New Writings in SF 22 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  It was in the Directive: the winches must always turn. Again: however fertile the soil of one region, there will always be more to come.

  Navigator Jase stood silently to one side of the platform. He was not scheduled to speak, though many of those who did invoked his name.

  ‘—the city will founder on any bridge across that river. Our Bridge-Builders are skilled, but before they have always had an opposite bank on which to lay foundations-’

  Bridges must be built to cross water. Paths must be diverted to avoid high mountains or deep chasms.

  ‘—our Surveyors have proved that we cannot avoid the river. We must stop, or we must cross that river. There is no hope of our crossing that water safely-’

  At all times, we must be fully prepared for what is to come. Men must go out to the north of the city, and survey for us a safe passage. Their word must be followed absolutely.

  ‘—the Navigators are navigating us to our destruction. Now is the time to terminate our journey before it is too late-’

  I have created the Council of Navigators. In the Council I vest the safety of the city of Earth. The Council’s decisions must never be questioned.

  The speaker stepped down, and another climbed up to the tiny platform. During this interval, Mann tried to count the size of the audience. There had been a census in the city recently which had revealed a population of just over eight hundred people; Mann estimated that at least half that number were in the square.

  The new speaker was one unknown to Future Mann. He claimed to have a scientific training, and could present scientific arguments for the case of the Terminators.

  Future Mann did not give him all his concentration; he had heard many of these quasi-scientific notions before in private. But one sentence caught his attention: a question he had never heard asked before.

  ‘—the Navigators say that we must continue northwards, for no living thing could survive to the south. I ask you this. We are all familiar with the herds of wild animals that we often encounter, with the natural fruits and vegetables that we find. These are living beings ... they require a stable climate and a natural environment in which to grow. They come down from the north, we take what we want, and allow the rest to pass on to the south. Do they go to a region where nothing can survive?’

  Future Mann frowned. There was silence in the tightly-packed square.

  * * * *

  There was a long period of inactivity inside the transporter. In answer to Gerdun Mann’s question—’Why me?’ —Langham had been evasive for the first time.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘But I think I may be able to show you.’

  For a long period, the camera had rested on the scene of activity around the building of the bridge. A storm had blown up during the night, and in spite of the best efforts of the men there, considerable damage had been inflicted. Now, in the morning, the wind had dropped but the sea was still high. With considerable bravery, work on the bridge continued.

  Occasionally, the operator panned the camera back towards the station and Langham watched the screen attentively, instructing the operator to zoom in to a close-up on selected men. After two hours of this, Langham beckoned to Mann.

  ‘This is the one. Look at him.’

  Gerdun Mann stared. Framed unsteadily in the screen— the camera-lens had zoomed in to its maximum focal length—was a man riding a horse. He rode alone towards the bridge-site, his head bent down thoughtfully.

  ‘Recognise him?’

  Gerdun shook his head...not in denial, but in surprise.

  ‘He looks like me.’

  ‘That’s why you were chosen. You were located by a matching of your appearance on the central photo-ident file.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Langham signalled to the cameraman to keep the horseman in view.

  ‘We’ve got less than fifteen days before the transliteration window reaches the coast. Before that happens, we’ve got to divert the station towards the window and get it through. If we don’t, the people in the station—and they number several hundred—will try to float across the Atlantic on a home-made bridge. You’ve already seen what one inshore storm will do to the bridge.

  ‘If they decide not to cross the water, they will be obliged to stop. The transliteration window will not stop, and it will pass on over the sea. Once that happens, we have no hope at all of rescuing them.’

  ‘But I don’t see what I can do on my own.’

  Langham gestured towards the image of Mann’s double. ‘We want you to impersonate that man, infiltrate the station. Inside it there is Destaine’s original graviton field-generator. All you have to do is switch it on ... we can do the rest from here.’

  ‘And supposing I can’t find it?’

  ‘You will. We have plans of the original construction.’

  ‘If it’s so simple, why do we have to go to the lengths of impersonating one of the men?’

  ‘Because it isn’t that simple. We’ve had great difficulty in communicating with the people. We can pass to and fro through the window, but to do so we have to wear portable transliteration gear. This is bulky and very heavy, and we presume that the appearance of the men who wear it frightens the people. We’ve made several attempts to approach them, but we succeed only in provoking a violent attack.’

  Mann said: ‘These suits have to be worn all the time?’

  ‘No. But as I said, they’re bulky and it takes time and several assistants to put them on or take them off.’

  ‘And you’ve never succeeded in communicating with, the people?’

  Langham shook his head.

  ‘The last few attempts have been made by the army. We issued them with hypodermic guns, hoping to stun the defenders ... but they’ve fought back in earnest. General Dula has lost several men, and we’ve had to suspend that kind of operation indefinitely.’

  ‘What does force ever achieve?’

  ‘In this case we hoped, in lieu of being able to communicate with them directly, that we could forcibly alter the course of the station and bring it nearer the window. Then we could bring the people through one by one. But as I say, this has had to be abandoned now. Our only hope is to activate the generator that transliterated the whole station originally and bring everyone through in one move.’

  ‘So you want me to go in alone, and do this myself.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Langham looked again at the screen. Mann’s double rode on northwards, alone. ‘We can’t order you to do this ... all we can do is request it.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘We send in Dula’s men again.’

  ‘Would that work?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  * * * *

  Future Mann stayed five days at the construction site, encouraged in some ways at the renewed progress of the pontoons, but alarmed by reports from new arrivals from the city. On Mann’s last day at the site. Future Colne arrived from the city and spoke privately to him.

  The Terminators had made a formal representation to the Council, requesting that the city be stopped and the planned crossing abandoned. After due consideration, the Council had decided to continue with the bridge. Navigator Jase had promptly resigned, committed himself overtly to the Terminator cause and was now their leading spokesman.

  There had been a confrontation between some of the Terminators and a group of Militiamen, and a riot had developed. In the chaos, some of the Terminators had managed to sever one of the cables.

  The city had been stopped, but only temporarily, and only long enough for the transfer to direct drive to be effected. The city was now independent of the tracks and cables, and needed only a comparatively rough-laid path on which to travel.

  As a result of this the Cable and Track Guildsmen were freed from their normal tasks and were coming to reinforce the work on the bridge. Most of the Militiamen, too, were being relieved of their work. The Council considered this an acceptable risk, in view of the recent lack of raider act
ivity.

  ‘So it’s a total concentration on the bridge from now on ?’ said Mann.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  They both stared at the pontoon bridge, stretching for two or three hundred yards into the water.

  Later in the day. Future Mann started his return to the city. He rode alone as he always did, with some misgivings about what he would find in the city. There had never been riots on Earth before, and he was wondering what damage he would find.

  In the five days he had been away the city had covered more than a mile in time and was now only a short riding distance from the bank of the river. He knew that the Navigators in their raised cockpit could see the bridge, and would be heading directly for it.

  Lost in thought, worried about what he would find in the city, frightened of what the future held for him and for everyone. Future Mann did not notice the five men until they had surrounded him. One of them grabbed his horse’s bridle, and forced him to stop.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mann said, jumping to the immediate conclusion that they were Terminators. He recognised none of them.

  The men made no reply, and instead led his horse to one side, away from the city. Future Mann repeated his question, but there was still no response. Mann looked in the direction in which he was being led, wondering why he should be moved away from the city.

  Then his gaze fell on a large, dark figure ... and he recognised it at once. A raider!

  He pulled hard on the horse’s rein, trying to pull her head round, and dug his heels into her sides. She reared up, hooves flailing.

  ‘Catch him!’ someone shouted, and one of the men managed to seize hold of Mann’s leg. He tried to kick free, but an instant later something hard and sharp was driven into his shin. The man hung on, and two of the others reached for the bridle.

  Future Mann found that his resistance was weakening. Slowly, the horse was brought under control ... and he slumped in his saddle. He fell sideways, and was caught by two of the men.

  Fully conscious, but unable to move, Future Mann was carried towards the raider. Behind him, his horse was being led.

  What followed was for Mann partly incomprehensible and partly nightmarish. The raider stood waiting, and there appeared to be a dead or unconscious raider lying on the ground nearby. This dead raider was lifted up, and fitted around his shoulders. Mann could not resist, could not struggle, but a great and uncontrollable fear swelled in him.

  When the dead raider was fitted about him, he was lifted and carried once more. This time, it was for a shorter distance.

  And then, totally inexplicably, he found himself in a metal room where several men stood waiting.

  * * * *

  Five

  Gerdun Mann walked through the transliteration window, and nearly fell. He had been warned that the ground would appear to change instantaneously from being level to a forty-five degree angle; but he was still unprepared for it when it came. He recovered immediately, discovering that once one was through the window the ground felt as if it were level.

  A technician was waiting for him on the other side. Two more technicians followed him through the window, and the three of them helped Mann take off his transliteration equipment, a hitherto unacceptable risk. A horse was tethered nearby.

  Wearing the clothes that had been taken from Future Mann, he went to the horse. He had never ridden a horse, and there hadn’t been time to learn, so he was obliged to lead it.

  He stood still for a moment, patting the horse’s neck and regarding his surroundings. Once again he had been prepared for what he was to see by what the television camera had shown him; but that was no substitute for actually being here.

  To his left was the sea. He could see the shore less than a mile away, and beyond that the surface of the sea rose up northwards until it vanished in the haze. He could just hear the sound of the surf, smell the salt on the breeze that blew from the coast.

  Ahead of him, and slightly to his right, was the station. Behind it, he could see the track that had been abandoned, and the last of the cable-stay emplacements.

  And behind that... the ground rose up once more. It was a dizzying, vertiginous feeling, looking at the ground as if viewed from an impossibly high cliff.

  He looked away, remembering Langham’s warning that some of his men had been made physically nauseated by the sight, their senses unable to comprehend the limitless nature of the surface of this world.

  He paused a while longer, trying to get his bearings.

  One difficulty for him was that north on this world was not the same as north on his. To the people of the station, their way led up the side of the planet, towards the infinitely distant north pole. But the analogous direction on Earth was one hundred and ten degrees away from this, almost south-west. Langham had been unable to account for this; logically, north on this planet should be north on Earth ... but that was not the way.

  He glanced up at the sun, catching a glimpse of its cross-shape before the brilliance forced him to look away. He rubbed his eyes, looked over towards the station and began leading the horse in that direction.

  He had no idea what to expect. He was the first man from true Earth to go into Destaine’s station since it vanished. No one on Earth was even sure about what common language was employed, even though their captive had shown that he spoke a recognizable English. He had Langham’s plan of Destaine’s station as it was first built; but even the most superficial glance at it confirmed that it had been much changed and expanded since then.

  Mann was confident, though, that he would be able to find the graviton field-generator. It was situated in the reactor-room, in the base of the station, and it was so large a piece of equipment that it was unlikely that it would have been moved.

  He walked right up to the edge of the station, passing several men on the way. One or two nodded to him, and he returned the greeting in kind. He kept his movements purposeful so that he wouldn’t be detained in conversation.

  He found himself at the side of the station.

  The main base was some twenty feet above the ground, and beneath it he could see some of the drive machinery. The mechanism was crude. As far as he could see, an arrangement of wheels was geared up to three large winches placed deep in the centre. The wheels looked ill-suited to the work they were doing, and Mann recalled Langham telling him that once the station had been fitted with caterpillar tracks. These wheels as such were probably once the runners for those tracks.

  From where he was standing, he could see no entry into the station. He walked the horse round to the station front, remembering that most of the movements to and from the station had been seen here.

  Directly at the front of the station, beneath the main base, there was a wide tunnel. He led the horse in, expecting her to rear ... but she was evidently accustomed to the tunnel and walked quietly behind him.

  To each side of him, Gerdun Mann now saw several doorways with staircases behind them, evidently leading up to the interior of the station. He walked for a short distance, wondering which one he should take.

  Suddenly a voice called out: ‘I’ll take the horse, sir.’

  Mann turned round. A young boy was standing a few feet away from him.

  ‘You needn’t bother with her. Future. I’ll take her in.’

  ‘Er—thanks.’ Mann walked the horse over to the boy and handed him the rein.

  ‘Are you going up into the city, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Be careful. Future Mann. There’s a lot of trouble up there.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Fighting, and some shooting. I heard about an hour ago that they were trying to set fire to the city.’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘Well, I hear the fires are out. But there’s still a lot of fighting. Of course, you’ve been north a few days, you haven’t seen the worst.’ The boy looked closely at Mann. ‘Don’t worry about your family, sir. Most of the women and children have been evacuated until the troubl
e’s dealt with. They’ll be back in the main part of the city by the time we reach the bridge.’

  ‘Where are they now ?’

  ‘They’re in the hospital, sir. They’re quite safe.’

  ‘Good. I’ll go and see them.’

  Gerdun Mann nodded to the boy, and headed for the nearest staircase. He walked up the flight of stairs and emerged in a narrow passageway, bounded on each side by what looked like wooden buildings. Several people pushed past him, and in the near distance he heard the sound of shouting.

  He walked down the passageway, and came to a slightly wider one.