It would be three-dimensional chess with a million billion squares and a million pieces. And with the rules changing every move.
It would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that there was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thutmosis III, to the sailing of Columbus. It would involve all fields of human endeavor and human speculation and it would twist the dreams of men who had never thought of time except as a moving shadow across the sun dial's face.
It would involve spies and propagandists, spies to learn the factors of the past so that they could be plotted in the campaign strategy, propagandists to twist the fabric of the past so that strategy could be the more effective.
It would load the personnel of the Justice Department of the year 7990 with spies and fifth columnists and saboteurs. And it would do that thing so cleverly one could never find the spies.
But, as in an ordinary, honest war, there would be strategic points. As in chess, there would be one key square.
Sutton was that square. He was the square that must be seized and held. He was the pawn that stood in the way of the sweep of bishop and of rook. He was the pawn that both sides were lining up on, bringing all their pressure on a single point…and when one side was ready, when it had gained a fraction of advantage, the slaughter would begin.
Adams folded his arms upon the desk and laid his head upon them. His shoulders twitched with sobbing, but he had no tears.
"Ash, boy," he said. "Ash, I counted on you so much. Ash…"
The silence brought him straight in the chair again.
For a moment, he was unable to locate it…determine what was wrong. And then he knew.
The psych-tracer had stopped its burping.
He leaned forward and bent above it and there was no sound, no sound of heart, of breath, of blood coursing in the jugular.
The motivating force that had operated it had ceased.
Slowly, Adams rose from his chair, took down his hat and put it on.
For the first time in his life, Christopher Adams was going home before the day was over.
XXVI
SUTTON STIFFENED in his chair and then relaxed. For this was bluff, he told himself. These men wouldn't kill him. They wanted the book and dead men do not write.
Case answered him, almost as if Sutton had spoken what he thought aloud.
"You must not count on us," he said, "as honorable men, for neither of us ourselves would lay a claim to that. Pringle, I think, will bear me out in that."
"Oh, most certainly," said Pringle, "I have no use for honor."
"It would have meant a great deal to us if we could have taken you back to Trevor and…"
"Wait a second," said Sutton. "Who is this Trevor? He's a new one."
"Oh, Trevor," said Pringle. "Just an oversight. Trevor is the head of the corporation."
"The corporation," said Case, "that wants to get your book."
"Trevor would have heaped us with honors," Pringle said, "and loaded us with wealth if we had pulled it off, but since you won't co-operate we'll have to cast around for some other way to make ourselves a profit."
"So we switch sides," said Case, "and we shoot you. Morgan will pay high for you, but he wants you dead. Your carcass will be worth a good deal to Morgan. Oh yes, indeed it will."
"And you will sell it to him," Sutton said.
"Most certainly," said Pringle. "We never miss a bet."
Case purred at Sutton, "You do not object, I hope?" Sutton shook his head. "What you do with my cadaver," he told them, "is no concern of mine."
"Well, then," said Case and he raised the gun.
"Just a second," Sutton said quietly.
Case lowered the gun. "Now what?" he asked.
"He wants a cigarette," said Pringle. "Men who are about to be executed always want a cigarette or a glass of wine or a chicken dinner or something of the sort."
"I want to ask a question," Sutton said.
Case nodded.
"I take it," Sutton said, "that in your time I've already written this book."
"That's right," Case told him. "And, if you will allow me, it is an honest and efficient job."
"Under your imprint or someone else's?"
Pringle cackled. "Under someone else's, of course. If you did it under ours, why do you think we'd be back here at all?"
Sutton wrinkled his brow. "I've already written it," he said, "without your help or counsel…and without your editing. Now, if I did it a second time, and wrote it the way you wanted, there would be complications."
"None," said Case, "we couldn't overcome. Nothing that could not be explained quite satisfactorily."
"And now that you're going to kill me, there'll be no book at all. How will you handle that?"
Case frowned. "It will be difficult," he said, "and unfortunate…unfortunate for many people. But we'll work it out somehow."
He raised the gun again.
"Sure you won't change your mind?" he asked.
Sutton shook his head.
They won't shoot, he told himself, It's a bluff. The deck is cold and…
Case pulled the trigger.
A mighty force, like a striking fist, slammed into Sutton's body and shoved him back so hard that the chair tilted and then slued around, yawing like a ship caught in magnetic stresses.
Fire flashed within his skull and he felt one swift shriek of agony that took him in its claws and lifted him and shook him, jangling every nerve, grating every bone.
There was one thought, one fleeting thought that he tried to grasp and hold, but it wriggled from his brain like an eel slipping free from bloody ringers.
Change, said the thought. Change. Change.
He felt the change…felt it start even as he died.
And death was a soft thing, soft and black, cool and sweet and gracious. He slipped into it as a swimmer slips into the surf and it closed over him and held him and he felt the pulse and beat of it and knew the vastness and the sureness of it.
Back on Earth, the psych-tracer faltered to a stop and Christopher Adams went home for the first time in his life before the day was done.
XXVII
HERKIMER lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was long in coming. And he wondered that he should sleep…that he should sleep and eat and drink as Man. For he was not a man, although he was as close to one as the human mind and human skill could come.
His origin was chemical and Man's was biological. He was the imitation and Man was reality. It is the method, he told himself, the method and terminology, that keeps me from being Man, for in all things else we are the same.
The method and the words and the tattoo mark I wear upon my brow.
I am as good as Man and almost as smart as Man, for all I act the clown, and would be as treacherous as Man if I had the chance. Except I wear a tattoo mark and I am owned and I have no soul…although sometimes I doubt that.
Herkimer lay very quiet and gazed at the ceiling and tried to remember certain things, but the memories would not come.
First there was the tool and then the machine, which was no more than a complicated tool, and both machine and tool were no more than the extension of a hand.
Man's hand, of course.
Then came the robot and a robot was a machine that walked like a man. That walked and looked and talked like a man and did the things Man wished, but it was a caricature. No matter how sleekly machined, no matter how cleverly designed, there never was a danger that it be mistaken for a man.
And after the robot?
We are not robots, Herkimer told himself, and we are not men. We are not machines and we are not flesh and blood. We are chemicals made into the shapes of our creators and assigned a chemical life so close to the life of our makers that someday one of them will find, to his astonishment, that there is no difference.
Made in the shape of men…and the resemblance is so c
lose that we wear a tattoo mark so that men may know their own.
So close to Man and yet not Man.
Although there is hope. If we can keep the Cradle secret, if we can keep it hidden from the eyes of Man. Someday there will be no difference. Someday a man will talk to an android and think he's talking to a fellow man.
Herkimer stretched his arms and folded them over his head.
He tried to examine his mind, to arrive at motives and evaluations, but it was hard to do. No rancor, certainly. No jealousy. No bitterness. But a nagging feeling of inadequacy, of almost having reached the goal and falling short.
But there was comfort, he thought. There was comfort if there was nothing else.
And that comfort must be kept. Kept for the little ones, for the ones that were less than Man.
He lay for a long time, thinking about comfort watching the dark square of the window with the rime of frost upon it and the stars shining through the frost, listening to the thin whine of the feeble, vicious weasel-wind as it knifed across the roof.
Sleep did not come and he got up at last and turned on the light. Shivering, he got into his clothes and pulled a book out of his pocket. Huddling close to the lamp, he turned the pages to a passage worn thin with reading.
There is no thing, no matter how created, how born or how conceived or made, which knows the pulse of life, that goes alone. That assurance I can give you…
He closed the book and held it clasped between the palms of his two hands.
"…how born or how conceived or made…"
Made.
All that mattered was the pulse of life.
Comfort.
And it must be kept.
I did my duty, he told himself. My willing, almost eager, duty. I still am doing it.
I acted the part, he told himself, and I think I acted well. I acted a part when I carried the challenge to Asher Sutton's room. I acted a part when I came to him as a part of the estate duello…the saucy, flippant part of any common android.
I did my duty for him…and yet not for him, but comfort, for the privilege of knowing and believing that neither I nor any other living thing, no matter how lowly it may be, will ever be alone.
I hit him. I hit him on the button and I knocked him out and I lifted him in my arms and carried him.
He was angry at me, but that does not matter. For his anger cannot wash away a single word of the thing he gave me.
Thunder shook the house, and the window, for a moment, flared with sudden crimson.
Herkimer came to his feet and ran to the window and stood there, gripping the ledge, watching the red twinkle of dwindling rocket tubes.
Fear hit him in the stomach and he raced out of the door and down the hall, to Sutton's room.
He did not knock nor did he turn the knob. He hit the door and it shattered open, with a wrecked and twisted lock dangling by its screws.
The bed was empty and there was no one in the room.
XXVIII
SUTTON SENSED resurrection and he fought against it, for death was so comfortable. Like a soft, warm bed. And resurrection was a strident, insistent, maddening alarm clock that shrilled across the predawn chill of a dreadful, frowzy room. Dreadful with its life and its bare reality and its sharp, sickening reminder that one must get up and walk into reality again.
But this is not the first time. No, indeed, said Sutton. This is not the first time that I died and came to life again. For I did it once before and that time I was dead for a long, long time.
There was a hard, flat surface underneath him and he lay face down upon it and for what seemed an interminable stretch of time his mind struggled to visualize the hardness and smoothness beneath him. Hard and flat and smooth, three words, but they did not help one see or understand the thing that they described.
He felt life creep back and quicken, seep along his legs and arms. But he wasn't breathing and his heart was still.
Floor!
That was it…that was the word for the thing on which he lay. The flat, hard surface was a floor.
Sounds came to him, but at first he didn't call them sounds, for he had no word for them at all, and then, a moment later, he knew that they were sounds.
Now he could move one finger. Then a second finger.
He opened his eyes and there was light.
The sounds were voices and the voices were words and the words were thoughts.
It takes so long to figure things out, Sutton told himself.
"We should have tried a little harder," said a voice, "and a little longer. The trouble with us, Case, is that we have no patience."
"Patience wouldn't have done a bit of good," said Case. "He was convinced that we were bluffing. No matter what we'd done or said, he'd still have thought we were bluffing and we would have gotten nowhere. There was only one thing to do."
"Yes, I know," Pringle agreed. "Convince him that we weren't bluffing."
He made a sound of blowing out his breath. "Pity, too," he said. "He was such a bright young man."
They were silent for a time and now it was not life alone, but strength, that was flowing into Sutton. Strength to stand and walk, strength to lift his arms, strength to vent his anger. Strength to kill two men.
"We won't do so badly," Pringle said. "Morgan and his crowd will pay us handsomely."
Case was squeamish. "I don't like it, Pringle. A dead man is a dead man if you leave him dead. But when you sell him, that makes you a butcher."
"That's not the thing that's worrying me," Pringle told him. "What will it do to the future, Case? To our future. We had a future with many of its facets based on Sutton's book. If we had managed to change the book a little it wouldn't have mattered much…wouldn't have mattered at all, in fact, the way we had it figured out. But now Sutton's dead. There will be no book by Sutton. The future will be different."
Sutton rose to his feet.
They spun around and faced him and Case's hand went for his gun.
"Go ahead," invited Sutton. "Shoot me full of holes. You won't live a minute longer for it."
He tried to hate them, as he had hated Benton during that one fleeting moment back on Earth. Hatred so strong and primal that it had blasted the man's mind into oblivion.
But there was no hate. Just a ponderous, determined will to kill.
He moved forward on sturdy legs and his hands reached out.
Pringle ran, squealing like a rat, seeking to escape. Case's gun spat twice and when blood oozed out and ran down Sutton's chest and he still came on, Case threw away his weapon and backed against the wall.
It didn't take long.
They couldn't get away.
There was no place to go.
XXIX
SUTTON MANEUVERED the ship down against the tiny asteroid, a whirling piece of debris not much bigger than the ship itself. He felt it touch and his thumb reached out and knocked over the gravity lever and the ship clamped down, to go tumbling through space with the twisting chunk of rock.
Sutton let his hands fall to his side, sat quietly in the pilot's chair. In front of him, space was black and friendless, streaked by the pinpoint stars that spun in lines of fire across the field of vision, writing cryptic messages of cold, white light across the cosmos as the asteroid bumbled on its erratic course.
Safe, he told himself. Safe for a while, at least. Perhaps safe forever, for there might be no one looking for him.
Safe with a hole blasted through his chest, with blood splashed down his shirt front and running down his legs.
Handy thing to have, he thought grimly, this second body of mine. This body that was grafted on me by the Cygnians. It will keep me going until…until…
Until what?
Until I can get back to Earth and walk into a doctor's office and say, "I got shot up some. How about a patching job?"
Sutton chuckled.
He could see the doctor dropping dead.
Or going back to Cygni?
But they wouldn't le
t me in.
Or just going back to Earth the way I am and forgetting about the doctor.
I could get other clothes and the bleeding will stop when the blood's all gone.
But I wouldn't breathe, and they would notice that.
"Johnny," he said, but there was no answer, just a feeble stir of life within his brain, a sign of recognition, as a dog would wag its tail to let you know it heard but was too busy with a bone to let anything distract it.
"Johnny, is there any way?"
For there might be a way. It was a hope to cling to, it was a thing to think about.
Not even yet, he suspected, had he begun to plumb the strange depth of abilities lodged within his body and his mind.
He had not known that his hate alone could kill, that hate could spear out from his brain like a lance of steel and strike a man down dead. And yet Benton had died with a bullet in the arm…and he had been dead before the bullet hit him. For Benton had fired first and missed and Benton, alive, never would have missed.
He had not known that by mind alone he could control the energy that was needed to lift the dead weight of a ship from a boulder bed and fly it across eleven years of space. And yet that is what he'd done, winnowing the energy from the flaming stars so far away they dimmed to almost nothing, from the random specks of matter that floated in the void.
And while he knew that he could change at will from one life to another, he had not known for certain that when one way of life was killed, the other way would take over automatically. Yet that was what had happened. Case had killed him and he had died and he had come to life again. But he had died before the change had started. Of that much he was sure. For he remembered death and recognized it. He knew it from the time before.
He felt his body eating…sucking at the stars as a human sucks an orange, nibbling at the energy imprisoned in the bit of rock to which the ship was clamped, pouncing on the tiny leaks of power from the ship's atomic motors.
Eating to grow strong, eating to repair…
"Johnny, is there any way?"
And there was no answer.
Time and Again Page 13
