Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (40 page)

“You’re leveling with me?”

“Honest.”

“ATTENTION LOUIS JOURDAN. WE KNOW YOU ARE THE ARTSY-CRAFTSY KID. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. RELEASE AUDREY HEPBURN AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP.”

Bauer flung the window open. “Come and get me, copper,” he yelled.

“WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE NETWORK I.D., WISE GUY.”

There was a ten-second pause for network identification. Then a fusillade of shots rang out. Minuscule mushroom clouds arose where the fission slugs struck. Violet screamed. Bauer slammed the window down.

“Got their ammunition damped to the lowest exponent,” he said. “Afraid of hurting the goodies in here. Maybe there’s a chance, Violet.”

“No! Please, darling, don’t try to fight them.”

“I can’t. I haven’t got anything to fight with.”

The shots came continuously now. A picture fell off the wall.

“Sam, listen to me,” she pleaded. “Give yourself up. I know it’s ninety days for burglary, but I’ll be waiting for you when you come out.”

A window shattered.

“You’ll wait for me, Violet?”

“I swear it.”

A curtain caught fire.

“But ninety days! Three whole months!”

“We’ll make a new life together.”

Outside, Inspector Robinson suddenly groaned and clutched his shoulder.

“All right,” Bauer said, “I’ll quit. But look at them, turning it into a damned Spectacular—‘Gang Busters’ and ‘The Untouchables’ and ‘The Roaring Twenties.’ I’m damned if I let them get anything I’ve pinched. Wait a minute… .”

“What are you going to do?”

Outside, the Bunco Squad began coughing, as if from tear gas.

“Blow it all up,” Bauer said, rooting around in a sugar canister.

“Blow it up? How?”

“I’ve got some dynamite I lifted from Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Marx when I was after their pickax collection. Didn’t get a pickax, but I got this.” He displayed a small red stick with a clockwork top. On the side of the stick was stenciled: TNT.

Outside, Ed (Begley) clutched his heart, smiled bravely and collapsed.

“I don’t know how much time the fuse will give us,” Bauer said. “So when I start it, go like hell. All set?”

“Y-yes,” she quavered.

He snapped the fuse, which began an ominous ticking, and tossed the TNT onto the sage-green sofabed.

“Run!”

They charged out through the front door into the blinding light with their hands up.

The TNT stood for thermonuclear toluene.

“Dr. Culpepper,” Mr. Pepys said, “this is Mr. Christopher Wren. That is Mr. Robert Hooke. Pray, be seated, sir. We have begged you to wait upon the Royal Society and advantage us with your advice as the foremost physician-astrologer in London. However, we must pledge you to secrecy.”

Dr. Culpepper nodded gravely and stole a glance at the mysterious basket resting on the table before the three gentlemen. It was covered with green felt.

“Imprimis,”
Mr. Hooke said, “the articles we shall show you were sent to the Royal Society from Oxford, where they were required of various artificers, the designs for same being supplied by the purchaser. We obtained these specimens from the said craftsmen by stealth.
Secundo
, the fabrication of the objects was commissioned in secret by certain persons who have attained great power and wealth at the colleges through sundry soothsayings, predictions, auguries and premonstrations. Mr. Wren?”

Mr. Wren delicately lifted the felt cloth as though he feared infection. Displayed in the basket were: a neat pile of soft paper napkins; twelve wooden splinters, their heads curiously dipped in sulphur; a pair of tortoise shell spectacles with lenses of a dark, smoky color; an extraordinary pin, doubled upon itself so that the point locked in a cap; and two large fluffy flannel cloths, one embroidered HIS, and the other, HERS.

“Dr. Culpepper,” Mr. Pepys asked in sepulchral tones, “are these the amulets of witchcraft?”

K
rane knew this must be the seacoast. Instinct told him; but more than instinct, the few shreds of knowledge that clung to his torn brain told him; the stars that had shown at night through the rare breaks in the clouds, and his compass that still pointed a trembling finger north. That was strangest of all, Krane thought. The rubbled Earth still retained its polarity.

It was no longer a coast; there was no longer any sea. Only the faint line of what had been a cliff stretched north and south for endless miles. It was a line of gray ash; the same gray ash and cinders that lay behind him and stretched before him… . Fine silt, knee-deep, that swirled up at every motion and choked him; cinders that scudded in dense night clouds when the mad winds blew; black dust that was churned to mud when the frequent rains fell.

The sky was jet overhead. The heavy clouds rode high and were pierced with shafts of sunlight that marched swiftly over the Earth. Where the light struck a cinder storm, it was filled with gusts of dancing, gleaming particles. Where it played through rain it brought the arches of rainbows into being. Rain fell; cinder-storms blew; light thrust down—together, alternately and continually in jigsaw of black and white violence. So it had been for months. So it was over every mile of the broad Earth.

Krane passed the edge of the ashen cliffs and began crawling down the even slope that had once been the ocean bed. He had been traveling so long that pain had become part of him. He braced elbows and dragged his body forward. Then he brought his right knee under him and reached forward with elbows again. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee—He had forgotten what it was to walk.

Life, he thought dazedly, is miraculous. It adapts itself to anything. If it must crawl, it crawls. Callus forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they breathe. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.

“I beg pardon?” Krane said, “I didn’t quite get that—”

He peered up at the tall figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab coat and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Krane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.

“How do you like your world, Steven?” Hallmyer asked.

Krane shook his head miserably.

“Not very pretty, eh?” said Hallmyer. “Look around you. Dust, that’s all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Steven, crawl. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—”

Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Krane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with grit.

“Hallmyer!” he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back. Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.

“Keep crawling,” said Hallmyer bitterly. “Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—” He emptied the goblet on the ground before Krane. “Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-times D. The diameter is eight thousand or so—”

He was gone, coat and goblet. Krane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm cinder mud, opened his mouth and tried to suck the moisture. Presently he began crawling again.

There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.

The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Krane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A gun, a bar of chocolate and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months’ supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Krane knew he had best eat it before all the value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.

As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day; a day he would never see; a day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Krane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism begins the last act.

Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.

Evelyn tapped his shoulder.

Krane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.

“Steven,” she said, “you’ve got to hurry!”

He could only admire the way her smooth hair waved to her shoulders.

“Oh, darling!” she said, “you’ve been hurt!” Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back. Krane nodded.

“Got it landing,” he said. “I wasn’t used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the earth came up at me like a fist—And Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn’t let him drop, could I?”

“Of course not, dear,” Evelyn said.

“So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me,” Krane said. “And then something smashed my legs and side—”

He hesitated, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn’t want to frighten her.

“Evelyn, darling—” he said, trying to reach up his arms.

“No dear,” she said. She looked back in fright. “You’ve got to hurry. You’ve got to watch out behind!”

“The cinder storms?” He grimaced. “I’ve been through them before.”

“Not the storms!” Evelyn cried. “Something else. Oh, Steven—”

Then she was gone, but Krane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him. In the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?

The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Krane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.

The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn’t have been that argument, could it?

What argument?

Why, that one before all this happened.

Oh, that!

Abruptly, the pieces locked together.

Krane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.

The muffled sounds of swearing came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Krane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were clamping the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.

“Easy there,” Krane called. “Want to knock the ship apart?”

One looked up and grinned. Krane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart. Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either, but Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Krane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab coat flying.

“Speak of the devil!” Krane muttered.

Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Krane. “Now listen—”

“Not all over again,” Krane said.

Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Krane’s nose.

“I’ve been up half the night,” he said, “working it through again. I tell you I’m right. I’m absolutely right—”

Krane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer’s bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.

“For the last time,” Hallmyer went on. “You’re using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it’s a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that.”

Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Krane knew that without conceit, for he realized he’d only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10 × 10
¹⁰
foot-pounds of energy for every gram of fuel. No man was smart enough to think all that up by himself.

“You don’t think I’ll make it?” Krane asked.

“To the Moon? Around the Moon? Maybe. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.” Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. “But for God’s sake, Steven, I’m not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your own affair. It’s the Earth I’m worried about—”

“Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off.”

“Look—” Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—“No matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can’t get 100 per cent efficiency in the mixing and discharge.”

“That’s what makes it a fifty-fifty chance,” Krane said. “So what’s bothering you?”

“The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it’ll do if a drop hits the Earth? It’ll start a chain of disintegration that’ll envelop the globe. It’ll reach out to every iron atom—and there’s iron everywhere. There won’t be any Earth left for you to return to—”

“Listen,” Krane said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.”