The Other Side of Here

FOUR

Waldron found himself standing up, gripping the little device he'd just made with fury-tautened fingers. He didn't have the pistol that had belonged to Lucy's father. She had it. He'd get it and at least kill some of this crew. Veins throbbed on his forehead with his hatred and his rage.

But then he looked down at the small device in his hands. In its interior a tiny tongue of metal wavered back and forth, and a tiny blue spark flickered. Because of that spark and the high-frequency currents it generated, Waldron himself was still able to move and breathe. And there around him were the other outfits.

He moved clumsily to the diathermy machine and turned its switch without releasing the device in his hands. He picked up the two leads which had revived the mice. Very, very carefully—not breaking the effect of his own tiny machine—he sent the diathermy current through the doctor's body.

The doctor stirred.

"Quiet!" said Waldron in a low tone. "You've had a dose of what they call the plague. Now you're out of it. But keep quiet and listen. While I keep high-frequency flowing through your body, start up that other pack on the table Start it!"

The doctor stared hard at Lucy. Then he listened.

"Yes!" said Waldron bitterly. "The town's dead! Quick!"

The doctor moved like a man accustomed to emergencies. Waldron drew back. The doctor still moved.

"Good!" said Waldron. "Lift Lucy over here. The wires won't reach her."

The doctor obeyed without words. He was very pale, but a man who confronts the daily emergencies of a general practitioner learned to act without stopping to talk. He lifted Lucy to within Waldron's reach with the diathermy terminals. Waldron touched them to her. She shuddered, stared and then gasped, looking at Waldron with horror-filled eyes.

"Right," said Waldron. "They've frozen the town around us. Doctor, give her that third generator. Start it."

He withdrew the diathermy terminals. Lucy continued to move and breathe. There was no sensation from either the diathermy or Waldron's own make of high-frequency generator. He switched off the big machine. He still breathed. He had been unreasonably fearful about that.

Now the sound of nearing footsteps was very plain.

"They stopped to check a street number," he said grimly. "Fran Dutt's compatriots, Lucy. We've got to get out of here and we've got to do it quietly. We can't fight. Doctor, it's up to you to get us out of here without a sound."

Without a word, the doctor led the way. They went through a side door from his office and came to a dark hallway. Steps led down and Waldron steadied Lucy, cautioning her under his breath. At last, the doctor opened a door ahead of them with infinite caution. The cool fragrance of night swept against their faces. Behind them, feet tramped into the building they had just left.

They went swiftly away into the dark. Behind them they heard voices: argument in an unknown tongue. Somebody tramped heavily down stairs again. The fugitives moved faster.

There was gruesomeness and terror all about. The street lamps still burned brightly. Lights in the houses were on. But no living creature moved anywhere. The three could see into a lighted room. A family was seated there, but not a person moved. They passed a car in which were a young man and a girl. The motor idled softly. The girl had just gotten in beside her sweetheart. He had snatched a furtive, quick and eager kiss—and had frozen in the act.

And a long, long way on—when they felt almost safe— they saw a woman sitting on the step of one of the meaner houses. She was bent over a tiny, carefully wrapped bundle which she held in her arms. The bundle was a baby. The woman would sit in that pose of unconscious tenderness through the night, and through days and nights to come.

They came to another parked car. There was no one in it. Waldron reached inside and fumbled with his hand.

"Somebody left the key in the lock. He meant to be right back. We need this, Doctor."

Very quietly, they climbed in and Waldron pressed the starter. There was very little sound. The car purred softly and Waldron drove away, moving swiftly into high gear to avoid the telltale whine. He did not turn on any lights, as his eyes were now fairly well accustomed to the dark.

Three times, he checked the car sharply to keep from running into something. Once, with tight-clamped jaws, he went up on a sidewalk to avoid running over persons lying absurdly in the street. He knew they were alive, no matter how they looked.

They got out of the town. Just beyond the houses there was a brightly lighted filling station, in which blared a radio. A big, black, glistening car was pulled up at the tank. A station attendant worked the pump. But it had shut itself off and nobody moved. The car itself was empty. Its occupants had probably gone into the filling station for cigars or soft drinks. Waldron saw a huddle of bodies on the floor. One of them had been frozen in the act of hearty laughter.

"We take this car," said Waldron coldly. "Hunted as I am, I need something with speed to it. You keep the car you've got, Doctor, and head in to New York. If you get to a hospital and revive a few patients, maybe some of the fatheads who think this is a plague will believe you. But make sure you get some more high-frequency generators made up!" The radio inside the filling station blatted: In fourteen hours there has been no enlargement of the three plague spots in Manhattan. The area about Newark, however, has enlarged twice. The first enlargement was near sunrise this morning, when a number of Army quarantine teams were overwhelmed, and the other was late this afternoon when a party of newspapermen and press photographers, touring the edges of the plague spot, were apparently overtaken. It is understood that though every precaution had been taken against infection...

"I notice," said the doctor quietly, "they don't mention the name of any well-known medical authority as calling it a plague."

"I can guess," said Waldron bitterly, "that anybody big enough to have more sense was picked off ahead of time—or else was caught in one of those two 'enlargements.'"

The radio voice went on: ... There is some hope that the virulence of the plague is dying down. This is not unusual in epidemics. In any case, the failure of the plague spots to spread is encouraging. No sporadic outbreaks have been reported, proving that the plague is at least not wind-borne. It has been suggested to the Plague Administration, in fact, that the plague may be artificial—

Waldron's eyes brightened. "Brains at last!"

... in that Steven Waldron, known to have been the source of infection in the New York plague spots, had been working in antibiotic research. It is suggested that during his work he produced some mutation of a familiar organism which is the deadly agent at work now. It has been suggested that his mind became unhinged and that he has released the culture deliberately. This view has not been officially accepted by the Plague Administration but all police officers everywhere have been urged to seize Waldron wherever he may be found. His description and facsimile photograph is being transmitted to every police department in fourteen states. If possible, he should be taken unharmed for questioning, but at all costs his career as a plague-spreader ...

Waldron laughed without any mirth. "I was a little ahead of myself. But at that I'd probably have guessed the same thing about somebody else. Take care, Doctor, not to admit you've seen me until you've proved you can revive the patients they're planning to bury, and until other men doing other revivals are protected as you are."

The doctor very deliberately finished filling the gas tank of the car Waldron had stolen.

"I shall be careful," he said dryly. "I pay you no compliments. Not yet. They would be rather futile when I think what your discovery means. I drive on to New York at once.... Will Miss Blair accept my protection back to the city?"

Waldron was silent.

"N-no," said Lucy. "I've been with Steve. They'd lock me up as a plague-spreader, too. And ... Steve and I..."

"You may be wise," said the doctor cynically. "I'll go now."

Starting the first stolen car and meshing the gears, he drove off into the night. Waldron loaded up the other, larger car with batteries and assorted parts with which small HF generators for personal protection could be made. The doctor, of course, had done exactly the right thing. But Waldron could not feel that what the soft-speaking physician did would make any difference. Certainly with police departments urged to hunt Waldron down dead or alive, he and Lucy were in no cheerful situation.

Dr. James Armistead reached the edge of New York just as news of the blotting out of his own home town became known to the public. There had been panic enough before. But after this last bit of news, the frenzied craving for the means of flight became a mania. However, when the doctor approached the city with knowledge of how to alleviate its terror and revive the victims of what everybody believed a plague, he ran into a blockade. Men swarmed into his car, battered him into unconsciousness. They then fought savagely among themselves for possession of the car.

Meanwhile, Waldron and Lucy had driven off into the darkness in another direction, leaving behind them a filling station attendant looking up at a gasoline gauge with an expression of absorption which would remain upon his face for days or weeks.

Waldron drove. At first he used only the parking lights and moved slowly. But after some miles he turned on the full headlights and the big car leaped ahead. A long time later, when a rabbit leaped frightenedly from the road before them, he was sure they were beyond the area of affliction. He relaxed, for he had felt a nagging anxiety that one of the high-frequency packs might cease to work at any instant.

"We're out of the dead spot," he told Lucy. "Tell me: while you were frozen, did you know it?"

"N-no," said Lucy. "One instant I was sitting in the chair, watching you twist two wires together. And suddenly the doctor was holding me toward you and you had your hands on my arms and I wasn't in the chair at all. I had no feeling of time-lapse."

"I think we should thank God for that!" said Waldron. "If all those hundreds of thousands of people could see and hear and feel but not move, they'd be better off actually dead. But they won't know anything until they're revived. That, at least, is merciful."

He slowed the car and searched the sides of the road.

"What are you looking for, Steve?"

"A hiding place," said Waldron briefly. "The packs we have are all right. They saved us. But they're makeshift. I want to connect them up so they'll use storage-battery current while we're in the car and go on dry cell only if we get out. And I want to change the dry cells. Also, I think you need some rest."

"How about you?"

Waldron shrugged. He did not feel sleepy, but he was beginning to feel that numbness which came from complete weariness of mind and body.

Presently he found a small side road. It was hardly more than a dirt road that led through the pinewood that bordered the highway. Seeing that it showed no sign of recent use, Waldron turned in it and drove a hundred yards or so. The road wound and twisted, and low-hanging branches swished over the car's roof.

"Okay," he said, and cut the ignition. "Now we should be all right for a while. I'm going to fix our life savers. When they're done, I'll take a nap until sunrise. Curl up in the back and go to sleep if you can."

Lucy hesitated, and then obediently moved to the wide, soft rear seat. Waldron cut all but the instrument-board lights and set to work as best he could in the unsatisfactory illumination.

There was silence. A breeze blew outside and tree branches sighed and whispered. Lucy was still. Waldron spliced wires and made contacts. From time to time, there was a faint humming sound as he tested some new arrangement.

Lucy stirred and sat quietly for a long time. She stirred again. Then she said: "Steve ... I haven't asked anything about my father for a long time. Does what you've found out tell anything about him?"

"He's in Fran Dutt's homeland," said Waldron flatly. "Fran said he was unharmed. I more than suspect he is. I believe it."

"But ... where's that? What country? Where?"

Waldron frowned. He scraped wires. He twisted them together. "Tricky to explain," he said slowly. "But you remember that your father was working on Straussman's Theory. Straussman sprang his wild ideas all of thirty years back, or even more. Scientists laughed at him. They classed him with Fort. He said two objects could be in the same place at the same time. Compenetration was philosophically possible. But in fact—they said it was ridiculous. When Straussman claimed experimental proof, nobody would even look at it. So Straussman disappeared. He vanished into thin air. Nobody cared. His theory lay fallow for thirty years, until somebody noticed that he'd anticipated some extremely ticklish wave-mechanics stuff. Then they realized that he had something. But I don't think anybody understands it all yet."

"My father said that much, Steve."

"Just so. Your father examined his theories. He published a paper on that two-objects-in-the-same-space-and-time angle. It was just about then that Fran Dutt turned up, so brilliant and so admiring that your father took him on as assistant. Remember?"

"He offered to work without pay for the privilege of serving with Father in pure research."

"With the purest of motives," said Waldron ironically, "as we know now. He was sent to spy on your father, just in case he found out something in this pure research of his."

He tightened two twisted wires with pliers.

"In the living room of your house," he said presently, "there's a mirror hanging on the wall. If you look in that mirror you see another living room in the space where actually there's a dining room. Right?"

"You see a reflection," said Lucy. "What has that to do with my father?"

"You'll understand in a minute. But you say it's a reflection you see, not another room, because you can't walk into it. It does not affect things which are real, and so can't be real itself. But if it did affect other things it would be real, whether you could walk into it or not. Is that right?"

Lucy knitted her brows. "I suppose so," she admitted doubtfully. "But I don't see..."

"Straussman says that the fact that we can't touch a thing or walk into it doesn't prove it doesn't exist. There are a lot of things we never see, but know exist. A press that prints the morning paper. The television transmitter that sends out programs. The dark companion of Sirius. We don't see them, and the last can't possibly be seen. But we infer their reality from their effects." Lucy stirred restlessly.

Waldron said: "There are some unexplained effects: the difficulty in calculating the moon's exact position; the anomaly in the orbit of Mercury. More things—very many more things—in wave-mechanics. Straussman suggested that those effects were like the reflection in your mirror, if it were real. Matter we can't touch or discover in ordinary physical ways. Matter, you might say, in another set of dimensions—though that isn't really it at all. Straussman talked about atomic polarities and the planes of rotation of electrons. He suggested that all the atoms of a given bit of matter must have their poles pointing very nearly in the same direction or they won't hold together. They have to face the same way, like a company of soldiers drilling. If they don't face together they aren't an organization but a mob."

"But Steve! What has this to do with ray father?"

"Everything," Waldron told her. "Just before he disappeared, he'd worked out an experiment to prove or disprove Straussman's theory. If Straussman is right, there is more than one kind of matter. There are at least three kinds, probably six, possibly eighteen and conceivably fifty-four different kinds of earth, air, water, and, of course, fire."

Lucy was silent.

"Like companies of soldiers," added Steve. "In open order. Some of them face east. Naturally they're not part of the organization which faces north. They can pass right through each other. And there are other soldiers lying on their backs staring up at the sky. If they're far enough apart —and the atoms in solid substances are relatively almost as far apart as the stars-they won't even see each other when one passes through the others. Change to atoms for soldiers and atomic poles for facings, and have the atomic poles face in different directions, and according to Straussman the two or three, or however many different kinds of matter there are, would not affect each other perceptibly-unless one looked very closely. Matter of one orientation could pass right through matter facing differently. There's plenty of room between atoms! We couldn't feel a cannonball passing through our bodies if it were made of one of those other sorts of matter."

Lucy spoke uneasily: "You mean it could be like one of those fourth dimensions people write stories about. There could be another world right around the corner, or something like that."

"According to Straussman, there would have to be another world right around the corner. Even if a planet were formed of one kind of matter, the pressure at its center would be so great that some of the atoms would have to yield and be squeezed into another orientation. That would be—in a sense—another world. If the pressure held up, some of those atoms would be squeezed into yet another angle of facing, to get room to exist in. And so there'd be pressures forcing the existence of other worlds whose atoms faced every way that atoms could face in order to get room to exist.

"Super-heavy suns and planets and so on are simply assumed to have a large number of such otherwise-oriented companions occupying the same space. That's how he accounted for the excess of Earth's mass over the specific gravity of what it's made of. The dark companion of Sirius is explained that way. And so on and so on and so on. Rather wild?"

"I remember my father talking that way," said Lucy dubiously. "But I haven't a head for that sort of thing. And what does it have to do with his disappearance?"

Waldron painstakingly fitted small parts together. Then he said: "Those mice I worked with had been in some artificial condition which partly changed the direction of their atom poles. Instead of east or north, they faced part-way between. When I put a direct current through them, they seemed to vanish. But I think it simply completed the change in the direction of their atom poles. They switched to a direction which isn't real in our world, but is very real in a world I suspect Fran comes from. I think your father was sent to that world by a similar process. He must have been expected. Fran says he's alive and unharmed. He should know! He was translated from that world to this. He's probably in regular communication."

"But ... another world ... a fourth dimension..."

"There've been several scientists vanishing, lately," Waldron told her. "They got too close to the facts. So they were snatched. But now I've made an apparatus which prevents snatching. Once it's known and proved what Fran's gang are doing, we're close enough to do the trick ourselves and go into Fran's homeland and raise the devil."

Lucy sat still. Then she leaned forward from the back seat, moving to where Waldron worked.

"I don't quite understand, Steve," she said unsteadily, "but somehow I know you can do what you say. Won't you —won't you kiss me good night?"

Waldron kissed her. Then he said gruffly: "Now go back where you belong, woman! Even if I am going to marry you, I'm human!"

He went back to work, that she might doze off while he was still awake. He made another power-pack. The parts from the filling station were superior. He made a second. He heard Lucy's breathing grow even and regular. He became conscious of the small sounds in the night outside the car. The wind made branches rustle. Presently, Waldron turned on the car radio very low. It murmured, almost inaudibly: ... thirty thousand more victims. It is considered established that the plague is the result of mutant bacteria developed by Waldron during his work with antibiotics. He is immune and acts as a madman sowing death. We do have the comfort that it does not spread, except by his action. And therefore it is officially announced that Waldron must be stopped at any imaginable cost. He may be shot down like a mad dog...

Waldron turned off the radio and shrugged his shoulders.