leading men of arms. She was consulted on serious questions, and her words were listened to keenly.

  She and Mack were folk of mystery, of origins they could not reveal but of resources which commanded respect. She continued to see little of Mack, of course. He had taken over the task of enabling the Weston engineers to tool up for Pipit manufacture, to prepare a few hand-built models.

  She saw Juana more often, of course —since the dark girl was now Marshal Henry's secretary. She came to like her increasingly, especially since her own emotions were no longer directed toward Mack. But some things about her erstwhile rival puzzled her.

  For instance, when she and the marshal had been out late one moonswept evening, Elspeth returned to her room to find Juana sitting in the only armchair and smoking a cigarette. The brunette regarded her quizzically—and with something else.

  "You've been out with my boss again," she said. It was a statement, not a question.

  "Right," Elspeth said dreamily. She kicked off her shoes and lay on the bed, linking fingers at the back of her neck. "I think he's simply perfect—he's so big and so humble, so strong and so gentle, so slow of speech, yet so fast of thought."

  "He's all those things," the girl said. "But, Elly, be careful. You can't stay in this world much longer and if you l
et yourself get emotionally involved you may impair your usefulness."

  Elspeth regarded her uninvited guest and sensed trouble behind the limpid dark eyes. With a spark of intuition she said, "It isn't just that, Juana. There's something else, isn't there?"

  "Of course there is," the dark girl replied. "I feel like a crumb to say this, Elly—but dammit he's a Negro."

  "Somehow I never suspected you of that," said Elspeth, surprised and more than a little shocked. The idea of such cheap prejudice in anyone connected with the incredibly wise Mr. Horelle had never occurred to her. She felt angry, almost ill.

  "You're wrong—what you're thinking about me, Elly," Juana said hotly. "There are some worlds where color doesn't matter—but this isn't one of them. Nor is yours—nor mine, heaven knows."

  "Then it's time something was done," said Elspeth sharply.

  "If you only knew how hard we have worked for it!" the dark redhead cried. "On world after world after world— even long before Mr. Horelle had charge. But progress is so slow. That's why I stuck my own hot little neck out and tried to warn you. Elly, you look like a girl who's falling in love—and you mustn't."

  "I'm sorry I misjudged you," said Elspeth. She sat up and reached for a cigarette, gave another to Juana. The sincerity in that lovely voluptuous little face was unmistakable. As she inhaled, she was able to see herself as this girl must see her, as Mack— But she told herself she didn't give a damn about Mack or what Mack thought. He had no business having opinions of her.

  "Perhaps," Elspeth went on slowly, "I'm in love with an idea rather than a man. But you'll have to admit he is gorgeous."

  "Strictly for the birds," said Juana and they both grinned. Had they been a bit younger they would have giggled. A few mintues later, when the cigarettes were finished, Juana rose to leave. At the door she said, "Have your fun, Elly —you've a right to it—but don't let the current carry you off. You're needed."