by Jerry Sohl
There were still problems, though they were different now. For example, what would happen in Chicago when people started popping out of nowhere with no clothes on? How would people go through? What kind of a system would they work out for the transition?
He walked up the wooden steps to the door and stepped through to the inside of the Needle II room. Electric lights—how hard the bulbs had been to make!—illuminated a room far different from the big room inside the Rasmussen Stove Company building. This one had a ceiling only eight feet high and encompassed a Needle much smaller than the one that had brought them there. Needle II was only four feet in diameter and the Eye barely gave a man enough room to crawl into. The Needle was only twenty feet high and the Eye was correspondingly smaller, a foot and a half wide by two and one-half feet high. Small as it was, it was still big enough for any New Chicagoan to go through, though he’d have to inch his way through on his side.
The Needle pointed at the sky out the roof of a building only fifteen feet square. Absent were the neat cabinets and panels of the first Needle. They were luxuries here where there were only bare necessities. The circuits and tubes and other electronic devices accessory to the Needle were arrayed on a number of breadboards and scattered over the floor and on the walls in profusion. Electricity to work it all came from New Chicago’s power plant just outside the stockade.
Dr. Costigan was at work on the wiring behind one of the panels he had removed from the shaft.
“Working yet?” Devan sat on a stool, watched the doctor handle the wires that led to one of the important circuit boxes only he knew the function of. The doctor, after all the years, had insisted on keeping his secret, and they had not tried to pry it out of him. Devan had provided him with all the materials he needed and knew the circuits almost as well as the doctor. Still he did not know how the key boxes worked, but he respected the old man’s penchant for security.
“I’ve gone over all the circuits. They’ve all checked out but this one. Just a loose connection, I think.”
Dr. Costigan looked pretty much as he had ten years before, Devan decided as he watched him work over the circuit with a test light. This was rather surprising considering the fact that Devan had judged him to be in his sixties even then. He was just as tall, maybe a little stockier, but with the same stoop, the same watery blue eyes and the same unquenchable thirst.
“Think we could get it to work tonight?”
The doctor turned around slowly. “Sure. The big test is tomorrow night, though. But if you like, we can make a routine check.”
“Don’t you think we’ve made enough routine checks? With the little Needle, I mean. We know, for example, that it’s no warmer or cooler on the other side, that the surface is hard, though a little yielding.”
“I know. Maybe it’s somebody’s living room carpet. Or the asphalt of a street.” The doctor turned back. “Could be the back yard lot where the kids play baseball. We’ll find out tomorrow night.”
“We could find out tonight.”
The doctor spun around, looked at Devan in surprise. “Who could find out? Who would go through?”
“Oh, I might go through.”
“You?” The doctor’s mouth dropped open. “Why, you couldn’t do that, Devan!”
Devan laughed. “I know. But I’ve been thinking about it.” He looked at the Eye illuminated now from both sides, looking much smaller but its polished metal sides looking just as efficient as the other Eye. At least you can’t fall into this one, he thought. When the people go through they’ll have to work their way into it.
“I’ve been thinking, too,” the doctor said soberly. “I didn’t want to mention it, but we haven’t even made the rabbit test this time. Just shoved our hands in. I wonder if that’s enough. Of course I’ve got too many fillings in my old teeth to go putting my head in there.”
Devan lit a cigarette and came over to where the doctor was. “I wonder if it goes through to Chicago? Suppose it’s not Chicago but some place like this? Or something even more different?”
“It’s a possibility,” the doctor said. “I’m not denying that.”
“Don’t you wonder about it?”
“Don’t twist my arm too much or I’ll turn it on and have a look.”
Devan’s heart was beating fast now. His will and the idea were having a battle inside. Was there really anything wrong with his going through at once? It would satisfy ten years of waiting one day sooner. The fact that he ought to wait that one more day was suddenly overbalanced by the fact that nothing would be actually accomplished by putting it off.
“Turn it on and I’ll have a look,” Devan said.
The doctor’s head said no. “Your fillings. You’d lose them all again.”
“So what? It will be all right. The big test is tomorrow night and we’ll all lose ours then anyway, or soon after when we go back. So, when I come out I’ll put wax in the cavities until after the big test. Then I can let them know I went through tonight.”
The doctor chuckled. “Well, I guess it really doesn’t make much difference which night we go through, does it?”
“Ten years’ work and then waiting for twenty-four hours just because of a schedule. It doesn’t make sense.”
“We’ve talked ourselves into it, haven’t we?”
“I’m ready when you are.”
“You be careful, hear?” The doctor softened the admonition with a smile.
A half hour later Dr. Costigan pulled the master switch that set tubes to glowing and other devices to humming and clicking. He and Devan carefully checked important test points with a volt-ohmmeter, the doctor making a few confidential checks of his own.
Devan made a sweep of his hand through part of the Eye, noted with satisfaction that it vanished momentarily. “It’s working all right.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Dev?” Dr. Costigan said, his voice edged with worry. “What if you don’t come back?”
“I’ll come back.” He put his hand deep into the lower part of the Eye, felt the hard surface a foot below the opening. Then he sat at the edge of the Eye, his feet disappearing into it. He could feel the ground below. He looked up, waved at the doctor.
“Good luck,” the doctor said.
Devan slid into the Eye.
He saw angry clouds that scudded across the sky in a world of stone outcropping and grass for as far as he could see. The moon rode high and bright, illuminating the rolling hills of rock, light patches chasing one another as the clouds hurried along.
It wasn’t cold, but Devan shivered as the soughing air threatened to blow him from the spot.
This is not Chicago.
He had tried to prepare himself for it but in spite of it the realization hit him hard: This is not Chicago.... Repeating the words numbed him.
There wasn’t a living thing in sight.
He bent down and touched the rock. It was hard, like igneous rock in a way, but it was different because it gave just a little. He dared not move from where he was because the Eye was right behind him and he wanted to be able to step back through it in a hurry, if he had to. If he wandered from it he’d never find it again in this monotonous world.
He yelled. His voice was lost on the breeze and nothing answered. He swore at the top of his lungs. Nothing, no one answered.
Not a thing stirred. Only the wind and the waving short-cropped grass that grew in the tiny crannies. This could not be any place in the world he knew.
Ten years’ work gone. Now the whole thing would have to be redone or tried some other way. He and Dr. Costigan would have to decide how to change the Needle to make its Eye go back to Chicago.
He took one more look at the desolate place, then stepped backward. Dr. Costigan was there, expectant. The bright room was cheery.
“Well?” The doctor’s eyes were curious.
“It’s not Chicago,” Devan said. “Just dreary, rocky country for as far as you can see. I don’t think anything exists there. At least I didn�
��t see anything.”
The doctor looked at him for a long time before he pulled the master switch. “You’d better pick up your fillings.”
Devan knelt and retrieved them, feeling the holes in his teeth with his tongue at the same time. When he had the last one in his pocket, the doctor handed him a glass.
“Let’s drink,” the doctor said. “Drink to commemorate what you probably consider ten years of working for nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Devan said, letting the doctor fill his glass with wine. “We have the Needle to experiment with. We can try some other way.”
The doctor shook his head gravely. “There is no other way.”
Devan looked at him sharply. “No other way? What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. There’s nothing we can do.”
“We can reverse the polarity and see what happens. That’s one thing.”
“It wouldn’t help.”
“Why not?”
“I did it with Needle I,” the doctor said, looking sheepishly into his half-empty glass. “I changed the polarity accidentally and it didn’t make any difference because Glenn went through when it was one way and the detective went through when it was the other way. They both ended up here.”
Devan suddenly needed another drink, poured it from the bottle. The doctor finished his own drink and refilled his glass.
“I didn’t think we’d ever get back to Chicago, Devan. This is a continuous thing. You could keep going from one universe to another by means of a Needle, each universe just like the last and complete itself, yet each one deceptively different, as we’ve noticed here. I think we were lucky to end up on an earth as nice as this one.”
“I suppose,” Devan said, “if you kept going through enough universes you’d finally get back to the one you started from.”
“It’s a guess, but I’d say you’d have to go through an infinite number of them.”
Devan finished his drink and put the glass down. “You couldn’t even make a Needle in the world on the other side of this Eye. Unless you made it out of grass and rock.”
“I’m just an old experimenter,” the doctor mused, sloshing the wine around in the bottom of his glass and watching it. “That’s what everybody thinks, anyway. That very first night I knew we all needed a goal, an incentive to keep us together. I saw Orcutt give us organization. I furnished the motive that stuck it together. The Needle and eventual return. It was simple to say, ‘Just reverse the polarity and we’ll get back all right.’ But I didn’t think we’d really get back. Not even then.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Have another drink,” the doctor said, reaching for his glass. “Living with the thought for ten years and not telling anyone has made this sudden sharing of it something that needs a little fortification.”
18
“We must be early,” Sam Otto said, closing the door after he and Basher had come in. “Where is everybody?”
“They’ll be along,” Devan said, moving two stools out from the wall for them.
“I wouldn’t expect them to miss the test,” Sam said. Then he brightened. “But getting here early gives me an opportunity to introduce you fellows to Mr. Basher and let you get acquainted with the man who’s going to volunteer to go through the Eye tonight.”
“You can go straight to hell,” Basher said. “I’m volunteering for no Eye duty. Once is enough. I don’t want to get stuck in any wilderness again. I only came to watch.”
Several others came through the door. Orcutt, tanned, slim and as imposing as ever; Tooksberry, visibly a little older but without the vinegary lines he used to have in his face; Holcombe, who had got over cracking his knuckles and had devoted himself to the manufacture of the camp’s wire and who looked much the same; and a youngster Devan recognized as Johnny Selden, son of one of the foundry workers. He was about sixteen.
“Except for Johnny here,” Orcutt said, “this could be ten years ago.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t end the same way,” Basher said.
Devan pushed firmly on the wax fillings in his teeth with his tongue, recalling what lay on the other side of the Eye and hoping at the same time the five men wouldn’t be too disconcerted by the knowledge that the Eye would not take them back to Chicago.
He had examined the problem from every angle but always came up with the same answer: he could not tell them before one of them went in and looked around. They had waited, as he had, for ten years to see where the Eye went. He would not have believed Dr. Costigan if the doctor had told him yesterday the Eye did not go back to Chicago; he would have had to see for himself. So he knew he could not tell Orcutt, Basher, Otto, Holcombe or Tooksberry now. They’d have to see for themselves.
“What’s the matter with you, Devan?”
Devan started at the mention of his name.
“You look so far away and sad,” Orcutt was saying. “Buck up, boy! This is the big night, haven’t you heard? This is when we all get a look at Chicago again. It’s time for rejoicing. You look as if it were time for a funeral.”
“We ought to have a party,” Otto said, looking at the doctor. “You have the wherewithal, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” Dr. Costigan said drily.
“What is this?” Orcutt said. “You, Devan, and the doctor—aren’t you glad this is the end of the trail, that you’ll know?”
“It must be the thought of all this coming to an end,” Devan said. “After all, ten years is a long time.”
“It is a long time.” Orcutt came up and slipped his arm around Devan’s shoulder. “Everyone in New Chicago owes a lot to you and the doctor whether the Needle works or not. If we manage to get back to Chicago and civilization with it, all the more credit to you both. We’re indebted to you because of your remembrance of so many things and to Dr. Costigan because of his thorough work making it with materials at hand.”
“Everyone’s worked on it,” Devan said.
“Everybody’s had a hand in it indirectly,” Dr. Costigan said.
“It’s what has held us all together, just the same.” Orcutt broke away. “Now, is everything set?”
“I’m ready when you are,” Dr. Costigan said. “But who is going through?”
“I’m way ahead of you, Doctor.” Orcutt put his hand on Johnny Selden’s head. The boy blushed.
“You’re not going to send a boy through!”
“He has no fillings to lose.”
“What do the Seldens think of this, Ed?” Devan asked.
“They put it straight up to Johnny and he said he’d do it. He remembers only vaguely what the real Chicago is like. But he’s not going in all the way. Just his head. Are you ready, lad?”
Orcutt escorted the boy to the Eye and Dr. Costigan pulled the switch that energized the Eye area.
“We’ll hang on to you, Johnny,” Orcutt said. “Just crawl through this opening, just to your shoulders. Leave your hands on this side so you can pull out in case you see anything dangerous.”
The boy wet his dry lips, swallowed a couple times and then lay down on the floor, his head toward the Eye. He inched himself forward while Orcutt and Holcombe held one leg and Johnson and Basher held the other.
“Good luck,” Sam Otto said.
The boy’s head disappeared little by little, first the hair, then the ears and on down his neck to his shoulders. His hands on the sides of the Eye were sweaty and his fingers were rigid. Then the hands relaxed and went to the floor and those who watched him saw, by the different positionings of his body, that he was turning first one way and then another.
“When is he coming out, for heaven’s sake?” Holcombe asked.
“He just went in,” Dr. Costigan reminded.
Devan imagined what he’d see. Dark sky full of stars and clouds and a moon and wind and stone and grass—unless the weather had changed, if there was weather. It might be raining, or just dark, with no wind and an overcast sky, or a bright, still night with a big moon
and memories of a warm day....
The boy finally eased himself out with his hands, rolled over on his back and sat up, blinking his eyes. The men sat around him, curious but patient. Dr. Costigan turned off the Eye. Devan’s nerves tightened for the revelation and its effects.
“Well?” Sam Otto could contain himself no longer.
“I don’t know,” the boy said.
“What don’t you know, son?”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
“Well, describe it as best you can.”
“It’s dark—”
Sam groaned.
“—and it’s damp—”
“So it’s not Chicago after all,” Tooksberry said.
“It could be Chicago,” Orcutt snapped. “Parts of Chicago are dark and damp. It depends upon where you are.”
“But in this section”—Tooksberry pointed through one of the walls—“we’re six blocks from where we came through. Six blocks southwest. Where would that be then from where we were? In a forest preserve?”
“No. We’d still be in the industrial district or in the middle of a shopping district,” Holcombe said.
“Give the kid a chance to talk,” Sam said. “All he’s said so far is that it’s cold and damp.”
“It smells different,” Johnny said. “But there was darkness everywhere I looked, though I could feel a breeze in my face.”
And Devan thought: I can tell you where you were, kid.
“A sewer,” Orcutt said. “It could be a sewer. What a laugh that would be!”
“Is it a bad smell?” Sam asked.
“It’s not a good smell.”
Devan didn’t recall what kind of a smell it was. It hadn’t impressed him one way or another.
