New Writings in SF 23 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘Only surprise me!’ Sometimes he quoted obscure poetry.

  When I began evading him, he followed me to Wildgreif. I computed his face obsessively into the facades of public buildings. Every gesture he made could be expressed in the rhythms of thoroughfares and traffic-flow lanes. His hired characteristics I expressed in the tensions of bridges and spaceways. To his persecution of love I supplied an answering persecution of function. Soon he was pervaded by interpretations of himself; the whole city became his anagram. The original population moved out, while all his followers moved in, delighted with the fantasy of existing within the spirit of their hero made concrete.

  His will broke before mine. ‘It is well to remember that evil is a pretty bad thing,’ he said. ‘I shall leave tomorrow for the Outer Zodiacal Planets. In any case, my present avatar expires next week.’ He moved 1.03 light minutes away, but I could still see him.

  All his admirers came to the spaceport to see him off. Nobody spoke or waved goodbye. There were ashes in the air, and traces of older destinations.

  Now someone else wears the hired personality. My city expires under its borrowed mannerisms, like machines whose wheels are velvet. My master sleeps for another seven years. I age. Shortly, I will revisit the environs of the Paranoid Sun, and then again dreams will be worth the memorising and vitamins will fall from the atmosphere.

  Meanwhile, I preserve my taste for the curious. A fame of my own has come my way; the lost volume was published, to immense acclaim. Now, on buildings expressing his animus, I find my anatomy sketched. Time has many revenges, but seven years will not pass too soon.

  All that I was, he is. All that he was, I wish I were. As long as he remains asleep, I remain in exile; the foils and veils cannot comfort me.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE FIVE DOORS

  Michael Stall

  Tests notoriously bring out the best and the worst in people and in priding ourselves on always rising to a challenge we are aping our ancestors. However deplorable or anachronistic such a stance may be, it could come in mighty handy...

  * * * *

  The First Door

  Inspector Norman Williams of the Humberside constabulary rubbed a rather too bristly chin with his uniform black glove as he looked on the long metallic cylinder that had sprouted overnight in John Sternson’s field. It certainly looked solid and substantial enough: it was surely no hoax; but that being so, just what was it ?

  ‘There’s an opening at the other end,’ Sternson told him and Williams turned to look at the anxious farmer. But it was no use asking him any more questions; he could either wait for the arrival of a superior officer, or he could investigate himself. There was no question in his mind of what he ought to do; the Humberside constabulary was just five years old, as old as the new county, but in that time it had established the usual traditions.

  ‘Lead the way.’

  * * * *

  The opening looked dark and forbidding, and it was quite impossible to see any distance into the object. Williams looked back at the road, two hundred yards away, where he had ordered his driver to remain in the car, in touch with local headquarters. Perhaps he ought to tell his driver... But tell him what?

  ‘Wait here,’ he told Sternson, and started in.

  As he entered, he took off a glove and felt the metal; it was cold to the touch, and smooth—very, very smooth. Some alloy or other, he thought, as he went from the dark portal through a dark passageway, to enter a small, brightly lit chamber, with faceted walls that for a moment made him think he was stepping into the interior of a cut diamond. He touched the glistening wall, and this time it felt warm and yielded a fraction to his touch—but no more. And there was a soft, rustling noise behind him.

  He turned quickly about to see the chamber wall parting. He moved into a defensive crouch; but nothing more happened, nothing emerged from the new door, and the passage it opened on was as dark as the passage by which he had entered. Instinctively, he turned the way he had come, half-expecting to find that way out no longer available to him. But it was there, just as before.

  In a flush of courage, inspired by the barely conscious realisation that only by action would he have an excuse not to think too deeply about the nature of the thing he found himself in, he entered the new passage with a brisk step.

  The passage ended in a glittering screen that shone like the diamond walls of the chamber; but as he approached it he could make out a picture, a scene beyond it. Green pasture and trees, and about a hundred yards past the entrance, another cylinder, shining in the sunlight.

  He pressed forward through the screen which offered no resistance, as if it were an illusion; and he stood on green grass, beneath a blue sky. But it was an alien sky; the grass wasn’t the right colour of green; it was strangely bifurcated; the trees were such as had never grown on Earth; and the air had a strange, metallic taste to it. And none of it bothered him. There was a bucolic peace to this landscape; there were no signs of handiworks or artifacts; and everything, for all its strangeness, felt right.

  He pressed forward to the new cylinder thinking, even as he entered it, that the chamber within, if it resembled the one he had just come through, was too high to be accommodated—as it was—in the cylinder.

  Inside it was as before; a new passage opened for him; he entered, and as he approached the screen, he began to make out the view of a different, dark world, all rocks and shadows. He put forth a hand to where the screen seemed, and felt nothing. Then he withdrew it. He had come far enough; he had learnt enough, perhaps more than enough, for the present. It was his duty to return and report in safety... He turned and made his way back under that safe though alien sky, beginning to wonder what it would be like to be famous.

  * * * *

  The Second Door

  As he lumbered over the grass in his radiation suit, Dr. Julian Wechsler found he couldn’t concentrate on the great enterprise he was about to undertake; he just felt ridiculous under the gaze of the red-tabbed generals and senior civil servants dotted about the field. Who was it who’d said he didn’t believe in adventure because even in its midst, one was always onself ? He couldn’t recall; all he could think of was that he felt itchy inside the suit.

  He was actually glad to enter the passage and make his way into the chamber, where there were only three tunnel technicians who saluted him wordlessly as he entered the second passage.

  It had all been so much easier for poor old Williams. He’d talked to him in hospital before he’d died, and been very struck by the description of the other world, of the walk Williams had had there, of the peace he had felt there. The peace, though he had not realised it, of a dead world. They were only now beginning to know; but it looked very much as if all the sentient life of that world had been destroyed in some atomic war. It would be easier to tell when the new batch of radiation suits were ready. But for the time being, of course, they had to concentrate on the second door.

  He stopped at the screen and picked up the radiation counter that lay just before him. He checked it with practised ease and then began the long walk through the lead tunnel that had been mechanically extruded to join the two cylinders so that in future it would be possible to pass between them without all the ridiculous garments that he now wore. That was essential if the apparently airless world the second door led to was to be properly explored.

  He watched the needle on the central dial carefully as he walked; if it started to swing the wrong way he would know that the seal wasn’t perfect and get back in double quick time. But it held, and he found himself in another chamber, just like the one he had left.

  Strictly against instructions, but just as he had intended, he walked down the new passage, and looked out on an airless world. In the distance he could see another cylinder. But it was someone else’s job to get to that. And a much simpler job than his own, he judged. His team had done a good job. It was time to go back and tell them.

  * * * *

>   The Third Door

  Ernest Thorton screamed. No one heard the scream through the thick full-protection suit, but the young doctor just saw the open mouth and guessed the pain. It was not hard to guess when one saw the fungoid growth that had been Thorton’s face. The young doctor took out a syringe, but his older colleague stopped him. The outside of the suit had been sterilised and sprayed with sealer when he had crawled back through the door; now, they could not take the risk of allowing anything to get out, even through the smallest aperture. The young doctor nodded. The patient would be taken back through the airtube on New Moon to the second chamber. There they would decide whether it was safe to take him back to Earth. By then he would almost certainly be dead.

  Ernest Thorton was still screaming as they began to move him.

  * * * *

  Julian Wechsler scratched his chin. It was not one of his usual reactions but the request that had just been made of him in the domed, airtight resthouse on New Moon had nothing of the normal about it.

  ‘Yes, I suppose the cylinders would stand it. No temperature we’ve been able to create has had any effect on them, but...” He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘It’s the only way,’ Hardy insisted. ‘Napalm has no lasting effect. An A-bomb mightn’t have a very lasting effect either, but it would clear the hundred yards between cylinders just long enough.’

  ‘Whose decision is it ?’ Wechsler asked him.

  The grey haired spore biologist looked back at him hard. ‘You could swing it. I mean, who is in charge of all this? The PM certainly. His nominee—just an elderly civil servant without scientific training. The real directorship of the project is up for offers. Decide on this, and it works—who else but you will be confirmed Scientific Director?’

  The argument had a certain logic to it. The device—in both senses of the word—was crude, but it should be effective for all that; and Wechsler, otherwise a section head at a covert AWRE, was ambitious enough. The Scientific Directorship would eventually bring him a knighthood, a real footing in the scientific power politics of his country, of the world ... He nodded.

  Hardy smiled. And suddenly Wechsler wondered at his motive. It could be pure scientific curiosity. It could also be that he intended to steal the credit for himself. Well, he’d picked the wrong boy for that. Wechsler knew he was only a middling physicist, but he was a damned good politician; he owed his present position to that. The thing to do, he knew, was to go straight to the nominee director and offer him the credit—he’d be only too willing to reward him with the Scientific Directorship: the inefficient always need good subordinates—his long service as a civil servant had taught him that.

  * * * *

  The Fourth Door

  Korner ran his eyes lazily over the array of instruments by the greenly flickering screen. The dials on the probe and back-up probes were all large and luminous as it was necessary for them to be read at some distance. The casts themselves were about the size of frying pans: if the next environment were radioactive there would be no large metallic objects to obstruct the way to the next cylinder.

  No one, after Williams, was likely just to volunteer to step outside in ignorance. It would have been better if the probes which were to be cast by a small spring steel arbalest, could radio back information. But radio didn’t work. Before the screen and beyond were two different worlds.

  It was nearly time. It was scheduled to start in ten minutes, and Director Wechsler was to be there to supervise. Korner wasn’t too happy about that; he rather despised Wechsler as a time-server made good, but he had to admit the man had guts, and he certainly didn’t want his job. He tried to lose himself in the mechanics of his own job in the project, but every so often he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the purpose behind the cylinders. With two men already dead, he didn’t view the makers of this puzzle, or whatever it was, as purely beneficent. He even favoured the idea, current in the project, that the investigation be internationalised. But that was a dead horse; only failure would entail that, so he could not wish for it.

  ‘Ready?’

  Korner turned to see Wechsler standing in the passage. He nodded.

  ‘It looks all right out there. Perhaps this will be a good world.’

  Wechsler didn’t speak, but his silence was a reply; it confirmed Korner’s true opinion. Somebody would die out there. Perhaps himself.

  ‘Let it go,’ Wechsler ordered.

  Stooping, Korner released the arbalest.

  And it was all right! This was the good one, Korner felt, as he read the instruments, irritated by seemingly imaginary flashes of light at the edge of his vision: he had hardly slept in several days; sleep would put it right.

  * * * *

  The re-fashioned, armoured, general purpose suit felt even more uncomfortable than the earlier version: Wechsler felt like nothing so much as a hastily fabricated tank, with himself doing duty as commander and powerplant. He would, he decided, memo the design team about the dehydrating unit.

  Abruptly, he realised he was thinking about the suit so as not to think about what he had to do. Well, the best way not to think about it was simply to do it. Without another glance at his back-up man he stepped through the screen into the afternoon world.

  He immediately felt ridiculous, like a knight in armour at a garden party. This world was different; but it was right. One could live here. This was the big one.

  Something caught at his ankle. He shook it off without looking down. The second cylinder with its new door was only seventy yards off. Something was catching at his ankle again. It was like a large grasshopper. But in steel. And with appalling swiftness, the air was full of them, and they began to settle all over him. Not grasshoppers—locusts! He stood immobile, in shock, listening to a new grating noise— the sound of a hundred tiny steel pincer jaws eating away at his armour. Like a fly in molasses, he turned back the way he had come. Behind that door was safety, a back-up team, only thirty yards and how many parsecs away ? A steel locust obscured his vision; all he could see were pincers gouging into armour glass, desirous of doing the same to his eyes. He wanted to scream, he wanted to run, but that would be death. Summoning all the self-possession he had, he began to walk slowly and deliberately back to the door, the grinding as his armour was slowly eaten away sounding like a death rattle in his ears.

  He found the passage with his hands, just as the armour on his left gauntlet gave. He felt steel cut into his flesh. He screamed, but kept on. The armour broke in other places; steel teeth began to eat him alive, and still he moved on, until his counted paces told him he was at the door. He had to be there; his strength was at an end. Then he fell through, into the darkness.

  * * * *

  A lecturer in Heuristics—a philosopher. A sounding board. A way of externalising a dialogue with himself. He had thought that; but it wasn’t turning out that way, Wechsler realised. Gordey was taking over. It was as if the pain had bankrupted his mind. But he could not admit to that. He picked up the now lifeless locust from his bedside table—his hospital room was on New Moon, but from its appearance, it could have been anywhere on Earth. He turned the locust over in his hands.

  ‘Utterly dead, now,’ he said in a low, tired voice.

  Gordey twisted in the visitor’s chair. ‘But how?’

  ‘You’ve told me already,’ Wechsler said. ‘Either the door cut it off from its power source, whatever that may be, or the force screen that must somehow be incorporated in the door somehow deactivated it.’ He shook his head tiredly. ‘How does that get us any further?’

  ‘You’re viewing the problem in isolation,’ Gordey said. ‘The doors are a whole, a series of graduated tests. Until now, our technology has been up to it; now it isn’t. So the problem is bringing it up to this new standard.’

  Wechsler looked hard at the locust. Perhaps half a dozen new technologies were there, waiting to be taken.

  ‘The project needs broadening,’ Gordey said. ‘It’s too big for one country; perhap
s for the world. We should-’

  ‘No.’

  Gordey nodded his submission to political reality.

  * * * *

  ‘So be it. Then the thing is to decide what stopped the locusts. We can take it for granted they’ve eaten a sentient race out of existence, that they’re programmed for just that. Every world, even this airless one, with its atmosphere blown off into space by God knows what weaponry, once held living intelligence.’ He noticed Wechsler flush. Everyone on the project knew this; they just didn’t like to talk about it—eminent scientists and superb technologists awed by the cylinders like medieval peasants in a great cathedral. But this was no cathedral, and Gordey refused to be awed. The makers were a long way from gods. He knew where he was. He was in Bluebeard’s Castle and the fifth or sixth or seventh door was death for humanity. He was certain that was the intent; and he knew in his bones there was no turning back. The test couldn’t be ignored; it had to be passed, and beaten.