The Universe Maker (12 page)

The man carefully closed the door and then came over to the side of the high, hospital-type bed. Giving Cargill a long, searching look, he seemed satisfied with what he saw, for he said with an understanding smile: "I'm Lan Bruch"—he pronounced it "brooch"—"and I want to assure you that you are in no danger. All your questions will be answered soon." He adjusted the dials of a small box on the table beside the bed.

Instantly, Cargill's feeling of eager impatience was replaced by a comfortable lethargy. He yawned and closed his eyes.

When he awakened the next time, the feeling of well-being seemed even greater than the first time. With it came a tremendous urge for action; he sprang straight over the foot of the bed, and landed in the center of the room with all the poise and grace of an acrobat. The leap astonished him. He had had the fleeting thought that he would like to do it, and the thought had been instantly converted into motion.

He glanced down. He was naked and the tanned, smooth-muscled body he saw was certainly not his. A tiled bathroom adjoined the bedroom. He strode into it and studied the face in the mirror. At first, he decided it was not his. And then, he couldn't be sure. He certainly seemed younger, more serene; the countenance that stared back at him resembled those in certain touched-up photographs he had had taken years before.

Cargill showered rapidly, not entirely displeased, and only casually concerned about what had happened to him. He looked around presently for shaving materials, but finding none suddenly knew that he didn't have to shave, and also he had the odd sensation that he wouldn't even know how to shave. That startled him again. But the man had said he would explain everything.

As Cargill emerged from the bathroom, Bruch came through the door from the hallway. He carried
a toga
-like raiment which he handed to Cargill, who examined it curiously. Then, since it was a simple enough design, he slipped it on. An ornamented cord fastened neatly around the waist, fitting the garment snugly against his skin. As he emerged from the bathroom—where he had gone to dress—Cargill saw that Lan Bruch had seated himself at a table near a window that had been curtained until this moment. It had been so cunningly curtained, indeed, he hadn't even noticed. He strode to the window in his flamboyant fashion, and felt immediately amazed. The window was ablaze with sunlight, but all around were mountain peaks. Below a mass of clouds he could vaguely make out the outlines of buildings.

From behind him, Bruch said: "Sit down. Have some breakfast. Enjoy the view."

Cargill turned automatically. Magically, the table had opened up. Steaming dishes were spread on its glittering surface. Two cups of what looked like coffee were already poured. A pitcher of cream, sugar, familiar tableware made the scene normal. Cargill seated himself, sniffed happily at the coffee, and put in his normal complement of cream. Across the table from him, Bruch said:

"Just in case you're wondering, that's not Shadow City out there. It's Merlic, the capital city of Merlica. The year is 7301. You were brought here because we need your help and cooperation. As soon as you understand the situation you will be returned to the Tweener capital, and events will proceed as before, except that we hope you will understand that it is absolutely vital that the Tweeners be victorious over the Shadows." "

He held up his hand, as Cargill made to interrupt. "Wait! Let me give you the facts in my own way. What the Shadows started in the twenty-second or twenty-third
century
had more implications than they realized. A civilization which would not normally have existed came into partial existence as a result of their work, and it has never quite become real. See that city down there—" He motioned at the mist below—"It's not really there yet. If you were to go down into it, you would find yourself coming presently to what is literally the edge of the world.

"You, being more real than I, would probably be disturbed by it. I accept my tentative existence but I am very determined to make it real. You may ask
,
how can such a thing be? To begin with, I won't go into all the laws governing time. They're very complex, and to understand them would require a long period of conditioning—"

Cargill silently disagreed. Whatever its value, his experience with the lake and the statue had given him an understanding of time that was not complex at all. You gave life-energy something to hold onto, and as soon as it started to cling and maintain and hold,
there
was time. Time was
havingness
.
In handing the material universe the life-energy to hold onto, time had literally been created in the process. He didn't have to imagine how rigid that holding could be. He had lived it.

Lan Bruch was continuing: "We have a fairly solid pattern of existence up to about the Shadow-Tweener war. At that point we have a fold, or a fault, or a flaw in the time-space continuum; and if anything goes on after that, we can't make contact with it. Captain, we've got to make Merlica real, and so establish a solid reality for this planet from the twenty-fourth century up to present time. This can only be done if the Tweeners win the war."

Cargill glanced again out of the window at the clouds and the mountain peaks and the vaguely visible city. He shook his head, wonderingly, thinking: "They evidently haven't anything to hold onto as yet." Aloud, he said: "Just what do I have to do to insure the Tweener victory?"

An amazing thing happened. He could see Lan Bruch's lips move, as the man replied. But he heard no sound. He leaned forward, straining. But the scene itself was fading. The table, and Bruch himself, and the room seemed to turn into mist that wavered and twisted—and darkened. In a flash, then, all was gone.
  
.

He was back in a bed. Only this time he knew it was the bed at Ann Reece's home. Cargill awakened with a start, and simultaneously realized three things: It was broad daylight; it
was
the bedroom in the Tweener Capital, and a voice was saying from the air just above his head: "The signal for you to act will be the phrase:
'Visit us some time.'
"

He felt briefly confused. Had all this been a dream, a fantasy-derivative of the hypnotic device that had been used against him by Ann Reece? As he dressed, he considered what had seemed to happen. The Merlica incident had been most disturbing. He recalled uneasily his first feeling that it was not really his face or his body. "I wasn't in that future," he thought. "Somebody was trying to sell me on a false notion."

The reality of Merlica and of the radioactive lake and of the huge, black statue seemed suddenly less believable. Cargill grinned ruefully. When a man started to think about what the human soul might really be like, he could certainly conjure up some fanciful stuff. And yet—

And yet, he found himself reluctant to abandon entirely the idea that briefly he had broken through the illusion of material things and looked on scenes as strange as anything ever conceived by the mind of man. He remembered the old human idea that God was in everyone; and he wondered: "Viewing the lake and the statue, was I a part of God?" It hadn't quite seemed that way. He had had a purpose in creating those two life-forms, but that purpose had been there from some immensely earlier "time." It was almost as if he had been given a mission to accomplish, with
carte blanche
powers. Around the mission there was an indefinable sense of deadly urgency.

His speculations ended as a knock sounded. Cargill opened the door. Granger, the butler, stood there. He said formally: "Miss Reece wishes me to inform you that breakfast will be served in ten minutes."

Cargill entered the breakfast room, scowling with the memory of the hypnotic device that had been used against him by Ann Reece and some man. He found the girl in a filmy white dress already seated at the table. He began irritably: "You don't think that kind of hypnotism is going to work on me."

She was smugly triumphant. "It's not exactly hypnosis," she said. "The electronic tube used works on the principle I mentioned last night, where one tunes one etcetera equals a million or a billion, or whatever it's set for—in this case a million. When that tube was turned on last night it established a pattern in your brain that only another tube set differently could eradicate."

She shrugged. "So you're trained. You can no longer communicate in any way to anybody the knowledge you have of the plan. And when you hear the cue your legs will carry you to the pyramid power house. Your hands will throw the switch. And you'll do all this exactly at twelve o'clock noon or midnight, Shadow City time—whichever comes next—after you've been given the signal."

"Just a minute," said Cargill. He had been listening with a strained sense of unreality. Now abruptly he tried to snatch a shred of victory from the implacable fact.

"What day," he asked grimly, "will this happen?"

She was calm. "I don't think a date was set. I believe the pattern was established in your mind that would leave that flexible. Anyway, I was not given the information, the reason being that somehow you might force it out of me. You'll find out—when it happens." She broke off. "Better finish your breakfast. There'll be an air force floater here to pick you up in half an hour." Cargill had forgotten about the air force, and he was impressed. These people seemed determined. Things were moving fast.

There must be something he could say or do to make sure that things happened right for
himself
, Cargill thought as he stood among the volor pilots later that morning. It was obvious the attack couldn't take place for at least two months. That much he knew. He had lived slightly over two months with Lela Bouvy and had listened to a Shadow City radio-TV station right up to the last.

Just for a moment, with Ann Reece, he had forgotten that. He'd never forget it again. He was living a time-paradox existence and for all he knew the paradox was even more intricate than he could hope to guess or imagine. But he'd have to make sure that there was delay. He'd have to force this situation to his will.

Warily he looked around him. The day was perfect. It was good to be alive and standing on this verdantly green hillside. The fleecy white of the small cumulus clouds that floated lazily in the higher vault of the sky only served to emphasize its blueness. An occasional breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees and puffed against his cheeks, bringing the smell of growing things. In the distance he could see the slow yellow water of a broad river. The flats that spread between him and that wide expanse of water were covered with clumps of swamp willow and a kind of coarse stiff grass whose tall serrated blades looked sharp and forbidding even at this distance.

Cargill wondered if he were looking down on the Mississippi River. The possibility excited him. He pictured himself standing here hi the twenty-fourth century, looking down at the great
river,
its muddy, sluggish water so little changed after all these centuries.

From somewhere hi the rear of the group of pilots a man said curtly, "I still don't approve
of
this man Cargill being here as an adviser. It's a Shadow trick of some kind."

Cargill turned stiffly and saw that the speaker was an intense-looking young man with dark brown eyes and a hawk-like nose. The officer, a full-fledged pilot, reminded him of Lauer. There was the same hard questioning tone, the same rebelliousness against the decisions of those higher hi authority.

An older officer, who had been introduced to Cargill as Flight Commander Greer, said in a tone of mild reproof, "Withrow, the presence of Captain Cargill makes all our plans possible. Besides, he's here. We're committed. My own opinion is that if we learn even a little from him about
air
tactics and strategy of World War Two and after we'll be amply repaid in lives saved."

"And I," said Cargill, "will try to assure that I also survive the attack." It was a point he intended to keep driving home—that he had a stake now in their success.

There, was no time for Withrow to comment. Dark specks appeared among the fleecy clouds. Almost instantly, the sky was full of volors. They came in over the river, low and in close formation. Even as Cargill watched the rushing machines he was aware that the
group of officers were
watching him. They expected a reaction. The question was
,
what should his response be?

He strained to recall the thousands of planes that he had seen in action, the scores of times he had stood on the battered soil of Korea and watched allied and enemy planes maneuver for the kill.

The volors whistled by a few hundred feet above the ground. He judged their speed to be as great as that of a jet plane. With a hiss of tortured air the volors plunged past. Cargill turned to follow their flight but they were already gone into the glare of the sun in the eastern sky—and the time had undoubtedly come for him to say something.

He began to ask questions. "Just what is the nature of the assault you're planning? Will you attack in flight formation or is it going to be individual ships diving down?"

Withrow said coldly, "Their protective pyramid of energy goes down and we dive in."

"We plan to attack without regard for danger," said Commander Greer.

Cargill was silent. He knew that kind of attitude, and it was basically sound except for one thing. He said, "I'd like to see this from the other side before I tell you my ideas." He pointed. "From up there. Can we go up?"

He sat presently in the co-pilot's chair in the control room and watched the volor climb. The machine rocketed upward like a shooting star. Cargill was squeezed back into his seat. The blood seemed to drain from his body. And then he felt the ship leveling off, and he saw the earth flow by below. Cargill finally turned to the men who were crowded into a series of small seats in the control room. He said to Commander Greer, "How many weapons do you have aboard?"

The officer leaned forward and indicated a trigger device in front of the pilot. "From here," he said, "you can see everything below us. You just have to make these hair lines balance on the target, then press the trigger. The billion-tube goes into action."