Farmer, Philip José - Traitor to the Living (6 page)

Western turned a rheostat, and the screen was filled with a single spark. At this close range, it was a globe of light. It began to slide off to the right of the screen, and Western pressed an AUT FIX button. The globe drifted back toward the center of the screen.

"Uncle Rufton," Western said.

Carfax said nothing.

"Heisenberg's principle works in the embu somewhat as it does here. The closer the observation, the more power required. The more power, the more we influence both the colony and the individual semb contacted.

The power upsets the e-m bonds and disturbs the orbits. The sembs report an uneasy feeling, and they get panicky if the contact is maintained for over an hour."

Carfax had to keep reminding himself that he was not to think of sembs as the human dead. They were some kind of alien being in a universe "at right angles" to his. But Western's matter-of-fact attitude was subtly influencing. It overrode his defenses without his being aware of it. He had to fight in order to remember his own theory.

And now, confronted with a thing which Western stated was their uncle, Carfax felt the beginning of dread. His heart was beating swiftly. He was sweating, despite the cold air. A sense of unreality was numbing him. His scalp and the back of his neck seemed to be turning to arctic rock.

"If you're like everybody else that ever sat there, you're experiencing the impact of the numinous,"

Western said. "We live in the age of enlightenment, of freedom from superstition, or so it's claimed. But even the least spiritual of men is suddenly gripped by fear and by awe when he sits there. I've had clients who were as eager as hounds at a hunt to speak to their dead. But, as soon as they were faced with them, they bolted. Or fainted. Or became paralyzed. The Old Stone Age never really dies in us."

Carfax could not trust himself to speak. He was sure his voice would be high and trembling.

"If we could get closer, we might see that that globe of light is composed of smaller units," Western said.

"But there's a definite limit to the nearness we can attain. If we increase the power when we reach that limit, the so-called attraction suddenly becomes a repulsion. The semb begins to recede, and the colony feels a sense of disruption."

The screen was suddenly shot with thin twisting white streaks, behind which the globe became less bright. Western turned a rheostat marked STTC CNTL, and the threads became black and then drifted off the screen.

"Static. At least, that's my name for the phenomenon. The colony got too close to a center of wild energy. Normally, when that happens, the colony is in trouble. The wild energy threatens the e-m bonds that hold the colony together and causes great mental distress to the sembs. The colony can't get away from the static fast enough. And that means that we might lose contact. So the static control circuit of MEDIUM applies more energy to keep a hold on the colony. What it does, we think, is supply the colony with the energy needed to get away from the static, but we still keep our lock on the colony."

He pressed a button marked CON and said, "O.K., here goes with the audio."

The semb could not actually speak, of course. Speech required vocal cords, and the semb was, as far as anyone knew, a pure energy configuration. But it could move the electrical analog of its lips and its tongue and its vocal cords and its lungs, and the analog of its cerebral-neural system and muscles functioned electronically as it had in life.

The voice that came out of the speaker was not exactly Rufton Carfax's. It resembled it but had a stiffness and metallic quality which made it sound like a robot trying to imitate a human voice.

Patricia had brought along a small recorder and played a tape of her father's voice for Carfax. Carfax had listened to it many tunes, and now he recognized the voice as that of his uncle's, despite its robotic quality.

"I ... feel you again," it--he?--said. "Don't leave me again. Please! Don't leave me!"

"We'll be with you for some time, uncle," Western said. "This is your nephew Raymond this time, uncle.

And the next voice you'll hear will be your other nephew. Gordon Carfax. He has some questions, uncle.

I hope you'll be cooperative."

Had Western's voice sheathed a threat? Or was he being overly suspicious and so had supplied the hint of threat himself? What could Western possibly threaten his uncle with? Withdrawal of communication?

It struck him that Western had used his new name.

This might or might not mean anything, since it was possible that his uncle had known about his name change before he died. And perhaps Western, during previous contacts, had told him about it. Carfax filed away this item with the intention of asking Western about it later.

Western whispered, "Go ahead."

Carfax's throat closed up. He was actually about to talk to a dead man. What do you say to a dead man? But, according to his own theory, this was not a dead human. Reminding himself of that did not help him. Whether a dead human or an other-universe sentient, this thing frightened him.

After being nudged by Western, Carfax said, "Hello, uncle."

"Hello, Hal," the semimechanical voice said.

"It's Gordon now, uncle," Carfax said, his throat beginning to open up.

"Oh, yes, Gordon, that's right. Raymond just reminded me of that again, didn't he?"

Carfax wished his numbness would thaw. He was not thinking as quickly and as clearly as he should.

"I have some questions, uncle," he said.

"They all do," the voice said.

Carfax blinked his eyes and shook his head. Was his brain deceiving him, or was the globe expanding and contracting, as if it were a photonic lung working to expel ectoplasmic air for a ghostly voice? (But the human mind had to cast everything into an anthropomorphic mold.)

"How are you, uncle?" Carfax said. (As if he were meeting him on the street!)

"It would take me a long time to tell you exactly how things are here, my boy. When I say time, I don't mean time as you know it. But I don't have the language to tell you what time is here. I'd take time, all of my time, Gordon, if you had the time. But you don't. Raymond tells me that time is money, as far as MEDIUM is concerned, anyway.

"It's lonely here, boy, though I don't lack company. But it's not company that I chose. And it's weird here. They tell me that after a while the strangeness wears off, and then the world we left becomes the strange world. But I don't believe them."

"I'm sorry if you're unhappy, uncle," Carfax said. "But your universe does have some advantages, and where there's life there's hope."

He stopped. A second later, a flat metallic hooting laughter came from the speaker. It finally stopped, though Carfax had been afraid that it would go on and on.

"Speak up, nephew," the voice said.

"Yes, uncle. First, did you invent a machine to communicate with, uh, the dead?"

There was a long silence. Then the voice said, loudly, "I? Of course not! My nephew, Raymond Western, invented it! He's a genius! The greatest man who ever lived! We had no hope before, but we do now be... "

Carfax waited a few seconds and then said, "Because of what, uncle?"

"Because we were cut off forever, we thought, from the world we left behind, what else, you simpleton?

You don't seem to understand that we're as wildly excited about MEDIUM as you are!"

Carfax did not believe that that was what his uncle had meant to say, but he had no way of proving it. And he had to be tactful with his questions, because his uncle could not be forced to talk if he did not wish to do so. His uncle? He must remember that this thing could be of nonterrestrial origin.

His next question caused Western to straighten from his slump. Carfax saw him out of the corner of his eye, and he wished that he could watch both him and the screen at the same time.

"Tell me, uncle, can you, uh, people, ever get through to this world via human mediums? Or are human mediums all fakes?"

There was another silence. Western slumped back into his chair, though his fingers drummed on the console. Carfax looked at his wristwatch. If Patricia had phoned, she wasn't being routed through to Western.

A hand coming into the area of his side vision made him jump. But it was only that of a man who had entered with a note for Western. He unfolded it, read it, frowned, put it back in his pocket, and stood up.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," he whispered. "Harmons will take care of you."

Carfax hoped that it was Patricia's call which had taken him away. Harmons would be listening, and the interview was being taped so that Western could run anything he'd missed. But it might be too late for him to do anything about it.

"Your nephew, Western, is gone now," Carfax said.

"You can speak freely."

Harmons sat down in the chair Western had vacated. He did not look at Carfax or even seem aware of what Carfax was saying. But Western may have told him to say nothing.

"What?" the voice said. "What do you mean? Why shouldn't I speak freely when he's around?"

"Your daughter ..."

"My daughter! Why hasn't she talked to me? Just because I'm dead and can't do her any good..."

"She's afraid to come here. She's afraid of Western. Listen, if you were murdered..."

"Didn't Raymond tell you that I don't know how I died?" he said. "I went to sleep, and awoke, if you can call this awakening, here. I was in shock..."

"Yes, Western told me that over the phone. But if you didn't invent MEDIUM, what were you working on that ate up so much power that you had to borrow money from Western?"

Carfax shook his head again. The globe seemed to be expanding and contracting at a faster rate.

"Ask Western," the voice said. "I've told him the complete details. Don't waste time with such questions."

"I will ask him," Carfax said. "But did you tell him why you kept your work from your daughter, why she couldn't be told?"

"All right. If I'd told her I was building a device to detect and interpret messages from outer space, she would have thought I was crazy. But I thought that I'd found a certain pattern in interstellar noise, and if I was right ... but I wanted to keep it secret until I knew for sure that I wasn't on a false trail."

"Why would a receiver take so much power?" Carfax said. "I could understand it if it was a transmitter." Carfax tried to think of his original question. He had asked his uncle, or the thing, whatever it was, something about. .. something about...

The globe had become much larger; the brightness was suddenly around him.

He reared up off the chair, crying out and trying to push against the light. He turned and ran, stumbling, half-blinded by the brilliance, to the door. It opened automatically for him, and he was out in the hall. The brightness around him faded and then was gone.

He was sitting slumped against the wall, breathing as hard as if he had run for several blocks at top speed. His heart was thumping, and his chest hurt. He was cold except around his crotch and his thighs. Later, he would realize that he had wet himself.

Western had appeared from nowhere and was leaning over him. He looked very strange.

"What happened?" he said.

Carfax felt very alone, weak, and helpless. He was in a building from which he could leave only by Western's permission.

Carfax got onto his feet and leaned against the wall.

It felt reassuring at first. But ghosts could come through solid walls, or walls thought to be solid. Actually, there was no such thing as a solid object if you thought of it in terms of molecules and atoms. The spaces among the microcosmos of atoms were vast, and many things could slip through them.

He moved away from the wall, as if glowing tentacles would reach through the interstices of invisible worlds and snatch him back through them.

"I thought that thing--uncle Rufton--had leaped out of the screen and was about to wrap itself around me."

Western did not laugh. He said, "Let's get some coffee."

They walked down the dull white corridor and went around a corner and into a small room. This had bright murals of sea life, derived from some Cretan murals, no doubt, what with its blue octopi and orange dolphins. The rug displayed black bulls dashing at naked brown-red boys and girls who were leaping every which way from the bulls' paths or grabbing the homs preparatory to a forward flip onto the beasts' backs. In one corner a huge silvery um perked.

Western went to it and picked up a large ceramic mug.

"Cream or sugar?" Western said.

"I don't want any coffee, thank you."

Western added two cubes, of sugar and a generous amount of cream to his coffee and stirred it vigorously. Western blew on the coffee to cool it, took several sips, and then said, "You can see now why we require our clients to sign papers freeing us of all liability. And why we also required that the records of a physical examination by an M.D. be sent us before we process applications."

"What about all those old people who've hired MEDIUM?" Carfax said. "Surely? . .."

"None of them showed indications of advanced heart trouble or of mental disturbances."

"The old woman who wants to speak to her dog?"

"She won't be accepted."

"What about my experience?"

Western raised his thick eyebrows and said, "I was coming to that. You're not the first to see that globe of light rush at you. But it's a visual hallucination. I can assure you of that. There is no possible way for a semb to escape the bonds of its colony or to get through the barrier between this universe and its own universe. I don't know what causes this phenomenon. I don't even have a theory, though I'm sure the effects are purely psychological."

"Are there any other such phenomena?" Carfax said.

"Yes. Sometimes a client has just the opposite of your experience. He feels that he's being pulled into the screen."

"Why haven't I read about this?" Carfax said. "I've read everything about MEDIUM I could get hold of."

"It's not that we're hiding anything sinister. Nor do we require that our clients keep quiet about such things. We're not publishing anything about it, as yet.