Cyril Kornbluth

“ The stolid, battering thought-weaves came again. "Mr. Sapphire told us of you. He has threatened us and we know that he is powerful. We shall hold you for his disposal He said that you were swifter than he but not as powerful and we should not fear you. If you do not wish us to believe that you must prove otherwise."
"Ask him," Angel said to Jackson, "how Mr. Sapphire threatened them."
Jackson knit his brows and Maclure could feel "the pulsing communication. Promptly the creatures answered: "He locked us into time. He is very wise and knows things about time that we do not." ”

“ Peter advanced hopelessly into a sort of audience chamber. "So!" thundered a mighty voice.
"So what?" asked Peter despondently. He saw on a throne high above him an imposing figure. "You Almarish?" he asked listlessly.
"I am. And who are you?"
"It doesn't matter. I'm Peter Packer of Braintree, Mass. I don't even expect you to believe me." The throne lowered slowly and jerkily, as if on hydraulic pumps. The wizard descended and approached Peter. He was a man of about forty, with a full brown beard reaching almost to his belt.
"Why," asked the sorcerer, "have you come bearing arms?" ”

“ I saw you at twelve the equal of men four times your age, physically and mentally their actual equal. And I know that after the death of your father you chose to disappear. I knew you would do this, Maclure, for a while. It was your intention to slip into the way of the world and forget that you were the infinite superior of your fellows. Well—you succeeded, in your own mind at least. You are well on the way to forgetting that to those around you you are as a man among apes. That is so of all men except you—and me."
Angel grinned bitterly. ”

“ She stopped as Colt caught her eye. Why, he wondered, had she been rattling on like that?
"The wisdom of the slave is the folly of the master," said Grandfather T'ang amiably. "He is happy who learns to discount the words of a woman."
"Suppose," said the woman slowly and quietly, "you learn to mind your own business, you poisonous old serpent?"
"They can't stand common sense," confided the old man.
Colt felt, painfully, that he had wandered into a family quarrel. He bolted with a mumbled excuse, hanging onto the bottle of brandy. ”

“ Okay?"
"Okay," snapped Jackson. "You only live once."
Delicately, with the most painful precision, knowing well that a too sudden and too amplified projection of the Morlens' minds would blow his mind out the way a thunderclap could deafen him, he turned the tiny screws of the gimmick.
The Angel winced and set his jaws as a surge of hate filled the room. It was the Morlens, far across the galaxy, who were the source. Like the pulsing roar of a dynamo the undersurge of detestation and the will to destroy beat into his brain. ”

“ In these times there is no guarantee against the unexpected striking one down harder than a thunderbolt and almost as quick. From the vast-spreading matrix of the ordinary there may fly into your face the grotesque, the shocking, ever the horrible.
Why did Leonard die?
Who were the Whelmers, silent partners in the most horrid nightmare that ever rose to walk the streets of New York?
Mac Leonard, who is now compressed into the small confines of a crematory urn, had always seemed to me to be one of the chosen of the Lord. ”

“ Valeska danced statelily: "Yes—now I'm a man's woman—now I'm on top of the heap of the ages—now I'm a human—now I'm a woman. . ."
Colt stopped short the whole accumulation of percussion, melody and harmony in a score of timbres, cutting in precisely a single blues piano that carried in its minor, sobbing-sad left hand all the sorrow of ages, in the serpentine-stabbing chords splashed gold by the right sang the triumph of man in his glory of metal and stone. ”

“ All creation is in motion, we know. So we are taught. Earth moves about the sun, sun about the great hub of the galaxy, the galaxy in a mighty circle about its own directrix—space itself, 'ether,' so called, is like a mighty ball rolling and tumbling through unimaginable chaos. To this outside of space we cannot attain, for to go to the end of space is to return to the starting point. ”

“ She studied his face and dropped the smile. "Barty," she said worriedly, "what's wrong?"
"Sit down," he growled, shoving a chair at her. Looking fixedly at the ceiling he said: "I just got a report from somewhere in the neighborhood of a punky little star named Arided in Cygnus. Babe, we're being invaded. The world is being invaded."
The girl laughed briefly. "Don't be an ass," she said.
"It's true," said Bartok.
She rose and began to pace beside him. Finally she exploded: "They can't do this to us! They simply can't—why, we're the invaders; we always have been!" ”

“ As he shook the old cabinet the peals redoubled until they battered against the eardrums of the draftsman, ringing in his skull and resounding from the walls, making instruments dance and rattle on the drawing-board, Peter drew back, his hands to his ears. He was filled with nausea, his eyes bleared and smarting, As the terrible clock thundered out its din without end he reached the door feebly, the room swaying and spinning about him, nothing real but the suddenly glowing clock-dial and the clang and thunder of its chimes. ”

“ Angel, his brows closely knit, shot out: "The vortex! The hub around which space revolves—space at rest and absolutely without motion!"
With the faintest suggestion of mockery in his voice Mr. Sapphire whispered, "The celebrated superman has it. Utterly unique and lawless—or perhaps with laws of its own? At any rate it must be obvious that the limitations which bind matter in space are removed in this vortex of Dead Center." ”

“ In the sudden way in which things happened in Ellil he turned a sort of blind corner in the road and found himself in the thick of it.
A taxi roared past him; with a muttered imprecation he jumped out of the way. The bustling people on the sidewalks ignored him completely. It was about six o'clock; they were probably going home from their offices. They were all sorts of people—women and girls, plain and pretty, men and boys, slim, fat, healthy and dissipated. And striding along in lordly indifference Peter saw a cop. ”

“ Above them was hanging a sister-craft to the Memnon, but a sickly green in hue. Said Sapphire: "Do not move or I shall release the second bomb. You underestimated these good people of mine. They are the Grey Watchers of the Silence. They are the ones to whom hate is all, and who will aid no good. With their aid I located you in your little display and with their aid I reached this world only a moment after you. And with their aid I shall become master of the Center, Angel Maclure. ”

“ Coming down the line of the caravan at a slow trot was a large Hindu on one of the small Mongolian ponies. He reined beside Colt and asked in French: "How are you? They passed me word. Can you march with us?"
"But yes! It's like life out of death to find you people here. What can I do to help?"
The Hindu dismounted to walk the pony beside him. "Keep up spirits. Our few Europeans are tired of each other's company. In case of bandit raiding—highly improbable, of course—you'll fight. I'm Raisuli Batar, merchant of the Punjab. I'm caravan master, whose word is law. ”

“ The viewpoint passed somewhere over a battlefield, dwelt lovingly on the nightmare scene below. There were dim flares of vitality radiating from every crawling figure below; a massing, of infantry was like a beacon. From the machinery of war there came a steely radiance which waxed as it discharged its shell or tripped its bomb, then dimmed to a quiet glow of satisfaction.
A file of tanks crawled over a hill emitting a purplish radiance which sent out thin cobwebs of illumination. They swung into battle formation, crept down the slope at the infantry mass. ”

“ And from the ancient creature's mind there radiated such a stream of destructive hate that the Angel winced and shut off the machine at its power lead. "Mr. Sapphire," he meditated aloud, "is not all that I had thought him to be."
Jackson grinned feebly. "What're you going to do, Maclure?"
The Angel said thoughtfully: "Mr. Sapphire must not get to the Center before us. You heard that he was starting—we must follow. And we must work on the way."
"He's terribly strong," said Jackson. "Terribly strong now that he has his own mind and a good part of yours in his grasp. ”

“ She took his hand and guided him across the snow and black rock to back within sight of his own caravan. He stared, eager and hungry to see. As she pointed with one tapering finger it seemed that many things were clearer than they ever had been before. He saw that the long line of lights was not his caravan but another in the opposite direction, parallelling his.
"There you will see their caravan master," she said, putting her face next to his. He looked and saw a pot-bellied monster whose turban was half as high as its wearer. ”

“ Babe MacNeice, assistant extraordinary, consoled him with: "Barty, you've done all you can—all anybody can to stop them. It isn't your fault that they've got more on the ball than we have or could hope to have." A philosophical shrug of the shoulders. "It's a question of making room for our mysterious friends. They may not even strike at Earth. They may even turn back."
"They may even," said Bartok sourly, "turn into packages of Rinso. But don't count on it. Babe, this is a spot." ”

“ I waited the long years for you to reach the full colossal apex of your genius; a genius so profound that you yourself do not realize one tenth of its capacities.
"Maclure, you will come to heel or be crushed. You have fulfilled your mission. You have plotted the course to Dead Center, and you have given me the faster-than-light drive which enables me to see for the first time that race of beings over whom I have for half a century been unquestioned master. My Morlens are my hands; they will duplicate for me the drive which you have devised for the Amters. ”

“ Sapphire—as you persist in thinking of him—was not a free agent? That he was—ah—grinding somebody else's axe?"
"Holy smokes!" yelped Maclure. The strange discrepancies which he had bundled into the back of his mind suddenly resolved themselves into a frightening pattern.
"Exactly," smiled Jackson. "You are the key piece in the problem. Both, sides must take care of you, for if you are lost the game is at an end. Shall I begin at the beginning?"
"You'd, better," said the Angel weakly,
"Very well" began Jackson. "Our opponents are known to us as the Mortens; we are the Amters. ”

“ As sight returned he realized that again they were walking on rock.
"And there's the Good and holy caravan at evening devotions," said the woman, with the same note of bedrock cynicism in her voice. And they were. From his coigne of vantage Colt could see Raisuli Batar solemnly prostrating himself before a modestly-clad, well-proportioned idol whose face beamed kindly on the congregation through two blue-enameled eyes. There was a choir that sang the old German hymn: "Ein Feste Burg."
"Shocking," said the woman, "yet strangely moving to the spirit. One feels a certain longing. . ." ”

“ You say you don't know a thing about these late-model robots?"
"Not a thing," almost sobbed the young man. "Not a thing. About twenty robot generations have gone by since I built protean 1, and they've been evolving like wildfire. A math robot thinks up a new law of electromagnetics, takes it to a physics robot who applies it and takes it to a protean, who incorporates it into the next series of machines. That's the way it perpetuates itself. They invented death-rays, tractor rays—I don't know what-all!"
"You shouldn't have said fanaticism, son," worried Bartok. ”

“ There were no survivors; that was the most appalling part of their technique. Everybody who could run, ran. Everybody who was left, died. Communication was cut off simply and efficiently by scrambling techniques which must have meant the expenditure of trillions of kilowatts per hour. Or did the invaders have some unsuspected source of energy? Nobody knew; that was the hell of it.
Bartok was good and ready to blow his brains out. It was his specialty, as commander of the Intelligence Wing, to relay information as to the whereabouts and plans of whatever enemy might be at hand. ”

“ There came one rolling crash that set Peter's hair on end.
"Think that was for us?" he asked nervously.
"Nope—I picked this spot for lava drainage. I have a hundred men erecting a shut-off at the only exposed point. We'll be safe enough." He turned again to the map, frowning. "This is our real worry—what I call impregnable, or damn near it. If we could get them to attack us—but those rocs smash anything along that line. We'd be cut off like a rosebud. And with our short munitions we can't afford to be discovered and surrounded. Ugh! What a spot for an army man to find himself in!" ”

“ There was music, harmonising ear, eye, taste, touch and smell in a twilit blend of sensation. Colt struggled involuntarily, felt himself bathed in rythmic complications, subtly off-pleasure, spoiled by the minute introduction of some unharmonious element. With dismay he felt there creeping into his own consciousness, his segment of the viewpoint, a simple little flicker of a theme in C Major. He was conscious of a gnat's-wing-beat of disapproval in response to his untoward disturbance. The viewpoint continued its drift toward the darkened apse. ”

“ The boy sagged down into the seat. "Unwilling master," he said, "of the most powerful army in the universe."
Barty!" screamed someone.
"Babe!" Bartok screamed right back, catching the girl in mid-air as she hurled herself into his arms. After a few preliminaries he demanded, "Now what goes on here?"
"I'll introduce you," said Babe MacNeice. "Barty, this is Peter Allistair, from Capella. He's a bit young—twenty—but he's all right. It's not his fault, any of it."
"How can that be?" demanded the Commander. "If you're their boss? Do you know what your ships are doing?" ”

“ He was a short, dark sort of person with a pair of disconcertingly bright eyes. "Suspicion," said Peter evasively. "How about you?"
"Practicing mancy without a license, theoretically. Actually because I tried to buck the Almarish machine. You know how it is?"
"Can't say I do," answered Peter. "I'm a stranger here."
"Yeah? Well—like this. Few years ago we had a neat little hamlet here. Mahoora was the biggest little city in these parts of Ellil, though I say it myself. A little industry—magic chalices for export, sandals of swiftness, invisibility cloaks, invincible weapons—you know?" ”

“ Bartok straightened himself out tiredly. He'd kept the world fairly well up while the invasion was going on; there were others capable to take over now that the real crisis was past and there was nothing to do but wait for the taking-over by whatever the incredibly soulless creatures were that could ray all the life of a planet out of existence without a qualm.
He was getting old anyway. Time to make room for younger men. He might have a fling now as any time at applied mortality. He was going to build himself a cruiser and streak out to Arided and Babe. ”

“ He had been napping after hours of steady travel. "What war zone?"
"Trolls—you know."
"No, I don't!" snapped Peter. "What side are we on?"
"Depends on who stops us," said the stranger, speeding the engine, They were out of the tunnel now, Peter saw, speeding along a couple of inches above the floor of an immense dim cave. Ahead the glittering double strand of the track stretched into the distance.
"Oh—oh!" muttered the cloaked stranger. "Trouble ahead!" Peter saw a vague, stirring crowd before them. "Those trolls?" he asked.
"Yep," answered the engineer resignedly, slowing the train. ”

“ That worries at a man, but does not kill. A curse is no juggling of hands. That worries at a man, but does not maim. A curse is no thinking of evil. That worries at a man but does not blind, tear, crush, char and slash. A curse is something you can see, hear, feel, hate, and love."
That was not the end of the dream, but it was near. After I—subconsciously doubling for Mac—had been thrown out of that ball room it ended and I awoke. ”

“ Perhaps it was the quiet of the room, he thought, and perhaps it was the faint and mysterious aura which the figure, revealed by the sliding wall, diffused.
It was the shape of a man—had been once, that is. For it was so terribly old that the ordinary attributes of humanity were gone from its decrepit frame. It could not move, for it was seated with legs crossed and arms folded over the shrivelled breast, these members held in place by padded clamps. The dully-glowing tangle of machinery about it bespoke artificial feeding and digestion ”

“ The Intelligence Wing took unto itself all authority of life and death, officially, at last. They had been shooting leaders for quite a while, but it hadn't been with sanction and consent from above. The Wing expanded legally to cover with its charter all those tenders, lighters and graving-ships which had been left behind by the back-bone of the Fleet. It made them the most powerful unit then in the colonial system, with fire-power to match any that sporadic rebellions might bring up.
Meanwhile the invaders progressed amazingly, almost forgotten as the cause of the system-wide crisis. ”

“ Bartok was baffled by the metallic sheen of the things when it hit him that they were robots. "Damned clever," he mused. "Damned clever indeed. They don't need air, they don't need a commissariat; all they need is orders and oil. I wish we'd thought up that gag a few centuries ago!"
They landed him skillfully and easily on the fourth planet. As Bartok looked about he realized slowly that Babe hadn't been under any hallucinations when she'd sworn that the engineering works that had been run up were the most remarkable things in the unknown universe. ”