The Long Twilight (45 page)

"What you're doing," he said over the roar of fire, "is dangerous. Far too dangerous to be tolerated. I've told you—"

"Uh-huh, you told me," I said. "Who are you, Diss? What team do you play on?"

The shadows danced on his face as the fire burned itself out. "That's a matter of no concern to you," he said in the sharp tone of one who wants to stop a line of argument before it gets started. "You're a petty creature, involved in great affairs. Out of compassion, I've offered you guidance; ignore it at your peril!"

"The next line is, you're giving me one more chance, right, Diss? What if I turn you down?"

"Don't be an utter fool, Florin! Go back to where you belong and destroy the apparatus that's precipitated you into your present difficulties."

"Why should I? Just for the sake of your little red eyes?"

"You owe me a debt, Florin! They thrust you into their machine as a guinea pig, a puppet, responsive to their wishes. How do you suppose it was that you threw off their control? By your own unaided efforts?" He smiled his contempt at the thought. "Do you have a lottery ticket in your pocket, dear fellow? No matter—I know you do. I planted it there, I believe the expression is. In actuality it's an extraordinarily complex printed circuit, keyed to your control rhythms. I gave it to you to help you regain your freedom of action so that I could deal with you as an equal. So you see, you owe me something, eh?"

"You'll have to spell it out better than that, Diss. I'm just a small-town boy, remember? Or so you've been telling me."

Diss made an exasperated gesture. "By sheer good luck you have it in your power to preserve your world's innocence, hopefully until a time in the far future when you'll be capable of a confrontation with the Galactic Power! Don't throw that chance away out of some misguided sense of pique, some atavistic simian curiosity—"

"You know too much about my little backwater world, Diss. That worries me. Lies always worry me, especially when there seems to be no good reason for them. What are you really after?"

"That's enough, Florin! I've been patient with you—far more patient than you deserve! You'll return now to your prime locus and carry out the destruction of the dream machine!"

"If it's all that important, why haven't you smashed it yourself, a long time ago?"

"Reasons of policy have restrained me; but now my patience runs thin—"

"Fooey. I don't believe you. You're bluffing, Diss."

"Bah, I'll waste no more time on you!" He started to turn away— and banged his nose on a stone wall I'd thrown up in his path.

"You fool! You unspeakable fool! Is this the reward I get for my restraint, for my desire to spare you suffering?"

"Right now I'm suffering most from curiosity. Tell me things, Diss. Start anywhere, I'm not particular anymore."

He scuttled off to the right; I planted another wall in front of him. He doubled back and I hemmed him in on the third side. He screeched in frustration—I thought.

"Get on with the exposé, Diss," I said, "before I yield to my yen to practice some more of my magic tricks."

"Magic! You use the word sardonically, but I assure you that there are forces in the Universe that would make turning princesses into pumpkins seem as routine as winking an eye!"

"Talk, Diss. If I don't like what I hear, I turn you into a mouse pulling a coach and go for a ride, got it? You can start now." I was still in charge, but somehow I had a feeling he wasn't as worried as he had been a few seconds before. I tried to spot my blunder while he edged past me toward the open side of the space I had walled in.

"You're a child—an idiot child with a new toy," he shrilled at me. "I order you—I
command
you to cease this inane harassment at once—" He jumped for freedom and I slammed a fourth wall across to close us both in and he turned and grinned at me like a sculpture peering down from the top of Notre Dame and placed his thumb between his noseholes and waggled his fingers and disappeared just like the pumpkin coach, without even a puff of purple smoke to mark the spot where he'd been standing.

"Suckered," I told myself, and watched the light fade as the walls I'd trapped myself inside of moved closer. They were rough-poured concrete with the form-marks plain on them, still slightly green, but hard for all that. I had my back against one and was pushing at another with everything I had, but it wasn't enough, and they came together and squashed me flat, spreading me out as thin as the wax on a gum wrapper, as thin as the gold on a Gideon Bible, as thin as a politician's ethics. Somewhere along the line I lost consciousness.

. . . and came to strapped in a gimbaled chair suspended high before the face of a gigantic illuminated grid where patterns of light winked and flashed in sequences too fast for the eye to follow.

"Hold on, Florin," the Senator's voice called from somewhere above and to my right. I was groggy, but I managed to swivel my head far enough to see him, perched in a chair like mine, gripping the arms and leaning forward, his eyes on the big board.

"You held them," he called. "You've won us some time! Maybe there's still hope!"

I was as weak as yesterday's tea bag. He got me down and helped me to a cot and shot something cool into my arm and broke something pungent under my nose and after a while I felt better. I sat up and looked around. It was a big, empty room with smooth ivory walls, curved like the inside of an observatory, occupied by the lighted grid and banks of controls and not much else. Two round ports looked out on the black loneliness of deep space.

Bardell sat down on a stool he had brought over and said, "You held them off, Florin. I was going under; you took over the board just in time. That was as close as they've come. Next time . . ." He looked at me, level-eyed, firm-jawed. "Next time nothing will stop them."

I sat up.

"Where are Van Wouk and Trait and the rest of the cast?"

"You ordered them back, Florin. Don't you remember? There's just you and me now, manning the mind-grid."

"Your name's Bardell?" I asked him. He looked surprised.

"Yes—of course, Florin."

"I seem to have a slight touch of total amnesia. You'd better give me a little fill-in on where I am and what's going on."

Bardell looked disconcerted for a moment, then smoothed his face.

"A certain amount of disorientation is normal after a session on the grid," he said heartily. "You'll soon be yourself again." He gave me a tense smile. "You're at Grayfell Station, in retrograde orbit twenty-eight parsecs from Imperial Center. We're manning the grid against the Diss attack."

I looked across at the glistening curve of wall, imagined it blushing a deep pink. Nothing happened.

"What is it?" Bardell turned to look the way I was looking.

"Nothing. Just clearing away the fog. I dreamed I was having an argument with a lizard—"

"The Diss are reptilian in appearance, you know."

"I thought the name belonged to just one lilac lizard," I said. "He wanted me to wreck the dream machine—"

Bardell started to say something, broke off, looked at me a bit warily.

"Don't worry, I turned down the idea," I said. "I don't know why. Just to be contrary, maybe. He seemed a little too insistent."

Bardell gave a short sample of a laugh. "I should think so! If they'd managed to subvert you—Florin himself—it would have been the end."

"Tell me about this enemy you say we're fighting."

"We don't know where they come from; they appeared a few years ago out of nowhere, attacking the worlds of the Empire— vicious mind-attacks that turn a man into a shambling zombie, without meaning or direction. There are billions of the devils, unimpressive individually, but potent
en masse
. They possess a degree of group consciousness that enables them to combine their intellectual energies for brief periods. It's in that way that they hurl their attacks against us. We fight back by way of the grid—an artificial means of joining a multitude of minds in a single gestalt. Few human brains can stand the strain of controlling the weapon: yours, mine, Van Wouk's, and the others'. We make up the slim ranks of the Mind Corps, manning the Deep Space Grid Stations, fighting humanity's battles for her." He snorted, a tired, cynical ghost of a laugh. "For which we receive scant thanks—or even awareness. They don't know the war is going on, the vast mass of our fellowmen. They don't understand the kind of attack they're under. How can you explain a light symphony to a blind man? Oh, they accept the indications of the instruments; they can see for themselves some of the results of the Diss attack. But only intellectually. Emotionally they suspect us of being charlatans, self-styled heroes, fighting our lonely battles in our imaginations. Only a handful even bother to link up now when the call goes out. That's why we're losing, Florin. If the entire race would recognize the threat, join together to pour their mental energies into the grid system—we'd neutralize the Diss at a stroke!"

"Van Wouk and the rest," I said, "how did they feel about it?"

Bardell looked at me sharply. "I see it's coming back to you. They were losing heart. They'd had enough. They spoke of peace terms; you wouldn't hear of it. You called them traitors and sent them home."

"And how do you feel, Bardell?"

He hesitated before answering, like a man trying words on for size.

"I stood by you last time," he said. "Now—I can see it's hopeless. We don't have the strength, Florin; we don't have the backing of our own kind—and we can't do it alone." As he spoke he got more excited.

"If we go on the grid again it means death. Worse than death: destruction of our minds! And for what? They'll overwhelm us, we know that; we'll be swept aside as if we weren't here, and the Diss will move into Human Space—whether we fight or not. If we recognize that fact now, face it—and evacuate the station before it's too late— we can still save our own sanity!"

"What about the rest of the population?"

"They aren't lifting a finger to help us," Bardell said flatly. "They go about their petty pursuits, business as usual. Our appeals don't touch them. They don't care.
They don't care, Florin!
And why should we?"

"How do you know we'll lose?"

"Wasn't this last assault proof enough for you?" He was on his feet, his eyes a little wild, his diction not quite so precise. "It was only a routine probe, tapping for a weak spot in the station line—but it almost broke through! You know what that means! Right now they're gathering their power for an all-out assault on our station— on you and me, Florin. Our minds can't stand against them. We're doomed! Unless . . ." He broke off and looked sideways at me.

"Go ahead, Bardell. Get it off your chest."

He drew a breath and let it out. "Unless we act swiftly. We don't know how long the present respite will last. We have to move before they do. They caught me short last time—" He broke off. "That is, before we had time to discuss the matter they were on us—but now—"

"I thought you volunteered to stay."

"I could have gone with the others. Obviously, I didn't."

"So you stayed—but not to fight, eh? You had other plans—but they hit before you were ready. Ready for what, Bardell?"

He tried a shaky laugh. "Well, you're recovering your old sharpness, I see, Florin. Yes, I had a reason for staying—and the reason wasn't suicide. With their Mind Corps credentials and priorities Van Wouk, Eridani, and the others can be well on their way toward the hinterlands by now. But what will that avail them, when the Diss advance—as they will—in five years or ten? They're fleeing in panic, Florin—but not me. Not us. We have an alternative."

"Spell it out."

"The grid." His eyes went to the high, wide, glittering construction that filled and dominated the white-walled room. "We can use the energies of the grid for something other than futile efforts to shield a mob of ingrates, Florin."

"Tell me about it."

"I've studied it," he said, talking fast now, spilling the beans. "I've experimented during extended lulls. The grid is a fantastic device, Florin, capable of things the designers never dreamed of! It can transmit matter—including men—instantaneously—across the Galaxy!"

"Wouldn't we feel a little lonely there?"

"Not just ourselves, Florin; whatever we choose goes with us. We can take our pick of the human-occupied worlds, transfer to it whatever we like—
whom
ever we like—and shift the entire planet into a stable orbit around a congenial sun a hundred thousand light years from the Diss threat. It will be generations before they penetrate that far—and perhaps in that time we can ready a new and better defense against them."

"Aren't you afraid the population of the planet in question might resent being ripped untimely from the bosom of the Empire?"

Bardell grinned a fierce grin. "What does it matter what those sybarites think? Not that it has to be Grayfell, of course; naturally, you'll have a say in the matter." He gave me a smile to reassure me, but refrained from patting me on the head. "As for any potential hostile actions by the ingrates we've saved, it will be simple enough to arrange matters so that we'll be quite invulnerable from them. We'll have vast powers, Florin, unassailable powers."

"Why not take an unoccupied planet?"

"And live like savages? No, thank you. I've no taste for hewing down jungles and opening stasispacks. Nor do I wish to live in solitude. We want cities, parks, dining places, gracious avenues, cultivated gardens. We want people around us, Florin. There are so many services that only a human servant can provide."

"I see you've given this a lot of thought, Bardell. Are you sure the grid can handle it?"

"Certainly. We simply send the emergency signal via trans-L; when the still-active units have linked, one single, well-directed pulse—and it's done."

"How many still-active units are there?"

"Less than half a billion in the entire sector," he said with a curl of his well-chiseled lip. "Still, it's sufficient—for a single pulse."

"Why a single pulse?"

His smile was a bit grim this time. "First, because the instantaneous peak demand will drain the contributing units dry in a fractional hemiquaver of time—and secondly, the discharge energies will melt the grid to slag in a matter of moments."