The Crack In Space (12 page)

Poor Cally, Tito thought. Stuck over there, supposedly in safety. What a surprise it must have been, when one of those wooden gliders came sailing past, one day.

It must have been quite a meeting.

ELEVEN

Seated in the back of the jet-hopper as it made its return flight across the Atlantic, the Peking man in his blue cloth cap and toga-like robe declared, ‘My name is Bill Smith.’ At least, that was the way the TD linguistics machine handled the utterance. It was the best the circuits could do.

Bill Smith, Sal Heim thought. What an appropriate name the machine’s given it! As American as apple pie. He miserably inspected his wristwatch, for the tenth time. Aren’t we ever going to get back across this ocean? he wondered. It did not seem so. Time, for him, stood motionless, and he knew who to blame; it was Bill Smith’s fault. Riding with him in the ‘hopper was for Sal Heim a nightmare, yet totally and completely lucidly real.

‘Hello, Bill Smith,’ Dillingsworth was saying into the mike, now. ‘We are glad to know you. We admire your science and efforts as represented by your roads, houses, gliders, ships, motor and clothing. In fact, wherever we look, we see indications of your people’s ability.’

The linguistics machine produced a hubbub of grunts, squeals and yips, to which the Peking man listened with slack-jawed intensity; his small, brow-overlain eyes glazed with the effort of paying attention. With a groan, Sal Heim turned away and looked out the ‘hopper window instead.

And to think I handed in my resignation over a little matter like the disagreement about George Walt, he reflected. What was that compared with this?

To Jim Briskin, seated beside him, Sal said bitingly, ‘I’m certainly going to be interested to hear your next speech. Got any idea what you’re going to say, Jim? For instance, about the emigration situation as regards this new development.’ He waited, but Jim did not answer; hunched over, Jim somberly scrutinized his interlocked fingers. ‘Maybe you could say it’s going to be like the Mason-Dixon Line,’ Sal continued. ‘With them on one side and us on the other. Of course, that’s if these Pekes agree. And they might just not.’

‘Why should they agree?’ Jim said.

‘Well, we could offer them the alternative of total annihilation, if Bill Schwarz can see his way clear in that direction.’

‘That’s out of the question,’ Jim said. ‘And I know Schwarz would back me up. They’ve got just as much right to exist as we, especially over here. You know it and I know it and they know it.’

‘Is that what you’re going to say in your speech? That it’s their planet—just after having promised that all the bibs can cross over and become farmers?’

Slowly, Jim said, ‘I’m  . . . beginning to see what you mean.’ His lean face twisted wrathfully. ‘Advise me, then. Do your job.’

‘This planet,’ Sal said, ‘will still be able to absorb seventy million bibs. They can fit in on the North American landmass. But there’s going to be friction. People—and those deformed things—are going to get killed. It’s going to be roughly a reenactment of the situation when the first white colonists landed in the New World. You see? The Pekes in North America will be driven back, step by step, until the continent is cleared of them; they might as well resign themselves to that, and you might as well, too. I mean, it’s inevitable.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then the trouble—the real trouble—comes. Because sooner or later it’s going to occur to some group or some corporation that if we can use North America, we can use Europe and Asia as well. And then the fight that was fought out on both worlds fifty or a hundred thousand years ago is going to take place again, only not with flint hatchets. It’ll be with tactical A-bombs and nerve gas and lasers, on our side, and on their side . . .’ He paused, ruminating. ‘  . . . with whatever they took out the QB satellite by. Who knows? Maybe in a million and a half years they’ve managed to stumble over and come up with a source of power we have no knowledge of. Something that’s beyond our conception. Had you thought of that?’

Jim shrugged.

‘And if we press them far enough,’ Sal said, ‘they’ll have to use it on us. They’d have no choice.’

‘We can always slam down the door. Close down the nexus by turning off the power supply of the ‘scuttler.’

‘But by that time there’ll be seventy million colonists over there. Can we strand them?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then don’t talk about "slamming the door down". That’s not going to be the answer. The moment the first bib passes over, that’s out.’ Sal pondered. ‘That Bill Smith, back there; for him this is like a ride in a flying saucer would be for one of us. Think what he can tell his playmates when he gets back home. If he ever does.’

‘What’s a flying saucer?’

Sal said, ‘Back in the twentieth century a number of people claimed  . . .’

‘I remember,’ Jim nodded.

‘If you were president already,’ Sal said, ‘if you held formal authority, you could meet with some enormous dignitary from their world, assuming they have a government of some kind. But right now you’re just a private individual; you can’t bind this country to anything. And Schwarz, if history repeats itself, won’t do a damn thing because he knows he’ll soon be out of office. He’ll leave it to be dumped in your lap. And by January it’ll probably be too late to settle this peacefully.’

‘Phil Danville,’ Jim said, ‘can write me a speech that’ll capture this situation and explain it.’

Sal guffawed. ‘Like hell he can. Nobody is going to be able to capture this situation, especially an intellectual simp like Phil Danville. But let him try. Let’s see what Danville can come up with.’ Say by tomorrow night, Sal thought. Or the day after, at the very latest.

From his pocket he brought out the itinerary, unfolded it carefully and began to study it.

‘I have to speak in Cleveland,’ Jim said. ‘Tonight.’

In the back of the ‘hopper, the Peking man Bill Smith, by means of the linguistics equipment, was saying, ‘ . . . metal is evil. It belongs inside the Earth with the dead. It is part of the once-was, where everything goes when its time is over.’

‘Philosophy,’ Sal said in disgust. ‘Listen to him.’ He jerked his head.

‘And that’s why you don’t build with it?’ Dillingsworth asked, speaking into the mike of the machine.

‘We have areas we avoid,’ Jim said to Sal. ‘You’d think twice before making a human skull into a drinking cup and using it every day.’

‘Is that what Pekes do?’ Sal said, horrified.

‘I believe I read that somewhere about them,’ Jim said. ‘At least their ancestors did. The practice may have disappeared by now.’ He added, ‘They were cannibals.’

‘Great,’ Sal said and resumed studying the itinerary. ‘That’s just what we need to win the election.’

‘Schwarz would have brought it out,’ Jim said, ‘eventually.’

Glancing out the ‘hopper window at the ocean below, Sal said, ‘I’ll be relieved to get out of here. And you won’t catch me emigrating. I’d rather do like your folks and give Mars a try, even if I wound up dying of thirst. At least I wouldn’t get eaten. And nobody would use my skull for a drinking cup.’ He felt severly depressed, meditating about that, and he did his best to reinvolve his attention in the itinerary.

How’s the first Negro President of the United States going to go about handling the presence of a planetful of dawn men who’ve proved themselves capable of constructing a fairly adequate civilization? Sal Heim asked himself. A race that, in theory, shouldn’t have been able to get past the flint-chipping stage. But after all, each of us started out chipping flint. What’s been proved here is that given time enough  . . .

I know I’m right, Sal thought. There isn’t a single legal basis on which these Pekes can be denied full rights under our laws—except, of course, that they’re not U.S. citizens.

Was that the only barrier? He had to laugh. What a way to stop an invasion of Earth: by denying the invaders citizenship.

But there was, sadly, a joker in that, too. Because U.S. citizens would be emigrating to this world, in which the jet-hopper now droned, and in this universe U.S. citizenship had no significance; the Pekes were here first and could prove prior residence. So it would be wise not to raise the issue of citizenship after all  . . .

What’ll we do, then, Sal asked himself, when our people and the Pekes begin to interbreed? Do you want your daughter to marry a Peke? he asked himself fiercely. Now the Ku Klux Klanners really have their job cut out for them.

It was potentially pretty nasty.

At the front door of Pethel Jiffi-scuttler Sales & Service, Stuart Hadley stood leaning on his autonomic broom, watching the people go past. With Dar Pethel gone today, a weight had been lifted from him; he could do what he pleased.

As he stood there mentally magnifying his new status by a few well-chosen daydreams, a slender red-haired shape, fullbosomed and young, all at once strolled up to him, her face stormy. ‘They’ve closed the satellite down,’ Sparky said, massive, defeated bitterness.

Awakened. Hadley said, ‘W-what?’

‘George Wait, that no-good crink, kicked us out this morning. It’s all over up there. I have absolutely no idea why. So I came right here to you. What’ll we do?’ With her toe she nudged a bit of rubbish from the sidewalk into the gutter, glumly.

He reacted. It was superb corto-thalamic response; he was all there. as alert as fine steel, The time had arrived for one of those unique, binding-type decisions which would shape everything to come. ‘You set out for the right place, Sparky,’ he informed her.

‘I know that, Stuart.’

‘We’ll emigrate.’ There it was, the decision.

She glanced sharply up. ‘How? Where? To Mars?’

‘I love you,’ Hadley announced to her. He had given it a great deal of thought. The hell with his wife Mary and his job—everything that made up his little routine life.

‘Thank you, Stuart,’ Sparky said. ‘I’m glad you do. But explain where you and I are going to go, for chrissakes, especially where they can’t find us.’

‘I’ve got contacts,’ Hadley said. ‘Believe me, have I got contacts! You know where I can put us?’ In a flash he had it all planned; it leaped fully formed, completed, into his busy brain. ‘Get set Sparky.’

‘I’m set.’ She eyed him.

‘Across. To that virgin world Jim Briskin talked about in his Chicago speech. I can actually—and I’m not kidding you—get us there.’

She was impressed. Her eyes grew large. ‘Gee.’

‘So go and pack your things,’ Hadley instructed her rapidly. ‘Give me your vidnumber at your conapt. As soon as I’ve got the details set up, I’ll call you and we’ll take off for Washington, D.C.’ He explained, ‘That’s where the nexus is, right now. At TD. That makes it awkward, naturally, but we can still do it.’

‘How’ll we live over there, Stuart?’

‘Let me handle that.’ He had worked it all out. It practically blinded him, it was so entire. ‘Get going—that damn law that forbids us to meet down here, we don’t want to get picked up before we can get away.’ And, in addition to the police, he also was thinking about Mary. Every now and then his wife dropped by the store. One glimpse of Sparky and it would be all over; he would be married the rest of his life, possibly two hundred more years. It was not much of a prospect.

On the inside of a match-folder Sparky wrote her vidnumber and gave it to him. He put it away reverently in his billfold and then resumed sweeping with the autonomic broom.

‘You’re sweeping?’ Sparky exclaimed. ‘I thought we were going to emigrate from Earth; isn’t that what you just now said?’

‘I’m waiting,’ Hadley explained patiently. ‘For my top-level contact. Nobody can cross over unless they’ve got someone they know placed up high, there, at TD. My contact’s got carte blanche at TD; he’s a wheel. But I have to wait for him to get back here.’ He explained, ‘He’s been at TD all day, on important business.’

‘Ding-aling,’ Sparky said, awed.

He gave her a swift, brief goodbye kiss and sent her off; her slim figure receded down the sidewalk and then was lost, for the time being, to sight. Hadley swept on, plotting in his mind the last, infinitely tiny details of his scheme. Everything—unfortunately—depended on Darius Pethel. I hope he shows up soon, Hadley said to himself. Before I jump clear out of my skin.

Two hours later, Darius Pethel appeared from the direction of the all day parking lot, his face gray. Mumbling, he passed by Hadley, who still stood out front, and vanished into the store.

Something was bothering Dar, Hadley realized. Bad time to prevail on him, but what choice did he have? He followed after Pethel and found him in the rear office, hanging up his coat.

Pethel said, ‘What a day. I wish I could tell you what we ran into over there, but I can’t. It’s classified; we all agreed. At least we got back here. That’s something.’ He began rolling up his sleeves and taking an initial look at the day’s mail on his desk.

‘You’ve really got those bigshots at TD over a barrel.’ Hadley said. ‘You could whip that ‘scutler out of there any time, so fast it’d make their heads swim. And then where’d they be? In fact I’d say you’re one of the most important persons in the universe, right now.’

Seated at his desk, Pethel eyed him sourly.

Huskily, Stuart Hadley said, ‘How about it, Dar?’

‘How about what?’

‘Set it up so I can go across.’

Pethel stared at him as if he were deranged, and repellently so. ‘Get out of here.’ He began tearing open his mail.

‘I mean it,’ Hadley said. ‘I’m in love, Dar. I’m leaving. You can get me—the two of us—out of here and across to the other side where we can start our lives over.’

‘First of all,’ Pethel said, ‘you don’t know what’s over there; you don’t have the slightest idea.’

‘I know what Jim Briskin said in his speech.’

‘Briskin, when he made that speech, hadn’t been over there either. Second, Mary would never . . .’

‘I don’t mean Mary,’ Hadley said. ‘I’m going with someone else, the first person I ever met who really understood and I could talk to instead of live out a fake role in front of. Sparky and I are going to be the first couple to emigrate and take up a new life in a virgin world half-way down the tube of that Jiffi-scuttler. Don’t try to talk me out of it; it’s impossible. Write out some sort of note that’ll get me into TD’s labs. We’re depending on you, Dar. Two human lives  . . .’