The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  For an instant there was an intolerable pain in his head; a pain he could only describe as unphysical. For a split second, the four-dimensional tesseract took shape in his mind. He wavered, poised as on a razor-edged bridge that spanned an abyss of space.

  Then came a period of consciousness without any sense perception. He had no awareness of anything except undifferentiated being.

  CHAPTER II

  When Corbin’s senses returned, they were crowded to the cracking point. Instead of desert, the country about him was verdant. The peaks which loomed up had recently been active volcanoes. At least two were definitely alive, fuming and rumbling.

  The light wavered. It was as though the sun, though haze obscured, emitted light in jerks. But for retinal persistence, there would have been alternations of illumination and darkness.

  In the distance he saw architectural forms, apparently of masonry. High over these, several disc-like constructs were in flight, some progressing, others hovering. They had a steel-gray, metallic luster. From the peripheries came jets of flame, as though propulsion was by rotation in the manner of a Fourth of July pinwheel.

  Corbin got to his feet. Looking about him, he noted fresh rifts in the dark face of a rocky outcropping. There were cracks in the earth. He felt a perceptible quaking. This did not abate as he set out for his logical objective, the distant towers.

  A trail led in their general direction. Judging from the breadth and depth and character, a sled with metal skids had marked the way.

  The vegetation, he decided, was not semi-tropical. From the corner of his eye, he saw a vivid flower of unusual shape. Though not parasitic, it reminded him of an orchid. He turned for a better look. The outlines dimmed and blurred.

  “My damn eyes,” he muttered, and reached to pick the flower.

  He missed. His fingers were deft as joints of sewer pipe. He over-reached.

  He fell short. It was like trying to pluck a gnat out of the air. Grimly, he kept at it.

  When at last he succeeded, all he had was a smudge of sap and stain on his fingers. He had no better luck in picking berries which grew further along his line of march. He dismissed a gravitational change as the answer. It was something else.

  Picking up a pebble was difficult; yet it took fewer trials. Reaching for a fist-sized rock was successful at the first attempt, though he had the impression that the chunk was going to leak through his fingers, somewhat as if he had got a handful of wheat.

  Nothing was precise. Intently eying any fragile leaf made it blur, and apparently shift position. It took some while for the significance of all this to register, and when it did, overwhelming depression beat him down. He seated himself on a rock and stared for moments at the earth at his feet. He had been translated into a cosmos alien to the one he had always known—and there was no way of return.

  Planck’s constant, h, was different here than in any place in the universe which any terrestrial scientist had studied. “Interaction between force and matter,” Corbin said to himself, by way of amassing his thought for use, “takes place not continuously, but in a succession of increments—shocks, jolts, packages, so to speak. Planck’s constant on earth is about 6.547x10-27 erg-seconds. No practical effect at all until you’re dealing with particles of the mass of electrons.”

  Lecturing to himself, spreading out the basic facts, helped restore his balance, so he continued, “You can not determine the position of an electron with a precision any closer than the diameter of the electron’s orbit around its nucleus. The wave, whether light or otherwise, used for observation changes the position of the mass. If you apply less than such an amount, less than a quantum of force, you get no observation at all.”

  He fumbled in his pockets. Among other familiar things; he found his miniature slide rule. Rough estimating on the basis of the mass of the things he had tried to grasp, he concluded that in this continuum, h was something like two hundred, thousand billion billion times as great as in the space he had left. In other words, h amounted to one erg-second, or maybe more.

  Things began to make sense, in a dismaying way. His attempts to handle light objects put him in mind of trying to focus a microscope which lacked a fine adjustment; the most delicate fingering either had no effect at all, or else there was too much motion, and the point of focus was overshot. The quantum of energy which the human hand could deliver, the smallest parcel it could convey, was far too heavy, unless the instrument had a fine adjustment screw.

  Far off to Corbin’s right was an enormous device which looked like a Bessemer converter. It tilted on trunnions, so that its mouth pointed at the face of a ridge of black rock. Flame poured from the mouth, and lapped about the rock, which was glowing, and flowing away in a sluggish stream. Burning vegetation, marked its course.

  Corbin could just distinguish the human shapes of those who operated the device. That they were human relieved him of his worst apprehensions. And curiosity as to the reason for melting down a spur of a mountain range made him forget his own plight for a moment.

  * * * *

  Presently, he came to a place where the sled track followed the edge of a water course. Trees shaded the bank. There was an inviting splash. It suggested both a drink and a swim. He could do well with both. And as he neared the bank, he saw that he was not the only one who had been attracted by the stream.

  A pair of small red sandals and some neatly folded garments lay beside a basket of berries at the foot of an overhanging tree. Corbin glanced about for a spot where he could wait until the lady had dressed before he accosted her.

  He had little time to wonder about the women of hyper-space. From the brush and rocks between rim and water’s edge came a scream, blended with a savage snarl. There was a flash of orange colored fur, black spotted. A leopard lunged from an overhanging limb. A rattle of rocks followed, and a growl. Judging from the human cry, the animal had missed.

  Corbin bounded to the edge. The girl, red-haired as Marcia, well-shaped, and white of skin, picked up a rock and heaved it. Though she missed, the crouching leopard hesitated, all the while grumbling deep in his throat. While no larger than a Mexican ocelot, it was nonetheless a nasty package. Corbin snatched a chunk of deadwood and jumped. The cudgel, none too handy, was heavy as ironwood.

  The girl and the leopard were equally surprised when Corbin landed. The beast’s eyes sharpened. The whiskers twitched. The tail-lashing became slower, and rhythmical, as the animal gathered himself for the attack.

  Before Corbin could move, the leopard had leaped, a ninety-pound projectile. It grazed his shoulder, knocking him off balance but without throwing him. He whirled before the spotted devil could recover, and lashed out with his club. Though the blow should have flattened the animal’s skull, there was no perceptible effect.

  But for the animal’s uncertain stance, Corbin would have gone down at the next charge. Instead, he struck again and uselessly. It did not at the moment amaze him that he understood the girl when she cried “Keep on hitting! Keep moving, keep doing something! Don’t stop!”

  Dismayed, winded, and bleeding from scratches, Corbin did not know what to make of her frantic advice until it came to him in a flash—the leopard had no more precision than did he! Corbin charged, flailing his club. The girl threw rocks. There was a tangle of cudgel and fur and Corbin. The animal rolled. Corbin landed headlong amid brush and stones. He had lost his weapon.

  “Keep moving, you’ve got him!” the girl called. “Do something!”

  He snatched a stone no larger than his fist and heaved it. The missile barely grazed the leopard. The animal went limp.

  The girl knew then that the fight was over. Hair streaming, she darted up the bank. By the time Corbin recovered sufficiently to clamber after her, she had put on her tunic, and was binding up her hair.

  “There are so few leopards left,” she remarked. “Still I was an idiot for wandering out such a d
istance.” Then, after a speculative moment during which she regarded Corbin with as much approval as curiosity she went on, “You’re a stranger.”

  “Well, rather! It’s hard to explain, too.”

  “Oh, it happens every once in awhile. In fact, all of our people fell out of the sky.”

  “It’s odd that we speak the same language, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t. A couple of red-faced men came here, a long time ago. They took charge, told us how much better their way of doing things was, and taught us their language. Ours was so much easier, but they couldn’t think of trying to learn it. Bloody barbarians, they called us. Probably we were.”

  “Has anyone ever left here?”

  “Our scientists either haven’t discovered a way, or else they’re keeping the information to themselves. After all, why’d anyone want to leave?”

  If Lani, as she called herself, was typical of the women of hyper-space, there was a good deal of sense behind her query. She had fine features, with just enough irregularity to make them piquant. Her voice was low-pitched, caressing and restful. For all the aliveness of her greenish-gray eyes, and the agility of her brows, her vitality was not of the exhibitionistic sort that Corbin had always found so irritating. Being wholly alive, she did not have any need to prove the fact by shrilling and burbling and fluttering.

  After that entirely satisfying appraisal, Corbin asked her about his battle with the leopard, and his odd experience in picking berries.

  Lani laughed softly. “That’s what told me you were an outlander. It wasn’t your clothes. In our country, an object is never really all in one place, unless it is awfully massive. It is mostly here, but partly there, and also, somewhat over yonder. You’ll get used to it, though it has driven a few outlanders raving mad.”

  In a surprisingly few and simple words, Lani confirmed Corbin’s suspicion: that in the terms of science, the quantum constant was fantastically large. Thus, each of his blows in the battle with the leopard had been an increment of force which had no effect until the repetition had amounted to enough to deliver a killing impact.

  In principle, it was as with wave phenomena, while the wave front, ever expanding, and so diminishing in intensity, might reach a billion or more electrons, only one of all that number responded. It was like rolling dice, or pulling the lever of a slot machine. But here, that same principle of indeterminacy applied to objects enormously larger than electrons.

  They were near the city when Corbin pointed to the fumes and glare of the device that spewed flame against the now distant ridge of rock. Lani explained, “We’ve been having a lot of trouble, just the past few days. The curvature of space is changing. Anyway, that’s what the Bureau of Science tells us. So they’re rearranging masses of ponderous matter. That’s supposed to make space curve back the way it should.”

  And by the time they were in the city, Lani had given Corbin so many practical hints that he felt that he had a fair chance of surviving in that nightmare of imprecision and insecurity. Better yet, he might learn from the local scientists how to get out of hyper-space. And his first project, on returning to Arizona, would be to corner Lester Gale and raise his energy level—by about n-plus-one pokes on the chin.

  Corbin learned for instance, that people from time to time got into hyperspace without any artificial aids. Apparently, some natural force, such as earthquake, lightning, volcanic eruption, would cause a space-crack which admitted outsiders. Lani, who worked for the government as a clerk, repeated her assurance that no immigrant had ever left.

  “How do you know? Don’t people disappear from here, the way I’ve just vanished from my world?”

  “Well, yes,” Lani admitted. “It has happened.”

  “Then how do you know they didn’t find a way back?”

  Lani shrugged. “In almost every case, it’s found later on that those who vanished had joined some of the outlaw bands that make some sort of living in the waste country. The disc patrols keep as close a watch on them as possible.”

  “Then those weren’t war craft I noticed?”

  “There’s nobody to have war with. All we know of war is from tradition and stories brought in by people like yourself. Don’t look so worried, Bill! Except for the few who go wild and join the outlaw bands, immigrants love it here. They wouldn’t dream of going back. And neither will you. You wait and see!”

  CHAPTER III

  Corbin’s first glimpse of the crowd convinced him that this corner of hyper-space would be a married man’s paradise. The concept of style was nonexistent. Each dressed according to his or her fancy. There was apparently not the precision nor mechanization of thinking that was required to make people style-conscious.

  With such a degree of non-uniformity, Corbin was not amazed to note that the streets were patrolled by watchmen. They were armed with devices resembling submachine guns, except that the muzzle flared in the manner of a 17th-century blunderbuss. This made sense; it was by now obvious that a rifle bullet would be useless, whereas a scattering of slugs had the off chance of hitting the target and boosting its energy level.

  “You must be hungry,” Lani resumed when she noticed that his glance strayed toward market booths. “Here’s the government restaurant, and across the street is one of the government lodging houses.”

  The food was pretty much as in his own space, though some of the vegetables in the stew were strange. It was not until Corbin had eaten, and Lani was making for the street, that he got his next bit of education. “See here,” he asked, “how will I pay for this? My money wouldn’t be any good, would it?”

  “Oh, you don’t pay till you’re asked to.”

  “Who does settle for our check?”

  “The state just picks on someone by chance, and he pays.”

  “For something he didn’t get?” Corbin demanded, aghast.

  “It averages off,” she assured him. “It’s really awfully scientific, doing it that way. One of these days you’ll be paying for maybe a thousand or so of someone else’s meals. That’s a lot more efficient than having to dig into your pocket after each meal.”

  “Suppose I couldn’t pay the bill?”

  “Then you’d work it out. In the quarries, or the beryllium mines, or the refineries.”

  Before he could ask about beryllium—the color of the flying discs suggested that they were made of that metal—a yell and a commotion in the street interrupted. A man was running. Darting, ducking, weaving, he eluded all who tried to stop him. He clutched a small leather bag which had a carrying strap. Judging from the outcries, he was a thief. Watchmen came pouncing from alleys. They leveled their curious weapons. On the run, they fired into the crowd. Smoke blotted the scene for an instant.

  Corbin felt as though he had been slugged with a caulking maul. There was no pain. He was certain that none of the whistling pellets had nicked him, yet he dropped. Closing in, the watchman yanked him to his feet.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “Stealing.”

  “I didn’t steal a thing. The thief got away.”

  The owner of the bag kept yelling, “I want my money! Arrest someone.”

  “You know I didn’t take your purse.”

  “Arrest someone!”

  “I can prove by my friend that—”

  “What friend?”

  Lani had vanished in the excitement.

  Corbin, hustled along by his, captors, wasted no time speculating on the curious weapons they carried. In terms of the quantum theory, he could all too readily appreciate why he had been arrested. He was in precisely the situation of one of the electrons he had in the laboratory blasted from its nucleus. The painful difference was that an electron didn’t care what happened to it.

  * * * *

  The magistrate seemed kindly and intelligent. He wore a red tunic and a c
urled wig; probably a scrambling of the British influences. His seamed and weathered face had quirks of humor at every angle. For a moment, Corbin took heart, and listened to the patrolman recite, “The prisoner, stole a purse containing two million pazoors.”

  The accuser was shouting the very same charge.

  “Your Honor,” Corbin began.

  “Duly arrested,” the patrolman carried on, “in accordance with—”

  The gavel rapped, cutting him short. “Flog him,” the court ordered.

  A squad took Corbin to the plaza, where they securely tied him to a whipping post. A solid fellow stood by with a cat-’o-nine-tails. He gave the scourge a whisk and a snap. The sound was ominous.

  “How many?”

  “Raise his energy level to the next stage.”

  Corbin heard the hiss of the whip, and the explosive exhalation of breath. The one with the tally sheet sang out, “One!” But Corbin felt nothing at all except apprehension.

  “One it is!”

  Another hiss and whack. And, no perceptible impact. Flinching anticipation became as painful as the blows should have been. Corbin wondered how the man could have missed.

  “Two!”

  “Two it is!”

  And as the unfelt blows were tallied, the truth came to Corbin—finally, there would be a stroke which would contain the accumulated effect of all those which had gone before. The graze of a pebble, he recollected, had been the leopard’s finish.

  A man waving a sheet of paper came running up, Lani was at his heels. “Wait, wait!” she cried. “Orders from Imbro!”

  “Hold it!” the tally man called.

  He glanced at the document. He spoke to the squad of police. One cut Corbin’s wrist and ankle bonds. Two others dashed after the crowd, which had bolted in sudden panic. A man stumbled. They seized him, and triced him up. Apparently Corbin’s trial had sufficed for the impromptu substitute. And as Corbin went with Lani and the courier, the tallyman called, “Six!”

  Lani said, breathlessly, “Lucky I work for the political bureau.”