Time and Again

XXV

The psych-tracer ticked on, endlessly, running fast, then slow, skipping a beat now and then like the erratic time measurement of a clock with hiccoughs.

It was the only sound in the room and to Adams it seemed as if he were listening to the beating of a heart, the breathing of a man, the throb of blood along the jugular vein.

He grimaced at the pile of dossiers which a moment before he had swept from his desk onto the floor with an angry sweep of his hand. For there was nothing in them…absolutely nothing. Every one was perfect, every one checked. Birth certificates, scholastic records, recommendations, loyalty checks, psych examinations — all of them were as they should be. There was not a single flaw.

That was the trouble…in all the records of the service's personnel there was not a single flaw. Not a thing a man could point to. Not a thing on which one could anchor suspicion.

Lily-white and pure.

Yet, someone inside the service had stolen Sutton's dossier. Someone inside the service had tipped off Sutton on the gun-trap laid for him at the Orion Arms. Someone had been ready and waiting, knowing of the trap, to whisk him out of reach.

Spies, said Adams to himself, and he lifted up his hand and made his hand into a fist and hit the desk so hard that his knuckles stung.

For no one but an insider could have made away with Sutton's dossier. No one but an insider could have known of the decision to destroy Sutton, or of the three men who had been assigned to carry out the order.

Adams smiled grimly.

The tracer chuckled at him. Ker-rup, it said, ker-rup, clickity, click, ker-rup.

That was Sutton's heart and breath…that was Sutton's life ticking away somewhere. So long as Sutton lived, no matter where he was or what he might be doing, the tracer would go on with its chuckling and its burping.

Ker-rup, ker-rup, ker-rup…

Somewhere in the asteroid belt, the tracer had said, and that was a very general location, but it could be narrowed. Already ships with other tracers aboard were engaged in narrowing it down. Sooner or later…hours or days or weeks, Sutton would be found.

Ker-rup…

War, the man in the mask had said.

And hours later, a ship had come screaming down across the hills like a blazing comet to plunge into a swamp.

A ship such as no man as yet had made, carrying melted weapons that were unlike any that man had yet invented. A ship whose thunder in the night had roused the sleeping inhabitants for miles around, whose flaming metal had been a beacon glowing in the sky.

A ship and a body and a track that led from ship to body across three hundred yards of marsh. The trace of one man's footprints and the furrowing trail of other feet that dragged across the mud. And the man who had carried the dead man had been Asher Sutton, for Sutton's fingerprints were on the muddied clothing of the man lying at the swamp's edge.

Sutton, though Adams wearily. It is always Sutton. Sutton's name on the flyleaf out of Aldebaran XII. Sutton's fingerprints upon a dead man's clothing. The man in the mask had said there would have been no incident on Aldebaran if it had not been for Sutton. And Sutton had killed Benton with a bullet in the arm.

Ker-rup, clickity, click, ker-rup…

Dr. Raven had sat in that chair across the desk and told of the afternoon Sutton had dropped in at the university.

"He found destiny," Dr. Raven had said and he said it as if it were commonplace, as if it were a thing that could not be questioned and a thing that could have been expected all along to happen.

Not a religion, Dr. Raven had said, with the afternoon sunlight shining on his snow-white hair. Oh, dear, no, not a religion. Destiny, don't you understand?

Destiny, noun. Destiny — the predetermined course of events often conceived as a resistless power or agency…

"The accepted definition," Dr. Raven had said, as if he might be addressing a lecture hall, "may have to be modified slightly when Asher writes his book."

But how could Sutton find destiny? Destiny was an idea, an abstraction.

"You forget," Dr. Raven had told him, speaking gently as one would to a child, "that part about the resistless power or agency. That is what he found…the power or agency."

"Sutton told me about the beings he found on Cygni," Adams had said. "He was at a loss as to how best to describe them. He said the nearest that he could come was symbiotic abstractions."

Dr. Raven had nodded his head and pulled his shell-like ears and figured that maybe symbiotic abstractions would fit the bill, although it was hard for one to decide just what a symbiotic abstraction was or what it would look like.

What it would look like — or what it might be.

The informational robot had been very technical when Adams had put the question to him.

"Symbiosis," he had said. "Why, sir, symbiosis is quite simple. It is a mutually beneficial internal partnership between two organisms of different kinds. Mutually beneficial, you understand, sir. That is the important thing — that mutually beneficial business. Not a benefit to one of the things alone, but to both of them.

"Commensalism, now, that is something else. In commensalism there still is mutual benefit, sir, but the relationship is external, not internal. Nor parasitism, either, for that matter. Because in parasitic instances only one thing benefits. The host does not benefit, just the parasite.

"Some of this may sound confusing, sir, but…"

"Tell me," Adams had asked him, "about symbiosis. I don't care about all this other stuff."

"It really is," the robot said, "a very simple thing. Now, take heather, for instance. You know, of course, that it is associated with a certain fungus."

"No," Adams said, "I didn't."

"Well, it is," the robot said. "A fungus that grows inside of it, inside its roots and branches, its flowers and leaves, even in its seed. If it weren't for this fungus, the heather couldn't grow on the kind of soil it does. No other plant can grow on so poor a soil. Because, you see, sir, no other plant has this particular fungus associated with it. The heather gives the fungus a place to live and the fungus makes it possible for the heather to make its living on the scanty soil where it has no opposition."

"I wouldn't call that," Adams had told him, "a very simple business."

"Well," said the robot, "there are other things, of course. Certain lichens are no more than a symbiotic combination of an alga and a fungus. In other words, there is no such a thing as a lichen in this case. It's just two other things."

"It's a wonder to me," said Adams sourly, "that you don't simply melt down in the white heat of your brilliance."

"Then there are certain green animals," said the robot.

"Frogs," said Adams.

"Not frogs," the robot said. "Certain simple, primal animals. Things that live in the water, you know. They establish a symbiotic relationship with certain algae. The animal uses the oxygen which the plant gives off and the plant uses the carbon dioxide the animal gives off.

"And there's a worm with a symbiotic alga which aids it in its digestive processes. Everything works swell except when sometimes, the worm digests the alga and then it dies because, without the alga, it can't digest its food."

"All very interesting," Adams had told the robot. "Now can you tell me what a symbiotic abstraction might be?"

"No," the robot had said, "I can't."

And Dr. Raven, sitting, at the desk, had said the same. "It would be rather difficult," he said, "to know just what a symbiotic abstraction might be."

Under questioning, he reiterated once again that it was not a new religion Sutton had found. Oh, gracious, no, not a religion.

And Raven, Adams thought, should be the one to know, for he was one of the galaxy's best and most widely known comparative religionists.

Although it would be a new idea, Dr. Raven had said. Bless me, yes, an absolutely new idea.

And ideas are dangerous, Adams told himself.

For man was spread thin across the galaxy. So thin that one word, literally one spoken word, one unbidden thought might be enough to set off the train of rebellion and of violence that would sweep Man back to the Solar system, back to the puny ring of cricling planets that had caged him in before.

One could not take a chance. One could not gamble with an imponderable.

Better that one man die needlessly than that the whole race lose its grip upon the galaxy. Better that one new idea, however great, be blotted out than that all the vast associations of ideas which represented mankind be swept from the billion stars.

Item One: Sutton wasn't human.

Item Two: He was not telling all he knew.

Item Three: He had a manuscript which was not decipherable.

Item Four: He meant to write a book.

Item Five: He had a new idea.

Conclusion: Sutton must be killed.

Ker-rup, clickity, click…

War, the man had said. A war in time.

It would be spread thin, too, like Man across the galaxy.

It would be three-dimensional chess with a million billion squares and a million pieces. And with the rules changing every move.

It would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that there was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thutmosis III, to the sailing of Columbus. It would involve all fields of human endeavor and human speculation and it would twist the dreams of men who had never thought of time except as a moving shadow across the sun dial's face.

It would involve spies and propagandists, spies to learn the factors of the past so that they could be plotted in the campaign strategy, propagandists to twist the fabric of the past so that strategy could be the more effective.

It would load the personnel of the Justice Department of the year 7990 with spies and fifth columnists and saboteurs. And it would do that thing so cleverly one could never find the spies.

But, as in an ordinary, honest war, there would be strategic points. As in chess, there would be one key square.

Sutton was that square. He was the square that must be seized and held. He was the pawn that stood in the way of the sweep of bishop and of rook. He was the pawn that both sides were lining up on, bringing all their pressure on a single point…and when one side was ready, when it had gained a fraction of advantage, the slaughter would begin.

Adams folded his arms upon the desk and laid his head upon them. His shoulders twitched with sobbing, but he had no tears.

"Ash, boy," he said. "Ash, I counted on you so much. Ash…"

The silence brought him straight in the chair again.

For a moment, he was unable to locate it…determine what was wrong. And then he knew.

The psych-tracer had stopped its burping.

He leaned forward and bent above it and there was no sound, no sound of heart, of breath, of blood coursing in the jugular.

The motivating force that had operated it had ceased.

Slowly, Adams rose from his chair, took down his hat and put it on.

For the first time in his life, Christopher Adams was going home before the day was over.