The Universe Maker

by A. E. van Vogt

  "What?" asked Cargill with automatic absorption. She shrugged. "It's really very simple. For your own private reasons you've been doing things for months. We don't know why but it brought you to our attention."

  Cargill was captious. "No one has investigated my reasons?"

  The woman smiled. "Naturally not. But now—it's customary for me to explain what our work is."

  Cargill restrained the questions that quivered on his lips. He forced himself to sit back. He watched the woman intently as she spoke.

  "We Shadows," she began, "are trying to undo the effects of the psychological disaster that demoralized the human race, beginning in the twentieth century. The pressure of civilization was apparently too much for millions of people. Everywhere men sought escape and they found the means late in 1980 in the newly invented floaters. When it became apparent that a mass flight from civilization was under way psychologists searched frantically for the causes. Naturally, in accordance with their training, they looked into the immediate past of each individual and so it was only gradually that they learned the truth.

  "It turned out to be a combination of inherited weakness and justified withdrawal from intolerable pressures. But man can build any civilization he desires. So the problem was to free him by nullifying the experiences and disasters that had befallen the affected protoplasmic lines, sometimes one, sometimes many generations earlier. Jung, one of the pioneer analysts, suspected its existence very early. He called it the ancestral shadow. After many years of experiment, a technique was developed for reaching into the past and rectifying to some extent the effects of the original disaster.

  "The results are becoming more apparent to us every year. Planiacs are accepting our training in ever-increasing numbers. Unfortunately, since they start from such a low level of culture, most of them fail in their purpose. The result of the test, I must explain, is something we cannot control. It is purely mechanical. The individual either responds to the training and becomes a Shadow or does not respond and so gains only the educational benefits that enable him to become a Tweener. But the Shadow shape depends on a balance within the individual. We know how that balance functions but we have no artificial method for producing it. Do you understand that?"

  Cargill said, genuinely interested, "What types of people generally succeed?"

  "Your type," said Moira. She stood up. She pointed at a closed door to his right, which till that instant he hadn't noticed. "You go through there. Good luck."

  Cargill stood up uncertainly but he opened the door. There was a grassy lawn outside and a spread of flowering shrubs that hid his view. He stepped across the threshold, walked around the shrubbery and saw with a start that he was inside Shadow City.

  With a hissing intake of his breath Cargill stopped. He was on a plateau, looking down at the city proper. But how had he come here so quickly? It was a mile at least to the terminal center where he had reported.

  In spite of his previous knowledge of their method of transportation he felt compelled to turn around and investigate. When he looked he saw that there was a shallow cliff behind him. It was about fifty feet high and it was covered with growth. Flowers of every hue peered from among shining green leaves, and the dry cool air was heavy with the blended perfume.

  For a moment, Cargill stood there, breathing deeply in relaxed enjoyment, and then he saw the door. It was in the side of the cliff. He went to it and it seemed ordinary enough. On impulse he turned the knob, pushed and stepped through. He was back in terminal center.

  The woman was still at her desk. "Curious?" she asked.

  Cargill said intently, "How does it work?"

  She pointed up at the top of the door frame. "There's a tube up there. It focuses on you as you step over the threshold."

  "Is it instantaneous?"

  She shook her head. "Not exactly."

  Cargill hesitated. Another thought had struck him. There had been no resistance to his returning here. The "training" Ann Reece had given him had, earlier, prevented him from so much as turning, around, but now he had come back a mile and a half.

  "If I could tell this woman about Grannis," he thought tensely.

  He parted his lips, swallowed, tried again but no words came. He guessed the explanation. His return this time had been natural, had had nothing to do with opposition to the "training." The moment, however, that he had consciously tried to take advantage of the situation the pressure resumed. He found himself struggling against the inhibition as he stood there. It was a silent fight but desperate for all that. He could think the words. He could even imagine the exact shape his mouth should take to utter them. But they didn't come. He swallowed again and gave it up. He said quietly, "I guess I'd better be going."

  He stepped through the door and found himself once more in the park. A minute later he was walking along a pathway when he heard the sweet sound of a child's laughter. A woman said something in a pleasant voice. Presently mother and daughter—Cargill assumed the relationship—emerged from behind a large path. Car-gill watched them till they moved out of sight behind a line of brush. He tried to envision this city, its protective screen gone, attacked by swarms of volors. It was a deadly scene he saw and it stiffened him.

  "The Tweeners are just a bunch of murderers," he thought grimly, "so long as they intend to carry through with that plan. I'll wreck that notion if it's the last thing I ever do."

  From where he stood on the hillside, he could see a park with dozens of floaters standing in neat rows. There seemed to be no one around. Cargill headed down and came presently to the entrance of the park. A small signboard there stated:

  NEWCOMERS Use These Floaters

  GOTO Square Building AT CENTER OF CITY

  Cargill climbed into one of the machines, guided it up and in the indicated direction. He had no difficulty finding the square building. It was surrounded by a series of round structures, and on its roof was a huge sign that spelled out: TRAINING CENTER. Another smaller sign said:

  Land on Roof.

  Once out of the floater Cargill followed a line of arrows to a doorway, down a flight of marble stairs and into a marble corridor. Both sides of the hall were lined with transparent plexiglass doors. At a great desk behind a counter to his left sat a woman. Stepping over to her, Cargill identified himself a little nervously and waited while she consulted a folder.

  "You will receive your first training," she said pleasantly, "in cubicle eleven. It's down the corridor to your right." She smiled at him. "Good luck."

  His heels clacked on the marble floor as he walked, giving him an assured feeling of being in friendly surroundings. Coming to Shadow City had burdened his mind with the fear that he would find only the alien and the unknown. But the human beings he had met so far were the friendliest and most relaxed he had ever seen. That made him uneasy for it didn't fit at all with the ruthless therapy they had planned for him. And yet the little girl he had seen in the park was so childlike, so normal. He could feel the pressure of this gathering crisis closing in upon him. What was he to do?

  The thought ended as he came to cubicle eleven. He hesitated, opened the door and stepped inside.

  17

  Although similar in construction to the cubicle in which he had been interviewed at terminal center, this one was larger. He saw a desk, one chair (not two), and another door—he wondered if it led to some remote point. There was also a mirror on the wall to his left. Desiring to know his surroundings, he tried the door. It was locked. As he turned back a voice spoke out of the air in front of him.

  "Sit down, please."

  Although the tone was friendly, Cargill felt the tension rise in him. Not knowing what to expect, Cargill seated himself.

  The voice spoke again. "See this!"

  The room flashed into pitch darkness and in the air only about two feet in front of Cargill's eyes appeared a stream of radiant energy. It was a delicate lacework of brightness and looked like a filament out of its vacuum environment.

  The
voice said, "You are witnessing electron flow in a vacuum tube. Now watch."

  The direction of the flow began to change. It followed a more winding path and seemed to be turning on some kind of an axis. Several moments passed before he saw that the flow direction was a distinct spiral.

  The voice said, "Old in mathematics is the idea that two forces exerted at right angles to each other produce a diagonal curve of motion. And so one times one may equal one and one-half or some fraction thereof, something other than it might equal in the old classical mathematics. Watch as we bring the spirals closer together."

  To Cargill they had seemed close as they were. But now as he stared at the filament, the spiraling line of light seemed to draw together, a tiny bit only. "One times one times one times one times zero," said the voice, "equals a million."

  Again there was a change in the flow. The filaments were closer together.

  ". . . equal a billion," said the voice. There was a pause. The filament glowed on. Then the voice said, "Now, we superimpose ordinary infra-red light powered by a tiny battery. And we have—a spitgun."

  The outline of a spitgun appeared in the air and Cargill saw how the tube was fastened into it, how the battery powered it.

  "We superimpose," said the voice, "a magnetic field. Now we can bend steel."

  Cargill saw how that was done.

  The voice went on, "We superimpose ordinary sunlight—and we have a sun-motor, power source of the floater. A score of energy possibilities suggest themselves."

  In quick succession, three of these possibilities were shown: how the volor worked, a method of turning a wheel, and the way thoughts were imposed on a brain.

  "Now," said the voice, "would you like to do these various things with your own mind? We focus a millionpower brain-pattern tube on the somaesthenic centers of the parietal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain—since you are right handed—and establish a high conditionally of flow patterned exactly after that of the steptube itself. We thus create a nerve tube in the brain. Since it is not possible for you in your normal body to superimpose other rhythms on the flow of this organic tube, we use the new control to alter slightly the atomic pattern of the body. And so, by drawing on the broadcast power of the pyramid screen, we create the Shadow shape. Young man, look at yourself in the mirror."

  The light came on. Cargill, in spite of the words not knowing what to expect, stepped over to the mirror. A Shadow image was reflected back at him. "Oh, my lord!" he thought. He looked down at himself. He was a Shadow, too.

  He began to feel the difference. His vision sharpened. He turned toward the mirror. It seemed now to be less substantial, as if most of the light beyond it were visible. In the next instant he was looking through the mirror. He stood on a height and his vision was Olympian. A speck in the distant sky beyond the now completely invisible pyramid touched his tension. His vision leaped to it It was a bird, a hawk, wheeling in flight.

  Astounded at the remarkable telescopic effect, he drew back into the room and looked at the floor. It half-dissolved 'before his eyes and then became as transparent as glass. He looked down at the floor below, down into the soil beneath. It was bright and dark brown, then gray stone, then brown-red soil, then a dark shale, then—it was harder to see. Some kind of clay, he decided finally. Below that he couldn't make it out at all. He drew his gaze back, conscious that there were depths he could not penetrate.

  The voice said, "Now, we bring you back to normal. Please notice though that what counted was the direction of your attention. The general secret is vibration and visualization."

  The mirror was visible again. The image of Morton Cargill was reflected back at him.

  The voice said: "Do you wish to make any comments or ask any questions?"

  Cargill hesitated; then he asked, "Is there a theory about the Shadow shape? What is your explanation for the way solid substance can be reduced to apparent insubstantialness?"

  The other was silent; then he laughed softly and said: "I could, of course, say that matter does not really exist. This has been long understood."

  Cargill nodded, abruptly feeling sardonic. Scientists had paid lip service to that notion in the Twentieth Century. And then, in their daily life, they acted as if matter were real. He wondered if he might now get closer to the world that he had explored in his—he kept thinking of it as a dream.

  The voice was speaking again: "The reality here, however, is that we probably make the body more substantial, not less. This is so because we use energy from an outside source, and fit it so perfectly into the body flows that we have, in effect, additional life energy available. We have tested this at all potencies up to and including death, which of course can be induced by too much energy as well as by a reduction of what is there.

  "The results of these tests were fascinating. As we raised the energy level, the person became progressively sane. Then there was a curious reversion, then an upward movement again, then down, then up—but with different phenomena at each level. The cyclic change occurred right up to where the insubstantiality began, seeming to follow this positive and negative pattern throughout. We had some dangerous reactions at the higher negative levels.

  "If you can visualize a man of supreme intelligence who is wholly evil, you will have the picture. The first time we achieved such an effect, we were lucky. Thereafter, we anticipated and took precautions, but despite that, several times it was touch and go. Does that to some extent answer your questions?"

  Cargill was silent, considering. Nothing that had been said conflicted basically with the strange ideas which he had had in his first dream. According to what he had known in the dream, outside energy was unnecessary. But if that were actually so, then these Shadows had not yet discovered the methods necessary to achieve that effortless state. He shook his head finally. "No questions at the moment," he said.

  "Very well. Except for some minor conditioning you can now make yourself a Shadow at will, merely by thinking it so. The second door is now unlocked. It leads to a series of apartments. The ones that show a green light are unoccupied and you may select one of them as your own for the time being. I'll call you presently."

  The apartment he entered was surprisingly large, five rooms and two baths. Cargill explored it hurriedly; he stopped only when he saw the phone. It was in a little alcove and it included a TV scanner and a viewing plate against the wall. On the lower right corner of the viewer—and it was that that interested him—was a series of small knobs. Above them was the word: DIRECTORY.

  With ringers that trembled he first explored the mechanical process, then manipulated the three knobs that had the letters of the alphabet arranged on them. He set the first one for G, the next for R, the third and last for A. Then he pressed the switch.

  A long list of names flashed on to the viewer: Granger, Granholm, Grannell, Grant . . .

  There was no Grannis listed.

  "But that's ridiculous," Cargill thought. "Now is the time for me to get hold of him before he can transmit the cue word to me." At the moment he could turn the equivalent of a mobile spit gun on Grannis before the man could suspect his intention or change into the protective Shadow shape. Surely he would be vulnerable in his human form. "I've got to find him," he told himself. "There must be some reason why he isn't listed. If I could only ask questions about that!"

  There was a clock in the living room and it showed ten minutes after ten. That galvanized him. Suppose they had selected noon today for him to disconnect the pyramid switch.

  He left the apartment hastily by an entrance that opened onto a winding street, a shopping center. The stores were crowded with shoppers and he had to stifle an impulse to go into one of the spacious buildings. He did pause to peer in at a window, but that merely emphasized the normalcy of the whole situation.

  He hurried on. Although aware that he was a man with a deadly mission, he had no idea where to go to carry it out. He only knew that it must be done quickly. For a while he walked feverishly along quiet
shady streets. Here in the residential area the houses were set well back behind flower and shrub gardens. Children played in most of the yards. At different times he saw both men and women working among the shrubs. Not once did he see a Shadow. It was a role and a condition they assumed for time travel and in case danger threatened. Agitatedly, Cargill wondered how quickly they could put on their protective cloaks of darkness.

  Time and again he looked on the name plates for the name, Grannis. As the morning lengthened towards midday the virtual impossibility of his search being successful penetrated deeper. A man who was not even listed in the directory would not be locatable by a hasty street-to-street search in a city of more than a hundred thousand people.

  He admitted defeat abruptly and hurried back toward his apartment. "I'll stay inside," he thought. "I won't answer the door. I won't answer the phone. That way no one can give me the cue."

  He had the empty feeling that he had made a mistake in leaving the place at all. As he approached the square building, his watch, which he had set by the clock in the apartment, pointed at twenty minutes to twelve. Cargill began to perspire. He was surprised to notice that several hundred people were gathered in front of an entrance to one of the great round buildings. Cargill asked one of them, "What's happening?"

  The stranger glanced at him with a good-natured smile. "We're waiting for the announcement," he said. "We received notice from the future of the results of an election held today and we're waiting for verification."

  Cargill hurried on. So they had elections, did they? He felt cynical and critical until he thought: "From the future? But Lan Bruch said there wasn't any future." The fact that such an election pronouncement had taken place cast a further doubt upon the integrity of the personnel in the 7301 A.D. incident, and indeed upon the reality of the vision itself. However, he was still reluctant to admit that it hadn't happened. Perhaps, if he asked careful questions, he might learn what had occurred.