Short Story for April 2002 |
ERSATZ ETERNAL |
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Grayson removed the irons from the other's wrists and legs.
"Hart!" he said sharply. The young man on the cot did not stir.
Grayson hesitated and then deliberately kicked the man. "Damn you,
Hart, listen to me! I'm releasing you - just in case I don't come back
" John Hart neither opened his eyes nor showed any awareness of the
blow he had received. He lay inert; and the only evidence of life in him
was that he was limp, not rigid. There was almost no color in his cheeks.
His black hair was damp and stringy. Grayson said earnestly, "Hart,
I'm going out to look for Malkins. Remember, he left four days ago,
intending only to be gone twenty-four hours." When there was no
response, the older man started to turn away, but he hesitated and said,
"Hart, if I don't come back, you must realize where we are, This is a
new planet, understand. We've never been here before. Our ship was
wrecked, and the three of us came down in a lifeboat, and what we need is
fuel. That's what Malkins went out to look for, and now I'm going out to
look for Malkins." The figure on the cot remained blank. And Grayson
walked reluctantly out the door and off toward the hills. He had no
particular hope. Three men were down on a planet God-only-knew-where - and
one of those man was violently insane. As he walked along, he glanced
around him in occasional puzzlement. The scenery was very earthlike:
trees, shrubs, grass, and distant mountains misted by blue haze. It was
still a little odd that when they had landed Malkins and he had had the
distinct impression that they were coming down onto a barren world without
atmosphere and without life. A soft breeze touched his cheeks. The scent
of flowers was in the air. He saw birds flitting among the trees, and once
he heard a song that was startlingly like that of a meadow lark. He walked
all day and saw no sign of Malkins. Nor was there any habitation to
indicate that the planet had intelligent life. Just before dusk he heard a
woman calling his name. Grayson turned with a start, and it was his
mother, looking much younger than he remembered her in her coffin eight
years before. She came up, and she said severely, "'Billie, don't
forget your rubbers." Grayson stared at her with eyes that kept
twisting away in disbelief. Then, deliberately, he walked over and touched
her. She caught his hand, and her fingers were warm and lifelike. She
said, "I want you to go tell your father that dinner is ready."
Grayson released himself and stepped back and looked tensely around him.
The two of them stood on an empty, grassy plain. Far in the distance was
the gleam of a silver shining river. He turned away from her and strode on
into the twilight. When he looked back, there was no one in sight. But
presently a boy was moving in step beside him. Grayson paid no attention
at first, but presently he stole a glance at his companion. It was himself
at the age of fifteen. Just before the gathering night blotted out any
chance of recognition, he saw that a second boy was now striding along
beside the first. Himself, aged about eleven. Three Bill Graysons, thought
Grayson. He began to laugh wildly. Then he began to run. When he looked
back, he was alone. Sobbing under his breath, he slowed to a walk, and
almost immediately heard the laughter of children in the soft darkness.
Familiar sounds, yet the impact of them was stunning. Grayson babbled at
them, "All me, at different ages. Get away! I know you're only
hallucinations." When he had worn himself out, when there was nothing
left to his voice but a harsh whisper, he thought, Only hallucinations? Am
I sure? He felt unutterably depressed and exhausted. "Hart and
me," he said aloud wearily, " we belong in the same
asylum." Dawn came, cool; and his hope was that sunrise would bring
an end to the madness of the night. As the slow light lengthened over the
land, Grayson looked around him in bewilderment. He was on a hill, and
below him spread his home town of Calypso, Ohio. He stared down at it with
unbelieving eyes, and then, because it looked as real as life, he started
to run toward it. It was Calypso, but as it had been when he was a boy. He
headed for his own house. And there he was; he'd know that boy of ten
anywhere. He called out to the youngster, who took one look at him, turned
away, and ran into the house. Grayson lay down on the lawn, and covered
his eyes. "Someone," he told himself "something is taking
pictures out of my mind and making me see them." It seemed to him
that if he hoped to remain sane - and alive - he'd have to hold that
thought. It was the sixth day after Grayson's departure. Aboard the
lifeboat, John Hart stirred and opened his eyes. "Hungry," he
said aloud to no one in particular. He waited he knew not for what and
than wearily sat up, slipped off the cot, and made his way to the galley.
When he had eaten, he walked to the lock-door, and stood for a long time
staring out over the earthlike scene that spread before him. It made him
feel better, vaguely. He jumped abruptly down to the ground and began to
walk toward the nearest hilltop. Darkness was falling rapidly but it did
not occur to him to turn back. Soon the ship was lost in the night behind
him. A girlfriend of his youth was the first to talk to him. She came out
of the blackness. and they had a long conversation. In the end they
decided to marry The ceremony was immediately completed by a minister who
drove up in a car and found both families assembled in a beautiful home in
the suburbs of Pittsburgh. The clergyman was an old man whom Hart had
known in his childhood. The young couple went to New York City and to
Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, then headed by aero-taxi for California
to make their home. Suddenly there were three children, and they owned a
hundred-thousand-acre ranch with a million cattle on it, and there were
cowboys who dressed like movie stars, For Grayson, the civilization that
sprang into full-grown existence around him on what had originally been a
barren, airless planet had nightmarish qualities. The people he met had a
life expectancy of less than seventy years. Children were born in nine
months and ten days after conception. He buried six generations of one
family that he had founded. And then, one day as he was crossing Broadway
- in New York City - the small sturdiness, the walk, and the manner of a
man coming from the opposite direction made him stop short.
"Henry!" he shouted. "Henry Malkins!" "Well, I'll
be - Bill Grayson." They shook hands, silent after the first excited
greeting. Malkins spoke first. "There's a bar around the
corner." During the middle of the second drink John Hart's name came
up. "A life force seeking form used his mind' said Grayson
matter-of-factly. "It apparently has no expression of its own. It
tried to use me -" He glanced at Malkins questioningly. The other man
nodded. "And me!" he said, "I guess we resisted too
hard." Malkins wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
"Bill," he said, "it's all like a dream. I get married and
divorced every forty years. I marry what seems to be a twenty-year-old
girl. In a few decades she looks five hundred." "Do you think
it's all in our minds?" "No no-nothing like that. I think all
this civilization exists - whatever I mean by existence." Malkins
groaned. "Let's not get into that. When I read some of the philosophy
explaining life, I feel as if I'm on the edge of an abyss. If only we
could get rid of Hart, somehow." Grayson was smiling grimly. "So
you haven't found out yet?" "What do you mean?" "Have
you got a weapon on you?" Silently, Malkins produced a needle-beam
projector. Grayson took it, pointed it at his own right temple, and pressed
the curved firing pin - as Malkins grabbed at him frantically but too
late. The thin, white beam seemed to penetrate Grayson's heed. It burned a
round, black, smoldering hole in the woodwork beyond. Coolly, the unhurt
Grayson pointed the triangular muzzle at his companion. "Like me to
try it on you?" he asked jovially. The older man shuddered and
grabbed at the weapon. "Give me that!" he said. He calmed
presently and asked, "I've noticed that I'm no older. Bill, what are
we going to do?" "I think we're being held in reserve,"
said Grayson. He stood up and held out his hand. "Well, Henry, it's
been good seeing you. Suppose we meet here every year from now on and
compare notes." "But -" Grayson smiled a little tautly.
"Brace up, my friend. Don't you see? This is the biggest thing in the
universe. We're going to live forever. We're possible substitutes if
anything goes wrong." "But what is it? What's doing it?"
"Ask me a million years from now. Maybe I'll have an answer." He
turned and walked out of the bar. He did not look back. |
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