CANTATA-141

9

Late at night, Tito Cravelli sat in his conapt, before a genuine fire, sipping Scotch and milk and reading over the written report which his contact at Terran Development had a little earlier in the evening submitted to him.

Softly, his tape deck played one of the cloud chamber pieces by the great mid-twentieth century composer, Harry Parch. The instrument, called by Parch 'the spoils of war', consisted of cloud chambers, a rasper, a modernized musical saw, and artillery shell casings suspended so as to resonate, each at a different frequency. And, as a ground bass accompanying the spoils of war instrument, one of Parch's hollow bamboo marimba-like inventions tapped out an intricate rhythm. It was a piece very popular these days with the public.

But Cravelli was not listening. His attention was fixed on the report of TD's activities.

The old man, Leon Turpin himself, had crossed over via the defective Jiffi-scuttler, along with various company personnel and media people. Turpin had managed to shake the reporters off and had made a sortie by jet-hopper. Something had been found on that sortie and had been carefully brought back to TD; it was now in their labs being examined. Cravelli's contact did not know precisely what it was.

However, one fact was clear. The object brought, back was an artifact. It was manmade.

Apparently Jim Briskin went off half-cocked, Cravelli said to himself. We're going to emigrate -

compel the bibs to emigrate - into a region already occupied. Too bad Jim didn't think of that.

Too bad I didn't think of it, for that matter.

We were fooled, it appeared, by the initial visual impression of the place. It seemed deserted, seemed susceptible to immigration.

Well, it can't be helped now, he realized. Jim made his speech; we're committed. We'll have to go on, hoping that we can still pull it off anyhow. But damn it, he thought. If only we had waited one more day!

Maybe we can kill them off, he thought. Maybe they'll catch some plague from us, die like flies.

He hated himself for having such thoughts. But there it was, clear in his mind. We need the room so badly, he realized. We've got to have it, no matter what. No matter how we have to go about it.

But will Jim agree ? He's so damn soft-hearted.

He's got to agree, Cravelli said to himself. Or it's the end -politically, for us, and in every way for the bibs.

While he was rereading the rather meager report, his door number was all at once tapped out; someone stood at the entrance to the conapt building, wanting permission to enter and visit him.

Cravelli put the report away and crossed the room to the audio-video circuit which connected his apt with the front door.

'Who is it ?' he said, guardedly. As always, he was somewhat wary of nocturnal visitors.

'It's me... Earl,' the speaker informed him. There was no video image, however; the man was standing deliberately out of range. 'Are you alone ?'

Instantly Cravelli said, 'Entirely.' He pressed the release button; fifteen stories below him the door automatically opened to admit Earl Bohegian, his contact at TD. 'You'll have to get by the doorman,' Cravelli told him. 'The key word for the building today is "potato." '

Several minutes later Bohegian, a dark, somber-looking man in his late fifties, entered the apartment. With a sigh, he seated himself facing Tito Cravelli. 'How about a beer ?' Cravelli asked him. 'You look tired.'

'Fine.' Bohegian nodded. 'I am tired. I just left TD; I came directly here. We're all on emergency double-shift. Frankly, I was lucky to get away at all; I told them I had a migraine headache and had to leave. So the company guards finally let me out.'

'What's up ?' Cravelli said, getting the beer from the refrigerator in the kitchen.

"The thing they hauled back here,' Earl Bohegian said. 'What I mentioned in my written report.

The artifact they've been going over it, and it's apparently the damnedest junk you ever heard of.

It's a vehicle of some kind; I finally managed to find that out by hanging around in the executives' washroom, drinking "Coke", and listening to stray colloquies. It's made out of wood, but it's not primitive. It's the turbine, though, that's really throwing the engineers on Level One.'

Gratefully, he accepted the beer and gulped at it. "It works by compressing gases. I'm not an engineer - you know that - so I can't help you out on technical details. But anyhow, by compressing gases it manages to freeze a trapped chamber of water. So help me, Cravelli, the rumor going around TD is that the damn thing is run by ...' He laughed. 'Excuse-me, but it's funny. It runs by expansion of the ice. The water freezes, expands as ice, and drives a piston upward with enormous force, then the ice is melted - all this happens extremely fast - and the gases expand again, which gives another thrust to the piston, driving it back down in the cylinder again. Ice! Did you ever hear of such a sources of power ?

'It's funnier than steam, is it ?' Cravelli said.

Laughing until tears filled his eyes, Bohegian nodded. 'Yes, a lot funnier than steam. Because it's so darn cumbersome. And so utterly ineffective. You should see it. It's incredibly complicated, especially in view of the meager thrust it ultimately manages to deliver. The vehicle coasts forward on runners, not wheels, and finally gets tip into the air, but just for a very few moments.

Then it glides back down. It's a kind of wooden rocketship with a sail. That's what they're building on the other side of the defective 'scuttler. That's their technology. What kind of a civilization is that ?' He finished his beer, set the glass down. "The story going around TD is that one of the better engineers got into it, cranked it up, literally, and manage to fly around the lab for fifteen or sixteen seconds, at a height of about four feet, approximately waist level.'

'Your report,' Cravelli said, once more getting it out, 'says that the stellar charts made by TD's astro-physicists prove that the planet, beyond any reasonable doubt, is Earth ?'

Earl Bohegian became serious, then. 'Yes, and right here in the present. There's been no timetravel at all, not even so much as a fraction of a second. Don't ask me to explain it; they can't explain it, and they're supposed to know about these things. I know what the old man believes, though. According to him - and evidently he hatched this out on his own - it's an Earth that started out like ours and then split off and took a different course; at least its evolution did, its development at the level of human society. Say, ten thousand years back. Maybe even further, even as far back as the Pleistocene Period. The flowers and plants seem to be identical with ours, anyhow. And the continental configurations show no deviation from ours. All the land masses are congruent with ours, so the split-off can't be too long ago. For instance San Francisco Bay.

And the Gulf of Mexico. They don't differ from ours, and I understand they formed as they are now in quasi-historical tunes.'

'How great is the population, do they think ?'

'Not great, certainly not like ours. By the number of lights on the dark side they assume that it lies in the millions - at most. And certainly not in the billions. For instance, whole areas don't appear to be inhabited at all, at least if you accept the lights as an index.'

'Maybe there's a war on,' Cravelli said, 'and they're blacked out.'

'But as the light side moves,' Bohegian said, 'there's little indication of cities, only what appear to be roads and some sort of small, town-like structures ... they'll know more about that in a day or so. The whole business is bizarre, to say the least. Because of the total lack of radio signals, TD

is beginning to speculate that, although they have developed a turbine of sorts, they for some reason haven't ran onto electricity. And the use of wood, laminated and then coated with asbestos paint; it's possible - although virtually incredible -that they don't work with metal. At least not in industry.'

'What language do they speak ?'

'TD doesn't even pretend to know. They're in the process of hauling a number of linguistic decoders over from the linguistics department, so when they finally manage to nab one of the citizens over there, they'll be able to converse with him or her. That should happen any time. In fact it may already have occurred after I left TD and came here. I tell you, this is going to be the apologia pro sua vita of every sociologist, ethnologist, and anthropologist in the world. They're going to be migrating from here to there in droves. And I don't blame them. God knows what they'll find. Is it actually possible that a culture could develop a turbine-powered, airborne craft and not have, say, a written language ? Because, according to the scuttlebutt at TD, there were no letters, signs or figures anywhere on the craft, and they certainly scrutinized it thoroughly for that.'

Half to himself, Cravelli said, "I frankly don't care what they have and have not developed. As long as there's room on their planet for immigration. Mass immigration, in terms of millions of people.'

They each had a second beer, he and Earl Bohegian, and then Bohegian departed.

You're lucky, Jim Briskin, Cravelli thought as he shut the door after Bohegian. You took a chance when you made that speech, but evidently you're going to be able to swing it after all.

Unless you balk at sharing this alter-Earth with its natives ... or unless they happen to possess some mechanism by which they can halt us.

God, I'd like to go there, Cravelli realized. See this civilization with my own eyes. Before we smear it up, as we inevitably will. What an experience it would be! They may have developed into areas which we've never even imagined. Scientifically, philosophically, even technically, in terms of machinery and industrial techniques, sources of power, medicines - in fact in every area, from contraceptive devices to visions of God. From books and cathedrals, if any, to children's toys.

We'll probably initiate events, he reflected, by murdering a few of them, just to be on the safe side. Too bad this isn't in the hands of the government; it's damn bad luck that so far it's entirely the personal property of a private business corporation. Of course, when Jim is elected, all that will change. But Schwarz. He won't do anything; he'll just sit. And TD will be permitted to go ahead in any way it chooses.

To himself Sal Heim said: I've got to arrange a meeting between Leon Turpin, head of Terran

Development, and Jim Briskin. Jim had to be photographed over there in that new world - not just talking about it, but actually standing on it.

And the way to make the contact, Heim realized, is through Frank Woodbine, because Jim and

Frank are old-time friends. I'll get hold of Woodbine and fix it all up, and that will be that. We'll have Jim over there and maybe Frank with him, and what a boost to our campaign that'll be.

We've just got to have it, that's all.

'Get on the vidphone,' he instructed his wife Pat. 'Start them searching down Frank Woodbine; you know, the deep space explorer, the hero.'

'I know,' Pat said. She lifted the receiver and asked for information.

'A hero is a good thing to have around,' Sal said meditatively as he waited. 'It always was my hope to get Jim involved with Woodbine during this campaign. Now I think we've got the exact tie-in we want.' He felt pleased with himself; he had a good idea, and he knew it. All his professional instincts told him that he was onto something, a two-birds-with-one-stone item.

On TV he had seen the media's excursion across into tine other world. Along with the rest of the nation, he had witnessed scenes of blissful trees and grass and clear sky, and he had reacted vigorously. This was it, all right. As soon as he had viewed it for himself, he had realized how profound Jim's insight had been. A new epoch in human history had begun, and his candidate had called the shots right from the start. Now, if they could just get Jim over there along with

Woodbine, this one last essential act...

'I have him,' Pat said, breaking into his thoughts. 'Here.' She held the vidphone receiver toward him. 'He knows who you are. Because of Jim, he accepted the call.'

'Mr. Woodbine,' Sal said, seating himself at the vidphone. 'It's darn nice of you to take a minute or so off from your busy schedule to hear me out. Jim Briskin would like very much to visit this other world. "Can you arrange it with Turpin at TD ?' He explained, then, why it was vital, just in case Woodbine was ignorant of Jim's Chicago speech. But Woodbine was not ignorant of it; he understood immediately what the situation was.

'I think,' Woodbine said thoughtfully, 'that you'd better have Jim drop by my conapt. Tonight, if possible. I want to discuss with him the material we've uncovered on the far side. Before he goes across, he should know about it. I'm sure TD won't mind; they're going to release it to the media sometime tomorrow anyhow.'

'Fine,' Sal said, immensely pleased. 'I'll have him shoot right over to your place.' He thanked

Woodbine profusely and then rang off.

Now let's see if I can light the proper fire under Jim, he said to himself as he dialed. Get him to do this. What if he won't ?

'Maybe I can help,' Pat said, from behind him. 'I can usually persuade Jim when it's genuinely in his interest. and this certainly is, beyond a doubt.'

'I'm glad you see it this way,' Sal said, 'because I'm very anxious about this.' He wondered what material TD had uncovered in the new world; evidently, it was important. And the way

Woodbine had talked, he was obviously concerned.

Hmm, Sal thought. He felt a little worried. Just a little: the first stirrings.

Frank Woodbine answered the knock on his conapt door, and there on the threshold stood his tall and very dark friend Jim Briskin, looking gloomy as always.

'It's been a hell of a long time,' Woodbine said, ushering Jim in. 'Come over here; I want to show you right away what we've turned up on the other side.' He led Jim to the long table in the living room. 'Their compressor.' He pointed to the photograph. 'There are a hundred better ways to build a compressor than this. Why'd they choose the most cumbersome way possible ? You can't call a culture primitive if it's got such artifacts in it as piston engines and gas compressors. In fact, their ability to construct a power glider alone puts them out of that class automatically. And yet, something's obviously wrong. Tomorrow, of course, we'll know what it is, but I'd like to know tonight, before we establish contact with them.'

Picking up the photo of the compressor, Jim Briskin studied it. 'The homeopapes thought you'd found something like this, when you hauled that object back. According to the rumor, you've actually ...'

'Yes,' Woodbine said. "The rumor's correct. Here's a pic of it.' He showed Jim the photograph of the power glider. 'It's in TD's basement. They're smart, and yet they're dumb - the people on the other side, I mean. Come on along with me tomorrow; we're going to set down exactly here.' He laid out a sequence of shots taken by the QB satellite. 'Recognize the terrain ? It's the coast of

France. Over here ...' He pointed.'... Normandy. A town of theirs. You can't call it a city, because it's simply not that large. But it's the largest one the QB has been able to detect. So we're going there .To confront them in their own bailiwick. By doing so, we get a direct confrontation vis-avis their culture, the totality of what they've managed to develop. TD is supplying linguistics machines; we've got anthropologists, sociologists ...' He broke off. "Why are you looking at me like that, Jim ?'

Jim Briskin said, 'I thought it was a planet in another star system. Then the hints in the media were right, after all. But I'll come with you; I'm glad to. Thanks for letting me.'

'Don't take it so hard, 'Woodbine said.

'But it's inhabited,' Jim said.

'Not entirely. My god, look on the bright side. This is a tremendous event, an encounter with another civilization entirely, what I've been searching for over three star-systems and a timeperiod of four decades. You're not going to begrudge us that, are you ?'

After a pause Jim said, 'You're right, of course. I'm just having trouble adjusting to this. Give me a little time.'

'Are you sorry now that you made that Chicago speech ?'

'No,' Jim said.

'I hope your attitude doesn't have to change. There's one more thing we found: no one at TD has so far been able to make out what it signifies. Look at this pic.' He placed the glossy print before

Jim. 'It was in the glider, poked down out of sight, obviously deliberately concealed. In a little leather bag.'

'Rocks ?' Jim said, scrutinizing the pic.

'Diamonds. Rough, not cut. Just as they come out of the ground. The inference is that these people prize precious stones but don't know how to cut or polish them. So, in this one respect at least, they're some four or five thousand years behind us. What would you say about a culture that can build a power glider, including piston engine and compressor, but hasn't learned to cut and polish gems ?'

Jim said, 'I - don't know."

'We're taking some cut stones with us tomorrow. Couple of diamonds, opals, a gold ring set with a nice fat ruby donated by the wife of one of TD's vice presidents. And we're also taking this.' He tossed a sheet of rolled-up paper before Jim. 'A schematic of a very simple, efficient turbine. And this.' He bounced another tube of paper onto the table. 'A schematic of a medium-size steam engine, circa 1880, used as a donkey engine in mine work. But, of course, our main effort will be directed toward finding a few of their technological experts, if there are any, over here. Turpin wants to show them around TD, for example. And after that, probably N'York City.'

'Has the government made an effort to get involved in this ?'

'Schwarz, I understand, has asked Turpin if a mixed bag of specialists from various bureaus can accompany us tomorrow. I don't know what the old man has decided; it's up to him. After all, TD

can shut down the nexus any time it so desires. Schwarz knows that.'

Jim said, 'Would you hazard any kind of estimate as to the level of their culture in terms of chronology relative to ours ?'

'Sure,' Frank Woodbine said. 'Somewhere between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1920. Does that answer your question ?'

'So it can't be graded on a time-scale which compares it to us.'

'We'll know tomorrow,' Frank said. 'Or rather - and I fully expect this, Jim - we'll know that they're so damn different from us that they might as well live on a planet in some other star system, as you'd like them to be. A non-terrestrial race entirely.'

'With six legs and an exoskeleton,' Jim murmured.

'If not worse. Something that would make George Walt look perfectly ordinary. You know, that's what we ought to do: take George Walt over with us tomorrow. Tell the people on the other side that George Walt is our god, that we worship him and they'd better, too, or he'll make the bad atoms rain down on them and cause them to die of leukemia.'

'Probably,' Jim said, 'they've not reached the level of developing atomic power. Either for industry or warfare.'

'For all I know,' Frank said quietly, 'they've got an atomic tactical bomb made out of wood.'

'That's impossible. It's a joke. You're kidding.'

'I'm not kidding - I'm just terribly upset. Nobody in our world ever knew that you could build complex modem machinery out of wood, as these people have. If they can manage to do that, although God knows how long it took them to do it, they can do anything. At least, that's the way it strikes me. I'm going to set the jet-hopper down in Normandy tomorrow with my heart in my mouth, and I've been to more star-systems than any other human being; don't forget that. I've seen a lot of alien worlds.'

Somberly, Jim Briskin picked up the photo of the wooden engine and once more studied it.

'Of course,' Frank added, 'I keep saying to myself, "Look what we can learn." And look what they can learn from us.'

'Yes,' Jim agreed, 'we have to look on this as an opportunity,' His tone, however, was grave.

'You know, just as I know, that something is awfully wrong.'

Jim Briskin nodded.

In the middle of the night Don Stanley, administrative assistant to Leon Turpin, was awakened by the ringing of his vidphone.

Sitting up groggily, he managed to locate the receiver in the dark. 'Yes ?' he said, switching on the light. In the bed, his wife slept on.

On the vidscreen the physiognomy of a top-level TD researcher came into view. 'Mr. Stanley, we're calling you instead of Mr. Turpin. Somebody at policy has to know this.' The researcher's voice was jumpy with tension. 'The QB is down.'

'Down what ?' Stanley could not focus his faculties.

"They shot it down. God knows how. Just now, not ten minutes ago. We don't know whether we should try to put up another one to replace it or just wait.'

Stanley said, 'Maybe the QB merely malfunctioned. Maybe it's up there coasting around dead.'

'It's not up there at all; we've got a number of instruments capable of registering that. You know, bringing down an orbiting satellite requires a pretty exact science of weapons development; it's not easy to do.'

Still half-asleep, Don Stanley had a momentary hypnogogic vision of an enormous crossbow with a cord capable of being stretched back a mile. He shook the vision off and said, 'Maybe we shouldn't send Woodbine over there tomorrow. We don't want to lose him.'

'Whatever you and Mr. Turpin decide,' the researcher said. 'But sooner or later we have to make formal contact with them, don't we ? So why not right away ? It seems to me that, in view of their maneuver against the QB, we can't afford to wait. We've got to know what they possess.'

'We'll go ahead,' Stanley decided, 'but we'll see that Woodbine is accompanied by company police. And we'll keep in constant radio contact with him all the time he's there.'

' "Company police,"' the researcher said in disgust. 'What Woodbine needs is the United States

Army.'

'We don't want the government meddling into this,' Stanley said sharply. 'If TD can't handle this, we'll shut down the 'scuttler and abolish the nexus. Forget the entire matter.' He felt irritable.

This puts an entirely new light on everything, this about the QB, he realized. In no way - or at least in no important way - are these people lagging behind as. We're not going to be able to get away with trading them a basketful of glass beads in exchange for North America. He recalled the leather bag of uncut diamonds found in this glider. They may not be able to finish up stones, he though , but at least they know what's really valuable. There's a crucial difference between carrying around a bagful of rough diamonds and, say, a bagful of seashells.

'You've still got a team on the other side, don't you' Stanley said. 'You didn't pull them back over here.'

'They're there,' the researcher said, 'but they're just standing by, waiting for dawn and the party of university professors and the linguistics machines, all that stuff that's been promised.

'We don't want to get into a brawl with these people,,' Stanley said, 'even if they did get to our satellite. TD wants industrial techniques from them, wants their know-how hardwarewise. Let's not spoil that. Okay ?'

'Okay,' the researcher agreed, 'and lots of luck.'

Don Stanley hung up, sat for a time, then rose and walked to the kitchen of his conapt to fix himself something to eat.

Tomorrow's going to be quite a day, he said to himself. I wish I was going along, but, in view of this, I think I'll stay on this side. After all, I'm a desk man, not a leg man; let somebody else do it.

Somebody like Woodbine who's paid to take risks. This is exactly why we hired him.

He did not envy Woodbine.

And then all at once it occurred to him that old Leon Turpin might order him to go along. In which case he would have to - or lose his job. And losing one's job, these days, was no joke.

His appetite was gone. Leaving the kitchen, Don Stanley returned to his bed, gloomily aware that with such thoughts on his mind he would probably be unable to get back to sleep.

It turned out that he was right.