Beyond the End of Time (1952) Anthology

by Frederik Pohl (ed. )

  The daydream vanished as two men in bulging sub-suits stepped through the rock wall. Their figures were transparent; their feet sank into the ground with each step. Both men suddenly jumped into the air; at mid-arc they switched off their walkthroughs. The figures gained solidity and landed heavily on the floor. They opened their faceplates and sniffed the air.

  The shorter man smiled. “It sure smells nice in here, right, Mo?”

  Mo was having trouble getting his helmet off; his voice rumbled out through the folds of cloth. “Right, Algie.” The helmet came free with a snap.

  Pete’s eyes widened at the sight, and Algie smiled a humorless grin. “Mo ain’t much to look at, but you could learn to like him.”

  Mo was a giant, seven feet from his boots to the crown of his bullet-shaped head, shaved smooth and glistening with sweat. He must have been born ugly, and Time had not improved him. His nose was flattened, one ear was little more than a rag, and a thick mass of white scar-tissue drew up his upper lip. Two yellow teeth gleamed through the opening.

  Pete slowly closed his canteen and stowed it in the pack. They might be honest rock divers, but they didn’t look it. “Anything I can do for you guys?” he asked.

  “No, thanks, pal,” said the short one, “we was just going by and saw the flash of your airmaker. We thought maybe it was one of our pals, so we come over to see. Rock diving sure is a lousy racket these days, ain’t it?” As he talked, the little man’s eyes flicked casually around the room, taking in everything. With a wheeze, Mo sat down against the wall.

  “You’re right,” said Pete carefully. “I haven’t had a strike in months. You guys newcomers? I don’t think I’ve seen you around the camp.”

  Algie did not reply. He was staring intently at Pete’s bulging sample case.

  He snapped open a huge clasp knife. “What you got in the sample case, Mac?”

  “Just some low-grade ore I picked up. Going to have it assayed, but I doubt if it’s even worth carrying. I’ll show you.”

  Pete stood up and walked toward the case. As he passed in front of Algie, he bent swiftly, grabbed the knife hand and jabbed his knee viciously into the short man’s stomach. Algie jackknifed and Pete chopped his neck sharply with the edge of his palm. He didn’t wait to see him fall but dived towards the pack.

  He pulled his Army .45 with one hand and scooped out the signal crystal with the other, raising his steel-shod boot to stamp the crystal to powder.

  His heel never came down. A gigantic fist gripped his ankle, stopping Pete's whole bulk in midair. He tried to bring the gun around, but a hand as large as a ham clutched his wrist. He screamed as the bones grated together. The automatic dropped from his nerveless fingers.

  He hung head down for five minutes while Mo pleaded with the unconscious Algie to tell him what to do. Algie regain consciousness and sat up cursing and rubbing his neck. He told Mo what to do and sat there smiling until Pete lost consciousness.

  Slap-slap, slap-slap; his head rocked back and forth in time to the blows. He couldn’t stop them, they jarred his head, shook his entire body. From very far away he heard Algie’s voice.

  “That’s enough. Mo, that’s enough. He’s coming around now.”

  Pete braced himself painfully against the wall and wiped the blood out of his eyes. The short man’s face swam into his vision.

  “Mac, you’re giving too much trouble. We’re going to take your crystal and find your strike, and if it’s as good as the samples you got there, I’m going to be very happy and celebrate by killing you real slow. If we don’t find it, you get killed slower. You get yours either way. Nobody ever hits Algie, don’t you know that?”

  They turned on Pete’s walkthrough and half carried, half dragged him through the wall. About twenty feet away they emerged in another artificial bubble, much larger than his own. It was almost filled by the metallic bulk of an atomic tractor.

  Mo pushed him to the floor and kicked his walkthrough into a useless ruin. The giant stepped over Pete’s body and lumbered across the room. As he swung himself aboard the tractor, Algie switched on the large walkthrough unit. Pete saw Algie’s mouth open with silent laughter as the ghostly machine lurched forward and drove into the wall.

  Pete turned and pawed through the crushed remains of his walkthrough. Completely useless. They had done a thorough job, and there was nothing else in this globular tomb that could help him out. His sub-rock radio was in his own bubble; with that he could call the Army base and have a patrol here in twenty minutes. But there was a little matter of twenty feet of rock between the radio and himself.

  His light swung up and down the wall. That three-foot vein of RbO must be the same one that ran through his own chamber.

  He grabbed his belt. The airmaker was still there! He pressed the points to the wall and watched the silver snow spring out. Pieces of rock fell loose as he worked in a circle. If the power pack held out—and if they didn’t come back too soon—

  With each flash of the airmaker an inch-thick slab of rock crumbled away. The accumulators took 3.7 seconds to recharge; then the white flash would leap out and blast loose another mass of rubble. He worked furiously with his left hand to clear away the shattered rock.

  Blast with the right arm—push with the left—blast and push—blast and push. He laughed and sobbed at the same time, warm tears running down his cheeks. He had forgotten the tremendous amounts of oxygen he was releasing. The walls reeled drunkenly around him.

  Stopping just long enough to seal his helmet, Pete turned back to the wall of his makeshift tunnel. He blasted and struggled with the resisting rock, trying to ignore his throbbing head. He lay on his side, pushing the broken stones behind him, packing them solid with his feet.

  He had left the large bubble behind and was sealed into his own tiny chamber far under the earth. He could feel the weight of a half-mile of solid rock pushing down on him, crushing the breath from his lungs. If the airmaker died now, he would lie there and rot in this hand-hewn tomb! Pete tried to push the thought from his mind—to concentrate only on blasting his way through the earth.

  Time seemed to stand still as he struggled on through an eternity of effort. His arms worked like pistons while his bloody fingers scrabbled at the corroded rock.

  He dropped his arms for a few precious moments while his burning lungs pumped air. The weakened rock before him crumbled and blew away with an explosive sound. The air whistled through the ragged opening. The pressure in the two chambers was equalizing—he had holed through!

  He was blasting at the edges of the hole with the weakened airmaker when the legs walked up next to him. Algie’s face pushed through the low rock ceiling, a ferocious scowl on its features. There was no room to materialize; all the impotent Algie could do was to shake his fist at—and through—Pete’s face.

  A monstrous crunching came from the loose rubble behind him; the rock fell away and Mo pushed through. Pete couldn’t turn to fight, but he landed one shoe on the giant’s shapeless nose before monster hands clutched his ankles.

  He was dragged through the rocky tube like a child, hauled back to the bigger cavern. When Mo dropped him he just slid to the floor and lay there gasping. ... He had been so close.

  Algie bent over him. “You’re too smart, Mac. I’m going to shoot you now, so you don’t give me no more trouble.” He pulled Pete’s .45 out of his pocket, grabbed it by the slide and charged it. “By the way, we found your strike. It’s going to make me richer’n hell. Glad, Mac?”

  Algie squeezed the trigger and a hammer-blow struck Pete’s thigh. The little man stood over Pete, grinning.

  “I’m going to give you all these slugs where they won’t kill you—not right away. Ready for the next one, Mac?” Pete pushed up onto one elbow and pressed his hand against the muzzle of the gun. Algie’s grin widened. “Fine, stop the bullet with your hand!”

  He squeezed the trigger; the gun clicked sharply. A ludicrous expression of amazement came over his face.

  Pe
te rose up and pressed the airmaker against Algie’s faceplate. The expression was still there when his head exploded into frosty ribbons.

  Pete dived on the gun, charged it out of the half-cocked position and swung around. Algie had been smart, but not smart enough to know that the muzzle of a regulation .45 acts as a safety. When you press against it the barrel is pushed back into half-cock position and can’t be fired until the slide is worked to recharge it.

  Mo came stumbling across the room, his jaw gaping in amazement. Swinging around on his good leg, Pete waved the gun at him. “Hold it right there, Mo. You’re going to help me get back to town.”

  The giant didn’t hear him; there was room in his mind for only one thought.

  “You killed Algie—you killed Algie!”

  Pete fired the clip before the big man dropped.

  He turned from the dying man with a shudder. It had been self-defense, but that thought didn’t help the sick feeling in his stomach. He twisted his belt around his leg to stop the blood and applied a sterile bandage from the tractor’s first-aid kit.

  The tractor would get him back; he would let the Army take care of the mess here. He pushed into the driver’s seat and kicked the engine into life. The cat’s walkthrough operated perfectly; the machine crawled steadily toward the surface. Pete rested his wounded leg on the cowling and let the earth flow smoothly past and through him.

  It was still snowing when the tractor broke through to the surface.

  The Doctor, sad to say was drunk. But his cures were out of this world

  THE LITTLE BLACK BAG

  By C. M. Kornbluth

  Old Dr. Full felt the winter in his bones as he limped down the alley. It was the alley and the back door he had chosen rather than the sidewalk and the front door because of the brown paper bag under his arm. He knew perfectly well that the flat-faced, stringy-haired women of his street and their gap-toothed, sour-smelling husbands did not notice if he brought a bottle of cheap wine to his room. They all but lived on the stuff themselves, varied with whiskey when pay checks were boosted by overtime. But Dr. Full, unlike them, was ashamed. A complicated disaster occurred as he limped down the littered alley. One of the neighborhood dogs—a mean little black one he knew and hated, with its teeth always bared and always snarling with menace—hurled at his legs through a hole in the board fence that lined his path. Dr. Full flinched, then swung his leg in what was to have been a satisfying kick to the animal's gaunt ribs. But the winter in his bones weighed down the leg. His foot failed to clear a half-buried brick, and he sat down abruptly, cursing. When he smelled unbottled wine and realized his brown paper package had slipped from under his arm and smashed, his curses died on his lips. The snarling black dog was circling him at a yard's distance, tensely stalking, but he ignored it in the greater disaster.

  With stiff fingers as he sat on the filth of the alley, Dr. Full unfolded the brown paper bag's top, which had been crimped over, grocer-wise. The early autumn dusk had come; he could not see plainly what was left. He lifted out the jug-handled top of his half gallon, and some fragments, and then the bottom of the bottle. Dr. Full was far too occupied to exult as he noted that there was a good pint left. He had a problem, and emotions could be deferred until the fitting time.

  The dog closed in, its snarl rising in pitch. He set down the bottom of the bottle and pelted the dog with the curved triangular glass fragments of its top. One of them connected, and the dog ducked back through the fence, howling. Dr. Full then placed a razor-like edge of the half-gallon bottle's foundation to his lips and drank from it as though it were a giant's cup. Twice he had to put it down to rest his arms, but in one minute he had swallowed the pint of wine.

  He thought of rising to his feet and walking through the alley to his room, but a flood of well-being drowned the notion. It was, after all, inexpressibly pleasant to sit there and feel the frost-hardened mud of the alley turn soft, or seem to, and to feel the winter evaporating from his bones under a warmth which spread from his stomach through his limbs.

  A three-year-old girl in a cut-down winter coat squeezed through the same hole in the board fence from which the black dog had sprung its ambush. Gravely she toddled up to Dr. Full and inspected him with her dirty forefinger in her mouth. Dr. Full's happiness had been providentially made complete; he had been supplied with an audience.

  "Ah, my dear," he said hoarsely. And then: "Preposterous accusation. 'If that's what you call evidence,' I should have told them, 'you better stick to your doctoring.' I should have told them: 'I was here before your County Medical Society. And the License Commissioner never proved a thing on me. So gennulmen, doesn't it stand to reason? I appeal to you as fellow members of a great profession?'

  The little girl bored, moved away, picking up one of the triangular pieces of glass to play with as she left. Dr. Full forgot her immediately, and continued to himself earnestly: "But so help me, they couldn'tprove a thing. Hasn't a man got any rights?" He brooded over the question, of whose answer he was so sure, but on which the Committee on Ethics of the County Medical Society had been equally certain. The winter was creeping into his bones again, and he had no money and no more wine.

  Dr. Full pretended to himself that there was a bottle of whiskey somewhere in the fearful litter of his room. It was an old and cruel trick he played on himself when he simply had to be galvanized into getting up and going home. He might freeze there in the alley. In his room he would be bitten by bugs and would cough at the moldy reek from his sink, but he would not freeze and be cheated of the hundreds of bottles of wine that he still might drink, and the thousands of hours of glowing content he still might feel. He thought about that bottle of whiskey— was it back of a mounded heap of medical journals? No; he had looked there last time. Was it under the sink, shoved well to the rear, behind the rusty drain? The cruel trick began to play itself out again. Yes, he told himself with mounting excitement, yes, it might be! Your memory isn't so good nowadays, he told himself with rueful good-fellowship. You know perfectly well you might have bought a bottle of whiskey and shoved it behind the sink drain for a moment just like this.

  The amber bottle, the crisp snap of the sealing as he cut it, the pleasurable exertion of starting the screw cap on its threads, and then the refreshing tangs in his throat, the wannth in his stomach, the dark, dull happy oblivion of drunkenness—they became real to him. You could have, you know! You couldhave! he told himself. With the blessed conviction growing in his mind—It could have happened, you know! It could have!—he struggled to his right knee. As he did, he heard a yelp behind him, and curiously craned his neck around while resting. It was the little girl, who had cut her hand quite badly on her toy, the piece of glass. Dr. Full could see the rilling bright blood down her coat, pooling at her feet.

  He almost felt inclined to defer the image of the amber bottle for her, but not seriously. He knew that it was there, shoved well to the rear under the sink, behind the rusty drain where he had hidden it. He would have a drink and then magnanimously return to help the child. Dr. Full got to his other knee and then his feet, and proceeded at a rapid totter down the littered alley toward his room, where he would hunt with calm optimism at first for the bottle that was not there, then with anxiety, and then with frantic violence. He would hurl books and dishes about before he was done looking for the amber bottle of whiskey, and finally would beat his swollen knuckles against the brick wall until old scars on them opened and his thick old blood oozed over his hands. Last of all, he would sit down somewhere on the floor, whimpering, and would plunge into the abyss of purgative nightmare that was his sleep.

  After twenty generations of shilly-shallying and "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," genus homo had bred itself into an impasse. Dogged biometricians had pointed out with irrefutable logic that mental subnormals were outbreeding mental normals and supemormals, and that the process was occurring on an exponential curve. Every fact that could be mustered in the argument proved the biometricians' case, an
d led inevitably to the conclusion that genus homo was going to wind up in a preposterous jam quite soon. If you think that had any effect on breeding practices, you do not know genus homo.

  There was, of course, a sort of masking effect produced by that other exponential function, the accumulation of technological devices. A moron trained to punch an adding machine seems to be a more skillful computer than a medieval mathematician trained to count on his fingers. A moron trained to operate the twenty-first century equivalent of a linotype seems to be a better typographer than a Renaissance printer limited to a few fonts of movable type. This is also true of medical practice.

  It was a complicated affair of many factors. The supemormals "improved the product" at greater speed than the subnormals degraded it, but in smaller quantity because elaborate training of their children was practiced on a custom-made basis. The fetish of higher education had some weird avatars by the twentieth generation: "colleges" where not a member of the student body could read words of three syllables; "universities" where such degrees as "Bachelor of Typewriting," "Master of Shorthand" and "Doctor of Philosophy (Card Filing)" were conferred with the traditional pomp. The handful of supernormals used such devices in order that the vast majority might keep some semblance of a social order going.

  Some day the supernormals would mercilessly cross the bridge; at the twentieth generation they were standing irresolutely at its approaches wondering what had hit them. And the ghosts of twenty generations of biometricians chuckled malignantly.