The Universe Maker

by A. E. van Vogt

  "We shall marry the survivors," said Ann Reece calmly. "It would be silly for a girl, particularly one in poor circumstances, to burden herself with a dead man's child."

  Cargill said drily, "When I lecture to the volor pilots I'll be happy to tell them the girls feel a civilian is the best bet for a husband."

  "I didn't say that. I said—"

  Cargill cut her off. He was not going to get anywhere with this girl and therefore the sooner he put her to flight the better. "And what," he asked, "about the man to whom you've so casually assigned the job of disengaging the pyramid switch in the heart of Shadow City? Do you mean to tell me he's not even going to get a kiss from a pretty girl?"

  He stepped forward and tried to take her in his arms. She evaded him and retreated to the door. Laughing, careful not to move so fast that he would actually catch her, Cargill followed. For one moment Ann Reece hesitated and then, her face scarlet with anger, she fled precipitantly along the corridor and up the broad stairs. He heard the door of her bedroom suite slam shut.

  His amusement faded quickly. Cool and intent, Car-gill hurried across to the French windows and out into the darkness. A minute later he was talking to Withrow, learning what he had half-expected—that it would require at least a month to set up the underground organization on the cell basis. The first week had shown the general speed of development that could be expected. Cargill's final comment was, "The important thing is that if anything goes wrong, individuals may suffer, but the organization itself will remain intact." They separated on that note.

  Later, on his way to his bedroom, he paused on impulse and knocked on Ann Reece's door. "May I come in?" he called.

  There was silence and then an outraged answer. "Don't you dare even try the door."

  Cargill twisted the knob noisily. The door was locked. He went on, smiling to himself, feeling quite without shame or guilt. He believed firmly with ninety percent of all the soldiers he had ever met that during war time every woman was a possible conquest—and how else could you find out her attitude unless you pursued her?

  Having started to pursue Ann Reece, he intended to continue. Though after he reached his room his thoughts drifted elsewhere. He lay in bed recalling the time he had been wounded in Korea and had experienced that sense offar awayness. "I've got to get the exact feeling," he thought.

  Presently it came to him. Moment after moment, he went through the experience, first moving through it chronologically, then in reverse. Each time he sought to pinpoint the moment when the shift from life to almost death had taken place. He noticed within himself a rising sense of excitement, an expectancy, a developing conviction that something was about to happen.

  Abruptly, there was an electrifying sensation all over his body. In the distance, he saw a golden ball spinning in space. It was so beautiful, he tried to close his eyes and look away. He couldn't. It was beauty incarnate.

  As he watched, he noticed that the ball emitted sparks as it spun. The sparks rushed off into space and took on spiral shapes. Now he noticed that the golden ball was made up of countless similar shapes which were part ofitself.

  "Why," he thought wonderingly, "it contains the entire physical universe. It is the universe."

  Something black swirled between him and the golden thing, hiding it, blotting it out. And he knew who the enemy was—blackness, nothingness.

  He felt an abrupt, unreasoning terror, a deadly panic. There was a blank, terrible urgency about the battle that was going on out there—here.

  The life-phase of the struggle was almost lost. Everyone connected with the gigantic conflict would go down in the disaster. Much had been expected from life-force, but it was turning out to be suppressive, unthinking— not creative. So low had the spirit sunk that even death did not bring awareness of identity. For long now, this same spirit had been caught in stereotyped life-traps; it no longer even suspected defeat. As things stood, any new major disaster could bring about final destruction. . . .

  Cargill grew slowly conscious of returning from a fantastic experience. He looked around the bedroom in Ann Reece's residence and wondered how wild a man's thoughts could become. "I'm going to have to stop this," he thought shakily. "A few more nightmares like that, and I'll begin to believe that the fate of the universe depends on this Tweener-Shadow fight."

  He was certainly getting results of a sort—he had to admit that. Whatever these strange dreams meant, they were phenomena; and, what was more important, he could apparently produce the weird manifestations at will. Two successes out of two attempts was not conclusive, but he had thought things, or rather, known things during the experiences that suggested entirely untouched trails of perception.

  There were thoughts about how space was drawn out of matter; thoughts about creation and destruction; orderly methods for tearing away the illusion that was the material universe; thoughts about the type of energy flows that had dealt with illusion and beauty.

  Beauty? Cargill remembered the glorious golden ball, and tensed. At the time, it had seemed the ultimate life-beginning, but it wasn't. He felt completely convinced of that, because beauty focused. Beauty was the light that kept the moth of life fluttering hopefully. It drew all attention, was the final goal of all endeavor. The far gleam of the beautiful kept a man straining all his life; and when somehow everything he grasped to him did not hold the radiance he had seen, he grew sad and sickly; and presently one of two things happened: The sadness either transformed into the apathy of death, or into the ecstatic apathy of another far-seen gleam of beauty—life after death.

  Beauty would be but one aspect of Prime Thought. Prime Thought would be but one aspect of—what?

  Cargill slept restlessly. He kept wakening with the memory of a golden ball so beautiful that twice he caught himself sobbing with excitement. Deliberately, he told himself to stop being a fool. After all, he'd need all the sleep he could get. It seemed to him finally that he had barely closed his eyes when Granger knocked on the door with the advice that: "Commander Greer called, sir, and a ship will be here to pick you up in an hour."

  There was no sign of Ann at breakfast, which reminded him that he had decided to pursue her. The trouble was that she evidently avoided him. During the days that followed he caught only fleeting glimpses of her. As he entered a room, she left it. Several tunes, she was leaving the house just as he was returning from a weary day. Every night, without fail, he tried her door. It was always locked, and only occasionally could he be sure that she was inside.

  A month went by. And still the secret organization was not of satisfactory size. The trouble, according to Withrow, was that men known to be opposed to the war adjusted slowly to the concept that a government could be seized from within. It was apparently a brand new idea in this remote age.

  For six weeks the air force kept Cargill busy. He was flown to distant stations to give his lectures and was able to form his first estimate of the size of the Tweenerland—the Tweeners called it America. This presumption, considering their small numbers, did much to indicate their lack of perspective.

  The new civilization was bounded on the west by the foothills of the Rockies, on the north by what Cargill guessed to be about the southern border of Montana, in the east by a line curving southwest from the lower tip of Lake Michigan, and in the south by northern Texas. Although it was a tremendous area for three million people to control, there was no doubt of this control.

  Cargill could imagine that eventually they would extend their domination over the entire continent. He learned that far-sighted Tweeners were already filing claims to vast acreage. He remembered the landless millions of the twentieth century, and it struck him that already the errors of the past were being repeated. "If I get out of this business alive," he told himself, "I'll try to put a stop to that."

  Wherever he looked he saw things he was better able to evaluate because of having witnessed end-results in his own age. A score of times he mentally filed away the notation, "I'll have to do something about
that— later."

  With each day that passed he convinced himself more completely that with his automatic knowledge he could be of enormous value to the people of this advanced age. It stiffened his will power. He walked straighter and with a firmer stride. He felt an alertness within himself, a will to action that also had behind it an enormous instinctive caution. He used words as if they were tools, perpetually aware of the possible danger that might at any moment confront him.

  This caution was proved sound one evening when he entered Ann Reece's house. He was walking along the carpeted hallway toward the living room, when he heard a man's emotional voice say, "I intend to kill you both the moment he comes."

  Cargill stopped as Ann shakily replied, "You're mad. You'll hang for this."

  "Shut up!" The voice was intense. "I know you. You started all this. You're the one that's associated with the Shadow, Grannis. I heard all about how he came to you a year ago and you've been his echo ever since."

  "I did not start it." Her answer was in a firmer tone. "The volors were already built, the plans made, when Grannis got in touch with me. I reported it to the government and I've been the contact with him ever since."

  "That's what I said." The man sounded tremendously satisfied. "You're the contact. With you and this new fellow dead, that'll stop the whole rotten business."

  Cargill heard no more. He was racing back toward the front door. He guessed that the would-be assassin had come in through the garden and was probably facing into the living room, watching the other entrances. Cargill slipped out of the door, went around the house, through the gate and—stealthily now, though still swiftly—moved across the terrace. One of the French windows was open. He crept up beside it, partly sheltered by the wooden frames. There he paused to determine the situation inside.

  The intruder was saying in a high-pitched tone, "My folks were Planiacs. They took the Shadow training and failed. But they came here and I was born into a good home. I had civilized upbringing, a decent education. I married a wonderful girl and I've got two fine kids. The Shadows made that possible." His voice lifted even higher. "You and those murderous scoundrels who planned the attack hate the Shadows because you all failed. Now you're trying to force the rest of us to your rotten notions. You want to destroy what you aren't smart enough to win."

  Cargill saw the man, a powerful-looking individual. His back was to the terrace, and a spitter was barely visible in his fingers. It pointed in the general direction of the girl.

  Ann Reece said scathingly, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a big man like you acting like a cowardly child. Have you thought of what's going to happen to your wife and children if you do anything foolish now?" Her voice was calm and forceful. She sounded as if she had got all her courage back. She said, "I'm going to give you one chance. Leave now and I won't report this. Quick, make up your mind."

  "I'll show you what mind I'm going to make up," the man said violently. He waved the spitter menacingly. "In just about one second—"

  He must have heard a sound or noticed a change of expression on Ann Reece's face for he started to turn. In that unbalanced position he was caught by Cargill's tackle. The big man went down heavily but firmly. Swiftly, brutally, Cargill plunged on top of him, aware that Ann Reece had snatched the spitter.

  "Get away from him," she yelled at Cargill. "I'll spit him."

  The stranger was also yelling. ."Help!" he called. "Manot! Gregory!"

  There was a sound. "All right," said a cold voice from the door. "Ann, put down that gun. Cargill, get up."

  Cargill hesitated and then, tense with the new danger, climbed to his feet. He was puzzled. The situation somehow seemed wrong. He turned slowly and saw the two men in the uniforms of volor pilots. The man who had spoken returned his gaze steadily.

  "Just testing, Captain, just testing," he said. "We've had reports about some kind of underground scheme and so we decided to try to get a reaction."

  Even as the man spoke, Cargill's mind darted over the events but found nothing out of the way. Ann ha d cted in character—why not? It was her character—and he himself had done only what could have been expected. He said slowly, "I hope you learned what you wanted."

  The pilot said with apparent frankness, "Exactly what we wanted." He bowed to Ann Reece, who was unusually pale. "I want to congratulate you, Miss Reece, on your courage. And don't blame us. Grannis suggested this test."

  To the big man, who was just getting up from the floor, he said curtly, "You put on a good act. But now come along."

  When they had gone Cargill walked over to the young woman and said, "That was very unkind of them. Here, you'd better sit down. They don't seem to realize what a shock a thing like this can be to the system."

  He was thinking, "Grannis again—what could the Shadow be up to?"

  Ann Reece allowed herself to be led to a chair. She looked up at him, her face still very white. She said in a low voice, "Thank you for saving my life, Captain."

  "I didn't actually save it," said Cargill. "After all, it was a fake menace."

  She said stiffly, "You didn't know that when you made the attack. I don't know how I can ever repay you."

  "Forget it. I thought I was saving my own as well."

  She seemed not to hear. "They were testing me," she said. "Me!" She seemed overwhelmed.

  Cargill started to say something but stopped himself. For the first tune he realized that this girl was undergoing a profound emotional experience. He watched her sharply for a few moments, then reached down and took her hand. "I think you'd better go to your room and lie down," he said.

  She let him lead her. At the door of her bedroom, she stopped. A touch of color came into her cheeks. She didn't look at him. "Captain," she said, "tonight I realized what you meant about war being different from any idea that I had of it. And I'm sorry for my share in bringing you into this desperate danger. Can you ever forgive me?"

  Cargill thought of the imminent rebellion and said coolly, "I'm in. I've accepted the idea. I'll fight with everything I've got to make sure that I survive." He added, "You'd better lie down."

  He opened the door for her. She stepped through and there was more color in her face as she gave him a quick glance. She said breathlessly, "Captain, you said something once about a reward for a soldier . . . Tonight, when you try the knob of this door, you'll find that it ... turns."

  She slipped all the way in. The door closed gently. The faint perfume of her presence lingered. Cargill walked slowly on to his own room. He was more touched than he cared to admit. The only annoyance was, when he tried the door an hour later it was locked.

  Cargill stood with one hand on the knob, baffled, a little irritated, not quite ready to give up. Most of the girls he had gone after in his career did not fall easily into a man's arms. Affinity had to be established; and apparently in Ann's case, the rescue hadn't been enough. He was still standing, undecided, when he heard a sound inside. The next instant the door opened, and the girl's strangely pale face peered through a crack about three inches wide. Cargill could see that she wore a blue negligee with not much else on underneath.

  She whispered, "I just can't go through with what I said. I'm sorry."

  Cargill sighed as many a man had before him in a similar situation. But now that he had a conversation started, he was not prepared to let go. "May I come in and talk to you? I swear you don't have to be afraid of me."

  She hesitated, and he seized the opportunity to push gently at the door. At that, she yielded, and retreating into the bedroom, turned on a bedside light, and crept into the bed. Protectively, she drew a soft pink quilt about her. It failed to hide the tanned skin that was visible through her negligee above the waist. Cargill took one of the pillows, placed it against the headboard. Seating himself on the bed, he relaxed back against the pillow.

  "How old are you, Ann?" he asked gently.

  "Twenty-four'." She looked at him questioningly.

  "If you hadn't backed out of this promise
tonight," Cargill asked frankly, "would I have been your first lover?"

  She hesitated, then shrugged. Something of her blase manner came back. She laughed curtly. "No, I tried sex once when I was seventeen. Something must have been , wrong because all I can remember is pain, pain, pain. I've got to admit that scared me." She laughed again, tensely. "I've heard good reports about it since then."

  "Where I come from," said Cargill, "seventy per cent of women are frigid because their husbands never learned the first simple principles of lovemaking. They're not really frigid, you understand, as many a soldier can tell you about many a so-called frigid wife of another man." He broke off. "Is it that seventeen year old memory that holds you back now?"

  She was silent. "I did think of it." she admitted. She began to laugh suddenly, hysterically. "My dear," she said, when she could control herself, "I'm sure this is really the funniest conversation I've had in a long time. Come on over here before I trap myself with words. I'm very skillful at talking myself into emotional corners."

  From that moment, Ann Reece was his girl.

  15

  She didn't realize how completely she was his at first. She had no idea how much emotion went along with a physical commitment. If she had been experienced it might have been different. She might have been able to divide herself, figuratively, into two individuals, on the one hand the patriot, on the other the mistress of the prisoner.

  The patriot, in spite of the rude shock of the test, remained fairly intact for five days. At that point she had her first breakdown. Thereafter, she cried easily in Cargill's presence. On the eighth day she came out openly with the suggestion that they find some method of escape. Her plans were vague, curiously impractical for someone who had been so hard-headed. She had a fine contempt for Cargill's objections. Half a dozen tunes within the space of a few days she lost her temper with him.