THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY

by John Brunner

  “Now,” said Chasnik with deep satisfaction, “we can argue properly!”

  X

  Extract from paper read to the British Society, Physical Division, June 3rd, 1974: “In place of the now exploded concept of the Conservation of Energy, it is proposed to substitute an equation defining the conditions proper to the displacement of energy from ‘now’… This suggests that what to us appears as the destruction or creation of matter and energy may simply be due to a sudden reversal of the entropy of wavicles over a sharply delineated area of the continuum… The path ‘backwards’ through time as an anti-particle need not coincide with the ‘forward’ one…”

  It is highly improbable that King Cambyses had heard of any atomic theory, even the Democritan one, when his army with himself at its head marched into the unknown vastness of history, and was never heard of again.

  The arrangement of the half-dozen small ships aboard which an anchor team carried out its work was always haphazard, depending on the whim and convenience of the team’s director. It did not much matter, since the Being’s ‘substance’ was reasonably homogeneous over any given area.

  Its presence could only be detected by the most sensitive instruments, though; it registered on them more as a tendency to displacement in time than as anything more tangible.

  As he pushed his way through the airlock of the nearest ship belonging to the team he had selected, Burma could not help wondering what kind of configuration the director had adopted this time. It was a good team—that was why he had picked it—but from the arrangement of the ships it looked as if they had simply been allowed to drift in a circular orbit until they were randomised.

  It was good to have the familiar tools of his trade about him again, after his nightmare plunge into what he could not help thinking of as a barbarian era. It almost, but not quite, stopped him wishing that it had not been necessary to do away with sleep. The combination of hypnotic relaxation and selective removal of fatigue poisons which the race had been forced to develop doubled an individual’s thinking time, was completely harmless and even aided longevity. But he missed—how he missed!—the ability simply to turn himself off for a while.

  We never knew, his mind ran on idly—we never knew just what a human being could be made to do until we had to find out. Yet—and still we’re being made to do it—how long can we stand the strain?

  He came into what should have been the busiest part of the ship, and stopped dead in his tracks.

  Among the elaborate and immensely valuable set-up of equipment, there was one weary-looking woman of sixty monitoring a single input trace on the temporal band.

  He spoke with a kind of controlled fury. “What—the hell—is going on?”

  The woman looked up and half spat at him. “So they finally remembered us! Who are you?”

  Burma ignored that, and pursued, “This is supposed to be a fully operating anchor team! Where is everyone? What do you think you’re doing?”

  Stung, the woman retorted, “Ask Artesha! They put out a call yesterday for the top men in alien psychology to investigate this Enemy they captured, and every blasted member of this team was sent for except me!”

  Burma forced himself to calm down, but he was still fuming. Mistakes like this were inevitable when you were trying to administer the fighting efforts of a race of some quintillion-odd individuals through a central agency. “All right,” he said, and told her who he was. “I’ll have this settled in quick time. Artesha!” he added, opening the communicator on the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” said Artesha when he had explained the situation. “I was getting around to that—I wanted to break up the team and disperse it because the odds are slightly in favour of us getting results with the Enemy before we get them with the Being. After all, we have more knowledge of their psychology—”

  “We did have,” corrected Burma. “Artesha, you aren’t computing with the fact that Wymarin stimulated the Being—are you? I have only the faintest idea how he managed it, but I know he was on to a brand new line. Listen!

  “We’ve found only one way of directly affecting the Being before—that’s by an atomic explosion. It doesn’t like high energy levels. Maybe they affect it like a hot fire does a man. Anyway, we can’t find traces of its presence much closer than Mercury to the sun, and every time there’s a really big explosion it writhes.

  “But Wymarin had an idea. He’s been pushing the possibility of the thing being intelligent in a way comprehensible to us. Mostly, we’ve been assuming it’s the four-dimensional equivalent of an amoeba, because it exhibits the same kind of actions and is equally shapeless so far as we can determine.

  “He tried to communicate with it. He wanted to see if we could explain to it what it was doing to us, so that it would help us to move it out of this area of space. And if it was the result of his communicating with it that caused that last outsize temporal surge—the one that caught me—”

  “I see,” said Artesha. She sounded as nearly excited as she could get. “I can’t return all your experts, but there must be some who’ve completed their contribution to the study of the Enemy. Why did you pick that team, anyway?”

  “Because there were experts in psychology here as well as in continuum mathematics,” Burma answered. “The same reason you took them for the study of the Enemy.”

  “I’ll have your people with you in quick time,” Artesha said, and signed off.

  Burma turned from the communicator to find the woman eying him. “I’m sorry,” she said reluctantly. “I didn’t know who you were. I’m Lalitha Benoni.”

  Burma acknowledged the introduction. “Had your team been attempting anything on the lines Wymarin tried?” he demanded.

  “No. We were thinking in terms of the Being reacting to stimuli. Mainly, we were trying to set up a pattern which fitted the way it starts away from atomic explosions and suchlike, in the hope of discovering a stimulus that would drive it away. Owing to the Being’s four-dimensional nature, we assumed the prod would need to be pretty complex.”

  “I wish co-ordination wasn’t so difficult!” said Burma feelingly. “We’ve got nine thousand-odd anchor teams all over the Solar System, and we haven’t yet solved the problem of making the information obtained by one available to all immediately. When did you last check your digest computer?”

  “Yesterday. I haven’t had a red-tabbed signal in since, though.” Lalitha spoke defensively.

  “One of the mathematicians on another team worked out the end results of driving the Being away.” Burma was surveying the equipment as he spoke; it seemed in good order. “It would literally wreck the Solar System. The sun would nova; the planets would leave their orbits—everything. But of course it wouldn’t be red-tabbed, since this was probably the only team which really needed the information. So, it’s as well the pattern has been broken. We’ll be able to get down to our own problem with fresh minds.”

  He was referring to the fact that after one of the anchor teams—or indeed any of the groups of super-specialists who were the brain of the race working as a whole—had functioned smoothly together for some time, there grew up among them a mutual understanding which approached telepathy, which was wonderful so long as they remained on the same task, but which made it appallingly difficult to change their line of research.

  “Put the digest computer on to sifting the data of the last year for items regarding communication with the Being,” Burma added. Nodding, Lalitha did so. Burma began to hum to himself as he continued studying the machinery. It was good; the former director of this team had been an imaginative man.

  “What a hell of a waste!” he burst out suddenly. Lalitha made an inquiring noise, and he went on, “Sorry. Your team has done some fine work. I was just thinking it was a shame that driving the Being away should turn out to be too big a risk after all.”

  Lalitha nodded, and the digest computer burped its little ‘ready’ signal. “Already?” said Burma, alarmed. “I expected there wouldn’t be much on
the subject, but if the computer got through the lot so quickly there can hardly be anything.”

  There was hardly anything—four completed preliminary studies, two of which he had helped Wymarin to programme for their own team’s computers, and an unfinished simultaneous broadcast which had been recorded while Wymarin was actually carrying out his experiment.

  “Oh, good man!” said Burma, seizing it. “This is like finding treasure!”

  The record was notated in the chicken-scratch markings of telemetered instrument readings but he could follow it without trouble. At the end, he frowned. “Tantalising!” he exclaimed. “Just when it starts to show a response, the temporal surge built up and its energies jammed the broadcast! Lalitha, put a computer on to analysing the trend of these recordings, will you? I can’t see a predictable pattern, but it’s worth trying, I suppose. Wymarin’s such a brilliant intuitive reasoner, though, I suspect he would just have been relying on his subconscious to lead him on until he found something that worked.”

  There was a cough at the door and a man entered. He looked around before coming over. “Gevolan,” he introduced himself. “Artesha told me you were starting something big here?” The sentence ended in the faintest of inquiries.

  “As soon as possible. How’s the study of the Enemy?”

  Gevolan shrugged. “We can’t hypnotise it, so now it’s up to the chemists to synthesise something we can use to inject our commands into it.” He wiped his face. “It’s made me wonder what would happen to any poor human being who fell into Enemy clutches—”

  “None have,” said Burma shortly. “All right, Gevolan. I’ll give you the set-up. After that, it’s up to you. I hope that search party of Magwareet’s does find Wymarin—otherwise we’ll be like a bunch of blind men trying to find a dark star in the Coal Sack!”

  Gevolan stared, and then laughed. “I come from around there,” he said. “I was evacuated from Arauk. We never used that simile, because it’s a matter of record that a blind man did once find a dark star in the Coal Sack.”

  “I hope we have that kind of luck,” said Burma flatly.

  XI

  The record of Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, called December, 1666, in the afternoon Helvetius, distinguished physician and respected citizen of The Hague: “The 21th of, came a stranger to my house… being a great lover of the Pyrotechnian art (alchemy)… He gave me a crumb as big as a rape or turnip seed (of the Philosopher’s Stone)… I cut half an ounce or six drams of old lead, and put it into a crucible in the fire, which being melted, my wife put in the said Medicine (the Stone)… within a quarter of an hour all the mass of lead was totally transmuted into the best and finest gold…

  “I… did run with this aurified lead (being yet hot) unto the goldsmith, who… judged it the most excellent gold in the whole world.”

  Magwareet wished achingly for a second that he had all Artesha’s resources at his command. This was too big a problem for any one man…

  But he was responsible. He studied the time map for a long time before coming to his decision.

  “Arafan!” he shouted, and the pilot’s voice came back through the communicator. “Get us to Earth as quickly as possible!”

  “At once,” confirmed Arafan. Magwareet turned to look at a map of the land masses of Earth stuck on one wall, lettered in drastically abbreviated symbols. With one backward glance to make certain of the spot, he stabbed at it with his right forefinger. “Red! Whereabouts is that in your time?”

  Red swallowed; the tension of their venture close to the Enemy raider was still tight in his stomach. “It looks—” he began, and had to start again. “It looks like the middle of the Soviet Union!”

  Magwareet nodded. “The Croceraunian Empire grew up from the wreckage of what you knew as China and Mongolia. We know more about them than we do about their predecessors, but there has always been something puzzling about their fantastically rapid expansion.” He frowned. “They had a sort of bastard science which they treated as magic, but it gave them results… I’ve read their scriptures—they speak of miracles and being able to see into the future.”

  Arafan’s voice broke in on them. “We’re at the edge of atmosphere,” reported the pilot baldly.

  “Trace still there?” Magwareet said, and the technician beside the time map confirmed it. “Coming up!” he shouted, and made for the control cabin.

  The sight from the viewport was awe-inspiring. They could see the vast spread of the Eurasian landmass dotted with clouds like smears of dirty white paint. The terminator between night and day was creeping towards the area for which they were making.

  “Are we screened?” Magwareet said absently, and Arafan nodded. “Okay, take her down. It shouldn’t be hard to spot what we’re looking for—if I know anything about those Croceraunians, they couldn’t be in one place for ten minutes without starting a fight.”

  It was eerie to swoop across the country whose reputation for secrecy and unapproachability had supplanted that of Tibet, looking at what might be the greatest secrets of all, unnoticed and uninterrupted.

  “There!” said Magwareet at last, and pointed. A column of lorries loaded with armed men was tearing along a poor road at the limit of safety. “Another few miles and—yes, that’s it!”

  Circling under Arafan’s deft touch, the ship surveyed the whole scene of battle. It was clear even to Red and Chantal, who knew nothing of military strategy: the ring of oddly-clad barbarians, many of them sheltering behind dead horses like Indians in a Western film, was standing off an army. Every now and again there was a puff of fire which did something indistinguishable but fatal to the Russian infantry.

  “But there are so few of them!” said Chantal. “Can they really do much damage?”

  Magwareet answered wryly, “They’re carrying probably the finest portable weapons ever developed—sonic guns, atomic grenades, and what they call the Breath of Terror—a sort of universal catalyst which accelerates natural oxidation. Look, there goes one of the tanks.”

  There was only a drift of mist, but the wind brought it up to the side of the tank, and in a moment it had flared brilliantly into dust. A man carrying a clumsy pack got up and ran twenty yards before dropping behind a rise and repeating the process on another tank.

  Arafan swore; they had noticed nothing, but he explained, “Being screened has its disadvantages! An aircraft nearly collided with us, going like lightning!”

  “What are you going to do about this?” Chantal demanded practically, and Magwareet gave her a slight sad smile. “I have a job for you and Red. I’m sorry to say it, but you’re—comparatively—expendable. We carry no weapons, and it would be useless to signal one of the ships that came after us to destroy the Enemy raider—their armament is just too powerful. It would take half the countryside with it.

  “I’m going to ask you to go out there—screened, so that you’re invisible—pick out the Croceraunians, and beat them over the head. It will be dangerous, because I don’t think the screens will protect you against either the Breath of Terror or a high-velocity bullet. I must be candid—it’s either you, or an indispensable technician.”

  Red looked at Chantal. “Me, I’ll go willingly,” he said. With the new-found clarity in his mind, he could tell that his urge sprang from the fact that now he was a whole man he wanted to match himself against other men—violently if need be.

  Chantal looked doubtful. “Do you think I’d be any good?” she said. Magwareet laughed.

  “Take these,” he said, unscrewing two heavy insulated handles from a master control panel; each was about two feet long, very light and strong, with the upper and terminating in a hard, resilient grip three inches round. “And take these too.” He held out pairs of goggles made of smoky grey plastic.

  “With these you’ll be able to see each other and the ship. No one else can. But they will hear you if you talk, or notice footprints in soft ground—…

  “We’ll bring the ship down to about ten feet and hover above you.
Knock out your men and leave them—we’ll pick them up, put them in storage and figure out what to do with them later.”

  Red dropped the ten feet to the ground, rejoicing in the equal strength of his two legs. He turned and broke Chantal’s fall for her, and found himself suddenly staring at her with open eyes for the first time.

  Like himself, she was now wearing the ubiquitous coverall which was the human race’s standard costume of the time. But her face was flushed with excitement and nervousness, and her brown hair was ruffled round her pretty head. Her right hand was clasped round the improvised club Magwareet had given her, and there was something purposeful in her entire appearance.

  He realised that he had been feeling, without noticing, the same air in the women he had met since his fantastic adventure took him with Burma over three thousand years of time—something utterly different from the women he had known in his own day. This was a woman who was a partner, an equal, knowing her own capabilities and willing to make the most of them.

  He had barely time to absorb the knowledge when the sharp snap of a rifle reminded him that they were in the middle of a battle.

  “Down!” he said under his breath, and they dropped side by side into the slight dip which was the reason for their being put down there. He looked up first, seeing their ship gigantic over them, and then searched the ground for a sign of the Croceraunians.

  They did not have to look far. Moving with the skill of a practised warrior, one of the barbarians dodged from a piece of cover which Red thought could not have concealed a mouse, and fell over them in an attempt to gain fresh protection.

  The man’s mouth was already opening in a scream of fear at finding invisible demons on the ground when Red, having no time to club the man, jabbed him in the midriff and took the breath out of him before bruising his knuckles under his jaw.