"So this is how mankind will be treated! This is the way you'll save them, by ways like this!"
"You'll come around to a realistic attitude," Blake said calmly. "You'll see that as men of the future--"
"Do you really think I will?"
The two men faced each other.
Slowly a flicker of doubt passed over Blake's face. "You must, Eller! It's our duty to consider things in a new way. Of course you will." He frowned, raising the disc a little. "How can there be any doubt of that?"
Eller did not answer.
"Perhaps," Blake said thoughtfully, "you will hold a grudge against me. Perhaps your vision will be clouded by this incident. It is possible..." The disc moved. "In that case I must adjust myself as soon as possible to the realization that I will have to go on alone. If you won't join me to do the things that must be done then I will have to do them without you." His fingers tightened against the disc. "I will do it all alone, Eller, if you won't join me. Perhaps this is the best way. Sooner or later this moment might come, in any case. It is better for me to--"
Blake screamed.
From the wall a vast, transparent shape moved slowly, almost leisurely, out into the control room. Behind the shape came another, and then another, until at last there were five of them. The shapes pulsed faintly, glimmering with a vague, internal glow. All were identical, featureless.
In the center of the control room the shapes came to rest, hovering a little way up from the floor, soundlessly, pulsing gently, as if waiting.
Eller stared at them. Blake had lowered his disc and was standing, pale and tense, gaping in astonishment. Suddenly Eller realized something that made chill fear rush through him. He was not seeing the shapes at all. He was almost completely blind. He was sensing them in some new way, through some new mode of perception. He struggled to comprehend, his mind racing. Then, all at once, he understood. And he knew why they had no distinct shapes, no features.
They were pure energy.
Blake pulled himself together, coming to life. "What--" he stammered, waving the disc. "Who--"
A thought flashed, cutting Blake off. The thought seared through Eller's mind, hard and sharp, a cold, impersonal thought, detached and remote.
"The girl. First."
Two of the shapes moved toward Silvia's inert form, lying silently beside Eller. They paused a slight distance above her, glowing and pulsing. Then part of the glimmering corona leaped out, hurtling toward the girl's body, bathing her in a shimmering fire.
"That will suffice," a second thought came, after a few moments. The corona retreated. "Now, the one with the weapon."
A shape moved toward Blake. Blake retreated toward the door behind him. His withered body shook with fear.
"What are you?" he demanded, raising the disc. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"
The shape came on.
"Get away!" Blake cried. "Get back! If you don't--"
He fired. The blue cloud entered the shape. The shape quivered for a moment, absorbing the cloud. Then it came on again. Blake's jaw fell. He scrambled into the corridor, stumbling and falling. The shape hesitated at the door. Then it was joined by a second shape which moved up beside it.
A ball of light left the first shape, moving toward Blake. It enveloped him. The light winked out. There was nothing where Blake had stood. Nothing at all.
"That was unfortunate," a thought came. "But necessary. Is the girl reviving?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"Who are you?" Eller asked. "What are you? Will Silv be all right? Is she alive?"
"The girl will recover." The shapes moved toward Eller, surrounding him. "We should perhaps have intervened before she was injured but we preferred to wait until we were certain the one with the weapon was going to gain control."
"Then you knew what was happening?"
"We saw it all."
"Who are you? Where did you--where did you come from?"
"We were here," the thought came.
"Here?"
"On the ship. We were here from the start. You see, we were the first to receive the radiation; Blake was wrong. So our transformation began even before his did. And in addition, we had much farther to go. Your race has little evolution ahead of it. A few more inches of cranium, a little less hair, perhaps. But not really so much. Our race, on the other hand, had just begun."
"Your race? First to receive the radiation?" Eller stared around him in dawning realization. "Then you must be--"
"Yes," the calm, inflexible thought came. "You are right. We are the hamsters from the laboratory. The pigs carried for your experiments and tests." There was almost a note of humor in the thought. "However, we hold nothing against you, I assure you. In fact, we have very little interest in your race, one way or another. We owe you a slight debt for helping us along our path, bringing our destiny onto us in a few short minutes instead of another fifty million years.
"For that we are thankful. And I think we have already repaid you. The girl will be all right. Blake is gone. You will be allowed to continue on your way back to your own planet."
"Back to Terra?" Eller faltered. "But--"
"There is one more thing that we will do before we go," the calm thought came. "We have discussed the matter and we are in complete agreement on this. Eventually your race will achieve its rightful position through the natural course of time. There is no value in hurrying it prematurely. For the sake of your race and the sake of you two, we will do one last thing before we depart. You will understand."
A swift ball of flame rose from the first shape. It hovered over Eller. It touched him and passed on to Silvia. "It is better," the thought came. "There is no doubt."
They watched silently, staring through the port scope. From the side of the ship the first ball of light moved, flashing out into the void.
"Look!" Silvia exclaimed.
The ball of light increased speed. It shot away from the ship, moving at incredible velocity. A second ball oozed through the hull of the ship, out into space behind the first.
After it came a third, a fourth, and finally a fifth. One by one the balls of light hurtled out into the void, out into deep space.
When they were gone Silvia turned to Eller, her eyes shining. "That's that," she said. "Where are they going?"
"No way to tell. A long way, probably. Maybe not anywhere in this galaxy. Some remote place." Eller reached out suddenly, touching Silvia's dark-brown hair. He grinned. "You know, your hair is really something to see. The most beautiful hair in the whole universe."
Silvia laughed. "Any hair looks good to us, now." She smiled up at him, her red lips warm. "Even yours, Cris."
Eller gazed down at her a long time. "They were right," he said at last.
"Right?"
"It is better." Eller nodded, gazing down at the girl beside him, at her hair and dark eyes, the familiar lithe, supple form. "I agree--There is no doubt of it."
The Preserving Machine
Doc Labyrinth leaned back in his lawn chair, closing his eyes gloomily. He pulled his blanket up around his knees.
"Well?" I said. I was standing by the barbecue pit, warming my hands. It was a clear cold day. The sunny Los Angeles sky was almost cloud-free. Beyond Labyrinth's modest house a gently undulating expanse of green stretched off until it reached the mountains--a small forest that gave the illusion of wilderness within the very limits of the city. "Well?" I said. "Then the Machine did work the way you expected?"
Labyrinth did not answer. I turned around. The old man was staring moodily ahead, watching an enormous dun-colored beetle that was slowly climbing the side of his blanket. The beetle rose methodically, its face blank with dignity. It passed over the top and disappeared down the far side. We were alone again.
Labyrinth sighed and looked up at me. "Oh, it worked well enough."
I looked after the beetle, but it was nowhere to be seen. A faint breeze eddied around me, chill and thin in the fading afternoon twilight. I mo
ved nearer the barbecue pit.
"Tell me about it," I said.
Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think, the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.
Now Labyrinth, having thought this, began to brood over all the fine and lovely things that would be lost in the reshuffling of societies. He thought of the art, the literature, the manners, the music, everything that would be lost. And it seemed to him that of all these grand and noble things, music would probably be the most lost, the quickest forgotten.
Music is the most perishable of things, fragile and delicate, easily destroyed.
Labyrinth worried about this, because he loved music, because he hated the idea that some day there would be no more Brahms and Mozart, no more gentle chamber music that he could dreamily associate with powdered wigs and resined bows, with long, slender candles, melting away in the gloom.
What a dry and unfortunate world it would be, without music! How dusty and unbearable.
This is how he came to think of the Preserving Machine. One evening as he sat in his living room in his deep chair, the gramophone on low, a vision came to him. He perceived in his mind a strange sight, the last score of a Schubert trio, the last copy, dog-eared, well-thumbed, lying on the floor of some gutted place, probably a museum.
A bomber moved overhead. Bombs fell, bursting the museum to fragments, bringing the walls down in a roar of rubble and plaster. In the debris the last score disappeared, lost in the rubbish, to rot and mold.
And then, in Doc Labyrinth's vision, he saw the score come burrowing out, like some buried mole. Quick like a mole, in fact, with claws and sharp teeth and a furious energy.
If music had that faculty, the ordinary, everyday instinct of survival which every worm and mole has, how different it would be! If music could be transformed into living creatures, animals with claws and teeth, then music might survive. If only a Machine could be built, a Machine to process musical scores into living forms.
But Doc Labyrinth was no mechanic. He made a few tentative sketches and sent them hopefully around to the research laboratories. Most of them were much too busy with war contracts, of course. But at last he found the people he wanted. A small midwestern university was delighted with his plans, and they were happy to start work on the Machine at once.
Weeks passed. At last Labyrinth received a postcard from the university. The Machine was coming along fine; in fact, it was almost finished. They had given it a trial run, feeding a couple of popular songs into it. The results? Two small mouse-like animals had come scampering out, rushing around the laboratory until the cat caught and ate them. But the Machine was a success.
It came to him shortly after, packed carefully in a wood crate, wired together and fully insured. He was quite excited as he set to work, taking the slats from it. Many fleeting notions must have coursed through his mind as he adjusted the controls and made ready for the first transformation. He had selected a priceless score to begin with, the score of the Mozart G Minor
Quintet. For a time he turned the pages, lost in thought, his mind far away. At last he carried it to the Machine and dropped it in.
Time passed. Labyrinth stood before it, waiting nervously, apprehensive and not really certain what would greet him when he opened the compartment. He was doing a fine and tragic work, it seemed to him, preserving the music of the great composers for all eternity. What would his thanks be? What would he find? What form would this all take, before it was over?
There were many question unanswered. The red light of the Machine was glinting, even as he meditated. The process was over, the transformation had already taken place. He opened the door.
"Good Lord!" he said. "This is very odd."
A bird, not an animal, stepped out. The mozart bird was pretty, small and slender, with the flowing plumage of a peacock. It ran a little way across the room and then walked back to him, curious and friendly. Trembling, Doc Labyrinth bent down, his hand out. The mozart bird came near. Then, all at once, it swooped up into the air.
"Amazing," he murmured. He coaxed the bird gently, patiently, and at last it fluttered down to him. Labyrinth stroked it for a long time, thinking. What would the rest of them be like? He could not guess. He carefully gathered up the mozart bird and put it into a box.
He was even more surprised the next day when the beethoven beetle came out, stern and dignified. That was the beetle I saw myself, climbing along his red blanket, intent and withdrawn, on some business of its own.
After that came the schubert animal. The schubert animal was silly, an adolescent sheep-creature that ran this way and that, foolish and wanting to play. Labyrinth sat down right then and there and did some heavy thinking.
Just what were survival factors? Was a flowing plume better than claws, better than sharp teeth? Labyrinth was stumped. He had expected an army of stout badger creatures, equipped with claws and scales, digging, fighting, ready to gnaw and kick. Was he getting the right thing? Yet who could say what was good for survival?--the dinosaurs had been well armed, but there were none of them left. In any case the Machine was built; it was too late to turn back, now.
Labyrinth went ahead, feeding the music of many composers into the Preserving Machine, one after another, until the woods behind his house was filled with creeping, bleating things that screamed and crashed in the night. There were many oddities that came out, creations that startled and astonished him. The Brahms insect had many legs sticking in all directions, a vast, platter-shaped centipede. It was low and flat, with a coating of uniform fur. The Brahms insect liked to be by itself, and it went off promptly, taking great pains to avoid the Wagner animal who had come just before.
The Wagner animal was large and splashed with deep colors. It seemed to have quite a temper, and Doc Labyrinth was a little afraid of it, as were the Bach bugs, the round ball-like creatures, a whole flock of them, some large, some small, that had been obtained for the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues. And there was the Stravinsky bird, made up of curious fragments and bits, and many others besides.
So he let them go, off into the woods, and away they went, hopping and rolling and jumping as best they could. But already a sense of failure hung over him. Each time a creature came out he was astonished; he did not seem to have control over the results at all. It was out of his hands, subject to some strong, invisible law that had subtly taken over, and this worried him greatly. The creatures were bending, changing before a deep, impersonal force, a force that Labyrinth could neither see nor understand. And it made him afraid.
Labyrinth stopped talking. I waited for a while but he did not seem to be going on. I looked around at him. The old man was staring at me in a strange, plaintive way.
"I don't really know much more," he said. "I haven't been back there for a long time, back in the woods. I'm afraid to. I know something is going on, but--"
"Why don't we both go and take a look?"
He smiled with relief. "You wouldn't mind, would you? I was hoping you might suggest that. This business is beginning to get me down." He pushed his blanket aside and stood up, brushing himself off. "Let's go then."
We walked around the side of the house and along a narrow path, into the woods. Everything was wild and chaotic, overgrown and matted, an unkempt, unattended sea of green. Doc Labyrinth went first, pushing the branches off the path, stooping and wriggling to get through.
"Quite a place," I observed. We made our way for a time. The woods were dark and damp; it was almost sunset now, and a light mist was descending on us, drifting down through the leaves above.
"No one comes here." Then Doc stopped suddenly, looking around. "Maybe we'd better go and find my gun. I don't want anything to happen."
; "You seem certain that things have got out of hand." I came up beside him and we stood together. "Maybe it's not as bad as you think."
Labyrinth looked around. He pushed some shrubbery back with his foot. "They're all around us, everywhere, watching us. Can't you feel it?"
I nodded absently. "What's this?" I lifted up a heavy, moldering branch, particles of fungus breaking from it. I pushed it out of the way. A mound lay outstretched, shapeless and indistinct, half buried in the soft ground.
"What is it?" I said again. Labyrinth stared down, his face tight and forlorn. He began to kick at the mound aimlessly. I felt uncomfortable. "What is it, for heaven's sake?" I said. "Do you know?"
Labyrinth looked slowly up at me. "It's the Schubert animal," he murmured. "Or it was, once. There isn't much left of it, any more."
The Schubert animal--that was the one that had run and leaped like a puppy, silly and wanting to play. I bent down, staring at the mound, pushing a few leaves and twigs from it. It was dead all right. Its mouth was open, its body had been ripped wide. Ants and vermin were already working on it, toiling endlessly away. It had begun to stink.
"But what happened?" Labyrinth said. He shook his head. "What could have done it?"
There was a sound. We turned quickly.
For a moment we saw nothing. Then a bush moved, and for the first time we made out its form. It must have been standing there watching us all the time. The creature was immense, thin and extended, with bright, intense eyes. To me, it looked something like a coyote, but much heavier. Its coat was matted and thick, its muzzle hung partly open as it gazed at us silently, studying us as if astonished to find us there.
"The Wagner animal," Labyrinth said thickly. "But it's changed. It's changed. I hardly recognize it."
The creature sniffed the air, its hackles up. Suddenly it moved back, into the shadows, and a moment later it was gone.
We stood for a while, not saying anything. At last Labyrinth stirred. "So, that's what it was," he said. "I can hardly believe it. But why? What--"
Collected Stories 1 - The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories Page 20