Everybody thought that was a good idea. Accordingly, they made their deductions. Each new one added to their growing conviction that they could retain complete mastery of the situation.
'And if something goes wrong,' one giant bubbled, 'we can always render her unconscious again by instantaneous uncreation and re-creation by the crystal.'
Shalil reminded gruffly, 'What about that odd decision she had reached, in her attempt to be the best of all possible Ediths, to handle situations with infinite flexibility?'
A groan of contempt greeted the remark. 'With her lifetime conditioning,' one huge scientist rumbled despisingly, 'she couldn't possibly deal with each situation according to its merits.'
Edith, they criticized, would never even know what the real issues of a situation were.
They completed their increasingly confident consideration by deciding that when Edith awakened she should appear to herself to be completely free...
* *
She was lying on grass. It touched her fingers and her face, The fresh smell of it was in her nostrils.
Edith opened her eyes, and simultaneously raised her head.
Wilderness. A primeval forest. A small brown animal with a bushy tail scurried off into the brush, as she climbed hastily to her feet, remembering.
She saw the giant in the act of picking himself up fifteen feet to her left. He seemed to be slow about it, as if he were groggy.
It was a misty day, the sun still high in the Sky. To her right, partly visible through foliage, was a great, gray hill of soil. To her left, the land fell away, and the mist was thicker. After a hundred yards it was an almost impenetrable fog.
Almost, but not quite, impenetrable. Vaguely visible in the mist was a building.
Edith barely glanced in that direction. Instead, she faced the giant squarely and said, 'Where are we?'
Shalil gazed at her warily. It was hard for him to realize that she did not intuitively know. Almost unacceptable that alongside her infinite power was such nadir thinking.
Yet she continued to stand there, facing him. He sensed her concern. And so, reluctantly, he decided that the analysis by his colleagues and himself continued to apply. They had perceived her to be motivated by unnoticed attitudes and forgotten memories, each psychically as solid as a bar of steel. All her life she had followed rules, gone along with group-think behavior.
To school and to college; these were the early norms, adhered to while she was still under the control of her parents. Basically those norms had been unquestioned.
Shalil noticed in her memory an awareness that millions of people had somehow failed to achieve higher education. That was astonishing to him; yet somehow, they had been veered away, by a variety of accidental circumstances.
So in those areas of personal development Edith had gone farther, better, straighter than the average. Yet in college, first time away from her family, she had swiftly been caught up in a group movement of nonconformism. Whatever the motives of the other persons involved, Edith's had been solely an intense inner need to belong to the group.
So, for her, it had been the beginning of aberration, which her behavior ever afterward reflected. Thus, Shalil observed, like a person struggling against invisible force lines; she had fought to return to an inner norm. More study, different jobs, different places to live, association with different men — the confusion was immense, and it was difficult to determine which of these numerous actions represented a real goal.
Adding to the jumble, everything she did was modified by a very large, though finite, number of small, endlessly repeated actions — eating habits, dressing habits, working, sleeping, walking, reacting, communicating, thinking: stereotypes.
What bothered Shalil was that he could not find a single point of entry that would not instantly trigger one of the stereotypes. The others had assumed that something would presently come into view in a conscious mind; they had taken it for granted that he would locate it. His instruction was to uncreate her into unconsciousness if he failed to make such an entry, whereupon there would be another consultation.
The possibility of such a quick failure disturbed Shalil. Temporizing, he said aloud, 'This is the Garden of the Crystals in the ninety-third century. Here, in the most virgin wilderness left on our planet, the crystals lie buried in the soil tended by guardian scientists.'
Having spoken, having had that tiny bit of extra time to consider, he decided that the problem she presented would be solvable with a steady pressure of verbal maneuvering by which she was motivated to express one after the other the endless stereotypes that had been detected in her, while he waited alertly for the one through which the crystal — on his command — would divest her of the power with which it had (through a factor that the others and he did not know) invested her.
Her primary concern, he saw, was that she would never get back to her own era. Since he knew she could return at once simply by thinking the correct positive thought, his problem was to keep her worried, negative, unaware, deceived, misled.
Shalil became aware that his anxiety about how to proceed was causing a hasty telepathic consultation among his colleagues. Moments later the suggestion was made: 'Divert her letting her win some minor victories, and believe that they are gifts from you.'
It seemed like a good idea, and Shalil carried it out as if it were a directive.
XIV
At the Harkdale Hotel, it was another morning. Marge Aikens came downstairs, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. Almost automatically, she walked over and peered into the conference room. The lights in it had been turned off, the drapes were still drawn; and so the dim emptiness of it was an instant weight on her spirits.
Heavy-hearted, she turned away — and became aware that a man had come up beside her. She turned about, and faced him with a start.
The hotel day clerk, Derek Slade, stood there, as usual the very mirror of New York male fashion. 'Madame,' he said courteously.
He continued to speak, and after a while his meaning penetrated her dulled mind. He thought he had recognized her as the young woman who had late the previous afternoon gone into the conference room with the five Seth Mitchells.
Where — Derek wanted to know — were the four married Seths? The wives had been phoning all night, according to a note on his desk from the night clerk. And a police officer was on the way over, because three Mrs. Mitchells had finally called the authorities.
Marge had an impulse to deny that she was the woman he thought he had seen. But his failure to mention the bachelor Seth captured her attention, and she asked about him.
Derek shook his head. 'Not in his room. Went out early, I'm told.'
Marge stood in the doorway, somewhat blankly considering what might have happened to the best Seth. Why would he have gone out when he had said the previous night that he would have breakfast with her? Then she became aware that Derek Slade's gaze had gone past her shoulder and was seeking the darkened interior of the room behind her.
His jaw grew lax, his eyes grew round.
Inside the room, a man's baritone voice uttered an exclamation.
Marge turned.
The four Seths, who had been uncreated the previous night, were standing near the door. Their backs were to her.
She realized that it was one of the Seths who had exclaimed and that what he had said was, Hey, who turned out the lights?'
Marge had an immediate and totally perceptive awareness of the implications of those words. Her mind leaped back to how Billy Bingham had explained the transition in time: no impression at all of time having passed.
This was the same.
Almost involuntarily she reached into the room to the light switch beside the door, and pressed it. As she did so, a fifth Seth walked forward from one corner of the room, where he had suddenly appeared. He seemed bewildered. Many minutes would go by before he was identified as the Seth of the gold Cadillac, somehow re-created without a bullet in his brain or a drop of lake water on his immaculate s
uit.
At the moment, Marge had only a fleeting glance for him, for a sixth Seth was suddenly standing on the far side of the conference table. The way he held himself, his quick alertness as he looked around the room, saw the other Seths — and then flicked his gaze to her with a relieved recognition...
Seeing him, and receiving so many familiar signals that identified Detective Seth Mitchell for her, she became emotionally unglued. Without any of her usual discretion, she let out a scream.
'Seth — my darling!'
Exactly how she got to him, and he to her, could undoubtedly be reasoned out from the fact that they met at the halfway point around the big table, and desisted in their embrace only when Marge grew aware that Edith Price was standing a few feet away, glancing around very timidly.
Close behind Edith, another Seth appeared. He was dressed in work clothes, and Marge surmised that he therefore must be the farmer.
Marge scarcely more than glanced at him. As she released herself from Detective Seth's embrace, she saw that Edith wore a different dress and had her hair done differently. Despite those swift noticings, it would take a while before Marge clearly, and the others in any way at all, understood that this was the Edith Price who had been murdered in New York by the worst Athtar.
Of the Athtars there was no sign.
And though the minutes fled by — and finally the bachelor Seth walked into the doorway — Edith Price, the crystal orientation, did not reappear.
The best Seth explained that he had gone for a walk, and in thinking over all that had happened, had decided that things would work out. He finished hopefully, 'And here, when I get back, you all are. Each of you is a living proof that Edith has found out something of what she can do. Or — he paused — 'someone has, and is willing.'
'But what can she do?' One of the Seths asked that, bewildered.
The bachelor Seth smiled his friendly smile, 'I'm rather fond of that young lady, In a way, a total reflection of our own age, yet she thought her way to some kind of best.' He broke off, glanced from one to another of the numerous duplicate faces, and said softly, 'You want to know what she can do. I didn't dare speak of it at the time, but, now, well... If God is dead, then what can replace Him?'
'Then you are God,' parroted Marge. She put her hand over her mouth, exclaimed, 'Oh, my lord — Edith!'
The best Seth said slowly, 'I wonder what the crystal and Edith are doing with that concept?'
* *
Shalil was in deep trouble. The giant had continued to wait for the purely personal, restrictive thought that, he and his colleagues believed, would presently end any control Edith had of the crystal's future.
But the moments had gone by, and she had kept on uttering her idealistic words, so binding on him and his kind in relation to the people of the past. All the Seths and the Ediths re-created. A cooperative solution for the severe threat to the giant human beings of the ninety-third century — between the giants, on the one hand, and the Ediths and Seths on the other.
Edith in an outburst of imagination visualized a time corridor between the twentieth and ninety-third centuries. Thriftily she retained control of that corridor for her own group.
It was as she established that enormous connection, and control, that Shalil — desperate — had her uncreated. He re-created her, unconscious, on the contour rest-place. The huge scientists gathered around her comatose body and gloomily evaluated the extent of their defeat.
One grudged, 'But let's face it. We can live with what's happened so far.'
The problem was that they had made no headway. Edith still radiated total power; somehow, she continued to evoke from the crystal an energy output that no one had ever analyzed to be potential in it.
Shalil had a tremendous insight. 'Perhaps that's what we need to examine — our own limitations. Perhaps the real problem is that, in our scientific zeal, we have rejected the enigma.'
After he had spoken, there was a dead silence. He saw that they were shaken. The enigma was the forbidden — because unscientific — area of thought: the enigma that is the universe. Why does it exist? Where did it come from?
Since science began, scientists had concentrated on how things worked and what they did.
Never why. Never ever how in the meaning of why.
The thrall of shocked silence ended, as a giant laughed a harsh, determined laugh, 'I don't know anything about the enigma, and do not plan to,' he said, but as a scientist I do know my duty — our duty. We must bring this small female being to consciousness, inform her of the unqualified extent of her power, and see what she does with it'
'B-but she may kill us all,' protested another. He added, almost plaintively, 'I've never been killed.'
'It will be an interesting experience for you,' replied the first man. 'Quite different from uncreation.'
Shalil interjected matter-of-factly, 'Edith is not a killer.' He broke off. Shrewdly, 'I think this is an excellent plan. I see it as being totally in our favor.'
They perceived what he meant, and accordingly sanctioned the awakening.
Lying there, Edith was brought awake.
After she had calmed herself — after she was told about her absolute ability, exactly as they had anticipated, she had a first automatic response to the possibility. For prolonged seconds a wild hope suffused her entire being. She wanted, most urgently, to undo the errors of judgment which had led her down the empty road of numerous boyfriends, none of whom took responsibility for her and her capacity to bear children. In a single overwhelm of earnest desire, all the years of frustration since college found their way first to her. eyes in the form of quick tears, and then, when she could speak, to the words: 'Aside from what I've just told you' — she spoke the qualifying phrase, which retained for her control of access to the twentieth century without even noticing it — 'all I really want is to be happily married.'
The giants perceived that the person she had in mind for a husband was the bachelor Seth Mitchell.
They accordingly commanded the crystal that the wish she had expressed be carried out forthwith in its exact and limited meaning. And then, safe and relieved, they stood marveling at the difficult concept of marriage,
In an era where everybody lived forever by a process of crystal duplication, they would never, left to themselves, have been able to ask the right question to produce such an answer.
'It is just possible,' Shalil cautiously summed up, 'that the interaction between the unmanipulated human beings of the twentieth century and the manipulated of the ninety-third will actually bring about a lessening of the rigidities of both groups.'
His stern, black gaze dared a denial. After a long moment, he was surprised to realize that no one was offended. Indeed, a colleague murmured reflectively, 'If that should happen, we may even find out what the crystal is.'
But, of course, that was impossible.
The crystal was a space phenomenon. The energy flows in that space, and around it, and out of it, involved individual events, things, persons. But that was a subordinate function — like the motor center of a human brain that moves a muscle in the tip of the little finger.
The muscle should be movable. Unfortunate if it wouldn't, or couldn't. Yet truth is, if that muscle were permanently incapacitated, it would be unnoticed by the vast brain on the conscious level.
On the flow level of existence, the patterned interactions in and around and out of the crystal exceeded 10 to the 27,000th power times the number of atoms in the universe — enough interactions for all the life configurations of all the people who ever lived; perhaps enough even for all those who ever would live on Earth.
But, for the crystal, that was minor. As a pattern of time and life flows, it had suspended those flows during twenty-five years in the Harkdale museum. That didn't matter. That was almost-nothing. As a shape of space, its existence was continuous. As space, it occupied a location, and was related. Though it had no flows during the quarter-century, made no recordings, and had no memory
and no doing, it nevertheless knew, it was, it had, and it could.
In finding it and tens of thousands of crystals like it, human beings of the eighth and ninth millennia made use of the interactions and flows; never of the space ability. They discovered the principal 'laws' — the how and the what — by which the crystals operated, and were determined to find out eventually the rules that would 'explain' certain unknowns in the wave behavior in and around and out of the crystals.
Someday all the interactions of all life and all time would be evenly divided among the crystals. It would then become its true form: one crystal shape, one space. It would then be complete, its intention achieved.
There was no hurry:
And so it waited. And, waiting, fulfilled other goals than its own, minor, unimportant goals involving flows and interactions; reflecting the illusions of motion: events, things, persons, involving nothing, really...
* *
In consequence, in Harkdale today there is a one-story building of unusual design. The building stands on the exact spot were Billy Bingham one disappeared, on the shore overlooking Lake Naragang. It is a solidly built structure and has a certain beauty. On a gold plaque beside the ornate front door are the words:
CRYSTAL, INC.
Owned and Managed by
SETH MITCHELLS AND EDITH PRICES
Not Open to the Public
Resort visitors who stop to look at the sign are often puzzled by the plural names. And long-time residents, when asked, offer the impression that Crystal, Inc., actually deals in the numerous crystals to be found in the rock formations in and around the hills and lake.
There is a large, pretty house with spacious grounds located near the building. In this house dwell Seth and Edith Mitchell.
To the puzzlement of their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Seth Mitchell (née Edith Price) started their married life by legally adopting a thirteen-year-old boy whom they called Billy Bingham Mitchell.
[ -: CONTENTS :-]
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