Beyond the Barrier

Chapter Twelve

He was aware of having been unconscious, of a pain in his head, and of a wordless anxiety that had driven him up out of sleep.

He opened his eyes.

He was looking up into a gulf of blue sky, dotted with clouds. Hardness pressed against his back; the air he breathed was cool and pure. Something dry and flexible brushed his cheek as he turned his head; vague yellowish rod-shapes moved across his vision. He sucked in a breath, rolled over and sat up.

He was on the ground, with grass shoulder-high all around him. A few feet away, on the trampled grass, lay a small blued-steel machine.

Naismith stared at it in frozen surprise for an instant, before he realized it was not the same one the aliens had used: the shape was similar, but not identical.

He reached for it, and found himself held back, although he could neither see nor feel any obstacle. Incredulous, he put out his full strength, straining until the blood roared in his ears; but he could not force his body an inch closer to the machine.

After a moment he gave it up, and cautiously got to his feet.

He felt no restraint, and was able to stand; but when he tried to take a step toward the machine, the same impalpable barrier held him back.

He straightened again, looking out over the sea of grass. At first he saw only the rolling yellow waves, with an occasional green treetop in the distance, and a line of misty hills along the horizon. Then he became aware of movement.

A few hundred yards away across the plain, a human form was moving slowly through the grass. It was a girl, the upper part of her body either nude or lightly clothed; her legs and hips were hidden by the grass. She was walking with leisurely grace, halting occasionally, with her face turned up to the sun.

He could not make out her features, but something in the lines and the motion of her body made him think she was young.

She had not noticed him. Naismith glanced again at the machine on the ground, then crouched out of sight and once more began a desperate effort to approach it. He found that he could walk in a circle around the machine, but could never come any nearer. He dug his feet in and pushed, with some idea of forcing the machine to move ahead of him, but did not succeed.

He stopped, gasping for breath, and looked over the tops of the grasses again. The girl was much closer. This time she saw him.

Naismith stood up and waited.

The girl walked unhurriedly toward him. Her skin was tanned, her hair coppery, shining in the light. She was dressed, or half dressed, in bits of contoured metal and fabric that clung to her body here and there, in a pattern more esthetic than functional. Her eyes were narrowed as she walked, as if she were aware of nothing but the caress of sun and air on her body.

She waited until she was only a few yards away before she spoke. “Awake already?” she said. The language she used was BoDen.

Naismith did not reply. Seen so near at hand, the girl had a startling, provocative beauty. Her skin was satiny, as if covered by an almost invisible sheer tissue—spiderweb-stuff that ended, without a visible border, at the edges of her lips and eyes. The red-violet of her lips might have been natural or artificial. Her eyes were pale green, fringed with dark lashes, startling against her brown face.

She was watching him with an amused expression. “Well, don’t stand there—back away.”

Naismith did not move. “Who are you—what is this place?”

“Earth, of course. Now back off so that I can get in.”

Naismith glanced down at the machine, then back at the girl. “What if I don’t?”

“I’ll leave you here until you get hungry.”

Naismith shrugged, backed off a few steps into the tall grass.

The girl waited, then darted forward to the machine. She sat down on the ground beside it, folding her legs neatly, and looked up at him with a mocking smile. “All right, you can come back.”

Naismith looked at her, then stared around at the grassy plain, peaceful and silent under the sky.

Absently he let his fingers trail through the dry, bearded grasses.

Far off, the tiny dot of a bird launched itself from one of the isolated treetops; he followed it across the sky until it alighted again.

“This is a beautiful spot,” he said.

Her laughter made him turn. “Like to see what it’s really like?” she said. She tossed something toward him. “Here.”

Naismith’s hand went up automatically to bat the thing away; at the last moment he changed his mind, plucked it out of the air.

It was a shaped blue grip of some smooth, waxy substance.

When his hand closed around it, a disk of dark color glowed into being just above it.

He stared at the thing in perplexity for a moment before he realized that he was looking through the disk, at a three-dimensional scene beyond. He turned the grip this way and that, swung it around, and discovered that the view through the disk corresponded with the landscape around him—

horizon, hills, the plain itself were all there, but all changed.

Grass and trees were gone; instead, there was raw earth and rock—blackened, cratered and barren under a starred purple sky. The sun blazed overhead—not the ordinary ball of light, but a monstrous thing with flames spreading high from either side. Naismith lowered the disk, puzzled.

“What is that—another time line?” he asked.

“I told you,” she said looking up at him serenely. “That is what is really here. Everything you see is only a clever illusion.” She indicated the landscape around them. “Earth is a dead planet now—destroyed by wars. You could not even breathe here, if you were not protected by this machine.”

Naismith frowned, and put out a hand to touch the nearest clump of grass. The dry stems, the bearded tips, were real to his fingers. He pulled up a few, wadded them in his palm, watched them fall.

“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “Who would do such a thing?”

“They say Zugs did it,” she answered indifferently. “The proof is that only human beings see any of this—a camera will not photograph it, and the illusion will not pass through that viewer. Give it back.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Naismith tossed the grip to her.

The disk winked out as it left his hand, winked on again as she caught it. She glanced through it, said with a trace of bitterness,

“All dust and stone,” and put it away in her silver belt.

“Then why were you walking out there?” Naismith asked curiously.

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t I enjoy it, just because it’s an illusion?” She gazed up at him. “Well, get in.”

Naismith stepped closer, watching as she picked up the machine. “Where are you taking me?”

Without replying, she touched the controls of the machine.

A faint jolt came, and they were enclosed in a transparent bubble, through which the landscape shone spectral blue.

Almost at once, without any feeling of motion, the earth dropped away underneath, the sky began to darken.

Naismith leaned forward slightly, found that the same barrier kept him from approaching the girl. She smiled up at him mockingly, and lit a green cigarette with jeweled fingers that trembled slightly. “Sit down, Shefth.”

Naismith obeyed slowly, staring at her. “I remember now,”

he said. “I saw something blue coming up, then—”

She nodded, blowing a jet of greenish smoke. “I didn’t dare take a chance with you,” she said. “I hit you with a force-rod as I pulled you in. Then I thought I might as well wait till you woke up, so I went forward a few thousand years and landed down there.” She moistened her lips. “You’re strong,” she said.

“By all the rules, you should have been unconscious for at least another twenty minutes. Anyhow, I had time to put a mind helmet on you and read all your little secrets.”

Naismith felt his body tensing. “What secrets?”

“I know them all,” she said, wagging her head wisely. “All about California, and the two Uglies you called Lall and Churan.” She laughed. “And what they wanted you to do.”

Naismith stared at her, eyes narrowed. “Do you speak English?” he asked abruptly.

She did not respond.

“Do you know that you are a dirty little slut?” he asked in the same even tone.

Her eyes blazed at him. Her lips pulled away from her teeth, and for an instant Naismith felt a chill of alarm. Then it was gone.

“I won’t kill you now,” she whispered in English. “That would be too easy. When I kill you, it will be slowly and painfully, to teach you not to speak that way to Liss-Yani.”

Naismith caught his breath, then pointed a finger at her.

“Now I know you,” he said. “It was your voice, that night, when I saw the Zug. You said ‘Kill it’ in just the same tone.

You sent that—vision, whatever it was. And those dreams—

Why?”

She blinked at him. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Why should I be? You said you’re not going to kill me now.”

“And later?”

“Later, maybe I’ll be afraid.”

“I wonder,” she said, licking her moist violet lips. She stubbed the cigarette abruptly into a hole in the floor, and it vanished. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Gordon Naismith.”

“Not that. Your real name, what is it?”

“I don’t remember,” said Naismith.

She looked at him thoughtfully. “And you don’t remember anything about the City, or the death collars, or Thera-Yani?”

“No.”

She sighed. “I wish I could believe you. Come here and kiss me.” She tilted up her face and sat waiting, hands on the control box.

After a surprised instant, Naismith slid toward her. The invisible barrier halted him, then seemed to soften; it melted away until his face approached hers; but when he tried to extend his arms, they were stopped in mid-air.

“Well, come on,” she said, half-closing her eyes.

Naismith, half annoyed, half intrigued, leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were soft, hot and moist; they parted under his at once, and her soft tongue probed into his mouth.

After a few moments, she lay back and pushed him away.

“Is that your best effort?” she asked. “Go on, sit down.”

She plucked another green cigarette out of the floor and lit it. “Well, I never heard of a Shefth that could kiss.”

Nettled, he asked, “Then why did you suggest it?”

“I wanted to see what you would do. A real Shefth would not kiss a Yani.” She cocked her head at him. “Actually, it was not too bad.”

Naismith stared at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed. Remembering the world of his dreams, he thought, No, of course a Shefth would not kiss a Yard; and she had all the stigmata—the coppery skin and hair, green eyes, slender, tapering fingers….

“How did you know where to find me?” he asked in BoDen.

“Were you watching, all that time I was with Lall and Churan?”

“Of course. Uglies are very stupid. They thought you would simply drop into the Earth and never come out again. But I knew better. I computed your orbit, and—” She shrugged.

“Then it was easy.”

Her fingers were slowly stroking one of the buttons on the control box she held on the floor. Naismith said, “You know, of course, that it was on your account the Uglies decided they couldn’t trust me?”

“I know.”

“Then why can’t you trust me?” he demanded. “Either I’m on one side or the other.”

“Because there’s something wrong about you,” she said, and blew green smoke at him. “I felt it when I kissed you, and I am never mistaken. I don’t know what it is—you seem to be just what you say, a Shefth who has lost his memory. But there is… something. Oh, well—forget it.” She touched the control box, then leaned back against the wall. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

At once Naismith was again acutely aware of both needs.

Watching nun, the girl reached behind her to the wall, withdrew a cup of foaming white liquid and a brownish, solid cake.

She broke the cake in half, offered him the cup and one piece of the brownish stuff.

Naismith accepted both, but cautiously watched the girl nibble at the cake before he tried it himself. It was chewy and rich-tasting, something like figs. He sipped the liquid, found it agreeably astringent.

The girl laughed suddenly.

“What is it?” Naismith demanded, lowering the cup.

“You were so easy,” she said. “How do you know I did not put ten-day poison in the fruit or wine?”

Naismith stared at her. “Did you?”

“Maybe.” Her eyes glittered with amusement. “If I did, you can only get the antidote from me. So if I ask you a favor, later on, you may want to do it instead of taking a chance.”

“What sort of favor?” Naismith asked. He glanced at the food, laid it down.

“Go on, eat! If there is poison in it, you’ve had enough already—the rest won’t make any difference.”

Naismith looked at her grimly, then nodded and took another bite of the cake. “What sort of a favor?” he repeated.

“I don’t know,” she said indifferently. “Things were becoming a little difficult when I left. The Barrier is so close now. It doesn’t hurt to have friends at a time like that.”

In spite of himself, Naismith smiled. “Is that your idea of a friend—someone who has to do what you say because you’ve poisoned him?”

“Please don’t be dull,” she said, with a moue of distaste.

“After all, we are going to be in this traveler together for another ten minutes.”

“Then what happens?”

“I hand you over to the Circle,” she said without interest.

She thrust out one hand, looking complacently at the nacrous violet of her nails. “Do you like this color?”

“It’s very pretty. The Circle—what do they want from me?”

“They think you can kill the Zug. They are terribly worried about it.”

“Then that part was true?”

“About the Zug? Oh, yes. This is total-access clothing, did you know that?” She touched the curved and ornamented plaques that clung to her body one after another. Each one winked briefly out of existence, revealing an arm, a breast with a rather startling violet nipple, a hip, a thigh.

Naismith felt an intense, momentary interest in that tender-looking flesh, but he put it aside. “Which faction is ascendant in the Circle now?” he demanded.

The girl frowned. “What a dull thing you are! You Shefthi, actually…” She yawned once more and stretched back against the curved blue-mist wall. “I think I shall take a little rest,” Her eyes closed.

Naismith gazed at her in annoyance, but before he could speak, something new in the sky caught his attention. It was a mass of spectral blue globes, hanging motionless at eye level: it had not been there a moment ago.

“What is that?” Naismith demanded.

The girl opened her eyes briefly. “The City,” she said.

At first her words seemed irrelevant. Then a shock went through Naismith’s body. “Do you mean that is the City?” he demanded.

She sat up, eyes wide open. “What’s wrong with you?”

Naismith did not reply. His pseudo-memories of the City were all of gigantic rooms, corridors, floating shapes, crowds of people.

Now that he looked for it, the knowledge was there: but it had never once occurred to him that the City was not on Earth.

His inner agitation increased. Here was the danger, not in Liss-Yani’s petulant threats.

His knowledge of essential things was incomplete, badly organized, not readily available. What other blunders might he not make at some crucial moment?… And how much longer did he have to prepare himself?

Outside, the huge, complex shape ponderously revolved as they drew nearer. A bull’s-eye pattern rolled into view, centered itself in the mass, grew steadily larger. The inner circle yawned and swallowed them. They were inside.