“He wanted you to help me, yes. But you are weak from the shock you have had. I cannot ask you—”
I said, “How much blood do you need?”
At her answer, I said, “All right. You saved my life; I must do the same for you. I can spare that much blood easily. Go ahead.”
She bowed toward me, a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman’s hand. I felt no pain.
You must rest now,” Lhar said. “I will go away but I shall not be long.”
The robot clicked and chattered, shifting on its tentacle legs. I watched it, saying, “Lhar, this can’t be true. Why am I—believing impossible things?”
“I have given you peace,” she told me. “Your mind was dangerously close to madness. I have drugged you a little, physically; so your emotions will not be strong for a while. It was necessary to save your sanity.”
It was true that my mind felt—was drugged the word? My thoughts were clear enough, but I felt as if I were submerged in transparent but dark water. There was an odd sense of existing in a dream. I remembered Swinburne’s lines:
Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds’ and spent waves’ riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams . . .
“What is this place?” I asked.
Lhar bent toward me. “I do not know if I can explain. It is not quite clear to me. The robot knows. He is a reasoning machine. Wait . . .” She turned to the sphere. Its cilia fluttered in quick, complicated signals.
Lhar turned back to me. “Do you know much of the nature of Time? That it is curved, moves in a spiral . . .”
She went on to explain, but much of her explanation I did not understand. Yet I gathered enough to realize that this valley was not of Earth. Or, rather, it was not of the earth I knew.
“You have geological disturbances, I know. The strata are tumbled about, mixed one with another—”
I remembered what Fra Rafael had said about an earthquake, three months before. Lhar nodded toward me.
“But this was a time-slip. The space-time continuum is also subject to great strains and stresses. It buckled, and strata—Time-sectors—were thrust up to mingle with others. This valley belongs to another age, as do I and the machine, and also—the Other.”
She told me what had happened . . . There had been no warning. One moment she had been in her own World, her own Time. The next, she was here, with her robot. And with the Other . . .
“I do not know the origin of the Other. I may have lived in either your future or your past. This valley, with its ruined stone structures, is probably part of your future. I had never heard of such a place before. The Other may be of the future also. Its shape I do not know . . .”
She told me more, much more. The Other, as she called it—giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage—had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It was a sort of merging . . .
Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes, forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size, familiar laws of nature do not apply.
So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence.
Sitting there in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet—what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip—and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and transported to our time-stratum.
A robot, a flower that was alive and intelligent—and feminine—and the Other . . .
“The native girls,” I said. “What will happen to them?”
“They are no longer alive,” Lhar told me. “They still move and breathe, but they are dead, sustained only by the life-force of the Other. I do not think it will harm me. Apparently it prefers other food.”
“That’s why you’ve stayed here?” I asked.
The shining velvety calyx swayed. “I shall die soon. For a little while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world, this alien time. Your blood has helped.” The cool tentacle withdrew from my arm. “But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled with—with certain energizing vibratory principles.
“They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays. And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then my poor robot will be alone.” I sensed elfin amusement in that last thought. “It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of a machine. But in our world there is a rapport—a mental symbiosis—between robot and living beings.”
There was a silence. After a while I said, “I’d better get out of here. Get help—to end the menace of the other . . .” What sort of help I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?
Lhar caught my thought. “In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this valley—you cannot. The fog will bring you back.”
“I’ve got my compass.” I glanced at it, saw that the needle was spinning at random.
Lhar said: “The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog, you will always return here.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a colloid brain.”
I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.
“Can’t your robot guide me?” I persisted.
“He will not leave my side. Perhaps—” Lhar turned to the sphere, and the cilia fluttered excitedly. “No,” she said, turning back to me. “Built into his mind is one rule—never to leave me. He cannot disobey that.”
I couldn’t ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said, “It must be possible for me to get out of here. I’m going to try, anyway.”
“I will be waiting,” she said, and did not move as I slipped out between two trunks of the banyanlike tree.
It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous. I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.
Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And presently I would find myself back in the valley . . .
I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley—unless hypnotically summoned, like the Indio girls.
I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn’t moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently.
“Lhar,” I said. “Lhar, can’t you help me?”
The white flame of the flower was motionless, but the robot’s cilia moved in quick signals. Lhar moved at last.
“Perhaps,” her thought came. “Unless both induction and deduction fail, my robot has discovered a chance for you. The Other can control your mind through emotions. But I, too, have some power over your mind. If I give you strength, wall you with a psychic shield against intrusion, you may be able to face the Other. But you cannot destroy
it unless it is in its normal shape. The Indio girls must be killed first . . .”
“Killed?” I felt a sense of horror at the thought of killing those poor simple native girls.
They are not actually alive now. They are now a part of the Other. They can never be restored to their former life.”
“How will—destroying them—help me?” I asked.
Again Lhar consulted the robot. “The Other will be driven from their bodies. It will then have no hiding-place and must resume its own form. Then it can be slain.”
Lhar swayed and curtseyed away. “Come,” she said. “It is in my mind that the Other must die. It is evil, ruthlessly selfish, which is the same thing. Until now I have not realized the solution to this evil being. But seeing into your thoughts has clarified my own. And my robot tells me that unless I aid you, the Other will continue ravening into your world. If that happens, the time-pattern will be broken . . . I do not quite understand, but my robot makes no mistakes. The Other must die . . .”
She was outside of the banyan now, the sphere gliding after her. I followed. The three of us moved swiftly across the blue moss, guided by the robot.
In a little while we came to where the six Indio girls were squatting. They had apparently not moved since I had left them.
“The Other is not here,” Lhar said.
The robot held me back as Lhar advanced toward the girls, the skirt-like frill at her base convolving as she moved. She paused beside them and her petals trembled and began to unfold.
From the tip of that great blossom a fountain of white dust spurted up. Spores or pollen, it seemed to be. The air was cloudy with the whiteness.
The robot drew me back, back again. I sensed danger . . .
The pollen seemed to be drawn toward the Indios, spun toward them in dancing mist-motes. It settled on their bronzed bodies, their limbs and faces. It covered them like a veil until they appeared to be six statues, white as cold marble, there on the blue moss.
Lhar’s petals lifted and closed again. She swayed toward me, her mind sending a message into mine.
“The Other has no refuge now,” she told me. “I have slain the—the girls.”
“They’re dead?” My lips were dry.
“What semblance of life they had left is now gone. The Other cannot use them again.”
Lhar swayed toward me. A cool tentacle swept out, pressing lightly on my forehead. Another touched my breast, above the heart.
“I give you of my strength,” Lhar said. “It will be as shield and buckler to you. The rest of the way you must go alone . . .”
Into me tide of power flowed. I sank into cool depths, passionless and calm. Something was entering my body, my mind and soul, drowning my fears, stiffening my resolve.
Strength of Lhar was now my strength!
The tentacles dropped away, their work done. The robot’s cilia signalled and Lhar said, “Your way lies there. That temple—do you see it?”
I saw it. Far in the distance, half shrouded by the fog, a scarlet structure, not ruined like the others, was visible.
“You will find the Other there. Slay the last Indio, then destroy the Other.”
I had no doubt now of my ability to do that. A new power seemed to lift me from my feet, send me running across the moss. Once I glanced back, to see Lhar and her robot standing motionless, watching me.
The temple enlarged as I came nearer. It was built of the same reddish stone as the other ruined blocks I had seen. But erosion had weathered its harsh angles till nothing now remained but a rounded, smoothly sculptured monolith, twenty feet tall, shaped like a rifle shell.
A doorway gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of inhuman beings that watched.
It was dark but I could see the Indio girl who had been Miranda Valle. Her eyes were, on me, and, even through the protecting armor of Lhar strength; I could feel their terrible power.
The life in the. girl was certainly not human!
“Destroy her!” my mind warned. “Destroy her! Quickly!” But as I hesitated a veil of darkness seemed to fall upon me. Utter cold, a frigidity as of outer space, lanced into my brain. My senses reeled under the assault. Desperately, blind and sick and giddy, I called on the reserve strength Lhar had given me. Then I blacked out . . .
When I awoke I saw smoke coiling up from the muzzle of the pistol in my hand. At my feet lay the Indio girl, dead. My bullet had crashed into her brain, driving out the terrible dweller there.
My eyes were drawn to the farther wall. An archway gaped there. I walked across the room, passed under the arphway. Instantly I was in complete, stygian darkness. But I was not alone!
The power of the Other struck me like a tangible blow. I have no words to tell of an experience so completely disassociated from human memories. I remember only this: my mind and soul were sucked down into a black abyss where I had no volition or consciousness. It was another dimension of the mind where my senses were altered . . .
Nothing existed there but the intense blackness beyond time and space. I could not see the Other nor conceive of it. It was pure intelligence, stripped of flesh. It was alive and it had power—power that was god-like.
There in the great darkness I stood alone, unaided, sensing the approach of an entity from some horribly remote place where all values were altered.
I sensed Lhar’s nearness. “Hurry!” her thought came to me. “Before it wakens!”
Warmth flowed into me. The blackness receded . . .
Against the farther wall something lay, a thing bafflingly human . . . a great-headed thing with a tiny pallid body coiled beneath it. It was squirming toward me . . . .
“Destroy it!” Lhar communicated.
The pistol in my hand thundered, bucking against my palm. Echoes roared against the walls. I fired and fired again until the gun was empty . . .
“It is dead,” Lahr’s thought entered my mind.
I stumbled, dropped the pistol.
“It was the child of an old super-race—a child not yet born.”
Can you conceive of such a race? Where even the unborn had power beyond human understanding? My mind wondered what the adult Alien must be.
I shivered, suddenly cold. An icy wind gusted through the temple. Lhar’s thought was clear in my mind.
Now the valley is no longer a barrier to the elements. The Other created fog and warmth to protect itself. Now it is dead and your world reclaims its own.
From the outer door of the temple I could see the fog being driven away by a swift wind. Snow was falling slowly, great white flakes that blanketed the blue moss and lay like caps on the red shards that dotted the valley.
“I shall die swiftly and easily now, instead of slowly, by starvation,” Lhar said.
A moment later a thought crossed my mind, faint and intangible as a snowflake and I knew Lhar was saying goodbye.
I left the valley. Once I looked back, but there was only a veil of snow behind me.
And out of the greatest adventure the cosmic gods ever conceived—only this: For a little while the eternal veil of time was ripped away and the door to the unknown was held ajar.
But now the door is closed once more. Below Huascan a robot guards a tomb, that is all.
The snow fell faster. Shivering, I ploughed through the deepening drifts. My compass needle pointed north. The spell that had enthralled the valley was gone.
Half an hour later I found the trail, and the road to safety lay open before me. Fra Rafael would be waiting to hear my story.
But I did not think that would believe it . . .
1955
TWO-HANDED ENGINE
Henry Kuttner and his wife Catherine have written under seventeen known pseudonyms, and undoubtedly a few more that have so far escaped the researches of scholars
; and under the best-known of these, such as Lewis Padgett and Lawrence 0’Donnell, they have created a quite undue proportion of the top science fiction of the past fifteen years. In recent times they*ve abandoned pseudonyms, even the treasured Padgett by-line, to write (always in collaboration) under their own names; and they make their first non-pseudonymous appearance in F&SF with a novelet of future crime and justice—at once an exciting melodrama, a terrifying nightmare . . . and a sort of poetic-theological statement concerning man and his soul.
Ever since the days of Orestes there have been men with Furies following them. It wasn’t until the Twenty-Second Century that mankind made itself a set of real Furies, out of steel. Mankind had been through a lot by then. They had a good reason for building man-shaped Furies that would dog the footsteps of all men who kill men. Nobody else. There was by then no other crime of any importance.
It worked very simply. Without warning, a man who thought himself safe would suddenly hear the steady footfalls behind him. He would turn and see the two-handed engine walking toward him, shaped like a man of steel, and more incorruptible than any man not made of steel could be. Only then would the murdered know he had been tried and condemned by the omniscient electronic minds that knew society as no human mind could ever know it.
For the rest of his days, the man would hear those footsteps behind him. A moving jail with invisible bars that shut him off from the world. Never in life would he be alone again. And one day—he never knew when—the jailer would turn executioner.
Danner leaned back comfortably in his contoured restaurant chair and rolled expensive wine across his tongue, closing his eyes to enjoy the taste of it better. He felt perfectly safe. Oh, perfectly protected. For nearly an hour now he had been sitting here, ordering the most expensive food, enjoying the music breathing softly through the air, the murmurous, well-bred hush of his fellow diners. It was a good place to be. It was very good, having so much money—now.
True, he had had to kill to get the money. But no guilt troubled him. There is no guilt if you aren’t found out, and Danner had protection. Protection straight from the source, which was something new in the world. Danner knew the consequences of killing. If Hartz hadn’t satisfied him that he was perfectly safe, Danner would never have pulled the trigger . . .
Collected Fiction Page 783
