And moving through these patterned cities upon three worlds, the followers of the Leader went about their ways, resolute, unfaltering, their faces set in one pattern of determination.
It was not a happy pattern. There was little laughter here; the only emotion upon the serious faces, aside from the shadow of that same exaltation that blazed in the Leader’s eyes, was a subtle furtiveness, a sidelong quality that by intuition seemed to distrust its neighbors. Bill recognized it. Every man’s duty was to sacrifice for the Cause not only his personal desires and happiness, but his personal honor as well; he must keep relentlessly alert for traitorous weakness in his friends, his associates, his own family.
Mistily the panorama of the centuries began to melt into itself, to fade, while behind it a blue-eyed face, helmed in blue steel, took form to smile straight into Bill’s eyes. A tense, expectant smile, supremely confident.
Bill sat back and breathed deeply, avoiding for a moment the proudly smiling face of his son. “I’m—there!” he was thinking. “That was me being born again and again, working with all my heart to crush out human happiness—But there was Sue, too, generations of her—yes, and of me—working just as sincerely toward an opposite goal, a world without war. Either way they’ve got me. If I don’t finish my work, the world unbalances toward matriarchy; if I do, mankind turns into a machine. It’s bad. Either way it’s bad—”
“The doctor is almost overwhelmed at the realization of his own greatness,” Dunn’s voice murmured from the window into the future. Bill recognized it for a sort of apology, and sat up with an effort to meet the pride-bright eyes of the boy who one day might be his son. There was nothing but happy expectancy of praise on the boy’s face, but Dunn must have read a little doubt in Bill’s, for he said heavily, as if to overwhelm that doubt:
“We build toward one common end, all of us—we have no thought for any smaller purpose than the conquest of the Solar System for the mighty race of man! And this great purpose is yours no less than ours, Dr. Cory.”
“Manpower is what counts, you know, sir.” Young Billy’s voice took up the tale as Dunn’s died. “We’ve got tremendous reserves, and we’re piling up still more. Lots of room yet on Mars to fill up, and Venus is almost untouched yet. And after that, we’ll breed men and women adapted to Jupiter’s gravity, perhaps…oh, there’ll be no end to our power, sir! We’ll go on and on—Who knows? There may come a day when we’re a United Universe!”
For an instant, hearing the young voice shake with eagerness, Bill doubted his own doubtfulness. The mighty race of man! And he was part of it, living in this far-off future no less than he lived now in the flesh, in the burning ardor of this iron-faced boy. For a moment he forgot to be amazed and incredulous that he stood in the Twenty-third Century and looked as if through a window into the Thirtieth, talking with the unborn descendant of his yet unconceived son. For this moment it was all accomplished reality, a very magnificent and blood-stirring present achieved directly through his own efforts.
“Father…father!” The voice was sweet and high in the core of his brain. And memory came back in an overwhelming rush that for an instant drowned out everything but a father’s awareness of special love for a favorite daughter.
“Yes, Susan…yes, dear.” He murmured it aloud, swinging around toward the cube that housed his other future. Sue leaned forward upon her knees among the myrtle leaves, her brown eyes wide and a little frightened upon his. There was a crease between her winged brows that dented Bill’s own forehead as he faced her. For a moment it was almost as if each of them looked into a mirror which reflected the features of the other, identical in nearly every detail. Then Sallie’s smile dimpled the cheeks of her far-descended daughter, and Sue laughed a small, uneasy laugh.
“What is it, father? Is something wrong?”
He opened his lips to speak—but what could he say? What could he possibly say to her, who did not even dream that her own time was anything but inevitable? How could he explain to a living, warmly breathing woman that she did not exist, might never exist?
He stared at her unhappily, groping for words he could not find. But before he spoke—
“Dr. Cory, sir—Is anything wrong?” He turned back to Billy with a harried crease between his brows and then stared wildly from one face to the other. How could they help hearing one another? But obviously Billy, from his window into the present, saw simply the cube that held Sallie’s immortal smile, while Sue, from hers, looked upon Marta’s changeless face. It seemed to Bill that the boy and the girl had spoken in voices almost identical, using words nearly the same, though neither was aware of the other. How could they be? They could not even exist simultaneously in the same world. He might have one of these beloved children or the other; not both. Equally beloved children, between whom he must choose—and how could he choose?
“Father—” said Sue on a rising inflection of alarm. “There is something wrong. I…feel it in your mind—Oh, what is it, father?”
Bill sat speechless, staring from one face to the other of these mutually exclusive children. Here they stood, with their worlds behind them, looking anxiously at him with the same little crease between the brows of each. And he could not even speak to either without convincing the other he was a madman talking to empty air. He wanted insanely to laugh. It was a deadlock beyond all solution. Yet he must answer them—he must make his choice—
As he sat there groping in vain for words, a curious awareness began to take shape in his mind. How strange it was that these two should have been the ones to reach him, out of all the generations behind each that had been searching the past. And why had they established contact at so nearly the same time, when they had all his life span to grope through, hunting him for such different reasons, in such different ways? There was more than accident here, if all this were not a dream—
Billy and Sue—so similar despite the wide divergence of their words, a wider divergence than the mind can well grasp, for how can one measure the distance between mutually incompatible things? Billy who was all of Bill Cory that was strong and resolute and proud; Sue, who incarnated his gentler qualities, the tenderness, the deep desire for peace. They were such poles apart—why, they were the poles! The positive and negative qualities that, together, made up all that was best in Bill Cory. Even their worlds were like two halves of a whole; one all that was strong and ruthless, the other the epitome of gentle, abstract idealism. And both were bad, as all extremes must be.
And if he could understand the purpose behind the fact that these two poles of human destiny had reached back in their own pasts to find him at the same moment—if he could understand why the two halves of his soul, split into positive and negative entities, stood here clothed almost in his own flesh to torture him with indecision, perhaps—
He could not choose between them, for there was no choice, but there was a deeper question here than the simple question of conduct. He groped for it blindly, wondering if the answer to everything might not lie in the answer to that question. For there was purpose here vaster than anything man has words for—something loomed behind it to shadowy heights that made his mind reel a little as he tried to understand.
He said inadequately to both his staring children: “But why…how did you…at this very moment out of all time—”
To Billy it was mere gibberish, but Sue must have understood the question in his mind, for after a moment, in a puzzled murmur, she said:
“I—don’t know, exactly. There is something here beyond the simple fact of success. I…I feel it—I can sense something behind my own actions that…that frightens me. Something guiding and controlling my own mind—Oh, father, father, I’m afraid!”
Every protective instinct in him leaped ahead of reason in Bill’s instant, “Don’t be frightened, honey! I won’t let anything happen to you!”
“Dr. Cory!” Young Billy’s voice cracked a little in horror at what must have sounded to him like raving madness. Behind him, staring faces went te
nse with bewilderment. Above their rising murmurs Sue wailed, “Father!” in a frightened echo to Billy’s, “Dr. Cory, are you ill, sir?”
“Oh, wait a minute, both of you!” said Bill wildly. And then in a stammer, to stop Billy’s almost hysterical questions, “Your…your sister—Oh, Sue, honey, I hear you! I’ll take care of you! Wait a minute!”
In the depths of the cube the boy’s face seemed to freeze, the eyes that were Marta’s going blank beneath the steel cap, Bill’s very mouth moving stiffly with the stiffness of his lips.
“But you never had a daughter—”
“No, but I might have, if—I mean, if I’d married Sallie of course you’d never even—Oh, God!” Bill gave it up and pressed both hands over his eyes to shut out the sight of the boy’s amazed incredulity, knowing he’d said too much, yet too numbed and confused now for diplomacy. The only clear idea in his head was that he must somehow be fair to both of them, the boy and the girl. Each must understand why he—
“Is the doctor ill, Candidate Cory?” Dunn’s voice was heavy from the cube.
Bill heard the boy’s voice stammering: “No—that is, I don’t—” And then, faltering, more softly: “Leader, was the great doctor ever—mad?”
“Good God, boy!”
“But—speak to him, Leader!”
Bill looked up haggardly as Dunn’s voice rolled out with the sternness of a general addressing armies. “Pull yourself together, sir! You never had a daughter! Don’t you remember?”
Bill laughed wildly. “Remember? I’ve never had a son yet! I’m not married—not even engaged! How can I remember what hasn’t happened?”
“But you will marry Marta Mayhew! You did marry her! You founded the great line of Corys and gave the world your—”
“Father…father! What’s wrong?” Sue’s sweet wail was in his ears. He glanced toward her window momentarily, seeing the terror in the soft brown eyes that stared at him, but he could only murmur: “Hush, darling—wait, please!” before he faced the Leader and said with a strong effort at calmness, “None of all that has happened—yet.”
“But it will—it must—it did!”
“Even if I never married Marta, never had a son?”
Dunn’s dark face convulsed with a grimace of exasperated anger.
“But good Lord, man, look here!” He seized Billy’s blue-uniformed shoulders with both hands, thrusting him forward. “You did have a son! This is his descendant, the living likeness of young Cory Junior! This world…I myself…all of us…we’re the result of that marriage of yours! And you never had a daughter! Are you trying to tell us we don’t exist? Is this a…a dream I’m showing you?” And he shook the boy’s broad young shoulders between his hands. “You’re looking at us, hearing us, talking to us! Can’t you see that you must have married Marta Mayhew?”
“Father, I want you! Come back!” Sue’s wail was insistent.
Bill groaned. “Wait a minute, Dunn.” And then, turning, “Yes, honey, what is it?”
On her knees among the myrtle leaves Sue leaned forward among the sun-flecked shadows of her cool green glade, crying: “Father, you won’t…you can’t believe them? I heard…through your ears I heard them, and I can understand a little through your mind linked with mine. I can understand what you’re thinking…but it can’t be true! You’re telling yourself that we’re still on the Probability Plane…but that’s just a theory! That’s nothing but a speculation about the future! How could I be anything but real? Why, it’s silly! Look at me! Listen to me! Here I am! Oh, don’t let me go on thinking that maybe…maybe you’re right, after all. But it was Sallie Carlisle you married, wasn’t it, father? Please say it was!”
Bill gulped. “Wait, honey. Let me explain to them first.” He knew he shouldn’t have started the whole incredible argument. You can’t convince a living human that he doesn’t exist. They’d only think him mad. Well—Sue might understand. Her training in metaphysics and telepathy might make it possible. But Billy—
He turned with a deep breath and a mental squaring of shoulders, determined to try, anyhow. For he must be fair. He began: “Dunn, did you ever hear of the Plane of Probability?”
At the man’s incredulous stare he knew a dizzy moment of wonder whether he, too, lived in an illusion as vivid as theirs, and in that instant the foundations of time itself rocked beneath his feet. But he had no time now for speculation. Young Billy must understand, no matter how mad Dunn believed him, and Sue must know why he did what he must do—though he didn’t understand himself, yet, what that would be. His head was ringing with bewilderment.
“The…the Plane of Probability?” In Dunn’s eyes upon his he saw a momentary conviction flare that, reality or not, and history be damned, this man was mad. And then, doubtfully, the Leader went on, “Hm-m-m…yes, somewhere I have heard—Oh, I remember. Some clap-trap jargon the old Telepathy House fakers used to use before we cleared them out of Science City. But what’s that nonsense got to—”
“It’s not nonsense.” Bill closed his eyes in a sudden, almost intolerable longing for peace, for time to think what he must do. But no, the thing must be settled now, without time for thinking. And perhaps that was the best way, after all. A man’s brain would crack if he paused to think out this madness. Only he must say something to young Billy—And what could he say? How could he face either of these beloved children and, to their uncomprehending, pleading faces, refuse them life? If he could only break the connection that riveted them all into a sort of triple time balance—But he couldn’t. He must make it clear to Billy—
“It’s not nonsense,” he heard his own voice repeating wildly. “The future—you and your world—is a probability only. I’m a free agent. If I never marry Marta, never perfect the sex-determination idea, the probable future shifts to…to another pattern. And that as bad as yours, or worse!” he finished to himself.
“Is he mad?” Billy’s voice was a whisper in the screen.
The Leader said as if to himself, in an awed and stumbling voice, “I don’t…I can’t…the thing’s preposterous! And yet he is unmarried, the Great Work’s still unfinished. Suppose he never—But we’re real! We’re flesh and blood, aren’t we?” He stamped a booted foot on the floor as if to test the foundations of his world. “We’re descended in an unbroken line from this…this madman. Lord in heaven, are we all mad?”
“Father! Come back!” Sue’s voice shrilled in Bill’s ears. He turned desperately, glad of an excuse to escape the haunted stares from that other window even though he must face hers. She had risen to her feet among the myrtle leaves. The glade was cool and still about her in this lazy, sunlit world of her own future. She was crying desperately, “Don’t listen, father! I can feel the confusion in your mind. I know what they’re saying! But they aren’t real, father—they can’t be! You never had a son, don’t you remember? All this you’re saying is just…just talk, isn’t it? That silly stuff about the Probability Plane—it’s nothing but speculation! Oh, say it is, father! We’ve got such a lovely world, we love living so…I want to live, father! I am real! We’ve fought so hard, for so many centuries, for peace and happiness and our beautiful garden world. Don’t let it snuff out into nothingness! But”—she laughed uncertainly—“how could you, when it’s all around us, and has been for thousands of years? I…oh, father!” Her voice broke on a little quivering gulp that made Bill’s heart quiver with it, and he ached intolerably with the rising of her tears. She was his to protect and cherish, forever. How could he—
“Dr. Cory—do you hear me? Oh, please listen!” Young Billy’s familiar voice reached out to him from that other future. He glanced toward him once, and then put his hands to his ears and whirled from them both, the two voices mingling in an insane chaos of pleading.
Sue on her myrtle bank in a future immeasurably far ahead, child of a decadent world slipping easily down the slope of oblivion.
Billy’s world might be as glorious as he believed, but the price was too high to pay for it. Bill re
membered the set, unsmiling faces he had seen in the streets of that world. These were men his own work had robbed of the initiative that was their birthright. Happiness was their birthright, too, and the power to make the decisions that determined their own futures.
No, not even for such achievements as theirs must mankind be robbed of the inalienable right to choose for himself. If it lay in Bill Cory’s power to outlaw a system which destroyed men’s freedom and honor and joy, even for such an end as mankind’s immortal progress, he had no choice to make. The price was too high. Confusedly he remembered something out of the dim past: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul…?”
But—the alternative. Bill groaned. Happiness, peace, freedom, honor—yes, Sue’s world had all that Billy’s lacked. And to what end? Indolence and decadence and extinction for the great race that Billy’s civilization would spread gloriously among the stars.
“But I’m thinking of choice,” groaned Bill to himself. “And, I haven’t got any choice! If I marry Sallie and don’t finish my work—one future follows. If I marry Marta and do finish it, the other comes. And both are bad—but what can I do? Man or mankind; which has the stronger claim? Happiness and extinction—or unhappiness and splendid immortality; which is better?”
“Cory—Dr. Cory!” It was Dunn’s voice, heavy enough to break through the daze of bewilderment that shrouded Bill’s brain. He turned. The Leader’s iron-hard face under the steel helmet was settling into lines of fixed resolution. Bill saw that he had reached some decision, and knew a sudden, dazed admiration for the man. After all, he had not been chosen Leader for nothing.
“You’re a fool to tell us all this, Cory. Mad, or a fool, or both. Don’t you know what it means? Don’t think we established this connection unprepared for trouble! The same force that carries the sight and sound of us from our age to yours can carry destruction, too! Nowhere in our past is there a record that William Cory was killed by a blast of atom-gun fire as he sat at his desk—but, by God, sir, if you can change that past, so can we!”
The Best of C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner Page 21
