The Universe Maker (3 page)

He glared down at his body. He was naked except for a pair of something similar to gym shorts. His clothing was not exactly indecent but Cargill felt irritated, as if he had been caught in an embarrassing position. His legs were hard and strong, but they looked thinner than they actually were. He had never been at his best in a bathing suit.

He said in annoyance, "You could have had some clothes waiting for me here. It's getting chilly."

It was. Through the window he could see that it was also becoming darker. If he were still in California then the late afternoon sea breezes were probably blowing outside. Even in midsummer that meant coolness.

The girl said casually, "One of the men will bring you something. You're to leave here as soon as it becomes dark."

"Oh!" said Cargill.

He shook his head as if he would drive out the blur that was confusing him. All these minutes he had been standing here, adjusting to the simpler aspects of his new environment. They were important—it was true— but they were the tiniest segment of all that was happening to him.

His restlessness derived from several major facts. He was in this far future world because an inter-time psychological society was using him to cure one of its patients. The morality of that was a little too deep for Cargill, but just thinking about it brought a surge of fury. What kind of curative agency was it, murdering him to soothe somebody else's upset nerves?

He fought down the anger, because danger was temporarily behind him. Ahead was the mystery of the group that had rescued him and that, tonight, intended to take him—elsewhere.

Cargill parted his lips to ask the question that quivered in his mind when the girl said, "I'll leave you here to look around. I've got to go and talk to somebody. Do not follow me, please."

She was at the door to the left of the window before Cargill could find his voice. "Just a minute," he said. "I want to ask some questions."

"I don't doubt it," said Ann Reece, with a low laugh. "You may ask
him
later." She turned and was gone before he could speak again.

Being alone soothed him. The presence of other people while he was trying to adjust had been a severe pressure upon him. Everybody else appeared to have plans about and for him. He had none for himself except perhaps to see more of what was outside the window.

Peering out through the glass, Cargill had the initial impression that he was looking onto a well-kept park. The impression changed. For through the lattice work of the shrubbery he could see a street. It was the kind of street men dream about in moments of magical imagination. It wound through tall trees, among palms and fruit trees. It had shop windows fronting oddly shaped buildings that nestled among the greenery. Hidden lights spread a mellow brightness into the curves and corners. The afternoon had become quite dark and every window glowed as from some inner warmth. He had a tantalizing vision of interiors that were different from anything he had ever seen.

All this came from only a glimpse as viewed through the lattice work of a rose arbor. Cargill drew back, trembling. He had had his first look at a city of hundreds of years in the future. It was an exhilarating experience.

He took another long look, but what he could see was too fragmentary to satisfy his expanding need. He retreated from that fascinating view and peered through the door beyond which the girl had disappeared. He saw the hallway, lit by a drab light that reflected from another doorway some score of feet to the right. He hesitated. Ann Reece had forbidden him to follow her, but she had made no threats. He was still standing there,
undecided,
when he grew aware that a man and woman were talking in the lighted room.

Cargill strained his ears. But he could hear nothing of what was said. It was the tone of the man's voice that interested him. He seemed to be giving instructions and the girl was protesting. Cargill recognized Ann Reece's voice. He noted how subdued it was. Her reaction dictated
his own
. This was not the time to barge in on her—better to sit down and wait.

He was halfway across the room, heading toward a chair, when his foot struck something that clanged metallically. In the almost complete darkness it took a moment to recognize the machine that had brought him and the girl out of the glass-walled room. Gazing at the strange object, conscious of the wonder of it, Cargill had a wild thought—if he could take this machine and sneak off into the descending night, then he'd be free not only of his original captors but also of the new group with its schemes. That last was important, now that he had heard the determined voice of the man in the next room.

Like a burglar in the night Cargill knelt beside the instrument. It was two-headed, like a barbell used by weight-lifters. In the gloom, his quick eyes searched for the "pin" that had caused the earlier trouble. It was not visible. Using only the tips of his fingers, he pushed the bar, rolling it slowly. It was warm to his touch but showed no other animation. Cargill withdrew his fingers. This was not really the time to test its power.

Uncertain, he climbed to his feet. He became aware that footsteps were coming along the hallway. He turned to face the doorway. The footsteps entered the room, there was a rustling sound and the place blazed with light.

A Shadow shape stood in the doorway.

Shadow shape, shadow substance . . . shadow. Car-gill's mind kept trying to play a trick on him, kept trying to put solidity where there was nothing but form. He could see the wall through the shadowy thing; and yet, even as he saw it, he tried to blot out the reality of it.

His gaze finally stopped jumping, and he saw that he was looking at a ghost-like human shape, a gaseous, dark being, an improbable creature, a human thing that said:

"He's one of them all right. I can detect nothing."

From a point close behind Cargill, Ann Reece said, "About how many are there?"

"Not more than a dozen in this whole area of time. It's an interesting phenomenon."

The conversation was both literally and figuratively over Cargill's head. There was the statement that he was an interesting phenomenon; and to Cargill, who had been under enormous strain for many
hours, that
was funny—considering the fantastic phenomenon that had said it. He began to laugh, uncontrollably. He laughed until the tears came to his eyes, and then, weakening, laughed until he sank down on the floor. He was lying there, exhausted, when something touched him, and he had a sense of being—
moved.

He was walking. It was hard to understand how it had happened, but he could feel the pressure of the dirt under his shoes and the play of muscles in his legs as they moved back and forth.

For a long time, in the reflection of the flashlight in the hands of the girl, he watched the rise and fall of her heels. Every little while she kicked up loose soil. The soft sounds suddenly shocked the blur out of Cargill's mind. His legs continued their automatic movement, but his brain flashed to awareness of his environment.

It was
pitch
dark. There was no sign of a city. He seemed to be on an unpaved rural road. Cargill looked up. But the sky must have been thick with clouds for he saw no stars and no moon. Cargill groaned inwardly. What could have happened? One instant he was in a large marble anteroom inside a city; then the shadow shape had come in and- seemed to examine him—one look, a few words—and then, this dark road behind a silent companion.

"Ann!" said Cargill softly. "Ann Reece."

She did not turn or pause. "So you're coming out of it," she said.

Cargill wondered briefly just what it was he was coming out of. Amnesia, certainly—temporary amnesia. The thought faded. To a man who had been unconscious several times now, another period of blankness didn't matter.

Here he was. That was what counted. "Where are we going?" he asked, and his voice was quite normal.

The girl's tone oddly suggested she was shrugging. "Couldn't leave you in the city," she said.

"Why not?"

"The Shadows would get you."

The phrase had an irritating rhythm that snatched Cargill’s attention.
The Shadows will get you. The Shadows will get you.
He could almost imagine children being frightened by the threat.

His thought poised on the fact that at least one Shadow had seen him. He said as much. There was a pause. "He's not . . . one of them," she finally answered.

"Who is he?"

"He has a plan"—she hesitated—"for fighting them."

Cargill's mind made a single, embracing leap. "Where do I fit into this plan?"

Silence answered. Cargill waited, then strode forward and fell in step beside her. "Tell me," he said.

"It's very complicated." She still did not turn her head. "We had to have somebody from a time far past so the Shadows couldn't use their four-dimensional minds on him. He looked at you and said he couldn't tell what your future was. Here and there through history are individuals who are ... complicated . . . like that. You're the one we selected."

"Selected!" Cargill exclaimed. Then he was silent. He had an abrupt impossible picture that everything that had happened to him had been planned. In his mind's eye he saw a drunken soldier being selected to wreck a car and kill a girl. No, wait, that couldn't be. He had deliberately got drunk that night. They couldn't have had anything to do with that.

His tense speculation subsided. The possibilities were too intricate. With a cold intentness he stared at the indistinct profile of Ann Reece. "I want to know," he said, "what way I'm supposed to be used."

"I don't know," she said. "I'm only a pawn."

His fingers snatched at her arm. "Like heck you don't know," he said roughly. "Where are you taking ' me?"

The fingers of her other hand tugged futilely at his hand.

She struggled a little. "You're hurting my arm," she whimpered.

Reluctantly Cargill released her. "You can answer my question."

"I'm taking you to a hiding place of ours. You'll be told there what's next." Her tone was strained.

Cargill pondered the possibilities and liked them less every second. Things
were
moving too fast, but a few facts stood out. It seemed certain now that he was not in the twentieth century. His brief view of the shadow-shape was already becoming unbelievable, but the recollection still had enough substance to establish this entire affair as something apart from the world as he had known it. Equally convincing as data was the transportation device Ann Reece had used to bring him from the room in Shadow City.

His thoughts on how all this had come about were not quite so clear. There were conflicting stories. The Inter-Time Society for Psychological Adjustment had in a routine fashion brought him to the future to play a part in the therapeutic conditioning of one of its clients. It sounded fantastic—and it was difficult to grasp how Marie Chanette's descendant could have carried through with such an idea—but that was definitely the implication she had presented to him. That was also the reality behind the statements made by the disembodied voice in that queer double apartment. No one there seemed to have anticipated the arrival of Ann Reece.

Her appearance on the scene introduced a new set of factors that would be harder to think through. "She said it," he thought, "They chose me." That changed the picture. He was no longer just Effect. He was Cause, though in a way that was not definable as yet; he was Cause in that he had something which somebody wanted.

The group behind Ann Reece intended to use him against beings they feared, which again implied that he had something which made him useful. What was it she had said? His future could not be predicted. Well, whose future could? If they meant that having pulled him away from his own tune, they could no longer keep track of his actions—well, that seemed rather natural. However, she had made a precise statement:
Here and there through history are individuals who are complicated.
What made him complicated?

He had been walking along, frowning, as he tried to think logically over what had happened. Finally, he said, "I really don't like this situation at all. I feel as if I shouldn't go with you to this hiding place."

That didn't seem to worry her. "Don't be silly," she said. "Where would you go?"

Cargill pondered that uneasily. Once, hi Korea, his unit had withdrawn in disorder, and had been in enemy territory for two days. He could imagine that a similar predicament here might be equally unhappy. Undecided, he looked down at himself. He was aware that he wore clothes. However, in the night dimness, it was impossible to see what they were like. But he did feel warm and cozy. Surely, conspicuous clothing wouldn't have been given him. Abruptly, he made up his mind.

"I don't think,"
he
said quietly, "that I'm going any farther in your direction. Good-by."

He stepped away from her and ran rapidly along the road, heading the way they had come. After not more than ten seconds he plunged off the road and found himself scrambling through thick brush. Ann Reece's flashlight flared behind him, obviously seeking him. But the reflections from the beam only made it easier for him to penetrate the brush.

He broke into a meadow and trotted across it—and then he was in brush again. For the first time he heard her voice calling. "You fool, you! Come back!" For several minutes, her words broke the spell of the night but he heard only snatches now. Once he thought she said, "Watch out for the Planiacs!" But that didn't make sense. He passed over the crest of a hill and thereafter heard her no more.

Purposefully, though carefully, Cargill pressed on through the darkness. He grew startled at the extent of the wilderness, but it was important that he keep moving. In the morning a search might be made for him, and he had better be as far as possible from the road where he had left Ann Reece. The night was dark, the sky continued sullen. The tangy smell of water warned him that he was approaching either a river or a lake. Cargill turned aside. He was crossing what seemed to be an open space when, out of the night, the beam of a flashlight focused on him.