Needle in a Timestack

by Robert Silverberg

  Steele was checking out the electronic scalpel, now, while the nurses fussed around, preparing the man for the amputation. In the finished tape, there would be music, narration, all the trimmings, but now there was just a soundless series of images, and, of course, the tapped brainwaves of the sick man.

  The leg was bare.

  The scalpel descended.

  Northrop winced as vicarious agony shot through him. He could feel the blazing pain, the brief searing hellishness as the scalpel slashed through diseased flesh and rotting bone. His whole body trembled, and he bit down hard on his lips and clenched his fists and then it was over.

  There was a cessation of pain. A catharsis. The leg no longer sent its pulsating messages to the weary brain. Now there was shock, the anesthesia of hyped-up pain, and with the shock came calmness. Steele went about the mop-up operation. He tidied the stump, bound it.

  The rushes flickered out in anticlimax. Later, the production crew would tie up the program with interviews of the family, perhaps a shot of the funeral, a few observations on the problem of gangrene in the aged. Those things were the extras. What counted, what the viewers wanted, was the sheer nastiness of vicarious pain, and that they got in full measure. It was a gladiatorial contest without the gladiators, masochism concealed as medicine. It worked. It pulled in the viewers by the millions.

  Northrop patted sweat from his forehead.

  “Looks like we got ourselves quite a little show here, boys,” he said in satisfaction.

  The mood of satisfaction was still on him as he left the building that day. All day he had worked hard, getting the show into its final shape, cutting and polishing. He enjoyed the element of craftsmanship. It helped him to forget some of the sordidness of the program.

  Night had fallen when he left. He stepped out of the main entrance and a figure strode forward, a bulky figure, medium height, tired face. A hand reached out, thrusting him roughly back into the lobby of the building.

  At first Northrop didn’t recognize the face of the man. It was a blank face, a nothing face, a middle-aged empty face. Then he placed it.

  Harry Gardner. The son of the dead man.

  “Murderer!” Gardner shrilled. “You killed him! He would have lived if you’d used anesthetics! You phony, you murdered him so people would have thrills on television!”

  Northrop glanced up the lobby. Someone was coming around the bend. Northrop felt calm. He could stare this nobody down until he fled in fear.

  “Listen,” Northrop said, “we did the best medical science can do for your father. We gave him the ultimate in scientific care. We—”

  “You murdered him!”

  “No,” Northrop said, and then he said no more, because he saw the sudden flicker of a slice-gun in the blank-faced man’s fat hand. He backed away, but it didn’t help, because Gardner punched the trigger and an incandescent bolt flared out and sliced across Northrop’s belly just as efficiently as the surgeon’s scalpel had cut through the gangrenous leg.

  Gardner raced away, feet clattering on the marble floor. Northrop dropped, clutching himself. His suit was seared, and there was a slash through his abdomen, a burn an eighth of an inch wide and perhaps four inches deep, cutting through intestines, through organs, through flesh. The pain hadn’t begun yet. His nerves weren’t getting the message through to his stunned brain. But then they were, and Northrop coiled and twisted in agony that was anything but vicarious now.

  Footsteps approached.

  “Jeez,” a voice said.

  Northrop forced an eye open. Maurillo. Of all people, Maurillo.

  “A doctor,” Northrop wheezed. “Fast! Christ, the pain! Help me, Ted!”

  Maurillo looked down, and smiled. Without a word, he stepped to the telephone booth six feet away, dropped in a token, punched out a call.

  “Get a van over here, fast. I’ve got a subject, chief.”

  Northrop writhed in torment. Maurillo crouched next to him. “A doctor,” Northrop murmured. “A needle, at least. Gimme a needle! The pain—”

  “You want me to kill the pain?” Maurillo laughed. “Nothing doing, chief. You just hang on. You stay alive till we get that hat on your head and tape the whole thing.”

  “But you don’t work for me—you’re off the program—”

  “Sure,” Maurillo said. “I’m with Transcontinental now. They’re starting a blood-and-guts show too. Only they don’t need waivers.”

  Northrop gaped. Transcontinental? That bootleg outfit that peddled tapes in Afghanistan and Mexico and Ghana and God knew where else? Not even a network show, he thought. No fee. Dying in agony for the benefit of a bunch of lousy tapeleggers. That was the worst part, Northrop thought. Only Maurillo would pull a deal like that.

  “A needle! For God‘s sake, Maurillo, a needle!”

  “Nothing doing, chief. The van’ll be here any minute. They’ll sew you up, and we’ll tape it nice.”

  Northrop closed his eyes. He felt the coiling intestines blazing within him. He willed himself to die, to cheat Maurillo and his bunch of ghouls. But it was no use. He remained alive and suffering.

  He lived for an hour. That was plenty of time to tape his dying agonies. The last thought he had was that it was a damned shame he couldn’t star on his own show.

  The Sixth Palace

  It was a quote from Hebrew mystical literature that touched off this story, which I wrote for Frederik Pohl’s Galaxy in February 1964 and which he published in the February 1965 issue. Soon afterward I lost my notes for the story, and wondered for years thereafter where I had come across the Lesser Hekaloth that had inspired my plot. I didn’t find out for close to fifty years, until one day late in 2014, there came an e-mail from Boruch Perl of Brooklyn, who has made a careful study of Jewish mystical lore and had read my story in a collection of mine where I had noted I had lost track of the source. “The quote,” he told me, “is from Jewish Gnosticism: Merkabah Mystic and Talmudic Tradition, by Gershom Scholem.” It is drawn, he said, from “an extremely obscure book of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and is based on an incident recorded in the Talmud (Hagigah 1)” in which “Ben Azai gazed (at the Divine Presence) and was killed …” I had heard of Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), the great German-born scholar who from 1933 until his retirement in 1965 held the post of Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mr. Perl provided me with a link to the text of the Gershom Scholem book. I was at my computer in a flash.

  Eureka!

  There was the whole story, the mere edge of which I had come upon in 1964 and used as the inspiration for that story in Galaxy.

  The Hekhaloth Books, Scholem explained, were part of a group of Jewish mystic texts, well over a thousand years old, including, among others, the Greater Hekhaloth, the Lesser Hekhaloth, and a book called Merkabah Rabbah. “Hekhaloth,” in Hebrew, means “palace” or “temple.” It is in the Lesser Hekhaloth, says Scholem, that the famous Jewish hero Rabbi Akiva, who lived from about A.D. 40 to 135, tells the tale of his journey to heaven in the company of three fellow rabbis, Ben Zoma, Ben Avuyah, and … Ben Azai! They discovered as they went that the Lord God of Israel “sitteth within seven palaces, one within another. And at the entrance to each palace are eight doorkeepers, four to the right of the lintel and four to the left of the lintel.”

  And thereby hung my tale.

  Ben Azai was deemed worthy and stood at the gate of the sixth palace and saw the ethereal splendor of the pure marble plates. He opened his mouth and said twice, “Water! Water!” In the twinkling of an eye they decapitated him and threw eleven thousand iron bars at him. This shall be a sign for all generations that no one should err at the gate of the sixth palace.

  —Lesser Hekhaloth

  There was the treasure, and there was the guardian of the treasure. And there were the whitening bones of those who had tried in vain to make the treasure their own
. Even the bones had taken on a kind of beauty, lying out there by the gate of the treasure vault, under the blazing arch of heavens. The treasure itself lent beauty to everything near it—even the scattered bones, even the grim guardian.

  The home of the treasure was a small world that belonged to red Valzar. Hardly more than moonsized, really, with no atmosphere to speak of, a silent, dead little world that spun through darkness a billion miles from its cooling primary. A wayfarer had stopped there once. Where from, where bound? No one knew. He had established a cache there, and there it lay, changeless and eternal, treasure beyond belief, presided over by the faceless metal man who waited with metal patience for his master’s return.

  There were those who would have the treasure. They came, and were challenged by the guardian, and died.

  On another world of the Valzar system, men undiscouraged by the fate of their predecessors dreamed of the hoard, and schemed to possess it. Lipescu was one: a tower of a man, golden beard, fists like hammers, gullet of brass, back as broad as a tree of a thousand years. Bolzano was another: awl-shaped, bright of eye, fast of finger, twig thick, razor sharp. They had no wish to die.

  Lipescu’s voice was like the rumble of island galaxies in collision . He wrapped himself around a tankard of good black ale and said, “I go tomorrow, Bolzano.”

  “Is the computer ready?”

  “Programmed with everything the beast could ask me,” the big man boomed. “There won’t be a slip.”

  “And if there is?” Bolzano asked, peering idly into the blue, oddly pale, strangely meek eyes of the giant. “And if the robot kills you?”

  “I’ve dealt with robots before.”

  Bolzano laughed. “That plain is littered with bones, friend. Yours will join the rest. Great bulky bones, Lipescu. I can see them now.”

  “You’re a cheerful one, friend.”

  “I’m realistic.”

  Lipescu shook his head heavily. “If you were realistic, you wouldn’t be in this with me,” he said slowly. “Only a dreamer would do such a thing as this.” One meaty paw hovered in the air, pounced, caught Bolzano’s forearm. The little man winced as bones ground together. Lipescu said, “You won’t back out? If I die, you’ll make the attempt?”

  “Of course I will, you idiot.”

  “Will you? You’re a coward, like all little men. You’ll watch me die, and then you’ll turn tail and head for another part of the universe as fast as you know how. Won’t you?”

  “I intend to profit by your mistakes,” Bolzano said in a clear, testy voice. “Let go of my arm.”

  Lipescu released his grip. The little man sank back in his chair, rubbing his arm. He gulped ale. He grinned at his partner and raised his glass.

  “To success,” Bolzano said.

  “Yes. To the treasure.”

  ‘And to long life afterward.”

  “For both of us,” the big man boomed.

  “Perhaps,” said Bolzano. “Perhaps.”

  He had his doubts. The big man was sly, Ferd Bolzano knew, and that was a good combination, not often found: slyness and size. Yet the risks were great. Bolzano wondered which he preferred—that Lipescu should gain the treasure on his attempt, thus assuring Bolzano of a share without risk, or that Lipescu should die, forcing Bolzano to venture his own life. Which was better, a third of the treasure without hazard, or the whole thing for the highest stake?

  Bolzano was a good enough gambler to know the answer to that. Yet there was more than yellowness to the man; in his own way, he longed for the chance to risk his life on the airless treasure world.

  Lipescu would go first. That was the agreement. Bolzano had stolen the computer, had turned it over to the big man, and Lipescu would make the initial attempt. If he gained the prize, his was the greater share. If he perished, it was Bolzano’s moment next. An odd partnership, odd terms, but Lipescu would have it no other way, and Ferd Bolzano did not argue the point with his beefy compatriot. Lipescu would return with the treasure, or he would not return at all. There would be no middle way, they both were certain.

  Bolzano spent an uneasy night. His apartment, in an airy shaft of a building overlooking glittering Lake His, was a comfortable place, and he had little longing to leave it. Lipescu, by preference, lived in the stinking slums beyond the southern shore of the lake, and when the two men parted for the night they went in opposite ways. Bolzano considered bringing a woman home for the night but did not. Instead, he sat moody and wakeful before the televector screen, watching the procession of worlds, peering at the green and gold and ochre planets as they sailed through the emptiness.

  Toward dawn, he ran the tape of the treasure. Octave Merlin had made that tape, a hundred years before, as he orbited sixty miles above the surface of the airless little world. Now Merlin’s bones bleached on the plain, but the tape had come home and bootlegged copies commanded a high price in hidden markets. His camera’s sharp eye had seen much.

  There was the gate; there was the guardian. Gleaming, ageless, splendid. The robot stood ten feet high, a square, blocky, black shape topped by the tiny anthropomorphic head dome, featureless and sleek. Behind him the gate, wide open but impassable all the same. And behind him, the treasure, culled from the craftsmanship of a thousand worlds, left here who knew why, untold years ago.

  No more mere jewels. No dreary slabs of so-called precious metal. The wealth here was not intrinsic; no vandal would think of melting the treasure into dead ingots. Here were statuettes of spun iron that seemed to move and breathe. Plaques of purest lead, engraved with lathework that dazzled the mind and made the heart hesitate. Cunning intaglios in granite, from the workshops of a frosty world half a parsec from nowhere. A scatter of opals, burning with an inner light, fashioned into artful loops of brightness.

  A helix of rainbow-colored wood. A series of interlocking strips of some beast’s bone, bent and splayed so that the pattern blurred and perhaps abutted some other dimensional continuum. Cleverly carved shells, one within the other, descending to infinity. Burnished leaves of nameless trees. Polished pebbles from unknown beaches. A dizzying spew of wonders, covering some fifty square yards, sprawled out behind the gate in stunning profusion.

  Rough men unschooled in the tenets of esthetics had given their lives to possess the treasure. It took no fancy knowledge to realize the wealth of it, to know that collectors strung from galaxy to galaxy would fight with bared fangs to claim their share. Gold bars did not a treasure make. But these things? Beyond duplication, almost beyond price?

  Bolzano was wet with a fever of yearning before the tape had run its course. When it was over, he slumped in his chair, drained, depleted.

  Dawn came. The silvery moons fell from the sky. The red sun splashed across the heavens. Bolzano allowed himself the luxury of an hour’s sleep.

  And then it was time to begin …

  As a precautionary measure, they left the ship in a parking orbit three miles above the airless world. Past reports were unreliable, and there was no telling how far the robot guardian’s power extended. If Lipescu were successful, Bolzano could descend and get him—and the treasure. If Lipescu failed, Bolzano would land and make his own attempt.

  The big man looked even bigger, encased in his suit and in the outer casement of a dropshaft. Against his massive chest he wore the computer, an extra brain as lovingly crafted as any object in the treasure hoard. The guardian would ask him questions; the computer would help him answer. And Bolzano would listen. If Lipescu erred, possibly his partner could benefit by knowledge of the error and succeed.

  “Can you hear me?” Lipescu asked.

  “Perfectly. Go on, get going!”

  “What’s the hurry? Eager to see me die?”

  “Are you that lacking in confidence?”’ Bolzano asked. “Do you want me to go first?”

  “Fool,” Lipescu muttered. “Listen carefully. If I die, I do
n’t want it to be in vain.”

  “What would it matter to you?”

  The bulky figure wheeled around. Bolzano could not see his partner’s face, but he knew Lipescu must be scowling. The giant rumbled, “Is life that valuable? Can’t I take a risk?”

  “For my benefit?”

  “For mine,” Lipescu said. “I’ll be coming back.”

  “Go, then. The robot is waiting.”

  Lipescu walked to the lock. A moment later he was through and gliding downward, a one-man spaceship, jets flaring beneath his feet. Bolzano settled by the scanner to watch. A televector pickup homed in on Lipescu just as he made his landing, coming down in a blaze of fire. The treasure and its guardian lay about a mile away. Lipescu rid himself of the dropshaft, stepping with giant bounds toward the waiting guardian.

  Bolzano watched.

  Bolzano listened.

  The televector pickup provided full fidelity. It was useful for Bolzano’s purposes, and useful, too, for Lipescu’s vanity, for the ,big man wanted his every moment taped for posterity. It was interesting to see Lipescu dwarfed by the guardian. The black faceless robot, squat and motionless, topped the big man by better than three feet.

  Lipescu said, “Step aside.”

  The robot’s reply came in surprisingly human tones, though void of any distinguishing accent. “What I guard is not to be plundered.”

  “I claim them by right,” Lipescu said.

  “So have many others. But their right did not exist. Nor does yours. I cannot step aside for you.”

  “Test me,” Lipescu said. “See if I have the right or not!”

  “Only my master may pass.”

  “Who is your master? I am your master!”

  “My master is he who can command me. And no one can command me who shows ignorance before me.”

  “Test me, then,” Lipescu demanded.

  “Death is the penalty for failure.”

  “Test me.”

  “The treasure does not belong to you.”

  “Test me and step aside.”