The first action of Blake’s brief reign had been to send the Maryland Fleet to bring the UN to heel. The United Nations, an administrative and - under the aegis of Colossus - effective organ of routine government, was really a sop to human vanity; although its power was more apparent than real, it had been vital for Blake to have it in his royal pocket. The Fleet had practically completed its assignment when Blake’s power had evaporated before the imminent threat of the Martians.
That was not all: Forbin knew that other Fleets held every major seaboard capital and city under the menace of ancient but very, effective guns, Washington, Quebec, Rio, Tokyo, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Wellington, Uhuru, Rome, Athens, Marseilles, Leningrad, Vladivostok, Shanghai, Canton, Oslo, Copenhagen, Cairo, Rotterdam, London, and many more …
Forbin could only guess the panic these gray monsters of another age had created. He stared in hatred at Blake, now beginning to move, moaning. He dismissed Blake from his mind, concentrated, and addressed the Martians:
“We humans are in chaos. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions may be dying. I must act.” He returned to the control panel; it never crossed his mind that the Martians might deal with him as they had with Blake. At the lower and more familiar level of world affairs his brain could function, and he banished the Martians from his thoughts, except as part of the world problem. No one outside the complex - and few inside - had any notion of the coming of the aliens; they must stay that way as long as possible.
“Angela, pass this to the Secretary-General: a revolt against the Master has been put down. No Fleet will take any further action. They will remain where they are for the present and may be ignored. Order is to be restored. That is the will of the Master.”
“Yes, Director.” She sounded scared, and the realization that he was not alone in his nightmare strengthened him. However powerless he might be in the claustrophobic confines of his own living room, outside he could still have some effect.
“That’s all for now.” He sounded more confident. “Don’t worry, Angela, just do as you’re told - and keep people off my back.”
“Yes, Chief.”
The sight of Blake raising himself painfully on his knees brought Forbin back to his hideous present. Blake had been sick on the carpet; his face was pallid, his eyes glazed.
Forbin ignored him. “Martians, our present state is chiefly due to your intervention. As a result, we are a headless body. You are now the masters, but at the human level my time is badly needed elsewhere.” He took a deep breath. “What do you want?”
This was it. Almost casually, he had asked the vital question.
Chapter IV
IN FORBIN’S IMAGINATION, the Martians took their time before answering.
“Forbin, you have said that much we do and are is beyond your understanding. Appreciate that you too present problems to us.” The comforting Devon burr was still there. Forbin sat down, his heart pounding horribly; he wanted to be out there in the sunlight, alone.
“Our two hundred years of Earth-study led us to believe we had a thorough understanding of Homo sapiens, but you are both simpler and more complex than we had supposed, possessing strengths and weaknesses we did not suspect.
“For example, a weakness: you judge us by your own standards, assuming that because we come with unimaginable power, we are hostile. Your minds, and particularly that of Blake, fly to violence. You frown, but answer this - and do not fear our anger: if it lay in your power at this moment to destroy us and restore the rule of Colossus, would you?”
His head bowed, chin on chest, he pretended to think, although he needed no time to answer, but the question struck him as strange.
He spoke calmly, head up. “Yes. I would destroy you.”
“That makes our point. Even you-and we think you may be the best of your kind-would destroy us, although you do not yet know why we have come. As a scientist, your mind must be more open than most men’s. Yet you would destroy us.”
Blake was on his knees, swaying, giving Forbin an excuse to get away from the Martians’ uncomfortable line of argument. He got his assistant to a chair where he flopped, a sagging wreck. Forbin gave him water and, between them, most of it spilled down Blake’s blouse. The Martians waited politely until Forbin had finished.
“Throughout our study, we have been fascinated by human bravery, attributing it to ignorance. We see now that is not a complete answer. Understanding on either side is hard; the gap between us is great. To you, we are strange incorporeal beings, creatures of thought. To us, you are courageous animals of violent action, possessing technological abilities we understand but cannot, by our very makeup, achieve.”
“Doubtless you are right.” Forbin stiffened slightly at “animals.” “You talk of our violence, but whatever you did to Blake, surely that was violence?”
At the mention of his name, Blake shrank back in the chair, gazing in horror at the Martians.
“Yes, but he is less developed, a more violent man than you. A lesson had to be taught and it was best he learned it, not you.”
“Something less drastic might have served your purpose.”
“Possibly. Forbin, you too must learn: we are not anti-Earth, for we have long recognized humanity’s latent qualities. Your evolution began many thousands of years after ours, you are far behind us in mental development, but you have the seed of a greater, more balanced entity than we are. You may never attain your goal, but for us to destroy man would be a sin of the greatest magnitude. We are not anti-Earth; we are pro-Martian.”
“Accepting that -” Hope stirred in Forbin’s mind. “- you have come here for something. Our technology ?”
“No.”
Forbin laughed shortly. “I cannot see what else we have to offer.”
“The answer is not simple; technology is involved. As you have inferred from our transmissions, we are infinitely superior in astronomy, optics, and radio, and our power systems are beyond your comprehension. In some ways we are complementary. We can conceive but not bring to birth: we understand theories which will elude you for hundreds, perhaps thousands of Earth-years. We understand yet cannot create. An example. Do not fear, Forbin: watch.”
The room darkened; the friendly sunlight went, swallowed in a velvet black void. Slowly, out of the dark, an image materialized, not lit, but visible - a root in reality, a familiar coffee-table top.
Despite the Martian’s assurance, the nape-hair on Forbin’s neck crawled: upon the dim surface a tiny point of light, diamond brilliant, changing, grew into a shimmering line of intense white fire less than a millimeter long. Other lines forked upwards from the two ends,, fanning out, certain of their path, meeting, interlocking, forming a web-thin structure, an intricate lacework delicate as a snow crystal, bright as sunlit ice.
He watched in awe; saw it expanding with all the satisfying completeness and mathematical beauty of a Bach fugue - delicate, glittering, strong.
The structure was complete, three meters tall, a meter wide at the top, before he realized its true form, a three-dimensional inverted pyramid resting on its millimeter base.
With no evidence, but with utter certainty, Forbin knew that this was no balancing act: the structure was stable, not defying but free of earthly laws, in harmony with laws far beyond human understanding.
He cried out in wild exhilaration. Bach filled his brain, living triumphantly before him in cold fire.
Its function he could not remotely guess, but it was too grand, too majestic to be a pointless exercise. All sense of scale gone, he saw it could be a thousand meters - or kilometers - tall, a fitting dwelling for the unknowable gods… .
And it was stable, springing from a base no bigger than a thumbnail.
As he watched, all else forgotten, the structure slowly tilted.
“No!” He jumped up, reaching out to save it.
“No. Do not touch: watch.”
Five degrees …
He sank back, trembling, praying for the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Ten degrees… . The rate of inclination increased: fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, an utterly impossible angle. Beyond anything at that moment-his wife, the world itself-he wanted to save it.
At thirty degrees the structure rested, still depending upon its tiny base. Forbin’s fears vanished. Less beautiful at that unnerving angle, it was even more fantastic. “Impossible!” He shook his head, although he believed in it totally, sure the image would be with him for the rest of his life. “Visual Bach!”
“Yes,” said the voice. “Bach is the composer we most understand. He saw what might be as we see what might be. We know that structure to be perfectly possible, but we cannot build it.”
“What a tragedy …” Forbin whispered, and meant it.
“A tragedy, yes - but ours. Not necessarily yours.” The vision slowly faded.
“Oh, never!” Already Forbin doubted his memory. “For both of us it is a dream.”
Instantly the tilted structure reappeared.
“Try to push it over. It will not harm you.”
Hesitantly he approached the bright web; to touch it seemed sacrilege. He reached up, felt it icy cold on his skin. Gaining confidence, he pressed with the palm of his hand. Nothing happened. He pressed harder, less amazed by the stability of the pyramid than by the fact that he could feel it at all. One theory collapsed; he had suspected that “Forbin” and “Blake” and this ethereal object were all fantastic projections of an optical device, but the gossamer struts hurt his hand. To project an image into his mind was one thing; to add physical side-effects struck him as a much more improbable ability. And even if it was no more than a Martian projection for a human to see and feel, surely that was reality? Could a Martian idea be a concrete fact to man? Not for the first time, Forbin gave up.
He stood back, panting with his exertions. For all the effect he had had, he might have been beating a steel girder with butterfly wings. He blinked in the returning sunlight. “What can I say - what can I say?” So many wonders in so short a time left his mind groping, blinded by their brilliance, but one conviction slowly emerged: no entity with the power to imagine anything so beautiful could be evil.
“That - that marvel … I don’t understand: you say you cannot build it and suggest that given time, we may. Yes …” His mind wandered, thinking what sort of supermen they would be. “Yes.” He repeated with more decision, his thoughts reverting. “You say you cannot build it, but it is, it exists, somewhere in time.” He stared at the imprint on his hand, still painful. Autosuggestion? No, he couldn’t accept that. “How did you create that model?”
“That we will not tell you.”
“Why?”
“Would you teach an infant how to strike matches?”
“No,” agreed Forbin, rubbing his hand, “indeed no. You think that a good analogy?”
“Yes.”
Pondering on that slap in the face, Forbin was suddenly aware of Blake, and felt guilty. Blake had tried to get up, and failed; he had undergone a traumatic experience, and whatever he had done, Blake was a human being. Confident in his new faith in the Martians, Forbin ignored them and went to Blake’s aid.
“How do you feel, Ted?”
Blake’s reactions were slow, his face a pallid parody of its usual beefy self, his eyes as intelligent as a cow’s. “Help me,” he muttered. “Help me. Get me outa here. Sleep …”
Somehow Forbin got him into his own bedroom and onto the bed. By the time he shut the door, Blake slept.
“What did you do to him?”
“We showed him his own mind.”
The Martian answer only added to Forbin’s pile of questions. “I don’t understand.” He tried to think. “Yes … How could you know Blake had anything in his memory which would have that effect?” As he said it, it didn’t make sense.
“It was not intentional, but when we were close enough to read your thoughts, we also read the contents of your minds.”
Forbin’s interest became sharply personal. “You mean you know everything in my mind?” He felt, yet again, amazement-and embarrassment.
“Yes. More than you yourself consciously know, back into your unconscious. We know that level of your brain from the moment you were born.”
“Oh? Oh!” He was alarmed. “I see.”
“That is not so, but do not fear, we will not reveal it to you. Your minds are very curious. We will study them - when we have time.”
Forbin got the message. “Yes, yes … That, er, demonstration of the structure has served your purpose. As a human I cannot help but still fear you, but I believe you speak truthfully, that you are not anti-Earth.”
“Very well. Let us put that question again: would you still destroy us?”
For a long time he was silent, and when he did answer, his manner was hesitant, uneasy. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“That is an improvement.”
The Martian’s deadpan delivery made Forbin’s thoughts jump to another track. “Tell me - I am not wasting time - the question is important to us humans: do you have a sense of humor?”
“No. Your radio and TV transmissions under that classification have presented us with problems of interpretation.”
“Many humans would agree with you.” “Indeed? That is of interest, for we suspect humor is an important factor in your potential capacity.”
The Martian admission, on top of his impression of their basic “goodness,” gave Forbin a warmer feeling towards the aliens. It lessened the gap between them. They had their limitations; they were by no means all-powerful. He spoke lightly. “Ah, well, our potential is another matter.” He waved it aside. “Tell me what you want of us.” He almost smiled.
“Oxygen.”
The single word dropped into his consciousness like a bomb. For several seconds it lay there, fizzing, then exploded.
“Oxygen? Oxygen!”
“Yes.”
Forbin laughed with relief, then felt bitter, near-physical pain. “And you have destroyed all this -” He gestured at the world in general. “- for that!”
“To be accurate, we helped you.”
“Yes. Yes, you are right. You cannot understand the irony of the situation. To think we may sink into barbarism for so trivial a cause. ” He shook his head, but deep down he felt so very thankful. The aliens satisfied, the world might yet pick up the pieces, although God alone would know how … . He concentrated on the practical problem. “How will you, er, collect it?”