The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel

by Frank Belknap Long

  “You bet I will, Dad,” Bobby said.” I mean…I’ll try.”

  “That’s great. But I want you to help your mother take care of Susan. She’s too young to watch every step she takes. The light doesn’t seem to quite reach you, Bobby. But in a moment you’ll be walking around again and the stiffness will go out of your legs. I want to talk to your mother now. There’s nothing I’m going to tell her I wouldn’t want you to hear. That’s why—being brave is so important. You’ll have to be very brave.”

  Helen could restrain herself no longer. “George, don’t torment me like this!” she said, her voice filled with agony. “Whatever it is you’ve got to tell me—”

  “Oh, darling, darling, that’s not what I want to say. Something terrible must have happened or you wouldn’t look so…so…”

  Wentworth’s lips twitched and he shut his eyes as if the kitchen reminded him of something he would have liked to blot from his mind. “I look,” he went on slowly, “like a man who is lost at sea with nightmares for companions.”

  “Where are you, darling? What happened? Please tell me. Don’t drive the nails in any deeper. I love you. That’s all that matters.”

  “Yes, darling, yes,” he said. His voice sounded flat, drained of all emotion. Suddenly he smiled. It was a small, crooked smile, a smile that didn’t come off well at all, but she knew exactly how much the effort had cost him.

  She tried to speak calmly. “Darling, reality as we’ve always known it has been pushed back or aside in some unheard of way and something else has rushed in and taken its place—something that I know nothing about. You don’t have to convince me of anything. Will that make explaining easier for you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think it will.”

  A strand of dark hair had fallen down over his forehead and she had a sudden, almost uncontrollable impulse to put it back in place in a tender, half-caressing way, as she had so often done in the past. Then she remembered that a light-projected image could only be changed at its point of origin and the impulse died.

  “I’ve seen and heard too much in the past thirty minutes that the best minds—the best scientific minds—could never hope to explain, to doubt anything you may have to tell me. Please don’t keep anything back—I’m glad you spoke to Bobby as you did. He’s not too young to know how important courage can be.

  For a moment, her words seemed to kindle a warmth in her husband’s eyes. Then the look of torment came back and when he spoke his voice sounded despairingly flat again, drained of all emotion.

  “I have lost all track of time,” he said. “I do not know whether I walked out into the garden a half hour…or two hours ago.”

  “But you must have known when you phoned me,” Helen said.

  “No, even then I was confused, uncertain as to the time. And nothing that I said was true. But they told me what to say.”

  “They? There was more than one man in the garden then. They—took you away? In a car, George?”

  “No, they forced me to walk. Along the road and up Thunder Mountain. But I do not think they are men.”

  “You do not think—”

  He shook his head, a look of desperate appeal coming into his eyes. “You said that you wouldn’t doubt me, that you’d seen enough to convince you that something strange and terrible must have taken place. Well…it has, Helen, it has. Something strange…and very terrible.”

  “Go on, darling,” she urged, when she saw that he was having difficulty in keeping his voice steady. “I won’t interrupt you again. But what you said…it’s so shocking…”

  “They may be human. I just don’t know. They keep faces covered with…a kind of hood They are about my height and their bodies are sturdily built, and not in the least malformed. In the brief time I’ve been with them, I’ve found out that there are a great many things they can do which no scientific technologist could possibly duplicate. And they can get inside my mind, and influence my thinking without making me feel I have lost all control over my thoughts. They have succeeded in convincing me that what they want me to do is reasonable, that it makes a great deal of sense.”

  Helen could restrain herself no longer. “But if they can influence your thinking they may have convinced you of something that isn’t true. How can you be sure—”

  Before she could complete the thought Wentworth shook his head, as if anticipating what she had been about to say. “It’s not an hypnotic compulsion—or anything of that nature. I’m still free to make my own decisions. I know—I’m sure. I could have refused to phone and plead with you to bring the children over here. But they made it unmistakably plain that if I didn’t make that call they would go right into the house and bring you here by force. It wasn’t really necessary for me to phone, but it made it a little easier for them. They are becoming impatient. They don’t intend to remain on the mountain much longer.”

  “But why did they want us to come here?” Helen asked, shaken by something in his expression that struck a chill to her heart.

  “So I could talk to you,” Wentworth said, his voice a little steadier now. She had the feeling that he was trying desperately to strike a balance between what had to be said, and words that would carry a small measure of reassurance. “I could not have communicated with you as I am doing now in our cottage, because this light transmission circuit is very complex and they set it up here to enable them to use this cottage as—well, I guess you could call it a base of operations. Mrs. Jackson is in her room in a drug-induced sleep.”

  He paused an instant. “I don’t know just why they are interested in us. We’ll be told, I think. But that’s no as important right now as the great danger we’ll be in if we disobey them. They’re conducting a very terrible night raid on our unsuspecting village. Ten or twelve of them are still in the village, making contact with men, women and children they would prefer not to subdue by violence. They were compelled to use physical force against me, because I walked out into the garden and surprised them when they were just setting up this light circuit, and if I’d broken away from them and summoned help they might have been in trouble.

  “Not really in trouble because I don’t think they would have any difficulty in destroying the entire village. But they don’t seem to want to resort to large-scale violence. They’ve told me just enough to convince me of that. Individual violence they are also determined to avoid, unless they are given no choice, and are forced to make use of it.”

  “But why, George?” Helen heard herself asking. “If they are as powerful as you say—”

  “They don’t want to inflict an emotional trauma on any of the people they are interested in…a trauma that might have difficulty in overcoming when they take us…”

  He hesitated, and for a moment, as the silence between them lengthened, a many-taloned fear took shape in Helen’s mind, and when she tried to speak her throat muscles tightened up and she could only stare at him, her hand pressed to her throat.

  His words, when the silence ended, seemed to bear no direct relation to what he had said before. “There is something they want you to see,” he said. “It is very strange…but I think they regret they were forced to take me to the mountain against my will. I struggled at first, and they had to resort to considerable physical violence. But they were less relentless than they might have been and I’m not seriously injured. A strained shoulder is nothing. The hurt would only go deep and destroy me if something happened to you and the children.”

  “Thank God you’re not… I was afraid…”

  “No, I’ll be all right,” he went on reassuringly. “But there’s something I think you should know before I see you again. The way we feel is important to them. They don’t want us to resent and hate them. It would interfere with whatever it is that makes them take an interest in us. I think, strange as it may seem, that they had two reasons for not going into our cottage and removing you and the children by forc
e. My phone call made it a little easier for them, as I’ve said. But I think they knew I’d be grateful as well, would feel less angry and resentful if they allowed me to talk to you as I am doing now, and you could see what I’m going to show you.”

  “You said…they wanted me to see it,” Helen heard herself saying. “What is it, George? Something they gave you?”

  “It’s a light-image transmission,” George Wentworth said. “I can project it myself. They’ve shown me how to manipulate the beam, just as I’ve been doing. It’s complex in a quite simple way—unbelievably so, much simpler than a short-wave transmitter. You merely—but there’s no need for me to describe how it works. Bobby could project his image just as easily as I’ve been projecting mine.”

  Again there appeared on George Wentworth’s lips the twisted, small smile that had cost him such an effort a few minutes earlier. “An image in full color that you can talk and move about at will inside a circle of light—an image that’s unlike anything you’ll ever see on TV, because it’s completely three-dimensional and can pass through the walls of a house or a pine forest with no clicking transmitter at the sending end or radio tubes to bring it right into the room with you. But it must operate on some principle that’s mechanical, for it’s difficult to set up, and can’t be installed without specialized equipment, even though a child of five could use it with a few simple instructions. There’s a luminous globe and a metal pointer with a notch in it that opens up the two-way transmission.”

  George Wentworth’s smile seemed to grow even more forced before it vanished. “To single it out is misleading. It is just one of the many astounding things they can do that seem to do violence to the laws of physics. I’ve seen a few of them, just in the short while I’ve been with them. They can burn down a tree from a distance, make it shrivel into gray ash with no visible flame.

  “They can bring a bird in flight down like a leaden weight plummeting to earth from high in the sky, with a tiny tube that’s totally soundless. They can make the waters of Thunder Mountain Lake boil for two or three hundred feet in all directions with another tube that’s not much larger. You know how placid those waters are. We’ve gone canoeing on the lake often enough.

  “They can talk to one another at a distance of three hundred feet with midget-sized walkie-talkie—a shining, one-inch disk which they insert in their ears, under the hood. They can uproot a tree with a kind of blowgun that makes a whirring sound and shoots darts that explode on contact.

  “What they can do with their minds alone is almost as incredible. But it takes a little more time. Right now they’re keeping you from moving, as they could have kept me from moving in the garden if grappling with me in a physical way had not seemed a simpler, quicker and more silent way of preventing me from struggling.

  “No instrument of science, no matter how powerful it may be, or strange, or miraculous can be any more effective than bodily strength in situations where instant action is of the utmost importance. It is actually the most dependable of silencers. But the use of that violence they now seem to regret.”

  “Why are you telling me all this, George?”

  “To make you understand that to resist them, to fight against them, would be useless. We must do as they say, or we will not be alive to tell ourselves that death is the most terrible of human disasters. And it is, darling—make no mistake about that. Just to remain alive, to draw breath means that all hope need not be abandoned. Men and women have died inwardly just to stay alive and have found themselves reborn again.”

  “Reborn as slaves? No—that would be worse than dying,” Helen heard herself protesting.

  “To be reborn free and whole again—to get back the great gift of life,” George Wentworth said. “There is always that possibility, always that hope to cling to. We must not relinquish it.”

  “Do they know what you are saying to me now?”

  “I’m sure they do. But it does not matter. They want me to feel that I am still independent—a free agent. Otherwise I would not be of interest to them.”

  “But are you free, George? Could you resist them if you wanted to, if you were willing to risk—”

  “I don’t know. I can’t be sure,” he said, cutting her short. “I only know that my uncertainly as to just how free I am to do something that would force them to resort to violence, is known to them and they want me to talk to you as I am doing now, with no attempt to mislead or deceive you in any way. They want you to talk to me just as freely, even to doubt some of the things I’ve told you. You cannot make a wise decision if your doubts remain unresolved, if you keep them concealed. Now I’m going to show you what they want you to see. It may help you to understand just how dangerous any kind of resistance would be.”

  The light had begun to flicker and dim a little, but it suddenly brightened again, as if he was having difficulty in altering the circle of radiance to bring another image into view.

  It flashed across Helen’s mind—was the thought solely her own?—that the difficulty was an emotional one. If another image appeared he would have to vanish, and she would be alone again, alone with the children in a house that would become as alien to normal experience as it had seemed before he had appeared in the midst of the glow. Oh, it had remained alien enough to make even the darkness seem alive, as if some invisible monster that had been spawned by it was breathing slowly in and out. But just her husband’s presence alone…

  “I love you, darling,” George Wentworth said, as if aware of her thoughts. “Keep remembering that, hold on to it very tightly. We’ll all be together again when they leave the mountain. Before daybreak—they have told me that much. I don’t know where they are taking us, or how long we’ll be gone. But others have been released after a short while, have been returned safely to their homes. They’ve had some incredible stories to tell—stories I’ve refused to take seriously. But now I am sure that most of them were true. The incredible can and does happen. When my image vanishes I will not return…but you and Bobby and Susan will have more than light-projected image to turn to for support when you join me on the mountain.”

  The circle of radiance began to flicker again, and Wentworth’s image became less distinct. He seemed to be moving slowly backwards into the glow as his image dimmed.

  “Dad, don’t go!” Bobby called out. “I’m scared. I can’t move, and if you’re not here…”

  “I was never really here, Bobby,” Wentworth said, with a catch in his voice. “If you saw a Western sheriff on TV with a gun in his hand and a badge pinned to his shirt you wouldn’t feel quite so alone and unprotected if a burglar came in through the window and grabbed hold of you. I know. That’s what you’re trying to tell me. But that’s plain silly, Bobby and you’re old enough to understand exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Dad, I can’t help it. If you’re not here—”

  “I’m not a sheriff, Bobby and I haven’t got a shining badge or anything of the sort. But I love you very much and sometimes just an ordinary man can do more to protect his family when they’re in great danger than a Western sheriff who is real and not an image on a screen. But if he’s an image himself his hands are tied. I’ll be more than an image, Bobby, when I see you again. Just remember that, and keep your powder dry.”

  “I don’t want Daddy to go,” Susan said, tugging at her mother’s hand. “Tell him, Mommy. He’ll stay if you tell him to.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Susan,” Helen said, looking at the circle of light with a sinking sensation that was making her feel as if all the breath was being squeezed from her lungs. “He has to go but we’ll see him again soon. That’s right, isn’t it George? You know you don’t have to spare me. But you could be trying to spare the children. Don’t darling, it’s not necessary. Bobby can be very brave—”

  “You bet he can,” Wentworth said, his voice still audible but his image so faint now that she had to strain to make it out in t
he depths of the glow. “He knows I’ve told him the truth, and nothing but the truth. And so do you, darling. What they want you to see is very beautiful. If they can build…well, you’ll see. Something else as well, that’s like nothing you’ve ever known before. An emanation of power, a kind of invincibility that makes itself felt. You can’t hope to struggle against that kind of invincibility. Don’t try. Accept it for what it is—a warning. There is no other way.”

  Wentworth’s image vanished and a dull, continuous flickering replaced the steady glow. Gradually the circle of radiance became brighter again, growing almost blinding for a moment, precisely as it had done before Wentworth’s image had come into view.

  Suddenly the flickering was gone and another image came into view, huge and shining, and only a little smaller in circumference than the circle itself.

  Behind it there towered pine trees on a mountain slope that Helen instantly recognized, for she had often climbed to that height on Thunder Mountain and stood staring down over a sea of greenery at the bright waters of the lake at its base.

  The slope was less than a hundred feet from the summit and there was a wide, plateau-like ledge of rock at that point jutting out from it, where she had often stopped to rest before continuing on to the top.

  But now she wasn’t ascending the mountain on foot. She was staring at the ledge in a dark and silent house, with a far greater constriction in her chest than when she had been out of breath from climbing, and the strain of the steep ascent had made her temples swell to bursting. Now it was shock alone, a sudden, inexplicable kind of fright, that made it impossible for her to wrench her gaze from the enormous, circular disk that rested on the ledge with the moonlight shining full upon it.

  It was hard to understand what there was about it that made her want to shut her eyes and blot it from her sight although she was powerless to do so for it was very beautiful. The moonlight brought into sharp relief the silvery-gleaming projections that encircled its entire circumference at evenly spaced intervals. They looked, at first glance, like fragile, delicately fashioned metal flowers. But as she continued to stare at them she saw that they were small, unfolded wings which were decorative, for they were too small to be functional. It was as if some silversmith of great artistic skill had designed them to symbolize the relationship between a flying object in swift, soaring flight and a flock of birds winging their way into the sky.