Something within him throbbed like electricity, and he sent a bolt of mental energy at Wagner’s head.
The shock of the emotional concussion brought blood bursting from Wagner’s nostrils and eye sockets. A red tide poured from his lips. His head dropped loosely and Buckmaster knew that Wagner was dead even before he fell from his chair.
Buckmaster sat astounded at the demonstration of power. He sat for a moment listening to the inner voice that sent up its answers to his silent questions. No, it hadn’t been able to help him before. Its power was not physical. No, it could not help him escape. From here he was on his own. The only satisfaction he received was the closer entity he had found between himself and the Force. It seemed to him now that it did not come from the outside. Rather it was an essential part of himself. Or, more exactly, he was a part of that Force.
Buckmaster worked his wrists backwards in their thongs until he forced the leather straps over the bases of his hands. Thus he was able to bend his wrists. Slowly, painfully, he brought up his right leg until his foot rested next to his right hand. The left foot next. Once he almost lost his balance. But at last he stood with his feet straddling his hands.
He exerted all the strength of his leg, arm, and trunk muscles. The pain from his broken arm was a sickening thing but slowly the leather bands began to tear loose from the rivets that held them. A last mighty exertion and he was free.
Wagner had a private elevator. Buckmaster entered and went to a ground floor. He walked out of the building through a tradesmen’s entrance into a dusky alley.
Keeping his good arm in front of his face he staggered around the corner and into a drugstore and reached a phone booth without being observed. He put in a call and crouched in the phone booth for the ten long minutes it took Oliver to come for him.
“Two weeks aren’t very long to get you well, Clifford,” Oliver said, “but I’m afraid it’s all the time we have, I’m sorry.”
“You did your best,” Buckmaster answered. “At least you’ve got me pretty well patched up.”
“The last reports were that the police have drawn a ring around this district, and that they’re closing in.”
“Do we have any way out?”
“I hate to have to say this,” Oliver said slowly. “But the rest of us can get out—if we don’t take you with us.”
Buckmaster had expected this. It seemed that he had known from the beginning that he would never live to see the end of this adventure.
“It’s all right. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No. They won’t stop us if you aren’t along. You’re the man they’re after. If there were any way I could help you by staying, I’d never leave. But I’d only be captured with you, and nothing gained.”
“Of course I understand.” Buckmaster rested his hand for a moment on the old leader’s shoulder. “Don’t feel badly about it, Lester. The men need you. You owe it to them to get out if you can.”
Oliver gripped his hand. “Before I go I want you to know how grateful we are for the help you’ve given us. Without Wagner the General won’t be nearly as hard to handle. And one other thing: I don’t want you to hope too much, but there’s still a chance we may be able to get you out. I’m trying a long shot. So if someone comes for you, go with him. In the meantime, keep your chin up.”
They shook hands again. Buckmaster surmised that Oliver was trying to give him something to cling to while he waited for the end. Then he was alone.
Three hours later Buckmaster spotted the first of his executioners. One of the Ruskies that walked with studied unconcern across the street.
Almost at the same time he heard a tap on the rear door of the apartment. He drew the gun Oliver had left with him and walked slowly the door. “Who is it?”
“Oliver sent me for you,” the voice on the other side of the door answered.
“Come in with your hands up.” Buckmaster flattened himself against a side wall and shoved his gun into the ribs of a tall young man.
“Who are you?”
“My name is August Gamoll,” the man said. Somehow the name was familiar. He should recognize it, Buckmaster thought. Abruptly he did.
“What are you trying to do?” Buckmaster asked harshly. “Make a small-time hero of yourself with this grandstand play?”
“Not at all,” Gamoll answered, “I’m the long shot Oliver mentioned.”
“You’re lying.”
“Then how would I know what Oliver said?”
“It may be a lucky guess. Why should I trust you?”
“Mainly because you have no choice. What have you got to lose?” He was a cool character.
Buckmaster shrugged. He hated this playing it blind, but the fellow was right. “O.K.,” he said. “You might as well take your hands down. Let’s go.”
They went down the stairs. At the rear exit Gamoll looked out. He wore no hat. The wind from the alley fluffed the hair on the side of his head.
“All clear,” Gamoll said, “Make a dash for it. When you get in the carriage lie low. Now!”
The die was cast, Buckmaster decided. He’d play it to the hilt now, all or nothing. He sprinted across the dirt of the alley and jerked open a door of the carriage. He threw himself inside and hugged the floor.
Soon the carriage began to roll. When they had travelled about a half block it stopped. Buckmaster drew in his breath. This was the critical point. If Gamoll could bluff his way through now the rest would be comparatively easy.
“Give me an escort, Captain,” he heard Gamoll say. “I don’t want to get tied up here. I understand there’s going to be some shooting soon.”
“That’s right, sir,” a crisp military voice answered. “It’s best that you get out fast. I’ll send one of my men with you.”
The carriage started forward again. A half-hour later it stopped once more.
“You may get up now,” Gamoll said. “We’re going inside. Stay close to me.”
Buckmaster was not surprised when he alighted and found himself near a side door to the General’s private residence.
* * * *
“I don’t get all this,” Buckmaster said. “You’ve had me here for six days now, and I’ve only seen you twice. Why should the General’s son be hiding me?”
“Quite simple. I don’t like his methods, or his government, any more than you do. Oliver knew that when he sent his message to me asking for help.”
“Do you mean to say that you’d help us kill your own father?”
“As to that,” Gamoll said, “if you’ll notice, my hair and eyes are brown.
“So?”
“Koski’s eyes and my mother’s are blue. You probably know that it is genetically impossible for two blue-eyed people to have a brown-eyed son.”
“Then you’re not his son?” Buckmaster was silent for a minute. “That’s why you took the name of your mother’s other husband,” he mused.
“If you remember, when the law was passed that each woman must have two husbands, the General set the example by marrying a woman who already had a husband. He knows that I am not his son biologically, but I am legally, and I have full inheritance rights. He was too smart—as well as legally exact—to disown me.”
“That means you’d automatically become the government head if the General died?”
“Yes. But you’re wrong if you think that I am doing this from any selfish motive. If I succeed, I’ll institute a democratic form of government at my first opportunity.”
“I’ll wait until I see it,” Buckmaster answered cynically. “But if it’s true, are your ideals strong enough to help us kill him?”
For the first time Gamoll seemed uncertain of himself. “Why is it necessary to kill him, especially now that Wagner is dead? We both know that Wagner did the actual ruling. And the General is an old man, without much longer to live. We’ll will if we do no more than stand by.”
“He must die—and soon!” Buckmaster exclaimed surprised at the vehemence of the words. So
vital had been the command, that he knew what he had said was true: Koski must die, in the very near future. Though he himself was not certain of the need for such urgency.
“I suppose I understand,” Gamoll said, a trifle uneasily. “You have to act in self-defense. If you don’t kill him, he will probably be able to kill many more of your men before he dies. But try to see his side. He is the representative of a Cause that is just—to his way of reasoning; so right and so just that he will do anything to advance it. Whatever we may think of him, his conscience is clear. I only ask you this! If you can see your way clear to attain your ends without killing him, will you let him live?”
* * * *
For another nine days Buckmaster stayed with Gamoll. He had nothing to occupy his time. In idle curiosity he went through the books in Gamoll’s library. The young man owned many good books.
Before long Buckmaster’s idle browsing turned to an intent search. For the first time he began finding clues to the mystery that rode within him.
His first clue, he thought, was a passage he read in a physics book entitled, “The Limitations of Science,” by Sullivan:
Research has changed our whole conception of matter. The first step was the experimental demonstration that there exist little electrified bodies, very much smaller than a hydrogen atom, called electrons. Measurement was made with the result that the “whole” mass of the electron was found to be due to its electric charge. This was the first indication that the material universe is not the substantial, objective thing we had always taken it to be. Matter began to thin away into the completely spectral thing it has now become. The notion of “substance” had to be replaced by the notion of “behavior”.
He passed readily from physics to the more fertile field of philosophy with the groping statement of Voltaire: I have seen that which is called matter, both as the star Sirius, and as the smallest atom which can be perceived with the microscope; and I do not know what this matter is.
He pursued this quest readily with the philosopher Schopenhauer and passed almost imperceptibly into metaphysics: I will never believe that even the simplest chemical combination will ever admit of mechanical explanation; much less the properties of light, heat, and electricity. These will always require a dynamical explanation.
If we can ferret out the ultimate nature of our own minds we shall perhaps have the key to the extended world.
Let us say, then, repulsion and attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will.
Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also the essence of life in all its forms, and even of “inanimate” matter? What if Will is the long-sought-for, the long-despaired-of, “the thing-in-itself”—the ultimate inner reality and secret essence of all things?
Buckmaster perceived that these men were catching glimpses of something which they called Will, Order, Thing, Absolute, and other names but which were all very probably the same thing—and also that which he sought. Eagerly he read on.
His next clue came from Bergson: Thought may begin with its object, and at last, in consistency, be driven, by the apparent necessities of logic, to conceive all things as forms and creatures of mind.
Quickly he passed on to Spinoza where he found a wealth of food for thought. Is the body merely an idea?
Is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, a diffused consciousness that animates the world?
There is but one entity, seen now inwardly as mind, now outwardly as matter, but in reality an inextricable mixture and unity of both.
Eternal order…that betokens the very structure of existence, underlying all events and things, and constituting the essence of the world.
Substance is insubstantial, that it is form and not matter, that it had nothing to do with that mongrel and neuter composite of matter.
Bruno said: All reality is one in substance, one in cause, one in origin; mind and matter are one.
Descartes’ conception of a homogeneous “substance”, underlying all forms of matter intrigued him for a time, and he wrestled mentally with the classic quotation, I think, therefore I am.
Berkeley wrote; A “thing” is merely a bundle of perceptions—i.e., classified and interpreted sensations.
Hegel: The Absolute, transcending the individual limitations and purposes, and catching, underneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of all things. Reason is the substance of the universe.
Leibniz: Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream, and the visible world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
* * * *
For a time Buckmaster left the philosophers and read poetry. He found germs of what he sought in some of them, as Goethe’sy force which draws the lover, and the force which draws the planets are one.
He found it beautifully in a stanza of Wordsworth’s.
Something
Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man;—
A motion and a spirit, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
In the main, however, he found in the poets that the grains of wheat were too few amidst the chaff and returned to philosophy.
Most of these excerpts, he felt, were clues to the enigma of himself. He knew that these great minds had touched on the very mystery that puzzled him. Once again he felt on the verge of understanding. Did he have all the pieces? Could he fit them into the pattern, if he but knew how? Or must he need to learn more?
Suddenly he found the explanation in a book of essays by, the incongruity of it struck him as ironical, an anonymous writer. He read:
For a time, during the middle ages, the theory that all the world, and even the universe, were figments of one giant imagination, swayed the thinkers of the world. The intellect in which this imagination centered was focused in one man, and one man only, in the whole of existence. That man was the one man who “thought.” All other men, all other matter, were but imagined props with no actual existence. That man is the one who “thinks!” “You”—and only “you” the person who is reading this—in the whole world. It does not matter what your name might be. It might be….
Clifford Buckmaster knew then the mystery of life, who he was, and why. He no longer concentrated, but his eyes read on:
At first glance it would seem that there is a concerted conspiracy to avoid acknowledging this fact. Learned men, acquiring wisdom, come to the brink of the great discovery, and then deftly skirt it, blinding themselves to its evidentness. However, on second thought the reason is obvious. The theory is anarchistic; it carries the seeds of its own futility. If they were ever to admit the truth of it, all reason for everything—their very discovery, their very thoughts—would be futile. So they refuse to recognize it.
Your obvious question is, How can I tell you this? Who am I—the writer of this essay? The answer is quite simple. I am merely a figment of your imagination, as is everything else about you!
At last he knew. His first sensation was one of awful, empty solitude. He was one creature—alone. Alone in a universe!
He was an entity living in a dream world. All about him were the figments of an imagination—presumably his own. And even knowing, he still had no control of events—like a dream that cannot be halted or changed. The people about him were automatons, in fact they possessed no actual substance. Even his own body was but a figment—but he could be hurt! He had experienced the most acute pain, and very probably he could be killed.
He had; however, little time to brood on it. At that instant in his reflections Gamoll jerked open the library door and walked in.
“The worst has happened,” he exclaimed. “The security police have caught Oliver.”
“What can we do?” Buckmaster still could not regard Gamol
l, or Oliver and his friends, as nonentities.
“I hate to say this,” Gamoll said, “but you’ll have to get out. I may be able to help Oliver escape, but I’ll be powerless if they learn that I’m connected with the Underground.”
“They probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill you also,” Buckmaster said.
“That wouldn’t be too important, if my dying would accomplish anything,” Gamoll said. “But the Underground’s only hope seems to be my keeping clear.”
Slowly, almost unobtrusively, a vision rose up before Buckmaster’s eyes, Gamoll’s features clouded, became vague, and were gone. In his place stood the General. In the General’s hand was a bottle, and before him a wooden frame, holding a metal box with its lid open. Buckmaster realized that what he was seeing was happening in some other part of the building. He could see cement walls in the room in which the General stood. Probably the basement, he thought.
Within him the Force commanded! He must get to the General, and kill him. The world was on the brink of disaster. And time was running out.
Gradually the whole composite vision vanished and he saw the handsome features of Gamoll again. He knew what he had to do now.
“I’m leaving immediately,” he said.
Closing the library door behind him he walked unhesitatingly down a long hallway. To either side of him, painted on the walls, were murals, depicting peasants in the fields, harvesting grain. Idly he observed the painted figures as he walked, with his brain chilled and numbed of almost all emotion. The painted figures possessed as much reality as anything else about him, he thought disinterestedly.
He walked down steps and across an inner courtyard, his legs moving stiffly, lifelessly.
He continued up the steps on the far side of the courtyard, his mind shutting out everything around him except the door ahead. When he reached there he stopped. Here, he knew, he was at the crossroads. He could move straight ahead through the door, or he could walk around the house and enter the basement through the back. That was the longer way, but probably the safer. And the Force urged the second choice.
The 19th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 9