The Empire of Isher

by A. E. van Vogt

  In spite of himself , Hedrock found himself becoming absorbed. His conviction that he ought to interrupt as often as was psychologically safe yielded before a gathering fascination in the details of a science that had so greatly outstripped his capacity even for learning about it. Graphs of brain and emotional integers, curious mathematical constructions whose roots delved deep into the obscure impulses of the human mind and body. He listened and watched, intently, as Cadron went on with his damning words:

  “The problem, as I have said, was to insure that the rescue party did not arrive at the palace too soon, or too late. It was found that the graph based on your old Pp proved that you would never leave the place alive, unless an Unknown of the third order intervened in your favor. That configuration was instantly abandoned. Science cannot take account of possible miracles. The second projection centralized on the hour of 1:40 p.m., with a concentric error possibility of four minutes. The landing therefore, was effected at 1:35, the false Imperial credentials were accepted within two minutes. At 1:39 you emerged from the elevator. You will agree, I think, that the evidence is conclusive.”

  It was a nightmare. All these years while he had been living and planning, carefully building up the structure of his hopes, he had actually already committed his-fortunes to the Pp machine, possibly the greatest invention ever developed in the field of the human mind. Distractedly, Hedrock realized that one of the councilors, not Cadron, but a little gray-haired man, was saying:

  “In view of the fact that this is not a criminal case in an ordinary sense of the term, and particularly because of Mr. Hedrock’s past services, I think he is entitled to assurance that we are taking seriously what the Empress is doing. For your information, young man, our staff here has been enlarged fivefold.

  Perhaps in your personal anxiety at the time, you did not notice that the elevator from the airport went down much farther than usual to reach here. We have taken over seven additional floors of the hotel and our organization is in ceaseless operation. Unfortunately, in spite of your stirring appeal, I must agree with Mr. Cadron. The Weapon Shops, being what they are, must handle cases like yours with cruel dispatch.

  I am compelled to agree that death is the only possible sentence.”

  There were nods along the table, voices murmuring: “Yes, death—death—immediate—”

  “Just a minute!”Hedrock’s voice made a strong pattern above the quiet medley. “Did you say that this council room is now a part of the hotel not previously occupied by the Meteor Corporation ?”

  They stared at him blankly, as he ran, not waiting for a reply, straight at the ornamental panel on the darkly gleaming wall to his right. It was simpler than he had expected in his wildest imaginings. No one stopped him; no one even drew a gun. As he reached the panel, he adjusted his four fingers, accurately fitted them against the panel, twisted—and the ring slid out of its hidden groove on to his index finger. In one continuous, synchronized motion, he turned its pale-green fire on the vibratory device—and stepped through the transmitter.

  Hedrock wasted no time examining the familiar room in which he found himself. It was located in underground vaults twenty-five hundred miles from Imperial City , filled with softly pulsing machines and glittering instruments. His hand closed on a wall switch. There was a hiss of power as he plunged it home.

  He had a brief mind picture, then, of all the rings and devices in the Hotel Royal Ganeel dissolving out of existence. They had served their purpose. One surprise escape was all he could ever hope to make from the Weapon Shops. He turned, walked through a door; and then, at the last instant, saw his deadly danger and tried to leap back.

  Too late. The twenty-foot monster pounced on him. Its sledge-hammer paws sent him spinning along one wall, dizzy, sick, half unconscious. He tried to move, to rise—and saw the gigantic white rat darting toward him, its great teeth bared for the kill.

  Four

  GRIMLY, HEDROCK WAITED UNTIL THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT. And then the roar of his voice filled the room with its threatening echoes. There was a massive squealing as the rat dodged aside into the far corner. It crouched there, and he could see that its violent movement had incremented its already speeded up life processes. Slowly, it began to keel over. Its glazed eyes peered at Hedrock as he staggered over to the rat enclosure, straight for the line of power switches. It made no effort to follow him; and, in a moment, he had pulled the lever that furnished the force for its size.

  More slowly, he walked back into the large room. He had already noticed where the wall had been smashed but he did not pause to examine the break. It required half a minute to find the creature, now that it was no longer physically magnified. But he finally saw the six-inch glint of dirty white, where it had crawled under a broken chair. It was still alive, a very old-looking rat. It twisted weakly as he picked it up and carried it through the rat enclosure into the laboratory beyond. The feeling that came to him then had very little to do with the miserable creature he was placing in his data-gathering machine. It was pity, but on a vast scale, not for any individual. The compassion embraced all life. He felt, suddenly, alone in a world where people and things lived and died with heartbreaking rapidity, ephemeral shadows that blinked in the strong light from the sun, and then faded and were gone for-evermore.

  With an effort, he fought off that black mood and, turning away from the data machine, went to examine his rat enclosure. The four rat houses were doing well. Each had a new batch of young ones, and from the size of them he guessed that they had been born since the mechanical process had been interrupted by the rat that had broken out.

  It would take too long to repair the break in the big metal pen, but the rest of the process resumed with automatic precision the moment he threw the switches back into position. The process was simplicity itself. He had begun it a thousand years before by introducing a dozen rats (six males and six females) into each of four specially constructed houses. Food was provided at intervals. The pens were kept clean by an ingenious pusher device that worked on a gear system. Nature had her own automatic methods, and every little while youngsters appeared and grew up, adding to the weight of the delicate balances that held up the floor. As soon as the weight of rats on the poised floor reached a set point, a little door would open, and sooner or later a rat would go into the narrow corridor beyond. The door would close behind it; and no other door in any of the four houses would open until it was disposed of. At the far end of the corridor was bait, inside which was a tiny Weapon Shop magnifier. When swallowed, the magnifier warmed from the rat’s body heat and set off a relay which opened the door into an enclosure forty feet long, wide and high. It also set the little corridor floor moving. Like it or not, the rat was precipitated immediately into the open. That door shut too, blocking the way back.

  More food in the center of the room activated the power that set off the magnifier. With a bang, the rat plummeted into size, becoming a twenty-foot monster, whose life functions speeded up in almost direct proportion to the difference in size. In that accelerated life-world, death came swiftly. And, as the corpse cooled below a certain temperature, the magnifying power was shut off, the floor tilted, and the small white body slid on to a conveyor belt which transported it to the data-gathering machine, from whence it was precipitated into a ray bath and disintegrated.

  The process then repeated. And repeated and repeated and repeated. It had been going on for a millennium; and its purpose was tremendous. Somewhere along the line, the enlarging rays of the vibrator would do to a rat purposely what they had done accidentally to Hedrock fifty-five centuries previously. A rat would become immortal, and provide him with a priceless subject for experiment. Some day, if he succeeded in his search, all men would be immortal.

  The data card of the rat that had so nearly killed him turned up in the “special” rack. There were three other cards with it, but the special quality about them was the continued functioning of some organ after death. Long ago, he had explored similar freak ha
ppenings to exhaustion. The fourth card excited Hedrock. The rat that had attacked him had lived the equivalent of ninety-five years. No wonder it had had time to break out. It must have lived several hours as a giant.

  He calmed himself because he couldn’t go into the matter now. The rat would have been precipitated, not into the dissolver, but into the preserver with the other specials, and would be waiting for his examination at some future date. Right now there were things to do, vitally important things affecting the existing human race; and he, who worked so hard for the future, had never yet let the might-be interfere at decisive moments with the now.

  There were things to do, and they must be done before the Weapon Shop Council could completely nullify his position and his power in the Weapon Shop organization. Swiftly, Hedrock donned one of his “business” suits, and stepped through a transmitter.

  He arrived in one of his secret apartments in Imperial City , and saw by his watch that ten minutes had passed since he had escaped from the Hotel Royal Ganeel. He’d be reasonably safe in assuming that the tens of thousands of Weapon Shop members would not yet have been notified that; he was now regarded as a traitor. Hedrock seated himself at the apartment ’stat, and called the Weapon Shop information center.

  “Hedrock speaking,” he said when an operator answered. “Get me the address of Derd Kershaw.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hedrock.” The response was quick and courteous, with no indication that his name was now anathema to the Shops. There was a pause, and then he heard the familiar click at the other end.

  Another woman spoke, “I have Mr. Kershaw’s file here, sir. Would you like it sent to you, or shall I read it to you?”

  “Hold it up,” said Hedrock, “I’ll copy the information I want.”

  The image of a file sheet slid on to his ’stat plate. He noted down Kershaw’s most recent address,

  “1874TrellisMinorBuilding .” The rest of “page” one was devoted to previous addresses of Kershaw, and to information about his birthplace, parentage, and the childhood trainings he had received.

  There was a gold star stamped on the lower right corner of the “page”. It was a Weapon Shop designation of merit, and indicated that Derd Kershaw was regarded by the shop scientists as one of the two or three greatest men in his field of physics.

  “All right,” said Hedrock, “next page, please.”

  The metal plate, many times thinner than an equal weight of paper, disappeared, and then reappeared again. “Page” two took up the story of Kershaw’s life where the first page had left off. Teen-age training, college training, character and intelligence evaluations, early achievements, and finally lists of scientific discoveries and inventions.

  Hedrock did not pause to read the list of Kershaw’s discoveries. He could check on the details later. He had secured Kershaw’s name from Edward Gonish, the No-man, and that was a stroke of luck that must not be lightly cancelled by any slow action now. Because of that accidental meeting he had information about which, he had reason to believe, no one else was as yet doing anything. It was true that Gonish did not regard his intuition about Kershaw and interstellar travel as complete. But his words provided a working basis. Accordingly for another hour, or even a day, Robert Hedrock could’ follow up the clue without interference from the shops.

  “Turn to the last page,” he said quickly. The page came on. Hedrock’s gaze flashed to the list of names at the right. They were the names of individuals who had most recently made use of the file. There were only two names, Edward Gonish, and below that, Dan Neelan. He stared at the second name with narrowed eyes and because he was alert and keyed up he noticed something that he might ordinarily have missed. Behind the name of Gonish there had been stamped a tiny symbol. It indicated that the No-man had made use of the file and that it had subsequently been returned to its cabinet. There was no such symbol after the name of Neelan. He asked swiftly, “When did Neelan make use of this file, and who is he?”

  The girl was calm. “Mr. Neelan’s call is not completed, sir. When you requested the file we withdrew it from that section and, transferred it over here. One minute, please. I’ll connect you with the operator involved.”

  She spoke to someone Hedrock couldn’t see and he did not catch her words. There was a pause and then another girl’s face came on the ’statplate. The new operator nodded when she understood what was wanted. “Mr. Neelan,” she said, “is waiting at this moment in the Linwood Avenue Weapon Shop. His first inquiry was about his brother, Gil Neelan, who, it seems, disappeared about a year ago. When we told him that his brother’s last known address was the same as that of Derd Kershaw, he asked for information about Kershaw. We were in process of searching for that information when your call with its higher priority came through.”

  Hedrock said, “Then Neelan is still waiting at the Linwood shop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold him there,” said Hedrock, “until I can get to the shop. I am not in a position to use a transmitter so k will take about fifteen minutes.”

  The girl said, “We’ll take our time giving him his information.”

  “Thank you,” said Hedrock. And broke the connection.

  Regretfully but swiftly Hedrock removed his “business” suit. He stepped with it back through the transmitter into the laboratory and then returned to the apartment. He dressed in a normal cloth suit and headed for the roof of the apartment block to the hangar where he kept a private carplane.

  It was a model he hadn’t used for several years, so precious minutes slid by while he checked the motor and the controls. In the air he had time to consider what he had done. What disturbed him most was the change from the “business” suit. And yet, there had been no alternative. The suit, which operated on the same energy principles as the “material” of which a weapon shop was made, was large enough to set up an energy disturbance in any part of the weapon shop, and was in its turn easily affected by the shop.

  Even that wouldn’t matter particularly by itself . But the disturbance was dangerous when it occurred close to the skin. It was possible to carry Weapon Shop energy guns and ring devices into a shop without ill effects, but a “business” suit was impractically large. There was another unfortunate aspect to his wearing such a suit into a weapon shop. He had incorporated into it features and inventions not known to the Weapon Makers. The possibility that some of those secrets might be analyzed by detector instruments was in itself sufficient reason for leaving the suit in a safe place.

  There was no sign of anything unusual as he approached the Linwood shop. His carplane was fitted with extremely sensitive detectors and if there had been a Weapon Shop warship hovering out of sight in the blue mists anywhere above the city they would have spotted it. That gave him, he estimated, a leeway of approximately five minutes, allowing for acceleration and deceleration of a spaceship in the atmosphere near the surface of the earth.

  Hedrock brought his machine down beside the shop and glanced at his watch. Twenty-three minutes had passed since he had broken the ’stat connection with the Weapon Shop information center. And that meant it was now three quarters of an hour since, his escape from the council room of the Weapon Makers. Warnings about him would be spreading farther through the vast organization. The time would come when the attendants of this weapon shop before him would also be advised. That put a pressure on him. And yet, despite the need for quick action, Hedrock stepped down from the carplane without haste and paused for another more searching examination of the shop. The usual sign glowed above it:

  FINE WEAPONS

  THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS

  THE RIGHT TO BE FREE

  Like all similar glitter signs, it seemed to turn to face him as he walked toward it. The illusion was one of the commoner aspects of a main thoroughfare, and yet a few hundred such signs could make so dazzling a spectacle that people had been known to become light-intoxicated. It was a pleasant experience, with colors and the sensation of floating on air, and no dangerous after eff
ects. There was a pill you could take to, normalize the vision centers quickly.

  The shop stood in a glade of green and floral vegetation. It made a restful and idyllic picture in its garden-like setting. It all seemed very normal and as of old. The window sign when—he approached it was the same as it had always been. The letters were smaller than those on the outside sign, but the words were equally positive:

  THE FINEST ENERGY WEAPONS

  IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

  Hedrock knew that that was true. He gazed at the gleaming display of revolvers and rifles and he was briefly shocked to realize that more than 100 years had passed since he had last visited a weapon shop.

  It made the shop itself more interesting than it might otherwise have been. He had a sudden awareness of what a wonderful organization the Weapon Makers were, with their shops existing in tens of thousands of cities and towns in the far-flung Isher Empire, an independent, outlawed, indestructible, altruistic opposition to tyranny. It was sometimes hard to believe that every weapon shop was an impregnable fort and that bloodily earnest attempts had been made by the Isher governments in the past to smash the organization.

  Hedrock walked quickly now toward the door. It wouldn’t open when he pulled at it. He let go, and stared at it, startled. And then he realized what was the matter . The sensitive door was condemning him because there were so many thoughts near the surface of his mind of the action taken against him by the Weapon Shop council. The door worked by thought and no enemy of the Shops, no servant of the Empress, had ever been admitted.

  He closed his eyes and let himself relax, let all the tense thoughts of the past hour drain from him.

  Presently, he tried the door again.

  It opened gently, like a flower unfolding its petals, only faster. It was weightless in his fingers, like some supernally delicate and insubstantial structure, and when he stepped through the opening it crowded his heels without touching them and closed behind him silently as a night in space.