The Time Axis Read online

  "An absolutely new form of matter, the death of energy. It breaks a supreme law of our universe, the law of increasing entropy. Entropy trends toward chaos, naturally. But the nekron is the other extreme, a pattern, a dead null-energy pattern of negation."

  "You mean," I demanded, "that the people of the City deliberately set a trap for the man who first opened the box?"

  "They had to. They had to make sure we'd answer their appeal to save ourselves."

  "Then you're convinced they exist in the future, not the past?"

  "You saw the Face. You were aware, you say, of the waves of civilization rising and falling between our time and theirs? How can you doubt it, then, Mr. Cortland?"

  I was silent, remembering.

  "It doesn't matter," De Kalb went on. "That question is purely academic. Past or future is all one in the time-fabric you will understand better after you've opened the box again."

  "But," I said, "how can we help them? If they can't destroy the menace to their own world, whatever it is, how could we? It's ridiculous. And anyhow, if time-travel was possible for the box – which I don't for a moment really accept – how could it be possible for tangible, living men from our time? And if it were, how could you be sure you weren't dashing off to save a city that would prove when you found it to be already dead? Overwhelmed a million years ago? How is it – "

  "No, no, Mr. Cortland!" De Kalb held up a large hand with an orange balanced on its palm. "You have so much to learn! Allow me the intelligence to think of those objections myself! Surely you don't imagine all that hadn't occurred to me already?

  "The answer is that the nekron can be destroyed – or at least that the problem it poses can be solved. I believe it can be solved only by this method – three men and one woman must go into the future age that holds the Face of Ea. For that, apparently, was the original plan of the people of the Face."

  "What makes you so certain of that?"

  "A number of factors. The Record was sent to our civilization, remember?"

  I had him there. "But it was found in Cretan ruins, you said."

  "Certainly. And the ancient Minoans didn't open it. I suspect the Record existed long before the time of Theseus – but it remained unopened until a neotechnical civilization had developed on this planet. Only men – and women – who were products of such a culture would have the qualities necessary to solve the nekronic problem."

  "Why didn't they send the Record directly to our era? Why did they miss the right time by thousands of years?"

  "I am no expert in the specialized restrictions of time-traveling," De Kalb said, with some irritation. "It may be that too-accurate aim is impossible. How can I tell that? The Record reached the right hands. I can easily prove that."

  But I was searching for errata. "You said we'd have the qualities that could solve the nekronic problem – destroy it, I suppose you mean. Well? Have you solved it?"

  De Kalb lost his ill-temper and beamed at me. "No," he said. "Not yet. The nekronic matter itself is very curious – atypical, completely. It is absolutely nonreactive. It has no spectrum. It emits no energy. No known reagent affects it in the slightest degree. It is a new type of matter, plain and simple. I cannot destroy it – not yet. Not now. But I believe I can do it with the guidance and aid of the people of the Face. As a matter of – "

  The telephone on the table beside him buzzed sharply. Dr. Essen swung around with a start. De Kalb grunted, nodded at her, muttered, "I'm afraid so," as if in answer to a question and took up the telephone with his free hand.

  It sputtered at him.

  "All right, put him on," De Kalb said in a resigned voice. The receiver buzzed and sputtered again. De Kalb's placid features grimaced, smoothed out, grimaced again. "Now Murray," he said. "Now Murray – no, wait a minute! Confound it, Murray, allow me to – I know you are, but – "

  The telephone would not let him speak. It crackled angrily, a word now and then coming out clearly. De Kalb listened in resigned silence. Finally he heaved himself up in the chair and spoke with sudden resolution.

  "Murray," he said sharply, "Murray, listen to me. Cortland's here."

  The phone crackled. De Kalb grinned. "I know you don't," he said. "Probably Cortland doesn't like you either. That's not important. Murray, can you come up here? Yes, it is important. I have something to show you." He hesitated, glanced at Dr. Essen, shrugged. "I am casting the die, Murray," he said. "I want to show you a certain box."

  "You know Colonel Harrison Murray?" De Kalb asked. I nodded. I knew and disliked him for personal qualities quite apart from his ability. He was old army, West Point, a martinet. He had the violent, uncontrolled emotions of an hysterical woman and the mechanical brilliance of a – well, a robot.

  No one could deny his genius. He prided himself on being scrupulously just, which he wasn't. But he thought he was. A fine technician, a genius at strategy and tactics. He confirmed that in the Pacific, back in '45. I'd done a profile on him once and he hadn't liked it at all.

  "You're taking him in on this?" I asked.

  "I've got to. He can make it too hot for me unless he understands. You see, I've been working with him on – never mind. But he insists I go on with it. He can't see how important this new business is."

  "Ira." Dr. Essen put in timidly. "Ira, do you really think it's wise? To bring the colonel in yet, I mean. Are you sure?"

  "You know I'm not, Letta." He frowned. "But there's so little time to be lost, now. I don't dare wait any longer. Mr. Cortland – " He swung around toward me. "Mr. Cortland, I see it is now time to give you one more bit of knowledge. I have a story to tell you, about myself and you. Surely you must have realized by now that you are involved in this thing far beyond any power of mine to accept or dismiss."

  I nodded. I did know that. I thought briefly of the things that had happened to me in Rio, of the affinity I had sensed without understanding between that stain on the hearthstone and the – the creature which had scorched my hand in Rio and the deaths that had come after. Would they stop now – in Rio? Would they begin again, nearer home? There had to be some connection – coincidence just doesn't stretch that far. But all I could do was wait.

  "This is my story," De Kalb said. "Our story, Mr. Cortland. Yours and mine, Dr. Essen's – perhaps Colonel Murray's too. I don't know. I wish I did. Well, I'll get on with it." He sighed heavily. "After I had experienced the Record many times," he said "I began to realize that there was in it reference to a certain spot on the earth's surface that had a rather mystifying importance.

  "I was unable to grasp why. The place was localized by latitude, longitude, various methods of cross-reference. It took me a long while to work it out in terms of our own world and era and decimal system. But finally I did it.

  "I went there." He paused, regarding me gravely. "Have you ever been in the Laurentians, Mr. Cortland? Do you know the wildness of those mountains? So near here by air, and so far off in another world, once you arrive and the sound of your motor ceases. You imagine then that you can hear the silences of the arctic wastes, which are all that lie beyond that band of northern forests.

  "Well, I hired men. I sank a shaft. They thought I was simply a prospector with more money and fewer brains than most. Fortunately they didn't know my real reason – that the spot I was hunting had turned out to be underground. You get some curious superstitions up there in the wilds – perhaps not curious. In many ways they're wise men. But my spot, in this era at least, had to be dug for.

  "My instruments showed me a disturbance toward which the shaft was angled. And eventually we came to the source of that disturbance. We found it. We hollowed a cavern around it. After that I dismissed the men and settled down to study the thing I had found." He laughed abruptly.

  "It was twenty feet of nothing, Mr. Cortland. An oval of disturbance, egg-shaped, cloudy to the eye. I could walk through it. But, inside that oval, space and matter were walled off from our own space and matter by a barrier that was, I know now, supra-dimensi
onal. A man may move from light to dark, encountering no barrier – yet the difference is manifest. There were tremendous differences here.

  "Also there was something inside. I was convinced of that long before I got my first glimpse of it. I tried many things. It was finally under a bombardment of UV that I saw the first shadowy shape inside that nothingness. I increased the power, I decreased it, I played with the vernier like a violinist on a Stradivarius.

  "I chased that elusive mystery up and down through the light bands like a cat on a mouse's trail. And at last, quite clearly, I saw – " He broke off, grinning at me.

  "No, I shall not tell you yet what I saw," he said. "You wouldn't believe me. The moment has now come, Mr. Cortland, when I must give you a little lesson on the nature of time." He held up the orange, revolving it slowly between his fingers.

  "A sphere," he said, "revolving on an axis. Call it Earth." He put out his other hand and took up from the fruit bowl a silver knife with a leaf-shaped blade a little broader than the orange. With great deliberation he slid the edge through the rind.

  5. THE DEATH CARRIERS

  What happened then came totally without warning. In one moment I sat comfortably in my chair watching De Kalb drew the knife-blade through the orange. In the next –

  A blinding nova of pure energy exploded outward from a nexus in the center of my body.

  The room ceased to be. De Kalb and Dr. Essen were unrealities far off at the periphery of that exploding nova. Vitality ran like fire through every nerve and vein, like an adrenalin charge inconceivably magnified. There was nothing in the world for one timeless moment but the bursting glow of that experience for which I have no name.

  The first thing I saw when the room came back into focus around me was the blood running from De Kalb's hand.

  It meant nothing to me, in that first instant. Blood is the natural concomitant of death, and I knew that somewhere not far away a man had died a moment before. Then my senses came back and I sat up abruptly, staring at De Kalb's face.

  The color had drained out of it. He was looking at his cut hand with a blank unseeing gaze. There was a little blood on the silver knife. It was nothing. He had only cut himself slightly because of –

  Because of –

  Our eyes met. I think the knowledge came simultaneously into our minds in that meeting of glances. He had felt it too. The explosion of white energy had burst outward in his nerve centers in the same moment it burst in mine. Neither of us spoke. It wasn't necessary.

  After what seemed a long while I looked at Dr. Essen. That bright steel glance of hers met mine squarely but there was only bewilderment in it.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  The sound of her voice seemed to release us both from our speechlessness.

  "You don't know?" De Kalb swung around to look at her. "No, evidently you don't. But Mr. Cortland and I – Cortland, how often have you – " He groped for words.

  "Since the first of the deaths in Rio," I said flatly. "You?"

  "Since the first of them here. And ever since, though, very faintly, when they happened in Rio."

  "What are you talking about?" Dr. Essen demanded.

  Heavily, speaking with deliberation, De Kalb told her.

  "For myself," he finished, glancing at me, "it began when I first opened the Record." He paused, looked at his hand with some surprise and, laying down orange and knife, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the bleeding cut. "I didn't feel that at all," he said, almost to himself.

  And then, to me, "I opened the Record. I told you that – something – went by me very fast and vanished at the spot where that nekronic strain later came into existence." He looked at me soberly, his eyes narrowed. "Mr. Cortland," he said, "can you tell me that you did not experience any feeling of recognition when you first saw that stain on the hearth?"

  I got up so suddenly that my chair almost tipped over. Violently I said, "De Kalb, somewhere a man has just died! Something killed him. Something is making you and me accessories to murder! We've got to put a stop to it! This isn't an academic discussion – it's murder! We – "

  "Sit down, Mr. Cortland, sit down." De Kalb's voice was tired. "I know quite well it's murder. We must and will discover the truth about it. But not by shouting at one another. The truth lies in that box on the table. It lies somewhere very far in the future.

  "Also, the truth is a being that roams our world, murdering at will. I released it, Mr. Cortland. Unwittingly, but I released it. That was a Pandora's box I opened. Trouble and death came out of it. We can only pray that there is hope in the bottom of it, as there was in Pandora's box."

  "Look," I said. "Tell me how I can help and I'll do it. But let's not have any more generalities. I'm too close to these deaths. I think I'm in personal danger. Maybe you are too. What can we do?"

  "We are not in personal danger from the killer. From the law – perhaps – if this connection from which we suffer were to become known. What can we do? I wish I could tell you. I'm sure of this much – that thing which came from the box, leaving the stain of nekronic matter like a footprint behind it, is a living and dangerous creature. It touched me as it went by. I think by that touch I've become – well, remotely akin to it. Were you touched too?"

  I told him.

  "Very well," he said. "We are in danger. Has it occurred to you yet that where it touched the hearthstone, the nekron took root?"

  For a moment I didn't see what he meant. Then the implication hit me and I went cold and empty inside. De Kalb, seeing the look on my face, laughed shortly.

  "I see it has. Very well. So far I haven't detected any sign of nekronic infection in myself. I assume you haven't either. But that proves nothing."

  "Have you seen the creature?" I asked. He hesitated. "I can't be sure. I think I have. Will you tell me exactly what happened to you, please? Every detail, even the irrelevant."

  And when I had finished, he exchanged troubled glances with Dr. Letta Essen. "Directive intelligence, then," she said.

  "The way it moved," De Kalb murmured. "That's highly significant. And the impossibility of getting a firm grip on the creature. So – Letta, do you agree?"

  "Frictional burns?" she asked. "But it didn't move fast enough to cause those. That is – not spatially."

  "Not in space, no," De Kalb said. "But in time? Limited, of course. A few seconds' leeway would be enough if you consider the energy expended and the tremendous velocities involved. It looks like a shadow – it seems to have mass without weight – and it has high velocity without spatial motion.

  "And Mr. Cortland's tightening his grip on the creature seemed to push it away. Time-movement, then! It vibrates – it has an oscillating period of existence, certainly limited within a range of a few seconds. A tuning-fork vibrates in space. Why not vibration through time – with an extremely narrow range?

  "No wonder you couldn't hold the creature! Could you hold a metal rod vibrating that rapidly? You would get frictional burns on your hands – since your own weight would prevent you from partaking of its motion. The being's existence must be, to a limited degree, extra-temporal.

  "Consequently, I suppose any weapon used against it would have to be keyed to its own temporal periodicity. That is, if we had a pistol oscillating in time, we might be able to shoot the creature. But the hand that squeezed the trigger might have to be oscillating too."

  "Trembling like a leaf," I said. "I know mine would be."

  He brushed that away. "How intelligent is this killer? Is ego involved, or merely vampirism? If the creature read your mind – " He grimaced. "No. No! The missing factor is what the nekron itself is and its special qualities. And we don't know that. We probably never will until we go to the Face of Ea."

  I sighed. I sat down. I'd had too many jolts in the past half hour to feel very sure of myself.

  "So we travel in time," I said wearily "Mr. De Kalb – you're crazy."

  He had enough energy left to chuckle rather wanly.<
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  "You'll think me even crazier, sir, when I tell you what it was I saw down there under the mountain, in the cavern. But I must finish my demonstration before you'll be able to understand."

  "Get on with it, then."

  He took up orange and knife again. He fitted the blade into the cut and finished the job of bisecting the fruit a little above its equator. The severed top half lay upon the blade as on a narrow plate. Below it he held the other half of the orange in place, so that it still maintained its unbroken sphere.

  "Consider this blade Flatland," he said. "A world of two dimensions, intersecting the three-dimensional sphere. Now if I revolve the lower half of the orange, you will please imagine that the upper half revolves with it. One fruit – you see? The axis remains immovable in relation to the plane in Flatland it intersects.

  "Now. I cut this lower half again, straight through. The same axis intersects the same point on this Flatland. In other words, the spatial axis remains stable. You understand so far?"

  "No," I said. He grinned, tossed knife and fruit back into the bowl.

  "It takes thinking," he said. "Let me go on. Now time is also a sphere. Time revolves. And time has an axis – a single stable extension of a temporal point, drawn through past and future alike, intersecting them all, as that knife-blade touched the orange everywhere in the Flatland dimension. And that, Mr. Cortland, is what makes travel in time theoretically valid.

  "The theory of time-travel usually ignores space. The traveler steps into some semi-magical machine, presses a button and emerges a thousand years in the future – but on earth!" He snorted. "In a thousand years, or a thousand days, or in one day, or one minute, this planet along with the whole solar system would have traveled far beyond its position at the moment the traveler entered his machine.

  "But there is one point from which he could enter the machine, enter time itself and be sure always of emerging on earth. For each planet, I think, there is one single point. The spot in the Laurentians where I saw – what I saw was that point for our planet. It is the spot at which the axis of the time-sphere intersects our own three-dimensional world. If it were possible to follow the line of the particular axis you would move through time.