The Crack In Space (14 page)

‘How much time do you estimate we’ve got?’ Stanley asked.

‘Days. Merely days. There’s a presidential campaign going on, or had that slipped your mind? We’ve already given Briskin a boost by letting Frank Woodbine talk us into conveying him over there; now let’s see what we can do for Bill Schwarz.’ And what we can do for Schwarz is a good deal more than we did for Briskin. Which was, in itself, rather substantial.

Don Stanley departed, to make the situation known to the experts on level one. As he passed out through the office door one of Leon Turpin’s many secretaries entered. ‘Mr Turpin, there’s a young couple on floor five who sent this up to you; they said you should see it at once.’ The secretary added, ‘It’s from Mr Pethel.’

‘Who’s Mr Pethel?’ The name did not ring a bell.

‘The owner of the Jiffi-scuttler, sir. The one downstairs in the lab; you know, the important one.’ She presented him with the message.

Opening it, Leon Turpin saw at a glance that it consisted of a request for him to permit the young couple, Mr and Mrs Hadley, to make use of Pethel’s ‘scuttler in order to emigrate to alter-Earth. Time was of the essence, for reasons Pethel did not choose to state.

‘All right,’ Turpin said to the girl, ‘I have no objection and we have to cater to this Pethel person to some extent.’ As he laid the message on his desk, he once more noticed the application from the other young couple, Art and Rachael Chaffy. That’s right, he remembered. Don was supposed to call them, but I guess he forgot in all the excitement. Well, he can do it later. He’s got their letter with him.

The Chaffys and the Hadleys can compete, Turpin reflected, as to who becomes the first American family to emigrate to alter-Earth. I suppose there should be some publicity attached to this. Homeopape reporters, TV newsmen and the like. President Schwarz cutting a big blue ribbon hung across the entrance hoop of the ‘scuttler. Or perhaps a bottle of champagne swung against the side of the ‘scuttler and an heroic name given it.

To the secretary he said, ‘Ask the Hadleys to come up here to my office.’

Several minutes later she returned and with her came a blond, genial-looking young man and a fabulously-attractive red-headed girl who seemed sheepish and ill-at-ease.

‘Sit down,’ Leon Turpin said in a friendly voice.

‘Mr. Pethel’s my boss,’ Hadley said. ‘Rather, my ex-boss. I had to quit in order to emigrate.’ He and ‘Mrs Hadley’ seated themselves. ‘This is the greatest moment in our entire lives. We’re going to start a new life.’ Hadley squeezed his ‘wife’s’ hand. ‘Right?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured almost inaudibly, nodding. She did not look at Turpin directly, and he wondered why.

I’ve seen this girl somewhere before, Turpin realized. But where?

‘Are you fully equipped?’ he asked the Hadleys.

Briskly, Hadley gave him a long list of items they were taking; it sounded complete, if not ornate. Turpin wondered idly how they expected to lug it all across. Nobody on floor one would be offering them a hand; that was certain.

‘Children,’ Leon Turpin said, ‘Terran Development is glad to contribute to a new awakening, both metaphorically and quite literally, of the young people of America  . . .’ And then, abruptly, he remembered where he met full-breasted young Mrs Hadley before. He had gotten her at the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. After all, he visited it twice a week, had done so ever since it had been built.

This is really terribly appropriate, Turpin said to himself, hiding his glee. The first couple to emigrate to the new world consists of a customer of the Golden Door satellite escaping with one of Thisbe Olt’s girls. Too bad this could not be made public. It was delightful.

‘I wish you two luck,’ Leon Turpin said, and giggled.

TWELVE

Within one week the initial collection of bibs passed through the Jiffi-scuttler and into another world entirely, to virtually everyone’s satisfaction. On TV the country watched it and in person Leon Turpin, President Schwarz, the Republican-Liberal candidate James Briskin, and Darius Pethel—who owned the ‘scuttler—and other pertinent notables looked on with a galaxy of emotions, most of them concealed.

The darn fools, Dar Pethel thought as he watched the steady line of men and women trudge past the entrance hoop. It made him sick to his stomach, and he turned and walked to the far end of TD’s lab, to light a cigarette. Don’t they know what’s going to happen to them on the other side? Don’t they care? Doesn’t anyone care?

I ought to close it down, Pethel said to himself. It’s my ‘scuttler. And I’ve decided I don’t want it used for this, not now, not after my trip over there, that ‘hopper ride back across the Atlantic with Bill Smith.

He wondered where Bill Smith, the Peking man, was now. Perhaps at Yale Psychiatric Institute or some such august place, being put through aptitude and profile tests, one after another. And of course being subjected to relentless questioning regarding the ingredients of his culture.

Some of Bill Smith’s testimony had leaked to the homeopapes. The Pekes had not, for instance, discovered glass. Rubber, too, was unknown to them, as were electricity, gun-powder, and, of course, atomic energy. But, more mysteriously, both clocks and the steam engine had never been stumbled onto or developed by the Pekes, and Dar Pethel could make no sense out of that. In fact, their entire society was an enigma to him.

However, one thing was certain: there had been no Thomas Edison on alter-Earth. Phonographs, light bulbs, and, for that matter, the telephone and even the ancient telegraph, were absent. What inventions they did have—for example the technique of laying crushed rock roads—had been developed over enormously long periods, microscopically elaborated by each generation mosaic-style. Except for the odd, complex compressor and turbine system, nothing seemed to have come to the Pekes in a single creative leap.

The device by which the QB satellite had been knocked off remained a mystery; Bill Smith knew nothing about it, according to the homeopapes, and knew nothing even of the satellite. The linguistics machine appeared to be unable to clarify the situation.

Jim Briskin, as he also watched, found himself dwelling on the gloomier aspects of the situation.

Where we made our mistake, he decided, was in not coming to some kind of rapprochement with the Pitecanthropi. It should have been done before a single emigrant crossed over  . . . now, of course, it’s too late. But of course President Schwarz had to proceed swiftly if this was to become a way of stealing Jim Briskin’s thunder. Both men knew this. In his situation, Jim mulled, I probably would have done the same.

But that doesn’t make it any less lethal.

Standing beside him, Sal Heim murmured, ‘When do you think they’ll be streaming back? Or will they be able to get back?’

‘Cally Vale stood it. Alone. Possibly they can adapt; it’s certainly more viable an environment than Mars.’ In fact, there was no comparison. Mars was utterly impossible and everyone knew it. ‘It all depends on the reaction of the Peking people.’ And, he reflected, since the Schwarz administration couldn’t wait to find that out, we’ll have to learn it the hard way. In terms of the loss of human life.

‘What I’m trying to figure out,’ Sal murmured, ‘is whether the public still identifies you with this or whether Schwarz has succeeded in . . ..’

‘Even if you knew that,’ Jim said, ‘you wouldn’t know anything. Because we don’t know yet what the upshot of this mass migration is going to be, and I have a feeling that when we find out it won’t matter who gets the credit for it; we’ll all be in the pot together.’

Sal said, ‘I heard an interesting rumor on my way here. You’re aware that George Walt have been missing since they shut down the Golden Door. According to this rumor  . . .’ Sal chuckled. ‘They emigrated.’

Feeling a pervasive, shocked chill, Jim said, ‘They what? To alter-Earth, you mean?’

‘Right through this ‘scuttler, here, that we’re looking at.’

‘But that ought to be easy to check on. If George Walt had passed through, TD’s engineers would certainly remember; they could hardly mistake George Walt for anybody else.’ He was now deeply disturbed. ‘I’ll see what Leon Turpin has to say about it.’

‘Don’t be so sure George Walt would be noticed,’ Sal said. ‘He, the actual living brother, may have carried his synthetic twin over in dissembled form, identified as maintenance and colonizing equipment; everyone who goes across carries something, some of them a couple tons.’

‘Why would George Walt emigrate?’ In facet, why had they shut the satellite down? Nobody had been able to explain that to his satisfaction, although a number of theories had been floating around, the central one being that George Walt anicipated Jim’s election and realized that their day had virtually arrived.

‘Maybe the Pekes will take care of them,’ Sal offered. ‘They would be rather a disheartening apparition, appearing in their midst; the Pekes might take it as a bad omen and cast the two of them back here in pieces.’

‘Who would be able to find this out?’ Jim said.

‘You mean what George Walt are up to on the other side—assuming they’re there? Perhaps Tito Cravelli.’

‘How would Tito know? He doesn’t have any contacts among the Peking people.’

Sal said, ‘Tito keeps tabs on everything.’

‘Not on this,’ Jim disagreed. ‘George Walt, if they’ve crossed over, have gone where we can’t scrutinize them; that’s the cold, hard truth and we might as well face it.’ Broodingly he said, ‘If I was positive they’d crossed over, I think I’d seriously plead with TD to shut the ‘scuttler down. To keep them bottled up over there, for the rest of eternity.’

‘Are you that much afraid of George Walt?’

‘Sometimes I am. Especially very late at night. I am right now, hearing about this.’ He moved a little away from Sal Heim, feeling depressed. ‘I thought we were through with George Walt,’ he said.

‘Through with them? Without killing them?’ Sal laughed.

I guess in the final analysis I’m not very bright, Jim Briskin said to himself glumly. We should have finished it, up there at the satellite, when we almost had them. Instead we chose to shuffle naively back to Terra, for what seemed a good idea at the time: a cup of hot syntho-coffee.

Now, it did not seem very brilliant. The passage of even a little time was a great edifier.

Sal said sardonically, ‘Hell, Jim, maybe you won their respect by being so charitable.’ He obviously did not think so. Far from it.

‘You’re a great second-guesser,’ Jim said, with bitterness. ‘Where were you with your advice then?’

Sal said quietly, ‘Nobody expected them to do something so radical as close the Golden Door. What happened up there on the satellite that day must really have shaken them.’

Coming up beside him, ancient Leon Turpin leered happily and cackled, ‘Well, Briskin, or whatever you call yourself, that’s the first batch of bibs. Historic, isn’t it? Makes you feel young again, doesn’t it? Say something. At least, smile.’ To Sal he said, ‘Is he always this solemn?’

‘Jim runs deep, Mr Turpin,’ Sal said. ‘You have to get accustomed to it.’

‘Just wait until we get that rent enlarged,’ Turpin wheezed. ‘My boys have been on it all week and tonight they’re going to hook up an entirely different power source; it’s all plotted out, rechecked dozens of times. By tomorrow morning, we should have a hole two to three times bigger. And then we can really hustle them through. Zip.’ He made a quick gesture.

‘Have you made thorough provision,’ Jim said, ‘to receive them back in the event something goes wrong on the other side?’

‘Well,’ Leon Turpin conceded, ‘the ‘scuttler will be turned off most of the night as the boys work it over. Nobody can pass through then, of course. But we weren’t expecting any trouble. At least not so soon.’

Sal and Jim glanced at each other.

‘President Schwarz said it would be agreeable,’ Turpin added. ‘After all, our contract is with the Dept of SPW. We’re acting well within the law. There’s nothing that compels us to keep the ‘scuttler running at all times.’

God pity those colonists, Jim Briskin said to himself, if anything does go wrong tonight.

‘They know about the Pekes,’ Turpin protested. ‘It’s been in the papes constantly; nothing’s been concealed from them: as soon as they were revived the situation was explained to them in detail. Nobody forced them to go.

Jim said, ‘They were given the choice of going across or being put back to sleep.’ He knew that for a fact; Tito had informed him.

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Leon Turpin said sulkily, ‘those people are over there voluntarily. And any risk they’re taking—’

You skunk, Jim Briskin thought.

It was going to be a long night. At least for him.

At eleven p.m. Tito Cravelli received from one of his almost infinite number of paid contacts a piece of news which did not resemble anything he had ever picked up before. Frankly, he did not know whether to laugh or rush to the tocsin; it was simply too goddam peculiar.

He mixed himself a whiskey sour in the kitchen of his conap and pondered. The datum had reached him by a circuitous route; initially it had been piped from a TD exploration team on the other side of the ‘scuttler nexus, prior to the shutting-down of the ‘scuttler, and from there to Bohegian, whereupon Earl had of course relayed it to him. Was it possibly a gag? If he could regard it that way, it would be a distinct relief. But he could not afford to; it might be bona fide. And in that case  . . .

Back in the living room, he dialed Jim Briskin’s number. ‘Listen to this,’ Cravelli said, when he had Jim on the vidscreen. He did not bother to apologize for waking Jim up; that hardly mattered. ‘See what you can make out of this. George Walt is with the Pekes, at their population center in northern Europe. TD’s field corps believes they made contact with the Pekes somewhere in North America, and the Pekes then transported them across the Atlantic.’

‘So quickly?’ Jim said. ‘I thought they had nothing better than slow surface ships.’

‘Here’s the substance of it. The Pekes have installed George Walt at their capital and are worshipping them as a god.’

There was silence.

Finally Jim said, ‘How—did the TD field corps find this out?’

‘From parleys with North American Pekes. They’ve been palavering continually; you know that. Those linguistics machines have been droning on night and day. The Pekes are—dazzled. Well, weren’t we a little in awe of George Walt ourselves? It’s not so odd when you think of it. I’d make book that George Walt went there anticipating some such reaction as that; they probably did some groundwork in advance.’

Jim said cyptically, ‘Another one of Sal’s predictions bites the dust.’ He looked weary. ‘Cravelli, you know we’re over our head. Schwarz is over his head. If someone suggested shutting—’

‘And strand those people over there?’

‘They can be brought back tomorrow morning. And then it could be shut down.’

‘There’s too much momentum behind it now,’ Cravelli pointed out. You can’t turn off a mass movement like that. In Dept of SPW warehouses all over the United States, they’re rousing the sleepers right and left. Assembling equipment, arranging transportation to Washington, D.C.—’

‘I’ll call Schwarz,’ Jim said.

‘He won’t listen to you. He’ll think you’re just trying to regain a primary relationship to the project, a relationship which he inherited by moving so quickly. Schwarz has the initiative now, Jim, not you. His whole political life depends on pushing those bibs across as fast as possible. Fix yourself a great big stiff type drink. That’s what I did. And then go back to bed. I’ll talk to you again in the morning. Maybe in the light of day we can hatch something out.’ But he didn’t think so.

Jim said, ‘I’ll talk to Leon Turpin, then.’

‘Ha! Turpin and Schwarz are interlaced through that lush contract let to TD through Rosenfeld; it’s a masterpiece. You can’t offer TD that kind of money—I hear it involves billions of dollars, and all TD has to do is keep the ‘scuttler going, just stand there and pump power to it.’ Cravelli added, ‘And enlarge the aperture, I understand. But that ought to be easy enough; they’ve been studying it for the last week.’ In fact they had probably already accomplished it. ‘I’m going back to my drink, now. And then I’m going to fix another and then  . . .’

‘There’s one man who can stop this. The owner of the ‘scuttler. I met him on that trip across the Atlantic. Darius Pethel, in Kansas City.’

‘Yes, he claims it as part of his inventory. But dammit, Jim, are you really sure you want to shut down the ‘scuttler and stop emigration? It would be the end of you politically. Sal must have told you that already.’

Woodenly, Jim nodded. ‘Yes. Sal told me.’

‘Don’t do anything tonight.’

‘We’re in the grip of fate,’ Jim said. ‘We can’t do anything; we’ve started something bigger than all of us put together. We may be seeing the end of the human race.’

‘Humanum est errare,’ Cravelli said, assuming he was joking. But was he? ‘You don’t mean that,’ Cravelli said, stricken. ‘I hate that kind of talk; it’s morbid and defeatist and ten other things, all of them bad. That acceptance speech you gave at the nominating convention; it was cut out of the same lousy cloth. Sal ought to give you a good swift kick.’

‘I believe what I believe,’ Jim said.

At four a.m. the augmented power supply had been coupled to the Jiffi-scuttler; supervising the work, Don Stanley gave the go-ahead signal to start the ‘scuttler back up. It had been off now for six and a half hours. His fingers crossed, Stanley tensely smoked his cigarette and waited as the entrance hoop gradually flared into unusual, pale-yellow brilliance, at least four times as bright as before.

Beside him, Bascolm Howard, who had strolled in to watch, said, ‘It certainly caught right away. No hesitation there.’

‘It really shines,’ Stanley murmured. God, suppose we’re overloading it he thought. Suppose it heats up too much and bums out. But the engineers who had done the work had assured him that the load was within the safe tolerance. And he had to go by what they said.