Beyond the Barrier

Chapter Thirteen

Through the walls of the time vehicle, Naismith found himself looking into a huge globular room—a hollow, pale-green sphere, with regular markings at intervals on its surface, in which floated a confusing array of objects.

Liss-Yani smiled at him sidelong, her hand on the control box. “Are you ready?”

He stared back at her, said nothing.

Smiling, she did something to the controls. The time vehicle winked out of being.

At the same instant, something dark and incredibly swift flapped toward them, enclosing them. Naismith flung up his arms in instinctive defense, then relaxed. Somewhere a bell was ringing.

“What is this?”

“A precaution,” she said, enjoying his reaction. “What if we had been Uglies?”

Through the dark transparency around them, Naismith could dimly perceive motion in the great globe. Angular machines drifted nearer, lenses glowing sullen red, like coals in the heart of a fire. A little above them, another shape was moving: Naismith realized suddenly that it was a man. Something was wrong with the legs, but he could make out pipe-stem arms, a head, the glint of eyes staring.

Abruptly the bell stopped; the darkness winked out. They were floating in the middle of the green sphere, surrounded by machines in whose lenses the red glow was dying. Nearer, the man Naismith had seen before was floating towards them, body at an angle to theirs, hands gripping his forearms, like a Mandarin. He was dressed in a fantastic, puffed and ruffled garment of yellow and white stripes, the top a short-sleeved singlet, the lower part a tube covering both legs and closed at the bottom with a yellow bow. His face was lean and gnomish, at once anguished and ironic. His eyes glittered; his wide mouth twitched. “You got him, I see,” he said.

“Yes, here he is, Prell.”

“Is he dangerous?”

The girl turned slowly in mid-air and gazed at Naismith.

“I’m not sure,” she said thoughtfully.

“We’d better keep the automatics on him, for the time being.

Later they’ll give him a collar.” Prell turned in the air, spoke a single, harsh word.

Out of the clutter of objects hanging in the vast space, one drifted nearer: it was a miniature sarcophagus, with a design painted on it in blue and yellow. The drawing was a crude sketch of a young girl with yellow hair, eyes closed, lips demurely smiling. Her hands were crossed over her breast.

“Tell the Highborn,” said Prell, “the attempt was successful.

We have the Shefth.”

The sarcophagus clicked, hummed, drifted away again.

“Probably it will take a while to get her attention,” said Prell. “Do you want to look at the work, in the meantime?”

“Yes, all right,” said the girl indifferently. The two of them turned, drifted rapidly away from Naismith. After a moment, already tiny in the distance, they paused and looked back, with comical expressions of surprise on their faces.

“I forgot,” said Prell’s distant voice; “he doesn’t have a director. Wait a moment.” He spoke the harsh word again; another machine drifted toward him. This one was box-shaped, ornamented with red and green arabesques on a black ground.

“A director for that man,” said Prell, pointing.

The box dipped slightly, turned, and came rocketing down at Naismith. At the last moment it slowed, came to a halt facing him a yard away.

“For my information, sir,” said a musical voice from the box, “what is that man’s name?”

“Naismith,” said Naismith, looking at it curiously.

“Excuse me, sir, but that is not a catalogued name,” said the box politely.

The voices of Prell and the girl murmured together a moment; then Prell said, “We’ll get him a name presently. For now, just call him ‘that man.’”

“Thank you, sir,” said the box. A hopper in its center slowly opened; out floated a narrow, flexible band of some cream-colored substance.

“Put it on your wrist,” called the girl. Naismith did so, and the stuff curled around his wrist as if half-alive, clung to itself and seemed to melt together; the seam disappeared.

“Now point in the direction you want to go and just tense your wrist slightly,” her voice went on.

Naismith did as he was told, and found the vast green sphere rotating slowly around him, while certain distant clumps of machines drifted nearer. When Prell and the girl came into view again, he pointed toward them, and this time managed to keep them centered. He lowered his arm, came to rest a few feet away.

“You’ll get used to it,” said Liss-Yani. “Come on!”

She and Prell moved off again, but came to a halt almost immediately. Naismith jockeyed up beside them. Prell was moving some small glittering object across the vacant air before him: suddenly there was a shimmer, a crackle, and a great round sheet of silvery reflection came into being.

Prell touched it again; the disk turned transparent, and they were looking into another room, darker and even more enormous than the one they were in. In the vast space myriads of tiny shapes were moving: some were human, some were the symmetrical forms of machines—boxes, sarcophagi, vase shapes. As Naismith’s vision adjusted to the scene, he began to make out serried ranks of dark objects, not visibly connected to one another, among which the human and robot forms came and went.

Prell reached out again, and the scene appeared to drift nearer. They were looking down upon one of the thousands of ranked machines, over which a gnomish young man in a dress like Prell’s was hovering.

“This is the Barrier control network,” the girl’s voice explained. “They’ve been working on it for five years. It’s almost finished.”

“Is this an actual entranceway into that room,” Naismith asked, fumbling for words, “or a—a viewscreen?”

Prell looked at him curiously. “What is the difference?”

Naismith realized, in confusion, that there was no difference, in the question as he had asked it: the two phrases, in BoDen, were almost identical.

While he was still thinking dazedly of the implications of this, Prell reached out again.

“Would you like to see what they’re doing?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he gestured once more with the shining object in his hand.

Part of the scene before them seemed to expand. Where one of the floating machines had been, there was a dim lattice of crystals, growing more shadowy and insubstantial as it swelled; then darkness; then a dazzle of faint prismatic Light—tiny complexes in a vast three-dimensional array, growing steadily bigger…

Naismith caught his breath. He realized that he was seeing the very molecules that made up the substance of the machines that were being built in the next chamber.

“This is why it takes so long,” Prell said, rubbing his forearms nervously. He grimaced. “Every channel has to be built up molecule by molecule, under rigid control. Like to see it closer?”

The magnification increased. In luminous darkness, Naismith saw molecules scattered like tiny planets. A moving dot of light appeared, slowly traced a mathematical arc across the blackness. Other arcs of light sprang out from it, like ribs from a spinal column; slowly, the dots that were molecules drifted across to take position upon them.

“Is that direct vision, or a display of some kind?” Naismith demanded, fascinated.

“It’s a mathematical analogue,” Prell answered. “Just a toy, really.” His mouth twitched; he scrubbed at his wrists as if in pain.

“It’s beautiful,” said Naismith.

Prell shot him a startled glance, then seemed to go into a reverie.

The sarcophagus robot drifted up, said discreetly, “The Highborn has received your message. She asks you to send that man to the social room.”

“All right,” said Prell. “Liss-Yani, you might as well take him over. Come back later, I want to talk to you.”

“Yes,” she said. Turning, she took Naismith’s arm. “This way.”

Naismith’s body was trembling in alarm. The thought came: Prell is dangerous. He knows what I am.

Brain working furiously, he allowed the girl to lead him away from Prell. His reactions are slow—he is still thinking about it. But in another few seconds…

The girl came to a halt in mid-air; awkwardly, Naismith stabilized himself beside her. Before them, faintly, he could make out a silvery circle in the air. Liss-Yani reached out, touched it with a glittering object, as Prell had done before.

The ten-foot circle quivered, rippled: they were looking into a gigantic room full of color and motion. “Come,” said the girl again, pulling him through.

On the opposite side, Naismith brought himself to a halt, looking back. He could still see the scientist, hovering in thought beside one of his machines. The girl’s arm reached past him, touched the circle, and the scene blanked out, was gone.

Naismith whirled. “Teach me how to operate these doorways,” he said angrily.

“It’s perfectly easy,” she said, staring at him. “You just touch them with the opener and think about where you want to go. There’ll be plenty of time for that—come on.”

“Give it to me,” he said, holding out his hand. After a moment she shrugged, put a smooth silvery object into his palm. It felt like plastic rather than metal; it was an elongated ovoid, fitting naturally into his hand so that the blunt tip of it projected.

Naismith reached out, touched the circle. The view sprang into being again. Prell had turned slightly, was massaging his forearms with his hands; there was an anxious expression on his face.

“One moment,” said Naismith. He propelled himself through the opening, turned, touched it with the silvery object again; it blanked out. Instantly Naismith hurled himself at Prell.

The scientist turned, with a startled expression, as Naismith hurtled up. Naismith seized the man by the front of his robe, yanked Prell toward him. Terror sprang into the little man’s eyes.

“What was my mistake?” Naismith demanded. “Tell me!”

He tightened his grip.

“Beautiful,” the little man gasped. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s, making no sound, until Naismith impatiently shook him. “You’re not—a Shefth… They have no—esthetic responses…” His face contorted with sudden malevolence. “I know what you are—help!—” His lungs filled, he opened his mouth to shout.

Naismith gripped his frail body with one arm, put the other forearm against his chin, pressed. There was a gurgling sound as the man’s wind was cut off; then a dry, loud snap. The body sagged.

As Naismith turned, one of the ubiquitous machines drifted nearer. “For my information, sir,” it said musically, “what has happened to Master Prell?”

“Uglies attacked him,” said Naismith at random, moving away. “They appeared suddenly, killed Prell, then vanished.”

“The automatic weapons did not fire,” said the machine politely.

“They were out of order,” Naismith said. He glanced around; none of the other floating robots seemed to have noticed anything. Could he disable this one, if he had to? Was it necessary?

“For my information, sir,” said the robot, “which were out of order, the automatic weapons or the Uglies?”

“The weapons,” Naismith told it, staring at the intricate design on the front of the box.

“Thank you, sir.”

“For my information,” Naismith said suddenly, “tell me, are you intelligent?”

“I am intelligent. I have a machine intelligence of plus forty.”

Naismith frowned. “That was not what I wanted to know.

Are you—are you conscious?”

“I am not conscious, sir.”

“Have you volition?”

“I have no volition, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir.” The machine dipped politely, turned, drifted away.

On the other side of the doorway, the girl was waiting.

Naismith slipped through, closed the circle quickly behind him.

“What took you so long?” she demanded.

“I had trouble finding the doorway again,” he said. Breathing hard, he stared around at the crowded immensity behind her. The room was globular, and so vast that he could not estimate its extent. In a pale greenish haze, what seemed to be thousands of floating bodies were ranked: some coming and going, in a slow circling movement, others fixed. In a given group, large or small, all the heads would be pointing one way and the bodies spaced about equally, like fish in.a school. Some were right-side up from his point of view, others upside down, others at all angles. It gave him a vertiginous feeling.

“Well, come on,” said the girl.

Naismith hesitated. Things were moving top fast; he needed time to think. It was incredible that he had just committed a murder… This was not like the other time, when he had blanked out and discovered later that he had killed Wells. This time, something in his own brain had said, Prell knows what I am. For the moment, he had known exactly what he had to do and why. Now it was fading…. In God’s name, he thought suddenly, what kind of a monster am I?