The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Iv Part 56

They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examined the muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. They searched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury that Baker knew was hopeless.

"You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build it again. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. The nerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply the scaffolding--while you build--"

He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he had done this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the building of organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinite sadness at the present ruin. Yes--he could build again.

Sam Atkins' face was like that of a dead man. Across the table from him, Jim Ellerbee and John Fenwick watched silently. Faintly, between them was the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.

Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown p.r.i.c.kle his scalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the pract.i.tioner of ancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick found the question tumbling over and over in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy of Sam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across s.p.a.ce, to the distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it while Baker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of his shattered organs.

Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehow shut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could not follow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.

Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace of panic. He hesitantly reached out to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyes and imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested the motion of Ellerbee's hand.

"I think you could kill them both," he whispered. The life force of one man, divided between two--it was not sufficient to cope with unexpected shocks to either, now.

Ellerbee desisted. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said. "I don't know what Sam's doing--I don't know how he's doing it--"

Fenwick looked sharply at Ellerbee. Ellerbee had discovered the crystals, so he and Sam said. Yet Sam was able to do things with them that Ellerbee could not conceive. Fenwick wondered just who was responsible for the crystals. And he resolved that some day, when and if Baker pulled out of this, he would learn something more about Sam Atkins.

Time moved beyond midnight and into the early morning hours of the day, but this meant nothing to William Baker. He was in the midst of eternity. Because the old pattern was there, and the ancient memories were clear, his reconstruction moved at a pace that was limited only by the materials available. When these grew scarce, Sam Atkins showed him how to break down and utilize other structures that could be rebuilt leisurely at a later time. There was remembered joy in the building and, once started, Baker gave only idle wonder to the question of whether this was more desirable than death. He did not know. This seemed the right thing to do.

In the presence of Sam Atkins everything he was doing seemed right, and a lifetime of doubts, and errors, and fears seemed distant and vague.

But Sam said suddenly, "It is almost finished. Just a little farther and you'll have to go the rest of the way alone."

Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutely sure he could not go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "You tricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I would have to be reborn alone!"

"Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, except alone?"

Slowly, the world closed in about Baker.

Light. Sounds.

Wet. Cold.

The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-ray particles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried for all of his life.

Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immense corridor. Behind were all the terrors sp.a.w.ned since the beginning of time. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced for the nearest and brightest and most familiar.

"No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way you went before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it will lead only to the same goal again."

"I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closing in.

"Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distant paths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you."

Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He pa.s.sed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright. He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seen before. He shuddered.

Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazing brightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," he said.

He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval.

He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the dark corridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to die rather than endure again.

It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But he knew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He was alive again.

Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all but dead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pick up Baker now."

They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires. Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car at Ellerbee's.

It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through the muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road. For an hour Sam fought the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle of the brownish ooze that led them through the night. The three men sat in the cab. Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been rigged for Baker. Sam told them nothing would be needed except soap and water, but Fenwick and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off without some other emergency equipment.

After an hour, Sam said, "He's close. Just around the next bend. That's where his car went off."

Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car. He was standing at the edge of the road. He waved an arm wearily.

Fenwick would not have recognized him. And for some seconds after the car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly in the beam of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all.

He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie. His clothes were ripped almost completely away. Those remaining were stained with blood and red clay, and soaked with rain. Baker's face was laced with a network of scars as if he had been slashed with a shower of gla.s.s not too long ago and the wounds were freshly healed. Blood was caked and cracked on his face and was matted in his hair.

He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About time you got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standing out here in this weather."

Dr. William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitalization, but he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway. He had some thinking to do, and he didn't know of a better place to get it done.

There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast network of very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays showed to have been only very recently knit, and the violent internal injuries which gave some evidence of their recent healing. Baker allowed the speculation to go on without offering explanations. He let them tap and measure and apply electrical gadgets to their heart's content. It didn't bother the thinking he had to get done.

Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him. The two approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing. "Pull up chairs!" he exclaimed. "Just because you saw me looking a shade less than dead doesn't mean I'm a ghost now. Sit down. And where's Sam? Not that I don't appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but Sam and I have got some things to talk about."

Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected the other to speak.

"Well, what's the matter?" demanded Baker. "Nothing's happened to Sam, I hope!"

Fenwick spoke finally. "We don't know where Sam is. We don't think we'll be seeing him again."

"Why not?" Baker demanded. But in the back of his mind was the growing suspicion that he knew.

"After your--accident," said Fenwick, "I went back to the farm with Ellerbee and Sam because I'd left my car there. I went back to bed to try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up again and kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of lightning seemed to strike Sam's silo. Later, Jim went out to check on his cows and help his man finish up the milking.

"By mid-morning we hadn't heard anything from Sam and decided to go over and talk to him about what we'd seen him do for you. I guess it was eleven by the time we got there."

Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement.

"When we got there," Fenwick went on, "we saw that the front door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in. We called Sam, but he didn't answer, so we went on in. Things were a mess. We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that drawers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out. Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was just gone.

"It was that way all through the house. Sam's bed hadn't been disturbed. He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess."

"Sounds like the place might have been broken into," said Baker. "Didn't you notify the sheriff?"

"Not after we'd seen what was outside, in back."

"What was that?"

"We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit.

"When we went out, all the cows were bellowing. They hadn't been milked. Sam did all his own work. Jim called his own man to come and take care of Sam's cows. Then we had a close look at the silo. It had split like a banana peel opening up. It hardly seemed as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it. We climbed over the broken pieces to look inside. It was still warm in there. At least six hours after lightning--or whatever had struck it, the concrete was still warm. The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were covered with a gla.s.sy glaze."

"No lightning bolt did that."

"We know that now," said Fenwick. "But I had seen the flash of it myself. Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning. Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had seemed like a thin thread of light striking upward. I thought I must be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it. In the silo, I remembered. I told Jim.

"We went back through the house once more. In Sam's bedroom, as if accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found this. Take a look!"

Fenwick held out a small book. It had covers and pages as did any ordinary book. But when Baker's fingers touched the book, something chilled his backbone.

The material had the feel and appearance of white leather--yet Baker had the insane impression that the cells of that leather still formed a living substance. He opened the pages. Their substance was as foreign as that of the cover. The message--printing, or whatever it might be called--consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-head size, in color. It reminded him of computer tape cut to some character code. He had the impression that an eye might scan those pages and react as swiftly as a tape-fed computer.

Baker closed the book. "Nothing more?" he asked Fenwick.

"Nothing. We thought maybe you had found out something else when he worked to save your life."

Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling. "I found out a few things," he said. "I could scarcely believe they were true. I have to believe after hearing your story."

"What did you find?"

"Sam Atkins came from--somewhere else. He went back in the ship he had hidden in the silo."

"Where did he come from? What was he doing here?"

"I don't know the name of the world he was from or where it is located. Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from my impressions. He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological study. He was responsible for the crystals. I suppose you know that by now?" Baker glanced at Ellerbee.

Jim Ellerbee nodded. "I suspected for a long time that I was being led, but I couldn't understand it. I thought I was doing the research that produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a suggestion every once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and produce something fantastic. He knew where we were going, ahead of time. He led me to believe that we were exploring together. Do you know why he did this?"

"Yes," said Baker. "It was part of his project. The project consisted of a study of human reaction to scientific processes which our scientific culture considered impossible. He was interested in measuring our flexibility and reaction to such introductions."

Baker smiled grimly. "We sure gave him his money's worth, didn't we! We really reacted when he brought out his little cubes. I'd like to read the report he writes up!"

"Why did he leave so suddenly?" asked Fenwick. "Was he through?"

"No, that's the bad part of it. My reaction to the crystals was a shock that sent me into a suicidal action--"

Fenwick stared at him, shocked. "You didn't--"

"But I did," said Baker calmly. "All very subconsciously, of course, but I did try to commit suicide. The crystals triggered it. I'll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me. He had to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life--and helping me to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again. He did this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of completing his program. When he gets back home, he's really going to catch h.e.l.l for lousing up the works. It's too bad."

Jim Ellerbee let out a long breath. "Sam Atkins--somebody from another world--it doesn't seem possible. What things he could have taught us if he'd stayed!"

Fenwick wondered why it had to have been Baker to receive this knowledge. Baker, the High Priest of the Fixed Position, the amba.s.sador of Established Authority. Why couldn't Sam Atkins--or whatever his real name might be--have whispered just a few words of light to a man willing to listen and profit? His bowels felt sick with the impact of opportunity forever lost.

"How did the crystals trigger a suicidal reaction?" asked Fenwick finally, as if to make conversation more than anything else.

Baker's face seemed to glow. "That's the really important thing I learned from Sam. I learned that about me--about all of us. It's hard to explain. I experienced it--but you can only hear about it."

"We're listening," said Fenwick dully.

"I saw a picture of a lathe in a magazine a few months ago," said Baker slowly. "You can buy one of these lathes for $174,000, if you want one. It's a pretty fancy job. The lathe remembers what it does once, and afterwards can do it again without any instructions.

"The lathe has a magnetic tape memory. The operator cuts the first piece on the lathe, and the tape records all the operations necessary for that production. After that, the operator needs only to insert the metal stock and press the start b.u.t.ton.

"There could be a million memories in storage, and the lathe could draw on any one of them to repeat what it had done before at any time in its history."

"I don't see what this has got to do with Sam and you," said Fenwick.

Baker ignored him. "A long time ago a bit of life came into existence. It had no memory, because it was the first. But it faced the universe and made decisions. That's the difference between life and nonlife. Did you know that, Fenwick? The capacity to make decisions without pre-programming. The lathe is not alive because it must be pre-programmed by the operator. We used to say that reproduction was the criterion of life, but the lathe could be pre-programmed to build a duplicate of itself, complete with existing memories, if that were desired, but that would not make it a living thing.

"Spontaneous decision. A single cell can make a simple binary choice. Maybe nothing more complex than to be or not to be. The decision may be conditioned by lethal circ.u.mstances that permit only a 'not' decision. Nevertheless, a decision is made, and the cell shuts down its life processes in the very instant of death. They are not shut down for it.

"In the beginning, the first bit of life faced the world and made decisions, and memory came into being. The structures of giant protein molecules shifted slightly in those first cells and became a memory of decisions and encounters. The cells split and became new pairs carrying in each part giant patterned molecules of the same structure. These were memory tapes that grew and divided and spread among all life until they carried un-numbered billions of memories.

"Molecular tapes. Genes. The memory of life on earth, since the beginning. Each new piece of life that springs from parent life comes equipped with vast libraries of molecular tapes recording the experiences of life since the beginning.

"Life forms as complex as mammals could not exist without this tape library to draw upon. The bodily mechanisms could not function if they came into existence without the taped memories out of the ages, explaining why each organ was developed and how it should function. Sometimes, part of the tapes are missing, and the organism, if it endures, must live without instructions for some function. One human lifetime is too infinitesimally small to relearn procedures that have taken aeons to develop.

"Just as the lathe operator has a choice of tapes which will cause the lathe to function in different ways, so does new life have a choice. The acc.u.mulated instructions and wisdom of the whole race may be available, except for those tapes which have been lost or destroyed through the ages. New life has a choice from that vast library of tapes. In its inexperience, it relies on the parentage for the selection of many proven combinations, and so we conclude certain characteristics are 'dominant' or 'inherited,' but we haven't been able to discover the slightest reason why this is so.

"A selection of things other than color of eyes, the height of growth to be attained, the shape of the body must also be made. A choice of modes of facing the exterior world, a choice of stratagems to be used in attaining survival and security in that world, must be made.

"And there is one other important factor: Mammalian life is created in a universe where only life exists. The mammal in the womb does not know of the existence of the external universe. Somewhere, sometime, the first awareness of this external universe arises. In the womb. Outside the womb. Early in fetal life, or late. When and where this awareness comes is an individual matter. But when it comes, it arrives with lethal impact.

"Awareness brings a million sensory invasions--chemical, physical, extrasensory--none of them understood, all of them terrifying.

"This terrible fear that arises in this moment of awareness and non-understanding is almost sufficient to cause a choice of death rather than life at this point. Only because of the developed toughness, acquired through the aeons, does the majority of mammalian life choose to continue.

"In this moment, choices must be made as to how to cope with the external world, how to understand it so as to diminish the fear it inspires. The library of genetic tapes is full of possible solutions. Parental experience is examined, too, and the very sensory impacts that are the source of the terror are inspected to a greater or lesser extent to see how they align with taped information.

"A very basic choice is then made. It may not be a single decision, but, rather, a system of decisions all based on some fundamental underlying principle. And the choice may not be made in an instant. How long a time it may occupy I do not know.

"When the decision has been made, reaction between the individual and the external universe begins and understanding begins to flow into the data storage banks. As data are stored, and successful solutions found in the encounter with the world, fear diminishes. Some kind of equilibrium is eventually reached, in which the organism decides how much fear it is willing to tolerate to venture farther into areas of the unknown, and how much it is willing to limit its experience because of this fear.

"When the decision has been made, and the point of equilibrium chosen, a personality exists. The individual has shaped himself to face the world.