'I'll be glad when Turpin gets here,' Stanley said. The responsibility had become too much for him; he wanted out. Obviously, the colonization attempt had failed. But he simply refused to face it. It can't be the same Earth, he repeated again and again to himself. It's just got to be a totally different one.
Something terrible must have taken place between our colonists and the Pekes.
At seven fifteen a.m., Leon Turpin arrived, perfectly shaved, washed, dressed, and in absolute control of himself.
'Have you sent dredging equipment across ?' he asked Stanley as the two of them stood by the partly-completed concrete barrier, looking out across the swamp.
'What for ?' Stanley said.
Turpin's face twitched. 'To look for remains of our campsite. This is the same spot, isn't it ?
There's been no movement in space; this is where our colonists set up their base a century ago.
There ought to be all kinds of junk, if we dig down far enough, down to the hundred-year level.
Tell them to get started right away.'
It took only two hours for the dredges to locate and bring up an aluminum canteen and then a rusted, corroded, slime-drenched U.S. Army laser rifle. And, after that...
Skeletons. First one which they identified as a human male and then a smaller one, possibly that of a female.
Turpin signaled for the dredging to cease.
'Beyond any reasonable doubt, this was our campsite,' Turpin said, presently. 'We've proved that, to my satisfaction at least.' The others nodded; no one spoke, however, and they did not look directly at one another. 'Perhaps it's possible to view this as a tremendous break,' Turpin said.
'We know now not to send any more colonists across; we know what's going to happen to them.
They're going to perish right here at the campsite without having even...'
'They were slaughtered,' Stanley interrupted, 'because we didn't send any more across. The first group wasn't large enough to hold off the Pekes; it's obvious that the Pekes are responsible for this massacre. What else could have happened to them ?'
'Disease,' Howard said, after a pause. 'We never took time to make thorough studies of viruses and protozoa over there, as we should have. We were in such a goddam hurry to rush them across.'
'If we had kept sending them across,' Stanley persisted, 'in a steady flow, the Pekes wouldn't have been able to mow them down. My god, those colonists suddenly found themselves cut off from us, stranded there with no way to get back, abandoned by us ...' He broke off. 'We never should have tinkered with the power supply. That's where we made our mistake.'
Howard said, 'I wonder what we'll find when we get the original power supply hooked back up.'
He jerked his head toward the group of TD engineers laboring to disconnect the larger source. 'In a few more hours they'll have it back the way it was. Presumably we'll find ourselves facing the original rent, the original conditions; we'll be back in contact with our campsite, then, and if necessary we can march them all back here to this side again. Every last one of them.'
'But,' Stanley said almost inaudibly, 'you're leaving a factor out. The nexus to this swamp world hasn't gone away; it's either self-maintaining or some force on the other side is underwriting it... in any case it seems to be there for good. Things are never going to be as they were; we can't reestablish the original situation. We'll never see those colonists again. And we might as well get used to that idea. I say, go ahead and hook up the first, smaller power source again, but don't expect anything.' To Leon Turpin, he said,
'I've been here all night. Can I go home and go to bed for a few hours ? I can't keep my eyes open.'
Turpin said raspingly, 'Don't you want to be here when ...'
'You're just not facing it,' Stanley said. 'When I wake up, six or ten or fifteen hours from now, the situation's going to be exactly as it is right now. We'll be looking across at that swamp world, and it'll be staring right back at us. I'll tell you what we've got to do. Somebody - and I don't mean just another atavistic, simple-minded robot-type dredge - some brilliant human individual has got to go across there into that swamp world and locate the power source that's keeping this nexus alive. And then he's got to blow it to bits or, at the very least, dismantle it.' Stanley added,
'And then - and this may be almost impossible - someone's got to find out what established that power source in the first place. And how they knew we were coming.'
After a pause Leon Turpin said, 'Howard tells me that in the first few moments of operation with the augmented power source, something came through, some living creature. Is that true ?'
Don Stanley sighed wearily. 'I thought so at the time. Now I think I was out of my mind; I was simply just too scared by what I saw. I must have realized right away that we had lost those colonists forever.' He walked unsteadily toward the exit door of the lab. 'I'll see you a few hours from now. After I've had some sleep.'
'But I saw it, too,' Howard was saying, as Stanley shut the lab door after him.
I don't care what came through, Stanley said to himself. I don't care what you saw. I've done all I can. I haven't got anything left to give to this situation.
But you better have, Turpin, he realized. Because it's going to take a lot. What I've done disconnecting the augmented power source, getting the barrier erected, sending over the QB
satellite, starting up the robot dredge - all that's nothing. Just a way of finding out what confronts us.
He thought, I wish I could sleep forever. Never wake up again and have to face this.
But he knew he had to.
And he was not the only one. They would all have to wake up, one by one, to face this, President
Schwarz involved in his deft political maneuverings to outrun Jim Briskin, hitting him with his own idea ... Briskin, too, because no matter what Schwarz had done, no matter how hurriedly and recklessly he had acted, the idea behind the colonization had been Briskin's. The responsibility remained essentially his, and Schwarz, now, would be quick to hand it back to him.
Having ascended to surface-level, Stanley passed through the wide front entrance of the TD
building, down the steps and onto the morning sidewalk, the busy downtown Washington street of people and 'hoppers and jet’ abs. The motion, the familiar, reassuring activity, made him feel better. This world, with its everyday sights, had not been blotted out, by any means; it remained solid, thoroughly substantial. As always.
He looked about for a jet'ab to take to his conapt.
Far off, at the corner of TD's administration building, a figure hurriedly disappeared.
Who was that ? Don Stanley asked himself. He halted, forbore hailing the jet'ab. I know him, and
I don't like him; it's somebody who in a day long past reminds me of things almost too repellent to recall, a part of my life that's dim, cut out, deliberately and for adequate reason forgotten.
Mud, he thought. Yes, oddly enough, he thought. That man makes me think of mud and twisted plants, deranged organisms that burst poisonously and silently under a weak and utterly useless sun. Where is this ? What have I been seeing ?
What just happened now, a few minutes ago, back there on level one in TD's labs ? He felt confused; standing on the sidewalk among the passing people he rubbed his forehead wearily, trying to rouse his mind. The swiftly-moving figure of course had been George Walt, but hadn't he - or rather they - closed down the Golden Door satellite and disappeared ?
He had heard that on TV or read it in the homeopapes. He was positive of it.
George Walt must be back, Stanley decided. From wherever they went.
Once more, a little dazedly, he began searching for a jet'ab to take him home.
13
At the breakfast table in the small kitchen of his conapt, Jim Briskin ate, and at the same time he carefully read the morning edition of the homeopape, finding in it, as a kind of minor melody in the momentous fugue which was playing itself out in heroic style, one item almost lo
st within the account of the migration of men and women to alter-Earth.
The first couple to cross over, Art and Rachael Chaffy, had been Cols. And the second couple,
Stuart and Mrs. Hadley, had been white. It was exactly the sort of neat and tidy detail which appeared to Jim Briskin's sense of proportion, and he relaxed a little, enjoying his breakfast. Sal would be pleased by this, too, he realized. I'll have to remember to mention it to him when I see him later on this morning.
President Schwarz missed something, he reflected, by not noticing this minuscule fact at the time it was occurring. Schwarz could have made an extra-special superior speech to the two couples, presenting them with large gaudy plastic keys to the alternate universe, disclosing to them that they're a symbol of a new epic era in racial relations ... as arranged for, of course, by the State's
Rights Conservation Democratic Party in all its full and healthy glory. Some minion on Schwarz'
staff slipped up, there, and should be fired.
He turned on the TV, then, to see if there was any later news. Had TD's engineering corps got the higher-yield power supply in operation yet, and if so, had the aperture been affected in the way anticipated ? By now a lot more emigrants should have joined the Chaffys and the Hadleys there on the other side. He wondered if the Pithecanthropi-Sinanthropi people had taken notice already ... had the crucial Augenblick, as the Germans put it, arrived by now ? While he had slept ?
On the TV screen the image gathered, became stable and fixed. But it was not what he had expected. The image had a certain grainy texture, familiar to him; it was emanating from a satellite which was still too far away. The sound, too, was distorted. It would, of course, clear up as the satellite moved closer, if it was moving in this direction and not away. What was going on ? What was this peculiar program, anyhow ? He leaned toward the speaker, trying to untangle the garble of words.
The video image became clarified, then. It was a head, the mutual head of the mutants George
Walt. Its mouth opened and it spoke. 'I am king, now,' George Walt declared. 'I have at my disposal up here an entire army of what you'd like to think of as "near" men but which are actually - as you are about to find out and not from me - the legitimate tenants of this world and every other alternative Earth running parallel to us. You'd be surprised at the type of scientific discoveries which the Peking race - and I call them that merely as a means by which to identify them - have made over the centuries. They can, for instance, warp time and also space to suit their needs. They've tapped sources of energy unknown to you Homo sapiens. I have with me here in the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite the wisest and kindest philosopher from among their great people. Just a moment.' George Walt's head disappeared from the screen.
Merciful lord, Jim Briskin thought. He sat staring at the TV set, unable to take his eyes from it.
George Walt are back, and they're out of their mind.
That's all we need, Jim said to himself. A crazy George Walt up there in their satellite, spinning around us. Now we've really got troubles.
His vidphone rang; automatically, he made his way over to answer it. 'Not just now,' he murmured. 'Call me later; I'm busy - '
'Don't hang up.' It was Tito Cravelli, sweating and agitated. 'I see you've got your TV set on.
He ... they have been broadcasting all morning, since about eight o'clock East Coast time.
They're going to bring that Peke sage back on again; this is a video tape, it's running over and over again. Get a load of this so-called philosopher; you've never seen anything like it in your life. And then call me back.' Tito hung up.
Jim Briskin numbly returned to the TV set to listen and watch.
'I can walk through wood,' the TV set was saying, but it was not George Walt, now. It was as
Tito had said, a Peking man, Sinanthropus telecasting from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. So George Walt... now you're in politics, Jim Briskin said to himself. And in a big way, too.
And we thought we were bad off before.
'Not only can I walk through wood,' the white-haired, massive-browed, enormous-chinned, ancient-looking Sinanthropus said, in reasonably good but somewhat mumbled English, 'but I
can make myself invisible. The god of air empowers me wherever I go. He fills the sails of life with his magic breath, capable of accomplishing all things. Poor, puny Homo sapiens creatures!
How could you conceivably expect to infest our world, with the Wind God himself present ?'
By the Wind God, Jim Briskin realized with a sickened, enervating start, was meant George Walt.
He had never before quite thought of them that way, but there it was.
Let's see how President Schwarz decides to handle this,, he said to himself. A Wind God in a satellite over our heads millions of fossil men straining to get at us. Darius Pethel can have his defective Jiffi-scuttler back; it's time we got rid of it, and by the quickest route possible. But how did this ancient Sinanthropus so-called philosopher get across to our world ? Didn't anybody at
TD notice his coming through ?
They must have opened their own nexus, he decided. Either that or what he says is actually true; he can make himself invisible.
It was a gloomy prospect, having to wake up in the early morning and face this, to say the least.
And somebody has really lost this election now, he decided. Either Bill Schwarz or myself, depending on whom the electorate, in its understandable frenzy, decides to blame.
Going back to the kitchen table he seated himself and resumed eating his breakfast, now cold. As he mechanically ate, he pondered the chances of successfully shooting down the Golden Door satellite; surely that was the most likely next move for President Schwarz. After all, the exact position of the satellite at any given moment was known; it was - or had been until recently -
printed on the entertainment page of every homeopape.
What I'm afraid of now, he realized, is that I'll look out the window of my decently private conapt and see Peking man walking along the sidewalk, and not just one but many of them.
He decided not to look, just to be on the safe side. At least not for a while. Instead he concentrated on finishing his breakfast, tasteless as it had become. As trivial a task as it was, at least it was a familiar event; it helped restore his sense of the regularity of reality.
Turning from the TV set Sal Heim released his emotion in an explosion of words. 'Call someone,' he said to his wife. 'Call Jim Briskin. Wait a minute; call Bill Schwarz at the White
House - I'll talk to him direct myself. This is a national emergency; anybody with half an eye can see that Party loyalty is out, you can wipe your nose on it. Let me know as soon as you have Bill
Schwarz on the line.' He returned to watching the TV.
'Not only can I walk through wood and across the surface of water,' the great old Peking man on the screen was saying, 'But I can annihilate time.'
Good grief, Sal thought. This is awful. They can do all kinds of things we can't; they're centuries ahead of us. Who around here that I know can annihilate time ? No one. He groaned aloud.
Pat said hecticly, 'I can't reach President Schwarz. The lines are tied up. Everybody must be...'
'Of course they are,' Sal said. 'The authorities know what this means. It's hopeless to try to get through to Schwarz. He'll have to get on the TV himself and tell the nation that a state of war exists between us and these dawn men. Or is this stuff on all channels ?' Savagely, he turned the knob. The same image appeared on every other channel; the satellite was blanketing the airwaves. He was not surprised. I might have known, he said to himself with envenomed bitterness. Next we'll be picking them up on the vidphone.
'But more important than anything else,' the white-haired Peking man on the TV screen was saying, 'I can work exceeding wonderful, powerful magic. For I am a mighty magician; I can cause the stars to fall from the vault of the heavens and confusion to blind the eyes of all my foes. What do you respond
to that, tiny Homo sapiens ? You should have cogitated on that before you invested our world. Facilis descensus Averno. You see, through my use of supernatural forces, entirely unknown to your little race, I can speak in German.'
'Latin,' Sal murmured. 'You damn fool dawn man; that's Latin. So you don't know everything.
Get off the TV so President Schwarz can declare war.' The image, however, remained.
Standing by his chair Patricia said, 'I guess this finishes Jim at the polls.'
'Didn't I just now get through saying that party doesn't count ?' He glared at her; Pat shrank back.
'To cope with this we've got to think along entirely novel lines - everything is changed. I noticed one interesting thing. When George Walt were on they referred to us as "you Homo sapiens."
Does that mean they're not ? My god, you can't become a converted Sinanthropus; it's not like a church. I really have to talk to someone about this besides you,' he said scathingly to his wife.
'Someone who can come up with answers.'
Pat said, 'What about ?'
'Wait,' He turned back to the TV screen. George Walt had once more appeared. 'They look older,'
Sal said. 'I can't remember which of them is the artificial body. The one on right, as I recall. The real one has certainly done a good job of building it back, after we tore it to pieces.' He chuckled.
'We had them on the run, then. Our finest hour.' Once more he became grim. 'Too bad it's not like that now.'
'You know who I was going to suggest you call ? Tito Cravelli. He always seems to be able to figure out what's happening.'
'Okay.' He nodded absently. 'Give me the phone; I'll call Tito.' He got to his feet, then. 'No, I'll get it myself. Why should you wait on me ?' At the vidphone he paused and turned toward her.
'I'm sure it's the one on the right. You know, I'll bet at this moment everybody, including even
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