A Handful of Darkness (7 page)

“We’re visitors,” Norris told him.

Trent flinched violently. “What?”

“Visitors on a strange planet. Look at us. Shielded suits and helmets, space suits—for exploring. We’re a rocket-ship stopping at an alien world on which we can’t survive. Stopping for a brief period to load up—and then take off again.”

“Closed helmets,” Trent said, in a strange voice.

“Closed helmets. Lead shields. Counters and special food and water. Look over there.”

A small group of runners were standing together, gazing up In awe at the great gleaming ship. Off to the right, visible among the trees, was a runner village. Checker-board crops and animal pens and board houses.

“The natives,” Norris said. “The inhabitants of the planet. They can breathe the air, drink the water, eat the plant-life. We can’t. This is their planet—not ours. They can live here, build up a society.”

“I hope we can come back.”

“Back?”

“To visit—some time.”

Norris smiled ruefully. “I hope so too. But we’ll have to get permission from the inhabitants—permission to land.” His eyes were bright with amusement—and, abruptly, pain. A sudden agony that gleamed out over everything else. “We’ll have to ask them if it’s all right. And they may say no. They may not want us.”

“My husband,” said Mary Ellis, “although he is a very prompt man, and hasn’t been late to work in twenty-five years, is actually still some place around the house.” She sipped at her faintly scented hormone and carbohydrate drink. “As a matter of fact, he won’t be leaving for another ten minutes.”

“Incredible,” said Dorothy Lawrence, who had finished her drink, and now basked in the dermalmist spray that descended over her virtually unclad body from an automatic jet above the couch. “What they won’t think of next!”

Mrs. Ellis beamed proudly, as if she personally were an employee of Terran Development. “Yes, it is incredible. According to somebody down at the office, the whole history of civilization can be explained in terms of transportation techniques. Of course, I don’t know anything about history. That’s for Government research people. But from what this man told Henry—”

“Where’s my brief-case?” came a fussy voice from the bedroom. “Good Lord, Mary. I know I left it on the clothes-cleaner last night.”

“You left it upstairs,” Mary replied, raising her voice slightly. “Look in the closet.”

“Why would it be in the closet?” Sounds of angry stirring arounds. “You’d think a man’s own brief-case would be safe.” Henry Ellis stuck his head into the living-room briefly. “I found it. Hello, Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Good morning,” Dorothy Lawrence replied. “Mary was explaining that you’re still here.”

“Yes, I’m still here.” Ellis straightened his tie, as the mirror revolved slowly around him. “Anything you want me to pick up downtown, honey?”

“No,” Mary replied. “Nothing I can think of. I’ll vid you at the office if I remember something.”

“Is it true,” Mrs. Lawrence asked, “that as soon as you step into it you’re all the way downtown?”

“Well, almost all the way.”

“A hundred and sixty miles! It’s beyond belief. Why, it takes my husband two and a half hours to get his monojet through the commercial lanes and down at the parking lot then walk all the way up to his office.”

“I know,” Ellis muttered, grabbing his hat and coat. “Used to take me about that long. But no more.” He kissed his wife goodbye.

“So long. See you tonight. Nice to have seen you again, Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Can I—watch?” Mrs. Lawrence asked hopefully.

“Watch? Of course, of course.” Ellis hurried through the house, out the back door and down the steps into the yard. “Come along!” he shouted impatiently. “I don’t want to be late. It’s nine fifty-nine and I have to be at my desk by ten.”

Mrs. Lawrence hurried eagerly after Ellis. In the back yard stood a big circular hoop that gleamed brightly in the mid-morning sun. Ellis turned some controls at the base. The hoop changed colour, from silver to a shimmering red.

“Here I go!” Ellis shouted. He stepped briskly into the hoop. The hoop fluttered about him. There was a faint
pop
. The glow died.

“Good Heavens!” Mrs. Lawrence gasped. “He’s gone!”

“He’s in downtown N’York,” Mary Ellis corrected.

“I wish my husband had a Jiffi-scuttler. When they show up on the market commercially maybe I can afford to get him one.”

“Oh, they’re very handy,” Mary Ellis agreed. “He’s probably saying hello to the boys right this minute.”

Henry Ellis was in a sort of tunnel. All around him a grey, formless tube stretched out in both directions, a sort of hazy sewer-pipe.

Framed in the opening behind him, he could see the faint outline of his own house. His back porch and yard, Mary standing on the steps in her red bra and slacks. Mrs. Lawrence beside her in green-checkered shorts. The cedar tree and rows of petunias. A hill. The neat little houses of Cedar Groves, Pennsylvania. And in front of him—

New York City. A wavering glimpse of the busy street-corner in front of his office. The great building itself, a section of concrete and glass and steel. People moving. Skyscrapers. Monojets landing in swarms. Aerial signs. Endless white-collar workers hurrying everywhere, rushing to their offices.

Ellis moved leisurely towards the New York end. He had taken the Jiffi-scuttler often enough to know just exactly how many steps it was. Five steps. Five steps along the wavery grey tunnel and he had gone a hundred and sixty miles. He halted, glancing back. So far he had gone three steps. Ninety-six miles. More than half-way.

The fourth dimension was a wonderful thing.

Ellis lit his pipe, leaning his brief-case against his trouser-leg and groping in his coat pocket for his tobacco. He still had thirty seconds to get to work. Plenty of time. The pipe-lighter flared and he sucked in expertly. He snapped the lighter shut and restored it to his pocket.

A wonderful thing, all right. The Jiffi-scuttler had already revolutionized society. It was now possible to go anywhere in the world
instantly
, with no time lapse. And without wading through endless lanes of other mono jets, also going places. The transportation problem had been a major headache since the middle of “the twentieth century. Every year more families moved from the cities out into the country, adding numbers to the already swollen swarms that choked the roads and jetlanes.

But it was all solved now. An
infinite
number of Jiffi-scuttlers could be set up; there was no interference between them. The Jiffi-scuttler bridged distances non-spacially, through another dimension of some kind (they hadn’t explained that part too clearly to him). For a flat thousand credits any Terran family could have Jiffi-scuttler hoops set up, one in the backyard—the other in Berlin, or Bermuda, or San Francisco, or Port Said. Anywhere in the world. Of course, there was one drawback. The hoop had to be anchored in one specific spot. You picked your destination and that was that.

But for an office worker, it was perfect. Step in one end, step out the other. Five steps—a hundred and sixty miles. A hundred and sixty miles that had been a two-hour nightmare of grinding gears and sudden jolts, mono jets cutting in and out, speeders, reckless flyers, alert cops waiting to pounce, ulcers and bad tempers. It was all over now. All over for him, at least, as an employee of Terran Development, the manufacturer of the Jiffi-scuttler. And soon for everybody, when they were commercially on the market.

Ellis sighed. Time for work. He could see Ed Hall racing up the steps of the TD building two at a time. Tony Franklin hurrying after him. Time to get moving. He bent down and reached for his brief-case—

It was then he saw them.

The wavery grey haze was thin there. A sort of thin spot where the shimmer wasn’t so strong. Just a bit beyond his foot and past the corner of his brief-case.

Beyond the thin spot were three tiny figures. Just beyond the grey waver. Incredibly small men, no larger than insects. Watching him with incredulous astonishment.

Ellis gazed down intently, his brief-case forgotten. The three tiny men were equally dumbfounded. None of them stirred, the three tiny figures, rigid with awe. Henry Ellis bent over, his mouth open, eyes wide.

A fourth little figure joined the others. They all stood rooted to the spot, eyes bulging. They had on some kind of robes. Brown robes and sandals. Strange, unTerran costumes. Everything about them was unTerran. Their size, their oddly coloured dark faces, their clothing—and their voices.

Suddenly the tiny figures were shouting shrilly at each other, squeaking a strange gibberish. They had broken out of their freeze and now ran about in queer, frantic circles. They raced with incredible speed, scampering like ants on a hot griddle. They raced jerkily, their arms and legs pumping wildly. And all the time they squeaked in their shrill high-pitched voices.

Ellis found his brief-case. He picked it up slowly. The figures watched in mixed wonder and terror as the huge bag rose, only a short distance from them. An idea drifted through Ellis” brain. Good Lord—could they come into the Jiffi-scuttler, through the grey haze?

But he had no time to find out. He was already late as it was. He pulled away and hurried towards the New York end of the tunnel. A second later he stepped out in the blinding sunlight, abruptly finding himself on the busy street corner in front of his office.

“Hey, there, Hank!” Donald Potter shouted, as he raced through the doors into the TD building. “Get with it!”

“Sure, sure.“Ellis followed after him automatically. Behind, the entrance to the Jiffi-scuttler was a vague circle above the pavement, like the ghost of a soap-bubble.

He hurried up the steps and inside the offices of Terran Development, his mind already on the hard day ahead.

As they were locking up the office and getting ready to go home, Ellis stopped Co-ordinator Patrick Miller in his office. “Say, Mr. Miller. You’re also in charge of the research end, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Let me ask you something. Just where does the Jiffi-scuttler go? It must go somewhere.”

“It goes out of this continuum completely.” Miller was impatient to get home. “Into another dimension.”

“I know that. But—
where?
”

Miller unfolded his breast-pocket handkerchief rapidly and spread it out on his desk. “Maybe I can explain it to you this way. Suppose you’re a two-dimensional creature and this handkerchief represents your—”

“I’ve seen that a million times,” Ellis said, disappointed. “That’s merely an analogy, and I’m not interested in an analogy. I want a factual answer. Where does my Jiffi-scuttler go, between here and Cedar Groves?”

Miller laughed. “What the hell do you care?”

Ellis became abruptly guarded. He shrugged indifferently. “Just curious. It certainly must go
some place
.”

Miller put his hand on Ellis’s shoulder in a friendly big-brother fashion. “Henry, old man, you just leave that up to us. Okay? We’re the designers, you’re the consumer. Your job is to use the ’scuttler, try it out for us, report any defects or failure so when we put it on the market next year we’ll be sure there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“As a matter of fact—” Ellis began.

“What is it?”

Ellis clamped his sentence off. “Nothing.” He picked up his brief-case. “Nothing at all. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks, Mr. Miller. Goodnight.”

He hurried downstairs and out of the TD building. The faint outline of his Jiffi-scuttler was visible in the fading late-afternoon sunlight. The sky was already full of monojets taking off. Weary workers beginning their long trip back to their homes in the country. The endless commute. Ellis made his way to the hoop and stepped into it. Abruptly the bright sunlight dimmed and faded.

Again he was in the wavery grey tunnel. At the far end flashed a circle of green and white. Rolling green hills and his own house. His back yard. The cedar tree and flower beds. The town of Cedar Groves.

Two steps down the tunnel. Ellis halted, bending over. He studied the floor of the tunnel intently. He studied the misty grey wall, where it rose and flickered—and the thin place. The place he had noticed.

They were still there.
Still?
It was a different bunch. This time ten or eleven of them. Men and women and children. Standing together, gazing up at him with awe and wonder. No more than a half-inch high, each. Tiny distorted figures, shifting and changing shape oddly. Altering colours and hues.

Ellis hurried on. The tiny figures watched him go. A brief glimpse of their microscopic astonishment—and then he was stepping out into his back yard.

He clicked off the Jiffi-scuttler and mounted the back steps. He entered his house, deep in thought.

“Hi,” Mary cried, from the kitchen. She rustled towards him in her hip-length mesh shirt, her arms out. “How was work today?”

“Fine.”

“Is anything wrong? You look—strange.”

“No. No, nothing’s wrong.” Ellis kissed his wife absently on the forehead. “What’s for dinner?”

“Something choice. Siriusian mole steak. One of your favourites. Is that all right?”

“Sure.” Ellis tossed his hat and coat down on the chair. The chair folded them up and put them away. His thoughtful, preoccupied look still remained. “Fine, honey.”

“Are you
sure
there’s nothing wrong? You didn’t get into another argument with Pete Taylor, did you?”

“No. Of course not.” Ellis shook his head in annoyance. “Everything’s all right, honey. Stop needling me.”

“Well, I
hope
so,” Mary said, with a sigh.

The next morning they were waiting for him.

He saw them the first step into the Jiffi-scuttler. A small group waiting within the wavering grey, like bugs caught in a block of jello. They moved jerkily, rapidly, arms and legs pumping in a blur of motion. Trying to attract his attention. Piping wildly in their pathetically faint voices.

Ellis stopped and squatted down. They were putting something through the wall of the tunnel, through the thin place in the grey. It was small, so incredibly small he could scarcely see it. A square of white at the end of a microscopic pole. They were watching him eagerly, faces alive with fear and hope. Desperate, pleading hope.

Ellis took the tiny square. It came loose like some fragile rose petal from its stalk. Clumsily, he let it drop and had to hunt all around for it. The little figures watched in an agony of dismay as his huge hands moved blindly around the floor of the tunnel. At last he found it and gingerly lifted it up.

It was too small to make out.
Writing?
Some tiny lines—but be couldn’t read them. Much too small to read. He got out his wallet and carefully placed the square between two cards. He restored his wallet to his pocket.

“I’ll look at it later,” he said.

His voice boomed and echoed up and down the tunnel. At the sound the tiny creatures scattered. They all fled, shrieking in their shrill, piping voices, away from the grey shimmer, into the dimness beyond. In a flash they were gone. Like startled mice. He was alone.

Ellis knelt down and put his eye against the grey shimmer, where it was thin. Where they had stood waiting. He could see something dim and distorted, lost in a vague haze. A landscape of some sort. Indistinct. Hard to make out.

Hills. Trees and crops. But so tiny. And dim…

He glanced at his watch. God, it was ten! Hastily he scrambled to his feet and hurried out of the tunnel, on to the blazing New York pavement.