The Crack In Space (16 page)

Having ascended to surface-level, Stanley passed through the wide front entrance of the TD building, down the steps and onto the morning sidewalk, the busy downtown Washington street of people and ‘hoppers and jet’abs. The motion, the familiar, reassuring activity, made him feel better. This world, with its everyday sights, had not been blotted out, by any means; it remained solid, thoroughly substantial. As always.

He looked about for a jet’ab to take to his conapt.

Far off, at the comer of TD’s administration building, a figure hurriedly disappeared.

Who was that? Don Stanley asked himself. He halted, forbore hailing the jet’ab. I know him, and I don’t like him; it’s somebody who in a day long past reminds me of things almost too repellent to recall, a part of my life that’s dim, cut out, deliberately and for adequate reason forgotten. Mud, he thought. Yes, oddly enough, he thought. That man makes me think of mud and twisted plants, deranged organisms that burst poisonously and silently under a weak and utterly useless sun. Where is this? What have I been seeing?

What just happened now, a few minutes ago, back there on level one in TD’s labs? He felt confused; standing on the sidewalk among the passing people he rubbed his forehead wearily, trying to rouse his mind. The swiftly-moving figure of course had been George Walt, but hadn’t he—or rather they—closed down the Golden Door satellite and disappeared ? He had heard that on TV or read it in the homeopapes. He was positive of it.

George Walt must be back, Stanley decided. From wherever they went.

Once more, a little dazedly, he began searching for a jet’ab to take him home.

THIRTEEN

At the breakfast table in the small kitchen of his conapt, Jim Briskin ate, and at the same time he carefully read the morning edition of the homeopape, finding in it, as a kind of minor melody in the momentous fugue which was playing itself out in heroic style, one item almost lost within the account of the migration of men and women to alter-Earth.

The first couple to cross over, Art and Rachael Chaffy, had been Cols. And the second couple, Stuart and Mrs. Hadley, had been white. It was exactly the sort of neat and tidy detail which appeared to Jim Briskin’s sense of proportion, and he relaxed a little, enjoying his breakfast. Sal would be pleased by this, too, he realized. I’ll have to remember to mention it to him when I see him later on this morning.

President Schwarz missed something, he reflected, by not noticing this minuscule fact at the time it was occurring. Schwarz could have made an extra-special superior speech to the two couples, presenting them with large gaudy plastic keys to the alternate universe, disclosing to them that they’re a symbol of a new epic era in racial relations  . . . as arranged for, of course, by the State’s Rights Conservation Democratic Party in all its full and healthy glory. Some minion on Schwarz’ staff slipped up, there, and should be fired.

He turned on the TV, then, to see if there was any later news. Had TD’s engineering corps got the higher-yield power supply in operation yet, and if so, had the aperture been affected in the way anticipated? By now a lot more emigrants should have joined the Chaffys and the Hadleys there on the other side. He wondered if the Pithecanthropi-Sinanthropi people had taken notice already  . . . had the crucial Augenblick, as the Germans put it, arrived by now? While he had slept?

On the TV screen the image gathered, became stable and fixed. But it was not what he had expected. The image had a certain grainy texture, familiar to him; it was emanating from a satellite which was still too far away. The sound, too, was distorted. It would, of course, clear up as the satellite moved closer, if it was moving in this direction and not away. What was going on? What was this peculiar program, anyhow? He leaned toward the speaker, trying to untangle the garble of words.

The video image became clarified, then. It was a head, the mutual head of the mutants George Walt. Its mouth opened and it spoke. ‘I am king, now,’ George Walt declared. ‘I have at my disposal up here an entire army of what you’d like to think of as "near" men but which are actually—as you are about to find out and not from me—the legitimate tenants of this world and every other alternative Earth running parallel to us. You’d be surprised at the type of scientific discoveries which the Peking race—and I call them that merely as a means by which to identify them—have made over the centuries. They can, for instance, warp time and also space to suit their needs. They’ve tapped sources of energy unknown to you Homo sapiens. I have with me here in the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite the wisest and kindest philosopher from among their great people. Just a moment.’ George Walt’s head disappeared from the screen.

Merciful lord, Jim Briskin thought. He sat staring at the TV set, unable to take his eyes from it. George Walt are back, and they’re out of their mind.

That’s all we need, Jim said to himself. A crazy George Walt up there in their satellite, spinning around us. Now we’ve really got troubles.

His vidphone rang; automatically, he made his way over to answer it. ‘Not just now,’ he murmured. ‘Call me later; I’m busy—’

‘Don’t hang up.’ It was Tito Cravelli, sweating and agitated. ‘I see you’ve got your TV set on. He  . . . they have been broadcasting all morning, since about eight o’clock East Coast time. They’re going to bring that Peke sage back on again; this is a video tape, it’s running over and over again. Get a load of this so-called philosopher; you’ve never seen anything like it in your life. And then call me back.’ Tito hung up.

Jim Briskin numbly returned to the TV set to listen and watch.

‘I can walk through wood,’ the TV set was saying, but it was not George Walt, now. It was as Tito had said, a Peking man, Sinanthropus telecasting from the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. So George Walt  . . . now you’re in politics, Jim Briskin said to himself. And in a big way, too.

And we thought we were bad off before.

‘Not only can I walk through wood,’ the white-haired, massive-browed, enormous-chinned, ancient-looking Sinanthropus said, in reasonably good but somewhat mumbled English, ‘but I can make myself invisible. The god of air empowers me wherever I go. He fills the sails of life with his magic breath, capable of accomplishing all things. Poor, puny Homo sapiens creatures! How could you conceivably expect to infest our world, with the Wind God himself present?’

By the Wind God, Jim Briskin realized with a sickened, enervating start, was meant George Walt.

He had never before quite thought of them that way, but there it was.

Let’s see how President Schwarz decides to handle this, he said to himself. A Wind God in a satellite over our heads millions of fossil men straining to get at us. Darius Pethel can have his defective Jiffi-scuttler back; it’s time we got rid of it, and by the quickest route possible. But how did this ancient Sinanthropus so-called philosopher get across to our world? Didn’t anybody at TD notice his coming through?

They must have opened their own nexus, he decided. Either that or what he says is actually true; he can make himself invisible.

It was a gloomy prospect, having to wake up in the early morning and face this, to say the least.

And somebody has really lost this election now, he decided. Either Bill Schwarz or myself, depending on whom the electorate, in its understandable frenzy, decides to blame.

Going back to the kitchen table he seated himself and resumed eating his breakfast, now cold. As he mechanically ate, he pondered the chances of successfully shooting down the Golden Door satellite; surely that was the most likely next move for President Schwarz. After all, the exact position of the satellite at any given moment was known; it was—or had been until recently—printed on the entertainment page of every homeopape.

What I’m afraid of now, he realized, is that I’ll look out the window of my decently private conapt and see Peking man walking along the sidewalk, and not just one but many of them.

He decided not to look, just to be on the safe side. At least not for a while. Instead he concentrated on finishing his breakfast, tasteless as it had become. As trivial a task as it was, at least it was a familiar event; it helped restore his sense of the regularity of reality.

Turning from the TV set Sal Heim released his emotion in an explosion of words. ‘Call someone,’ he said to his wife. ‘Call Jim Briskin. Wait a minute; call Bill Schwarz at the White House—I’ll talk to him direct myself. This is a national emergency; anybody with half an eye can see that. Party loyalty is out, you can wipe your nose on it. Let me know as soon as you have Bill Schwarz on the line.’ He returned to watching the TV.

‘Not only can I walk through wood and across the surface of water,’ the great old Peking man on the screen was saying, ‘But I can annihilate time.’

Good grief, Sal thought. This is awful. They can do all kinds of things we can’t; they’re centuries ahead of us. Who around here that I know can annihilate time? No one. He groaned aloud.

Pat said hecticly, ‘I can’t reach President Schwarz. The lines are tied up. Everybody must be  . . .’

‘Of course they are,’ Sal said. ‘The authorities know what this means. It’s hopeless to try to get through to Schwarz. He’ll have to get on the TV himself and tell the nation that a state of war exists between us and these dawn men. Or is this stuff on all channels?’ Savagely, he turned the knob. The same image appeared on every other channel; the satellite was blanketing the airwaves. He was not surprised. I might have known, he said to himself with envenomed bitterness. Next we’ll be picking them up on the vidphone.

‘But more important than anything else,’ the white-haired Peking man on the TV screen was saying, ‘I can work exceeding wonderful, powerful magic. For I am a mighty magician; I can cause the stars to fall from the vault of the heavens and confusion to blind the eyes of all my foes. What do you respond to that, tiny Homo sapiens? You should have cogitated on that before you invested our world. Facilis descensus Averno. You see, through my use of supernatural forces, entirely unknown to your little race, I can speak in German.’

‘Latin,’ Sal murmured. ‘You damn fool dawn man; that’s Latin. So you don’t know everything. Get off the TV so President Schwarz can declare war.’ The image, however, remained.

Standing by his chair Patricia said, ‘I guess this finishes Jim at the polls.’

‘Didn’t I just now get through saying that party doesn’t count?’ He glared at her; Pat shrank back. ‘To cope with this we’ve got to think along entirely novel lines—everything is changed. I noticed one interesting thing. When George Walt were on they referred to us as "you Homo sapiens." Does that mean they’re not? My god, you can’t become a converted Sinanthropus; it’s not like a church. I really have to talk to someone about this besides you,’ he said scathingly to his wife. ‘Someone who can come up with answers.’

Pat said, ‘What about—’

‘Wait,’ He turned back to the TV screen. George Walt had once more appeared. ‘They look older,’ Sal said. ‘I can’t remember which of them is the artificial body. The one on right, as I recall. The real one has certainly done a good job of building it back, after we tore it to pieces.’ He chuckled. ‘We had them on the run, then. Our finest hour.’ Once more he became grim. ‘Too bad it’s not like that now.’

‘You know who I was going to suggest you call? Tito Cravelli. He always seems to be able to figure out what’s happening.’

‘Okay.’ He nodded absently. ‘Give me the phone; I’ll call Tito.’ He got to his feet, then. ‘No, I’ll get it myself. Why should you wait on me?’ At the vidphone he paused and turned toward her. ‘I’m sure it’s the one on the right. You know, I’ll bet at this moment everybody, including even Verne Engel and every last damn member of that rotten bunch CLEAN, would give his shirt if we could go back to, say, a month ago. To the way we were and the so-called "race problem" we had then. That’s who I ought to call: Verne Engel. You know what I’d say to him? "You stupid bastard, does what you’re fighting for look so real now? Skin pigment. What a laugh! Why not eye color? Too bad nobody ever thought of that. It cuts it a little finer, but basically it’s the same thing. Okay, Verne, you get out there and die over the issue of upholding one certain eye color. Lots of luck." ‘ Picking up the vidphone he dialed.

Pat said, ‘What color eyes do Peking men have?’

Glaring at her Sal said, ‘Christ, how would I know?’

‘I just wondered. I never thought of it before.’

‘Hello, Tito?’ Sal said, as the vidscreen lighted. ‘Get us out of this,’ Sal said. ‘Find where they’re getting through into our world and plug it up, an then we’ll figure out how to knock down the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. You agree? Tito, say something.’

‘I know where they’re getting through,’ Tito said, laconically.

Sal turned to his wife. ‘You were right. He does know.’ He turned back to the vidscreen. ‘Well, what do we do? How do we . . .’

‘We make a deal,’ Tito Cravelli said in a harsh, totally dry voice.

Staring at him Sal said, ‘We what? I don’t believe it.’

‘And we’ll be lucky if we can manage that,’ Tito added. ‘There are a few things you don’t know, Sal. This attack on us by the Pekes is coming out of a hundred years in the future. George Walt have had an entire century to work with them, filling in the gaps in their culture, teaching them as many of our techniques as they could cram into them in that time  . . . and it’s a very long time. Don’t ask me how I found this out; just take my word that it’s the case. The nexus that they’re using is at TD, but we can’t close it; they’re supplying it with power from the other side, a possibility which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone at TD until it was too late. In other words, until now.’

‘What kind of deal?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m seeing Jim Briskin in a few moments; we’re going to try to think of something we can offer them—offer George Walt actually, since they’re doing the talking. As I see it, the Pekes don’t actually need to expand into our world; they haven’t even filled up their own. They have no pressing population problem, as we have. So there may be something they want and can use more than mere land. Because that’s all they’re going to find if they try to come over here. I know damn well our people will put up a fight until there’s nothing left standing. It’ll be a scorched-earth planet  . . . we can promise them that. As a starter.’

Turning to Pat, Sal said, ‘We’re going to make a deal; there’s no other way out.’

‘I heard,’ she said. ‘I wish I hadn’t; I didn’t want to hear that.’

‘Isn’t that something? Our ancestors didn’t make a deal. They wiped the Pekes out.’

‘But now,’ Pat said, ‘they have George Walt.

He nodded. Evidently that made the difference. But he had a terrible feeling that Tito Cravelli was wrong as to the quantity of techniques that George Walt had passed on to the Pekes. His intuition was that the transfer of knowledge had gone the other way: it had been the Pekes who had educated George Walt.

Jim Briskin said half-ironically, ‘We can offer them the Encyclopedia Britannica, translated into their language.’ If they have a written language, he added to himself. Or if George Walt haven’t given them that already. ‘Maybe George Walt have passed them everything they’ll ever need,’ he said to Tito Cravelli, who sat moodily facing him across the room. ‘I’d assume that during the next century George Walt probably have gone back and forth continually.’ He could picture it, and it was not encouraging.

‘Who can we ask for help from?’ Sal Heim said, to no one in particular. ‘Call God.’ His wife patted his arm, sympathetically. ‘Don’t do that,’ Sal complained. ‘It distracts me. In the name of something-or-other there must be somebody we can turn to.’