Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 38
The man waiting at home for him was not Stafford but a police sergeant. The sergeant asked him when he had last seen Stafford, made other pertinent inquiries, and finally revealed that Stafford had been fished out of the Thames, dead.
“He jumped from the Embankment,” said the sergeant. “People saw him from a distance but couldn’t get there in time to save him. He left this note for you, Mr. Cornman, on the parapet.”
He handed Cornman a folded piece of paper. Cornman read the pencilled scrawl on it.
Dear Old Corny,
I’ve walked the streets for hours but I can see no way out except this one. That other world is worse than useless to me. How can I conduct my research if my critical faculty is to be destroyed ?
That was how Raines was destroyed as an artist.
My work means everything to me. But it is impossible to adhere to the scientific method without the element of doubt. All science has been built up laboriously on a system of doubting, doubting, doubting, until a theory has been accepted as almost beyond doubt. But never wholly beyond doubt, for that is against the spirit of science.
Science must forever doubt that it has final knowledge.
But the system of trial and error falls to pieces if you will admit to no error. Progress, except for absolute flukes, is impossible. And progress in this present world of ours, it seems, is impossible, too.
I’m getting out.
It will, I’m sure, amuse you to learn that I’m jumping into the Thames from that very spot where only yesterday I restrained Raines from performing this act of sanity. I can almost hear you laughing.
Your old friend,
Stafford
But Cornman found it difficult to laugh that night alone amid the labyrinth of books. He missed Stafford’s company. He felt lonely and unhappy—and insecure.
>
~ * ~
Roger Flint Young
SUBURBAN FRONTIERS
Here is a tale of the development of means of intercommunication between our world and a parallel world that is interconnected with ours at all points. The other world has a time rate so much faster than ours that we seem to be standing still in our traces, from their point of view, even when we are traveling as fast as we can. Now, suppose that a couple of shrewd young businessmen-engineers thinly up a method of capitalizing on this time difference and establishing profitable trade between the two worlds. There might be some uncanny side effects. . . .
~ * ~
GEORGE LINDEN stopped at the threshold of the office and looked across to the window where Badick was sitting. Badick looked up from the papers in his hand and started to smile. He saw Linden’s face then, and the smile never quite hit his lips.
The two men looked at each other gravely, while Linden closed the door behind him, then went to his own desk in the corner. It was Badick who looked away finally, his eyes drifting toward the window, then, remembering, back to the papers in his hand.
There was something very close to hatred in Linden’s young, almost handsome face. The little wrinkles at the corners of his mouth made his blue eyes look bitter and tired. He still watched Badick, waiting, wanting the older man to speak first. Badick still stared at the papers in his hands, not looking up, swallowing continually, his large Adam’s apple running up and down his throat.
Linden sighed finally, put his feet up on the desk, and let his body relax. He looked away from Badick; his eyes sought a spot on the ceiling, failed to find one, and concentrated on nothing at all.
“You should have gone,” he said. “You should have had to take it. It should have been your job.”
Badick cleared his throat before answering. “I know it, George. Was it—bad?”
“Bad? Bad?” Linden laughed shortly. “He blistered me. He burned me. He turned me inside out and put hot coals between my skin and my bones. They’re still there.”
“George, I’m sorry. One of us had to go and say ‘no’ to him. You could keep on saying it because you didn’t have the authority to say anything else.”
Linden ignored him. “And that was just the start. He’ll crucify us, Will. Crucify us. You and me—I’ve wondered how that kind, gentle old statesman could survive among politicians. Now I know. He’s got the personality of Medusa, the tongue of a hundred ports, and he’ll have the vengeance of a jealous god.”
Badick nodded. “I knew something of that, George. That’s why you had to be the one to face him. You did say nothing doing?”
Linden grunted. “What choice did I have? The President of the United States turns on the heat, and I can’t even give him an apology or a good reason. Just: ‘No, Mr. President.’ I won’t go back, Will. You’ll have to go next time.”
Badick sighed and shrugged his resignation. “All right, George. We’re unpatriotic, of course?”
“Naturally. Printably speaking, we are the very seeds of treason, the flowers that blossom in the hothouse of national disunity, and we are the core of defeat. And that’s the least of our crimes. That we don’t bow to President Martin S. Warner seems to be our major failing.”
“I suppose so. Well, we’ve still got our business to run, George.”
“For the moment, you mean. You don’t think Basic Assurances is big enough to get away with this, Will. From what Warner said, we’re already on the skids.”
Badick met his eyes, now, and looked at him steadily. “How?”
“How? Lord, Will, they’ll fix us. There’s a dozen ways they can do it. From what Warner said, though, they’ll know all our secrets, and the government will take care of things without troubling Basic Assurances at all.”
“They could, of course.” Badick stabbed at the intercom on his desk, waited until Miss Ayers answered. “Get Hammond in here.” He looked at Linden again. “If they get the right men and follow us in theory, they could get there, all right.”
Hammond came into the office, a small, balding young man, very self-reliant, very assured. He nodded slightly to the two men and took a chair without speaking.
“How are your rumors today, Hammond?”
Hammond shrugged slightly and kept the grin off his face. “The President had George for tea at the White House. It is said that the President found George quite indigestible.”
Linden looked at Hammond then, and both men smiled slightly. “I’ll bet,” Linden suggested, “you could have told me that before it happened?”
“Almost,” Hammond admitted.
Badick waved this aside. “We want to know if the government is making any effort to duplicate Basic Assurances’ work.”
Hammond seemed annoyed. “I send both of you reports every day. That’s what you hire me for. Then you don’t read what I send. If you’d—”
“All right, we don’t read them all the time. How will it boil down?”
“Violently. Warner’s been on your tail for about three months. They’ve backtracked both of you since your school days. They know every move you’ve made since then, every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen, every date you’ve had, and about every other thought that’s been in your minds.”
“All right. That doesn’t help them.”
“No? They know how your minds work and what’s interested you through the years. They know what you wrote for college theses when you had your choice of material. They know where all your interests have been, and they have an idea of what they’re after. They’ve checked every supply house and know every piece of equipment you’ve ever ordered. So they know what you used for materials and tools. They’ve got men who can put those things together.”
“It still won’t get them there.”
“It started them well enough. All that, and ICM.”
“They found that?”
“Sure, Will. They found that two months ago. ICM made a special calculating machine for you a few years ago. So they decided they needed one, too.”
Linden looked a little pleased. “That’s all right. Even with the special ICM machine it took us two years to get the answer. They can’t put things through it any faster than we did.”
Badick was frowning. “How many did they order?”
“Indefinite. They’ve already got delivery on a hundred and some of them. They’re taking them as fast as ICM can get them off the line.”
Linden looked at Hammond suspiciously. “It took ICM six months to make one for us.”
“Sure. Then ICM thought the design over, decided it was good for general mathematical usage, and got it ready for mass production. They were about to start their marketing campaign when government agents came along.”
Linden swore softly. “How long, Will?”
Badick shrugged. “Depends on how well they know what they’re doing. If they break the steps up properly between machines, they can get the answer in ... if they’re lucky, say—”
“They were lucky,” Hammond broke in. He was very casual, as though it didn’t matter, as though he didn’t know it was a bombshell. “They got the answer three weeks ago. They built an experimental portal and tried it out yesterday.”
There was silence for a few minutes. Linden and Badick waited for Hammond to speak. Hammond brought out a pair of nail clippers, worked on his nails, then trimmed the wick of his cigarette lighter.
“All right, what happened?”
Hammond smiled lightly, then. “I’m still waiting for the report.”
Linden grunted. Hammond stood up. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”
Both men nodded, but neither spoke. Hammond reached the door, then turned back.
“There’s going to be a war.” He wasn’t looking at either of the other men.
“Yes,” Badick said, admitting it. “Yes, there’s going to be a war.”
Hammond hesitated before going on, shifting uncomfortably. “There’ll be some atomic bombing, naturally.”
“Naturally.” It was Badick again.
“Basic Assurances could get the ones that land in this country, and— Well, it’d save a lot of lives and property. It might be the balance in the war.”
“Yes.”
“Well—” Hammond looked at the two men, from one to the other, then down at the doorknob. “I guess it isn’t my job to tell people things they already know.”
“I guess not.”
Hammond nodded. “That’s the way I figure it. I’ll let you know.” He closed the door gently behind him.
“Well?”
Badick smiled. “I don’t know anything to say.”
“No. . . . I’m going to look around.”
Badick didn’t answer. Linden got up from his desk, then turned back and shuffled through some papers, half wondering if there was anything that needed doing. He dropped them back to the desk and left the office.
Jane was in the outer office, talking to Miss Ayers. She didn’t see him for the moment, and Linden stood still, watching her. As always, the first glance at her brought him the feel that was in the very sight of her: that intense look of the very goodness of life. Then, as always, the shocking drop inside him at the remembrance of her illness, already beginning to take the young life away from her.
Jane looked up, smiling, when she heard Linden, and went to him swiftly. She was still smiling when she kissed him, and her soft eyes looked over his shoulder into some far distance.
Linden held her away to get a good look at her. He dabbed at the corners of her eyes where the teardrops were.
“How is it, Jane?”
“Good, darling. Good.”
“What do you mean?”
The smile was fixed on her face now, looking a bit strained. “No worse, George. Not that they can tell. So that means it’s good.”
Linden nodded and tried to smile. “All right, Jane. Let’s sit down some place and talk.”
“No. I’m always resting. I’d rather walk.”
“I was just going downstairs to look things over. Want to come with me?”
“Yes.” She took his arm, steered him away from the elevator toward the stairs. “I said walk.”
The stairs brought them out on the first floor, behind the reception room. Linden stopped for a moment, looking at the people waiting for appointments.
“Counting the house, George?”
He nodded. “Business is getting good, all right. Every satisfied customer—client, rather—means a dozen more customers.”
“Clients.”
“Yes, clients.” They went down the long hall behind the reception room, stopped before one of the compartments. Linden held the curtain aside for Jane. She looked in first.
“There’s someone in there.”
“Yes.” Linden motioned her in.
The man in the chair didn’t see them. His eyes were opened wide, staring at the wall where the wheel turned steadily. Jane watched the wheel for a moment. It was fascinating the way the color bands first caught the eyes, then, as they revolved, made the eyes follow them to the center of the wheel where the small bright light shone so brightly. It hurt the eyes a little, it was so bright, so bright, and she never wanted to look at anything else again, just watch the little bright—
She couldn’t see it any more. Jane became aware that someone was shaking her. She couldn’t see anything.
“Jane!” Linden was beside her, still shaking her gently, one hand in front of her eyes. “Jane! . . . That’s better.” She heard him laugh. Then she was wide awake again, looking toward him. He took his hand from before her eyes.
“I’m sorry, George. I know better, of course. But I just looked at the wheel and it got me, before—”
“Easy!”
“What?”
“You were starting to look at it again.”
“All right. I’ll be careful.”
She kept her eyes away from the wheel, looked back at the man in the chair. He was well past middle age, paunchy, well dressed. He reminded her a little of a frog, the way his eyes were almost popping while he stared at the wheel, and the way the lines were almost gone out of his face, his face smoothed out and softened because of his drooping lower jaw.
She could hear the loud-speaker in the wall now.
“—need anyone. Any time you need anyone. Need anyone. Whenever someone can help you. If you’re in pain. In pain. Accident and no help around. Whenever you need anyone. Need anyone. Whenever—”
She listened to the voice over and over, and knew it was only a recording and couldn’t get her unless she looked at the wheel.
“—subconscious inside you must cause automatic reaction. Your wristband will give you protection. Your wristband can save you. Whenever—”
Jane looked down at the plain metal band that circled her own wrist. At the stud that need only be pressed— There were some things that Basic Assurances couldn’t help, no matter how hard the stud was pressed. Sometimes you could need help and—
She shook her head. This wasn’t helping. Jane turned as the curtain moved, watched the red-haired young girl in white come in, cross briskly to the wall, and stop the wheel. She realized the voice from the speaker had stopped.
The man in the chair was clearing his throat, blinking his eyes, and already looking sheepish, apologetic.
“Must have fallen asleep. I was watching that confounded wheel, and—”
He stopped, uncertain of what had happened. The nurse smiled at him.
“You were meant to fall asleep, Mr. Bronson. While you were asleep you were given all the information you’ll require to operate the wristband. Now if you’ll—”
Mr. Bronson was out of the cubicle, on his way to Band-fitting and Consignment Accounting, when the girl in white brought another man in, seated him in the same chair, and started the wheel again.
They stood in the hall and watched the steady flow of clients in and out of the compartments, wondering going in, bewildered coming out. Only a few of the clients were women.
Jane giggled suddenly, turned to Linden. “It seems so silly. They come here and pay you ten per cent of their entire worth as a retainer, and all you do is confuse them.”
“It straightens out by the time we release them. Remember when you went through ? We’ve got the system a lot better now.”
“I remember. I was confused all the way through and getting rather angry. Then, after the lecture at the end, I began to feel all right. Safe and secure in the motherly arms of Basic Assurances.”
