Collected Short Fiction, page 461
I SENT for him just before we were about to make Earthfall, offered him a few slugs of brandy before I got to the point. “Mike, I’ve watched the way you handled the exhibits on the way back here.”
“The other exhibits,” he pointed out. “I’m one of them, not a staff man.”
“Your Wazzenazzian status is just a fiction cooked up to get you past the immigration authorities, Mike. But I’ve got a proposition for you.”
“Propose away.”
“I’m getting a little too old for this starcombing routine,” I said. “Up to now, I’ve been doing my own recruiting, but only because I couldn’t trust anyone else to do the job. I think you could handle it, though.” I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. “Tell you what, Mike—I’ll rip up your contract as an exhibit, and I’ll give you another one as a staffman, paying twice as much. Your job will be to roam the planets finding new material for us. How about it?”
I had the new contract all drawn up. I pushed it toward him, but he put his hand down over mine and smiled amiably as he said, “No go.”
“No? Not even for twice the pay?”
“I’ve done my own share of roaming,” he said. “Don’t offer me more money. I just want to settle down on Earth, Jim. I don’t care about the cash. Honest.”
It was very touching, and also very phony, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t get rid of him that way. I had to bring him to Earth.
The immigration officials argued about his papers, but he’d had the things so cleverly faked that there was no way of proving he wasn’t from Wazzenazz XIII. We set him up in a key spot of the building.
The Kallerian, Heraal, is one of our top attractions now. Every day at two in the afternoon, he commits ritual suicide, and soon afterward rises from death to the accompaniment of a trumpet fanfare. The four other Kallerians we had before are wildly jealous of the crowds he draws, but they’re just not trained to do his act.
But the unquestioned number one attraction here is confidence man Mike Higgins. He’s billed as the only absolutely human life-form from an extraterrestrial planet, and though we’ve had our share of debunking, it has only increased business.
Funny that the biggest draw at a zoo like ours should be a homegrown Earthman, but that’s show business.
A COUPLE of weeks after we got back, Mike added a new wrinkle to the act. He turned up with a blonde showgirl named Marie, and now we have a Woman from Wazzenazz too. It’s more fun for Mike that way. And downright clever.
He’s too clever, in fact. Like I said, I appreciate a good confidence man, the way some people appreciate fine wine. But I wish I had left Ildwar Gorb back on Ghryne, instead of signing him up with us.
Yesterday he stopped by at my office after we had closed down for the day. He was wearing that pleasant smile he always wears when he’s up to something.
He accepted a drink, as usual, and then he said, “Jim, I was talking to Lawrence R. Fitzgerald yesterday.”
“The little Regulan? The green basketball?”
“That’s the one. He tells me he’s only getting $50 a week. And a lot of the other boys here are drawing pretty low pay too.”
My stomach gave a warning twinge. “Mike, if you’re looking for a raise, I’ve told you time and again you’re worth it to me. How about twenty a week?”
He held up one hand. “I’m not angling for a raise for me, Jim.”
“What then?”
He smiled beatifically. “The boys and I held a little meeting yesterday evening, and we—ah—formed a union, with me as leader. I’d like to discuss the idea of a general wage increase for every one of the exhibits here.”
“Higgins, you blackmailer, how can I afford—”
“Easy,” he said. “You’d hate to lose a few weeks’ gross, wouldn’t you?”
“You mean you’d call a strike?” He shrugged. “If you leave me no choice, how else can I protect my members’ interests?”
After about half an hour of haggling, he sweated me into an across-the-board increase for the entire mob, with a distinct hint of further raises to come. But he also casually let me know the price he’s asking to call off the hounds. He wants a partnership in the Institute; a share in the receipts.
If he gets that, it makes him a member of management, and he’ll have to quit as union leader. That way I won’t have him to contend with as a negotiator.
But I will have him firmly embedded in the organization, and once he gets his foot in the door, he won’t be satisfied until he’s on top—which means when I’m out.
BUT I’m not licked yet! Not after a full lifetime of conniving and swindling! I’ve been over and over the angles and there’s one thing you can always count on—a trickster will always outsmart himself if you give him the chance. I did it with Higgins. Now he’s done it with me.
He’ll be back here in half an hour to find out whether he gets his partnership or not. Well, he’ll get his answer. I’m going to affirm, as per the escape clause in the standard exhibit contract he signed, that he is no longer of scientific value, and the Feds will pick him up and deport him to his home world.
That leaves him two equally nasty choices.
Those fake documents of his were good enough to get him admitted to Earth as a legitimate alien. How the World Police get him back there is their headache—and his.
If he admits the papers were phony, the only way he’ll get out of prison will be when it collapses of old age.
So I’ll give him a third choice: He can sign an undated confession, which I will keep in my safe, as guarantee against future finagling.
I don’t expect to be around forever, you see, though, with that little secret I picked up on Rimbaud II, it’ll be a good long time, not even barring accidents, and I’ve been wondering whom to leave the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science to. Higgins will make a fine successor.
Oh, one more thing he will have to sign. It remains the Corrigan Institute as long as the place is in business.
Try to outcon me, will he?
Gateway to Terror
Holstein’s equations proved that a body could be hurled through time. The catcher was that nothing could guarantee its safe return!
LEE WESTLY SWITCHED on the light and entered the Project Tomorrow lab. He had a few minor tests to run—half an hour’s work. He wanted to make sure the apparatus was in top shape. Tomorrow, when the Brass would be here to see the unveiling of the time machine, everything would have to be perfect.
There was a man with a gun in the room.
Tt took Westly a moment to adjust to the idea. The lab was such a safe place—aside from the brooding vastness of the machinery itself—free from the conflicts of the mundane world. Men with guns just didn’t fit into the picture.
Especially when they happened to be fellow scientists.
Frowning, Westly said, “Hello, John. What brings you here—and what’s the artillery for? Afraid of burglars?”
John Murdoch shook his head. “No. No burglars around here, Westly. The gun’s for you. If you don’t do as I tell you, I mean.” For the first time Westly began to be upset. “What in blazes are you talking about?”
“I’m going to run a preliminary test on the time machine,” said Murdoch. “Perfectly legitimate scientific practice—especially with the big boys coming here tomorrow to see how well we’ve spent their money.”
“I know. That’s what I’m doing here. You—”
“Quiet,” Murdoch said. “The records will show that I was the engineer in charge of giving her the last run-through, not you. And you, my friend, will be my guinea pig.”
“Murdoch!”
“If you’re going to inform me that the time-field is irreversible and that I’m therefore casting you out of the 20th Century forever, save your breath. I know the field equations as well as you do.” The lean scientist grinned unpleasantly. “I know they’re irreversible. You’ll never be found. And, in time, when Katherine gets over the shock of your sudden disappearance—”
“No.”
“Yes. When Katherine recovers from the blow, when rumors are starting to get around that missing engineer Lee Westly was actually a Red spy and is now somewhere behind the Iron Curtain working on a Soviet time machine—why, I imagine the field will be clear for me to marry Katherine. Neat?”
“Admirable,” Westly said bitterly. “Your mind was never functioning better.”
“Get over to the departure stage of the machine, then.” Murdoch wiggled the gun meaningfully. “And be proud of your opportunity. You’ll be the first human being ever to venture into the time-space distorter.”
There was no arguing with the snout of a gun. Slowly, Westly crossed the spacious lab, climbed the little metal railing he had climbed so often stepped over the induction barrier, and out onto the burnished platinum circle which was the departure stage.
Murdoch strode to the control console keeping the gun trained on Westly. Westly wished there were something he could do, some trick he could play, anything to prevent Murdoch from hurling him through the time-space fold.
But there was no way to stop him. No way at all.
“I’m throwing the lever at the count of three,” Murdoch said. “For my sake and yours don’t go roaming around on the stage. I’d hate to transport half of you into the future and have the other hall left behind. You know how I hate messes, Lee.”
“Skip the byplay. Get it over with.” Sweat coursed down Westly’s face. He looked around the lab—the lab he had helped to build and which now would be the instrument of his irreversible separation from Katherine, from the world he knew—
“One,” Murdoch said.
“Two.”
“Hurry it up,” Westly snapped.
“Goodbye, Lee. It’s a pity we’ll never meet again. Three.”
He yanked down the lever. A flood of blinding radiation arced from the ceiling and swept down around Westly, sizzling and crackling.
He closed his eyes and staggered back as the time-space distorter beat down at him. The floor seemed to yield and melt, became nonexistent.
The barrier of the time was shattered momentarily and Westly plunged through—on a one-way journey.
AWAKENING CAME SLOWLY. First there was the smell of fresh air instead of sizzling ozone in his nostrils. He sucked the air in greedily, gasping. There was a curious flavor to it that puzzled him.
The air was warm—warm and wet. Cautiously Westly opened his eyes and sat up.
The world before him was totally alien.
Hanging blue-leaved trees bowed before him, dripping with moisture. Puffs of clouds drifted across the sky, revealing the bright, too-big sun. Ahead of him a thick forest rose. Birds yawped overhead and one fluttered past him—a curious creature with jagged red-and-gold feathers and a deadly-looking toothed beak.
Where am I?
Elsewhere. That was all he knew.
Project Tomorrow had been built around Professor Holstein’s force-stress postulates—a set of equations that predicted, in a vague and tentative manner, what would happen if a force-field of a certain potential were allowed to distort an area of space.
The machine had been built to test the theory. But the theory was just that—a theory. It stated that a body placed within the effective distortion field would be hurled into the future—hurled longitudinally along the time-axis of the fourspace continuum, in Holstein’s words—for a duration proportional to mass. A mouse might be thrown a week ahead; a man of Westly’s 180 pounds would, according to Holstein’s equations, be hurled some 20,000 years forward.
All that was theoretical. For all he or Holstein or anyone else knew he had been thrown backward into the distant prehistoric past. The lush vegetation and warmth of the air and general primitive atmosphere seemed to imply that.
But one thing was certain: there was no returning. Katherine and all else of 1979 was permanently behind him. The temporal distortion field equations indicated that travel in the opposite direction was absolutely impossible.
He was here to stay.
VOICES REACHED HIM.
Harsh-sounding voices, whispering in an unfamiliar language.
Men?
No. Not men. He saw them now, approaching in single file through the forest, moving toward him.
Reptiles.
They stood about the height of a man; green, glossy-skinned, they wore no clothes but carried efficient-looking machetes slung from their waists. They were talking. They were intelligent.
The future? Westly wondered. The past? Or—
He poised himself for flight. The forest didn’t look like a welcome place to hide but he’d done some pretty good broken-field running in college and he’d take his chances. First, though, he wanted to see what was going to happen. He got slowly to his feet and waited as the reptile-men advanced, moving quickly and sinuously on splayed four-taloned feet.
There were nine of them, all in a row. Machetes glittered in the too-bright sunlight. The leader of the group said, “What are you, strange pink thing?”
“You speak English?” Westly asked, astonished. “But—”
“English? A strange word. We speak The Tongue; what else could we speak but The Tongue? What are you, strange pink thing? And where are you from?”
Westly faced the nightmare creature squarely. “I’m a man. I’m from the United States, in the year 1979. Where am I and who are you—and how do you speak my language?”
“This is The Kingdom.” said the reptile. “I am Decalon Stollseq, and these are my men. We know no United States. And it is natural to speak The Tongue.”
Westly shrugged. The language seemed to be English, but was it? He had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he spoke it and they understood. A side-effect of the time—space distortion, no doubt. But these intelligent reptiles . . . ?
He had no time for further speculation. Decalon Stollseq said, “I have lost one of my men in battle and my group is incomplete. Would you join us, pink one?”
“Join what?”
“The group of Decalon Stollseq. We seek the Gateway to Elsewhere.”
Westly frowned. “The—Gateway, eh? All right. I’m with you.” He had nothing to lose and if he gained a few friends in this bizarre world, all the better.
“Test him,” Stollseq snapped to one of his men.
Before Westly knew what was happening the reptile had stepped forward and its thick, fleshy tail lashed out, knocking him to the ground. Stunned, he groped his way to his feet again only to have another lightning-like thrust of the creature’s tail slam him to earth.
The reptile cackled. “You move slowly, pink one!”
“What the hell—” He got to his feet a second time, edging warily out of reach of that tail. The reptile waited for him. Someone handed Westly a machete. His adversary drew his.
“Are we supposed to fight?” Westly asked.
The reptile gave him his answer—a swift, blinding surge of blows which Westly barely managed to parry. He struck back clumsily; the broad machete was heavy and not suited for the sort of wrist-maneuvering that was the only swordplay Westly understood.
The other reptiles cackled appreciatively as Westly gave ground. Suddenly his opponent brought his blade crashing down on Westly’s with ferocious force.
Numbed, the human let his weapon drop. He glanced up, expecting to be hewn to pieces any moment and only half caring—when, unexpectedly, another lashing blow from that mighty tail knocked him sprawling again.
He did not get up immediately. He tasted mud.
“Enough,” Decalon Stollseq said, barely able to retain his laughter. “We find you not suited for our company, pink one. But we need a slave. You may join us in that capacity, if in no other.”
From the ground, Westly glared up angrily. It hadn’t been fair. The reptile weighed a good 300 pounds, and had muscles and sinews of pure beryllium steel. He shouldn’t be judged by an encounter of that sort—
No. This is the way this world works.
“All right,” he said in a beaten voice. “I’ll be your slave.”
WESTLY FOLLOWED THEM—at a respectful distance. They treated him like an interesting sort of dog.
Bitterly, he wished he could get his hands on John Murdoch. He could almost forgive Murdoch everything—the loss of Katherine, even—except for this. Murdoch had thrown him into a world where human intelligence meant nothing, where muscle and sword-skill were the highest determining values of life. He had robbed Westly of human dignity and Westly could never forgive him for that.
Westly firmed his lips, squared his shoulders. He promised himself that he’d fight his way back up. He wouldn’t remain a slave, here in this weird world where reptiles seemed to rule.
He glanced ahead. Decalon Stollseq and his men were pausing, throwing down their swords, sprawling out at the side of a blue-green river.
Westly caught up with them. “Why are we stopping?” he asked.
“The midday sleep,” said Stollseq, as if it should have been self-evident. “It is the time.”
“Oh,” Westly said.
He sprawled down next to them and watched. One by one the glassy yellow eyes closed, the massive armored chests rose and fell more regularly. Westly glanced at the soundly sleeping reptiles and at their naked swords lying on the grass. He chuckled. For all their strength, all their sinew, he could slit their nine throats one by one now, kill them all while they slept.
But he had no desire to do that. Not yet.
The Gateway to Elsewhere—that was their goal, Stollseq had said. The term intrigued Westly. He had come through something that might be so termed; he was curious to see what the Gateway might be. And he depended on Stollseq and his men to get him there safely.
The reptiles were snoring peacefully. Above, the bloated sun blazed. Westly passed the time by inventing varied and more horrible revenges he could enact on Murdoch if he could ever return to 1979. It was impossible, of course, but it filled the time pleasantly.
