Keith Laumer

“ Eight hours, three sandwiches and six beers later, Dan roused suddenly from a light doze and sat up on the cot. Between him and the crowded shelving, a palely luminous framework was materializing in mid-air.
The apparition was an open-work cage—about the size and shape of an out-house minus the sheathing, Dan estimated breathlessly. Two figures were visible within the structure, sitting stiffly in contoured chairs. They glowed, if anything, more brightly than the framework.
A faint sound cut into the stillness—a descending whine. The cage moved jerkily, settling toward the floor. ”

“ The car dropped us before the gigantic entry and moved off. We made our way through the crowd, and into the reception hall.
Light from massive crystal chandeliers glittered on gowns and uniforms, polished boots and jewels, silks, brocades and velvets. A straight-backed man in rose-pink bowed over the hand of a lovely blonde in white. A slender black-clad fellow with a gold and white sash escorted a lady in green-gold toward the ballroom. The din of laughter and conversation almost drowned out the strains of the waltz in the background. ”

“ I sat down on the other bed and pulled off my shoes. It was my turn to have a tired mind. I lay on the bed and let it sink down like a grey stone into still water.
I awoke from a dream in which I had just discovered the answer to the riddle of life. I tried to hold onto it, but it slipped away; it always does.
Grey daylight was filtering through the dusty windows. Foster lay slackly on the broad sagging bed, a ceiling lamp with a faded fringed shade casting a sickly yellow light over him. ”

“ Instead of a simple room, neatly bounded on all four sides by solid walls, she seemed now to occupy a stage set off by windows through which other, similar, stages were visible, endlessly repeated. The old feeling of intimate companionship with her reflected self was gone; the two mirror-women were strangers, silently watching her. Defiantly, she stuck out her tongue. The two reflections grimaced menacingly. With a small cry, Flora ran to the switch, turned the screens on. ”

“ Bram said hoarsely. "Your rage destroys you! One of the suns you see in the Niss sky is your Sol!"
"Sol?" Tremaine said. "Then it's the Sol of a thousand years ago. Light takes time to cross a galaxy. And the earth is still here ... so it wasn't destroyed!"
"Wise are you," Bram said. "Your race is a wonder in the Cosmos, and deadly is your hate. But you know nothing of the forces you unloose now. Past time is as mutable as the steel and rock you melted but now."
"Listen to him, James," Miss Carroll pleaded. ”

“ I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within pattern; the diagrammed circuits of a strange machine.
I followed through its logic-sequence; and, like a bomb-burst, its meaning exploded in my mind.
From the vile nest deep under the dark surface of the Gool world in its lonely trans-Plutonian orbit, I had plucked the ultimate secret of their kind.
Matter across space.
"You've got to listen to me, Kayle," I shouted. "I know you think I'm a Gool robot. But what I have is too big to let you blow it up without a fight. Matter transmission! You know what that can mean to us. ”

“ It has been the fate of your spiritual forebears to carve civilization from the wilderness and then, amid tearing of garments and the heaping of ashes of self-accusation on your own confused heads, to withdraw, leaving the spoils for local political opportunists and mob leaders, clothed in the mystical virtue of native birth. ”

“ In the light of the colored floods a grey-painted van, ponderously bulky, sat askew across flower beds. Besides it, three tattered crewmen struggled with a bulky load. A small tripod stood on the lawn, awaiting the mounting of their burden. I had time for one momentary mental vision of what a fission bomb would do to the summer palace and its occupants, before I dashed at them with a yell. I fired the pistol I had grabbed, as fast as I could pull the trigger, and the three men hesitated, pulled against each other, cursed, and started back toward the open door of their van with the bomb. ”

“ There's nothing like a little slavery to make a man appreciate even a modest portion of freedom. Everything I had thought I knew about Vallon had been wrong: the centuries that passed had changed things—and not for the better. The old society that Foster knew was dead and buried. The old places and villas lay deserted, the spaceports unused. And the old system of memory-recording that Foster described was lost and forgotten. I didn't know what kind of a cataclysm could have plunged the seat of a galactic empire back into feudal darkness—but it had happened. ”

“ And then the dancer stood rigid before the brocaded table—and the music stopped off short as the sabre slammed down before a heavy Yill in ornate metallic coils. The challenged Yill rose and raised a fist. The other ducked his head, put his hands on his helmet. Coins rolled. The dancer moved on.
Twice more the dancer struck the table in ritualistic challenge, exchanged gestures, bent his neck and passed on. He circled the broad floor, sabre twirling, arms darting in an intricate symbolism. The orchestra blared shrilly, unmuffled now by the surf-roar of conversation. ”

“ A wave of heat struck Tremaine. Let it be cool here, he thought. Now, Niss world....
"No!" Bram's voice shouted. "Stop, stop!"
Tremaine hesitated. He stared at the vista of volcanic fury before him.
I could destroy it all, he thought. And the stars in the Niss sky....
"Great is the power of your hate, man of Earth," Bram cried. "But curb it now, before you destroy us all!"
"Why?" Tremaine shouted. "I can wipe out the Niss and their whole diseased universe with them, with a thought!" ”

“ Brett dropped his hands from the fat man's arms, stood looking at him: the blotched face, pale now, the damp forehead, the quivering jowls. The fat man stooped for his hat, slapped it against his leg, clamped it on his head.
"I think I understand now," said Brett. "This is your place, this imitation city. Everything's faked to fit your needs—like in the hotel. Wherever you go, the scene unrolls in front of you. You never see the Gels, never discover the secret of the golems—because you conform. You never do the unexpected." ”