Beyond the Barrier

Chapter Nine

His head ached. He was sitting on the floor, holding his head in his hands to quiet the throbbing pain. He looked around, moving with exaggerated caution, for the slightest motion made his head feel as if it were about to split.

The headband lay across the room, bent out of shape. Churan was staring at him, breathing hard; sweat was beaded on his narrow forehead.

“How do you feel?” he asked hoarsely.

Naismith tried to sit up, groaned and slumped back. “Pain in my head,” he answered indistinctly. “What happened?”

“You tore off the helmet halfway through,” Churan muttered. “It’s lucky for you that I had neutralized the gun. Make no mistake—it’s locked on again now!” He twitched, and resumed, “I don’t understand how— You are not supposed to be able to resume voluntary control until after the memory unit has stopped working.… Do you understand everything I say?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Naismith asked, and then halted, trans-fixed by a realization that almost drove his pain into the background.

He and Churan were not speaking English. They were talking in the language of his dreams—the same hissing, guttural tongue the aliens used—but now every word was clear.

“Who is the Highborn?” Churan demanded, inching nearer.

“The hereditary aristarch,” Naismith answered impatiently.

“She—” Once more he stopped, in total dismay. The knowledge that he found in his mind, a complete and detailed history of the Highborn and her court, had not been there before.

“The process was successful, then,” Churan said with evident relief. “You missed the end of the disk, of course, but we can supply that later, if necessary. I was afraid that— Sit still until you feel better.” He turned, retreated.

He was back in a moment, followed by Lall. Both aliens were staring at him with an air of suppressed excitement.

Churan, muttering something under his breath, stepped over to the wall and picked up the damaged headband, showing it to Lall.

Her muddy complexion paled. She held out her hand for the headband, fingered the bent metal unbelievingly. “He did that?

While the educator was turned on?”

Both aliens stared at Naismith. “Does he have the compulsion?”

“Obviously not.”

Lall snarled at him, “How do you know?”

The pain in Naismith’s head had eased a little. He got gingerly to his feet and retreated with cautious movements to the wall. He leaned back, watching and listening, while the aliens erupted into a sudden furious argument.

“How, then?” Churan demanded, thrusting his face into Lall’s. “Tell me how.”

“Try it yourself!” she returned, and thrust the headband into his hand.

Churan looked at it with surprise; his amber eyes narrowed, then glinted with understanding.

“The disk will begin at the moment it was interrupted,”

Lall said. “Go ahead, put it on—what harm can it do you?”

Churan grinned mirthlessly. “True. Very well.” He pried dubiously at the bent framework. “I do not know if it will function—” He shrugged and put the headband on. His eyes closed, then opened again.

“Well?” the woman demanded.

Churan took the headband off slowly. “You were right. The compulsion formula was almost all there—he could have heard only the first syllable of it.”

Again the two aliens stared at him, with something like respect in their faces.

“This changes matters,” Churan muttered. He glanced sidelong at Naismith, and added, “Don’t forget, he understands what we say now. Come—” He took Lall’s arm, drew her aside.

Naismith straightened up. “Just a moment!” he said. “Are you going to go on trying to keep me in the dark? Because if so, I give you warning now that my cooperation is over. He gestured at the gun on its tripod. “Turn that thing off, and tell me what that machine was meant to make me do.”

The aliens looked at him sullenly. “There was a compulsion formula in it,” Lall said at last, “to make sure you would do as we wish, when you are past the Barrier.”

Naismith said, “Then the story you told me about myself was false?”

“No, it was true, every word,” said Churan earnestly, coming forward a step. “We only wanted to make sure—”

“Wait,” Lall interrupted. She peered into Naismith’s face.

“Mr. Naismith—do you hate the Lenlu Din?”

Naismith opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. At her words, memories had begun to swim up out of some black place in his mind.

“The Lenlu Din…” he said. Plump, floating people in puffed costumes of scarlet and gold, peach, frost-white, orchid, buff. Shrill overbearing voices, glittering eyes….

“This may be the answer,” the woman was saying in a tense undertone to Churan. “Forget the compulsion—if he really hates them, he will do it because he wants to. Let us try him on the lie detector. What can we lose now?”

Churan looked uncertainly at Naismith, and there was a flicker of anger in his eyes. “How can I tell?” he muttered. “He is a Shefth.”

“All the more reason. We will do it. Come.” She beckoned to Naismith, started off down the corridor.

“The gun,” said Naismith, not moving.

“No,” she said. “We are going to be frank with you, Mr.

Naismith—but the gun stays, a little longer.”

Naismith shrugged and followed. The gun retreated as he moved, rolling smoothly along beside the two aliens, with its lensed muzzle trained steadily on him.

It was that way all the way back to the aliens’ suite. The pain in Naismith’s head was receding, only a dull ache now, but his mind was confused by an insistent crowd of images, sounds, voices babbling together, faces that were unknown and yet familiar…

Yet he was dimly aware that there was something unex-plained about what had just happened. Why had Churan found him just there, in the corridor outside the gymnasium?…

They entered the lounge, where Yegga sprang up from the floor, spilling a bowl of something greenish-yellow, and went to its mother with an angry squall.

She cuffed it aside impatiently. “Sit down, Mr. Naismith.

Gunda, get the detector.”

“It will take a few—” Churan began. “No, I am wrong, I have to retrieve the time vehicle anyway. I may as well do it, and then—”

“Go, get it,” she said impatiently. Churan went out, with a last sullen glance at Naismith.

Naismith lowered himself into a chair, thinking hard. Lall sat down opposite him, her long amber eyes hooded and watchful. “What were you doing in the ship, all that time until Gunda found you?” she demanded.

Naismith stared back at her somberly. Twice now, he was thinking, someone had tried to tamper with his mind—first Wells, now Churan—and twice, while he was unconscious, something in him had exploded with incredible violence…

some thing buried in his mind. Naismith felt the birth of an angry impatience. This must not go on; sooner or later he must find a way to reach those buried depths, force them to give up their knowledge….

“I was in the library,” he answered.

Lall’s fingers curled tensely on the table. “And what did you find there?”

She was so evidently nervous, anxious about his reply…

Naismith considered her narrowly, and said, “I found out that the time vehicle is not a part of this era’s technology.”

Her body visibly relaxed. She laughed. “I could have told you that much, Mr. Naismith. No, if you are going to build your own time vehicle, you cannot do it here. For that we must take you many centuries forward.”

“How far?”

She shook her head. “When the time comes, Mr. Naismith.”

Churan came in, carrying the machine under one arm and an oblong gray case in the other. He set the gray case down on the table, with a curt “Here,” and crossed the room to deposit the other machine in the wall cabinet.

Lall was removing the cover from the oblong box, revealing a smooth gray-metal base with two protrusions—one a dull pinkish-gray ovoid, the other a more complex shape, some-what like a misshapen mushroom.

“This is an ordinary lie detector, Mr. Naismith,” Lall said, pushing it toward him. She moved her chair quickly, stood up and stepped back. Churan was at the farther wall, watching intently. The gun on its tripod pointed steadily at him.

“Try it,” said Lall. “Pick up a dish in one hand, take the grip of the machine in the other…. Now say, ‘I am not holding the dish.’”

Naismith followed directions. Nothing happened.

“Now say, ‘I am holding the dish.’”

Naismith repeated it after her. The oval bulb flared into pink, hot brightness.

“Now, this is all you have to do,” Lall said breathlessly.

“Put your hand on that grip and say to me, ‘I hate the Lenlu Din.’”

Churan moved his hand slightly: in it was the control box of the automatic gun.

Naismith stiffened, aware that he had let the crisis find him unready. If he refused, he would be shot. If he took the test, and failed—

Once more the images of those bright, bloated people drifted up to the surface of his mind. He examined his own feelings dispassionately. He neither hated nor loved them. To part of his mind they were utterly strange; to another part, they were familiar and almost commonplace….

“Now, Mr. Naismith,” said Lall sharply.

Naismith put his hand on the rounded mushroom-top of the grip. It was a shape that smoothly fitted his palm. He tensed his muscles, without hope—he knew he could not move fast enough to escape the gun. Because he could think of nothing else to do, he said, “I hate the Lenlu Din.”

The oval bulb burned fiercely for a long moment, then slowly faded, glimmered, went out. Naismith heard Lall’s and Churan’s intake of breath, saw them relax and begin to move toward the table.

He stared blankly at the detector, thinking, But that’s impossible!

The staggering thing was that the aliens themselves showed no suspicion. As far as they were concerned, the detector test was obviously conclusive. Lall said briskly, “One more day here will be enough. You will put on the educator headband once more—without tricks, this time, Mr. Naismith. Then it will take you some twelve hours to absorb all you have learned

… the process is sometimes fatiguing, and it is important that you rest during that period. After that,” she finished, “you will be ready to begin building your time vehicle.”

Naismith looked at her sharply, but there was no humor in her expression. “Do you mean that literally?” he demanded.

“I thought—”

“How else can we get you into the City?” she countered.

“You may be positive they will check whatever story you tell.

If you say you materialized in the factory city of Ul in the fifth century before the Founding, they will go there in their own time vehicle to see. Therefore, you must not only tell the story, you must actually be there, building that vehicle, when they come to look. It will take you a little over ten years.”

“Ten years” said Naismith, stunned by the matter-of-factness in her tone.

“Understand this,” she said harshly, leaning toward him.

“It’s that or nothing. Make up your mind.”

Her glance was sullen. Churan, across the room, was looking at him with the same expression, his eyes hooded and dull.

Naismith shrugged. “What choice do I have?” He held out his hand. “Give me the headband.”

… Afterwards, he lay back in a soft chair, his mind a cloudy confusion of new thoughts and images, while the three aliens prepared a meal and ate it.

“We are going to bed now,” Lall said dully to Naismith.

“Your room is there. Till the morning, then.”

They went into their room and closed the door. Naismith sat where he was for a while, then went to the room Lall had pointed out, examined the door controls. There was nothing unusual about them as far as he could determine; the door closed and opened again easily.

He went inside and lay down on the bed, half aware of his surroundings as the stream of memories, voices, faces came and went in his mind. When an hour had passed, he sat up.

He rose, opened the door and listened. There was no sound from the aliens’ room. He closed the door behind him and moved quietly across the lounge. Outside, he followed the red trail, heading directly for the place where Churan had found him a few hours ago.

He passed through the natatorium again, into the gymnasium… and stared with speculative interest at the pieces of equipment lying on the polished floor. Something had been prepared for him here: but what?

He moved closer, bent to examine the black case with the transparencies and dials. It was evidently the control box; three of the dials were calibrated and set. A fourth had only two positions, marked by a red dot and a white one. The pointer lay on the white dot.

Caution held him back, but Naismith had a sense that there were too many things still hidden in the background. Events were sweeping him on, and ignorance was still his most dangerous weakness. Certain risks had to be accepted.

He made up his mind. Kneeling, he turned the dial from white to red, then got to his feet and stepped back.

Not quickly enough.

The far end of the gymnasium darkened suddenly. Out of that blackness, like a vault opening where the far wall should have been, something stirred.

Fear entered the room. It came like a cold wind out of that darkness. Naismith’s fingers were cold; his skin prickled.

Straining his eyes, he could make out a glint of light here, another there, as something impossibly huge came toward him in the blackness. It was the monster of his dream! Two little red eyes stared at him, and there was a faint rattle of bony plates.

The head of the thing began to emerge into the light…

Naismith forced himself to remain still as that immense body came fully into view. It was a shape of tremendous animal power, armored and clawed, many-limbed… but the most frightening thing about it was the look of intelligence, of merciless, ancient wisdom in its eyes….

With a bone-chilling roar, the thing sprang. In spite of himself, Naismith flinched back. The gigantic body swelled, filled the universe… and was gone. The darkness winked out. The gymnasium wall reappeared.

Naismith found himself trembling and covered with sweat.

The far wall darkened again. With a sense of panic, Naismith realized that the experience was beginning once more.

Again the stirring in the darkness, again the red eyes, the emergence: but this time the beast sprang more quickly. The lights came up; after a moment, the darkness fell a third time.

Grimly, Naismith watched the same terrifying bulk appear even more quickly, spring with less delay. A fourth time, and a fifth, he watched, before the lights came on and stayed on: the cycle was over.

And that, he thought bleakly, was probably only the beginning. The beast itself must move incomparably faster than that…

He left the gymnasium and went into the corridor where Churan had found him before. Almost absent-mindedly, he glanced around. His attention sharpened, as he thought again of the anomaly of Churan’s finding him just here. Why not in the gymnasium itself? Why in the corridor outside?

A little farther down the corridor there was an open doorway. Naismith remembered glancing in before, and finding only a small, uninteresting room. He went over to it, looked in again. It was as he recalled it, a tiny green room, hardly larger than a closet.

He stood in the doorway, frowning. There was a small bare desk, the same green as the walls, a simple-looking vision instrument over it, and an array of green and white panels on the wall behind.

The little room might have been a storeroom of some kind: but it was the wrong size. Either it should have been much bigger, Naismith thought, or else there should have been no desk, no vision apparatus. In sudden excitement, he rounded the desk, began to fumble at the control strips of the panels.

This might, just might, be the purser’s office, with all the records of the voyage…

But it was not. It was the dispensary.

The wall panels held rack on rack of drugs in cylindrical bottles, each elaborately labeled. Probably most of them were worthless by now. Naismith examined a few, put them back.

He tried another section of the wall.

Inside were gleaming, ranked strips of metal, each labeled with a name and a date. Naismith touched one experimentally, and it tilted out into his hand, a metal-bound sheaf of papers.

It was the case-history of a passenger aboard the ship: the others were the same.

In five minutes the whole story lay under his hands. A virus carried by the green skinned people had mutated; the new form attacked homo sapiens. The symptoms were fever, nausea and intense feelings of anxiety, followed by collapse and coma, then a slow recovery. Death ensued in only a small percentage of cases: but every recovered victim had suffered severe and irreparable brain damage. There were stereo pictures, from which Naismith averted his eyes: vacant faces, dull eyes, jaws hanging….

The epidemic had broken out on the same day the ship left Earth. In the end, it must have been only the greenskins, immune to their own infection, who had been able to bring the ship back and land it safely with its cargo of mindless human beings. All over the Earth, the same tragedy…

Naismith could imagine the shambling aments who had been the luxury ship’s passengers, wandering out onto the plain by ones and twos… out into a land where nothing waited for them but death by exposure arid starvation…

Naismith closed the book slowly and put it back in its place.

He understood now why this was a so-called “dead period.”

Only a handful of immune human beings must have survived, along with the greenskins, to rebuild civilization slowly and painfully over the course of centuries. Yes, that explained many things….