The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Chester S. Geier

  Grayson gave a great cry of doubt, of relief, of unbelief, then a shout of laughter. He had been right! This immaterial “material” of this world would answer a thought command, this world of ships and flesh and matter and machines was in truth an illusion that could be shattered by a picture of an atomic bomb if the picture were accepted by those who saw it as a true one! Grayson could not accept the rosy monitor’s view of what had happened, or that the being had saved his life by cutting off his sight. He had seen, he had not believed, and the monitor was one of those who Grayson suspected of working for Karnia, who had been about to stop Grayson’s work, and had been too late, was covering his failure with the intent to confuse Grayson analysis of what he had done. He whirled, throwing his sight into the penetrative vision range he had learned, in order to analyze the force-body of the rosy alien “monitor”, but he was nowhere to be seen, nor were his companions, who had seemed to be standing about him when Grayson had been blinded by the blast.

  To Grayson this proved that they feared him, knew that the ruse would but hold him off for a short time. For it was in his mind that these “monitors” must be next on Azura’s list of enemies—if what he suspected were true. But why had they not destroyed him, it had seemed an opportune time?

  Not pausing to seek them more, he turned back to the view-crystal, turning the sighting device across the whole field of battle. Floating everywhere about the area were the bodies of the Karnians, unharmed for the most part, their arms and legs thrashing about in complete lack of wounds or hurt of any kind. Yet of Karnian material ships and weapons, there was not a sign in the skies. His blast had been curiously selective, destroying the “matter” of the Karnians, leaving the “matter” of the Azuran fleet intact because they had not seen and been convinced of their own destruction. Speeding here and there were the scout ships and tenders of the fleet of Azura, stoping to pick up the Karnian survivors. Grayson fell to the deck in uncontrollable hysteria, and laughing at the sight, expected but yet—impossible to his eyes! So much so that to his strained mind it was inexpressibly funny. The thought voice of Istar bellowing from the communicator brought him out of the laughing fit.

  “Grayson, you utter idiot, what in rosy-fingered Damnation have you done to the poor Karnians? They are floating all over the place, and half of them think they are angels of light—they are trying to fly!”

  Grayson staggered to the speaking crystal, shouted: “Pick them up before they figure it out or they can still make trouble. I told you this world of yours was an illusion and I just proved it! I didn’t put anything in that crystal but a suggestion of intense and blinding light . . .”

  GRAYSON could hear the big commander cursing to himself, then heard him laughing again at some angle of the sight of the Karnians floating in space denuded of ships and weapons.

  Grayson left the turret, and leaned weakly against the wall of the companionway. He could see the bodies of the men in the turret begin to stir, and he made his way toward the bridge with a sigh of utter relief.

  The communicators along the way kept up a steady succession of commands as Istar directed the work of capture, then:

  “Paul Grayson, get up here! If you don’t show up I’m going to tell the fleet what you did for them—and that you think their ships are illusions!”

  Paul stepped to a wall bracket where a speaking crystal hung, and centered his effort in it.

  “If you tell the whole fleet what I told you, Istar, and if they understand you—you won’t have a fleet! It will dissolve around you! Just ignore the whole thing till we are alone. Then I’ll explain. Your world depends on a general concept, it is held together only by the tenuous threads of your people’s thought. Any “truth” or “falsehood” of that kind can dispell the whole illusion of materiality . . . even though it is not strictly illusion. You keep your secret, Istar!”

  “Agreed, you blasted magician! But get up here and explain me out of this, I don’t know what to tell them!”

  “Explain it any way you want, I’m busy!’” Grayson laughed . . . understanding his dilemma. Then, stronger in his limbs and now clear in the mind, he made his way to the lower side of the big ship, where the little scout flyers were kept, the life boats and general purpose tenders of the big craft. Selecting the largest of these still in their cradles, Grayson opened the round port, got in, sent the little ship out into that space that had once seemed so strange to him. Now—it was the path to Sareen, and he was delaying no longer. Spreading the charts on his lap, he picked out the little red dot that marked Kadon, a far-circling satellite of Azura. Setting the simple directional control, he relaxed, and in an instant a body lay slumped in the seat—tenantless.

  On Kadon, a grey and violet force-shape hovered over a girl’s figure in a garden. Slowly, gently, Paul Grayson settled to the transparent earth beside Sareen.

  She sat looking disconsolately at the grass, upon a wide carved bench of ebony. At each end of the bench leaned two stalwart guards in the gold and scarlet colors of Marduc, whose estate this garden centered.

  Grayson, invisible in his “real” body, put out his grey fingers, touched Sareen’s hand gently. For an instant she shrank from the touch, looking around wildly. Then she relaxed, as his quiet thought flowed to meet her seeking—and in a swift full instant of communion and understanding, her body slumped, empty and tenantless—between the frightened, wondering guards.

  High, higher—two radiant beings winged on a nuptial flight, their arms enlacing the loved, “immaterial” bodies of the other.

  * * *

  “Just what is illusion, anyway?” murmured the grey-and-violet to the gold-and-blue-and-rose figure.

  “Everything that is not love, my dearest mate,” answered the wisdom of the other.

  The Bottle

  THE BOTTLE was squat and green and had once been stoppered with wax. It rested on the bureau top, and Colvin’s fingers touched it in a kind of mute appeal as he stood before the mirror, hesitating.

  He, felt the now familiar dread again, stealing through him like tendrils of icy mist. Suppose, he thought, suppose he were to gaze at his reflection and find that his existence of the past several weeks had somehow been only a dream, only a remarkably vivid and life-like illusion.

  Suppose he were to find that his renewed youth had gone.

  He thought of Doris, and desperation swept him. It couldn’t end, he told himself. It couldn’t end now, when Doris had come to mean so much to him.

  A defiance born of his panic impelled his eyes upward. He looked at himself in the mirror.

  The face, that stared back at him was smooth and unlined, a lean face, engaging if not actually handsome, the face of a young man. The dark hair visible at temples and forehead was thick and unmarred by any trace of gray.

  Relief flooded Colvin. But in the next instant he realized that nothing had actually, been settled. Each day it would be like this. Each day he would approach a mirror in dread of what he might find.

  One day, he felt certain, he would look at his reflection and find that the dream was over, the song ended. His features would be lined and worn, his hair thinning and touched with gray. As it had been in the beginning . . .

  It would be like a nightmare—a conscious nightmare. He would be awakes, in full possession of his senses, yet facing a reality more horrible than anything imagination might conjure.

  Slowly he turned away from the bureau, his shoulders slumped. With a threat of that kind hanging over him, he had been a fool to speak to Doris of marriage. A fool—yet not for worlds would he have missed her delight or the sweet shyness of her consent.

  Marriage to Doris, he decided now was out of the question. His life with her could never be anything more than a mockery and, a sham—doomed eventually to be exposed. He would not be playing fair with her. The shock of his transformation, when it came, might be more than her sanity could bear.

  It would be best never to see Doris again, to go someplace, where her nearness would not otherwise
tempt him into abandoning his resolve. He realized that this was the most considerate thing to do—but every fibre of his being seemed to writhe in rebellion at the thought. Not to see Doris again would be like giving up sunlight and music, like shutting himself away from everything worthy and fine.

  He kneaded his hands in misery as he became aware of the full implications of his dilemma. He felt crushed between two equally impossible alternatives. There had to be some answer to his problem, he told himself. It could not be completely hopeless.

  And then the answer came to him, He knew it had been in the back of his mind all along.

  He would have to tell Doris, of course, tell her what had happened to him, and how it had happened. The decision of whether they would or would not continue their relationship would be hers to make.

  But how could he possibly tell her of the utterly incredible? How could he tell her of something that went hand in hand with black magic and supernatural?

  COLVIN glanced back at the squat, green bottle on the bureau top and he knew how his story would begin. It would begin with that fateful evening, almost two months, before when he had been crossing the boulevard and had met the gnome-like man.

  He had just left the offices of the construction firm where he was employed as an architect, having been working late over some plans. Anxiety filled him, an urgent need for haste. He would have to hurry if he wanted to catch a glimpse of the girl with the soft brown hair and the large dark eyes.

  He did not know her name. He knew nothing about her. He knew only that she appeared almost every evening at the modest little restaurant where he ate before taking a bus to his two-room apartment on the north side of the city.

  She evidently had been coming there for some time before he grew conscious of her. But once he did, it was not long until he found himself hopelessly in love. It was ironic and not a little fantastic, considering that he was so much older.

  She could not be called a beautiful girl, though she seemed so to him. She appeared too grave, too reserved, for that. She was slim and dark, and she was always well and quietly dressed. She wore no makeup and little or no jewelry. She did not smoke. These qualities, as much as her air of intelligence and maturity, appealed to him with an intensity he had never before experienced.

  He had never spoken to the girl. He had never done more than steal surreptitious glances at her from where he sat in pretended concentration behind his evening newspaper.

  He could not be sure if she were aware of him, if she had ever so much as glanced in his direction. And it annoyed and hurt him. He wanted desperately to walk over to her table and make an effort to get acquainted. But he knew he couldn’t do that. She might think him nothing more than an elderly flirt. She might see no further than his lined, graying exterior, though he prided himself that his body was still straight and firm despite all the years he had spent bending over a drawing board.

  His familiarity with the girl was entirely one-sided. It was a thing of stolen glances and secret admiration. He lived only for those exhilarating moments when she was present in the restaurant with him—present, yet as aloof and unapproachable as the mountains of Tibet.

  He was thinking of her that particular evening, as he hurried across the boulevard. He stopped in the center of the broad traffic lane, waiting for a break in the almost solid stream of cars that roared past. Dimly he was aware of another man a few feet ahead of him, and a short distance to his right, an excavation or something of the sort, which had been railed in with boards and hung with red warning lanterns.

  Neither seemed to have any particular importance, but in the next few seconds he noticed that the other man was in motion, walking erratically, with his hands outstretched before him as though ill or drunk. He was stumbling directly toward the excavation and the flimsy wooden railing around it.

  The scene abruptly took on a strangeness, an almost garish clarity. The headlights of the passing cars swelled and ebbed in a pulse-beat of blinding brilliance along the dark artery of the boulevard, silhouetting the other man as he groped his way to certain injury. Colvin started forward, a cry of alarm surging to his lips.

  “Good Lord—look out there!”

  And then he had caught the other by the arm and was pulling him back. He had been none too soon. Anger swept him, a sudden flash of emotion that merely underscored his sense of relief. He said sharply:

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You almost—”

  HE BROKE off as the other’s face turned and lifted to him. The face somehow of a beardless gnome, not old and yet not young. A face in which age and youth were somehow weirdly mingled. In some unfathomable fashion it shocked Colvin. Owl-like eyes rose to blink dazedly up. at him. He himself was not a tall man, yet he seemed so in comparison. The other was short and frail, with a head that seemed abnormally large.

  The gnome-like man’s tiny mouth shaped itself and moved in speech. Colvin could not distinguish the tone of his voice over the roar of passing cars, but somehow he understood clearly what was said.

  “I . . . I am sorry. The lights . . . they confused me. I am not accustomed to much light.”

  Colvin felt a cold finger of unease touch him. The other wasn’t sick or drunk. He was just . . . strange, in a way that could not be explained.

  “All right,” Colvin said gruffly. “Just stand still. I’ll take you across to the sidewalk.”

  The cars presently thinned out and were gone as the stream was dammed by a changing traffic light down the boulevard. Colvin escorted his charge to the sidewalk, hesitating a moment before he turned away.

  “This is where you wanted to go, isn’t it?”

  “Yes . . . . I believe so.” The gnome-like man was glancing with an uncertain air along the street.

  “Are you lost?” Colvin asked.

  The owl-like eyes lifted to him slowly and, it seemed, sadly. “I have been lost for many orbitals. I arrathened in the wrong time direction, you see. . . .”

  “Oh,” Colvin said. He felt the unease, again, more sharply than before, and he stirred to complete his motion of leaving.

  A small hand gripped his arm.

  “I am in your debt, it seems,” the gnome-like man said. “Is there any favor I can return?”

  “Why . . . no.” There was a fluttering in Colvin’s chest, almost of panic. In the temporary quiet that had fallen over the boulevard, still another aspect of the other’s queerness had dawned on him. He realized that the gnome-like man had not actually been using his voice, even though his lips had moved. Yet in some incomprehensible way Colvin had a distinct impression of audible speech.

  He stared at the stranger in growing alarm. The owl-like eyes were studying him with a fixed intentness. They seemed to widen and glow. They seemed to draw him into them, as though into the depths of a luminescent sea. He had the eerie sensation of being searched . . . read.

  Then he became aware that the gnome-like man was speaking again in his toneless, soundless way.

  “You are not happy, Peter Colvin. It is because you too, in your own fashion, are lost in time. But I can help you. I have knowledge and abilities of a certain order . . . anachronistic, you might say, though you would term them, supernatural.

  “The solution to your problem is obvious . . . and simple enough. To obtain the fulfillment of your dreams, it is necessary for you to regain a portion of your lost youth. I can make it possible for you to accomplish that.”

  Colvin floated in the luminescent depths. He felt lulled, somehow suspended. Dimly he was aware of the dark canyon of the boulevard, with cars roaring by again in a parade of flashing headlights.

  THE SCENE abruptly sharpened, swooped into focus. For an instant his senses possessed an abnormal clarity. He had the distinct impression that he was alone, that the gnome-like man had somehow gone. It was as though the other had turned in some inexplicable way that had taken him from sight. But that must have been an illusion, for in another moment he saw the stranger standing before him with
an object held in one extended hand.

  “Please accept this as a token of my gratitude, Peter Colvin.”

  Taking the object, Colvin peered at it in dazed wonder. It was a bottle, he saw, squat and green and stoppered with a substance that seemed to be wax.

  “The bottle contains a liquid compound,” the gnome-like man went on. “You might call it an elixir, for it will react upon the mechanism of your body in such a way as to produce a period of renewed youth. The effects are not permanent, yet they will endure long enough for you t attain certain of your immediate desires.

  “Do not hesitate to use it. The elixir creates no adverse physical results, as numerous others who have benefited from it would gladly testify . . . . And now farewell. Peter Colvin. May the future bring you much happiness.”

  With a grave nod, the gnome-like man turned and set off down the boulevard. Colvin stared after the strange small figure until it finally turned a corner and was gone from sight.

  Slowly, then, his eyes went back to the bottle in his hand An elixir, something that would temporarily restore youth. It was incredible, he decided, impossible, even in this day of scientific miracles. The gnome like stranger was obviously a psychopathic case, despite his uncanny abilities. And yet . . . youth! The thought brought a tightening to his throat. Youth! To be as young as the girl with the brown pair and the dark eyes! To be able to meet her speak to her!

  Recollection of the girl made Colvin suddenly tense. He realized that much precious time had passed during his encounter with the gnome-like man. He had already been late for his one-sided rendezvous at the restaurant. Now the girl would be gone.

  But perhaps she had remained a little longer than usual. Acting on this hope, he thrust the bottle into a pocket of his coat and hurried into motion.

  She was not there. Feeling suddenly lost and forlorn, he sat down at a table and gave his order. He was not quite sure of what it was, nor was he quite sure of what he subsequently ate. Thoughts of the girl and of the green bottle made a confused pattern of eagerness and doubt in his mind. Later, still in a mental chaos, he took a bus to his apartment.