THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY

by John Brunner

  “Women have always borne children,” Chantal replied, managing to keep her face quite straight this time. “But now machines do so many tasks men and women alike can know about science, and think of the same things.”

  “I see that it would be so,” nodded Vyko. “And are these some of the machines?” He indicated the banked medical equipment. “Indeed it is very wonderful!”

  “You forgot to answer my question,” Chantal pointed out.

  “Of course. Well, I know that we are inside a metal—boat—that flies above the air. You call it a spaceship. But I do not understand how there is so much room!”

  Red glanced wryly at Chantal. “Artesha said a lesson in the basics of astronomy might be necessary. Where can we go to show him space, and explain about the war?”

  They took him to the master control centre from which the plans hatched in Artesha’s incredibly complex mind were translated into terms of concrete action. This Vyko understood; once he had come to see what the battleground was—the vast empty reaches of space—he followed quite clearly the strategy of a struggle in four dimensions.

  “How does he get a grasp of it so rapidly?” demanded the soft-spoken elderly officer who was their guide around the control centre.

  “He has rudimentary four-dimensional awareness,” explained Red. “We’re hoping he can help us to communicate with the Being.”

  “Darned sight more useful if he could tell us what the Enemy was likely to do round Tau Ceti,” said the officer unhappily. “Can he?”

  “Maybe he’ll be able to when he’s been shown all round the set-up. Excuse us—we’ll have to move on.”

  And they did so—throughout Centre’s manifold departments. They saved until last the most overwhelming experience of all, remembering how it had affected them—looking out into deep space at the ball of the Earth.

  They had been noticing for some time when they finally entered the ship orbiting closest to the planet that Vyko kept casting curious glances at Red. They hoped, though they felt unready to risk asking, that he was getting to be able to forecast things about them. Holding their breath, they waited as the panels rolled back and displayed the round, brilliantly green sphere that was their birthplace.

  But Vyko took it without a qualm. He merely studied it for a few minutes in absolute silence. Then at last he gave a sigh.

  “How wonderful to be able to see the truth, not guess at it,” he said simply.

  Red drew a deep breath. “Are you beginning to be able to see into our future, now?” he asked.

  “It’s very peculiar,” was Vyko’s slow reply. “Yes, I am, but—Red, I can sense something strange about you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s like when you cross your eyes. You see two things which are the same but from a slightly different angle. I find that when I look into your future—only the two things I see are not just the same thing from different points. They are separate.”

  They thought that amazing remark over in silence. Before any of them had a chance to speak again, the wall communicator which was in this compartment of Centre as in every other came to life. It was Artesha who spoke from it.

  “I was listening to that,” she said. “Red, will you take Vyko down to the department where Kepthin is studying the Enemy? I want to know if he can make prophecies about another species.”

  “Right away,” agreed Red, and shut out the view of space again.

  The fussy little alien biologist met them in person on their arrival, beaming all over his face. “We’re making fabulous progress,” he told them brightly. “Look!”

  He waved down at the big hall below the gallery where they were standing. Men and women, with every appearance of extreme concentration, were watching the five-limbed alien creature move in a slow rhythmic kind of dance.

  “I don’t see—” began Red.

  “We’re controlling it,” Kepthin told him. “Its movements now are the direct result of our orders to it. It took us a lot of trouble, but we managed it. We can prepare coded molecules to make it perform more than twenty complex action patterns now! From the spacesuit the thing was wearing, we’ve discovered what bands they use for long-range communication—in another few hours we’ll be talking to it, and it won’t be able to lie when it answers. But by the stars around us, its communication technique is extraordinary.”

  “How?” Red wanted to know.

  “It’s an extension of the internal cell-to-cell contact. It’s got a speech organ in which several billion different molecular patterns can be almost instantly synthesised—if we can adapt that, by the way, we’ll have a powerful new means of synthesising plastics and so on—anyway, as I was saying, it amplifies the normal sub-molecular resonance pattern of about sixty of the possible combinations, and uses them like syllables to construct phrases with specific meaning. It’s astonishing—”

  “Ask Vyko if he’s getting anything, or thinks he’ll be able to,” Artesha requested over a wall speaker. Red realised she must be watching their progress continuously.

  Vyko was staring in fascination at the Enemy. When Red repeated Artesha’s question to him he sighed and shook his head.

  “I know I shall not be able to feel that creature,” he said. “It is not possible even with animals on Earth. I am sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s nobody’s fault,” said Chantal, touched by his obviously sincere regret at failing them, and he gave her a quick, warm smile. There was something extremely likable about this young barbarian.

  “That’s a pity,” said Artesha thoughtfully. “Still, it was a very faint chance at the best. Red. Burma is setting up the conditions for his next experiment on the Being at the moment. I’d like you to go over with Vyko and see if you have better luck in that respect.”

  “All right. Can we go out to an anchor team direct from Centre?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’ve ordered a ship to wait for you at the nearest lock to you now. You’ll find spacesuits near the lock entrance, and I’ve told the pilot to come in and show you how to use them. Being in free space affects people different ways at first, but I think you should enjoy a little trip like this one.”

  “Okay,” said Red, and beckoned for Vyko to follow him.

  It was little, their trip; the pilot used high acceleration and it took half an hour. At first it was eerie being carried along between the unchanging stars on a skeleton of metal tubing to which their suits were merely clamped, but after a while they got their bearings and relaxed. The most frightening moment was not when they first felt the absence of gravity before the ship pulled away—the acceleration substituted for it soon enough—but their approach to the anchor team. Their pilot’s skill was fantastic; he juggled the flimsy craft between the solid-hulled orbiting vessels so neatly that they missed one by literally six inches.

  Sweating, they scrambled through the airlock aboard the control ship of the anchor team and stripped off their suits.

  A panel on the wall of the lock gave them directions, and they found their way without trouble to the big technical room. Here there were seemingly endless banks of complex machinery; time maps glowed green from the walls, and many screens bore the red splotches indicating the existence of material bodies in the neighbourhood.

  Down among the time maps was Burma. As they entered, he was swearing aloud, and Red gathered that he had made the latest of several ridiculous mistakes. He called out.

  Burma looked up. On seeing them, he stopped what he was doing and came over to greet them warmly. But there was something distracted in his manner.

  “Is something worrying you?” Red inquired blankly.

  “Yes, it is—and it’s such a peculiar thing, at that. It’s quite put me off my work! Just a few minutes ago, as I was working at the far end of the room, I could have sworn I saw someone at this end who looked exactly like me.”

  XVI

  Disappearances have never been confined to human beings, after all. Taking the proportions of habitable land and uninhabitab
le ice and wastes of ocean on Earth, one would expect to find the latter yielding many more mysteries—but unknown, because unobserved. Men vanished from the Marie Celeste— … But there is a strange prejudice about Friday as a day of ill-omen among seamen. In an attempt to eliminate this in the Royal Navy, towards the end of the nineteenth century an “enlightened” Board of Admiralty laid the keel of a warship on a Friday. She was launched on a Friday and christened H.M.S. Friday; she was commissioned on a Friday and put to sea on a Friday under the command of a Captain Friday.

  She was never heard of again.

  In the silence with which he and Chantal greeted Burma’s statement, Red found time to wonder exactly what was going on at that moment. No one else in the technical room paid any attention; they continued to work. A little distance away, Artesha went on attending to the complex business of Centre. Further out, the ships circling the Solar System obeyed her commands, watched and waited and occasionally struck or were struck. All about and around them the Being did whatever it did (or was its purpose confined to mere existence?). Beyond that again, the Enemy plotted and planned, struck and were struck.

  But everywhere the universe followed its incomprehensible ways: suns radiated, planets cooled, comets swung through their slow, age-long orbits or drifted from sun to sun until their substance was wasted by radiation pressure and they became clouds of the ever-present interstellar dust.

  The galaxies wheeled their slow way through time. New members of their family formed from that same dust—taking an aeon about it, and yet not wasting time. Because time was not to be wasted. Time was something—something very abstract—within which they simply were, as they were in the insubstantiality of empty space.

  And this is our home, thought Red. Is anything—even seeing the unknown close at hand—more amazing than this?

  When he recovered from the shock, he found himself looking questioningly at Vyko. The youthful magician was studying Burma in a puzzled manner.

  “Red,” he said hesitantly. “Red, do you have a—a twin?”

  “Yes,” said Chantal with sudden emphasis. “There’s another man going round Centre who’s exactly like him.”

  Burma watched this exchange wonderingly, and Vyko turned to him, nodding. “That explains it,” he said calmly.

  “Explains what?”

  “When I try to—feel your future, I get the same sensation that I do when I think of Red.” Vyko repeated his analogy of seeing double. “And as you say you have a—a going-double—”

  “Look, what is all this?” Burma demanded. Chantal gave a quick summary of her experience, and Red listened in mounting dismay.

  “A going-double is a sign of disaster approaching,” Vyko told them doubtfully. “And yet I do not read disaster in the future… It is said among my people that to see oneself is a mark of death near at hand, and yet…” He shook his head as if giddy, and walked a few paces to be alone.

  “Is this the result of our tampering with time?” Red asked apprehensively, and Burma looked worried.

  “Possibly. We’ll have to get in touch with Artesha about it.”

  Artesha sounded actually tired when they told her what had happened. “I’m afraid this is the beginning of something very big,” she said. “And I can’t spare the time to study it properly! We’re getting reports in of an Enemy attack massing—they’ve been at it for days, but up till a little while ago we thought it was aimed at Tau Ceti. It isn’t. The Enemy are about to mount a full-scale offensive on the Solar System.”

  “Can we stand it off?”

  “I don’t know. I think so—we’re rushing in extra resources as fast as possible, almost faster than we can handle them, and production of our most modern ships is being stepped up to maximum. Have you had any results with Vyko?”

  “We haven’t asked him yet,” said Red, and called the boy back. “Do you feel any special awareness of—presence?” he asked anxiously.

  Vyko shook his head. “There is something,” he began, and frowningly changed his mind. “But it is no more here than anywhere else. I have always known of a sort of presence.”

  “That fits,” said Artesha. “The Being exists at least as far back as the furthest temporal surges. Have you been through the ship to find whether there actually is a double of Burma on board?”

  “But there can’t be,” said Burma briefly. “How did he get through the airlock without—?”

  “Did he get through the airlock?” said Artesha significantly. “Remember, that specimen of the Enemy found its way into the city from 129 Lyrae—”

  She broke off, and when she spoke again was excited and dismayed. “Tesper has seen his going-double,” she said.

  “This is too big,” said Red abruptly, and Artesha agreed.

  “I’ll get Magwareet on to it right away. We’ll have to turn Centre and all the anchor teams inside out—”

  “Have you considered the possibility that we were deliberately allowed to capture that Enemy?” Chantal put in. “I mean—could it be signalling somehow?”

  “That was a chance we had to take. But if, somehow, they are managing to get duplicates of existing human beings into our defences, we’re headed for real trouble.”

  “You had already thought of that,” Red realised, recalling the behaviour of the woman in the medical section.

  “Of course. Magwareet will be over with some helpers to investigate as soon as I can arrange it.”

  Burma turned abruptly back to his team. “We’ve got to get this test set up quickly,” he barked. “How’s it going?”

  “It’ll take another hour,” said one of the technicians. “Then we’re all ready.”

  “Not bad,” admitted Burma grudgingly. “I’m afraid you and Vyko will just have to stand around for the time being. Maybe it’ll give him a chance to get his bearings properly.” Red and Chantal signified agreement.

  Withdrawing to one side of the cabin, Chantal murmured, “I can’t understand why they take all this so calmly.”

  “I guess they’ve just been schooled into concentrating on their own problems,” Red answered softly. “Time’s too valuable to spend worrying about questions you can’t solve yourself.”

  The hour was almost half gone when Magwareet pushed his way into the room, still wearing his spacesuit. Frost was melting on the metal shell, and his helmet, thrown back on his shoulders, was misted inside and out. “Go through the ship,” was his curt order to the men and women who followed him, and they dispersed with an air of grim intentness, weapons ready in their hands.

  “Sorry to break in, Burma,” the co-ordinator said shortly, “but we have to check everywhere that a going-double has been notified. Won’t disturb your equipment.”

  Burma nodded, and they carried on working. When the members of Magwareet’s party returned, they had nothing to report, and with a short word of thanks, Magwareet prepared to go on elsewhere.

  Red felt someone pluck at his sleeve, and glanced down to find Vyko staring at him worriedly. “That man—the one in the metal clothes,” he said.

  “What about him?”

  “He too has a going-double! I don’t know where, but I can sense it.”

  Red raised his voice and yelled after the departing co-ordinator. Magwareet turned back.

  “Has your double been reported from anywhere?”

  “No—not as far as I know,” Magwareet answered, staring.

  “Vyko says you’ve got one.”

  The young magician looked almost on the edge of tears. “It is beginning to seem as though everyone in this day and time has one!” he exploded. “Some people’s are very close to themselves, and hard to make out, like those of most of the people in this room. But Red’s, and yours”—Vyko nodded at Magwareet—“they are unmistakable.”

  Magwareet crossed the room with a bound despite the weight of his suit, and slammed open the communicator. “Triple emergency!” he said. “Anchor team” (he gave co-ordinates quickly) “Magwareet speaking, to all units, all anch
or teams, all ships! Somewhere there is a double of myself. Notify and capture if possible on sighting it. Any other doubles must be reported instantly.”

  “Wymarin!” said Burma suddenly. “What are you doing here?”

  They spun round, to see the familiar dark-haired man who had called himself Elias standing between the banks of instruments.

  “You weren’t quite ready to test,” Wymarin answered. “I came over to see if you were doing exactly what I said.”

  “Where’s he supposed to be?” Red asked a technician near him, whispering.

  “Monitoring the test from another anchor team’s ships, just in case something goes wrong,” was the answer.

  Wymarin walked slowly towards them, eyes flickering over the massed dials and lights. “Not quite!” he said at length. “Listen, Burma, I’ve been doing some figuring on a new tack. Suppose instead of simply trying my original test on a smaller scale, you do this.”

  He went off into a language so full of technicalities they could no longer follow. Burma and his technicians, however, seemed to appreciate his reasoning.

  Burma, in particular, was shaken when Wymarin had finished. “If I get you right, what you’re proposing is to set up a working vocabulary based on a number code, which we can key to a mechanical translator and actually speak to the Being!”

  “Why not?”

  “Hello, Burma,” said a voice from the wall communicator. “Wymarin here. You should be almost set to go ahead now, shouldn’t you?”

  They wheeled together. In the instant when their eyes were all off him, Wymarin’s going-double went.

  Vyko whimpered. “This must be the end coming—for all of us! Never can there have been so many omens of ill-fortune! When every man and woman has a going-double—”

  “Quiet!” snapped Burma, and explained to Wymarin—the real one, speaking from the communicator—what had happened. “Of course, we daren’t trust what he told us, though it seemed logical enough. I think we’ll have to go ahead right away—if there’s a chance of communication with the Being, we must grab it. Magwareet—pull your team out of here and get on with your own job. Red, Chantal—do you want to go with him? It’s risky, staying here—”