The Cosmic Puppets (12 page)

At Dudley Street they halted. Ahead, something glimmered and glowed. For a time he couldn't see what it was. Something was happening, but what? A lapping flame, low and intense, played over buildings and stores, telephone poles, the pavement itself. Curious, he made his way forward.

A shapeless mass lay on the pavement. He bent down uneasily. Clay. An inert lump of clay. There were others, all dead and unmoving. Cold. He picked one up in his hands.

It was a golem. Or what had once been a golem. It was no longer alive. Incredibly, it had been returned to its primordial state of non-existence. It was dead clay again. The clay from which it had been formed. Dry and shapeless and totally lifeless. It had been ungolemed.

Such a thing had never happened before. His still-living golems retreated in horror; they were terrified by the sight of their inert brethren. This was what he had been called to see.

Peter moved forward, perplexed. The light played ahead. The lapping fire that crept and crawled from building to building. Spreading out silently. A growing circle that widened each moment. There was a strange intensity about it. A determined quality. It missed nothing. Like burning water it advanced and absorbed everything.

In the center was a park. Paths, benches and an ancient gun. A flagpole. A building.

He had never seen it before. There was no park here! What did it mean? What had happened to the rows of deserted stores?

He swept up all the still-living golems and squeezed their struggling, piping bodies together in a common mass. The ball of living clay twisted, as he rapidly reformed it. From the mass he fashioned a head, without a body. Eyes, nose, then mouth, tongue, teeth, palate, and lips. He set it down on the pavement and pressed the edges of the neck until it stood.

“When did this begin?” he demanded.

The lips moved, as the several minds summoned their memories. “An hour ago,” it croaked finally.

“Those who were ungolemed! How did it happen? Who did it?”

“They entered the park. They tried to pass through it.”

“And it ungolemed them?”

“They came out slowly. They were weak. Then they lay down and died. We were afraid to go near.”

It was true, then. The spreading circle had done it. He pushed the features of the head back into shapelessness, then stuffed the clay into his pockets. The clay squirmed against his legs, each bit alive. Peter got cautiously to his feet. The circle of fire had expanded; it moved constantly. Taking in more and more buildings. Soundlessly increasing. It was highly unstable. A menace to everything close by.

And then he understood.

It wasn't destroying. It was changing things. As the buildings and houses sank down into the fire, other shapes emerged to take their places. Other forms, rising up from the lapping glow. Objects he had never seen before. Shapes unfamiliar. Alien to him.

For a long time he stood watching, while his golems flitted about him nervously, plucking at him and trying to make him leave. The fire advanced near; Peter took a few steps back.

He was excited. Joy and wild exhilaration burst loose inside him. The time had arrived. Her death—and now this. The balance had swung. The line no longer signified anything.

This, the restorer. Primordial shapes, rising from beneath. Springing back into being, from the depths below. The last element. The final piece needed.

He made his decision. Quickly, he emptied his pockets of the squirming clay, took a deep, shuddering breath, and crouched. For a last time he glanced back and up, at the towering shapes of darkness jutting against the sky. The sight filled him with strength—the strength he was going to need.

He ran straight into the lapping tongues of fire.

The Wanderers watched intently as Barton corrected the last of the maps.

“This is wrong,” he muttered. He struck out a whole street with his pencil. “This was Lawton Avenue here. And you've got most of the houses wrong.” He concentrated. “A small bakery was here. With a green sign over it. Owned by a man named Oliver.” He pulled the name-chart over and ran his finger along it. “You've missed it here, too.”

Christopher stood behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Wasn't there a young girl working there? I seem to remember a heavy-set girl. Glasses, thick legs. A niece or something. Julia Oliver.”

“That's right.” Barton finished the correction. “At least twenty percent of your reconstruction schematics is inaccurate. Our work with the park showed us we had to be letter-perfect.”

“Don't forget the big old brown house,” Christopher put in excitedly. “There was a dog there, a little short-haired terrier. Bit me on the ankle.” He reached down and felt around. “The scar went away on the day of the Change.” A strange look crossed his face. “I'm sure I was bit there. Maybe—”

“You probably were,” Barton said. “I remember a short-haired Spitz on that street. I'll put it in.”

Doctor Meade stood in the corner of the room, grief-stricken and dazed. Wanderers swarmed around the long drafting table, carrying charts and maps and data sheets back and forth. The whole building hummed with activity. All the Wanderers were there, in their bathrobes and slippers, two-piece gray pajamas. Excited and alert, now that the time had finally come.

Barton got up and approached Doctor Meade. “You knew all the time. That's why you collected them here.”

Meade nodded. “As many as I could locate. I missed Christopher.”

“Why did you do it?”

Meade's agonized features twisted. “They don't belong down there. And—”

“And what?”

“And I knew they were the right ones. I found them wandering aimlessly around Millgate. Random. Meaningless. Thinking they were lunatics. I brought them together up here.”

“But that's all. You won't do anymore.”

Meade futilely clenched and unclenched his fists. “I should have acted. I should have thrown my weight against the boy. He's going to suffer, Barton. I'll make him suffer in ways he knows nothing about.”

Barton returned to the drafting table. Hilda, the leader of the Wanderers, called him urgently over to her desk. “We've got them fairly well corrected. You're sure about all these alterations? You're not in doubt?”

“I'm sure.”

“You must understand. Our own memories are vague, impaired. Not sharp like your own. At best we remember only dim snatches of the town before the Change.”

“You were lucky to get out,” a young woman murmured, studying Barton intently.

“We saw the park,” another said, a gray-haired man with thick glasses. “We were never able to do that.”

Another tapped his cigarette thoughtfully. “None of us has a really clear memory. Only you, Barton. You're the only one.”

There was tension in the room. All the Wanderers had stopped work. They had drawn around Barton in a taut ring. Tense men and women. Earnest and deadly serious.

The whole side of the room was taken up with files. Heaps of charts and reports, endless stacks of data and records. Typewriters, pencils, reams of paper, cards, reference photos tacked on the walls. Graphs, detailed studies, bound and well-thumbed. Tables of ceramic materials. The actual three-dimensional model. Paints, brushes, pigments, glues and drawing equipment. Slide rules, measuring tape, cutting pliers, hacksaws.

The Wanderers had been working a long time. There weren't many of them; out of the whole town they were a small group. But their faces showed their determination. They had staked a lot on their work. They weren't going to let anything jeopardize it.

“I'm going to ask you something,” Hilda said carefully. Between her competent fingers her cigarette burned unnoticed. “You say you left Millgate in 1935. When you were a child. Is that right?”

Barton nodded. “That's right.”

“And you've been gone all this time?”

“Yes.”

A low murmur moved through the room. Barton felt uneasy. He tightened his hold on the tire iron and waited.

“You know,” Hilda continued, choosing her words carefully, “that a barrier has been put across the highway, two miles outside of town.”

“I know,” Barton said.

All eyes were on Barton as Hilda continued calmly. “Then how did you get back into the valley? The barrier seals us all in here. And it seals everyone else out.”

“That's right,” Barton admitted.

“You must have had help getting in.” Abruptly, Hilda stubbed out her cigarette. “Somebody with superior power. Who was it?”

“I don't know.”

A Wanderer got to his feet. “Throw him out. Or better yet—”

“Wait.” Hilda raised her hand menacingly. “Barton, we've worked years to build all this. We can't take chances. You may have been sent here to help us, and maybe not. We know only one thing for certain. You're not on your own. You had help, assistance from someone. And you're still under superior control.”

“Yes,” Barton agreed wearily. “I had help. I was brought here, let past the barrier. And I'm probably still being manipulated. But I don't know any more than that.”

“Kill him,” a slim, brown-haired Wanderer said. She glanced up mildly. “It's the only way to be sure. If he can't tell us whose agent he is—”

“Nonsense!” a plump, middle-aged man retorted. “He brought back the park, didn't he? And he corrected our maps.”

“Corrected?” Hilda's eyes were bleak. “Changed, perhaps. How do we know they were corrected?”

Barton licked his dry lips. “Look,” he began. “What am I supposed to say? If I don't know who brought me here I sure as hell can't tell you.”

Doctor Meade moved between Barton and Hilda. “Shut up and listen to me,” he grated. “Both of you.” His voice was hard and urgent. “Barton can't tell anybody anything. Maybe he's a plant, sent here to break you. It's possible. He may be a creation, a super-golem. There's no way to tell, not now. Later on, when reconstruction begins. If it really works you'll know. But not now.”

“Then,” the slim, brown-haired girl observed, “it'll be too late.”

Meade agreed grimly. “Yes, much too late. Once you start the fat's in the fire. You won't be able to back out. If Barton's a plant you're finished.” He smiled humorlessly. “Even Barton doesn't know what he's going to do, when the time comes.”

“What are you getting at?” a thin, sallow-faced Wanderer demanded.

Meade's answer was directly to the point. “You'll have to take a chance on him, whether you like it or not. You have no choice. He's the only one who's been able to reconstruct. He brought back a whole park in half an hour. You haven't been able to do a damn thing in eighteen years.”

There was stunned silence.

“You're impotent,” Meade continued. “All of you. You were all here. You're like me, distorted. But he's not. You'll have to trust him. Either take a chance or sit here with your useless maps until you die of old age.”

For a long time no one said anything. The Wanderers sat rigid, faces shocked.

“Yes,” the slim, brown-haired girl said finally. She pushed her coffee cup aside and leaned back in her chair. “He's right. We don't have a choice.”

Hilda looked from one to the next, around the circle of gray-clad men and women. She saw the same look on all their faces. Hopeless resignation.

“All right,” she said. “Then let's get moving. The sooner the better. I doubt if we have much time.”

The board fences were quickly knocked down. The surface of the rise was cleared; cedars cut down, bushes cleared away. Ail obstructions removed. In an hour, there was a clear view of the valley, and the town of Millgate below.

Barton moved uneasily around, swinging his tire iron. Maps and charts were carefully laid out. Detailed, letter-perfect schematics of the old town; every factor had been added and entered in its proper place. The Wanderers organized themselves in a circle around the charts, a closed ring facing inward. Up and down the slope fluttered night-flyers, huge gray moths bringing news up from the valley, and carrying messages back and forth.

“We're limited at night,” Hilda said to Barton. “The bees are no good, and the flies are too dulled and stupefied.”

“You mean you can't be certain what's going on down there?”

“Frankly, no. Moths are unreliable. As soon as the sun comes up we'll have the bees. There's much better results to be obtained—”

“What do they say about Peter?”

“Nothing. No reports on him at all. They've lost him.” She looked worried. “They say he disappeared. All at once, without warning. No further sign.”

“Would they know if he crossed over here?”

“If he came, he'd be protected. Spinners to handle the night-flyers would spread out in advance. They're terrified of the spinners. And he's bred hundreds of them in his work chamber. Bottles of them, just for this.”

“What else can we count on?”

“Some cats may show up. But there's absolutely no organization there. Whatever they feel like—no more. If they want to they'll come. Otherwise we can't force them. Only the bees can really be counted on. And they won't be up for another couple of hours.”

Below, the lights of Millgate flickered dully in the early-morning darkness. Barton examined his wristwatch. It was three-thirty A.M. Cold and dark, the sky overcast with a moist layer of ominous mist. He didn't like the look of things. The night-flyers had lost Peter; he was on the move. He'd already killed the girl. He was damn clever, to shake the night-flyers at a time like this. And he was after Barton's hide.

“How does he fit into all this?” Barton demanded.

“Peter?” Hilda shook her head. “We don't know. He has tremendous power, but we've never been able to approach him. Mary handled him. She had power, too. We never understood either of them. We Wanderers are ordinary people. Doing that best we can to get our town back.”

The circle was ready to begin the first attempt to lift the distortion layer. Barton took his place and was quickly linked with the others. All faces were turned toward the maps spread out on the ground, faintly moist with night dew. Starlight filtered down on them, diffused by the billowing mist.

“These maps,” Hilda said, “are to be considered adequate symbols of the territory below. For this attempt we must use the basic principle of M-kinetics: the symbolic representation is identical with the object represented. If the symbol is accurate, it can be considered the object itself. Any difference between them is purely logical.”