A Treasury of Great Science Fiction 1

by Anthony Boucher (ed)

  Little more than a year ago he had applied for weapon shop membership, his given reason being that he expected a crisis between government and weapon shop forces and that he desired to be on the weapon shop side. His papers were in order, the Pp machine gave him so high a rating in every mental, physical and moral category that his file was immediately brought to the attention of the weapon shop executive council. From the beginning he was on special duty and his assignment to the coordination department during an emergency was merely a normal step in his meteoric rise to weapon shop power.

  Hedrock was aware that a few members of the council and a number of the top executives considered his ascent too rapid and not in the best interests of the weapon shops. That he was even regarded by some as a mysterious figure, though no sinister connotations were intended by the critics. No one actually questioned the verdict of the Pp machine in his favor, which puzzled him at times. At some later date, he decided, he would investigate the machine much more carefully and discover just why normally skeptical men accepted its judgments without question.

  It had proved inordinately simple for him to fool it, lie to it, tell it his carefully doctored story.

  True, he had special control of his mind and abnormal technical knowledge of machine reaction to biological processes. There was also the overruling fact of his friendliness to the weapon shops—which undoubtedly helped. The Pp machine, he had been told, had the weapon shop door’s unique sensitivity for recognizing hidden hostility. And it’s basic structure included the ability, also built into every gun, to recognize and react within limitations. Like the weapons that would not kill except in self-defense, or under other restrictions, its intricately acute electronic senses perceived minute differences in the reactions of every part of the examined body. It was an invention that had been developed since the last time he had been a member of the weapon shops a hundred-odd years before. It was new to him. And their dependence on it made it necessary for Robert Hedrock, Earth’s one immortal man, friend of the weapon shops, to make sure it was as effective a safeguard as they thought.

  But that was for later. It was the least of the problems confronting him. He was a man who had to make up his mind, how soon was not yet clear—but all too soon it seemed to him. The first great attack of the youthful empress had already closed the weapon shops in every large city on earth. But even that was secondary compared to the problem of the endless seesaw. He could not escape the conviction that only he, of all the human beings on earth, was qualified to make the decision about that. And he still had not an idea of what to do.

  His thought reached that point, as he came to the door marked Private—Executives Only, his destination. He knocked; waited the necessary seconds, then entered without further preliminary.

  It was a curiously arranged room in which he found himself. Not a large room, by Isher standards, but large enough. It was so close to being a 200-foot cube that Hedrock’s eyes could not detect the difference. Its most curious feature was that the door, through which he entered, was about a hundred feet above the floor with the ceiling an equal distance higher. There was a platform just inside the door. From it projected an energy plane. Hedrock stepped into one of the pairs of insulators on the platform. The moment he felt them grip his shoes he walked out onto the vaguely glowing latticework of force.

  In the center of the room (center on height-depth as well as length-width level) seven weapon shop councilors were standing around a machine that floated in a transparent plastic case. They greeted Hedrock briefly, then returned their attention to the machine. Hedrock watched them silently, conscious of their intense, unnormal depression. Beside him Peter Cadron whispered, “It’s almost time for another swing.”

  Hedrock nodded. And slowly, as he gazed at the wizard mechanism floating in its vacuumized case, their absorption communicated itself to him. It was a map of time. A map of inter-crossed lines so finely drawn that they seemed to waver like heat waves on a torrid day.

  Theoretically the lines extended from a central point into the infinite past and the infinite future (with the limitation that in the mathematics employed, infinity was almost zero). But after several trillion years the limitation operated to create a blurred effect, which was enhanced by the unwillingness of the eyes to accept the image. On that immense ocean of time, the shadowy shapes, one large and very near the center, one a mere speck on the curving vastness of the map, lay moveless. Hedrock knew that the speck was a magnified version of the reality, which was too small to make out with the naked eye. The image had been so organized that its every movement was followed by a series of magnifiers. These instruments were attuned to separate sensitive energies and adjusted automatically to the presence of additional onlookers.

  As Hedrock watched with pitying eyes both shadows moved. It was a movement that had no parallel in macro-cosmic space—a movement so alien that the vision could not make an acceptible image. It was not a particularly swift process but, in spite of that, both shadows—withdrew? Where? Even the weapon shop scientists had never quite decided that. They withdrew and then slowly reappeared, but now their positions were reversed, with variations.

  They were farther out. The large shadow, which had been wavering one month and three days from the center in the past, was suddenly a month and three days and a few hours in the future. The tiny speck, which had been 97 billion years in the future, reversed to about 106 billion years in the past.

  The time distance was so colossal that Hedrock shrank in spite of himself and half turned to Cadron. “Have they figured out his energy potential.”

  Cadron nodded wearily. “Enough to destroy the planet.” He groaned. “Where in the name of space are we going to release it?”

  Hedrock tried to picture that. He had not been among those who talked to McAllister, the reporter from the twentieth century. His understanding of what had happened had been pieced together from fragmentary accounts. And one of his purposes in coming to this room now was to learn the details.

  He drew Cadron aside and frankly asked for information. Cadron gazed at him with a wry smile. “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you. The truth is, all of us are ashamed of the way we acted.”

  Hedrock said, “Then you feel that McAllister should not have been sacrificed?”

  Cadron shook his head. “No, that isn’t exactly what I mean.” His frown deepened. “I guess the best method is to tell you the whole story—briefly, of course.”

  He began. “The girl attendant of the Greenway shop heard someone come and went out to attend to him. The customer was a queer looking chap in outlandish clothes. It turned out that he was a newspaper reporter from the twentieth century A. D. He was so obviously disconcerted, so fascinated by the showcases with their energy guns. And he gave an account of a weapon shop having appeared in a street in a little city in which he lived. I can imagine the sensation it caused but the truth is that everybody thought it was an illusion of some kind.

  “It seemed solid, of course. But when the police tried to open the door, naturally it wouldn’t open. McAllister, with a reporter’s curiosity, finally tried the door himself.

  For him, of course—he not being a police or government official—it opened immediately. He went inside.

  “He admitted to the attendant experiencing a sense of tension as he crossed the threshold and, although he didn’t know it, it was at that moment that he picked up the first measure of time-energy, the equivalent of approximately seven thousand years—his weight being the other factor. When the attendant told her father—who was in charge of the shop—what had occurred, he realized immediately that something was wrong. In a few minutes he had verified that the shop was being subjected to titanic energy pressure. He discovered that the source of the energy was the huge government building on an adjacent street. He immediately called the weapon makers into council.

  “By the time we arrived on the scene a swift decision was necessary. McAllister had enough time energy locked up in his body to destr
oy the entire city—that is if he ever stepped outside our insulated shop without himself being insulated. Meanwhile, the pressure from the government building against our shop continued unabated. At any moment it might succeed in precipitating the shop itself into the time stream, and there was reason to believe that other attacks would be made at any moment on our shops everywhere. No one could guess what the result would be. To cut a long story short we saw a way to gain time by focussing the energy of the building upon McAllister and tossing him back into his own time. We could do this by putting him into an insulated space suit which would prevent him from exploding until we could develop a mechanism for that purpose.

  “We knew that he would seesaw back and forth in time, shifting the government building and its energies out of this space-time area.”

  Cadron shook his head gloomily. “I still don’t see what else we could have done. We were compelled to act swiftly in a field where no great knowledge is available, and the fact that we merely got out of the frying pan and into the fire was just our hard luck. But personally I feel very badly about the whole thing.”

  “Do you think McAllister is still alive?” Hedrock asked.

  “Oh yes. The suit into which we put him was one of our supers, complete with an eight ring food-making device, and there’s a cup in it that’s always full of water. The other facilities are equally automatic.”

  He smiled a twisted smile. “We had an idea, completely false as it turned out, that we could save him at some later date.”

  “I see,” said Hedrock. He felt depressed. It was unfortunate but all the decisions had been made before he had even heard of the danger.

  The newsman was now the juggernaut of juggernauts. In all the universe there had never been anything like the power that was accumulating, swing by swing, in his body. Released, the explosion would rock the fabric of space. All time would sigh to its echoes and the energy tensions that created the illusion of matter might collapse before the strain.

  “What’s the latest about the building?” Hedrock asked.

  Cadron was more cheerful. “It’s still within its critical limits. We’ve got to make our decision before it reaches the danger stage.”

  Hedrock was silent. The matter of what the decision should be was a sore point with him, who was obviously not going to be asked. He said finally. “What about the men who are working on the problem of slowing the swings and bringing the seesaw back this way?”

  Another man answered that. “The research is abandoned. Science four thousand seven hundred and eighty-four has no answer. Were lucky enough to have made one of our shops the fulcrum. We can set off the explosion anywhere in the past or future. But which? And when? Particularly when?”

  The shadows on that cartograph made no movement, gave no sign. Their time of action was not yet.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE STRAIN ATTENDANT on watching another swing faded. The men were turning away from the map, and there was a murmur of conversation. Somebody said something about using the opportunity to acquire all the possible data on time travel. Councilor Kendlon remarked that the body’s accumulation of energy was fairly convincing proof that time travel would never be popular.

  It was Dresley, the precise, the orderly, who finally remarked, “Gentlemen, we are here as delegates of the Council to listen to Mr. Hedrock’s report of the counterattack against the empress. In his report some weeks ago he was able to give us administrative details. And you will recall that we found his organization set-up to be efficient in the extreme. Mr. Hedrock, will you now bring us up to date?”

  Hedrock glanced from person to person thoughtfully. He saw that they were watching him, and that raised his necessity level. His problem, it seemed to him, was to make up his own mind about the seesaw, then carry out his decision without regard for the attitude of his nominal superiors. It would be difficult.

  He began succinctly, “Since the first directive was given me, we have set up one thousand two hundred and forty-two new shops, primarily in small villages, and three thousand eight hundred and nine contacts have been established, however tenuous in some cases, with imperial government personnel, both military and civil.”

  He explained briefly his system of classifying the various individuals into groups on the basis of vocation, degree of importance and, what was more important, pitch of enthusiasm for the venture into which the empress had precipitated her adherents.

  “From three scientists,” Hedrock went on, “who regard the weapon shops as an integral part of Isher civilization, we gained in the first ten days the secret of the science behind the time-energy machine in so far as that science is known to the government. We discovered that, of the four generals in charge of the enterprise, two were opposed to it from the beginning, a third was won over when the building disappeared—but the fourth, General Doocar, the man in charge, unfortunately will not abandon the attack until she does. He is an empress man in the sense of personal loyalty transcending his own feelings and opinions.

  He paused, expecting them to comment. But no one said anything. Which was actually the most favorable response of all. Hedrock continued, “Some thousands of officers have deserted the Imperial forces, but only one member of the Imperial Council, Prince del Curtin, openly opposed the attack after the execution of Banton Vickers who, as you know, criticized the whole plan. And the prince’s method of disapproval has been to withdraw from the palace while the attack is in progress.

  “Which brings us,” said Hedrock, “to the Empress herself.” He summarized her character for them. The glorious Innelda, an orphan since her eleventh birthday, had been crowned when she was eighteen and was now twenty-five. “An age,” said Hedrock grimly, “which is an in-between stage in the development of the animal man to human man levels.”

  He saw that they were puzzled by his reiteration of facts they all knew. But he had no intention of condensing his account. He had his own formula for defeating the empress and he wanted to state it at least once in as skillful a fashion as possible. “At twenty-five,” he said, “our Innelda is emotional, unstable, brilliant, implacable, impatient of restrictions on her desires and just a bit unwilling to grow up. As the thousands of reports came in, it seemed to me finally that our best method of dealing with such a person was to leave channels along which she could withdraw gracefully when the crises came.”

  He looked around, questioningly. He was keenly aware that, with these men he dared not try to put his ideas over in a disguised form. He said frankly, “I hope that Council members will not take it amiss if I recommend for their consideration the following basic tactic. I am counting on some opportunity occurring of which we can take advantage and so bring her whole war machine to a stop. My assumption is that once it has stopped the Empress will busy herself with other matters and conveniently forget all about the war she started.”

  Hedrock paused in order to give weight to his next words. “My staff and I will watch anxiously for the opportunity and will call your attention to anything that seems to have possibilities. And now, are there any questions?”

  The first few were minor. Then a man said, “Have you any notion as to what form this so-called opportunity will take?”

  Hedrock said carefully, “It would be difficult to go into all the avenues that we are exploring. This young woman is open on many fronts to persuasion and to pressure. She is having a hard time with recruits for the army. She is still subject to the connivances and intrigues of a group of older people who are reluctant to accept her as an adult. They withhold information from her. Despite her efforts to keep in touch with what is going on, she is caught in an old, old net: Her communication with the real world is snarled up.” Hedrock finished, “In one way or another we are trying to take advantage of these various weaknesses.”

  The man who had already spoken said, “This is only a formula.”

  “It is a formula,” said Hedrock, “based on my study of the character of the Empress.”

  “Don’t yo
u think you had better leave such studies to the Pp machine experts and to the No-men?”

  “I examined all the weapon shop data on the lady before offering my suggestion.”

  “Still,” said the man, “it is up to the elected Council to make decisions in such matters.”

  Hedrock did not back down. “I have made a suggestion,” he said, “not a decision.”

  The man said nothing more. But Hedrock had his picture of a Council of very human members, jealous of their prerogatives. These people would not easily accept his decision, when he finally made it, on the problem of the seesaw drama that was being played to its still undetermined conclusion in ever remoter bends of time.

  He saw that his audience was becoming restless. Eyes turned involuntarily toward the time map and several men glanced anxiously at their watches. Hastily Hedrock withdrew from the room with its almost invisible energy floors. Watching that pendulum could become a drug. The brain itself would be weakened by the strain of attending a mechanism which recorded the spasms of real bodies in their movements through time itself.

  It was bad enough to know that the building and the man were swinging steadily back and forth.

  He arrived back in his office just in time to catch a ‘stat call-up from Lucy.

  “. . . in spite of my efforts,” she said, “I was forced out of the Penny Palace. And when the doors shut I knew what was going to happen. I’m afraid he was taken to one of the houses of illusion, and you know what that means.”

  Hedrock nodded thoughtfully. He noted sharply that the girl seemed disturbed by her experience. “Among other things,” he said slowly, “‘the illusion energies have some qualifying effect on callidity. The nature of the modification cannot be determined without subsequent measurement but it can be stated with reasonable certainty that his luck will never again take the direction of success at gambling.”

  He had delayed his reaction while he examined her face. Now he said with decision, “It is unfortunate that Clark has fallen prey to all these pitfalls of the city so easily. But since he was never more than a long-run possibility we can let him go without regret, particularly—and this cannot be stressed too often—as even the slightest interference in the natural progression of his life would cause later suspicion that would nullify any good he might do us.