“I’ve forgotten his name. Loathsome fellow. Wretched attitude, Unctuous smile. I can’t see what difference it makes. Sargoth will be back.”
I visited the genealogical department but Falloway wasn’t there. In his place was a soft-spoken young woman who wanted to be helpful but lacked experience.
“Those profiles are wonderful,” I said to her after I had wasted much time with the computers.
“I think so too.” Her name was Shiri. “Do you people really believe you can predict personalities of newborns?”
“Why not? We’ve been studying gene patterns for centuries.”
“But you’re completely ignoring environmental influences.”
“No, we’re emphasizing heredity.”
“What about free will?” I asked. “Where does that come in?”
She shrugged. “I only work here. Mr. Falloway has been doing this work for years. You might come back when he’s in. But as far as free will is concerned, you see it being exercised every time somebody does something.”
“It’s pretty hard to distinguish it from compulsion, desire, temptation, impulse and blind drive.”
“That’s life.”
I returned to the personality profile computer but only for a short time.
“You have a sheet on everybody who has been born in Emera for the past two hundred years,” I said to Shiri.
“Yes.”
“Except for a few people.”
“Oh?”
“I’m one of them.”
Her dark eyes went over me like a camera but she seemed to learn nothing from the scrutiny. “We do have a few losses. Computer memory-erase. It doesn’t happen often. Like people, machines aren’t perfect.”
“Do you believe in Coincidence?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But only up to a point.”
I wasn’t really interested in psychology, philosophy or genes at that time but was merely whiling away the moments until I heard from Grena. I knew I would. She had to call or come by. Somehow she would get in touch. She must. But she didn’t.
“I’m going camping with Willmett for a few days,” I said to my father.
He looked at me as if he hoped I was telling the truth, which I wasn’t. “I shall see you when?”
“I’m not sure. When we run out of food and money, probably.”
“Very well. Be careful, won’t you?”
As I looked back on my memories, I realized that I had never really enjoyed climbing the mountain. Perhaps I had done it regularly to tax my strength, perhaps to live dangerously, or maybe I couldn’t bear the suspense of not knowing what was up there.
It was worse today because I could feel the dark region pulling at me. It was silent but I could almost hear it muttering with hundreds of soft, sinister voices. Rasping sounds accompanied me as I scaled the escarpment. They were near when I arrived at the plateau where I used to sit and watch for Grena to come and sun herself.
As usual the fog prowled across the ground, hiding holes and crevices so that I frequently stumbled. Once or twice I asked myself what I was doing up there. I could wait for Grena down in Emera. Sooner or later she would descend again. Instead I climbed up the face of a cliff I had never touched before, dug in and scaled it like a fly on a windswept wall. What if I were blown into the chasm? My father was too old to tolerate grief. If I disappeared he would search for me for a while and then he would die.
Up and up I climbed with the vision of the dark region before my eyes. It was with no sense of victory or accomplishment that I hauled myself onto a sunny plateau several hundred yards distant from a series of long, low buildings. There was fog above and beneath me, so thick that I could see only my immediate surroundings. Wherever the place was, I had arrived at the home of Hallistair, Grena and a good many other people.
I hadn’t known we were being invaded by aliens from another dimension. I hadn’t even been aware of the presence of any other world besides my own and those seen through telescopes.
“For at least three hundred years that we know about and perhaps longer than that,” a man named Colsan told me. He was middle-aged and balding and said that among other things he was in charge of quarters and maintenance. He had assigned me to building number five without my having requested a berth.
“You seem to accept anyone who blunders up here,” I said.
“Only on Falloway’s say-so and nobody comes up here who doesn’t belong in one way or another.”
I said nothing about the plainness of my room or the building itself, nor did I speak of my intention of satisfying my curiosity and then going home. That was what I intended to do. Let Falloway, Colsan and the others fight the invisible invasion occurring beyond the dark region. They were fitted for it while I belonged in civilization walking about with clean hands and a wrinkled brow. Such was the future I envisioned for myself and I planned to have it. I hated it at the top of Timbrini. The mountain had been fine for a boy to climb but now its atmosphere was befouled by the bad feelings and evil vibrations of whatever or whoever it was attempting to break through the fabric of space. In my mind I was particularly vulnerable to the dark influences because of my neophyte status. Reality would be better if I had my look around before taking to the slopes. It would be even better if I managed to persuade Grena to accompany me.
No one paid any attention to me so I went pretty much where I pleased. It was my guess that there were about fifty people up here fighting the invaders, most of whom kept to themselves. As for the living things behind the black cloud, once in a while some hideous little specimen got through, at which time somebody took a weapon, straddled a jinga and went to hunt it down.
“Riding the birds is part of Falloway’s prediction chart,” Colsan said to me, as if that explained everything. He had come out onto the plateau to tell me where the lounge and cafeteria were. “In case you stay long enough to need refreshment,” he added with what I thought was an overabundance of kindness.
It seemed that the people on Timbrini had it bred in them to ride the jinga. No, I had the facts confused. One of the criterion for being recruited was that a person had the ability to ride the birds, and Falloway could predict who that person was going to be by consulting the personality profile. Before he or she was born. There were so many possibilities a set of parents could produce and the profile charts were apparently a scientific projection.
“You’re a rather odd case,” Falloway said to me later with no trace of a smile. Only his tone was idle. Absentminded, almost. “I predicted that you would ride the birds but you can’t call them to you or even command them and you ride like a drunk.”
“I don’t think it matters how I ride but the plain truth is that I just grab whatever is in reach and bucket away. It isn’t a talent at all. Anyone can do what I do because I don’t do much of anything.” We were alone in the lounge and I kept looking over my shoulder in case Grena came into view. As soon as I had the opportunity to discover who was responsible for my being here I would tell them what I thought of them and be gone.
“My father expects me back,” I said to Falloway who seemed interested in everything in the lounge but me.
“Yes, I suppose he does,” he said and then walked away while I was in mid-sentence.
I would have followed him except that I saw a drell coming down the hall. “Sargoth!” I said, getting to my feet. When a female voice responded I nearly fell backward.
“No, of course I’m not Sargoth. You’ll learn to recognize drells by their colors.”
“Stop trying to con me,” I said, moving after the shiny thing as it walked away. “Come here and tell me what you think you’re doing.”
The drell stopped and returned to stand beside me while it regarded me with a big green eye. In the same smooth female voice, it said, “I am one of the sixty-two drells assigned to the station. For your own good you should either learn to recognize us or ignore us. For starters, I am Jolanne. See how my lights flicker only in the blue spectrum? The arm lights of Sargoth, as you call him, are amber.”
Again she walked away and this time I let her go.
I didn’t see Grena for two days. I probably could have seen her sooner but I didn’t want to ask for her. She hadn’t turned up in the cafeteria for meals or in the gymnasium during exercise periods. I looked for her in the film room, the library and everywhere else I could think of but she remained mostly in her quarters or the office where she worked.
On the third morning I walked into what was called the monitoring station and there she was talking to Hallistair while they both worked on some kind of electronic grid of lights on a wall. I couldn’t help but notice how attentive Hallistair was to her. He perched on a high stool beside her talking in animated tones, smiling, sometimes chuckling as he used a keyboard to make the grid lights flicker or alter position.
When Grena saw me standing in the back of the room, her smile disappeared. Hallistair watched as she came back to me.
“I’m both sorry and glad to see you,” she said.
Tempted to say something flippant, I refrained. It wasn’t the time or the place to be anything but serious. That was the kind of atmosphere they had up here on Timbrini.
“What do they want you for?” She said. “Have they told you?”
“Not yet.”
She seemed to relax. “Maintenance, maybe, or one of the offices.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, we’re always . . . losing people, one way or the other.”
“How do you mean?”
Hallistair gave his throat a decided clearing, causing her to look his way.
“I’ve got to go back now. Maybe I can see you in the afternoon.”
She returned to her work and I wandered through the building until time for a meeting in the room they called the ward. It was made of dark, unfinished wood that reared over me and gave me claustrophobia. Walls I couldn’t see through, a roof that didn’t slide away to the sun, rooms filled with obstructions in the form of furniture and closed doors—I was accustomed to none of it and felt as if familiar reality would burst upon me at any moment. As many times as I had left Emera to go poking about in the hinterland and in the wilds, the city was my home, my world, and I planned to live in it for as long as my life lasted. Just as soon as I could get Grena to come down with me. Then I went to the meeting and everything changed.
“This is what lies behind the dark region of the sky,” said the lecturing drell and pressed a button on a banked panel. A grid of lights resembling the one in Grena’s place of work lit up the wall, but this one was larger and more detailed.
I didn’t like the meeting even before it started. Why should I when the drell and I were the only ones present? It seemed to have been called solely for my benefit, to turn my life upside down and put an end to my dreams and ambitions. All I had wanted to do with my life was invent oddities and make a million dollars. Now it looked as if I would, be lucky to live long enough to spend the change in my pockets.
The drell was Jolanne and she explained to me that the grid lying just beyond the crack in the sky outside was some type of weapon. Whoever lived in that other dimension or world was trying to break through into our side.
“We don’t know what kind of weapon it is or its power source,” said Jolanne. “It exerts pressure against the crack, or perhaps it created it. We don’t know. Mills Suttler discovered the rent by accident three hundred years ago and we’ve been trying to keep it closed ever since.”
I looked a question but didn’t ask it. She sounded as if she had personally been involved in this so-called struggle all of that time.
I was grateful that I wasn’t involved in it. Personally, I mean. Jolanne gave me an overview of the grid and the personnel on this side who were engaged in frustrating alien efforts. She didn’t mention what was expected of me or how I fit in, which was just as well since I didn’t want to do anything. From where I stood it appeared to me that drells were well-suited to the labor since they were suited to very little else. Let them carry on the bizarre war with an unseen enemy while I got on with my life.
There was a sunny spot outside on a small peak where I met Grena to become reacquainted.
“It’s a strange bunch up here,” I said, sitting beside her and looking up at the sky. It was clear-blue in every direction but west where I refrained from looking.
“Yes,” she said. She had lost whatever vivacity she possessed down in Emera. Back was the lack of energy or ambition and the tendency to lapse into long periods of silent brooding. Her hair was wound into the flat disc on top of her head, pulled so tightly that it gave her a skinned, severe look.
“I think I like you better with your hair flowing,” I said.
With haunted eyes she looked past my shoulder. “It won’t snare in the machines this way. Don’t let’s talk about here. Tell me about Emera and your father and Mrs. Pelf, the old man Terris, Willmett. Hold my hands. I’m so cold.”
“The sun is warm.”
“No, nothing is warm except you.”
Falloway came out of a barracks building; spotted us and came toward us at a fast clip. He seemed angered to find us together and ordered Grena back inside. He ignored me completely.
That night I couldn’t get the television set working.
“Let me,” said my roommate and extended both hands to pound the sides of the machine. One hand, rather. The left one was gone.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Don’t be stupid!” He went out of the room and didn’t come back until late. I lay in bed listening to him curse and swear because he had hit his stub on a rail. It must have hurt him badly. It looked like a sore wad of dough, not nearly healed but well enough to be left unbandaged.
Sleep was a long time coming for me. I lay trying to conjure Grena’s face in my mind. Instead I envisioned bleeding stumps and pulsing bits of black sky.
To these people it was normal to be irrational, sane to behave unpredictably, all right to fall silent in mid-sentence or carry on vivacious conversations about subjects of no consequence.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said to my roommate whose name was Lake. “Not at all. I especially don’t know what’s expected of me.”
“That’s okay. Be naive for a little while longer. It won’t hurt you. What hurts is progressive knowledge.”
Hallistair condescended to notice me in the cafeteria by dropping a paper cup of coffee at my feet.
“I thought I’d seen the last of you when I left you on that cliff,” he said. His hair was sleek, his skin was pink and scrubbed looking. He worked hard at making me feel like an oaf.
“You mean when you sent a boulder down the trail after me.”
His dark eyes flashed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Then was when he dropped the coffee so that it splashed on my shoes and trouser cuffs.
Every day I went to the ward or meeting room where Jolanne showed me a picture of the weapon grid and lectured me.
“We don’t know much about it,” she said, promptly proceeding to tell me a great deal. The alien weapon was large, taking up a half-acre of space. Whatever its power source it set up a warping effect that distorted human vision. It also had the facility for creating hallucinations. How did she know this? Had anyone approached the weapon and, if they had, how had they gotten through the crack? Was it large enough for a man to slip through? Those were the questions that occurred to me but I didn’t ask them for Jolanne gave me no time.
By pushing a button on the panel beneath the projected image of the weapon, she added a blue line that began at one section and wound partially through the structure.
“This is known territory,” she said. “Please remain in the room and study the patterns.”
After she had gone I sat in my seat and rested my chin on my hand. I was tired of looking at the grid but I looked at it anyway. Not wanting to think about it, I knew it was important to memorize that blue track. There was no break in it that I could see, though it often disappeared behind alien girders. I wondered if they were made of ordinary metal. Was there any other kind? How had Jolanne and the others managed to penetrate that much of the weapon? The entire affair was dense while the line, according to the scale, continued for about a hundred feet, but not in a straight line. Rather it wound around beams, crossed back on itself, darted and zigzagged like a pencil mark made by an infant.
“I don’t want to talk about work,” Grena said to me that afternoon when we met on the peak.
“I wish you did.”
“They haven’t assigned you yet because they’re thorough and slow. You won’t be forced to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t like what they propose you can turn them down. We’re still a democracy even if we don’t live in Emera.”
“What are they going to propose?”
She placed her cold hands in mine and settled against me. “A job, but I don’t know which job.”
I thought about it. “Hallistair is an odd bird,” I said finally.
“Do you think so? Yes, I suppose he is.”
“Where does he come from?”
“You mean in Emera? I don’t know.”
“Maybe he’s an outlander.”
“Possibly. He and I and Shiri came here together, I think, about fifteen years ago.”
“As infants!” For some reason the very idea scandalized me.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by the moans of Lake. Hopping from the upper bunk, I turned on the light. He was sound asleep but he wasn’t at rest or at peace, thrashed back and forth on the mattress until I was afraid he would fall off. I reached out to grasp his wrist but swiftly recoiled in horror. He hadn’t one. His arm was gone all the way to the elbow. The empty sleeve lay over the side of the bed like an empty sock.
Shivering, frozen, I climbed into my own bunk and tried to still my pounding heart. A few days ago my roommate had been missing a hand. Now he was minus half an arm.