The Well of The Worlds

II

Sawyer moved with silent smoothness toward the projector. With a few deft motions he freed the little spool of film, slipped it into its case, and dropped the case itself in his pocket.

“It’s Alper!” Klai said, darting panicky blue glances about the room. “He mustn’t find me here! He mustn’t know!”

Sawyer said, “Calm down,” and took out his key-ring. “I have a passkey here. I never like to get locked into rooms with only one exit. That door over there gives into the next bedroom. I’ll let you out. Wait for me. I don’t want you to go down into the mine alone. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, huddling her fur hood about her face. “Do hurry!”

Another tremendous thump upon the outer door made the windows rattle behind them.

“Sawyer!” the deep, thick voice from outside called imperiously. “Are you there?”

“Coming,” Sawyer answered in a patient voice. In a whisper he added, “Out with you, now. And remember what I said.”

He locked the door behind her scared departure, smiling at the desperate scuttle with which she crossed the next room toward the exit. Then he went back leisurely and opened the door upon which a third great thump was still resounding.

“Come in, Alper,” he said, mildly, politely, but his face tight with alert expectancy.

The man on the threshold filled the doorway from side to side. For a moment he stood there, leaning on his cane, peering up under his eyebrows. He was a troll, Sawyer thought. A thick, squat figure of an old giant who had bowed beneath his years until he could no longer move without his cane. The massive face sagged in deep pleats and folds. Two cold, small grey eyes looked up with singular dispassion at Sawyer under thick lids and thicker brows. A voice like a muffled organ said, “Do you remember me, Mr. Sawyer?”

He did not wait for an answer. He stumped forward and Sawyer fell back involuntarily. The man was so massive he seemed to push and compress the very air before him when he moved. The small eyes flickered once at the wall where the reversed picture hung.

“Get me a chair, Mr. Sawyer,” Alper said, leaning on his cane. “It isn’t easy for me to move around very freely. I’m an old man, Mr. Sawyer. Thank you.” Heavily he lowered himself, leaned the cane against his knee. “I see you’ve been enjoying a very interesting film,” he said, and watched Sawyer without emotion.

Sawyer said only, “Oh?”

“I watched too,” Alper told him heavily. “Does that surprise you? This hotel was built in the old days when uranium was top-secret material. Sam Ford and I eavesdropped on many an important conference in this very room. Nothing, perhaps, quite as important as what’s happening now.” He blew out his breath and fixed Sawyer with a compelling gaze.

“I am here, Mr. Sawyer, to make you an offer.”

Sawyer laughed gently.

“I was afraid you’d take that attitude,” Alper said. “Let me go into the case more fully. I’m prepared to offer you—”

He spoke in detail for perhaps sixty seconds. At the end of it, Sawyer laughed again, very politely, shook his head and then waited, looking alert. Alper sighed his ponderous sigh.

“Young men are such fools,” he said. “You can afford idealism now, maybe. When you get to my age, things look different.” He seemed for some moments to consider a private matter. Finally he shook his heavy head. “Don’t like to do it,” he murmured. “Still—” He reached into the pocket of his rumpled coat and held something out on a large, unsteady palm. “Take it,” he said. “Study it. What do you make of it?”

Sawyer rather gingerly accepted between thumb and forefinger a small, metallic, faceted disc about the size of an aspirin tablet. It was curved slightly on the underside. He looked up inquiringly.

“A little something of my own,” Alper said complacently. “A transceiver, actually. It transmits sound and it receives sound. But a very specialized sort of sound. I don’t know how familiar you may be with communication machines. One of the vital factors in any such device is the intensity of the internal noise of the receiving system. For instance, there is a constant sound and motion inside the human skull—the human body is such a communication machine. The heartbeat reverberates in it. The frictional whispering of blood moves through the arteries of the brain. The sound of breathing is loud in the passages of your head. Normally you are oblivious to these sounds. But they could be amplified.”

Alper leaned back and smiled. There was, Sawyer thought, distaste and dislike in the smile. Perhaps an old man’s jealous dislike of a young one.

“This device is such an amplifier,” he said.

The thing vibrated slightly in Sawyer’s hand, was still, vibrated again. Sawyer glanced at Alper’s hand, which had gone back into his pocket.

“You’re making it vibrate?” he asked. The old man nodded.

“And why,” Sawyer asked politely, “are you showing this to me?”

“Frankly—” Alper said, and suddenly snorted with laughter. “Frankly, I may as well confess the truth. I made it for the head of Klai Ford. I am somewhat distressed to realize that you saw the humiliating part I played in that film. You saw me begging for something I most urgently need. You saw it—refused. Very well. You also heard my statement that I had a method to bring Klai to heel. That wasn’t idle boasting, Mr. Sawyer. This transceiver is the method.”

Sawyer looked at him, puzzled and wary.

“I can trust you,” Alper said sardonically. “More than you know. The one thing I won’t risk is endangering my bargain with my—with the person I spoke to in the mine.”

“Has she really got you convinced,” Sawyer asked him, “that she’s tapped the fountain of youth?”

“You fool!” Alper said with sudden violence. “What do you know about youth? Do you think I could be fooled by mumbo-jumbo? Where do you think the energy comes from that you young men squander? From the sun, through photosynthesis, turning into a form your body can accept as fuel! Some radiations you can get directly from the sun. And electric energy can be conducted from one person to another. You’ll believe me—later.

“This is something a young man couldn’t comprehend—Mephistopheles didn’t bargain for Faust’s soul. I know. It was Faust who had to convince the devil his soul was worth buying, in a buyer’s market. And I had to convince Nethe I could be useful to her. I know what she demands in return for the energy I need. Klai’s life depends on me, whether I can remove her as an obstacle so Nethe won’t need to eliminate her. And I don’t want Klai killed. The investigation afterward might be—awkward.

“So I made this transceiver. I worked it out myself, in private. I meant it for Klai, but I see now that could be even more of a nuisance than the girl. I came here today prepared for trouble.” He laughed. “Here we go!” he said.

Alper was a ponderous man. He was also an old and a feeble man. What he did just now was therefore clearly impossible. He stood up straight. He pushed the cane violently away, so that it clattered to the floor besied his suddenly and strongly upright figure. The troll was still ponderous, but he was no longer stooped and feeble. A sort of impossible power flickered through him like a visible current. It was not youth, or muscular strength. It was something less natural, less explicable than suddenly restored physical power.

Sawyer heard the cane clatter without realizing what had happened. He was a young and active man, but he was no match for this unnaturally violent old one. Alper’s leap across the space that parted them was exactly the leap on an electric current between high-voltage terminals, not a physical body’s motion propelled by muscular action. Muscular action seemed to have nothing to do with it. Alper’s heavy bulk moved on some other propulsive force than muscle and bone.

The cane clattered. In the same instant the tremendous weight of that heavy old body hurtled against Sawyer’s chest, drove him six feet backward and flattened him hard against the wall. A ponderous forearm jammed against his throat all but throttled him. The room swam blackly before him. Dimly he was aware that at the very crown of his skull some curious sudden pressure took place.

And then it was all over.

The pressure released him before he could gather himself to fight Alper off. When the first clatter of the cane had warned him, Sawyer’s brain had sent a message to his body and his muscles flexed to respond. Alper’s incredibly quick action took place in the split second needed for an active young man’s reflexes to answer a summons to action. Sawyer thrust violently against the old man’s bulk in the same instant that all power failed Alper.

It had been rapid. It was soon ended. But it had been enough.

Alper collapsed before Sawyer’s thrust, helpless as a sack of flour. He fell heavily to the carpet, the floor shaking to the impact of his weight. He caught himself on one arm, wheezed noisily, and looked up under his thick, folded lids at Sawyer with a sly triumph on his empurpled face.

“Hand me my cane.” he said.

Sawyer was massaging his throat with one hand and cautiously touching the crown of his head with the other. He paid no attention. Once the menace of Alper’s weight was removed, he had a more immediate problem to solve. That strange, light, tingling area at the top of his skull…

“Hand me my cane,” Alper said again. “Sawyer! You may as well learn now to jump when I speak. You’ll get used to it Now!”

When he said now, thunder suddenly cracked Sawyer’s skull wide open.

The shaft of it seemed to strike downward straight through his skull and into the middle of his brain. Through a haze of forked lightnings he saw Alper’s grimly smiling face watching him. He clapped both hands to his head to keep the separating halves of his skull from falling entirely apart. While the thunder still crashed in his head he could do nothing at all but stand rigid, enduring it, holding his temples with both hands.

But it died at last. And then Sawyer whirled on the man at his feet, murderous anger flooding through his mind in the wake of the receding thunder.

“Careful!” Alper said in his thick voice. “Careful! Do you want it again? Now hand me my cane.”

Sawyer drew a long, uneven breath.

“No,” he said.

Alper sighed. “You’re a useful man,” he said. “I could kill you very easily. I could shake your brain to such a jelly you’d obey me, but if I did that, you’d be no use. To me or anyone. Be reasonable, Sawyer. I’ve got you. Why not cooperate. Would you rather die?”

“I’d rather kill you,” Sawyer said, still pressing his head with both hands, and between them looking down with a grim defiance that matched the old troll’s grim resolution. “I will, when I can.”

“Ah, but you can’t,” Alper told him. “Shall I prove it again? Shall I prove you can’t touch me fast enough to stop the—the lightning? You’re behaving very stupidly, Sawyer. I want to talk to you, but I can’t do it from the floor and I can’t get up alone. I want my cane. I’ll count three, Sawyer. If you haven’t handed me my cane by then, you know what to expect. You’ll have to learn the lesson, my boy.”

Sawyer set his teeth. “No,” he said, and braced himself for the instant thunder. He was not rational at this moment. His mind had been shaken clear down to bedrock by the inexplicable torment of the thunder, but the stubborn determination of the animal ruled him now—not to yield, though it killed him. He only knew that if he surrendered now he would be Alper’s man forever, and no thunder, no pain, no cracking of the fibers of the mind could force him to that extremity.

“No,” he said to Alper, and set himself for whatever might come.

“One,” Alper said relentlessly.

“No.”

“Two—” Alper said.

Sawyer grinned a fierce, mindless grimace, and without warning, even to himself, found himself launching at Alper’s thick throat.

The thunder cracked his head wide open and lightning wiped the room out of existence. The last thing he saw was the floor pitching upward toward him.

When he could see again, Alper was half a dozen feet away, levering himself painfully towards his cane, breathing hard and watching Sawyer with bright, still eyes under the heavy lids.

“All right,” Alper said. “You’re quite a boy, Sawyer. I’ll get the cane myself. Sit up. You’re all right. I haven’t damaged you permanently—yet. Get up and take a chair, my boy. You and I have some talking to do. And first of all, to be on the safe side, there’s a matter of evidence that I intend to destroy.” He glanced around the room. “That metal waste-basket should do nicely to burn a film. So—give me that film, Sawyer.”

Sawyer said painfully, “Come and get it, you—”

Alper smiled.

A few final wisps of smoke rose from the waste-basket and faded. Sawyer, breathing a little hard, leaned back in his chair and stared at the old man. Curiously, now that the thunder had passed he felt no ill effects. He seemed perfectly normal. But his brain cringed at the thought of what Alper had just done to him—could do to him again, apparently at will. What was Alper saying now?

“You had better understand first exactly what has happened to you. Afterward you’ll realize that you are going to do precisely as I say from now on, or you will die. I’m willing to go a long way with you, because you’re a good man. You’re better than I expected. I admire you. I respect you. But I’ll kill you if I have to. Is that clear?”

“No,” Sawyer said, lifting a tentative hand toward his head. “Do you really expect to get away with this?”

“I do,” Alper said. “Go ahead, try to remove that transceiver. You can’t without killing yourself. There are tantalum probes making contact with your brain itself, through the bregma—the opening at the vault that closes as a man ages. Luckily, you’re still young enough to have a vestige of the fontanel still open. Luckily for me.”

Sawyer lowered his investigatory hand. He still felt thatif he could kill alper he could stop the thunder, or at least die trying. But information might show him a better way, and Alper seemed quite willing to talk.

“Maybe I couldn’t remove this thing,” Sawyer said, “but I could get it removed.”

“Possibly,” Alper said. “There’s a contact compression that will eventually form a semi-permanent ceramic-to-bone bonding, of course. But at present the tantalum probes as a nerve-contact serve the purpose. It’s an amazing little device, isn’t it?”

“Fascinating,” Sawyer said grimly. “Who did you steal it from?”

Alper chuckled.

“I’m not a bad technician myself,” he said. “Though I admit the original design wasn’t my idea. I did make some improvements. I saw possibilities the inventor didn’t. A miniature electrostrictive device like this—a transducer, let us say, which converts sound pressure to electric signals and back again—oh, I could see the possibilities very easily. It was simply a matter of applying the properties of light to the principles of sound. Sound, like light, can reflect, and can be amplified… Yes, my young friend—down through the bregma, into the cavities of your skull, reaches that transceiver to pick up sounds your senses are too dull to catch, and amplify them and reflect them back directly into the temporal lobe, the auditory area. And other brain-centers are involved too, as the wave-motions pass through motor and somesthetic areas. Implicit in your skull is the sound of the trumpets that shattered the walls of Jericho!”

He began to laugh. “You know what high frequency ultrasonics can do, don’t you? Shatter glass. Burn wood. Shake a human mind apart, Mr. Sawyer! And you might also consider the wave-motions of the brain—the alpha and kappa waves—which I believe the transceiver can receive and amplify.

“The beauty of it is, you can’t get away from it. It’s in you, inherent in your blood and breath and thoughts. If you could stop it—you die. But no one else can hear it. It’s subjective. And so is madness, my boy. This is a very special and literal version of madness. So I think, in the end, you’ll do as I ask.”

He watched Sawyer not without sympathy, smiling as he saw the younger man’s hands close in a tight, primitive clench.

“One other thing,” he said quickly. “No doubt you would like to kill me. Don’t. It would save nothing. You see, your body-field has a damping effect on the transceiver’s operation, which I can alter by the—ah—volume control of this.” He half drew from his pocket a small, flat metal case and thrust it back out of sight immediately. “If you tried to remove the transceiver, the farther it’s moved from your body-field, the less the damping effect, and that would soon kill you. My body-field provides a supplementary damper, but it takes the combined effects of both fields to keep the acoustic level of the transceiver below your threshold of safety. So if you took this control device from me—or if I died—you would die in either case. We would meet in Hell in no time. Out of breath, startled, I expect, but mutual murderers, and not the devil himself could convict either of us of the other’s death, they would happen so nearly at the same time.”

The bloodhound smile was genial.

“It’s a multi-purpose device, too. It also is clever enough to act as a microphone—and here is the receiver.” He patted his pocket. “It isn’t keyed to pick up the internalized sounds you find so uncomfortable; I made sure of that. But it does report to me, quite accurately, spoken conversations. So when you go down into the mine with Klai Ford soon and get the rest of the film she’s planted down there, I’ll be able to keep track of exactly what’s happening. I don’t expect there’ll be anything on the film this time. Klai was miraculously lucky.” He nodded at the waste-basket with its charred ashes.

“So,” he said, with an air of finality, “you’ll give me any further evidence you happen to run across. Meanwhile, you’ll report by radio to headquarters that this—this affair seems to be a false alarm. As for Klai, the safest thing she could do is leave Fortuna. If we can prove she has hallucinations—delusions of persecution—a year’s rest at some private sanitarium might be the best way to eliminate the risk of Nethe’s killing her. And Nethe will, if Klai persists in sticking her head in the lion’s mouth. Quite impersonally. Without malice. Nethe’s disinterest in ordinary human problems is—awkward, sometimes.”

“Who is she?” Sawyer asked.

Alper paused, frowned a little, and shook his head slowly, as though he were as puzzled as Sawyer.

“No questions,” he said. “Action, now. I have the whip hand, and I intend to use it. If you got away from me, you might find a way to remove the transceiver from your head—what man has made, man can unmake, I suppose. But I warn you, Sawyer, that if you get out of my sight without permission, I can and will kill you. You can never get out of my hearing, with your—your built-in microphone. Now my energy’s low. I used up too much of it, and I’ve got to get more. That means closing the mine, as Nethe wishes. I’ve got to keep my part of the bargain before she’ll keep hers. So—”

His cool gaze studied Sawyer calculatingly.

“You’re a young man,” he said. “You want to live, don’t you? Well, I repeat my previous offer. I expect you to say no. But my offer of a job for life, working for me, holds good at any time you care to accept it. What have you to say now, young man?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I was sent up here to do a job,” Sawyer said quietly. “Maybe I’ve failed. I’ve had failures before. Every man has.”

“Not every man,” Alper said, with a sudden flash of curious pride.

Sawyer shrugged slightly. “Okay,” he said. “Put it this way. I don’t mind failing when a job’s too big for me. But if that happens I figure it’s up to me to pass along the job to somebody good enough to handle it. Right now the Royal Commission’s depending on me to take care of what looked like a routine check-up. It isn’t routine. And maybe I’ve already failed. But if I have, it’s my responsibility to notify the Commissioner—”

“I’d be fascinated to know just how you intend to go about that little matter without getting yourself killed,” Alper said, with an unpleasant grin. “If you’re sensible, you could collect two salaries—and the one I’d pay you would be considerably more than what you earn from the Commission.”

“It would have to be a damned high salary,” Sawyer said, “to compensate for this—headgear!” He touched his head lightly.

“I can remove it,” Alper said.

He waited for Sawyer’s reaction, seemed disappointed, and went on:

“I would even feel safe in removing it, under certain circumstances. Who would believe your story? But first, I’d make perfectly certain that you intended to remain cooperative.”

Sawyer said thoughtfully, “How could you remove the transceiver? You said it had a ceramic-bone seal to my skull, didn’t you?”

“Not yet—not for weeks. Until then, I can turn off the power entirely, and if I do that—and only if I do that—can you lift the transceiver from your head without committing suicide. Yes, I can turn off the power. There is a way. The secret is here, in the control case in my pocket—but I spent more time devising that shut-off switch than I spent on the rest of the work combined. So don’t waste time hoping you could find the way to turn off the power-switch, by examinging my control case. Houdini couldn’t find the way, and it would take a differential analyzer to find the—ah—combination. So I think you understand that you’ll do what I tell you. Yes, you’ll do that, my boy,” and here Alper smiled ferociously, “or you’ll die.”

They were looking at each other with a measuring stare, each waiting for the other to make a definitive move, when from outside a sudden earsplitting din made the windows rattle.

Both men wheeled toward the sound. A siren screamed its high, shuddering wail for three piercing beats and then subsided. A voice, amplified to hollow impersonality, spoke tremendously through the darkness of Fortuna’s noon.

“Trouble in Level Eight!” the voice informed the little city and the cold, still night of the Pole. “Trouble in Level Eight!”

Alper turned snarling to the younger man.

“The little fool!” he said. “She went down! After all my warnings, Klai went down, and now Nethe’s got her!”