Inside Man and Other Science Fiction Stories Part 6

For her, not for him. He found he couldn't get her out of his mind. One night was not enough. The xhindi had been right. Now he wanted her for his own, for the rest of his life if not for all eternity.

He had no romantic fancies that she would be willing to go off with him for the sake of true love and himself alone. He had seen himself too often in the mirror panel on the door of his tiny cabin, and he looked there now, with a chill objectivity.

Undersized, crippled, pallid with the unhealthy color that comes from spending too little time in any kind of sunlight, Len Mattern was twenty-four and looked forty. Not even an ordinary woman of the planets could love him, let alone a love G.o.ddess.

But a love G.o.ddess who loved money could be bought. However, in order to win her, he'd need to have really big money. No matter how efficiently he organized the Valkyrie's operations the s.h.i.+p was just a battered old hulk and, in her sphere, could never be more than small-time. There was only one answer hypers.p.a.ce.

He found Schiemann puffing contentedly at his pipe in the Valkyrie's control room.

"Look, Pop," he said, "we've been wasting our time on stardust. We have to aim for something big.

Schiemann looked trustfully at the young man. He had no relatives, so he had come to think of Len as his son, and, in fact, had made him his heir. "Whatever you say, Lennie. Figure on breaking out of this sector and moving in closer to Earth, do you?"

"Not exactly. We're going into hypers.p.a.ce."

"Sure," Schiemann said, blowing a smoke ring. "Can't leave the sector without pa.s.sing through hypers.p.a.ce; that stands to reason. But where are we jumping to?"

Len tried to keep the tautening of his body from becoming apparent. "We're not jumping anywhere. We're stopping in hypers.p.a.ce."The pipe dropped from the old man's mouth. He caught it in his hand and gave a m.u.f.fled exclamation as the heat burned his palm. Then he looked at his partner. "Of course you're joking, Lennie!' And he arranged his face for laughter.

Len shook his head. "No joke, Pop; I'm dead serious. We're going to take a cargo into hypers.p.a.ce. To the mem the mern oh, h.e.l.l, I can't p.r.o.nounce it the queen, I guess, of Ferr. That's one of their planets. She wants Earth stuff, she says, and she promises to do right by us if we bring it to her. Sounds like a good deal!"

The silence thickened as the two men face each other. At last Schiemann got up.

"Look, Lennie, I don't make out I'm a saint. I've smuggled and cheated and stolen.

But this I will not do. For the laws of the Federation, I don't give a d.a.m.n men made 'em and men can break 'em but to go against the laws of nature, that is a different thing." He turned on his heel and went out of the control room.

Len went to his cabin and began to pack his gear. As he had expected, Schiemann interrupted him when he was halfway through.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Leaving," Len said. "I'm sick of small-time operations."

"Leaving me? Just like that? Does our friends.h.i.+p mean nothing at all to you?"

"Sure it does," Len told him. "When I get a chance, I'll write."

The old man's face crumpled. "Look, Lennie, if we did move into one of the more important sectors, maybe"

"You know we wouldn't have a chance there," Len said harshly, to conceal his true emotions. "The sectors closer in to Earth have bigger, faster s.h.i.+ps, and bigger, tougher men to run 'em. And they wouldn't like us trying to jet in!"

"I'd rather take a chance on that than"

"We wouldn't have a chance; it'd just be a ma.s.sacre, with us on the receiving end.

The only way we can break into the big time ourselves is through hypers.p.a.ce. We've got to do what's never been done before!"

That wasn't quite true, from what the xhindi had told him, but near enough. It had been done before, but not very often, and not very recently. However, it had been done, so it was possible to do. Otherwise he wouldn't think of chancing it ... or would he?

"Why do you want money so much, Lennie?" Schiemann asked. "What do we need the big-time stuff for? It's nice and quiet and practically secure the way you've got things running for us, almost like we were honest businessmen. So why go looking for trouble?"

"If I'd wanted a quiet life," Len said, "I'd have stuck with the Perseus. So don't singme security."

The hand that held the pipe was trembling. "Look, Lennie, at least give me time to think."

"Okay," Len said. He was, in his way, fond of the old man, but there were bigger things at stake. He had to have Lyddy; he had to have money; he had to have ...

something he couldn't put a name to, but desperately important nonetheless. "I'll give you six months."

At the end of half a year, Schiemann said no, he positively wouldn't do it. Len said "Good-by." Schiemann said, "All right, but you'll be sorry; we'll all be sorry," and gave in.

So they took the Valkyrie, the two of them and Balas, of course, but naturally n.o.body would consult a madman and headed for hypers.p.a.ce. Len knew exactly where to go, even though he had no charts. The breakthrough he wanted was in their own sector and it had been carefully marked for him in his mind.

Schiemann left all the details to him, even the selection of cargo. Len chose coal. He knew that what the xhindi wanted was norms.p.a.ce materials, but not precisely what materials. Their norms.p.a.ce value did not matter, because norms.p.a.ce matter changed to another form of itself when it got to hypers.p.a.ce, and that was where the possibility of enormous profit came in. Something cheap in norms.p.a.ce could become something quite rare and expensive in hypers.p.a.ce, and vice versa. The distribution of elements was different between the two universes; each one essentially complemented the other.

There was one hitch: a stable form in norms.p.a.ce could become an unstable one in hypers.p.a.ce. Without empiric knowledge, it was impossible for anyone going from one universe into the other to tell whether any substance he was carrying or wearing or was would remain stable. If unstable, it could turn into liquid or gas; it could turn into energy and blow up; it could cease to be a solid in any one of a number of ways.

As if that weren't bad enough, it could also happen that even a stuff previously proven to be stable in both universes could become unstable, if there was even the trace of a potentially unstable element, or if something that, stable in itself, combined with it in unstable fas.h.i.+on. Such an admixture could be accidental, which was what made the whole business especially tricky, and what made the reason for the inter-universe ban necessary.

The reason why that first load of the Valkyrie's had been coal was a simple one.

Somewhere Len had read that coal and diamonds were different forms of the same norms.p.a.ce element, and he'd thought that might carry over into the other continuum.

However, even an education wouldn't have helped him know what a right first cargo to take would have been. The xhindi had told him what they did know, but their terminology was not clear. They spoke his language with outward correctness butwith imperfect conceptualization; he spoke theirs not at all. Much of what they did know, they appeared to have forgotten, or only half-learned.

They managed to make him understand that certain stuffs would be definitely unsafe; they could not make it clear which stuffs would be safe, or which they would find most desirable as trade goods. He gathered that they would be satisfied with anything that came through. So he chose coal, hoping to make a splendid initial impression.

The Valkyrie reached hypers.p.a.ce. It slowed down. The throbbing of its creaky engines ebbed to a hum. And it stopped and hung there in the quiet darkness of utterly alien time and place. Schiemann and Balas, expectedly, changed their appearance, but he had seen them in their monster guises before. The coal changed to something pale and glittering, but not diamonds. Everything remained quiet. The s.h.i.+p's instruments recorded no temperature change, but it seemed to grow colder and colder inside her.

Suddenly, Mattern knew the truth. A trap had been laid for him, and he had tumbled neatly into it And the most shameful part was that his own desires and yearnings deliberately fostered by the xhindi had been the bait.

He wanted to turn to the horrible thing that Schiemann had become to scream, "Let's go back!" But he couldn't. Something held tight grip of his mind. And, looking out the portholes, he saw that the xhindi had begun to swarm.

The flickering terror of their appearance became more awesome to him than it had been at the beginning, when he'd been only a transitory shadow in hypers.p.a.ce. Now, although he had no doubt that they were friendly indeed, almost ardent in their welcoming horror chilled him all over again. He could almost feel the molecules inside his body slow down as his viscera quivered faintly and then froze into stillness.

He looked at Schiemann and Balas. Neither of them could, he knew, see the hypers.p.a.cers. Their conditioning back on Earth's s.p.a.ce schools had ensured this.

That was the real reason for the schools; any actual training was incidental. But Schiemann knew the creatures were there, and so he could sense them. And Balas, too, certainly seemed to sense something as he stood there, tense and wary and almost understanding. It must be even worse, Len thought, to know the hypers.p.a.cers were out there and not be able to see them.

"We we can still go back," Schiemann said in a cracked voice; apparently the minds outside had not touched his. "Please, Lennie..."

"No, it's too late!" Mattern cried. Once he went back, he would never dare return, and all hope of Lyddy would fade into fog. The thought of not being able to have her was unbearable. "We can't go back now!"

The hideous mask that was Schiemann's hypers.p.a.ce visage contorted, and drops ofliquid flowed where his withered cheeks would have been in norms.p.a.ce. "Please, Lennie...

"I can't!" Len said. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. It's too late, now that we've stopped."

He forced out the words, against objections that seemed to come from outside him not objections to Schiemann's knowing the truth, but to his own admission of it.

"They're in control," he said.

V.

"We bid you welcome to our universe, Mattern," the xhindi said in his mind. "Come, follow us. We will lead you to the port on Ferr that we have made ready for you."

"Will the s.h.i.+p be safe there?" Mattern asked, remembering the further danger of touching alien substance.

"As safe as she could be anywhere in this s.p.a.ce." And then the mellifluous one added, "Remember, whatever risks there are, now we share them with you."

A point of livid light that danced so Mattern knew it must be alive led them to the gleaming purpledark ovoid that was Ferr, then to the place that had been set aside for the Valkyrie. The xhindi had been right about the port so far as the s.h.i.+p herself was concerned. Probably they'd had a fair idea of what materials she and her contents were composed of from the s.h.i.+ps that had pa.s.sed fleetingly through their s.p.a.ce, never pausing to become real. What they could not allow for were the random factors.

The s.h.i.+p set down on the "safe" port at Ferr. It made contact with the glossy alien ground. And, as it did so, Captain Schiemann very quietly disintegrated. No explosion, no sound. He simply crumbled into a white powder which slowly drifted away, and then was gone.

"Coal into diamonds," Mattern found himself saying as he stared at Schiemann's pipe rolling on the empty corridor floor, "dust unto dust." When the pipe quivered to a stop, he began to laugh hysterically.

"So you think it's funny, do you?" a gentle voice said behind him.

Mattern turned. Balas stood there.

"I'm afraid that I don't agree," Balas went on with that frightening softness. "He was good to me, and to you too, Lennie. He was d.a.m.ned good to the both of us. And this is the way you repay him. It wasn't a nice thing to do, Lennie."

Mattern opened his mouth to deny intent, but all that came out was the bubbling laughter."I know you didn't mean for him to disappear like that," Balas said, almost kindly.

"It's just that I guess you don't care what happens to anybody but yourself. No, you don't care for yourself even, just the things you want. You're awful greedy, Lennie awful greedy."

His voice was very reasonable. "If I don't do something to stop you, you'll do the same thing to our whole universe that you did to the captain. It would be wrong for me to let that happen. So, you see, I have to kill you. I'm sorry, Lennie, because I like you, but I know you'll understand."

And he lunged for Mattern, reaching out the four monstrous arms that were his in hypers.p.a.ce, the eye in his forehead brilliant with that hideous sanity.

Mattern backed away, still laughing. If Balas has gone sane, he thought, then perhaps I have gone mad. Only I am still conscious of everything that's going on: the danger I am in, the way I am behaving. In fact, I have control over all of myself except my laughter. I know where we are-Balas and I are locked inside the s.h.i.+p alone together, and only one of us is coming out alive.

Undoubtedly the xhindi could have pa.s.sed through the hull or opened the airlocks in some way, if they had wanted to. But they made no move to try, merely remained outside, watching. The two humans, in that s.p.a.ce and time, were alone in a small private war of their own. Mattern could not tell whether the xhindi outside were enjoying themselves, as a group of humans would have under like circ.u.mstances, but he seemed to sense anxiety for the outcome not only of that battle but of another, inner one. Why, I'm beginning to read their thoughts, too, he realized, in the middle of his fear and hysteria.

I am growing closer to them by the minute.

And Balas was getting closer to him. Mattern had a blaster, of course, but he was afraid to use it. A bolt of alien energy might produce a reaction that could rip both universes. Yet, barehanded, he was no match for the bigger, stronger man.

Fortunately, he had never pretended to be a hero, not even to himself in the saneness of norms.p.a.ce, so he was able to turn and run. Balas pursued him through the desolate corridors of the Valkyrie, Mattern's laughter echoing crazily in the emptiness.

His only hope was to find a hand weapon or something that could be used as a hand weapon. And, as he rounded a bend, Mattern saw the primitive fire axe hanging against a bulkhead, the traditional relic that all s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, large and small, carried and kept burnished and ready for a use that would never come. But there was another use it could be put to.

Instinct made Mattern seize the axe from its hooks on the wall. Instinct surged up from the handle to fill him with the power and joy and knowledge to use it. He turned to face Balas' onrush, and his laughter no longer sounded insane in his ears; it had the triumphant energy of a primeval war cry.The madman's charge was lightning fast, but Mattern was the younger man by at least a decade.

He told himself that he meant only to stun Balas, but he was conscious all the time that, if Balas were merely stunned, the problem would be merely postponed. He lifted the axe and brought it down. And then Mattern was alone, the only human being in an alien s.p.a.ce and an alien time, locked in this s.h.i.+p with the drifting white dust that had been his friend, and the bleeding corpse that had been no, not his enemy, but his friend also, and who had, only minutes after death, already begun to haunt him. It was then that Mattern remembered the other man he had killed in the same way.

Karl Brodek had never haunted him, but that was because Len knew the killing was justified it was retribution, not murder. For Len had seen Brodek kill his mother, not all at once, but little by little. It was her face that stayed with him always, her blue eyes and her sweet voice. She'd been the only one he ever had, really the brother had been nothing but a wailing blob of protoplasm and then Schiemann, a little.

Now he was more alone than he'd been in all of his solitary life.

He knew that the eerie creatures outside meant him no harm, but would have liked to comfort him if they could. That made it worse rather than better. If only there were some tangible enemy to attack, to beat his fists against ... but the only enemy he could find was the monstrous form reflected in the mirror of his own cabin.

He was no longer laughing, he noticed; the fit was over. And so, he sensed, was the anxiety outside. In some way, he had pa.s.sed a test.

It was then that the xhindi began to speak to him through the hull of the s.h.i.+p, urging him to come out. "You have come so far," they said, "and time is a precious and a dangerous commodity. We cannot afford to waste it, either of us."

He did not could not respond.

They could have forced him out, but they were kind or perhaps only wise. They simply coaxed and waited. After a while, moving stiffly, as if he had cogs instead of a heart, he opened the airlock and went outside. He set foot on the dark polished surface of Ferr. But there was no thrill of strangeness or of triumph or antic.i.p.ation.

There was ... nothing. His physical senses were all operating. He knew there was neither gravity nor lack of it. He knew there was no atmosphere and he accepted that, not because he accepted the xhindi's word that he would not need to breathe in this continuum, but because he didn't care whether or not he breathed; he didn't care about anything.

"Come," the xhindi said, in audible words now, and their spoken voices were as sweet as their mind voices.

He found himself moving as through a nightmare, as he proceeded according to their directions, and the xhindi themselves, with their monstrous grace and musical voices,were a logical part of the black ballet in which he found himself partic.i.p.ating.

The dignitaries of Ferr, a fantasy procession in the moonlit colors of h.e.l.l smoke and flame and shadow came to greet him and to lead him to the mbretersha. She glittered splendidly upon her throne of alien substance a monster, of course, in human terms, and yet also a great lady, as a queen should be in any terms. Through the fog of his own immediate perception, she reached out and touched him with her dignity and compa.s.sion.

"I am very sorry," she said, "that such a thing should have happened. I know you are full of grief for your comrades, and I wish that I could have postponed our interview. However, I must press you, for the longer you stay on this world, the greater the risk is for my people."

Somewhere before, it seemed to him, he had heard her voice sensed her mind pattern, anyway. If he had not known that she was the mbretersha, he would have fancied that hers had been one of the minds that had spoken to him, the most persuasive of the cajoling creatures that had sung him their siren songs as he flashed transistorily through their universe. But, he thought dully, that was impossible. She was the mbretersha, the queen.

She read his thoughts, and the pattern of her appearance altered subtly. It was a warm and kind expression of herself; it was a smile. "You must learn, Mattern, that the concept of a ruler in this universe differs from the concept in yours. Here a ruler is the servant of her people, not their master. It is her obligation to take care of them, protect them, watch over them in whatever way seems most fitting to her. She can have no pride in herself, only in them. They are more than her children."

It was funny, Mattern thought, that she should so easily plan to break the rules of her universe. A s.p.a.ce rat like him that was one thing; it was to be expected. But a queen? Now that he was coming back to life a little, he began to wonder about this again.

Deftly, she picked the wonder out of his mind and answered it. "Our Federation, like yours, is an artificial creation. Its laws are no more than arbitrary regulations, devised by the various peoples of each universe with regard to the good of the majority, and thrust upon majority and minority alike."

Mattern began to understand, or thought he did. "A queen isn't likely to hold with democracy," he said though perhaps not aloud.

She was a little impatient. "It's not a question of absolute power or divine right simply that my people come first, even before myself; my own world is part of me, and I am part of it by nature and instinct. Its needs are my needs. When my people are hungry, I feel the pangs."

Most rulers justify themselves like that, he thought, keeping his lips pressed firmly together. But they all do the same things.But he couldn't keep her out of his mind. "No," she said, "you're wrong. I was not speaking metaphorically. My nervous system is attuned to my people's; it is a hereditary trait bred into my family. So being the ruler is not a pleasant station to occupy."

It certainly wouldn't be, he thought, if she was telling the truth to suffer every pang that was suffered on the planet, and, if the attuning were psychic also, every sorrow.

He expected her to pick the disbelief out of his mind, but she smiled and went on to tell him about her planet.

Ferr was not a large world. Moreover, it was essentially a barren one. It had been rich only because it had previously engaged in sub-rosa commerce with Mattern's universe. "And the last traffic was long, long ago," she told Mattern. "In a day much before mine, when my mother ruled."

"What happened? What stopped the traffic?"

"Our captain died of old age, and we have had trouble finding a successor to him."

"Why is it so hard to get somebody else?" Mattern asked bluntly.

She paused. When she spoke again, it was so obliquely that he did not realize immediately that it was an answer. "Time was when we had more contact with your people. There were many who knew of the xhindi, although few had actually encountered us. It was not difficult for us to get humans to work with us then. But the barbarians took over your world and your people lost the knowledge of how to get through to us. And when they regained it, we were not why they wished to get through. Much of the problem is in making people believe that we exist."

He nodded. "The flluska call you demons."