Children of Infinity Read online

  When he awoke, he saw the screen with the oblong and the flickering. If this was a replay, it was of a more recent vision. The oblong had gotten blacker, or the area around it had paled. And the flickering ran along something bladelike.

  “It’s acquiring shape,” Deet said.

  “Or shape is acquiring it,” Clark said. He did not know what he meant by that.

  “Who gave you permission to stick those electrodes into my brain?” Clark added.

  Deet told him what he already knew. His parents had signed the papers. They had done so because all his hospital bills would be paid by the research center.

  That was the logical thing for them to do, he told himself. Why should they beggar themselves, put themselves in debt for the next how many years?

  If he had a son, wouldn’t he do the same?

  He groaned, and peaks of light traveled across the voice screen.

  He would never have a son.

  It was no use thinking of his lost limbs or his lost life as husband and father someday. It was better to think of the implications of his being in the N-PWR.

  He might really be in contact with another world. To be exact—if there could be exactitude in this field of research—he was in touch with a parallel universe.

  The principle that only one object could occupy a particular area of space at any one time did not seem to be true any longer. Many worlds could be “polarized,” could exist “at right angles to each other,” and so could occupy the same point in matter. Of course, the matter of one universe would not be the matter of another, which is why thousands, or even billions, of worlds filled the same “space” but did not rub against each other.

  A scientist named Pearson, however, had maintained, and had “proved,” that these worlds did, in fact, influence each other. Rather, the beings of one world could get into mental communication with those of the world next door. They did so through an unconscious method of transceiving, one that operated without the transceiver’s knowledge or wish.

  Pearson had detected in the brain the very weak wave that sent out complexly modulated forms. And he had located the area of the brain—a minute colony of nerves—that received at the same time it transmitted. Whatever barrier it was that kept the physical aspects of one universe from colliding with the other, this barrier was no obstacle to the waves.

  Pearson also claimed that the power of fantasizing did not exist. Fancies, dreams, daydreams, wild thoughts did not originate in the fancier, the dreamer, the wild-thinker. They were glimpses of another world, brief drinkings-in of the foam of alien seas forlorn.

  Most scientists did not accept Pearson’s theory of the origin of fantasy in the human brain. But they did accept the fact that some people were more gifted than others in making contact with other worlds. And they could not deny that it was the most imaginative who were the most gifted at making this contact.

  Now that even more powerful electronic amplifiers had been developed, N-PWR was on the verge of another breakthrough.

  “If you want to know who you are,” Deet said, “you’re the Columbus of the parallel worlds.”

  “Did Columbus know who he was?” Clark said.

  “We’re not dealing with spiritualism or with time travel,” Deet said.

  By then, the oblong had become even darker. But it was like dark glass. Through it, the definitely swordshaped light could be seen. And something tall and thin and peculiarly shaped was forming behind the blade. At times, it looked manlike.

  “Almost like an angel with a flaming sword,” Deet said. “It could be a guardian at the gate of the new Eden.”

  “Does it want to keep me out?” Clark said.

  Deet hastened to explain that he had been using anthropocentric terms. Even scientists who knew better were always couching their terms in such images. But he did not literally mean that the oblong was a gate or that the strange phenomenon of the blade and the figure was an angel holding a sword. In fact, what they saw on the tube was not the “real” thing. It was a hybrid of the psychic and the physical. It was a silhouette formed by Clark’s mind and by the limitations of the electronic amplifier itself. After all, the tube could only show what the circuits were designed to interpret. And man had built the circuits.

  “And what lies behind the mask of what we see?” Clark said. “What is the reality?”

  “Only an intelligent young man, a very young man, or an old fool asks such a question,” Deet said.

  “My legs and arms and tongue and most of my lower jaw and my ability to move anything but my eyes are gone,” Clark said. “I’m only half-here. Half-matter. The ratio of psychic to physical has risen, and so I’m closer to reality. You follow me? I’m entitled to ask that question.”

  “Very well,” Deet said. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to an answer.”

  Clark watched the screen. At first, it did not change much. After a while, the oblong seemed to swing out from one side a little.

  Deet, seeing it, became excited.

  “You’re influencing it with your conscious mind! That’s not a recording!”

  “No,” Clark said. “I haven’t been trying to influence it with my thoughts at all.”

  “Then you’re able to influence it while you’re conscious, even if your unconscious is doing the work.”

  After a few minutes, Clark became tired. The oblong swung shut.

  “Where are my parents?”

  “Your father is working, of course,” Deet said. “Your mother is attending classes at the university. I thought she told you she was going back to get her degree.”

  “Weren’t they here all the time while I was unconscious?”

  “At first. But when it looked as if you might never come out of the coma, or that it might take years, they quit coming so regularly. They’re only human, you know. And now that you can cooperate with us scientists, you can spend your time more profitably than by just talking to your parents. They have to have their lives, too, you know. As it is, they do spend a lot of time here. At least two to three hours every day.”

  “And so now when they can talk to me, and when I need them, they’re gone.”

  “What would you talk about?” Deet said. “The last few times they’ve been here, you and they had nothing to say to each other.”

  “We would have improved with practice,” Clark said.

  “After sixteen years?” Deet said.

  “Seventeen.”

  “You were, for all purposes, gone for a year.”

  Clark did not answer. Deet said, “N-PWR is your father and your mother.” He touched Clark’s forehead. “Anytime you want to talk, day or night, the middle of the night, anytime, I’ll be here.”

  Clark had never felt so helpless, so frustrated, so scared, and so angry.

  After a while, he said, “The door’s swinging open again.”

  Deet wasn’t looking at the voice-screen then, but he did happen to see the Parallel World screen.

  “I wonder?” he said.

  “Wonder what?” Clark asked.

  The oblong was slowly turning outward, as if it really were on hinges.

  “If the desire to escape your, ah, condition, could enable you . . . but no, it’s too fantastic.”

  “Could what?”

  “Enable you physically to transport yourself through that gate? Or through what is, obviously, a gate to you? After all, there have been many unexplained disappearances. People disappearing in plain view of many witnesses, as if they had stepped into another world. And there have been many cases of airplanes or ships disappearing without a trace. An entire squadron of naval planes flying over the Caribbean in fine weather, and then . . . nothing. But you’ve read Charles Fort. You know what I’m taking about.”

  “You mean that if I think hard enough, I can open that gate and go into the other world?”

  “And have arms and legs again, talk with a tongue, run, play as you did before.”

  “How could that be?”
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  “How? How would I know?” Deet said. “But I’m just talking. Besides, there is your guardian angel with the flaming sword. How would you manage to get by him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you want to escape through that doorway, you also want to stay here. Otherwise, why do you put a guardian there? One who’s armed to keep out intruders.”

  “I’m not putting him there,” Clark said. “According to the theory, the world next door is as independent of effect of thought on its physical substance as this one is. How could I put a guardian there unless I dreamed up that universe? In which case, you’re seeing only the electronic manifestation of my fantasies.”

  “I don’t think you’ve created that world,” Deet said. “But I do think you somehow managed to locate a doorway that has a guardian. For your own purposes, whatever they are.”

  “Get my parents,” Clark said. “Let them see what’s happening. Then, maybe . . .”

  “Ah, so that’s it,” Deet said. “Very well. I can have them here inside half an hour.”

  But they did not come. They did send word they would be at the center during the evening, sometime after supper.

  “You told them it was an emergency?” Clark said.

  “I told them you wanted them now.”

  “But you didn’t convince them. Why? Is it because you’re afraid that if my parents and I start having a good relationship the contacts with that other place might vanish? Is that it? Or maybe you never even called them? Maybe you never said a word to them? You wouldn’t want your experiment ruined, would you? You’re as bad as they are.”

  “You’re getting hysterical,” Deet said.

  “Then step back over here so I can see your face!”

  “I know best what’s good for you,” Deet said.

  “And where have I heard those words before?” Clark said.

  The voice-screen became an explosion of light.

  One of the women doctors screamed.

  A few seconds later, Deet screamed.

  Something wet splashed over Clark’s face. He had no tongue to lick his lips, but he knew it would be salty if he could taste it.

  The blade now seemed more like a pair of scissors than a sword. It flashed and flashed soundlessly, though heavy thumps followed every flashing.

  There was silence. The thing stood at the foot of the bed so that Clark could see only the head. Its eyes flamed, and then it was gone.

  From the corridor came screams.

  These were cut off. Then, faintly, from the corridor below—or was it from the one above?—more screams. It must have gone upstairs. It would be making a clean sweep of the hospital before it moved out into the street.

  Clark wished he could die. If he died now, that thing would have to go back through the gate. Deet had been mistaken. It had not been at the gate to keep intruders out. It had been waiting for the gate to open wide enough for it to slip through.

  And it had not killed Clark because he, in some mysterious way, was its gate. To kill him was to shut the gate.

  The screen in the ceiling was flashing, “Help Help Help.”

  But there would be no help, and the lightning blades would snip and snip. They would close, but they would always be clean, no matter what they passed through, and then the thing would find his parents. And they would never know, never know.

  Or would they, in a flash of light from the thing’s eyes, see his eyes?

  arthur tofte

  Terrafied

  Puzzled, Dor peered up at the strange object in the deep blue sky. Still far away, it seemed very small. Yet, even as she watched, it grew steadily larger and larger.

  Never before had she seen anything in the sky. There were no flying creatures on the planet of Tyrox.

  Her first reaction was that of youthful curiosity. But as the object kept coming closer, Dor felt a growing sense of danger.

  Her clawlike hands pulled back on the slender leather reins that gave her control over her tholl. Today was Dor’s sixteenth birthday. The tholl was her parents’ birthday gift. It was a beautiful, six-legged beast, fully twenty feet long from its single horn in front to its six-foot tail at the back. Best of all, it was full of spirit and swift as the wind. Not yet full grown, it would be her personal mount for years to come.

  Dor watched for several minutes as the flying object sped downward toward her. Whatever it was, Dor knew

  that it was not of Tyrox. It was something alien and, therefore, to be feared.

  Although she had planned to ride her birthday tholl farther, she pulled it around and headed back toward her village. It would be wise, she thought, to get home quickly and warn the others.

  Before her tholl had gone a dozen leaps, Dor was horrified to see the flying object settling down a few hundred paces ahead and directly in her path. Flames were shooting out of its bottom as it slowly came to rest.

  Dor gave a violent tug on the reins to turn the tholl away. Terror-stricken by the flames, the animal leaped sideways in a forty-foot jump that unseated his young rider. Dor flew head over heels, landing on the thick turf with a jarring jolt that knocked her unconscious for a few minutes.

  When she opened her three eyes, she had trouble focusing them. It seemed that a tall, very pale-skinned creature was standing over her. She felt short, stubby fingers probing for possible injuries. Apparently it was a thinking animal. Only a thinking being would do that.

  Dor sat up. The creature was even taller than she had first thought—taller by a head and a half than any of the adults in Dor’s village. He was dressed in a tight-fitting, one-piece uniform that seemed to be made of a shiny, metallic substance. But what surprised and shocked Dor more than anything else was that the creature had only two eyes. That, and two rows of deadly looking teeth he was revealing by smiling at Dor.

  Dor sensed that the smile was to reassure her. But she was not reassured. Actually she was terrified.

  When Dor tried to rise to her feet, she winced with pain. One of her legs had been wrenched. She took a half step and fell back to the ground.

  The tall creature reached down and easily picked her up. Moments later she felt herself carried up a short ladder into the body of the flying object. She was placed into a sleeping pod. Straps were fastened to hold her tight. Then she felt a stab in her arm.

  Hours later she awoke to see the tall stranger looking down at her. Again he was smiling.

  Dor realized that the flying object had taken off from Tyrox. She was allowed to get out of her sleeping pod and to take a few tentative steps. Her hurt leg had been wrapped with bindings and she could stand on it now.

  She discovered there were four beings on the ship. All had only two eyes each. All were very tall and had ferocious-looking teeth. They seemed friendly enough, however. They tried to talk with her. It was all a hopeless gibberish.

  After she had eaten, Dor was taken to a room that contained a mass of controls. On one wall was a large screen. The view on the screen was that of a green sphere.

  Dor stared at it for several minutes. Then she realized that it was her own planet seen from thousands of miles away. She let out a cry of “Tyrox!” It was the first word she had uttered whose meaning the creatures on the ship could understand.

  Later, when she was lying in her pod, she thought of the terrible situation she was in. What was going to happen to her? Who were the two-eyed strangers? Where did they come from? What were her father’s and mother’s thoughts when she failed to return from her first ride on her birthday-gift tholl? Would the tholl return to their home?

  She tried not to let herself be panicked. She knew her only chance to escape was to keep her wits about her. She would learn everything she could about the ship and its crew. By biding her time and looking for the right moment, she might have a chance.

  What she must not do is lose her courage. The crew seemed friendly enough. Clearly they meant her no bodily harm. All she could do was wait for the right opportunity.

  The ne
xt day, one of the crew members began an intensive course teaching Dor their language. She learned they called themselves human beings, or men. They were from the third planet in a small solar system, a planet they called Terra. The man who had carried her into the ship was their leader whom they addressed as Captain Cahorn.

  Gradually, as the days moved into weeks and into months, Dor learned how to communicate with the beings who had captured her. In fact, within two months, as the ship sped along its way, she was able to talk to them fluently.

  Although Captain Cahorn asked that she teach them the Tyroxan language, Dor could seem to make no progress. For one thing, she could see no gain in teaching them her language. On the other hand, if she were to escape, she would have to know everything possible about her captors.

  In many ways she felt that she was brighter, sharper-minded than the four men of the ship. She watched them at their work. She studied the ship’s controls until she felt she knew them as well as they did. She was especially interested in the long-range communications system with which they kept in contact with their home planet. Dor quickly perceived that it was similar to the system that had been in use on Tyrox for centuries. She felt that she might even be able to communicate with Tyrox if she could only get to the controls alone.

  Dor was careful, for the present, not to mention this possibility. Actually, it was the one secret fact she had been able to discover that might eventually help her.

  Otherwise Dor was quite free and open in telling her captors about life on Tyrox. She told of its beauty—the deep blue sky and the rolling green hills. She said the climate was favorable for growing crops all year. The difference between winter and summer was very little. There were large bodies of clear, fresh water, yielding fish of many kinds. Mountain ranges in the interior contained easily mined minerals of all needed kinds. An abundance of waterfalls provided all the hydroelectric power that was required. Life on Tyrox was easy and gentle. The birthrate was kept at about level with the deathrate. People lived comfortably in widespread villages. Conflicts between villages were unheard of.