‘No, it won’t do’, he says.
Karen resumes her normal size.
‘We aren’t really living at all’, he says. ‘You’re just as unreal as all
your doubles.’
‘What kind of nonsense is that? Anyhow, we have a good time.
Any one of my doubles is just as good at satisfying you as I am.’
She leaves him in a huff. He is about to run after her but, un-
accustomed as he is to walking, he stumbles over some of her clothes.
As he falls the ring scrapes against the floor. It begins to grow larger.
*
*
*
*
*
Stig is sitting on the ground. They have seated themselves in a circle—
many, many of them. All have their eyes closed and all are completely
relaxed. They feel each other, they are each other. Stig feels a single
large body which is the entire group and which inhales and exhales in
unison like one large organism.
Until one of them says, ‘Now we are waking up’.
They open their eyes and look happily around at each other.
‘And now we are completely awake.’
They get up and move about. Their legs come in contact with the
ground and carry them forward with light, buoyant steps. Their arm
movements add to the effect.
‘Am I dreaming or am I awake?’, Stig’s voice whispers within him
as he moves to and fro. ‘At last I’m fully awake again.’
Intense colours flicker before his eyes, the field stretches out into
infinity. Everything is completely new and everything is familiar.
New, fantastic shapes hover before him. Beautiful, familiar objects are
within his reach.
A radiant young woman stumbles over a stone. The pain she feels is
transmitted to him. He reaches out and helps her up. He feels her pain
in his knee and banishes it with a cooling hand. He smiles at her
gratefully.
The Good Ring
79
Together they walk over to the tree. She reaches up and plucks a
piece of fruit. She hands it to him, he takes it, holds it in his hand,
turns it slowly around. It is a world with everything in it, it is
everything they are familiar with, it is everything new.
‘It is a world with everything in it, is everything we are familiar
with, it is everything new’, she says in a voice that simply floats off
into space.
‘It is the beginning, it is the end. Do you see it?’, he adds.
‘It is sleep, and it is the sleep that we call life, and it is the waking state that is ours’, she says, and her smile dissolves into his.
They share the fruit, they touch each other’s fingers and let their
happiness flow from one to the other. They feel the group around
them. They are themselves, they are the same person, and they are
the group.
He shows her the ring he has just found. She touches it and
carefully turns it round.
‘Are we really awake?’, says Stig.
‘We are happy’, says the cautious voice that clings around him.
‘Is what we call our waking state nothing but a dream to other
people?’, says Stig.
‘We are happy’, says the cautious voice that clings around him.
Stig shuts his eyes and comes to life in the ordinary sense. He wants
to grab hold of her, but in his mundane clumsiness he stumbles. As he
falls the ring scrapes the ground. It begins to grow larger.
*
*
*
*
*
Everything is white, and there is nothing, Stig is in nothing and on
nothing. There is no earth beneath his feet, there is no sky above him.
‘You have paid a visit to the three worlds that are in the same stage
of development as yours and that were established under the same
conditions as yours’, Krr explains.
‘I can tell that you are now a little more convinced that our account
of things is correct’, says Sst-Sst. ‘But it’s only reasonable that you
should have time to get used to the thought.’
‘You were in the three worlds at the same time, but we had to let
you experience them one at a time’, Fffh explains.
‘There is something I don’t understand’, says Stig. ‘Which of the
four worlds is the authentic model, which of them brings us up to
you? Which is historically correct?’
‘We can’t answer that question because it is not correctly put. There
80
Svend A
˚ ge Madsen
is not simply one truth. You people must have found that out, haven’t
you?’
‘No’, says Fffh, shaking all of his large head. ‘That will only happen
somewhat after his time, to its full extent, that is.’
‘Incredible!’, says Krr.
‘We have to assure you that all four worlds are real, and therefore
historically correct.’
‘But then do you come from several different planets? Did you
three originate in different places?’
‘No, we all come from one world—the one you call Earth. But all
four models of the Earth that you visited are authentic and exist
simultaneously.’
‘What is going to happen to me?’, Stig asks, on his guard.
‘We merely wanted to show you the various possibilities. Now you
yourself must decide which world of those you visited you want to be
put down on—that is, where you’ll spend the rest of your life.’
Feeling cheered up, Stig looks at the three Brains.
‘You—you mean I can make my own choice—any of the three
places?’, Stig stammers. ‘Why, there can be no doubt about it . . . And
yet I don’t want to do anything rash. It means too much to me, you
know.’
Stig begins to consider the three possibilities. Throughout the
conversation the three Brains have been flashing lights and transmit-
ting thoughts to each other. They have a bet on, and they have
brought Stig up to let him make his choice. Each has placed its money
on the particular world that is its personal object to study, since each
is convinced that it cannot help being considered the best.
‘Why weren’t you satisfied with showing me only one of them?’,
Stig says. ‘Then I would have felt much more certain of my choice.
You should have sent me to the first one—the one that resembled my
own, where I was happy and could have things the way I wanted
them.’
‘Does that mean you prefer that one?’, says Krr.
‘No—just wait a moment. Those machines were really marvellous. I
don’t suppose I’d be allowed to mix things up a bit, would I? I mean a
little of that happiness, a bit of the machines and a little of the colours.
Such a combination would be utterly and fantastically good.’
Stig is made uncomfortable by the way the three Brains stare at
him.
‘Regardless of how I choose, I’ll always be wondering whether I
made the right choice.’
The Good Ring
81
Although the Brains seem very patient, he feels hard pressed
because of their overwhelming mental faculties.
‘After all, you’re not offering me worlds at all, but only images of
> them. How do you expect people to live in them? It’s simple enough
for you—you know that your world is the right one, whereas I . . .’
‘We’re not actually so sure’, says Fffh, suddenly looking serious.
‘Our most recent investigations have turned up some disquieting
material.’
Alarmed, Stig looks from one to the other of the superior beings to
make sure they are not merely pulling his leg.
‘But that doesn’t concern you’, says Sst-Sst. ‘You won’t remember
this experience very long. It’s all so improbable that you’ll soon begin
to think it’s nothing but a story you heard. And fortunately you don’t
put much stock in stories.
*
*
*
*
*
Stig is standing on solid ground. He looks around.
‘There is something that has to be done over’, he mutters.
He grasps the ring on his finger. With some difficulty he pulls it off.
For a moment he looks through it as if through a telescope, but
nothing catches his eye. Then he violently casts it away. He hears a
faint sound as it lands.
He blinks his eyes. ‘That was a strange story’, he says to himself. ‘It’s a good thing it’s only a story—one that I wouldn’t care for if it were
true.’
He is annoyed because of the innate irascibility that has led him to
throw the ring away. ‘But that’s the way things are in the world—a
person no sooner gets hold of something valuable than he throws it
away. Well, that’s how it is, and there’s nothing one can do about it.’
Although it strains his back to do so, he stoops over and picks up a
sharp stone. With it he begins to scrape away the sores on his arm.
translated by CARL MALMBERG
GERMANY
Slum
HERBERT W. FRANKE
‘We’re not here to pass judgement on anybody’, said Vertain, the
chairman of the Commission. ‘We’re here to find out what happened.
Just the facts: straight, accurate, and objective. Without any emo-
tionalism. That’s all.’
They sat in the Institute’s little conference room, the specialists
from the Office of Investigation and the members of the expedition
team—the ones who had returned, that is. The only movement in the
room came from a five-year-old girl whose image was projected onto
the giant videoscreen. Although she was surrounded by toys, the
child showed no interest in anything except the candy that had been
set out for her. She played with the colourful foil-wrapped bonbons,
alternately tucking them behind the pillows and stuffed animals and
then retrieving them, only to find another hiding place after a
cautious look around.
Vertain turned to the heavy-set man at the far right of the row of
team members. ‘Why don’t you start off, Govin?’
‘All right.’
Govin tore his eyes away from the child playing on the screen. In
a slightly hesitant voice, he began to speak. ‘You all know the
background. The Institute for Ecological Research needed some
data. A change in the composition of the outer air had been
registered—there’d been an increase in carbon dioxide and nitrogen,
and the bacteria count was up as well. Our job was to find out why.
The government issued a special permit for us to go on to the
mainland.’
The chairman filled in the silence with a question. ‘Were you given
adequate equipment?’
‘Of course. We had everything we needed—food, water, respiratory
filters, medication—’
‘But no weapons’, put in Petrovski, the chief technician at the
Institute.
‘No, no weapons; whatever for? At that point, we had no idea—I
mean, who would have imagined that—out there—’ Govin’s glance
involuntarily strayed to the window. A shaft of milky green light fell
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83
across the floor of the room. ‘We thought the outside world was dead.
After all, it’d been years since anyone had left the suboceanic cities.’
‘That’s just it’, said Petrovski.
Vertain waved his hand, a gesture of impatience. ‘Go on’, he told
Govin.
‘We took three special vehicles, each one with its own supply
system: living quarters below, a control cabin on the upper level, and
a quartz dome. They were hermetically sealed against bacteria, and
had some lead content—to act as a radiation shield. One tank for
every two men. The sluice ferry dropped us off.’
‘What did it look like—out there?’, asked Ruarka, the biologist.
‘At first everything looked just like the descriptions—ruins of
suburbs, mountains of garbage, dust, fog . . . And the sun—the sun
was nothing more than a flat disc of haze.’
‘Any animals? Plants?’
‘No animals at first’, Govin replied. ‘Later on we came across some
rats. Big fat ones, much bigger than the ones you read about in the
Chronicles. There must have been a thousand of them gathered on an
empty spot between the ruins of a wall. Murray and I climbed out to
catch a few specimens. We had our protective suits on, of course, and
were prepared for a real hunt, nets and all. But they didn’t try to run
away. In fact, they came right up to us. Didn’t attack us, either. They
sniffed at our boots, climbed up our legs—they even let us pick them
up with our hands.’
‘They’ve been examined in the meantime’, Ruarka added. ‘They’re
white rats, albinos. And they’re well fed, almost as if they’d been
fattened up.’
‘That should have made us stop and think right there’, said Govin.
‘But we had to keep going if we wanted to penetrate several miles into
the interior, as we’d planned. It was rough going, too. We kept hitting
up against masses of viscous material, decaying garbage that would
give way every once in a while. At one point Anthony’s tank sank
halfway into the muck, and that was some job, fishing it out with
steel ropes.
‘Later on we ran across our first hint about that change in air
composition. We came on a river bed where the water had dammed
up: a bridge had collapsed, there were garbage deposits, and the water
seepage had created pools, like miniature lakes, their shores covered
with a grey-green film of algae or fungi.’
‘Some sort of symbiosis’, Ruarka explained. ‘Algae and bacteria with
an unusual metabolic system. They release nitrogen and consume—’
84
Herbert W. Franke
Vertain broke in. ‘Maybe all they need to see is the report. It’s all
stored in the data bank under UP 7/CURRENT.’
‘I might just add that the presence of these organisms doesn’t
explain the increase in nitrogen’, said Ruarka. ‘Not by a long shot.’
There was a moment of silence. Vertain thumbed through the stack
of photocopies in his mind.
‘There might have been other clues farther on in the interior.’
‘We never got that far’, Govin reported. ‘After that point, our
problems began to mount up. First a building c
ollapsed right in front
of our eyes; we barely escaped being buried by the debris. Then Larry
drove his tank into a kind of trough. There was some sort of murky
liquid, pools of it, at the bottom. We thought it was water, but it turned out to be sulphuric acid. The chain drive gears were eaten away, and
the tank stalled—we had to leave it behind. That meant we were
working with two tanks and had to divide the living space among three
men. It was a little tight, but that was no reason to turn back.
‘The next night we had that business with the cobalt tank. We’d
been keeping the Geiger counters running, and rarely ran into a hot
zone. We’d been particularly careful about checking the areas where
we planned to spend the night, of course, and we’d done the same
thing this time. Everything was fine. But when we woke up the next
morning, the needles were jumping like crazy. We got out of the
radiation zone as fast as we could; then we took a look. Under Ed’s car
there was a lead tank containing cobalt.
‘Uncovered. And the gama radiation field had reached our camp
site.’
‘You didn’t suspect anything then?’, Petrovski asked. A shadow fell
across the faces of the team members: dark clouds of smoke were
drifting past the window. Vertain switched on the lighting discs.
‘Not exactly’, Govin answered. ‘We were in a basin, after all. The
tank might have slid down by itself. Besides, we knew how careless
the cities had been with radioactive residue.’
Ruarka put a hand up. ‘Hadn’t you been taking the safety precau-
tions a little lightly yourselves?’
‘We took every precaution imaginable’, Govin assured him. ‘We
didn’t feel as safe as we had in the beginning. But that’s what made us
wonder whether we weren’t imagining things. There were certain—
signs . . .’
‘What kind of signs?’
‘Falling rubbish—the bridge that had just collapsed—tracks . . . But
they could just as easily have been caused by natural events.’
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85
‘What effect did the radiation exposure have on the men?’, Doctor
Griscoll asked.
‘Slight nausea. That passed, though; only Larry never recovered.
He’d been nearest to the tank.’
‘And got the highest dose’, Griscoll added.
‘Then the accident happened. We passed several mountains of
piled-up rubbish. They were burning—even from a distance we
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 15
