“Yes, sir.”
“Merrick – I think you said his name was – Mr Merrick, you will be good enough to accompany us to the Council Hall. Fairbairn, I am astonished that you should lend your countenance to the Chief Adapter, who has already been warned against these practices. You, sir,” he added to the latter, “will explain your proceedings before the Council.”
He led the way out of the room. Tennyson ranged himself alongside me and the Chief and Fairbairn followed, the rest of the crowd bringing up the rear. I had dropped the sickle, but the knife I secreted in my breast pocket. We walked all the way and I noticed that the stranger was treated with the greatest respect by all whom we encountered. They all joined in the procession until there must have been over a hundred of all shapes and diameters gravely walking with a curious half hop, half run, to which they were evidently not accustomed. It appeared to be from some sense of etiquette that they did not roll.
Tennyson told me as we went along that the stranger was the President of the country, and that I could think myself lucky he had taken the matter up. He had but just returned from a secret visit to Paris, where he had been studying the latest developments in aeroplanes.
I was taken into the Main Hall that I had already seen, and placed in a kind of dock erected temporarily – so Tennyson said – for my particular benefit.
The ensuring proceedings were singularly informal, and so far as I could see, free from the atmosphere of law which overwhelms a stranger in the English Law Courts.
The President ordered the Chief Adapter to give his account of what had happened. Somewhat to my surprise he did this without seeking to minimise in the slightest degree his share, in which he actually seemed to take considerable pride.
“As you are aware, I have for some time past endeavoured to procure the means of demonstrating my discovery relative to suspended animation,” he said, “and the specimen Merrick, who owes his existence to my skill, would have had the inestimable honour of being the means of proving in his own person the certainty of my method. I intended to benefit him by my special method of development, and there is little doubt that he would have been physically, if not quite mentally, one of us before I had done with him. The operation would not have lasted longer than twenty days, when he would not have been distinguishable in general appearance from any of the inhabitants of this country. Now, I represent to you, sir,” he added, addressing the President directly, “that there is no crime in what I have declared on oath.”
The President merely requested me to confirm or deny the truth of the Chief’s statements. I admitted that there was nothing I could deny.
“Why, then, were you endeavouring to kill him?”
“Kill him!” I said, “I was defending myself. Do you think I wanted to be operated on for his amusement? Besides, he forgot that he wanted to do it out of revenge because his daughter didn’t agree—”
The Chief Adapter interrupted:
“My daughter should be left out of this discussion.”
“No,” said the President, “let us hear the whole story.”
I thereupon told him my account of the Chief’s anger with Clarice, and how he had threatened me when she told him that she had informed the Council.
The Chief Adapter sprang off his butt-end, and waved his tentacles furiously in my direction.
“The abominable monkey leaves me no alternative but to state in public that which for my own honour and the honour of this whole nation I would have buried in oblivion. This object has dared to raise his eyes towards my daughter – let him deny it if he can – and she, to her shame and mine, has not repulsed him. Nay, she has even expressed a desire to become as one of those half-developed creatures of the old world – she has scorned her birthright.”
He had got so far when his voice was drowned by a terrific roar of fury from all those present. Cries of “Kill! kill! kill!” in a series of stunning shouts rent the atmosphere. Even the President’s glance in my direction seemed to be that of a wild beast. There was a rush in my direction, when he raised his arms and commanded silence.
“You are fully exonerated and have the sympathy of us all,” he said to the Chief, “but let us not be carried away by our righteous anger at the enormity of which this man has been guilty. We must remember that he cannot in his ignorance realise his guilt. Let him therefore be deported immediately. We cannot consent to your experiment, Adapter. Give him fourteen days’ provisions and set him where he may be picked up. That is my word.”
I was immediately seized and conveyed from the hall. Not a single friendly countenance could I espy. Tennyson in particular was making the most diabolical faces at me. Those who carried me seemed to think I was contaminating them by my touch. I was placed in a roller and they were about to start when the President and the Chief came up and stopped them.
I felt a cold hand pressed on my forehead and a piercing pain passed through my head.
“He will remember nothing of the locality now,” said the Chief Adapter.
The roller started, but at a funeral pace, and I perceived that an enormous crowd were following – every eye was fixed upon me with a baleful glare. Only the guard by which I was surrounded held them in check.
Fierce yells of hatred and derision were raised. The journey was over interminable winding paths, overhanging precipices of enormous depth, down which I looked in a vain endeavour to distinguish the bottom. At last the roller stopped, and I was ordered to descend.
All about me were a mob of savage faces glaring from their barrels, and pointing their extended fingers stretched to their utmost length in the direction of a winding stream which formed the boundary to the glade. Beyond me was a huge mass of boulders forming the approach to an iron ring of mountains.
“Go – you are expelled,” cried the President. “You have grossly abused our hospitality. You may thank fate that you leave with your life. Do not attempt to linger in this vicinity.” It all seemed so much like a dream, from which I felt I should awaken presently – but when I looked back I suddenly caught sight of my poor Clarice. She was standing at the bottom step of the tunnel, a little white hand was extended towards me in a mute gesture of farewell . . .
I walked for days through barren paths in the burning sun, resting at night in any shelter of the rocks that presented itself, and now I only await the end.
THE CREATOR
Clifford D. Simak
The next story was written about twenty-five years after the previous one. Clifford Simak (1904–88) was one of the truly original practitioners of science fiction. He is probably best known for City (1952), which won him the International Fantasy Award in 1953. This study of the future of human civilization both on and beyond the Earth, though, was not typical of his later work. He created his own niche for depicting strange events in rural settings, such as farmers or small-town residents being visited by aliens or encountering other dimensions. One of his best stories, “The Big Front Yard” (1958), won him the Hugo Award in 1959 and he won it again for his novel Way Station in 1964. You can find a selection of his short works in Strangers in the Universe (1958) and All the Traps of Earth (1962) and currently the American publisher Darkside Press has started to repackage Simak’s Collected Stories under the editorial hand of Philip Stephensen-Payne starting with Eternity Lost (2005).
The following story, though, comes from much earlier in Simak’s career. In the early 1930s the science-fiction magazine was still a new creation and, like all youngsters, it had become a little uncontrollable, with much of its fiction degenerating into little more that wild-west adventures in space. Those who knew that science fiction was capable of much more than this despaired and almost gave up. One fan, William Crawford, decided to try his hand at publishing his own magazine, which became Marvel Tales. His idea was to publish stories of originality and brave ideas. Simak had written “The Creator” on spec, but knew that none of the professional magazines of the day would take it because the subject was so taboo. So its first
appearance was in a little magazine with a circulation of only a few hundred. It’s only been reprinted a handful of times since but I think you’ll agree that for a story written over 70 years ago, it is still fairly extreme.
Foreword
This is written in the elder days as the Earth rides close to the rim of eternity, edging nearer to the dying Sun, into which her two inner companions of the solar system have already plunged to a fiery death. The Twilight of the Gods is history; and our planet drifts on and on into that oblivion from which nothing escapes, to which time itself may be dedicated in the final cosmic reckoning.
Old Earth, pacing her death march down the corridors of the heavens, turns more slowly upon her axis. Her days have lengthened as she crawls sadly to her tomb, shrouded only in the shreds of her former atmosphere. Because her air has thinned, her sky has lost its cheerful blue depths and she is arched with a dreary grey, which hovers close to the surface, as if the horrors of outer space were pressing close, like ravening wolves, upon the flanks of this ancient monarch of the heavens. When night creeps upon her, stranger stars blaze out like a ring of savage eyes closing in upon a dying campfire.
Earth must mourn her passing, for she has stripped herself of all her gaudy finery and proud trappings. Upon her illimitable deserts and twisted ranges she has set up strange land sculptures. And these must be temples and altars before which she, not forgetting the powers of good and evil throughout the cosmos, prays in her last hours, like a dying man returning to his old faith. Mournful breezes play a hymn of futility across her barren reaches of sand and rocky ledges. The waters of the empty oceans beat out upon the treeless, bleak and age-worn coast a march that is the last brave gesture of an ancient planet which has served its purpose and treads the path to Nirvana.
Little half-men and women, final survivors of a great race, which they remember only through legends handed down from father to son, burrow gnome-like in the bowels of the planet which was mothered their seed from dim days when the thing which was destined to rule over all his fellow creatures crawled in the slime of primal seas. A tired race, they wait for the day legend tells them will come, when the sun blazes anew in the sky and grass grows green upon the barren deserts once again. But I know this day will never come, although I would not disillusion them. I know their legends lie, but why should I destroy the only solid thing they have left to round out their colorless life with the everlasting phenomena of hope?
For these little folks have been kind to me and there is a bloodbond between us that even the passing of a million years cannot erase. They think me a god, a messenger that the day they have awaited so long is near. I regret in time to come they must know me as a false prophet.
There is no point in writing these words. My little friends ask me what I do and why I do it and do not seem to understand when I explain. They do not comprehend my purpose in making quaint marks and signs upon the well-tanned pelts of the little rodents which over-run their burrows. All they understand is that when I have finished my labor they must take the skins and treasure them as a sacred trust I have left in their hands.
I have no hope the things I record will ever be read. I write my experiences in the same spirit and with the same bewildered purpose which must have characterized the first ancestor who chipped a runic message upon a stone.
I realize that I write the last manuscript. Earth’s proud cities have fallen into mounds of dust. The roads that once crossed her surface have disappeared without a trace. No wheels turn, no engines drone. The last tribe of the human race crouches in its caves, watching for the day that will never come.
First Experiments
There may be some who would claim that Scott Marston and I have blasphemed, that we probed too deeply into mysteries where we had no right.
But be that as it may, I do not regret what we did and I am certain that Scott Marston, wherever he may be, feels as I do, without regrets.
We began our friendship at a little college in California. We were naturally drawn together by the similitude of our life, the affinity of our natures. Although our lines of study were widely separated, he majored in science and I in psychology, we both pursued our education for the pure love of learning rather than with a thought of what education might do toward earning a living.
We eschewed the society of the campus, engaging in none of the frivolities of the student body. We spent happy hours in the library and study hall. Our discussions were ponderous and untouched by thought of the college life which flowed about us in all its colorful pageantry.
In our last two years we roomed together. As we were poor, our quarters were shabby, but this never occurred to us. Our entire life was embraced in our studies. We were fired with the true spirit of research.
Inevitably, we finally narrowed our research down to definite lines. Scott, intrigued by the enigma of time, devoted more and more of his leisure moments to the study of that inscrutable element. He found that very little was known of it, beyond the perplexing equations set up by equally perplexed savants.
I wandered into as remote paths, the study of psychophysics and hypnology. I followed my research in hypnology until I came to the point where the mass of facts I had accumulated trapped me in a jungle of various diametrically opposed conclusions, many of which verged upon the occult.
It was at the insistence of my friend that I finally sought a solution in the material rather than the psychic world. He argued that if I were to make any real progress I must follow the dictate of pure, cold science rather than the elusive will-o-wisp of an unproven shadow existence.
At length, having completed our required education, we were offered positions as instructors, he in physics and I in psychology. We eagerly accepted, as neither of us had any wish to change the routine of our lives.
Our new status in life changed our mode of living not at all. We continued to dwell in our shabby quarters, we ate at the same restaurant, we had our nightly discussions. The fact that we were no longer students in the generally accepted term of the word made no iota of difference to our research and study.
It was in the second year after we had been appointed instructors that I finally stumbled upon my “consciousness unit” theory. Gradually I worked it out with the enthusiastic moral support of my friend who rendered me what assistance he could.
The theory was beautiful in simplicity. It was based upon the hypothesis that a dream is an expression of one’s consciousness, that it is one’s second self going forth to adventure and travel. When the physical being is at rest the consciousness is released and can travel and adventure at will within certain limits.
I went one step further, however. I assumed that the consciousness actually does travel, that certain infinitesimal parts of one’s brain do actually escape to visit the strange places and encounter the odd events of which one dreams.
This was taking dreams out of the psychic world to which they had formerly been regulated and placing them on a solid scientific basis.
I speak of my theory as a “consciousness unit” theory. Scott and I spoke of the units as “consciousness cells”, although we were aware they could not possibly be cells. I thought of them as highly specialized electrons, despite the fact that it appeared ridiculous to suspect electrons of specialization. Scott contended that a wave force, an intelligence wave, might be nearer the truth. Which of us was correct was never determined, nor did it make any difference.
As may be suspected, I never definitely arrived at undeniable proof to sustain my theory, although later developments would seem to bear it out.
Strangely, it was Scott Marston who did the most to add whatever measure of weight I could ever attach to my hypothesis.
While I was devoting my time to the abstract study of dreams, Scott was continuing with his equally baffling study of time. He confided to me that he was well satisfied with the progress he was making. At times he explained to me what he was doing, but my natural inaptitude at figures made impossible an understanding of t
he formidable array of formulas which he spread out before me.
I accepted as a matter of course his statement that he had finally discovered a time force, which he claimed was identical with a fourth dimensional force. At first the force existed only in a jumble of equations, formulas and graphs on a litter of paper, but finally we pooled our total resources and under Scott’s hand a machine took shape.
Finished, it crouched like a malign entity on the work table, but it pulsed and hummed with a strange power that was of no earthly source.
“It is operating on time, pure time,” declared Scott. “It is warping and distorting the time pattern, snatching power from the fourth dimension. Given a machine large enough, we could create a time-stress great enough to throw this world into a new plane created by the distortion of the time-field.”
We shuddered as we gazed upon the humming mass of metal and realized the possibilities of our discovery. Perhaps for a moment we feared that we had probed too deeply into the mystery of an element that should have remained forever outside the providence of human knowledge.
The realization that he had only scratched the surface, however, drove Scott on to renewed efforts. He even begrudged the time taken by his work as instructor and there were weeks when we ate meager lunches in our rooms after spending all our available funds but a few pennies to buy some piece needed for the time-power machine.
Came the day when we placed a potted plant within a compartment in the machine. We turned on the mechanism and when we opened the door after a few minutes the plant was gone. The pot and earth within it was intact, but the plant had vanished. Search of the pot revealed that not even a bit of root remained.
Where had the plant gone? Why did the pot and earth remain?
Scott declared the plant had been shunted into an outre dimension, lying between the lines of stress created in the time pattern by the action of the machine. He concluded that the newly discovered force acted more swiftly upon a live organism than upon an inanimate object.
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction Page 36
