Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Baker," said Ellerbee. "He smashed up on the road somewhere. He's out there dying."

  "Can you be sure? Then don't sit there, man! Let's get on our way!"

  Ellerbee shook his head. "He'll be dead before we can get there."

  "How do you know he cracked up, anyway? Can you read that out of the crystal?"

  Ellerbee nodded. "He kept it in his pocket. It's close enough to him to transmit the frantic messages of his dying mind."

  "Then we've got to go! No matter if we get there in time or not."

  Ellerbee shook his head again. "Sam is on his way over here. He's in touch with Baker. He says he thinks he can talk Baker back."

  "Talk him back? What do you mean by that?"

  Ellerbee hesitated. "I'm not sure. In some ways Sam understands a lot more about these things than I do. He can do things with the crystals that I don't understand. If he says he can talk Dr. Baker back, I think maybe he can."

  "But we can't depend on that!" Fenwick said frantically. "Can't we get on our way in the car and let Sam do what he thinks he can while we drive? Maybe he can get Baker to hold on until we get him to a doctor."

  "You don't understand," said Ellerbee. "Dr. Baker has gone over the edge. He's dying. I know what it's like. I looked into a dying mind once before. There is nothing whatever that a doctor can do after an organism starts dying. It's a definite process. Once started, it's irreversible."

  "Then what does Sam--?"

  "Sam thinks he knows how to reverse it."

  * * * * *

  There wasn't much pain. Not as much as he would have supposed. He felt sure there was terrible damage inside. He could feel the warmth of blood welling up inside his throat. But the pain was not there. That was good.

  In place of pain, there was a kind of infinite satisfaction and a growing peace. The ultimate magnitude of this peace, which he could sense, was so great that it loomed like some blinding glory.

  This was death. The commitment and the decision had been made. But this was better than any alternative. He could not see how there could have been any question about it.

  He was lying on his back in the wet clay of a bank below the road. It was raining, softly now, and he rather liked the gentle drop of it on his face. Somewhere below him the hulk of his wrecked car lay on its side. He could smell the unpleasant odor of gasoline. But all of this was less than nothing in importance to him now. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a remnant of memory of what he had been doing this day. He remembered the name of John Fenwick, and the memory brought a faint amusement to his bloody lips. There had been some differences between him and John Fenwick. Those differences were also less than nothing, now. All differences were wiped out. He gave himself up to the pleasure of being borne along on that great current that seemed to be carrying him swiftly to a quiet place.

  After a time, he remembered two other names, also. James Ellerbee and Sam Atkins. He remembered a crystal, and it meant nothing. He remembered that it was in his pocket and that for some time he had felt a warmth from it, that was both pleasant and unpleasant. It was of no importance. He might have reached for it and thrown it farther from him, but his arm on that side was broken.

  He was glad that there was nothing--nothing whatever--that had any magnitude of importance. Even his family--they were like fragments of a long-ago dream.

  He lay waiting quietly and patiently for the swiftly approaching destination of ultimate peace. He did not know how long it would take, but he knew it could not be long, and even the journey was sweet.

  It was while he waited, letting his mind drift, that he became aware of the intruder. In that moment, the pain boiled up in shrieking agony.

  He had thought himself alone. He wanted above all else to be alone. But there was someone with him. He wasn't sure how he knew. He could simply feel the unwanted presence. He strained to see in the wet darkness. He listened for muted sounds. There was nothing. Only the presence.

  "Go away!" he whispered hoarsely. "Go away, and leave me alone--whoever you are."

  "No. Let me take you by the hand, William Baker. I have come to show you the way back. I have come to lead you back."

  "Leave me alone! Whoever you are, leave me alone!" Baker was conscious of his own voice screaming in the black night. And it was not only terror of the unknown presence that made him scream, but the physical pain of crushed bones and torn flesh was sweeping like a torrent through him.

  "Don't be afraid of me. You know me. You remember, we met this afternoon. Sam Atkins. You remember, Dr. Baker?"

  "I remember." Baker's voice was a painful gasp. "I remember. Now go away and leave me alone. You can do nothing for me. I don't want you to do anything for me."

  * * * * *

  Sam Atkins. The crystal. Baker wished he could reach the cursed thing and hurl it away from him. That must be how Atkins was communicating with him. Yes, somehow it was possible. He had found no trick, no gimmick. Somehow, the miserable things worked.

  But what did Sam Atkins want? He had broken in on a moment that was as private as a dream. There was nothing he could do. Baker was dying. He knew he was dying. There was no medicine that could heal the battering his body had taken. He had been slipping away into peace and release of pain. He had no desire to have it interrupted.

  There was no more evidence of Sam Atkins' presence. It was there--and Baker wished furiously that Atkins would let his death be a private thing--but he was not interfering now.

  There was the faint suggestion of other presences, too. Baker thought he could pick them out, Fenwick and Ellerbee. They were all gathered to watch him die through the crystals. It was unkind of them to so intrude--but it didn't really matter very much. He began drifting pleasantly again.

  "William Baker." The soft voice of Sam Atkins shattered the peaceable realm once more. "We must do some healing before we start back, Dr. Baker. Give me your hand, and come with me, Dr. Baker, while we touch these tissues and heal their breaks. Stay close to me and the pain will not be more than you can endure."

  The night remained dark and there was no sound, but Baker's body arched and twisted in panic as he fought against invisible hands that seemed to touch with fleeting, exploratory passes over him.

  "I don't want to be healed," he whispered. "There is nothing that can be done. I'm dying. I want to die! Can't you understand that? I want to die! I don't want your help!"

  He had said it. And the shock of it jolted even him in the depths of his half-conscious mind. Could a man really want to die?

  Yes.

  He had forgotten what terror he had left so far behind. He knew only that he wanted to move forever in the direction of the flowing peace.

  Like probing fingers, Sam Atkins' mind continued to touch him. It scanned the broken organs of his body, and, in some kind of detached way, Baker felt that he was accompanying Atkins on that journey of exploration, even as Sam had asked.

  They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examined the muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. They searched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury that Baker knew was hopeless.

  "You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build it again. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. The nerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply the scaffolding--while you build--"

  He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he had done this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the building of organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinite sadness at the present ruin. Yes--he could build again.

  * * * * *

  Sam Atkins' face was like that of a dead man. Across the table from him, Jim Ellerbee and John Fenwick watched silently. Faintly, between them was the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.

  Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown prickle his scalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the practitioner of ancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick
found the question tumbling over and over in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy of Sam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across space, to the distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it while Baker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of his shattered organs.

  Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehow shut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could not follow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.

  Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace of panic. He hesitantly reached out to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyes and imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested the motion of Ellerbee's hand.

  "I think you could kill them both," he whispered. The life force of one man, divided between two--it was not sufficient to cope with unexpected shocks to either, now.

  Ellerbee desisted. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said. "I don't know what Sam's doing--I don't know how he's doing it--"

  Fenwick looked sharply at Ellerbee. Ellerbee had discovered the crystals, so he and Sam said. Yet Sam was able to do things with them that Ellerbee could not conceive. Fenwick wondered just who was responsible for the crystals. And he resolved that some day, when and if Baker pulled out of this, he would learn something more about Sam Atkins.

  Time moved beyond midnight and into the early morning hours of the day, but this meant nothing to William Baker. He was in the midst of eternity. Because the old pattern was there, and the ancient memories were clear, his reconstruction moved at a pace that was limited only by the materials available. When these grew scarce, Sam Atkins showed him how to break down and utilize other structures that could be rebuilt leisurely at a later time. There was remembered joy in the building and, once started, Baker gave only idle wonder to the question of whether this was more desirable than death. He did not know. This seemed the right thing to do.

  In the presence of Sam Atkins everything he was doing seemed right, and a lifetime of doubts, and errors, and fears seemed distant and vague.

  But Sam said suddenly, "It is almost finished. Just a little farther and you'll have to go the rest of the way alone."

  Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutely sure he could not go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "You tricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I would have to be reborn alone!"

  "Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, except alone?"

  Slowly, the world closed in about Baker.

  Light. Sounds.

  Wet. Cold.

  The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for all of his life.

  Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immense corridor. Behind were all the terrors spawned since the beginning of time. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced for the nearest and brightest and most familiar.

  "No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way you went before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it will lead only to the same goal again."

  "I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closing in.

  "Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distant paths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you."

  Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He passed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright. He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seen before. He shuddered.

  Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazing brightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," he said.

  He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval.

  He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the dark corridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to die rather than endure again.

  It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But he knew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He was alive again.

  Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all but dead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pick up Baker now."

  * * * * *

  They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires. Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car at Ellerbee's.

  It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through the muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road. For an hour Sam fought the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle of the brownish ooze that led them through the night. The three men sat in the cab. Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been rigged for Baker. Sam told them nothing would be needed except soap and water, but Fenwick and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off without some other emergency equipment.

  After an hour, Sam said, "He's close. Just around the next bend. That's where his car went off."

  Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car. He was standing at the edge of the road. He waved an arm wearily.

  Fenwick would not have recognized him. And for some seconds after the car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly in the beam of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all.

  He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie. His clothes were ripped almost completely away. Those remaining were stained with blood and red clay, and soaked with rain. Baker's face was laced with a network of scars as if he had been slashed with a shower of glass not too long ago and the wounds were freshly healed. Blood was caked and cracked on his face and was matted in his hair.

  He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About time you got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standing out here in this weather."

  * * * * *

  Dr. William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitalization, but he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway. He had some thinking to do, and he didn't know of a better place to get it done.

  There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast network of very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays showed to have been only very recently knit, and the violent internal injuries which gave some evidence of their recent healing. Baker allowed the speculation to go on without offering explanations. He let them tap and measure and apply electrical gadgets to their heart's content. It didn't bother the thinking he had to get done.

  Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him. The two approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing. "Pull up chairs!" he exclaimed. "Just because you saw me looking a shade less than dead doesn't mean I'm a ghost now. Sit down. And where's Sam? Not that I don't appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but Sam and I have got some things to talk about."

  Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected the other to speak.

  "Well, what's the matter?" demanded Baker. "Nothing's happened to Sam, I hope!"

  Fenwick spoke finally. "We don't know where Sam is. We don't think we'll be seeing him again."

  "Why not?" Baker demanded. But in the back of his mind was the growing suspicion that he knew.

  "After your--accident," said Fenwick, "I went back to the farm with Ellerbee and Sam because I'd left my car there. I went back to bed to try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up again and kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of lightning seemed to strike Sam's silo. Later, Jim went out to check on his cows and help his man finish up the mi
lking.

  "By mid-morning we hadn't heard anything from Sam and decided to go over and talk to him about what we'd seen him do for you. I guess it was eleven by the time we got there."

  Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement.

  "When we got there," Fenwick went on, "we saw that the front door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in. We called Sam, but he didn't answer, so we went on in. Things were a mess. We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that drawers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out. Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was just gone.

  "It was that way all through the house. Sam's bed hadn't been disturbed. He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess."

  "Sounds like the place might have been broken into," said Baker. "Didn't you notify the sheriff?"

  "Not after we'd seen what was outside, in back."

  "What was that?"

  "We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit.

  "When we went out, all the cows were bellowing. They hadn't been milked. Sam did all his own work. Jim called his own man to come and take care of Sam's cows. Then we had a close look at the silo. It had split like a banana peel opening up. It hardly seemed as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it. We climbed over the broken pieces to look inside. It was still warm in there. At least six hours after lightning--or whatever had struck it, the concrete was still warm. The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were covered with a glassy glaze."

  "No lightning bolt did that."

  "We know that now," said Fenwick. "But I had seen the flash of it myself. Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning. Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had seemed like a thin thread of light striking upward. I thought I must be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it. In the silo, I remembered. I told Jim.