Beyond the Barrier

Chapter Sixteen

In the darkness, the being who knew himself as Naismith awakened. Memory returned. He knew where he was, and what he was.

He was alive, though the rapidly cooling body in which he lay was not. He could remember, now, with utter clarity, all the things it had been necessary for “Naismith” to forget.

He remembered killing Wells. Earlier, he remembered standing beside the wreckage of a bomber, and coolly selecting the dog tags of one of its crewmen, the one who most resembled him in age and height: dog tags that read “NAISMITH, GORDON.”

He remembered stripping the body, carrying it on his shoulders to a ravine, throwing it in and covering it with boulders….

Earlier still, he remembered his first grublike awareness—

warmth, protection, motion. He had put out pseudoganglions, first cautiously, then with gathering sureness and skill. He had linked his own nervous system with that of his host, a Shefthi warrior returning belatedly from a Zug hunt.

Then he could see, feel, hear, with his host’s human senses.

He was inside the Shefth: he was the Shefth….

With grim satisfaction, he realized that the game was over, the long-maturing plan had been successful. His knowledge of his own kind came only from human sources, but logic alone made it certain that he represented his species’ counterblow to the humans’ Barrier. Encysted in a human body, his mind radiations mingled with those of a human brain, he alone of all his kind could pass through that Barrier. He was the one surviving Zug: he himself was the monster he had been sent to kill.

Now, as his strength returned, he was aware of motion. The host-body was being towed off out of the way, probably by a robot. He waited, tensely, until the motion was arrested and the sounds of voices diminished. It was evident that he had been taken out of the great hall, into some smaller chamber.

He waited again, to make sure, but there was no further movement.

Ever since the host-body died, he had been injecting desic-cants into it to harden it and make it brittle along the center line of the torso. Now he stretched himself, applied pressure: and the body split. Light came into his prison.

For the first time, he saw with his own eyes; and he was dazzled. The world was so much more brilliant and beautiful than human senses could convey!

Now he saw that he was floating in a small, bare cubicle, among the corpses of dozens of greenskins.

Carefully he drew himself out of the hollow he had made in the body of his host. He felt his limbs and wings stretching in the air, hardening.

A fresh babble of voices came from outside the cubicle. He gripped the empty host-body and drew it quickly to the back of the room, hiding it behind the other floating bodies. A moment later, there was a commotion: a body crashed heavily into the room, followed by another. The first was babbling in a thin, terrified voice, “No, no, no…”

He risked a glance. A robot, as he watched, was affixing a death collar to the scrawny neck of a technician. Its task done, the robot turned and floated away. It was carrying a cluster of the metal collars, which jangled faintly as it moved.

The technician, left behind, tugged vainly at his collar. Tears glittered in the little man’s eyes. With a choked sound, after a moment, he turned and followed the robot.

The being who called himself Naismith waited grimly. Now that the Shefthi and the greenskins were gone, the City’s rulers were evidently making sure of the technicians—perhaps of the Entertainers as well. However that might be, Naismith waited because he had to. -

During these first few minutes, he was vulnerable and weak, easy prey for any determined man with a weapon.

At intervals, cautiously, he tested his wings. The curved ribs were hardening, the membranes drying. He flexed his grasping members, watching the armored segments slide in their casings.

Strength and alertness began to flow into his body. Soon—

His thoughts broke off abruptly as another robot entered the chamber. Naismith felt a tug, and saw the greenskinned bodies around him bob and wheel, as they followed the robot out into the corridor.

Naismith went along, caught in the same web of force. Outside, he saw that his small group of bodies was being joined to a much larger one. All the greenskinned corpses, evidently, were being brought together for disposal. Naismith could have broken free of fee weak attraction that held him, but he ran less chance of detection in staying where he was. Besides, if his idea of bis whereabouts was correct, the procession was headed where he wanted to go.

Other groups of bodies were added as they went, but always at the head of the procession, and it was not until they crossed a large spherical hall that anyone noticed Naismith.

“Look—a Zug, isn’t it?” an effete voice remarked. “How frightening, even dead as it is!”

“Yes, and imagine that we aren’t even seeing its true form,”

another voice replied. The sound faded as the procession moved on. “If we had a viewer to look at it with—” A pause. “But, Willot, what is a dead Zug doing here, in the New City?”

Naismith waited no longer. With a surge of his wings, he was out of the cluster of bodies, darting straight across the hall toward the nearest doorway.

Shouts echoed behind him as he gathered speed. Ahead, a little group of gorgeously dressed fat men blundered squarely into his path. He burst through them like a rocket, sending them flying with bruised limbs and broken bones.

Then he was at the doorway, thinking his destination. He dove through, into the workrooms of the technicians.

Here everything was confusion—machines unattended and adrift, unidentifiable instruments floating in clusters. A few technicians were visible, most of them wearing the death collars. Of the few who were still without them, one was being pursued, shrieking, by a robot.

The dim memories of his last sleep were now clear. Naismith remembered stealing out of the cubicle, going to the workrooms, capturing and subduing one of the technicians. He had put a mind helmet on the little man, had forced out of him the one secret he wanted to know.

Now he headed directly for one small doorway, half-hidden behind floating machines. He opened it with a thought, dived in.

There was a gnome before him in the narrow, blind tube. He had the rear panel already open, and was fingering the controls.

He turned a snarling face as Naismith entered; then his eyes widened, his face paled.

Naismith killed him with one blow, pushed his body aside, and turned his attention to the control board.

Here, carefully concealed and guarded, was the central control system for all the automatic devices that made life possible in the City—air generators, synthesizers, automatic weapons, robots.

Naismith examined the control disks carefully. Some had the death symbol on them, meaning their settings could not be altered without killing the operator—an underling would have to be sacrificed for each such adjustment. These were the controls for the force-fields which made up the walls of the New City; the precaution was understandable.

Others, of a slightly different color, also bore the death symbol, but in these cases it was a bluff, and Naismith touched them without hesitation. He turned off all the automatic weapons in the City, neutralized the robots, and opened the gateways between the Old and New Cities. Then, working more slowly, he opened the panel and altered the thought signals required to approach the control board. Now only he could make any further changes in its settings.

He was hungry, so he made a light snack from the food he found in the corridor. Then, at his leisure, he went back the way he had come and began the tour of the City.

Everywhere, the Lenlu Din gawked at him with pasty faces, all silent, all shaking. Those nearest the doorways fled in a panic when they saw him enter: the rest did not even try to escape, but only hung where they were, passive, staring.

He paused to examine his reflection in the silvery disk of a mirror. It was strange, and yet perfectly natural, to look at himself and see this pale, unearthly figure, with its blazing eyes in the inhuman mask of the face. He flexed his great arms, and the smaller grasping members; then the tail, watching the sharp sting emerge.

He moved on, giving new orders to the robots as he went.

In the social room he came upon a little group of fat men frantically at work upon an instrument he recognized.

They scattered as he approached, and he read the message they had been trying to send into the past: “DANGER—

ONE ZUG ALIVE. DO NOT SEND SHEFTH.” The machine was glowing, the message incomplete. He turned it off, and went on his way.

He was here, nothing they could do could alter that. That had been obvious from the beginning: but let them try.

The vast concourses and galleries of the New City absorbed his attention; he was beginning to catalogue the treasures of his new domain, a task that would occupy many months. Yet the silent throngs, the glittering color, the miles of records and information capsules, did not please him as they should. After a long time he realized what the trouble was. It was the phantom personality of the man, Naismith. It was oppressive, as if he were wearing an invisible overcoat. Irritably he tried to shrug it off, but it stayed.

Now that he was aware of it, the feeling was more annoying than ever. He stopped and floated still, appalled. Every thought, every feeling that Naismith had had during the months their minds were linked together was recorded in his brain. It was not merely that he remembered Naismith: he war Naismith.

He was a member of the race of conquerors; and he was also a man.

He made a violent mental effort to throw off that phantom mind, but the thing clung to him stubbornly, like the ghost of an amputated limb. It was no use telling himself that Naismith was dead. Naismith’s ghost was in his mind—no, not even a ghost; his living personality.

He whirled in sudden anger, and the fat little people scattered around him. Were these the rulers of Earth’s ultimate City, the inheritors of four hundred thousand years of human evolution? These puffed little parasites, selfish, neurotic and cruel?

Their race produced some great men, Naismith’s voice said soberly in his mind.

There are none among these! he answered. Nor will they ever produce any, if they live a million years.

Not under your rule.

And if I had left them to themselves, what then—would they have done any better?

No, there is no hope for them, nor perhaps even for the technicians. But there is hope for the Entertainers.

Pride stiffened his body. They are my property.

They are human beings.

In doubt and confusion, he turned to the nearest robot, a sarcophagus-shape with geometric figures inscribed in red on a gold and silver ground. “Tell me briefly, what is a human being?”

The robot whirred, hummed. “A human being,” it said, ‘is a potentiality.”

After a moment, he gestured. The robot bowed and drifted away.

The Entertainers deserve their chance, Naismith’s voice said.

No.

He turned as another robot floated up: he recognized it as one he had sent into the Old City on an errand.

“Lord, I found no Masters alive, but I have taken eggs from their bodies as you ordered. They are under the care of the technicians in the biological laboratories.”

He made a sign of dismissal and the robot went away. He went on with his tour of inspection. Everywhere, the eyes of the little fat people stared at him in dull misery.

Woe to the vanquished, said a voice in his brain: was it -his own, or Naismith’s?

With a sense of panic, he discovered that he could not tell the difference. The two were one.

He was all triumph and mastery; yet he was all commisera-tion, all regret.

Give them their lives, and their chance, said the voice.

Where?

Where but on Earth?

Naismith hung frozen for a moment, remembering the sea of grass, under the cloud-dotted sky.

A little man in white drifted up. “Master, are there any orders?”

“Yes. Find me the Entertainers Liss and Rab.” As the human bobbed his head and darted off, Naismith beckoned the nearest robot. “Bring me a vehicle.”

Still, when the robot had gone, he hung in the air, oblivious to the color and movement around him, astonished by the purpose that was in his mind. Could a Zug feel this passion of mercy, and remain a Zug?

The robot came first with the control box, then the Entertainers, looking frightened and desperate.

Naismith took the control box. “Come near, and don’t be afraid,” he said to the Entertainers. “We are going to Earth.”

“To Earth? I don’t understand,” said Liss-Yani.

“Are you going to exile us there?” Rab burst out. He turned to the girl. “Let him do it,” he said fiercely. “It’s better than staying here to be food for him.”

Liss-Yani’s face paled. After a moment, she stepped nearer, and Rab followed. Naismith touched the controls. The blue-tinted bubble of force sprang up around them; the hall drifted away. They passed through one partition, then another… then a third, and they were in space, under the cold majesty of the stars.

They stood on the grassy plain just at dawn, when the greenish-blue sky to eastward was lit with yellow fires along the horizon, and the sun bulged up red as a blood-orange above the mountains.

Naismith switched off the bubble. The two entertainers looked at him without expression, then turned and began to walk away through the wet grass. After a moment they linked hands.

“Wait,” Naismith called after them. They turned. “How far does the influence of this machine extend?”

“About half a mile,” the girl said dully.

“Then if I take it farther away than that—or, better, if I remove it in time—you will die?”

“You know we will.”

“Then watch.” Naismith touched the controls, forming the bubble. He depressed and rotated the time control gently.

The two silent figures vanished; the plain writhed, darkened, glowed with sunlight, darkened again. Touching it more gently, Naismith turned the control the other way. The same sequence unrolled in reverse, like a film strip run backward.

The two figures appeared once more, then a third—Naismith himself, wings busy as he hovered in air, his grasping members holding the machine.

Invisible in the bubble, he watched himself leave. He saw the two Entertainers stiffen, saw them clutch each other. After a moment he saw them separate, open their eyes, look around in wonder.

Still he waited, until they dared to walk a few steps into the grass, calling to each other, breathing deep. Dawn was diffus-ing half the sky; across the plain, birdsong echoed.

Naismith lowered the bubble, brought it into phase and turned it off. The two humans did not even see him.

“Liss—Rab!” he called.

They turned, with incredulous faces. “It didn’t kill us!” said Liss-Yani. “Is this real?”

“It is real,” he told her.

“But then—” she whispered, and fell silent.

“They said that you Zugs made the illusion,” said Rab.

“They also told you we were hideous monsters,” Naismith replied drily. “Which is easier—to make an illusion you can see with your own eyes, or to make one that can only be seen through a ‘viewer’?”

They stared at him. “This is your true form?” Liss-Yani ventured.

“It is my only form.”

“And all this is real?”

Naismith did not reply. They were a pretty pair, he was thinking, especially the female; it would be interesting to breed them and see— He checked himself. Was that the Zug’s thought, or the man’s?

It was neither, he realized, but a blend… and how curious to think that this detached pleasure, half cool, half warm, was possible only to the mythological creature he had become….

“But why would they do this?” Rab asked.

“Tell me, when you left the City on their errands, did you ever think of staying on Earth?”

“Yes, often,” said Liss, her eyes glinting.

“Why didn’t you do so?”

“If we had stayed in the past, that would have changed history, changed the City—so it was impossible—it would have pinched out the loop.”

“And why didn’t you settle here, in your own present?”

The two looked at each other. “Because they made us think it was a wasteland,” Rab said.

Naismith inclined his head. “We will go back to the City now,” he said. “You will tell the other Entertainers, gather them all together. I will give you vehicles, tools, records, everything you need.”

They came toward him slowly. “But why are you doing this?” Liss asked.

“You would not understand,” said Naismith.

…In truth, he hardly understood himself. But as he moved through the glittering throng in the great hall, listening to the music and the voices, seeing the respectful looks on the faces of the Lenlu Din when they glanced his way, it seemed to Naismith that somehow, through accident and willfulness, he had woven himself precisely and symmetrically into the grand design.

Always, he thought, the universe tended to strike a balance between two excesses: long life and short, intelligence and mindlessness, mercy and cruelty. The tapestry unrolled, and there was never an end to it.

“Lord,” said a robot, drifting up, “the last of the Lenlu Din are being processed now in the gold chamber. In one hour they will all have been treated, as you ordered.”

Naismith dismissed it, and watched it float among the idle pleasure-seekers. He was pleasantly hungry; in half an hour it would be time to eat. After all, this way was best. In the old days, a Zug would have leaped upon his victim and devoured it on the spot. Now…

A few hundred yards away, from the midst of a large group, he heard the screeching of the old woman, the Highborn, hysterical and angry as ever. Other voices were soothing her.

All was normal, all was for the best in this best of worlds.

Naismith drifted over; the gaily dressed little people parted respectfully to let him through. Even the mad old woman interrupted her screeching to bob her head.

“Highborn,” said Naismith, “have you forgotten that you are about to retire for extended meditation?”

“I am? Am I?” she said uncertainly. “When am I going?”

“Almost immediately,” Naismith told her gently, and beckoned to a passing robot. “Show the Highborn to her chambers.”

“But won’t that be unpleasant?” she asked, letting herself be led away.

“You will not mind it at all,” Naismith promised her, and floated off in another direction.

Three fat little men, arms linked, drifted across his path with respectful glances. To them, he was no monster, but a revered counsellor and guide. The absence of the Entertainers did not strike them as odd: Drugged and hypnotized, they had forgotten there had ever been such a caste, or any other state of things.

They were cattle.

Was this mercy? Then a Zug could be merciful. Was it cruelty? Then there was cruelty in a man….

The game, Naismith realized now, was not over. The pattern was still unfolding, in this small and unimportant corner of the universe of stars.

Here, in the closed world of the City, he tasted triumph—

dominion was his. Yet it was good to know that down there on Earth, the human species was still free, still evolving in its pattern.

It was pleasant to think that in a thousand years, or ten thousand, Zug and Man might meet again, and this time blend their powers into something greater. It would take that long, or longer; Naismith and his kind could afford to wait.

For God is not born in a day.