Children of Infinity Page 6

  It was a sad affair, and the ending was inevitable. The Rutherfords were obviously incompetent and they had to be committed. Both of them died within a matter of months.

  The space program people stayed out of the affair, of course; at least, they didn’t interfere publicly. But they followed the hearing and they had the data and they took charge of Keva once more.

  Taking charge was a mere formality now, for they weren’t dealing with a child any longer. Keva was physically adult and mentally she was—

  Worthy of further study.

  That’s what the medical team decided.

  Keva was happy to cooperate, even though it meant temporarily abandoning her research project on methods of communicating with distant planetary bodies through the use of ultrasonic frequencies.

  On the appointed day she appeared before an international panel of scientific authorities at Space Command headquarters, prepared to submit to a thorough examination and checkup. But she was not prepared to meet the head of that panel—an elderly, stoop-shouldered man who was introduced to her as Mission Commander Richard Tasman, USN, Ret.

  The foreign scientists noted that Keva didn’t seem to react to the introduction. Perhaps she didn’t recognize the name, but, of course, there was no reason that she should.

  At least, there was no reason until Tasman began asking questions. The questions were polite, formally phrased, and simple. But their content was disturbing.

  Tasman wanted Keva to tell him about the shadows.

  Keva frowned, and then sighed. “Surely you’ve read the reports of the hearing. The shadows my poor foster parents claim to have seen were nonexistent—paranoid delusions—”

  Commander Tasman nodded. “But it’s the other shadows I’m interested in. The shadows that I saw with my own eyes twenty years ago when I found you in that cave on Echo.”

  The listening scientists leaned forward as Keva shook her head. They turned up the earphones to hear what their translators were reporting as the conversation continued.

  Keva shrugged. “I was a baby. How do you expect me to remember anything? And if I could, why should I notice shadows?”

  “Why, indeed?” Tasman smiled. “I saw them plainly enough but at the time I had no reason to pay attention to them. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tasman smiled again. “I’m not so sure of that, either. In fact, I’m not sure of anything anymore. It occurs to me that we should have followed up our findings on Echo. Somehow, in all the excitement of your discovery and rescue, certain unusual bits of data were neglected. An earth-type planet exists within a certain range of prescribed conditions—this we know because we’ve located and studied others within the galaxy. Like Echo, they all contain life-forms. Microorganisms, algae, plant life in infinite variety. And all of them, in this phase of evolution, contain animal life, too. All except Echo.”

  Tasman fixed his eyes on Leva. “I understand you have a background in space research.”

  “Em only a novice—”

  “But you have studied available information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me ask this: doesn’t it seem strange to you that Echo, and Echo alone, is the only earth-type body ever discovered that is capable of supporting higher and more complicated life-forms, yet contains none?”

  “Perhaps there were such forms at one time, and they failed to survive.”

  “For what reason? There’s no indication of natural disaster or recent geologic upheaval.”

  “Maybe the evolutionary cycle came to a natural end. Whatever might have existed there merely died out,” Keva said.

  “Suppose it didn’t die out? Suppose it merely developed along different lines, advanced to a point where life was no longer dependent upon a physical body of the type we’re familiar with.”

  “You mean something like pure thought?” It was Keva’s turn to smile.

  Tasman shook his head and he wasn’t smiling. “Something like shadows,” he said.

  Keva stared. They were all staring now.

  “Shadows,” Tasman repeated. “Consider a life-form that may once have been human like ourselves—very much like ourselves in many ways—but had reached a turning point in the evolutionary road. Instead of continuing to evolve in terms of brawn, the emphasis became spiritual.”

  “Pure thought again?” Keva gestured. “Impossible.”

  “Of course, it’s impossible,” Tasman said. “Life is energy, and energy has form. But on Echo, which seems to have existed for countless years in an idyllic state, there was no need for a sturdy body to withstand the elements. And who knows—upon reaching a certain stage of mental development, there may no longer be any dependency upon ordinary nourishment.”

  “You’re saying these creatures turned into shadows?”

  “Creatures? Hardly the term I’d use to describe so advanced an organism. As for shadows, how do we know what they really are? Possibly what we saw as shadows are merely visual projections of mental energy contained in the minimum possible shape. A shape that no longer requires sensory organs for perception or communication. A shape that doesn’t need the complex of mechanical aids we call civilization, that can live without our concept of comfort and shelter—”

  “In caves?”

  Keva rose as she spoke, and faced the assemblage around the long table. She talked and the others listened. Exactly what she said is a matter of debate—afterward, opinions seemed to differ. But her words made sense, and everyone got the point.

  Carefully, courteously, but concisely, she took Tasman’s theories apart, demolishing each premise in turn. There was no precedent, not in biology or physics or the most advanced observations of science, for sentient shadows. One might as well argue the reality of ghosts. A shadow, by definition, is merely a shade cast upon a surface by a body that intercepts rays of light. It is the body that exists. Shadows are merely illusions—like the apparitions Keva’s foster parents had babbled about, or like Commander Tasman’s strange beliefs.

  The speech was effective. And after Tasman, cold but controlled, excused Keva from the hearing and had her escorted from the room, there was a general buzz of conversation from the scientists gathered there.

  Obviously they were impressed by what they had heard. They were even more impressed when an apologetic sound engineer buzzed the chamber on intercom to report the sudden power failure that had cut off the mikes and had made translation of Keva’s speech impossible.

  “Amazing, the young woman!” The Italian scientist groped for words in his heavily accented English. “Such presence, to realize this—and continue speaking in Italian.”

  “Nein.” The guttural rejoinder came swiftly. “It was in German she spoke.”

  “Français!”

  Dissension rose in Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Mandarin. All had heard Keva and all had understood.

  Tasman understood, too.

  He raced out the door and down the corridor. At the entrance to a small side office he found Keva’s security guards stationed and waiting.

  “Keva—where is she?”

  The senior officer blinked and gestured. “Inside.”

  Tasman brushed past him and opened the door.

  The room beyond had no windows, no other exit.

  But it was empty.

  There was no official report of Keva’s disappearance. Even the medical team wasn’t informed. But Tasman knew, and went straight to Top Security. A directive was issued.

  Find Keva.

  “She’s bound to slip up,” Tasman said. “What happened at the hearing proves she’s not infallible. When the mikes went dead she unconsciously continued to communicate by means of direct-thought transmission. That explains why each foreign delegate believed he was hearing Keva speak to him in his own language. When Keva realized she was giving herself away, it was too late. She had to flee.”

  The security officers nodded uneasily. How do you find a person who can transmit tho
ughts at will, hypnotize guards, and pass them by without being seen or remembered?

  “If she made one mistake she’ll make others,” Tasman assured them.

  But Tasman himself didn’t wait for mistakes. While security personnel searched for Keva in the present, Tasman sought her in the past. He talked to people who had known her at the ranch, to schoolmates, to the surviving members of the original relief mission, men such as Gilbey and Weber. What he learned he kept to himself, but the word spread.

  Eventually, it reached back to a man who had known Keva’s true parents.

  Dr. Hans Diedrich, living in retirement in the Virgin Islands, contacted Space Command with an urgent message. He had, he said, certain information which might be of vital importance in this affair.

  Within twenty-four hours Diedrich was visited at his cottage home by an elderly, stoop-shouldered man who identified himself as Mission Commander Richard Tasman, USN, Ret.

  “I’m glad you came,” Diedrich said. “I have followed the reports with great interest—my nephew is in the space program and it was he who informed me of what happened.”

  His visitor frowned. “A security leak?”

  “Do not be alarmed. It is for the best that I was told, and in a moment you will understand why I say that. You see, I know what you are thinking.”

  “You do?”

  Diedrich frowned. “You have a theory, haven’t you? That Kevin Nichols’ child was left alone in that cave on Echo when her parents died, left alone with the shadow creatures. And that somehow, before your relief expedition arrived, these beings took possession of her, so that when she was rescued she was no longer an ordinary infant but something more. Because they infused her with their powers, established a mental contact, a link with themselves which was not broken when she returned to earth. And that all through her childhood and youth, she was really acting as their pawn. A human being under alien control. Is that it?”

  His visitor nodded.

  “Well, you are wrong,” said Dr. Diedrich. “I was the Nichols’ family physician. I have their medical records. Two years before the journey to Echo, I had to perform surgery on Mrs. Nichols.”

  “So?”

  “That is what I wanted to tell you. The surgery made it impossible for Mrs. Nichols to have a child. The infant you found in the cave was not their daughter.”

  Dr. Diedrich leaned forward. “These beings must have the power to receive thoughts as well as to transmit them. They absorbed the contents of Nichols’ mind as he lay dying in the cave—his wife’s mind, too. And using what they learned, they created the illusion of an infant, one of their own kind disguised in a mental projection, programmed to live and grow as a child.”

  “Why send it back to earth?”

  Diedrich shrugged. “I cannot say.”

  “And you have no proof.”

  “Only of the surgery. Here, my own medical records—”

  He handed a bulky envelope to his visitor.

  His visitor smiled, thanked him, pulled out a revolver, and shot Dr. Diedrich through the head.

  “I told you she’d make a mistake,” Tasman muttered.

  “Going down there, getting the information, then deliberately using a clumsy, old-fashioned weapon to kill Diedrich—it was a clever idea. And there are half a dozen people who can testify to seeing me escape from the cottage.

  “Fortunately, you know I was here at headquarters all the time. Keva didn’t anticipate I’d have such an airtight alibi. And she didn’t anticipate that Diedrich had taken the precaution of taping a statement of his beliefs beforehand and sending it here to Space Command. So, we understand how all this happened—and why.”

  “We know something else now, too.” The Chief of Operations himself answered Tasman, and his voice was grim. “The life-form we’re dealing with has greater powers than we imagined. The ability to transmit thought and to receive it. The ability to appear in the form we identify as Keva, or to change that form at will.

  “Do you realize what we’re up against? A creature that can read our minds, walk unseen among us as a shadow, and alter its appearance whenever it chooses.”

  “Mimicry,” Tasman said. “Insects use it for protection, taking on the look of the plant or tree branch where they rest. The being we know as Keva has this same faculty, developed to its ultimate extent.”

  The Chief of Operations frowned. “Then why did it even bother to appear as Keva in the first place?”

  “Again we can look to the insect world for a parallel,” Tasman said. “Some insects begin in a larval state. It’s only later that they emerge in new forms, with the power of disguising their shapes. Perhaps it was necessary for Keva to go through certain stages in a single body while she grew to maturity and learned our ways. Only now, as an adult, is she capable of functioning fully.”

  “And just what is her function? Why did a shadow creature come to earth in human disguise?”

  Tasman shrugged. “Maybe the shadows grew tired of being shadows. Perhaps an existence of pure thought was no longer enough for them and they yearned for the sensations and satisfactions of solid physical shapes. In which case Keva was sent here as a scout, to study our ways and see if we could be taken over.”

  The Chief of Operations shook his head. “You think that is a possibility?”

  “I think that is what actually happened.”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “Another expedition to Echo. Give me the command, and a task force. Keep it under sealed orders, call it an exploratory operation if you like. But you and I know the real purpose of the mission.”

  “Seek and destroy?”

  Tasman nodded. “It’s our only chance. And we’ve got to move fast, before Keva suspects.”

  Commander Tasman lifted off for Echo under top security, but that didn’t stop the rumors.

  Whether or not Keva suspected was no longer the problem. The search for her went on, but how do you find a shadow? It could be anywhere now.

  It was the spread of the rumors that really caused the trouble—and the panic.

  Somehow the word was out, and the world trembled. People had forgotten about the spacechild through the years, but now they remembered as the whispers grew.

  There was a monster in our midst, the rumormongers said. An alien unlike any humanoid form on planets known to man—an invisible creature, murdering at will. True, a mission had been mounted against Echo, but it would never return.

  The whispers rose to angry shouts, and there was only one way to silence them.

  The President of the United States went on Emergency Band and addressed the world. Standing before the cameras and microphones in the tower at Communications Center, he delivered his message.

  The rumors were partially true, the President admitted. The spacechild was indeed an alien, but there was no longer any reason to fear her. Because Keva was dead. She had been discovered and trapped only this afternoon in a secret hideaway—a mountain cave near Pocatello, Idaho. Full details would be available on an international newscast following the President’s message.

  Meanwhile, it was time to put an end to the vicious falsehoods spread by our enemies, the President declared. All this wild talk of alien invasion was part of a plot, designed to prevent the opening up of free space travel and communication—but the plot had failed. After all, Commander Tasman had been sent into space for exploratory purposes and had not encountered any resistance.

  It was his privilege, the President said, to announce the final expansion of the space program. From this time forward there would be no restrictions on further flights. Every area of the galaxy was now officially declared to be open to the ships of any government or any private concern or individual. No more secrecy, no more security, no more fear. If new alien life-forms were encountered, they would be met with friendship. If they chose to visit our solar system or even our own earth, let them be welcomed. For this was the start of the true Age of Space—founded firmly in freedom and in frie
ndship.

  The world listened to its leader and breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  The President joined in that sigh as the broadcast ended. He watched the technical crews gather up their equipment and depart, leaving him alone in the tower room with its single window opening on the night sky and the stars.

  Then the President of the United States melted into a shadow and slithered across the floor to the window, as she waited for her alien brothers to arrive.

  harvey l. and audrey l. bilker

  All You Can Eat

  He might have been judged to be a senior in high school, or perhaps a junior. He was of average height and weight, and had nondescript features.

  He stood looking into a window of one of the establishments in New York’s restaurant district off Sixth Avenue. Having trod the streets for many hours after arriving in the city in hopes of finding a buffet dinner, he should have located this restaurant sooner, he thought, but at least there it was. His mouth spread into a grin as he licked his lips hungrily.

  The menu, tilted back on a heavy wooden easel, showed regular sections listing complete dinners as well as a la carte servings. But the youth’s eyes were fastened on a specially bordered area of the bill of fare that bore a rococo headline reading: “All You Can Eat—$4.95.” Below those words was a potpourri of cuisine ranging from a generous choice of appetizers through meat and fish entrees of delicate flavor to desserts whose names would set any palate to tingling—assorted fruits flambé, luscious pies, sherbets, and pastries heaped with whipped cream.

  He would, of course, have to go heavily on the meat and fish, he reasoned, suctioning his tongue momentarily against the roof of his mouth—because meat and fish were pure protein. It was primarily for protein that he had come all this distance. But if their supply was low, anything would do. In fact, everything would do.

  He swung open one of the heavy glass doors and entered, immediately, detecting the slight change in temperature when the warmth of the small foyer enveloped him. Then he pushed the next door open and stepped onto the plush red rug of the restaurant.