Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time

by Judith Merril (ed. )

  For instance when the science of mathematics had reached an impasse in the old arithmetics, Newton and Leibnitz, separated in two different nations, without knowledge of each other, individually invented and worked out the system of calculus. Again the planet Neptune had been seen by two different astronomers almost simultaneously. Again and again, inventions were duplicated, sometimes at half a world’s distance, by minds of similar caliber.

  It was as if there were an invisible telegraphic network linking all the minds of the world. So that when a Frenchman named Ader made a wild short flight in a crazy apparatus of canvas and propellers in 1898, two young mechanics in Ohio could conceive a mad inspiration for a miracle that would mature at Kitty Hawk a few years later.

  Now, reasoned Carlton Vanney, was it not logical that when two minds as similar as Dane’s and San Sebastian’s were living within a few blocks of each other, were simultaneously trying to determine the demands of the same mind, LeClair B. Smith’s, in the same specialized style of writing, Grimoire’s, that one should telegraph his ideas to the other, just as a powerful sending station transmits instantly to the receivers of a waiting set? Who is to say which of the two originated the ideas of these stories? It may be San Sebastian glimpsing them from Dane’s mind, or vice versa. No personal guilt could be placed.

  The reason, the only reason, why Dane was winning was that he was the faster writer. Dane wrote by typewriter the first time and never rewrote. Once he tore his first draft from the keys of his machine, it went within hours to Smith’s desk. And it would be two weeks before San Sebastian’s tortoise-paced prose would reach that same destination.

  Marvin Dane was clever enough, beyond doubt. He had often irked San Sebastian by his boasting that he never cluttered up his imagination with the stories of others. He never read other writers’ efforts and he never relied on the classics and anthologies for inspiration. His mind was very probably wide open for stray plots coming over the telepathic ether.

  This answer satisfied San Sebastian’s curiosity, but left him in an even grimmer plight than before. Was he doomed always to lose out in this ghastly race? Did this spell his end as a writer?

  For several days Allen San Sebastian wandered the streets of the big city lost in wonder and despair. There must be an answer, but what, but how? This was to be a struggle to the death—for it was clear that the only obvious course that would clear his future would be Dane’s incapacitation.

  He could, for instance, break into Dane’s apartment and smash his typewriter with an axe. By the time Dane could borrow or buy another machine, San Sebastian would have at least one new story on Smith’s desk first. But this was obviously an impractical solution. He could pay someone to beat up Dane and put him in a hospital. This too did not exactly appeal to him. Besides, it invited a host of trouble; whom would he get to do it and how could he keep himself from being blackmailed thereafter? As for murder, the idea didn’t appeal to him at all.

  Then, one afternoon, the idea came to him. Almost in a fever flush, San Sebastian made his way home, closed and locked the door behind him and dashed to his bookcase. Pulling out a volume therein, he seated himself at his desk, took pen in hand and began transcribing the pages of the book that he had opened. Carefully he bent himself to his task.

  In two hours he had completed the first writing. Setting the manuscript aside, he waited. Next day he again repeated the process, laboriously copying out the printed pages for a second time. Yet a third day he worked on it, then set up his typewriter and began typing out the pages slowly in his usual painstaking manner. He drew out the work as long as possible.

  On the fourth day, upon typing finis to the last page, he clipped all the completed pages together, read through them very carefully once more, and then, taking the various manuscripts into his little kitchenette, burned them each and every one over a jet of his gas stove.

  Then he took a rest from literary work for two months.

  Now LeClair B. Smith was, as has been said, pretty much of a non-literary businessman, self-educated and self-opinionated. He knew a good horror story when he saw one; and when Marvin Dane submitted a humdinger to him, he bought it on that same day and fitted it into his magazine’s schedule. Dane, as has also been said, had the not unadmirable quality of keeping his mind clear of other horror writers’ works.

  It was very embarrassing when a host of discerning readers and fans flooded the magazine with angry letters for publishing H. P. Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls under the title of The Mumbling Vermin of Oxham Priory by Marvin Dane—“A gripping tale of ancestral doom, written especially for Grimoire by a modern de Maupassant.” It was disastrous for Marvin Dane when Smith not only threw him out of the office but sued him for the return of his money and damages.

  And it didn’t do Allen San Sebastian any harm when Dane’s new stories were constantly returned to him by the office boy unopened, as per editorial orders. You could be sure to find San Sebastian’s name in any table of contents in any new issue of Grimoire. As for Dane, after that ruinous climax to his literary career, for which he was quite unable to blame anyone but himself and his sizzling typewriter, he became a moderate sort of success as the clerk in a small but select bookstore catering to obscurantist prosody.

  How open-minded can you get?

  I am perfectly ready to entertain speculation about the reality of telepathy; I am reluctantly willing to consider the philosophic implications of precognition; I am even prepared to let my prejudice against table-rappings and stone-throwings he swayed by the scientific-sounding word, “psychokinesis.” But though you lead me to the séance room, you will never get me to accept spiritualism and “materializations” as subject matter capable of treatment by “science-fictional rationale.”…

  At least, that was true until I read Miss Christie’s story about a “trance medium,” which she has managed to imbue with the same mounting suspense and the same quietly inevitable logic to be found in her best detective stories.

  The Last Séance by Agatha Christie

  Raoul Daubreuil crossed the Seine humming a little tune to himself. He was a good-looking young Frenchman of about thirty-two, with a fresh-colored face and a little black mustache. By profession he was an engineer. In due course he reached the Cardonet and turned in at the door of No. 17. The concierge looked out from her lair and gave him a grudging “Good morning,” to which he replied cheerfully. Then he mounted the stairs to the apartment on the third floor. As he stood there waiting for his ring at the bell to be answered he hummed once more his little tune. Raoul Daubreuil was feeling particularly cheerful this morning. The door was opened by an elderly Frenchwoman, whose wrinkled face broke into smiles when she saw who the visitor was.

  “Good morning, Monsieur.”

  “Good morning, Elise,” said Raoul.

  He passed into the vestibule, pulling off his gloves as he did so.

  “Madame expects me, does she not?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Ah, yes, indeed. Monsieur.”

  Elise shut the front door and turned towards him.

  “If Monsieur will pass into the little salon, Madame will be with him in a few minutes. At the moment she reposes herself.”

  Raoul looked up sharply.

  “Is she not well?”

  “Well!”

  Elise gave a snort. She passed in front of Raoul and opened the door of the little salon for him. He went in and she followed him.

  “Well!” she continued. “How should she be well, poor lamb? Séances, séances, and always séances. It is not right—not natural, not what the good God intended for us. For me, I say straight out, it is trafficking with the devil.”

  Raoul patted her on the shoulder reassuringly.

  “There, there, Elise,” he said soothingly, “do not excite yourself, and do not be too ready to see the devil in everything you do not understand.”

  Elise shook her head doubtingly.

  “Ah, well,” she grumbled under her breath. �
�Monsieur may say what he pleases, I don’t like it. Look at Madame, every day she gets whiter and thinner, and the headaches!”

  She held up her hands.

  “Ah, no, it is not good, all this spirit business. Spirits indeed! All the good spirits are in Paradise, and the others are in Purgatory or…”

  “Your view of the life after death is refreshingly simple, Elise,” said Raoul as he dropped into a chair.

  The old woman drew herself up.

  “I am a good Catholic, Monsieur.”

  She crossed herself, went towards the door, then paused, her hand on the handle.

  “Afterwards when you are married, Monsieur,” she said pleadingly, “it will not continue—all this?”

  Raoul smiled at her affectionately.

  “You are a good faithful creature, Elise,” he said, “and devoted to your mistress. Have no fear, once she is my wife, all this ‘spirit business,’ as you call it, will cease. For Madame Daubreuil there will be no more séances.”

  Elise’s face broke into smiles.

  “Is it true what you say?” she asked eagerly.

  The other nodded gravely.

  “Yes,” he said, speaking almost more to himself than to her. “Yes, all this must end. Simone has a wonderful gift and she has used it freely, but now she has done her part. As you have justly observed, Elise, day by day she gets whiter and thinner. The life of a medium is a particularly trying and arduous one, involving a terrible nervous strain. All the same, Elise, your mistress is the most wonderful medium in Paris—more, in France. People from all over the world come to her because they know that with her there is no trickery, no deceit.”

  Elise gave a snort of contempt.

  “Deceit! Madame could not deceive a newborn babe if she tried.”

  “She is an angel,” said the young Frenchman with fervor. “And I—I shall do everything a man can to make her happy. You believe that?”

  Elise drew herself up, and spoke with a certain simple dignity.

  “I have served Madame for many years. Monsieur. With all respect I may say that I love her. If I did not believe that you adored her as she deserves to be adored—eh bien, Monsieur! I should be willing to tear you limb from limb.”

  Raoul laughed.

  “Bravo, Elise! You are a faithful friend, and you must approve of me now that I have told you Madame is going to give up the spirits.”

  He expected the old woman to receive this pleasantry with a laugh, but somewhat to his surprise she remained grave.

  “Supposing, Monsieur,” she said hesitatingly, “the spirits will not give her up?”

  Raoul stared at her.

  “Eh! What do you mean?”

  “I said,” repeated Elise, “supposing the spirits will not give her up?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in the spirits, Elise?”

  “No more I do,” said Elise stubbornly. “It is foolish to believe in them. All the same—”

  “Well?”

  “It is difficult for me to explain, Monsieur, You see, me, I always thought that these mediums, as they call themselves, were just clever cheats who imposed on the poor souls who had lost their dear ones. But Madame is not like that. Madame is good. Madame is honest, and—”

  She lowered her voice and spoke in a tone of awe.

  “Things happen. It is not trickery, things happen, and that is why I am afraid. For I am sure of this. Monsieur, it is not right. It is against nature and le bon Dieu, and somebody will have to pay.”

  Raoul got up from his chair and came and patted her on the shoulder.

  “Calm yourself, my good Elise,” he said, smiling. “See, I will give you some good news. Today is the last of these séances; after today there will be no more.”

  “There is one today then?” asked the old woman suspiciously.

  “The last, Elise, the last.”

  Elise shook her head disconsolately.

  “Madame is not fit—” she began.

  But her words were interrupted, the door opened and a tall, fair woman came in. She was slender and graceful, with the face of a Botticelli Madonna. Raoul’s face lighted up, and Elise withdrew quickly and discreetly.

  Simone!

  He took both her long, white hands in his and kissed each in turn. She murmured his name very softly.

  “Raoul, my dear one.”

  Again he kissed her hands and then looked intently into her face.

  “Simone, how pale you are! Elise told me you were resting; you are not ill, my well-beloved?”

  “No, not ill—” she hesitated.

  He led her over to the sofa and sat down on it beside her.

  “But tell me then.”

  The medium smiled faintly.

  “You will think me foolish,” she murmured.

  “I? Think you foolish? Never.”

  Simone withdrew her hand from his grasp. She sat perfectly still for a moment or two gazing down at the carpet. Then she spoke in a low, hurried voice.

  “I am afraid, Raoul.”

  He waited for a minute or two expecting her to go on, but as she did not he said encouragingly;

  “Yes, afraid of what?”

  “Just afraid—that is all.”

  “But—”

  He looked at her in perplexity, and she answered the look quickly.

  “Yes, it is absurd, isn’t it, and yet I feel just that. Afraid, nothing more. I don’t know what of, or why, but all the time I am possessed with the idea that something terrible—terrible—is going to happen to me…”

  She stared out in front of her. Raoul put an arm gently round her.

  “My dearest,” he said, “come, you must not give way. I know what it is, the strain, Simone, the strain of a medium’s life. All you need is rest—rest and quiet.”

  She looked at him gratefully. “Yes, Raoul, you are right. That is what I need, rest and quiet.”

  She closed her eyes and leant back a little against his arm.

  “And happiness,” murmured Raoul in her ear.

  His arm drew her closer. Simone, her eyes still closed, drew a deep breath.

  “Yes,” she murmured, “yes. When your arms are round me I feel safe. I forget my life—the terrible life—of a medium. You know much, Raoul, but even you do not know all it means.”

  He felt her body grow rigid in his embrace. Her eyes opened again, staring in front of her.

  “One sits in the cabinet in the darkness, waiting, and the darkness is terrible, Raoul, for it is the darkness of emptiness, of nothingness. Deliberately one gives oneself up to be lost in it. After that one knows nothing, one feels nothing, but at last there comes the slow, painful return, the awakening out of sleep, but so tired—so terribly tired.”

  “I know,” murmured Raoul, “I know.”

  “So tired,” murmured Simone again.

  Her whole body seemed to droop as she repeated the words.

  “But you are wonderful, Simone.”

  He took her hands in his, trying to rouse her to share his enthusiasm.

  “You are unique—the greatest medium the world has ever known.”

  She shook her head, smiling a little at that.

  “Yes, yes,” Raoul insisted.

  He drew two letters from his pocket.

  “See here, from Professor Roche of the Salpetrière, and this one from Dr. Genir at Nancy, both imploring that you will continue to sit for them occasionally.”

  “Ah, no!”

  Simone sprang suddenly to her feet.

  “I will not, I will not. It is to be all finished—all done with. You promised me, Raoul.”

  Raoul stared at her in astonishment as she stood wavering, facing him almost like a creature at bay. He got up and took her hand.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Certainly it is finished, that is understood. But I am so proud of you, Simone, that is why I mentioned those letters.”

  She threw him a swift sideways glance of suspicion.

  “It is not that you will ev
er want me to sit again?”

  “No, no,” said Raoul, “unless perhaps you yourself would care to, just occasionally for these old friends ”

  But she interrupted him, speaking excitedly.

  “No, no, never again. There is danger, I tell you. I can feel it, great danger.”

  She clasped her hands on her forehead a minute, then walked across to the window.

  “Promise me never again,” she said in a quieter voice over her shoulder.

  Raoul followed her and put his arms round her shoulders.

  “My dear one,” he said tenderly, “I promise you after today you shall never sit again.”

  He felt the sudden start she gave.

  “Today,” she murmured. “Ah, yes—I had forgotten Madame Exe.”

  Raoul looked at his watch.

  “She is due any minute now; but perhaps, if you do not feel well ”

  Simone hardly seemed to be listening to him; she was following out her own train of thought.

  “She is—a strange woman, Raoul, a very strange woman. Do you know I—I have almost a horror of her.”

  “Simone!”

  There was reproach in his voice, and she was quick to feel it.

  “Yes, yes, I know, you are like all Frenchmen, Raoul. To you a mother is sacred and it is unkind of me to feel like that about her when she grieves so for her lost child. But—I cannot explain it, she is so big and black, and her hands—have you ever noticed her hands, Raoul? Great big strong hands, as strong as a man’s. Ah!”

  She gave a little shiver and closed her eyes. Raoul withdrew his arm and spoke almost coldly.

  “I really cannot understand you, Simone. Surely you, a woman, should have nothing but sympathy for a mother bereft of her only child.”

  Simone made a gesture of impatience.

  “Ah, it is you who do not understand, my friend! One cannot help these things. The first moment I saw her I felt ”