The Other Side of Here

EIGHT

Lucy sobbed. Waldron remained utterly motionless. Fran no more than glanced at him. The radiation or the field of force—or whatever it was that had caused the greatest single catastrophe in human history aside from war—the weapon of the invaders had been so utterly effective that merely to see Waldron stiff and still was proof to Fran Dutt that he would stay that way.

He put away his small-caliber pistol and said desperately: "Lucy, I've been a traitor to my homeland, trying to make you safe. I haven't asked anything in return. I've made no bargain. But you must listen to me."

"You've killed my father and Steve, and now—" "Your father isn't dead. I beg you to believe me." His features were contorted. "I cannot let our Leaders take you!" he cried. "You do not know our Leaders! You cannot imagine them! I will not let them take you. Beautiful as you are, they would want you for themselves. I would kill you first, Lucy! I love you, and I will kill you first!"

"Then do it!" cried Lucy as fiercely. "You've killed everybody else—"

"No! Your father is alive. He is in the laboratories of the Leaders. He works, but he is well treated. He is even happy. The Leaders know better than to mistreat scientists. Straussman filled them with such reverence that they will only keep your father prisoner. And Steve is not dead. You know that also. He will go to the laboratories and he will help your father, and they will have work that they love, and good treatment—everything but freedom."

"Then if they're to be prisoners," said Lucy desperately, "let me be a prisoner tool"

Fran Dutt wrung his hands again.

"Listen to me! I hate our Leaders as you do. I hate this invasion as you hate it. I hate our Leaders more than you can imagine, because I have felt their whips. But my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters—they are hostages for me while I am in your world. If I fail our Leaders, they die by torture. How can I do that? Listen to me! Soon our Leaders will take New York itself. They will take Philadelphia. They will take all the great cities and loot them. They will have such riches and such loot that they will forget this place. Let me hide you, and presently I can come back to this place. We can be happy, perhaps, because I will never let our Leaders see you. I can do no more than that, Lucy. I swear it."

Lucy stared at him in the queer, reflected light that came from the flashlight on the floor. Her face was chalky-white.

Her eyes were wide and dazed.

"I think I believe you," she said through stiff lips. "I used to like you. You're probably trying to be decent, in your way. But it isn't enough. I-I think I prefer dying."

"But I won't let you!" Fran said fiercely. "You will become like Steve and I will hide you carefully. Then I'll come back and waken you and plead with you again. I cannot let you die—and I cannot let our Leaders take you!" His expression was pitiful. "Do not make me do that, Lucy! I beg you—"

There was a sudden, quite impossible movement. Waldron's voice came, icy and even.

"I'll take over now, Fran. And I'll kill you if you move!"

He stood up and went over to Fran. The muzzle of his pistol touched Fran's side as he disarmed him.

"I got one of your gang," he observed, "and put on his armor under my clothes. It works very well, thank you. I pretended to freeze so you could talk frankly to Lucy. I think you did. Lucy, take this unneeded pack off me. I think there's only a wire broken by Fran's bullet. Twist it together and wake Nick up, will you?"

Lucy trembled as she moved to obey.

"You won't kill Fran, will you?"

"Not if I can help it," said Waldron. "He's going to be too useful."

Fran said in the bitterness of absolute despair: "I will not be useful to you, Steve." Waldron said: "We'll see."

He watched as Lucy adjusted a high-frequency pack to Nick's body. The photographer's rigid figure relaxed and he stared foolishly. Then he swore luridly and got up.

"What the hell hap— Oh, he shot and there I was on my face. Damn! Have I been dead again, Steve?"

"Something like it. Get your gun on Fran, here. I don't want to kill him—but if you need to, don't hesitate! This is a sort of war, after all. He's an enemy. Shoot him if you have to."

"It will be," said Nick grimly, "an exquisite pleasure."

He covered Fran. Waldron fumbled in the pockets of his coat.

"I bought some paper and envelopes the other day," he said dryly. "I only used one sheet and it did no good. I forgot to throw away the rest. Fran, could you make a suit of armor like you're wearing?"

"No," said Fran. "I am a spy and a theoretic physicist. But I do not know the process for making this armor. Your high-frequency packs work as well, but not as dependably —and you can be located."

"Good," said Waldron. He spread out a sheet of paper and extracted a fountain pen from his pocket. He wrote. Presently he read aloud what he had written.

Report of Operative 27D, in Newark. I have so far failed to get more information about the armor used by the invaders, and Fran Dutt has been able to supply me with only one more suit for examination. He points out that this is extremely dangerous work for him, and that the revolutionary plot in which he is engaged is much more likely to lead to the failure of the invasion than outright war. With a sufficient supply of NN gas and adequate bazookas, he is sure that he and his fellow-conspirators can seize and hold the entrance to his world and allow of the entry of an invading force from this world. He is prepared to sign a treaty promising adequate reparations for the damage done in this invasion if supplied with poison gas and bazookas. Of course our troops will be in partial occupation also. He is authorized to sign, "Fran Dutt, for the Revolutionary Committee." The helix by which the Invaders entered Newark is fully sketched, and an outline of its theory is promised within three days.

He glanced up. Fran Dutt looked like a corpse.

"That's phony, of course," Waldron observed. "But I'm putting it in my pocket. If your crowd kills me, they'll want to know how I escaped freezing. They'll find that in my pocket. What will they think when they find it, Fran?"

Fran's forehead glistened with sweat. "That I'm a traitor. That a plot exists. They'll torture my father and mother and my brothers and sisters—all my friends. You don't know what hellish torments—" His voice broke. "You can't do this, Steve. If you'll kill me and tear that up, I'll thank you. On my honor I'll bless you if you'll only kill me and tear that up."

Waldron shook his head. "You'd better go back to your friends who hate your Leaders, and tell them about this. And get that revolution going! I suspect it's overdue. Because either I win, over here, and your damned Leaders are licked by us, or else I'm killed over here and they'll find this on my body. So you'd better start a revolt."

Fran licked his lips. Then he said in a strange voice: "Perhaps—perhaps you have done me a favor. Our Leaders keep us Underones thoroughly cowed. I have urged revolt before. But the penalties for failure—they have been too great. Now if we do not revolt, we will be punished terribly. Because we cannot tell them—"

Waldron said nothing. He watched, his eyes narrow. Fran Dutt steadied himself.

"I know what I face. If I am accused of treason there will be others accused. Under torture, they would accuse others. Ah, yes! And it would be such torturing, such burning, such slow death— We have been afraid to strike. Now we dare not not strike!" Incredibly, he smiled, his face like chalk. "Either you have done us a favor, Steve, or else you will be cursed by so many men, suffering such agonies as they die, that their curses will pass the boundary between our worlds and strike you here."

"I hope," said Waldron in a matter-of-fact voice, "that I've done you a favor. My guesses were right, then?"

"What harm to tell you?" asked Fran, still ash-pale. "Yes. Straussman arrived in our world many years ago. He appeared in an open field outside of one of our cities, with a structure of metal about him. Underones and Leaders saw it appear. All were frightened. When Straussman appeared, our Leaders took him away and questioned him."

Waldron glanced at Nick. The photographer was listening, but skeptically. And he kept his revolver bearing steadily on Fran.

"Our Leaders," said Fran, "were very gentle to Straussman. They took him to their palace and gave him rich food and many women—women whom they took, as is their custom, from us Underones. Straussman learned to speak our language. He showed marvels. And Straussman became a Leader and even more arrogant than most of the others. He made Underones build him strange devices. Then new things began to appear: new weapons, new books, strange knowledge. The Underones who worked in his palace told of groups of Leaders who went into machines with him and vanished, and many hours later returned. They brought back machines and living plants and dogs which were more intelligent than those we had—even horses.

"And they brought back men who were wounded or drugged, and much more often there were women. Most of these captives were kept in stockades, and children of the Underones were sent to them to be taught. I was one. We were to be trained as spies, and we learned many things. But we were never allowed to forget that we were Underones and that a terrible punishment awaited us and our families if we failed our Leaders!"

Waldron said: "About the same thing that would have happened if ancient Babylonia could have sent time-machines to our era to kidnap and loot."

"But our Leaders feared this world," said Fran. "There were more people here—many more people. And they had something our Leaders could not endure: the people rule themselves. That is a fearful idea to our Leaders. So for many years they have been terrified lest other scientists duplicate the work of Straussman. At first they thought they could build our world to where it could defend itself. But it was easier to tear down the civilization of this world—and it would yield loot. So they kept spies here, and when other scientists—your father, Lucy, and others—began to inquire into Straussman's work, they knew that sooner or later our world would be found out. So they have set out to destroy the things they fear in your world."

"And meanwhile Lucy's father works in their laboratories," said Waldron. "I suggest that he might help in your revolution, Fran. He's no fool. But neither am I. Your armor is better than our high-frequency packs. I'm going to take it."

Fran went whiter still.

That's the same as killing me."

"I'm giving you a high-frequency pack," said Waldron. "Nick, there is an extra pack for him. Get the armor off, Fran."

Fran licked his lips. When his armor was partly removed, he went rigid and started to fall. Nick caught him. They got the balance of the armor off. Lucy donned the armor, discarding her outer clothing behind one of the cars. She looked slim and boyish when she came back.

Nick turned on the power pack. Waldron said coldly: "Now, Fran, we'll be on our way. Nobody eke has a listening device like yours, but they could think of it any time. You stay here. I'll leave your pistol at the next corner." He moved to open the garage door. Lucy said uneasily: "Steve, if Fran's seen without his armor and with one of our packs—"

"He knows what I'll have to do," said Fran harshly.

And Waldron did. Fran would have to use his native language to call a compatriot aside from others, and then he would have to knock out that compatriot and take his armor. And the other man from the other side of here would thereupon become a frozen, catatonic image.

Nick started the car they had fueled and checked over before and Waldron opened the garage doors. The car went smoothly and silently out into the street. With a relatively desperate plan in mind, Waldron moved the car as quietly as possible toward the bonfire on the Pulaski Skyway. It would approach that part of the cordon not far from the dead area, but laterally along the fringe of it. Nick would pretend that he had been passed by another cordon and did not realize that he had gone beyond the permitted area. At the least they would not be shot down for so plausible an error. Then they would be able to use a telephone. They would be able to do something.... Once somebody—anybody—listened to them...

They saw the bonfire in the night. Nick turned on his car's headlights. He swept confidently toward the fire. There were soldiers around it and he saw a machine gun pointing toward Newark.

But nobody moved. There was a sudden clashing, clanging uproar everywhere toward New York. The uproar grew greater. It reached a climax. Then it stopped. Afterward, only here and there other crashings sounded. Then they stopped too.

They reached the soldiers, who were now motionless, lying on the ground in grotesque postures.

The rest of the United States would immediately be assured that the plague which had wiped out Newark—and had appeared again in two spots in New York and one in Westchester County—had spread. Jersey City was now a place of frozen, motionless forms and wreckage.

"Head on toward the tunnel," said Waldron grimly. "It isn't likely that Fran's gang has gotten to that yet. If they have, we'll try to shoot our way through. Hold it!"

He got out of the car. The street lights here had not yet been turned off. It seemed very remarkable to be walking openly in a lighted place. But Waldron accumulated weapons and ammunition, including sub-machine guns. The three of them were very well armed when they went on down the ramp into the long tunnel which led to the vehicular tube itself.

Fran's gang had not gotten to the tunnel mouth.

Nick drove into it. The lights burned brightly, but the traffic was wrong. Utterly wrong. The traffic was stopped. And every car that stopped did so because it crashed into something, or stalled when it pushed gently against the immovable. There was one place where Nick and Waldron had to get out and use the jack from a truck to raise up a car so that they could topple it over. That way there was barely space for their own car to scrape by.

One of the tunnel police lay on the catwalk beside the highway, one hand stretching stiffly out to where a moving car would have hit it. But theirs was the only moving car.

Then, abruptly, the lights in the Tube went out. The rows of glittering electric bulbs which brighten its white-tiled walls died abruptly. Their car's headlights glared ahead. Suddenly they showed only emptiness. Apparently the Invaders' weapon had ceased to have effect, here, and the cars beyond its reach in the tunnel had fled on ahead and out. But then they saw a limousine, stopped for no perceptible reason. Bluish, dense smoke came from under its hood. The smell was from burning rubber.

Then they came out into New York, with all its lights glowing brightly and stars shining down from the light-tinted sky. But New York was silent. It was still.

It was dead, with people tumbled stiffly in its streets, and all its vehicles piled in wrecks and heaps and dented masses.