The World Turned Upside Down

by Eric Flint

  "Harder, Jon! Harder!" Harlan prompted.

  Gaynor was sweating. He could feel the perspiration roll down his temples. His eyes seemed to be popping from their sockets.

  Harlan strained with his peering. The outlines grew stronger, darkened—but only for a moment. The next they wavered mistily again, thinned, and were gone.

  Gaynor drew a sobbing breath, straightened up. He asked, "Wade—what did you see?"

  "I don't know for sure. Things—or the ghosts of things. Here—give me that. I'm going to see what I can do."

  Gaynor relinquished the jewel. Holding it in his palm, Harlan gathered his thoughts, poised them, focused them. And, watching, Gaynor saw the ghostly outlines for the first time—misty suggestions of angles and curves, hints of forms whose purpose he could not guess. Alien ghosts of alien objects, summoned by will from some alien limbo.

  Abruptly, the outlines faded and were gone. The tinkling of the jewel thinned and died.

  Harlan drew a shuddering breath. "Jon—you saw them?"

  "Yes. Dimly."

  "We . . . we haven't got the strength, Jon. We haven't got the power necessary to materialize the objects—whatever they are."

  "Maybe that's the drawback. Or—maybe we've got the strength, but simply can't materialize things—objects—whose size, shape, and purpose we do not know and cannot guess."

  "That might be it." Harlan's voice grew sharp. "But, great space, Jon, what possibly could be the idea behind it? Why did they—that other race—construct buildings in which the rooms were left unfurnished, or which could be furnished merely by concentrating on . . . on these jewels? What could have been the reason behind it?"

  Gaynor shook his head. "We'll never know that, perhaps. At least, we'll never know if we persist in thinking in terms of our own culture. The builders of this city were humanoid, Wade—but mentally they were alien. Don't forget that. These rooms may not have been living quarters at all. They may have been repositories for valuable things, of which the jewels were the means of materializing. Only those who knew how could materialize them. Thus, perhaps, those things were kept safe."

  "That might be it," Harlan muttered. "It makes sense."

  "These pictures"—Gaynor gestured at the paintings on the walls—"might contain the answer. If we knew how to read them, they might tell us the purpose of these empty rooms—why the furnishings or machines had to be materialized. I wonder, Wade . . . I wonder if each of these pictures is complete in itself, or if each is part of a greater series. You know—like a book. You read one page, and it doesn't make sense. You read the whole thing—and it does."

  "The beginning, Jon," Harlan whispered. "We'd have to start at the beginning."

  "Yes—the beginning."

  Harlan replaced the jewel in its niche, and on the invisible wings of their antigravity flight units, they glided back to the force shaft. Here they switched off their units, allowed the force to carry them up. But the apartments on the upper floors contained nothing new or illuminating. Like the first they had visited, these were empty, save for the wall paintings and the jewels in their niches. They returned to the shaft again, this time to meet a complication.

  "Say—how do we get down?" Harlan puzzled. "This thing has been carrying us up all the time, and there doesn't seem to be another one for descending."

  "Why, you simply will yourself to go down," Gaynor said. Then he looked blankly surprised.

  Harlan nodded gravely. "Of course," he said. "That's the answer. I should have thought of it myself."

  They descended. Outside, the sun was bright and warm. Under its light the city dreamed on.

  Gaynor and Harlan soared through the warmth. The city was very bright and still. Far away and high in the blue, glittering swarms of the crystal creatures darted. Their tinkling and chiming drifted down to the two men.

  Gaynor and Harlan descended several times to investigate tower buildings, but these were very much like the first they had visited. The spacious apartments seemed to echo in their strange emptiness, each one seemingly louder than the last. Twice they took turns, attempted to materialize the unguessable furnishings of the rooms. Each time they failed. And afterward they did not disturb the jewels in their niches. They merely gazed at the flaming wall paintings, and came away.

  Again they glided through the air, though slowly and thoughtfully, now. They were silent. Beneath them, the city dreamed. Once a cloud of crystal creatures flashed past, sparkling, chiming, but the two did not seem to notice.

  "Jon—?" Harlan's voice was hesitant.

  "Yes?"

  "I don't know how to put it into words, but—well, don't you feel that you are beginning to know?"

  "Yes—there's the ghost of something in my mind. Those pictures, Wade—"

  "Yes, Jon, the pictures."

  Again they were silent. Gaynor broke the silence.

  "Wade—all my life I've been reading primers. Someone just gave me a college textbook, and I glanced through several pages. Naturally, I did not understand, but here and there I found words familiar to me. They left a ghost in my mind—"

  "You've got to go back to the beginning, Jon. You've got to read all the books which will help you to understand that college textbook."

  "Yes, Wade, the beginning—"

  They drifted on while the city dreamed beneath them. The sun was a swaddling blanket of brightness. Like memory-sounds, faint chimings and tinklings wafted on the air.

  And then Gaynor was grasping Harlan's arm. "Wade—down there. Look!" He pointed tensely.

  Harlan stiffened as he saw it. The ship was a tiny thing, almost lost amid the greenery of the park. Almost in unison, the two touched the controls of their antigravity flight units, arrowed down in a swift, gentle arc.

  The ship was very big, like no ship they had ever seen before. It was a thing of harsh angles, built of some strange red metal or alloy that gleamed in the sunlight with the hue of blood. A square opening gaped in its side. Slowly, Gaynor and Harlan entered it.

  It was as though they entered the gloom of another world. Little of what they saw was familiar to them, and they had to guess the purpose of the rest. There were passageways and corridors, and rooms opened from these. A few they were able to identify, but the rest, filled with queer, angular furniture and sprawling machines, escaped classification. They left the ship—and the sunlight felt good.

  Gaynor's voice rustled dryly. "They were humanoid, Wade, the people who built that ship. If nothing else made sense, the things we saw showed that. But the people who made that ship were not of the city. They were spawned on some planet circling another sun."

  "They came here," Harlan rasped. "They came—and they left that ship behind—Jon . . . they came . . . and they never left this world—"

  "Wade—I'm thinking. There might have been other ships—"

  Harlan touched the butt of his positron blaster, and his face was pale. "We've got to look, Jon. That's something we've got to know."

  They lifted into the air. Circling and dipping, they searched. The sun was at zenith when they found the second ship. By mid-afternoon they had found a third and a fourth. The fourth was the Ark, the hyperspacial cruiser in which old Mark Gaynor and his band of Purists had left the Earth some one hundred and twenty years before.

  The four ships which Gaynor and Harlan had found had two things in common. Each had been built by a different humanoid people, and each was completely deserted. Other than this, there was no basis of comparison between them. Each was separate and distinct, unique in its alienness. Even the Ark, long outmoded, seemed strange.

  In the Ark, Gaynor and Harlan found nothing to indicate what had happened to its passengers. Everything was orderly and neat—more, even in the most excellent condition. Nothing written had been left behind, not the slightest scrap of rotting paper.

  Gaynor whispered, "They did come here, then. And the same thing happened to them that happened to all the rest of the people who landed here. The same thing, I'm sure, that
happened to the builders of the city. Why did they leave these ships behind? Where did they go? What could have happened to them?"

  Harlan shook his red head somberly. "We'd better not know that. If we stay and try to find out, the same thing will happen to us. The government expedition which discovered this planet encountered the same mystery—but they didn't try to find out. They returned to Earth. Jon—we'd better get back to the Paragon. We'd better leave while we can."

  "And in time more people would come to settle here. And there would be more empty ships." Gaynor's lips tightened to a stubborn line. "Wade—I'm not leaving until I crack the mystery of this place. I'm going to find what happened to old Mark and the Purists. We've been warned—we'll be on the alert."

  Harlan met Gaynor's determined gaze, and then he looked away. He moistened his lips. After a long moment he gave a stiff nod. His voice was very low.

  "Then we've got to start at the beginning, Jon. Those pictures—"

  "Yes, Wade, the pictures. I'm sure they hold the answer to the whole thing. We've got to find that beginning. You've noticed how the city is strung out. At one end is the beginning, at the other—"

  "The end!" Harlan said abruptly.

  "No. Wade. The answer."

  They returned first to the Paragon, to satisfy pangs of hunger too intense to be ignored any longer. Then, donning their antigravity flight units once more, they took to the air. They circled several times, set out finally for a point on the horizon where the city thinned out and finally terminated.

  Their flight ended at a single, slender tower set in the midst of a parklike expanse. That they had reached the end of the city, they knew, for ahead of them no other building was in sight. They floated to the ground, stared silently at the tower. It glowed with a chaste whiteness in the late afternoon light—serene, somewhat aloof, lovely in its simplicity and solitariness.

  Harlan spoke softly. "The beginning? Or—the end?"

  "That's what we have to find out," Gaynor responded. "We're going in there, Wade."

  The interior of the tower was dark and cool, filled with the solemn hush of a cathedral. It consisted solely of one great room, its ceiling lost in sheerness of height. And except for the ever-present wall paintings, it was empty—utterly bare.

  Gaynor and Harlan gazed at the paintings, and then they looked at each other, and slowly they nodded. Silently they left.

  "That . . . that wasn't the beginning," Harlan stated slowly.

  "No, Wade. That was—the end. The beginning lies on the opposite side of the city. But we'll have to postpone our investigation until morning. We wouldn't reach the other end of the city until dark."

  They returned to the Paragon. The sun was setting behind the towers of the city to the east, sinking into a glory of rose and gold. Slowly the paling fingers of its radiance withdrew from the city. Night came in all its starry splendor.

  Gaynor and Harlan were up with the dawn. Eagerness to be back at their investigations fired them. They hurried impatiently through breakfast. Then, attaching kits of emergency ration concentrates to their belts and donning their antigravity flight units, they took to the air.

  As they flew, Gaynor and Harlan had to remind themselves that this was the second day of their visit and not the first, so closely did the new day resemble the one preceding. Nothing had changed. The city beneath them still dreamed on. And far away and high in the blue, glittering clouds of the crystal creatures darted and danced, their chimings and tinklings sounding like echoes of melody from an elfin world.

  The sun was bright and warm when Gaynor and Harlan reached the end of the city opposite the one which they had investigated the day before. Here they found no slender tower. There was nothing to show that this part of the city was in any way different from the rest. The general plan of tower-encircled courts was the same as everywhere else. The city merely terminated—or looking at it the other way, merely began.

  Gaynor and Harlan glided down into one of the very first of the tower-encircled courts. They touched ground, switched off their flight units, stood gazing slowly about them.

  Gaynor muttered, "The beginning? Or— Maybe we were wrong, Wade. Maybe there is no beginning."

  "Those towers should tell us," Harlan said. "Let's have a look inside them, Jon."

  They entered an arching doorway, strode into a great foyer. Within this they had their first indication that this part of the city actually was different from the rest. For within the foyer was no dais and force shaft as they had found previously. Instead, a broad stairway led to the floors above.

  They mounted the stairs. The walls of the first apartment they investigated were covered with paintings, as everywhere else, but this time the spacious rooms were not empty. They were furnished. Gaynor and Harlan gazed upon softly gleaming objects which very clearly were tables and chairs, deep, luxurious couches, and cabinets of various sizes and shapes. At first everything seemed strange to them, and as they glanced about, they found themselves comparing the furniture to that which they had seen in homes on Earth. And after a while things no longer seemed strange at all.

  Gaynor blinked his eyes rapidly several times. He frowned puzzledly. "Wade—either I'm crazy, or this room has changed."

  Harlan was gazing at the wall paintings. His voice came as from far away. "Changed? Why, yes. Things are as they should be—now."

  Gaynor gazed at the walls, and then he nodded. "That's right, Wade. Of course."

  Gaynor walked over to a low cabinet. Somewhere before he had seen a cabinet like this one. He felt that he should know its purpose, yet it eluded him. He stared at it musingly. And then he remembered something—his eyes lifted to the paintings on the wall. No. The other wall? Yes.

  Gaynor looked at the cabinet again—and now a slow murmur of melody arose within the room. Hauntingly familiar, poignantly sweet, yet formless. Gaynor looked at the walls again. The melody shaped itself, grew stronger, and the lilting strains of a spaceman's song flooded richly through the room.

  I'm blasting the far trails,

  Following the star trails,

  Taking the home trails,

  Back, dear, to you—

  "The Star Trails Home to You," Gaynor whispered. Sudden nostalgia washed over him in a wave. Home. The Earth— His eyes lifted to the walls, and he was comforted.

  Gaynor looked around for Harlan. He found the other standing before a second cabinet across the room. Gaynor approached him, noting as he did so that Harlan stood strangely rigid and still. In alarm, Gaynor ran the remaining distance. Harlan did not seem to notice. His face was rapt, trance-like.

  Gaynor grasped Harlan's arm, shook him. "Wade! Wade—what is it? Snap out of it!"

  Harlan stirred. Expression came back into his features—his eyes sharped upon Gaynor's face. "What . . . what— Oh, it's you, Jon. She . . . she had red hair, and . . . and her arms were around me, and—" Harlan broke off, flushing.

  Investigation of the cabinets in the other rooms produced still more interesting results. One had a spigot projecting from its front, with a catchbasin below, much like a drinking fountain. Gaynor looked at the wall paintings, and then he looked at the spigot, and suddenly liquid jetted from it. He tasted it cautiously, nodded approvingly, not at all surprised.

  "Scotch," he said. "I'll have it with soda."

  "Hurry up, then," Harlan prompted impatiently.

  There was another cabinet that they found particularly interesting. This one had a foot-square opening in its front, and after Gaynor and Harlan had gotten their proper instructions from the paintings, they moved on—each munching at a delicious leg of roast chicken.

  Not all the cabinets produced things which were edible or audible, but all opened up new vistas of thought and experience. Gaynor and Harlan learned the purpose of each, and already in their minds they were devising new methods of test and application. The wall paintings were very extensive, and they were learning rapidly.

  That was the beginning—

  After the
cabinets, which supplied every possible physical or mental want, came the machines. Simple things at first, for Gaynor and Harlan were still in the equivalent of kindergarten. But they were humanoid—and, therefore, inquisitive. The machines were delightful and of absorbing interest. Once their purpose and function became known, however, their novelty died, and Gaynor and Harlan quested on for new fields to conquer. Thus, in a very few days, they moved to the next unit.

  Here was the same plan of tower-encircled court, but the cabinets and machines had become more complicated, more difficult of operation. But Gaynor and Harlan had become quite adept at reading the wall paintings which were their primers. They learned—

  Instruction followed application, and in a very few days again, Gaynor and Harlan moved on. Thus they went, from unit to unit, and always the wall paintings pointed out the way.

  The sun rose and the sun set, and the city dreamed on. And always, high in the sky, the crystal creatures circled and soared, tinkling and chiming. The days passed gently, mere wraiths of sunlight.

  The machines grew larger, more intricate, ever more difficult of solution. Each was a new test upon the growing knowledge of Gaynor and Harlan. And each test was harder than the last, for the wall paintings no longer pointed out the way, but merely hinted now.

  Gaynor and Harlan progressed more slowly, though none the less steadily. They were not impatient. They had no sense of restless striving toward a future goal. They lived for the present. They were submerged heart and soul in the never-ending fascinations of their environment to the exclusion of all else.

  The machines continued to grow larger. At one point they were so huge, that a single machine filled an entire apartment. But that was the climax, for afterward the machines grew smaller, ever smaller, until at last they came to a unit the apartments of which were empty. Empty, that is, except for the wall paintings and the jewels in their niches.

  Harlan peered about him, frowning. "I seem to remember this place."