Before the Universe

BEST FRIEND

Like most of the earliest Futurlan stories, "Best Friend" was written to fill a hole in one of the magazines I was editing. I think it was in Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie's After Worlds Collide that I had, years before, read a throwaway line about a vanished alien race whose pets had been as intelligent as modern human beings. I had wanted to explore Mat further, from the point of view of the pets: Cyril agreed, and "Best Friend" was the result.

Moray smoothed his whiskers with one hand as he pressed down on the accelerator and swung easily into the top speed lane. Snapping the toggle into a constant eighty-per, he lit a meat-flavored cigarette and replaced the small, darkly warm bar of metal in its socket. He hummed absently to himself, Nothing to do after you were in your right lane – not like flying. He turned on the radio.

'—by Yahnn Bastion Bock,' said the voice. Moray listened; he didn't know the name.

Then there breathed into the speeding little car the sweetly chilly intervals of a flute-stop. Moray smiled. He liked a simple melody. The music ascended and descended like the fiery speck on an oscillograph field; slowed almost to stopping, and then the melody ended. Why, Moray wondered plain-lively, couldn't all music be like that? Simple and clear, without confusing by-play. The melody rose again, with a running mate in the oboe register, and like a ceremonial dance of old days they intertwined and separated, the silvery flute-song and the woody nasal of the oboe. The driver of the little car grew agitated. Suddenly, with a crash, diapasons and clarions burst into the tonal minuet and circled heavily about the principals.

Moray started and snapped off the radio. Try as he would, he never could get used to the Masters' music, and he had never known one of his people who could. He stared out of the window and stroked his whiskers again, forcing his thoughts into less upsetting channels.

A staccato buzz sounded from the dashboard. Moray looked at the road-signs and swung into a lower speed-lane, and then into another. He looped around a ramp intersection and drove into a side-street, pulling up before a huge apartment dwelling.

Moray climbed out into the strip of fuzzy pavement that extended to the lobby of the building. He had to wait a few moments for one of the elevators to discharge its burden; then he got in and pressed the button that would take him to Floor L, where lived Birch, whom he greatly wanted to marry.

The elevator door curled back and he stepped out into the foyer. He quickly glanced at himself in a long pier glass in the hall, flicked some dust from his jacket. He advanced to the door of Birch's apartment and grinned into the photo-eye until her voice invited him in.

Moray cast a glance about the room as he entered. Birch was nowhere to be seen, so he sat down patiently on a low couch and picked up a magazine. It was lying opened to a story called, 'The Feline Foe.'

`Fantastic,' he muttered. All about an invading planetoid from interstellar space inhabited by cat-people. He felt his skin crawl at the thought, and actually growled deep in his throat. The illustrations were terrifying real – in natural color, printed in three-ply engravings. Each line was a tiny ridge, so that when you moved your head from side to side the figures moved and quivered, simulating life. One was of a female much like Birch, threatened by one of the felines. The caption said, ' "Now," snarled the creature, "we shall see who will be Master !" '

Moray closed the magazine and put it aside. 'Birch !' he called protestingly.

In answer she came through a sliding door and smiled at him. 'Sorry I kept you waiting,' she said.

`That's all right,' said Moray. 'I was looking at this thing.' He held up the magazine.

Birch smiled again. 'Well, happy birthday !' she cried. 'I didn't forget. How does it feel to be thirteen years old?'

`Awful. Joints cracking, hair coming out in patches, and all.' Moray was joking; he had never felt better, and thirteen was the prime of life to his race. 'Birch,' he said suddenly. 'Since I am of age, and you and I have been friends for a long time --'

`Not just now, Moray,' she said swiftly. 'We'll miss your show. Look at the time!'

`All right,' he said, leaning back and allowing her to flip on the telescreen. 'But remember, Birch – I have something to say to you later.' She smiled at him and sat back into the circle of his arm as the screen commenced to flash with color.

The view was of a stage, upon which was an elaborately robed juggler. He bowed and rapidly, to a muttering accompaniment of drums, began to toss discs into the air. Then, when he had a dozen spinning and flashing in the scarlet light, two artists stepped forward and juggled spheres of a contrasting color, and then two more with conventional Indian clubs, and yet two more with open-necked bottles of fluid.

The drums rolled. 'Hup!' shouted the master-juggler, and pandemonium broke loose upon the stage, the artists changing and interchanging, hurling a wild confusion of projectiles at each others' heads, always recovering and keeping the flashing baubles in the air. 'Hup!' shouted the chief again, and as if by magic the projectiles returned to the hands of the jugglers. Balancing them on elbows and heads they bowed precariously, responding to the radioed yelps of applause from the invisible audience.

`They're wonderful!' exclaimed Birch, her soft eyes sparkling.

`Passably good,' agreed Moray, secretly delighted that his suggested entertainment was a success from the start.

Next on the bill was a young male singer, who advanced and bowed with a flutter of soulful eyelids. His song was without words, as was usual among Moray's people. As the incredible headtones rose without breaking, he squirmed ecstatically in his seat, remembering the real pain he had felt earlier in the night, listening to the strange, confusing music of the Masters.

Moray was in ecstasy, but there was a flaw in his ecstasy. Though he was listening with all his soul to the music, yet under the music some little insistent call for attention was coming through. Something very important, not repeated. He tried to brush it aside ...

Birch nudged him sharply, a little light that you might have called horror in her eyes. 'Moray, your call! Didn't you hear it?'

Moray snatched from a pocket the little receiving set his people always carried with them. Suddenly, and unmuffled this time, shrilled the attention-demanding musical note. Moray leaped up with haste ...

But he hesitated. He was undecided – incredibly so. 'I don't want to go,' he said slowly to Birch, astonishment at himself in every word.

The horror in Birch's eyes was large now. 'Don't want to! Moray ! It's your Master!'

`But it isn't – well, fair,' he complained. 'He couldn't have found out that I was with you tonight. Maybe he does know it. And if he had the heart to investigate he would know that –that —' Moray swallowed convulsively. 'That you're more important to me than even he is,' he finished rapidly.

`Don't say that!' she cried, agitated. 'It's like a crime! Moray you'd better go.'

`All right,' he said sullenly, catching up his cape. And he had known all along that he would go. 'You stay here and finish the show. I can get to the roof alone.'

Moray stepped from the apartment into a waiting elevator and shot up to the top of the building. 'I need a fast plane,' he said to an attendant. 'Master's call.' A speed-lined ship was immediately trundled out before him; he got in and the vessel leaped into the air.

One hundred thousand years of forced evolution had done strange things to the canine family. Artificial mutations, rigorous selection, all the tricks and skills of the animal breeder had created a super-dog. Moray was about four feet tall, but no dwarf to his surroundings, for all the world was built to that scale. He stood on his hind legs, for the buried thigh-joint had been extruded by electronic surgery, and his five fingers were long and tapering, with beautifully formed claws capable of the finest artisanry.

And Moray's face was no more canine than your face is simian. All taken in all, he would have been a peculiar but not a fantastic figure could he have walked out into a city of the Twentieth Century. He might easily have been taken for nothing stranger than a dwarf.

Indeed, the hundred thousand years had done more to the Masters than to their dogs. As had been anticipated, the brain had grown and the body shrunk, and there had been a strong tendency toward increased myopia and shrinkage of the distance between the eyes. Of the thousands of sports born to the Masters who had volunteered for genetic experimentation, an indicative minority had been born with a single, unfocussable great eye over a sunken nosebridge, showing a probable future line of development.

The Masters labored no longer; that was for the dog people and more often for the automatic machines. Experimental research, even, was carried on by the companion race, the Masters merely collating the tabulated results, and deducing from and theorizing upon them.

Humankind was visibly growing content with less in every way. The first luxury they had relinquished had been gregariousness. For long generations men had not met for the joy of meeting. There was no such thing as an infringement on the rights of others; a sort of telepathy adjusted all disputes.

Moray's plane roared over the Andes, guided by inflexible directives. A warning sounded in his half-attentive ears; with a start he took over the controls of the craft. Below him, high on the peak of an extinct volcano, he saw the square white block which housed his Master. Despite his resentment at being snatched away from Birch he felt a thrill of excitement at the sensed proximity of his guiding intelligence.

He swung the plane down and grooved it neatly in a landing notch which automatically, as he stepped out, swung round on silent pivots and headed the plane ready for departure. Moray entered through a door that rolled aside as he approached. His nostrils flared. Almost at the threshold of scent he could feel the emanations of his Master. Moray entered the long, hot corridor that led to his Master's living quarters, and paused before a chrome-steel door.

In a few seconds the door opened, silently, and Moray entered a dark room, his face twitching with an exciting presence. He peered through the gloom, acutely aware of the hot, moist atmosphere of the chamber. And he saw his Master – tiny, shrivelled, quite naked, his bulging skull supported by the high back of the chair.

Moray advanced slowly and stood before the seated human. Without opening his eyes, the Master spoke in a slow, thin voice.

`Moray, this is your birthday.' There was no emphasis on one word more than another; the tone was that of a deaf man.

`Yes, Master,' said Moray. 'A friend and I were celebrating it when you called. I came as quickly as possible.'

The voice piped out again, 'I have something for you, Moray. A present.' The eyes opened for the first time, and one of the Master's hands gripped spasmodically a sort of lever in his chair. The eyes did not see Moray, they were staring straight ahead; but there was a shallow crease to the ends of his lips that might have been an atavistic muscle's attempt at a smile. A panel swung open in the wall, and there rolled out a broad, flat dolly bearing an ancient and thoroughly rotted chest. Through the cracks in the wood there was seen a yellowish gleam of ancient paper.

The Master continued speaking, though with evidence of a strain. Direct oral conversation told on the clairvoyant, accustomed to the short cuts of telepathy. 'These are the biographies of the lives of the North American Presidents. When you were very young – perhaps you do not remember – you expressed curiosity about them. I made arrangements then to allow you to research the next important find of source-material on the subject. This is it. It was discovered six months ago, and I have saved it for your birthday.'

There was a long silence, and Moray picked up one of the books. It had been treated with preservatives, he noted, and was quite ready for work. He glanced at a title page unenthusiastically. What had interested him in his childhood was boring in full maturity.

`Are you ready to begin now?' whispered the human.

Moray hesitated. The strange confusion that he had felt was growing in him again, wordlessly, like a protesting howl. 'Excuse me, please,' he stammered, stepping back a pace.

The Master bent a look of mild surprise upon him.

`I am sorry. I – I don't wish to do this work.' Moray forced himself to keep his eyes on the Master. There was a quick grimace on the face of the human, who had closed his eyes and was slumped against the back of the chair. His sunken chin twitched and fell open.

The Master did not answer Moray for a long minute. Then his eyes flicked open, he sat erect again, and he said, 'Leave me.'

And then he stared off into space and took no further notice of Moray.

`Please,' said Moray hastily. 'Don't misunderstand, I want very much to read those books. I have wanted to all my life. But I—' He stopped talking. Very obviously, the Master had eliminated Moray from his mind. Just as Moray himself, having had a cinder in his eyes, would drop from his mind the memory of the brief pain.

Moray turned and walked through the door. 'Please.' he repeated softly to himself, then growled in disgust. As he stepped into the plane once more he blinked rapidly. In the hundred thousand years of evolution dogs had learned to weep.

Moray, looking ill, slumped deeper into the pneumatic couch's depths. Birch looked at him with concern in her warm eyes. `Moray,' She said worriedly, 'when did you sleep last?'

`It doesn't matter,' he said emptily. 'I've been seeing the town.'

`Can I give you something to eat?'

`No,' said Moray. With a trace of guilt he took a little bottle from his pocket and gulped down a couple of white pills. 'I'm not hungry. And this is more fun.'

`It's up to you,' she said. There was a long silence, and Moray picked up sheets of paper that were lying on a table at his elbow. 'Assignments as of Wednesday,' he read, and then put down the sheaf, rubbing his eyes with a tired motion. 'Are you doing any work now?' he asked.

Birch smiled happily. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'My Master wants some statistics collated. All about concrete pouring. It's very important work, and I finished it a week ahead of time.'

Moray hesitated, then, as though he didn't care, asked : `How are you and your Master getting along?'

`Very well indeed. She called me yesterday to see if I needed an extension of time for the collation. She was very pleased to find I'd finished it already.'

`You're lucky,' said Moray shortly. And inside himself, bursting with grief, he wondered what was wrong between his own Master and himself. Three weeks; not a single call. It was dreadful. 'Oh, Birch, I think I'm going mad!' he cried.

He saw that she was about to try to soothe him. 'Don't interrupt,' he said. 'The last time I saw my Master I – made him unhappy. I was sure he would want me again in a few days, but he seems to have abandoned me completely. Birch, does that ever happen?'

She looked frightened. The thought was appalling. 'Maybe,' she said hastily. 'I don't know. But he wouldn't do that to you, Moray. You're too clever. Why, he needs you just as much as you need him!'

Moray sighed and stared blankly. 'I wish I could believe that.' He took out the little pill-bottle again, but Birch laid a hand on his.

`Don't take any more, please, Moray,' she whispered, trying desperately to ease his sorrow. 'Moray – a while ago you wanted to ask me something. Will you ask me now?' `I wanted to ask you to marry me – is that what you mean?' `Yes. To both questions, Moray. I will.'

He laughed harshly. `Me! How can you marry me? For all I know I've lost my Master. If I have, I – I'm no longer a person. You don't know what it's like, Birch, losing half your mind, and your will, and all the ambition you ever had. I'm no good now, Birch.' He rose suddenly and paced up and down the floor. 'You can't marry me!' he burst out. 'I think I'll be insane within a week! I'm going now. Maybe you'd better forget you ever knew me.' He slammed out of the room and raced down the stairs, not waiting for an elevator.

The street-lights were out; it was the hour before dawn. Obeying a vagrant impulse, he boarded a moving strip of sidewalk and was carried slowly out to one of the suburbs of the metropolis. At the end of the line, where the strip turned back on itself and began the long journey back to Central Square, he got off and walked into the half-cultivated land.

He had often wondered – fearfully – of the fate of those of his people who had been abandoned by their Masters. Where did they go? Into the outlands, as he was?

He stared at the darkness of the trees and shrubs, suddenly realizing that he had never known the dark before. Wherever his people had gone there had been light – light in the streets, light in their cars and planes, light even at night when they slept.

He felt the hair on his head prickle and rise. How did one go wild? he wondered confusedly. Took off their clothes, he supposed.

He felt in his pockets and drew out, one by one, the symbols of civilization. A few slot-machine tokens, with which one got the little white pills. Jingling keys to his home, office, car, locker, and closet. Wallet of flexible steel, containing all his personal records. A full bottle of the pills – and another, nearly empty.

Mechanically he swallowed two tablets of the drug and threw the bottle away. A little plastic case ... and as he stared at it, a diamond-hard lump in his throat, a fine, thin whistle shrilled from its depths.

Master's call! He was wanted!

Moray climbed from the plane under the frowning Andes and almost floated into the corridor of his Master's dwelling. The oppressive heat smote him in the face, but he was near laughing for joy when he opened the door and saw his Master sitting naked in the gloom.

`You are slow, Moray,' said the Master, without inflection.

Moray experienced a sudden chill. He had not expected this. Confusedly he had pictured a warm reconciliation, but there was no mistaking the tone of the Master's voice. Moray felt very tired and discouraged. 'Yes,' he said. 'You called me when I was out at the fields.'

The Master did not frown, nor did he smile. Moray knew these moods of the cold, bleak intellect that gave him the greater part of his own intelligence and personality. Yet there was no greater tragedy in the world of his people than to be deserted – or, rather, to lose rapport with this intelligence. It was not insanity, and yet it was worse.

`Moray,' said the Master, 'you are a most competent laboratory technician. And you have an ability for archaeology. You are assigned to a task which involves both these divisions. I wish you to investigate the researches of Carter Hawkes, time, about the Fifteenth Century Anno Cubriensis. Determine his conclusions and develop, on them, a complete solution to what he attempted to resolve.'

`Yes,' said Moray dully. Normally he would have been elated at the thought that he had been chosen, and he consciously realized that it was his duty to be elated, but the chilly voice of his conscience told him that this was no affectionate assignment, but merely the use of a capable tool.

`What is the purpose of this research?' he asked formally, his voice husky with fatigue and indulgence in the stimulant drug.

`It is of great importance. The researches of Hawkes, as you know, were concerned with explosives. It was his barbarous intention to develop an explosive of such potency that one charge would be capable of destroying an enemy nation. Hawkes, of course, died before his ambition was realized, but we have historical evidence that he was on the right track.'

`Chief among which,' interrupted Moray – deferentially –'is the manner of his death.'

There was no approval in the Master's voice as he answered, `You know of the explosion in which he perished. Now, at this moment, the world is faced with a crisis more terrible than any ancient war could have been. It involves a shifting of the continental blocks of North America. The world now needs the Hawkes explosive, to provide the power for re-stabilizing the continent. All evidence has been assembled for your examination in the workroom. Speed is essential if catastrophe is to be averted.'

Moray was appalled. The fate of a continent in his hands! `I shall do my best,' he said nervelessly, and walked from the room.

Moray straightened his aching body and turned on the lights. He set the last of a string of symbols down on paper and leaned back to stare at them. The formula – complete!

Moray was convinced that he had the right answer, through the lightning-like short cuts of reasoning, which humans called `canine intuition.' Moray might have felt pride in that ability –but, he realized, it was a mirage. The consecutivity of thought of the Masters – not Moray nor any of his people could really concentrate on a single line of reasoning for more than a few seconds. In the synthesis of thought Moray's people were superb. In its analysis ...

A check-up on the formula was essential. Repeating the formula aloud, Moray's hands grasped half a dozen ingredients from the shelves of the lab, and precisely compounded them in the field of a micro-inspection device. Actually, Moray was dealing with units measured in single molecules, and yet his touch was as sure as though he were handling beakers-full.

Finally titrated, the infinitesimal compound was set over a cherry-red electric grid to complete its chain of reactions and dry. Then it would explode, Moray realized – assuming he had the formula correct. But, with such a tiny quantity, what would be the difference?

Perhaps – at utmost – the room would be wrecked. But there was no time to take the stuff to the firing-chambers that were suspended high over the crater of the extinct volcano on flexible steel masts, bent and supported to handle almost any shock.

Moray swallowed two more pellets of the drug. He had to wait for its effect upon him, now, but he dared not take a larger dose.

He strode from the room, putting the formula in his pocket.

Wandering aimlessly through the building, he was suddenly assailed by the hot, wet aura of his Master. He paused, then nudged the door open a trifle and peered longingly within.

The Master was engaged in solitary clairvoyance, his head sagging down on his scrawny chest, veins and muscles visibly pulsing. Even in the utter darkness of his room, he was visible by a thin blue light that exuded from the points and projections of his body to flow about the entire skin.

The Master was utterly unconscious of the presence of his servant. Though Moray was not a child or a fool, he stemmed directly from the beautiful, intelligent creatures that used to hunt and play with men, and he could not stand up to the fierce tide of intellect that flowed in that room. With a smothered sound he turned, about to leave.

Then Moray heard a noise – quiet and almost restful at first, like a swarm of bees passing overhead. And then it rumbled into a mighty crash that made the elastic construction of the Master's house quiver as though stricken.

Suddenly he realized – the Hawkes explosive! It had worked! He looked at his Master, to see the blue glare fade as though it were being reabsorbed into his body. As the last of it vanished, lights glowed on around the room, bringing it to its accustomed shadowy twilight. The Master's head lifted.

`Moray,' he whispered tensely. Was that the explosive?'

A thin little ripple of delight surged along Moray's spine. They could both be blown to splintered atoms in the explosion, and the continent they were trying to save along with them – he didn't care! His Master had spoken to him!

He knew what he had to do. With a little growl that was meant to say, `Pardon!' he raced to the Master's side, picked him up and flung him over a shoulder – gently. They had to get out of the building, for it might yet topple on them.

Moray tottered to the door, bent under the double burden; pushed it open and stepped into the corridor. The Master couldn't walk, so Moray had to walk for him. They made slow progress along the interminable hall, but finally they were in the open. Moray set his burden down, the gangling head swaying, and—Felt unutterably, incontrovertibly idiotic! For the air was still and placid; and the building stood firm as a rock; and the only mark of the Hawkes explosive was a gaping mouth of a pit where the laboratory had been. Idiot! Not to have remembered that the Hawkes would expend its force downward!

Moray peered shamefacedly at his Master. Yet there was some consolation for him, because there was the skeleton of a smile on the Master's face. Clearly he had understood Moray's Motives, and ... perhaps Moray's life need not finally be blighted.

For a long second they stood there looking into each other's eyes. Then the Master said, gently, 'Carry me to the plane.' Not stopping to ask why, Moray picked him up once more and strode buoyantly to the waiting ship. Letting the Master down gently at the plane's door, he helped him in, got in himself, and took his place at the controls.

`Where shall we go?' he ask.

The Master smiled that ghost of a smile again, but Moray could detect a faint apprehension in his expression, too. 'Up, Moray,' he whispered. 'Straight up. You see, Moray, these mountains are volcanic. And they're not quite extinct. We must go away now, up into the air.'

Moray's reflexes were faster than an electron-stream as he whipped around to the knobs and levers that sent the little ship tearing up into the atmosphere. A mile and a half in the sky, he flipped the bar that caused the ship to hover, turned to regard the scene below.

The Master had been right! The explosion had pinked the volcano, and the volcano was erupting in retaliation — a hot curl of lava-was snaking into the atmosphere now, seemingly a pseudo-pod reaching to bring them down. But it was thrown up only a few hundred feet; then the lava flow stopped; cataclysmic thunderings were heard and vast boulders were hurled into the sky. It was lucky they'd got away, thought Moray as he watched the ground beneath quiver and shake; and luckier that no other person had been around, for the ship could carry but two.

And as he stared, fascinated, at the turmoil below, he felt a light, soft touch on his arm. It was the Master! — the first time in all Moray's life when the Master had touched him to draw attention, Moray suddenly knew, and rejoiced — he had found his Master again!

`Let us go on, Moray,' whispered the Master. 'We have found that the explosive will work. Our job, just now, is done.'

And as Moray worked the controls that hurled the ship ahead, toward a new home for his Master and toward Birch for himself, he knew that the wings of the ship were of no value at all. Tear them off! he thought, and throw them away! His heart was light enough to bear a world!