John D. MacDonald

Amphiskios[1]

Any diagrammatic presentation of the time concept must perforce be a simplification. Time is neither pulsations nor is it a winding river nor yet coiled upon itself like a spring. To best understand it and to free it of metaphysical confusions we must revert a full five thousand years to the basic Einstein conjectures, many of them since disproven in the mighty laboratory of stellar space. Draw two lines intersecting. An X. Where they cross is the “now”.

The upper half is the past, the lower half the future.

Both the understandable past and the forseeable future are severely limited by the sides which form a crude, angular hour-glass. The sidelines represent the speed of light, the infinite Fitzgerald Contraction, the bitter barrier of existence.

Each soul is a grain of sand in this hour-glass, but suspended forever at the point of “now”. Since the origin of this concept twenty-five generations of experimentation have proved that man, pinned in the focal point of existence, can move timewise neither up into the past nor down into the future.

Thus it has been conceded that escape from this trap of time, from the jaws of inevitability, lies in the possibility of a lateral movement, which, of course, assumes a penetration of the barrier of the speed of light.

Assuming the possibility of lateral movement, this movement could thus be reversed and the person which had existed for a moment OUTSIDE the time barrier would return at an alien focal point, thus completing the illusion of a “journey” within time.

All this is, of course, a simplification to extreme as to render the entire exposition almost meaningless.

“Narración de Viajes en Tiempo” — Agabanzo Historical Collection — Martian Micro-library

Chapter I

Four Are Chosen

Howard Loomis glanced down at the dashboard clock and cursed the long-winded customer who had delayed him for over two hours. His sample cases packed the back seat. He had already reported to the sales manager that he would spend the night in Alexandria, seventy miles away.

He yawned, lit a cigarette and ran the window down, hoping the cold air would keep sleep away. He was a thin and nervous young man with a mobile mouth, a receding hairline and driving ambition.

He began to think of the prospects in Alexandria then as sleep welled up over him. His hands relaxed on the wheel. He awakened with a start as his front right wheel went off onto the shoulder. The big car swerved and he fought it back under control.

It was a clear cold night — below freezing. It had rained during the afternoon but the road was dry.

He decided to increase his speed, depending on the added responsibility to keep him awake.

In the white glow of his headlights he saw a bridge ahead — a bridge over railroad tracks.

The tires whined on the concrete, changed tone as they hit the steel tread of the bridge.

The bridge was coated with thin clear ice.

As the back end began to swing Howard Loomis bit down on his lower lip, fighting both panic and sheer disbelief that this could be happening to him.

The back end swung in the other direction and there was a grinding smash as it tore through the side railing.

The big car tipped. Howard Loomis caught a glimpse of the steel tracks far below. Ridiculously the thought that he could not live through the fall was intermingled with the thoughts of the potential customers in Alexandria.

There was the spinning silence of the fall, the sickening lunge through space, and…

The third show was coming up and she knew that it would be rough and unpleasant. During the second show a drunk who fancied himself a comic, after chanting, “Take it off!” had come out onto the floor to offer assistance. There would be more drunks for the third show.

Her name was Mary Callahan — Maurine Callaix on the bill — and she was a tall girl with the blue-black hair, milky skin and blue eyes of her race.

She was checking the concealed hooks in her working dress when Sally, the new singer, came into the dressing room and stood watching her.

“How can you do it, Mary?” she asked.

“Do what, kid?”

“I mean, get out there in front of all those people and—”

Mary smiled tightly. “It’s just a business. I was the gal who was going to knock them dead in ballet. But I grew too big. It doesn’t bother me any more.”

Sally looked at her, shook her head and said, “I could never do it.”

Mary Callahan stared at the smaller girl for a moment. Mary Callahan thought of the last three years, of the ten months’ hospital bill her mother had accumulated while dying, of the money for milk and meat and bread for the twin nephews.

“I hope you don’t have to do it. Ever.”

“How about Rick?” Sally asked.

Mary Callahan frowned. “The guy worries me. I don’t know what gave him the idea that I was his prize package. He’s a hophead, dearie. He stopped me at the door tonight and I had to slap him across the teeth to get by him.”

“Was that safe?” Sally asked.

“He hasn’t got the nerve to try anything. I hope.”

She got the call and went on, pausing just off the floor for the blue spot to pick her up, then walking on in a slow half dance to the sultry beat of the tom-tom, wearing the mechanical lascivious smile, reaching gracefully for the first concealed snap on the evening gown.

When Rick came into the glow of the spot the music faltered and stopped.

Mary Callahan watched his hand, watched the gun.

Suddenly she knew that he would shoot She saw his pinpoint pupils, the twisted mouth, the stained teeth.

She saw the gun come up. She looked down the barrel, saw his finger whiten on the trigger, saw the first orange-red bloom of the flower of death and…

Joe Gresham padded across the I beam, his eyes fixed on the upright opposite him. He had learned three years before that when you’re on the high iron you never look at your feet. Because then you’d see the cars below, like beetles, the people like small slow bugs, and something would happen to your stomach.

He was a sun-hardened man, with wide shoulders, knotted hands and an impassive though good-humored face.

Above him he heard the rivets clanking into the bucket, the buck of the hammer. The sun was bright.

When he heard the shout, he stopped dead. The red-hot rivet struck him just above the right ear.

For long seconds he fought for balance, gave up, tried to drop in such a way that his hands would clasp the girder on which he had been walking.

But he had waited too long, and his hands merely slapped the girder.

He spun down through the warm morning air and it was as though the earth spun slowly around him. Each time he saw the street it was startlingly closer. And as he fell he thought, “This isn’t happening to me. This can’t be the end of Joe Gresham!”

And…

Stacey Murdock took three more smooth crawl strokes, rolled over onto her back and looked back at the lake shore, at the vast white house, the wide green lawns.

She grinned as she wondered if the two muscle-men her father had hired were still sitting in the house waiting for her to get up. Nothing could be more ridiculous than Daddy’s periodic kidnaping scares. Why kidnaping was out of fashion! Even when the gal in question would one day inherit more millions than she had fingers and toes.

Stacey was a trim, small girl with pale blond hair, a rather sallow face and a wide, petulant mouth.

The party last night had been a daisy. The cold water of the lake felt good. Best thing in the world for a hangover.

She had climbed down, dressed in a terricloth robe, from the terrace outside her bedroom window. She could see the robe on the dock, glinting white in the sun.

It was so much more pleasant to swim without a suit.

Her soaked hair plastered her forehead. She pushed it aside, rolled over and began her long, effortless crawl out into the big lake. The waves were a bit higher way out and sometimes when she rolled her face up to breathe, one would slap her in the face.

Suddenly she felt the churn of nausea. The hangover was worse than she thought. But messy to be sick out in the water like this.

She floated for a time as the feeling got worse. When the paroxysms started, she doubled over, unable to catch her breath, unable to straighten out. She coughed under water and it made a strange bubbling by her ears. Then, stupidly, she had to breathe and she strangled on the water she was sucking into her lungs.

She had no idea where the surface was, and she was climbing up an endless green ladder with arms as limp as wet doth and then there was a softness of music in her ears and it was so much easier and more delicious just to lie back and relax and sleep and…

It was Baedlik who first penetrated the barrier of the speed of light. The feat was not performed, as one might suppose, in the depths of space but in his laboratory in London. By bombarding the atoms of Baedlium with neutrons, he so increased the mass and attraction of the nuclei that the outer rings of electrons, moving at forty thousand miles per hour, were drawn in toward the nuclei, their speed proportionately increasing.

This decreased the dead space within the atom, resulting in an incredibly heavy material. When the speed of the outer rings passed the speed of light, the samples of Baedlium, to all intents and purposes, naturally ceased to exist at Baedlik’s focal point.

This, for over seventy years, was called Baedlik’s Enigma, until the lateral movement in time was explained by Glish, who also set forward the first set of formulae designed to predict and control this lateral movement.

Ibid

Chapter II

The Watching Boxes

Howard Loomis did not have, in his background or experience, any comparable sensation. One moment every fibre of his body was tensed in vain effort to withstand the smash which would tear soul from body.

And, without transition, he lay on a gentle slope, still curled in a seated position, and the air that was cold was warm the night that was dark was suddenly a new day.

He sat up, still dressed in gray conservative suit, snap-brim hat, buttoned topcoat. His trembling hands rested against the grass. Or was it grass? It was not a proper green, having a bluish cast mixed with it.

Seventy feet away a fairytale forest cast a heavy shadow — mammoth trunks, roots like broken fingers, crowns as high as redwoods, reaching up toward a sky that was too blue. It was a purple blue. The disk of the sun was wide and in its yellow-glare was a tinge of blood.

Breathing hard, he scrambled to his feet, turning, looking around him, seeing nothing but the expanse of grass, a ragged outcropping of rock that glinted silver, the side of a hill that restricted his horizon.

There was no sign of car, bridge or tracks. And, after the first few seconds, he did not look for any. This was alien, this world. The air was thin, as on a high mountain and to have seen in this place his car or any fragment of the world he knew would have been as grotesque an anachronism as his own presence.

He listened and heard the distant sound of birds. The air was sweet with the scent of sun-warmed grasses.

Howard Loomis dropped to his knees.

His hat rolled away, unheeded. He ran thin fingers through his thinning hair and thought about delirium, Valhalla and death.

He took off his topcoat and threw it aside. He fingered the fabric of his familiar suit, hoping to gain from the touch of the smooth weave a surer grasp on reality. He looked at his sleeve, saw the place where the weaver had fixed the cigarette burn in Baltimore.

He spun to his feet as she coughed.

She was a tall girl in a wine evening dress. Her blue eyes were wide with fear and she stood, her hands at her throat. She looked at something in the air in front of her which did not exist.

“Rick!” she gasped.

Howard Loomis began to laugh. He couldn’t control it. He fell onto his hands and knees and laughed until the tears dripped ridiculously from the end of his sharp nose.

“Too… too much,” he gasped. “Now bring on the — the golden harps.”

“Who are you calling a harp?” the girl snapped.

The sound of her angry voice snapped him out of it. He stared at her in silence. “Where is this place? Who are you?”

“Those are my lines, mister.”

“I car’t tell you where we are, but I’m Howard Loomis. I sell Briskies. I skidded off a railroad bridge but I don’t remember hitting the bottom. I ended up right here.”

“You don’t belong here?” she asked.

“Do I look it? In this decorator’s nightmare am I part of the decor?”

“No,” she said. “You’re the Junior Chamber of Commerce type. You and blue trees don’t mix. I’m Mary Callahan. I was starting my strip when a hoppie named Rick walked up and shot me right between the eyes. At least that was where he was aiming. I saw him pull the trigger but I didn’t feel it hit.”

She reached an unsteady hand up and touched her smooth forehead between her eyebrows with her fingertips.

He took out his cigarettes. She came over and sat down beside him. They smoked in silence.

“Oh, great!” Mary Callahan said.

“Meaning that it’s tougher on you than on the common people? Let’s take a hike around this glamour pasture and see where we are?”

“In these?” she asked, holding out a slim foot encased in a silver sandal with a four inch heel. “You walk. I’ll wait.”

He shrugged. When he was forty feet from her, walking toward the hill, she said, “Hey! Howie! Don’t look now but there’s something floating over you.”

He looked up quickly and his mouth sagged open. It was a little metal box about the size of a cigar box. A fat lense protruded from the bottom of it. It had no visible means of support. Howard stepped quickly to one side. So did the box.

In sudden anger he picked up a rock and threw it at the box.

The rock sailed up, passed through the space where the box had been and continued on.

He turned and looked with exasperation at Mary Callahan. He cocked his head on one side, said, “Hmmm. You have one too.”

Fear of the unknown drove them together. Mary Callahan, in her high heels, topped him by two inches, yet she clung to his arm as she stared upward. The two boxes were twenty feet over their heads, drifting quietly side by side.

“They… they’re watching us!” said Mary Callahan.

And he knew that she was right. The lenses were cool observant eyes.

“This I’m not going to like,” she said grimly. “In spite of my profession I’m a girl who rather likes her privacy. I don’t want to be watched, even by floating cameras.”

She waited while he went down the slope, struggled up the steep hill. Tough brush aided him as did the outcroppings or rock. At last he gained the summit. He looked out over wild country. There were more forests, a wide river in the distance and several semiflat expanses which he judged to be covered by grass at least ten feet high. He saw no sign of human habitation.

He turned and looked back. The wine dress was brilliant against the blue-green grass. He saw her wave up at him. He started down the hill. She met him at the foot of the hill.

“Howie, did you bring any of those Briskies? They sound as if you eat them. Or are they whiskbrooms? About this time of night — or is it day — I yonk on a steak sandwich.”

They both turned as a heavy weight crashed into the top of a small tree. The branches writhed and cracked and a powerful young man dressed in working clothes plummeted down, hitting on the slope, rolling almost to their feet.

He sat up, looked straight up in the air, said, “Heavenly Mary Jane! Where’s the building?”

“You lose a building?” Mary Callahan asked sweetly. “I lost a night club and Howie, my pal here, he lost a car and a railroad bridge.”

Joe Gresham stared at her, got slowly to his feet, testing arms and legs. He looked around at the landscape, glared at Howard Loomis, looked up again, recoiled as he saw the silver box with lense floating over his head.

“Whassat?” he gasped.

“Oh, we all wear them here. De riguer, you know,” Mary answered. “I assume that you fell off a building. You want the pitch?”

“Pitch? You mean you can tell me what happened?” Joe asked.

“Oh, it’s very simple,” Mary said. “The fall killed you.”

Joe Gresham sat down. He tilted his head on one side and peered at Howard. “Where’d you get this crazy dame?”

“Her name is Mary Callahan and I’m Howard Loomis and we both got here almost the same way you did. If she’s crazy, so am I. I haven’t said it out loud before but we’re all dead. Mary was shot through the head. I went off a bridge. What floor did you fall from?”

“About the forty-first. And my name is Joe Gresham.”

“Joe, how many people do you know that fell from the forty-first floor and didn’t break even a finger.”

Joe took out a bandanna and wiped his sunburned brow. He said softly, “Al Brunert fell off the top of the tool house and busted his arm and a pint of drinking liquor. You win, pal.”

“And what do I win? Joe, is this any part of earth you ever heard about?”

Joe took another look around. He stood up and said, “They got the wrong colors here. And that sun is too big and I never seen rocks that look like they’re all metal. I don’t want to sound like a dope, folks, but is this heaven?”

Mary said, “A — I haven’t been a very good girl. B — I don’t think you get hungry in heaven. C — This isn’t exactly a heavenly dress I’ve got on.”

“Then it’s hell,” Joe said firmly.

“Don’t be so dogmatic,” Mary said briskly. “Maybe they’ve got three deals.”

As she spoke Joe took hold of her arm so hard that she gasped. He spun her around and pointed with a big calloused hand. And he whistled softly. “Heaven it might be,” he said.

The girl was on the grass twenty feet away, gasping and choking. She was a slightly sallow blonde with a honey tan — all over. Her hair was soaked.

“She represents the ultimate in my profession,” Mary said.

The girl sat up, hugged herself and glared at them out of streaming eyes. “Well — do something!” she rasped between coughs.

Howard ran and got his discarded topcoat. Keeping his eyes carefully averted, he held it for the blonde. Mary watched her as she slipped into the coat, buttoned it around her. Mary said, appreciatively, “Sister, you ever want to change your line of work, I can give you the address of my agent.”

The blonde stamped her foot on the grass. As it was a bare foot and as she managed to stamp it on a pebble, the gesture was ineffectual. She yelped with pain and hopped on one foot, holding the other.

The three stood and watched her. Stacey Murdock said, “Get in touch with my father immediately. He’s T. Winton Murdock. I’m Stacey Murdock. The Stacey Murdock. He’ll be worried about me.”

They still stared.

She raised her foot to stamp it again, thought better of it. “Didn’t you cretins hear me? I insist that you get in touch with my father. He’ll be worried. He’ll pay you thugs whatever you ask.”

Mary nodded, said in an aside to Howard, “You ask me, I think she drowned. Swimming raw too.”

“This is no time for silly jokes,” Stacey said. “I passed out and you pulled me out of the water and brought me here. Daddy has the note you wrote him.”

Howard said tiredly, “I gather that you think we’ve kidnapped you. Look around, Miss Murdock. Take a good look.”

Stacey took a long look and swallowed hard. “This is — a funny place,” she said weakly.

“Ha, ha!” said Mary Callahan. “Funny.”

“I detest oversized women,” Stacey said briskly. She smiled at Joe. “Now you look like a good earthy type. Tell me where I can fined a phone.”

Joe pointed at his tree. “Lady, I just fell outa the topa that tree. I don’t know my way around.”

Stacey gave him a dazzling smile. “Now I get it,” she said. “They rescued me and I’m still delirious from the shock. You are all figments of my shocked imagination.”

Mary grinned tightly. “Figments, eh. Then we can’t hurt you a bit?”

“Of course not,” Stacey said.

Mary straightarmed Stacey in the forehead with the heel of her hand. Stacey sat down. “Just a love pat from an oversized woman, dearie.”

Howard and Joe had to combine forces to pry them apart.

When they had calmed Stacey down they pointed out the floating boxes. She made a tiny bubbling sound. Howard caught her as she fell. He carried her over to the shade of a tree. She was wonderfully light in his arms.

Mary said bleakly, “I’m still starving.”

“Could eat something myself,” Joe admitted.

Howard shaded his eyes and looked at the sun. “If that sun moves as fast as the one we’re used to, kids, we’ve got two hours to find food, water and a place to sleep.”

Mary took off her shoes and hurled them off into the brush. “Better sore feet than a busted ankle. Wake up your dreamboat and we’ll trudge.”

Ten years after the death of Glish it was O’Dey, expanding the group of basic materials subject to the Baedlik Enigma, who first managed to test the formulae propounded by Glish. His experiments attracted the attention of the original Planet Foundation, which assigned the Third Integrated Research Team to the task.

Forty-one years after the Third Integrated Research Team took over the task, a method was perfected whereby recording apparatus could be sent to any specific segment of the past after the exact position of the planet in question had been computed.

During the period when the histories of the planets were being rewritten the first basic rules of time travel were being determined, largely by trial and error.

The first truth to come to light was that no specific alteration can be made in the past. By alteration is meant any specific action which, by itself, will cause reactions and interactions that, like a pebble dropped in a pool, might cause alterations in the future.

The second truth to be exposed was that, as the future pre-exists in the variabilities of the present, no travel into the future for prognostic purposes can be made.

Ibid

Chapter III

Harvest of Bones

Mary Callahan sat on the river bank at dawn and smiled beatifically as she held her bruised feet in the cold water.

She half turned, then relaxed as Howard Loomis came up and sat beside her. In four days Howard had changed a great deal. He had grown more nervous and his hands shook uncontrollably.

“We need food,” he snapped, “and rather than sitting here, crooning to your feet, you could be fishing. Stacey found more grubs last night.”

“You bore me, Howie,” she said, yawning. She looked ruefully at the insect bites on her bare arms. She had torn off the wine dress at knee level. She wondered if she could make crude sleeves from the extra portion of fabric.

“You don’t seem to care what happens to us,” Howie snapped.

“Kid, you’re losing your sense of humor. I haven’t had a rest like this in four years. I’m enjoying it. Besides, who was it found out those berries were good to eat?”

“They might have killed you.”

She looked at him. “Again?” she asked softly.

Howard shuddered, glanced up at the two silver boxes. At least they went away at nightfall. “I don’t feel dead,” he said.

“Where’s Joe?”

“Puttering around with that fire of his. Trying to burn rocks.”

“And the princess?”

“She’s still sleeping. And since you brought it up, Mary, I think you could be nicer to her.” He waved his hand aimlessly at the surroundings. “She’s delicate. All of this is a shock to her. She can’t stand the environment the way we can.”

Mary smiled without warmth. “The way we men can? Don’t be a sucker, Howie. She’s as tough as nails. She’s just lazy. No work, no eat, I always say.”

Howard snorted in disbelief and wandered away.

By concerted effort, they had three fish by lunch time. They were cleaned with Joe’s pocket knife, spitted on green twigs and cooked over the flames.

And it was at lunch that Joe showed them the arrowheads he had made.

“For vampires,” he said.

When they looked puzzled he said, “Those shiny rocks are silver, I think. Anyway I melted these into a stone mold. I’m cutting a slice off my belt for a bowstring. Find me a dead bird’s feathers and boom — I got something to use so maybe I can kill one of those little antelopes — the ones that hide out in that big grass.”

“You’re okay, Joe,” Mary said.

Stacey sniffed and Howard reached over and patted her shoulder. It was then that he propounded his theory of heading for a low line of hills in the distance. He said he thought he saw sun glint on rock and, if so, there might be some nice dry caves there, out of the rain that came each night to make them miserable. They had found, according to Howard’s watch, that it was only seven hours from dawn to dusk, that the night was not quite six hours long. Thus it might take two or maybe three days to get to the hills.

Stacey cast the only negative vote.

It took five days to reach the hills. And two more days to find the caves.

Four footsore and weary people stood at the base of the cliff and looked up. Joe Gresham had the haunch of a deer, wrapped in bluish leaves, slung over his shoulder.

He carried a sturdy bow and three notched arrows in his hand.

Stacey, using thorns and a patience that had elicited Mary’s first speck of admiration for her, had made a rather neat costume, shorts and a halter, of the hide of the tiny antelope-like beast. Howie had made a crude knapsack from the topcoat and, when Stacey discovered that her new costume was beginning to smell rather high, it was too late.

Mary noticed with amusement that Howard did not stay as close to Stacey as usual.

Joe had begun to develop an almost animal awareness of his surroundings. And thus it was Joe who saw the length of whitened bone protruding from the thorn brush at the base of the cliff.

Stacey refused to look. Mary, Howard and Joe stared down at the skeleton. It had worn a hide garment. An axe with a stone blade lay under the skeletal arm.

Joe bent over, picked it up, hefted it. “This we can use,” he said.

“But don’t you see?” Mary exclaimed. “There are people in this screwy world. Honest-to-God people!”

“You missed something,” Howard said in a flat voice.

She gave him a quick glance. He was pale. She looked back at the body, saw the glint of metal. It was a fifty-cent piece, tarnished. A hole had been bored through it and it was on a greasy thong around what had been a neck.

She shut her teeth hard, bent over and looked closely at it. Then she straightened up, screamed and fell back against Joe. He steadied her.

Howard looked closely and said, “Joe, it’s a U.S. coin all right. But it has a head on it I don’t recognize. And the date is nineteen hundred seventy-one.”

Joe gave him a puzzled smile. “But nineteen-hundred seventy-one don’t come along, pal, for another — lemme see — twenty-one years.”

“What killed him, Joe?” Mary said.

Joe took a long look. Then he turned and looked up at the cliff. He shook his head. “Thought first he fell. But he’s too far out. No, something give him a bash over the ear, caved his head in.”

They found three more before nightfall. And one wore a shirt of chain mail, badly rusted.

The fire was in the mouth of the big cave. Howard was the spokesman. They sat back inside the cave, on stones that they had found there, arranged in a half circle, as though they had been used before in just that manner.

Howard said, “We’ve got to get our heads together. We’ve been here four days now and we’ve found — how many bodies, Joe?”

“Seventeen. Fourteen old ones and three fresh ones. Fairly fresh ones.”

Mary shivered.

Howard continued. “I’m no historian, folks, but I’ve been looking at the stuff those people had. Clothes, for example. Now they either came fresh out of a costume play or else they landed here right out of their own world. Understand, I’m just thinking out loud. We’ve seen only a little part of this country. At the rate we found bodies here they must be all over the place.

“We don’t know what the score is. We do know that we can feel hunger and cold and pain — and if these bodies are any proof, we can be killed — even if it is for the second time. I want to stay living if only to find out what this is all about. Agreed?”

The other three nodded.

“Now something killed all these people. Joe, you take it.”

“Well, I’d say the most of them got their heads bashed but the fresh ones were carved up a little by something sharp. Not teeth or claws — a little sword, maybe, or a big knife.”

“Thanks, Joe. That means there’s danger here. I don’t think all these people killed each other off. It would have been a help if some of them had written down what was after them.”

“Or written it down so we could read it,” Joe said grumpily.

“What do you mean?” Howard asked sharply.

“Oh, didn’t you see that funny lingo scratched on the wall back there? About twenty feet back into the cave?”

Howard cursed softly, lit a torch and hurried back, Mary and Stacey following him. He found the markings. The flickering flame lighted it.

“Modern French,” Stacey said. “Here goes — ‘I am the one who remains. They came at dawn to hunt us. The shining men. The others, my comrades, have fallen. We killed one. They took away the body, but our dead are… are—’ ” She faltered.

“ ‘Unburied’,” Mary said briskly. “ ‘I do not expect to survive the morrow. It is a strange existence in which one must die twice.’ And signed by a character named Lerault.”

“How do you—?” Stacey said.

“Education isn’t restricted to the upper classes, darling,” Mary said.

“Stop that eternal bickering!” Howard yelled. They went back to the fire.

When the flames died down, Joe replenished the blaze.

Mary said softly, “Shining men. Goid your lerns, boys. Tomorrow the battle.”

“Shut up!” Howard said, a note of hysteria in his voice.

“Don’t let her bother you, darling,” Stacey said softly. She took Howard by the arm and the two of them went back into the cave into the darkness.

Joe spat onto the fire. “I was reading once,” he said, “or maybe it was a movie or maybe TV. I forget. Anyway, they got this place where they stock it with animals and then if you’re a very special guy with a big roll, they let you in there to hunt once in a while.”

“Very sharp, Joe,” Mary said. “We’re thinking alike. Me, I’m going to give them a hell of a time. I know a place where nobody can come up with me plumping rocks down on their heads.”

Joe, his voice softer, said, “I should a met you a long time ago, Mary. You got guts.”

“Listen to the sweet talk.”

Joe stirred restlessly, his voice growing husky. “Kid, on account of maybe this is our last night and—”

“Not so sharp, Joe. Don’t let the princess give you wrong ideas. On account of this might be our last night, I’ll stay up an hour later and we can have a nice talk.”

Universe organization collapsed when Adolph Kane, egomaniac supervisor of the colonies near Sirius and Alpha Centauri, built a war fleet in secret and, after ten years of bitter warfare wiped out all organized resistance on the part of the Planet Foundation.

Within fifteen more years he controlled all of the civilized universe, having subjugated the colonies in the Regulus, Fomalhaut, Pollux, Aldebaran, Altair, Procryon, Arctures and Capella Sectors. He established new colonies near Archermar, the furthest mankind had yet been from Mother Earth.

He called himself Emperor, built on the gray planet, Lobos, a mighty palace and fortress, protected by the impenetrable ring of satellite warships.

In the shining palace he begat the sons who carried his name and his authority. During three hundred years of the reign of the line of Kane, research for the sake of knowledge ceased to exist. All research was channeled toward the single goal of making the Empire immune to attack, both from within and from without — for men yet feared the possibility of intelligent and warlike races in some yet unconquered comer of the universe.

Yet mankind benefited from the single-minded lust for power of the Empire, for it was through the insistence of the Kanes that the mighty space-ships plunged through the barrier of the speed of light with the lateral time movement aberration cancelled down to the point where it was so slight as to be recorded only by the most delicate instruments.

And the Empire, searching the far comers of the universe, found that no enemy was in opposition and they yet lusted for war, as no dictatorship can exist without war.

Bannot, the Ninth in the Succession, turned his attention to past eras m search of a worthy foe.

Ibid

Chapter IV

They Come to Kill

They did not come the following dawn — or the next.

Joe Gresham had gradually taken over authority from Howard Loomis, yet he deferred to the judgment of Mary Callahan when he was in doubt. The headquarters cave was forty feet from the narrow valley floor, reached by a narrow ledge.

Joe summed up their plan. “We’ll try to dicker with these jokers, but if they won’t listen we better be ready. It’s no use running. This is as good a place as we’ll find.”

During the two full days of preparation, Mary canceled all attempts at surprise weapons. She pointed up at the hovering boxes and said, “Whatever we do we’ll be watched.”

At the end of the second day there were six heavy bows. Stacey, pale and upset, displayed a remarkable talent for fashioning arrows. For the sake of speed the tips were fire-hardened. Joe had carried up the rocks. Howard Loomis had fashioned the spears, had made a sling, had traveled to the stream bed to gather small stones for the sling.

Water storage was a problem, unhappily solved by using the hides of the small deer-like creatures to fashion waterbags. Improper curing of the hides gave the water an evil smell, a worse taste.

The initial attack came on the third dawn.

Stacey was on watch at the cave mouth near the embers of the dead fire. Her scream jolted the other three out of sleep.

There were four of them. They stood on the brow of the hill opposite the cliff face. They were a good hundred and fifty yards away, the sun silhouetting them.

Mary shaded her eyes and frowned. “A ham act,” she said. “A walk-on part. Spear-carriers. Something out of Shakespeare. J. Caesar, maybe.”

The four, even at that distance, looked trim and young. They wore the crested helmets of antiquity, carried oval shields, short swords, unscabbarded. The sun glinted off the silver of their shields, the naked blades, the breastplates, the metallic thongs binding their husky legs.

They merely stood and watched.

“Armor, yet,” Joe muttered. “What good are wooden arrows going to be?”

Stacey began to moan.

“Shut up, honey,” Mary said softly.

The four men advanced down the slope with cautious steps. As they reached the valley floor their tanned faces were upturned toward the face of the cliff. They wore short stout war axes suspended from their belts.

And above each of them floated a small metallic box.

They seemed wary but confident. Joe growled deep in his throat, backed into the shadow, notched one of the best arrows on the bowstring of the heaviest bow, pulled it back until his thumb touched his cheek, just under his right eye. His big arms trembled slightly with the strain.

He released the arrow. It sped down whizzing toward the biggest of the four. The man raised his shield with startled speed. The arrow penetrated halfway through the shield. The big man staggered back, lowering his shield. A thin line of blood ran down his cheek. He shouted something in a foreign tongue, a wide smile on his face. With a careless flick of his short sword, he lopped off the protruding arrow.

Howard shouted, his voice shrilled, “What do you want?”

The answer was in English, oddly accented. “To kill you!”

“He couldn’t have made it clearer,” Mary said.

“Come on and try,” Joe yelled.

The four, shields high, inched toward the narrow ledge that wound up to the wide place in front of the cave mouth.

“Let ’em get nearly up here,” Joe muttered.

They were so close that the shields overlapped, giving the impression of a vast metallic beetle crawling up the rock.

Joe selected a rock that had taken him much effort to lug up to the cave. His big arms corded with the effort as he lifted it, staying back out of sight. Mary peered over the edge.

She signaled to Joe. He held the rock over his head, stumbled as he came rushing forward.

It took him precious seconds to regain his balance.

The hundred-pound stone crashed down among them. A man yelled in pain as he was smashed against the ledge. Two men fell off, tumbling down into the brush.

But the lead man, the one with the punctured cheek, scrambled up the last ten feet, throwing aside his shield.

He stood enormous in front of the cave, his sword flashing, the war axe in his huge left hand. His mouth was open in a wide grin of battle. Joe charged him with one of the spears but the sword lopped off the spear, along with Joe’s first finger and thumb.

Joe fell back. Mary flattened against the inside wall of the cave, stooped and picked up a half pound rock. Her tomboy girlhood had left cunning in her muscles. The rock hit the broad forehead. The man dropped sword and axe, dropped to his knees, his eyes glazed.

Joe took two steps forward and kicked the man in the face. He went over backward, dropped out of sight.

Two of the attackers were uninjured. They had recovered their shields, which they used to protect the injured man who had been hit by the stone Joe dropped among them. They disappeared down the valley into the brush.

The dead giant lay at the foot of the cliff.

They rekindled a fire from the embers while Joe held his right wrist clamped with his strong left hand. With the heated sword blade, Mary seared the stumps of finger and thumb. Joe screamed like a woman. Stacey sat with the face of one slowly going mad. She rocked from side to side and smiled foolishly.

Joe went to the dark interior of the cave and immediately fell into a deep sleep. Howard paced restlessly. Mary sat and watched the valley floor.

In mid-afternoon of the short day, the two uninjured ones made a concerted rush, looped a vine over the foot of the one who had died and dragged him off into the brush. As they did so, one of them glanced up at Mary.

He was dark, lean, powerfully built. But she noticed that there was a contradiction in his face. It had a specific sensibility, sensitivity. He had the look of a man who detested what he was doing.

Long after he had disappeared, she thought about him.

When Bannot, the Ninth Emperor Kane, ordered the court scientists to bring worthy foes from past eras, he had not sufficient training to realize, that his request violated the first rule of space travel. Were any man to be taken from a past era the fact of his disappearance would make appreciable change in the future. As the future had already been determined, any effort to alter the past by removing a specific living being would be doomed to failure.

But the court scientists knew that to fail meant death. Their researches carried them far afield. Many of them died painfully when the promises they made to Bannot were not fulfilled within the time interval allotted.

Court secrecy was such that posterity will never know which man it was who first brought a living being from a past era to his own time. His method was dependent upon scanning the person at the moment of death, thus assuring that there would be no specific effect on the past. The lateral movement in time of the person thus transported caused an actual physical split, so that the lifeless duplication of the body remained in the past world.

When the method was first disclosed there was an outcry from the philosophers and from the church, though both institutions had been carefully emasculated by the Kanes.

Bannot, in the week before his death, handled the outcry in typical fashion. He not only ordered the assassination of the more outspoken but explained to the peoples of all planets, in tones of sweet reasonableness, that these persons were not living, even though they seemed to be alive, as they had actually died in times long gone.

When Bannot felt death upon him he ordered the same technique to be used on him after his death, to return a few days to the past and bring him into a new life.

But Bannot died of an exceedingly painful disease, the result of past dissipations. His eldest son, who hated him, found that Bannot could be brought back, only to die again, in agony, within hours.

His eldest son extended those hours into a full year before at last tiring of the game and taking over the golden throne.

Ibid

Chapter V

Battle-Ax Berserk

At dawn the next day, four attackers stood as before on the brow of the opposite hill.

Joe, his right arm badly swollen, laughed mirthlessly. “We kill one and cripple one and there’s still four. A nice game they have.”

“That’s what it is, Joe,” Mary said flatly. “A game. People who can make those little boxes that follow you around could do better than swords. This is like the old Roman amphitheatre. Those guys are gladiators. It’s a big game with the boxes watching. Maybe the boxes flash the battle on screens. Home movies for the public. Hired entertainers.”

Stacey had grown worse during the night. She sat with the empty smile on her lips and her eyes were far away.

Howard said, licking his lips, “Mary, do you think they could have…”

“For my money, yes. They want fun, so they grab us somehow just as we get knocked off and here we are and they have their fun.”

“It… it’s horrible!” Howard said.

“It ain’t pretty,” Mary agreed.

Howard said, “Why don’t we just... well... hold our hands up. If we don’t give them any sport, maybe they’ll—”

“A lot I can do with one hand,” Joe said. “Maybe it’s worth a try.”

Mary stood up, her lips compressed. “No dice, boys. These kids are bloodthirsty. I think they’d like to cut our throats. Why give them the brass ring?”

“What makes you so sure you’re right, Callahan?” Howard asked.

“Take a look,” she said tersely.

The four were advancing across the valley floor as cautiously as their predecessors. Mary looked closely. No, two of them were the same as the day before — the uninjured two, including the dark one with the look of disgust in his eyes.

There was nothing reassuring about their advance.

Howard said, “I still think it’s—”

With a shrill scream Stacey bounded to her feet, shouldering between Mary and Howard. Though she had always been careful on the ledge she ran down at reckless speed. Mary picked herself up off the floor.

“Stacey!” Howard called after her. “Stacey, darling!”

He started to go after her. Joe caught him, held him, said, “Shut up and we’ll see if your plan works. You couldn’t catch her in time anyway.”

They stood and watched the blond girl. This Stacey Murdock was grotesquely changed from the girl who had demanded that they get in touch with Daddy.

Her tan skin was scratched and torn, her hair dirty, her feet scarred by the rocks. She ran toward the four men, her hands outstretched. They heard her panting voice, her incoherent pleading. The lead man dropped sword and shield. Stacey ran to him. Mary saw the dark man make a move toward the lead man as though to object. But it was too late.

As Stacey ran toward the man’s arms he sidestepped her. As she ran by him he caught her blond hair, yanked her backward off her feet. She fell with the small of her back across his bent knee. With one arm across her throat, the other across her hips, he snapped her back like a brittle stick.

He stood up and Mary could see the look of revulsion on his face as though he had disliked touching her. Stacey lay grotesquely bent. The man nudged her with his foot and the four of them looked up at the cave mouth.

Howard Loomis gave an incoherent yell, grabbed the battle axe from the floor and was gone before either Mary or Joe could stop him.

Still yelling in rage and the lust to kill, Howard Loomis, ex-salesman of Briskies, charged the four helmeted warriors.

Mary’s throat tightened at the sight of his hopeless bravery.

By the pure fury of his attack he drove the two men back into their companions.

The slashing axe bounced off shield, rang off helmet, a bright arc in the morning light.

Three men dropped back. One of them faced Howard, parried his blows, waiting for the inevitable pause when Howard grew armweary.

With the short sword, as Howard’s axe sagged, he spitted him carefully through the middle, twisting the wide blade to let air into the wound.

Howard fell onto his face, toppled over onto his side. The swordsman looked triumphantly up at the cave mouth. As he did so, Howard, with one last convulsive effort of the axe he still clutched, hacked at the swordsman’s leg as one would hack at a tree. The axe severed muscle and tendon and artery.

“Good boy!” Joe whispered.

They staunched the flow of blood and one of them helped the injured man down the valley. The remaining two, the dark one and another one, stared up at the cave.

“They’ll wait for their pal,” Joe said.

“No. This thing seems to be run by rules. I say that if there are two of us left they’ll only toss in two of them.”

The two warriors moved cautiously toward the ledge, their shields high, their swords held tightly.

In the beginning a vast planet called Thor was earmarked and set aside for the wars between the soldiers of Kane and the soldiers of the past.

In the beginning there was difficulty in selecting the proper period of the past. To go too far back resulted in poor warfare. To go too short a distance into the past, was dangerous. At last it was decided that the savages of the twentieth century were the best. They had the beginnings of a technology and they yet retained much animal cunning.

In the beginning of this mock warfare the soldiers of Kane used the most modem of weapons and the opponents were annihilated so rapidly that the technicians were hard pressed to maintain the supply of combatants.

Also, with such vast armies on Thor, when the available weapons were equalized the loss among the soldiery of Kane was too great. In addition the images of the conflict beamed to all planets were vast, dusty, confusing.

The great-grandson of Bannot, bored with this type of conflict, devised new rules. He changed the scene of the conflict from Thor to Lassa. Lassa was a lush Earth-size planet, circling the bright sun Delta Virginis.

He ordered the manufacture of small individual scanners. He ordered brought from the past young healthy persons of both sexes, savages who could be expected to adjust to the wild conditions of Lassa and put up respectable battle.

In addition his propagandists inculcated a horror of the savages in the minds of those selected to oppose them.

In the beginning, because billions sat entranced before the screens watching the combat, there was intense rivalry among the young men to be selected as they hoped thus to gain fame.

But Orn, the great-grandson of Bannot, was shrewd enough to realize that he could kill two birds with one stone by making combat with the savages a necessary stepping stone to rank and authority within his elite corps of space warriors.

In this manner he assured his forces of constant supply of bold officer material as hand to hand combat, obsolete for two thousand years, was a screen to sieve out the faint of heart.

It was discovered that, by arming his warriors with short broadsword, shield and battle axe, the thrill of the combat was intensified in close quarters.

And Orn was sufficiently wise to know that the periodic spectacles served to keep reasonably content a mass of humans who otherwise might think of the personal liberty which they lacked, of the restrictions of life under dictatorship.

Ibid

Chapter VI

No Stage

As dusk came, as the last attempt ceased, Joe laid on his back on the sandy floor of the cave, completely exhausted.

Mary Callahan stared down into the valley, watched the shadows slowly mask the two bodies remaining.

During the bitter afternoon, during the silent combat, neither side had been able to gain any decisive edge.

The crucial moment had come when the dark-haired warrior had, for a moment, gained the flat place in front of the cave. A blow from the club held in Joe’s right hand had knocked his sword spinning into the valley. The warrior had left his axe behind so as to simplify the ascent.

He had blocked Joe’s further blows with the shield, had beat an orderly retreat back down the ledge.

Joe sighed, inched over to the sagging water-bag, drank deeply.

Mary said ruefully, “Paging DeMille. Only his makeup was never this good.”

Joe grunted. He said, “Always with the jokes, eh?”

“Either that or start screaming, laddie. Which’ll you have?”

He didn’t answer. She looked around, said, “Our best gadget was the rocks. And we’re down to three good-sized ones. Can you help me or do I go down and see if I can bring up a few lady-sized ones.”

Joe said, his voice oddly high, “Damn you, Johnny! You promised me that five bucks!”

Mary went over to him. She knelt and put the back of her hand against Joe’s forehead. It was like fire. She got some of the fetid water, tore a new strip from the hem of her dress and began to bathe his face.

Joe moaned, rolled from side to side and talked incessantly. At last he went to sleep. Mary suddenly realized that the last of the carefully guarded store of matches was gone and in the heat of combat they had let the last embers die.

The stars shone with hard brilliance. She sat in the cave mouth. For a time she sang softly to herself because it was good to hear the lift of a song. In the starlight she felt her way down the ledge, struggled painfully back up with stones. Four trips was all that she could manage.

And then she talked aloud to herself. She told herself that it was a stupid and empty thing she was doing, to resist. The second death might come as quickly as the first. But she felt the hard core of her courage, the will that would not give up. And she knew a sardonic amusement.

She gnawed on the strips of hard smoked meat until her hunger was gone. Joe shivered in his comatose state, his teeth chattering.

She lay down beside him, warming his body with hers, at last drifting off to uneasy sleep.

The shadow in front of the morning sun awakened her. Even as she rolled to her feet, backed slowly to the cave wall, she knew that she had been fighting to remain asleep, squinting her eyes against the sun.

It was the dark-haired one.

He walked lightly toward her on the balls of his feet. At first he was in silhouette and then he turned so that she could see his face where the light struck it, see the lip lifted away from white teeth.

He lifted the sword, his right arm held in front of his body for a backhand slash.

Mary Callahan lifted her chin, smiled at him and said softly, “A quick one right across this swanlike neck, honey-bun. A real quick one.”

The web of muscles stood out on his bronzed forearm. Dawn light shone on the crest of the helmet.

She shut her eyes and waited. But the slashing blow did not come. She heard the thud, the grunt of effort and opened her eyes to see the dark-haired one drop like a log.

Joe stood on his feet, the wildness gone from his eyes. He held the club in his left hand. The swelling had begun to leave his right arm.

He said, “He was a soft one, Mary. He couldn’t quite do it. And while he was making up his mind I got him.”

Joe dropped the club, picked up the sword, wedged his toe under the fallen one’s shoulder, rolled him over and aimed the point of the sword at the unprotected throat for a downward thrust.

“No!” Mary shouted. “Don’t do it, Joe.”

He gave her an odd look. “Why not?”

“Because… well, maybe we can use him for a hostage.”

The fallen man stirred. Joe shrugged, kicked him on the angle of the jaw, while Mary cut two strips from the empty water bag, tied the man’s wrists tightly, then his ankles.

As she finished his ankles, the man opened his eyes and stared calmly at her. Joe once again pressed the tip of the sword to the man’s throat. He looked as calmly up at Joe. The keen tip punctured the skin and a tiny rivulet of blood flowed down into the hollow of his strong throat.

Joe cursed. “I could have done it before, Mary, but I can’t do it with him looking at me.”

Mary pushed the blade away with the flat of her hand.

“Go watch for the other one,” she said.

Joe stalked to the mouth of the cave, muttering. She turned and glanced up at the two silver boxes which floated, motionless, a few inches from the high roof of the cave.

She smiled up at the lenses and said, “How do you like this, fight fans?”

Shawn, son of Orn, carried on the conflicts as devised by his father, ordering the technicians to make minor improvements.

But Shawn was wearied by the difficulties of administration of the greatest Empire the universe had ever seen.

With the passage of the years, as the blood of the Kanes thinned, unrest had spread throughout the four hundred and eleven colonies and throughout Mother Earth. This unrest was based primarily on the accelerating reduction of the birth rate.

Colonies which once had numbered in the hundreds of millions had shrunk to half their original number. Shawn had kept the court scientists hard at work on the problem but they spoke to him of the tiring germ plasm, of the diminishing vitality of the race. They at last convinced him that the race of man had passed the crest of vitality and was doomed to gradual reduction in numbers until at last, when all vitality was gone, the weeds and the rot would take over the works of man.

When Shawn at last believed the word of his court scientists, when he knew that the Empire would eventually fall with the race, he embarked on a course of personal extravagance, of dissipation, that exceeded anything previously known during the reign of the line of Kane.

His subjects became increasingly discontented, the malcontent spreading even to the officers of his elite corps of warriors of space.

The flames smouldered deep underground and various secret societies were formed, each pledged to overthrow the empire. Such was the efficacy of the espionage system of the house of Kane that these societies were, for the most part, ignorant of the existence of the others and consequently each underestimated the total power of the spirit of rebellion.

In line with the spirit of malcontent, all decent men wearied of the spectacle of combat, feeling in their hearts that the bitter little battles on Lassa were but an evidence of the harshness of their ruler.

When Shawn found that his billions of subjects were not being entertained by the battles on Lassa, he cleverly recreated their interest by using Lassa as punishment for those he suspected of insubordination, of desiring to overthrow his empire.

He was not so foolish as to send only the rebels against the savages — against the savage dead, as they were called — but carefully kept the proportion down to three loyal and ambitious young officers to one rebel.

There was one minor difference. Once an officer was victorious on Lassa, he was free to rejoin the fleet. But a rebel was condemned to remain until he at last was killed by one of the savages.

What Shawn did not realize was that his subjects, more than sated with the sight of death, had begun to be sympathetic toward the savages and had lost most of the superstitious horror and fear which was the result of the propaganda of his infamous ancestor.

Shawn was careful to see that loyal technicians handled the individual scanners so that, should any condemned rebel attempt to shout his defiance to the listening universe, he would be quickly taken off the receivers of the world.

But Shawn made one mistake. He misjudged the loyalty of one scanner operator, or possibly the operator of the scanner was loyal until he saw what happened in the case of the ex-officer, Anthon.

Or it can be argued that the Empire was in so precarious a state that any incident would have been sufficient.

Ibid

Chapter VII

Final Gesture

The strands of hide cut deeply into his wrists and ankles and Anthon wondered at the strength of the savage woman who had tied him.

He knew that he was close to the end of his life and felt nothing but fury that his life should have ended in such a meaningless fashion. He would have willingly died in striking one more blow against the rule of the infamous Shawn.

These four savages had fought bravely. At least two of them had.

In the beginning, when he had been searched, when they had found on him the sketch of the castle defences, when he had been condemned to Lassa to fight against savages until he at last was killed, he had thought it best that to go into combat with the idea of being sufficiently clumsy so that death would come easily.

He knew that it would pain his friends, his relatives and those who had plotted with him against Shawn to see his death on the screen, but it had seemed worth the candle to spite Shawn’s plan for him to provide sport and entertainment.

Thus, during the training period, he had made no special effort to become adept with sword and axe as had the loyal officers, who looked upon Lassa not as punishment but as a field where they could gain fame.

He had nothing but contempt for those officers who put personal gain above the needs of the race, above the spirit of rebellion. But Anthon was human — he was a victim of hope — and he found that he did not wish to die so pointlessly.

Possibly, if he remained alive for a sufficiently long period, the Empire would be overthrown and he would be free to help build a new world for mankind. Anthon was a sensitive and intelligent man. He recognized the basic weakness of his stand, and the forlorn slimness of his hope. And now the last of his hope was gone.

Incomprehensibly the girl had saved him from his own sword, held in the uninjured hand of the huge sunburned savage. Basically it was his own fault. Had he been able to steel himself to cut the throat of the woman with one back-handed slash he could then have disposed of the man.

He wondered ironically if the savage woman had saved him from the sword thrust out of some desire to repay him for not being able to strike the blow that would kill her. Surely, when Kor attacked, either the girl or the man would have one free moment in which to kill their bound captive before they died.

He pitied the two of them. They had been brought from their own world of the past to fight vainly against force that would eventually quell them. The girl knelt beside him and, with a bit of cloth, wiped away the blood at the base of his throat. Her eyes were as gentle as her touch.

Anthon wondered at the odd feeling of warmth within him. It had first occurred when he had seen her, standing with the smaller one with the yellow hair. He had not liked the death of the smaller one. He had wanted to interpose himself, to save her, but his resolve had come too late.

And the smaller man had died like a warrior, crippled a strong man even as he died.

He looked up into the blue eyes of the woman in the ragged dark red dress and something in her look was like a note of strange music. He smiled as he thought of the absurdity of feeling affection — even love — for one of the savage dead.

Yet, philosophically speaking, was she dead? She could feel pain and cold and fear. Her touch was gentle. Yes, this was a far different sort of being than the lean, rather astringent women of his own class. This savage one had a deep, lusty strength about her. And she was incredibly brave. She had smiled and when she had asked for death the meaning was clear.

He had but few words of her archaic tongue. He said, “Why not kill?”

“Why it speaks busted English,” Mary said. “Why not kill you? Look, pretty boy. I want to live. Mary wants to live. Understand? How can I do that?”

“Mary,” he said, rolling the name softly on his lips.

“That’s right. Mary. Who are you?”

“Anthon. You will die.”

“You say the nicest things, Tony. But you didn’t say that fiercely now, did you? You said it like you didn’t care for the idea very much but it was inevitable.”

“No understand,” he said and he wanted her to take some more. He wanted very much to hear the sound of her voice.

“You’re the soft one of the group, aren’t you? The only one that doesn’t seem to get a crazy joy out of killing off the innocent.”

With his few words it was hard to tell her what he wanted to say. “If another way. If not die. Mary and Anthon.”

Her laugh was husky silver. “Bless him! I get it, Tony. If not die maybe you’re right. I like the look of you, lad.”

She stood up quickly as Joe shouted hoarsely. The other warrior stood in the mouth of the cave. Anthon saw the dangling end of vine and knew how the man had been outwitted by Kor.

Kor was between the savage man and the mouth of the cave. The man had no chance. The man fought bravely with his club, but Kor parried the blow, slashed the man across the face. The man, his face spurting blood staggered back.

With another slash of the sword Kor disemboweled him and the man toppled slowly over, fell out of sight. Anthon heard the crash as the man struck the floor of the valley below the cave mouth.

The girl, holding the crude spear rushed at Kor, trying to prod him over the edge. Anthon found himself wishing that she would be successful, wishing it so hard that his teeth almost met in his lower lip.

Kor twisted away from the thrust.

Anthon saw the ready blade and he screamed, “No! Don’t—”

His scream faded into a sob. The girl with the dark hair lay face down on the cave floor, coughed once and then was still.

Kor came smiling forward and said, “Rebel, you live to try your luck again. Why they kept you alive I’ll never know.”

With a flick of the sword blade he severed the thongs that bound Anthon. Anthon moved as though in a dream. He waited a moment until feeling came back to his numbed hands. He reached for his own sword, came up off the floor with a roar of rage, with inhuman strength born of fury.

The startled Kor parried the first blow but the second caught him at the angle of neck and shoulder. The blade severed bone. Kor dropped with the blade still in him.

Still blind with anger, Anthon spread his arms wide, looked up at the silver box above him and said, “Would that it was Shawn who received that blow. Shawn and every one of his assassins and his thieves and the criminals who surround him.

“It is time that we are done with Shawn and his brood. It is time that we were free. It is time for every man of courage to stand upright and fight off oppression. We are not as free as these poor savages who die on Lassa.”

And then Anthon realized that with his first words the scanner would have been turned off, that he spoke only to the empty cave of death. He walked two heavy paces, sank on his knees beside the body of the girl and began to sob hoarsely.

History records that the technician operating the scanner turned and fought with hare hands against the supervisor who would have turned it off. By the time the technician was killed, the damage was done.

No battle cry was ever broadcast so instantaneously to all parts of a vast empire.

Everyone had misjudged the strength of the forces of rebellion.

Entire space cruisers, almost to a man, revolted against Shawn. Those who remained loyal died suddenly. The rays of destruction crackled and spat and the air of many planets hummed with the blue fury of released power.

It is recorded that seven hundred millions died in that bloodbath. Shawn and his court died when the Palace of the Kanes became a wide pool of rock and molten metal which bubbled for many months like the crater of a somnolent volcano.

Earth, the mother of the race, was made the home of the new democratic government of the universe.

The organization of government, which has persisted to this day, was the Council of Seven. Anthon, as the man who sparked the rebellion, as the hero of billions, was elected to the original council, was immediately voted Chairman by the other six, who, it seemed, had been the leaders of the unintegrated groups seeking to overthrow Shawn.

For many months after he took over the Chairmanship Anthon was lethargic and depressed. He seemed to be a sick man. Many problems needed solution and there was talk for a time that Anthon, though a hero and a legend during his own lifetime, lacked the administrative ability to discharge properly his responsibilities.

We know, from the diary kept by Calitherous, that it was during a Council discussion of the greatest problem facing the race, that of the regression of procreative powers of the race, that Anthon came alive once more.

He whispered something so softly that no man could make out his words. Then, with eyes that flashed fire, he disbanded the meeting.

His manner was such that no man opposed him.

Anthon was closeted with his scientists for many weeks. One of the peculiarities of that period was the way he occupied himself during every free moment with the acquiring of skill in one of the archaic tongues.

Ibid

Chapter VIII

Re-Run

Howard Loomis spun as he heard a woman cough.

She was a tall girl in a wine evening dress. Her blue eyes were wide with fear and she stood, her hands at her throat. She looked at something in the air in front of her which did not exist.

“Rick!” she gasped.

Howard Loomis began to laugh. He couldn’t control it. He staggered to the side of the vast luxurious room, furnished in a manner so strange as to give it the appearance of a dream, and laughed until the tears dripped ridiculously from the end of his sharp nose.

“Too… too much,” he gasped. “Now bring on the golden harps.”

“Who are you calling a harp?” the girl snapped.

The sound of her angry voice brought him out of it. He stared at her in silence. “Where is this place? Who are you?”

“Those are my lines, mister.”

“Is your name Mary?” Howard asked. “If so, there’s a guy here who—”

There was no need to finish the statement. The young man with the air of authority, with the golden toga that left his bronzed left shoulder bare, pushed by Howard Loomis and advanced toward Mary Callahan.

In his odd English, he said, “Mary, you are more beautiful than before.”

“Than before what, friend?”

Anthon took her hands in his. His eyes were warm. “There is much to tell you. There is much that you do not understand.”

“That, chum, is a perfect understatement.”

“All I have time to tell you right now, Mary, is that this is a world thousands of years ahead of yours. You were brought her once before. I met you then. Others will come after you. I promise you a full and rich life at my side. You and those like you are the hope of this world, Mary. Through you we will gain the strength and vigor of times long past.”

Mary Callahan tilted her head on one side. “Brother,” she said, “I’ve been propositioned before but this is the first time I ever heard this line.”

“Line?” he said. “All you have to do is to believe me and trust me.”

She looked up into his eyes. She said, “Never let anybody say that Callahan doesn’t land on her feet.”

Anthon took her arm. He said, “Come with me. You must meet the Council. There are things I must explain to them. You can listen and I will translate for you and thus you will learn much.”

Mary let herself be led toward the vast doorway. As she passed Howard Loomis she winked broadly at him said in a stage whisper, “I don’t know what the deal is, chum, but something tells me I’m going to like it.”

Howard Loomis scratched his head, bewildered and frustrated, as he saw the tall girl, her fingertips on the arm of the oddly dignified young man, pass out through the enormous arched doorway into the sunlight.

Ten minutes later he was hastily wrapping his topcoat around a soaking-wet young lady with blond hair who, in spite of her irate tone, seemed badly in need of a competent man to look after her.

Any good salesman is resourceful.

Notes

1

Greek word meaning capable of throwing a shadow in either direction.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Amphiskios

Chapter I Four Are Chosen

Chapter II The Watching Boxes

Chapter III Harvest of Bones

Chapter IV They Come to Kill

Chapter V Battle-Ax Berserk

Chapter VI No Stage

Chapter VII Final Gesture

Chapter VIII Re-Run

Notes