The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel

by Frank Belknap Long

“Why didn’t you ask me? It is the first question you should have asked, because it is the most natural thing in the world for a man who has traveled in time to draw a map for you. The region’s geographical features—its precise locality—should have aroused your curiosity beyond anything else. But you didn’t even ask. Shall I tell you why?”

  “If it will help me to understand, I guess you’d better. But it’s all very strange. I had the feeling I didn’t have to ask—that I knew.”

  “You thought you knew—and you were not greatly mistaken. Only slightly so. You thought he must come from a country very much like India, where the specter of starvation can turn the thoughts of men inward as it has never done in the West, despite the blight, despite everything.

  “When I described that age to you there came into your mind a picture of thousands of emaciated men and women, half-naked, despairing, seeking escape from their wretchedness by the kind of self-imposed and tormented introspection that has actually, in India as we’ve known it across the centuries, increased the hidden powers of the mind.

  “Contemplation, constant brooding, a summoning of an inner strength to resist an environmental deprivation that would otherwise be unbearable. The weakest slew or were slain in a desperate struggle to avoid starvation. Others, the strongest, managed to survive with little or no food and turned into gaunt skeletons like Malador. It happened in India centuries ago and in the twentieth century, too, of course and it could happen anywhere on earth in the twenty-second century, because the world I visited was like that everywhere.

  “There must be many Maladors in the twenty-second century. Emaciated skeletons with the mind’s powers so highly developed as to seem almost limitless.

  “We thought Malador was no different from all of the others who begged us to save them, often falling to their knees, sobbing and pleading.

  “But I’m almost sure now that he was one of the strong ones, with the power, as I’ve said, to move and shake. That does not mean that he would not have welcomed food as well. Starvation or near-starvation is never pleasant. And if he was one of the strong ones, Dan, his hatred of you could be just as all-consuming. The only difference would be—his inner strength would make him a hundred times more dangerous, a hundred times more determined to exact retribution for the torment that he has endured.”

  “What you are really saying is that developing the hidden powers of the mind does not always turn men and women into saints,” Helen Blakemore said.

  “Exactly,” Faran said. “I’m feeling much better now, but not because of that. I think I can get up without having the compartment start pinwheeling the way it did a moment ago.”

  “All right, let’s try it,” Blakemore said. He took firm hold of Faran’s arm, but when Tyson started forward Gilda gestured him back. “Dad doesn’t need all that help, Roger,” she said. “Dan and I will take care of it.”

  It seemed a surprising thing for her to have said, and for the barest instant there flashed across Blakemore’s mind a thought that might have thrilled him in some other age as remote in Time, long ago or far away and if the only woman more important to him than a thousand others combined could have been had not come into his life at all.

  It was almost as if Gilda, despite herself, could not quite forgive Roger for what he had done and was letting him think that he had a rival she was experiencing no need to forgive at all.

  It was a mad thought and the instant Faran was on his feet Blakemore saw how mistaken he had been, for she darted instantly to Roger’s side, linked her arm with his, and kissed him firmly on the cheek.

  “I was ready to believe, when the paralysis started to wear off, that Malador had actually borrowed that weapon from Poseidon in some way,” Faran said, with a twisted smile. “A god of the sea must have possessed hidden powers of the mind as well—quite extraordinary ones, if Homer was not a bald-faced liar. Who knows? There may have been a man like Malador once in the Aegean world whom the Greeks later deified.”

  “A god of storm and shipwreck,” Blakemore said. “Yes, I can well believe it.”

  “He probably hated both the land itself and all landsmen,” Gilda said. “It makes sense. He may have been a lean and hungry god, and when he saw a field of golden wheat he shook his trident in rage, a storm arose and the land became flooded.

  “If a man like Dan had grown that wheat I’m sure Homer would not have let it be forgotten,” Faran said.

  “Perhaps he didn’t,” Blakemore said. “He may have turned me into the Cyclops. One-eyed and short-sighted. Polyphemus was the wrong kind of landsman.”

  “Far-sighted, you mean,” Faran said. “Your wheat built the cities we saw. No short-sighted Cyclops could have done that. Besides, you’ve nothing in common with a Cyclops, apart from being a giant.”

  Before Blakemore could comment on the absurdity of that the compartment did what Faran had feared it might—for him at least. It began to pinwheel.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was a swaying as well as a pinwheeling, a movement of the entire compartment that was not unlike the rising and falling movements of a ship at sea, riding the crest of a high wave and then descending into the trough. It lacked the violence, the swift, erratic tossing about of a ship caught in a gale. But it was not on that account less terrifying, for the floor tilted at a precarious angle before it righted itself again, threatening to hurl the occupants to the floor.

  Only Faran did not become wildly alarmed. The look on his face was merely one of chagrin, and he immediately sat down again, clearly thinking that it was a wave of dizziness sweeping over him that was causing the compartment to sway and spin about.

  Then, abruptly, the vexation vanished from his eyes and was replaced by as great a look of fear as he had worn when he had first discovered that the dials had shifted about and the machine could not be stopped from careening through Time, completely out of control.

  Blakemore’s concern, on seeing him descend to the floor, had prevented him from keeping as well-balanced as the others, and he was hurled to his knees just as Faran arose, with Gilda’s screams echoing in his ears. Helen simply drew in her breath but so sharply that he was sure he would have heard the sound as she had been three or four feet away instead of almost at his side.

  She was even closer to him when he regained his feet, for an increase in the swaying was forcing her to cling to him for support.

  All at once the swaying stopped and the compartment became totally still again. But the viewing window had become enveloped, on its outer surface, in what looked for an instant like a solid sheet of flame.

  Then there were flames inside the compartment as well, dancing on the walls, streaming across the floor in widening banners that wrapped themselves around Tyson and Gilda, blotting them from view, and then turned into a thin dragon’s tongue spitting fire.

  The dragon’s tongue was forked as well, and one fiery filament ascended and coiled around Faran’s head, and shoulders. His hair seemed to catch fire. Helen screamed as Gilda had done, and went limp in her husband’s arms.

  Blakemore was retreating with her toward the opposite wall when all of the flames expired. No one appeared to have been harmed. Tyson and Gilda could not have looked more shaken and their lips were drained of all color. But their clothes had not caught fire and their arms and faces were not scorched. Neither had Faran’s hair been burned away. It had, in fact, not been burned at all.

  Blakemore could only hope that the seemingly heatless flames had not inflicted injuries which were invisible and might be slow to heal. But the look which Faran was exchanging with him was not that of a man who had been wounded in his mind, at least not grievously, and Tyson and Gilda were raising and lowering their arms and looking down over themselves with considerably less fear in their eyes, although it was far from an absence of fear.

  Only Helen Blakemore remained limp and unstirring in her husband’s arms. He loo
ked at Faran almost accusingly as he lowered her to the floor. “She fainted when she saw the flames swirl up over your head,” he said. “I’ll try chaffing her wrists. I hope it helps.”

  “Don’t do anything,” Faran said. “Just ease her gently down, and let her recover by herself. She’s going to be all right.”

  He swung about and moved unsteadily toward the viewing window, and for an instant Blakemore was angered by what he mistook for a lack of concern. Then he saw that there was still a brightness beyond the pane. It had ceased to look like a solid sheet of flame, but there was nothing reassuring about that. The glare was less bright but Blakemore knew from experience, having once nearly lost his life in trying to put out a fire, that high-leaping flames that darted in all directions could be more difficult to bring under control than just one steady blaze.

  He was on his knees at his wife’s side, chaffing her wrists despite what Faran had said and pleading with her to open her eyes when Tyson’s voice came to his ears. He was pleading with Gilda in much the same way, except that he wasn’t trying to awaken her from a dead faint but simply doing his best to calm her down.

  “The swaying is gone and the flames are gone and nothing more may happen—at least for awhile. If it’s Malador and that’s the best he can do— Don’t you realize what it means? He’s shot his belt and failed.”

  “I’m terribly frightened, Roger,” Gilda’s voice was barely audible, a kind of half-whisper, choked, despairing. “Those were real flames, not just reflections of light. You can always tell.”

  “Not always, no. We weren’t burned. There was no heat.”

  “But I felt them, swirling around me. There was a slight heat. Please, Roger—don’t deny it. You know it’s true. The next time—”

  “The flames outside are real enough!” Faran’s voice cut in sharply. “The vegetation is burning. And the machine was moved. Not much, but a little. There’s no question about it—”

  “Dad, how do you know?”

  “The flowering plants—the biggest ones—aren’t as close as they were. The whole alignment has changed. The glare makes them stand out.”

  “Are you sure?” It was Roger’s voice again.

  “Yes… yes. I can tell.”

  Blakemore neither looked toward the viewing window nor across the compartment toward Tyson and Gilda. He had not removed his eyes from his wife’s face, nor his hands from her wrists. He was glad that he hadn’t, for she was stirring now and the color had come back into her face.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was almost sure he knew, from the way her pupils quivered and widened, the exact moment when she remembered what had caused her to faint.

  In a moment she was sitting up, her fingers biting into his wrists.

  “Stay steady, darling,” he pleaded. “Philip’s all right. So are Roger and Gilda.”

  “But I’m not. I’ve never had so terrible a shock. There’s a quivering inside me and I—I can’t make it stop. How can Philip be all right? His head was ablaze.”

  “I tell you, he is. There were no burns.”

  “I don’t see him. Where—”

  “I’m right here,” Faran said, having crossed so quickly from the viewing window to where she was sitting that he was standing directly behind her with his hand on her shoulder before Blakemore’s eyes could sweep the compartment.

  “We’re still in danger,” he said, “because the vegetation outside is burning and the machine is right in the midst of the flames. The flames outside may be hot enough to damage the machine. I’m just guessing, of course, but I think when the flames penetrate a thick metal barrier they lose most of their heat. It’s as if a harmless beam of light were swirling over us, except that it isn’t quite like a harmless light beam in its fieriness, the way it singled us out and wrapped itself around us.”

  “I should think it would have to be an invisible heat ray, infra-red or some other ray situated below the red end of the visible spectrum to penetrate a metal barrier,” Blakemore said. “It would have to be hot and invisible, not visible and without heat.”

  “It would have to be, of course,” Faran said. “There’s only one thing wrong with that. What it would have to be it isn’t.”

  “But how can visible light penetrate an opaque metal barrier?” Blakemore persisted.

  “I don’t know,” Faran said. “Do you?”

  “A moment ago you were talking as if you did know,” Blakemore couldn’t help saying. “You based it on the educated guess that Malador knew exactly how to enlarge on the East Indian rope trick. I still don’t quite share that point of view, but since you and Roger seem to think there’s invisible writing on every folded-back part of the universe—what’s so strange about it? If you’re right, I mean.”

  Before Faran could say anything in reply Roger’s voice caused him to swing about and postpone, for an instant, helping his wife to get up. Both Tyson and Gilda had managed to cross the compartment and were blocking off the light from the viewing window.

  “Whatever you may believe, Dan,” Roger said, moving a step closer. “We’ve got to do something about it. If Malador could move the machine, what that light failed to do is of no importance. It can only mean we’re completely at his mercy, until he’s—well, until he’s stopped. There may be only one way of stopping him, and I don’t think we should go on refusing to face it. I think you know what that way is, Dan. He’s forfeited all claims to survival.”

  “Oh, hell,” Blakemore heard himself saying. “What makes you think I’d draw back from that? If I was sure it was his life or ours I’d blast him down at the first opportunity, and that’s entirely apart from the way he feels about me. But two things stand in the way. One—I’m still far from sure you and Philip are right about him. Moving the machine would take more doing than just lifting up a big boulder, say, and teleporting it a short distance. Psychokinesis may be a paranormal possibility. How should I know? I’m not enough of an expert to know what the hidden powers of the mind can accomplish, in India or elsewhere. But there’s one thing I can’t buy. That inside man’s fragile cerebral cortex—it’s like a blob of jelly—there’s enough hidden power to move the machine. In a small way, it would be like moving a mountain.

  “Two—” Blakemore went on, after a pause. “I don’t think we could train a weapon on him—any kind of weapon—and blast him down in time to prevent him from stopping us. I’ll concede you and Philip that much. He’d find some way of stopping us.”

  “He’s right, Roger,” Faran said. “I don’t think I could operate the weapon he turned against Dan—and I doubt if you could. You were watching him closely on the beach when he started to bring down that gull. But he didn’t complete the demonstration.”

  “I’m sure I can operate it,” Tyson said. “But there’s something Dan told me that would enable us to go after him with a much better chance of succeeding. Dan can’t be hypnotized.”

  Faran straightened and looked at Dan steadily for an instant. “Is that true?” he asked.

  “I’ve encouraged a few hypnotists, exceptionally gifted ones, to try it—just out of curiosity,” Blakemore told him. “It has never worked. It doesn’t have to mean I’m particularly strong-willed. I didn’t put up too much resistance—once or twice or none at all. That would have spoiled the experiment. Hypnosis just doesn’t seem to work with some people.”

  “Extrasensory hypnosis—sight unseen, as Roger has stressed—might be different,” Faran said. “I don’t like that term. It’s basically meaningless. But something of the sort undoubtedly exists and has been often practiced.”

  He hesitated, then said: “Still, still, it could change everything. If you can’t be hypnotized in the usual way Malador might well be unable to get through to you. It would provide an added protection and if Roger is really convinced he can operate the weapon—”

  He broke off abruptly, st
ood up and walked to the window. It gave Blakemore an opportunity, while he remained staring out, to help his wife to her feet. Up to that moment both she and Gilda had remained silent.

  But now there was a fear in Helen’s eyes that was exactly like the look that had come into them just before she had fainted, and her voice could not have been more chillingly close to desperation if it had been a voice from the tomb.

  “You’re not going to leave the machine. I won’t let you. If you do—I’ll find some way of not being here when you come back.”

  “Roger’s not going outside either,” Gilda said. “He’s lying to you about the weapon. He told me he was far from sure he could operate it.”

  “I’m not the one who’s lying,” Roger said. But I can forgive you for that, darling, because I know why you—”

  Faran’s voice from the window prevented him from going on. Faran spoke without turning. “I think the fire’s dying down a little,” he said. “Since there’s nothing out there that could stop a blaze like that in an ordinary way Malador may want the flames to go out. About a third of the vegetation is seared, but it has stopped shriveling and blackening over a wide area.”

  “Between us we should be able to operate the weapon,” Blakemore said, not wanting his wife to repeat what she had said, but fearing that she would. “I’ve always been rather—well, good with guns.”

  Before Helen could grasp the enormity of what he had said Faran turned from the window and spoke again.

  “We’ll have to wait, of course, until there are no more flames. The fire could blaze up again and get worse. It’s still spreading a little here and there. But I’ve a feeling it’s going to burn itself out—”

  “Dad, don’t you realize what that could mean?” Gilda almost screamed the words. “Malador may want Roger and Dan to go outside. He may be waiting for them to come out and get themselves killed. Maybe he found he couldn’t move the machine enough to wreck it. He may have tried and failed. So he set that fire to bring Dan out. He must hate Roger too, now, because of what happened on the beach. But he needed him, right up to the last moment and after that—well, killing him may have seemed unimportant to him, not worth bothering about. But if he goes out with Dan—”