This eating, something he had never done, was all right, he decided.
He wondered if cats ate, too. Yes, Midge was under the gas stove,
chewing delicately at a different kind of preparation.
There was a great deal of eating. The traveler knew from the
inspection of the mind he was inhabiting that the man was enormously
hungry and tired almost to exhaustion.
"The damn job had to go out today," was what had happened. "We worked
till almost eight o'clock. I think I'll take a nap after supper while
you do the dishes."
The traveler understood perfectly, for he was a very sympathetic type.
That was one reason they had chosen him for the transdimensional
exploration. They had figured the best applicant for the job would be
one with an intellect highly attuned to the vibrations of these
others, known dimly through the warp-view, one extremely sensitive and
with a great capacity for appreciation. Shrewd, too, of course.
The traveler tried to exercise control. Just a trace of it at first.
He attempted to dissuade the man from having his nap. But his effort
was ignored.
The man went to sleep as soon as he lay down on the couch in the
living room. Once again, as the eyes closed, the traveler was
imprisoned. He hadn't realized it until now, but he evidently couldn't
transfer from one mind to another except through the eyes, once he was
inside. He had planned to explore the woman's mind, but now he was
trapped, at least temporarily.
Oh, well. He composed himself as best he could to await the awakening.
This sleeping business was a waste of time.
There were footsteps and a whistling noise outside. The inhabited man
heard the sounds and woke up, irritated. He opened his eyes a slit as
his wife told the neighbor that Charlie was taking a nap, worn out
from a hard day at the office, and the visitor, darting free,
transferred again.
But he miscalculated and there he was in the mind of the neighbor.
Irritated with himself, the traveler was about to jump to the mind of
the woman when he was caught up in the excitement that was consuming
his new host.
"Sorry," said the neighbor. "The new batch of records I ordered came
today and I thought Charlie'd like to hear them. Tell him to come over
tomorrow night, if he wants to hear the solidest combo since Muggsy's
Roseland days."
The wife said all right, George, she'd tell him. But the traveler was
experiencing the excited memories of a dixieland jazz band in his new
host's mind, and he knew he'd be hearing these fantastically wonderful
new sounds at first hand as soon as George got back to his turntable.
They could hardly wait, George and his inhabitant both.
* * * * *
His inhabitant had come from a dimension-world of vast, contemplative
silences. There was no talk, no speech vibrations, no noise which
could not be shut out by the turning of a mental switch. Communication
was from mind to mind, not from mouth to ear. It was a world of
peaceful silence, where everything had been done, where the struggle
for physical existence had ended, and where there remained only the
sweet fruits of past labor to be enjoyed.
That had been the state of affairs, at any rate, up until the time of
the Change, which was something the beings of the world could not
stop. It was not a new threat from the lower orders, which they had
met and overcome before, innumerable times. It was not a threat from
outside--no invasion such as they had turned back in the past. Nor was
it a cooling of their world or the danger of imminent collision with
another.
The Change came from within. It was decadence. There was nothing left
for the beings to do. They had solved all their problems and could
find no new ones. They had exhausted the intricate workings of
reflection, academic hypothetica and mind-play; there hadn't been a
new game, for instance, in the lifetime of the oldest inhabitant.
And so they were dying of boredom. This very realization had for a
time halted the creeping menace, because, as they came to accept it
and discuss ways of meeting it, the peril itself subsided. But the
moment they relaxed, the Change started again.
Something had to be done. Mere theorizing about their situation was
not enough. It was then that they sent their spy abroad.
Because they had at one time or another visited each of the planets in
their solar system and had exhausted their possibilities or found them
barren, and because they were not equipped, even at the peak of their
physical development, for intergalactic flight, there remained only
one way to travel--in time.
Not forward or backward, for both had been tried. Travel ahead had
been discouraging--in fact, it had convinced them that their normal
passage through the years had to be stopped. The reason had been made
dramatically clear--they, the master race, did not exist in the
future. They had vanished and the lower forms of life had begun to
take over.
Travel into the past would be even more boring than continued
existence in the present, they realized, because they would be
reliving the experiences they had had and still vividly remembered,
and would be incapable of changing them. It would be both tiresome and
frustrating.
That left only one way to go--sideways in time, across the dimension
line--to a world like their own, but which had developed so
differently through the eons that to visit it and conquer the minds of
its inhabitants would be worth while.
In that way they picked Earth for their victim and sent out their spy.
Just one spy. If he didn't return, they'd send another. There was
enough time. And they had to be sure.
* * * * *
George put a record on the phonograph and fixed himself a drink while
the machine warmed up.
The interdimensional invader reacted pleasurably to the taste and
instant warming effect of the liquor on George's mind.
"Ahh!" said George aloud, and his temporary inhabitant agreed with
him.
George lifted the phonograph needle into the groove and went to sit on
the edge of a chair. Jazz poured out of the speaker and the man beat
out the time with his heels and toes.
The visitor in his mind experimented with control. He went at it
subtly, at first, so as not to alarm his host. He tried to quiet the
beating of time with the feet. He suggested that George cross his legs
instead. The beating of time continued. The visitor urged that George
do this little thing he asked; he bent all his powers to the
suggestion, concentrating on the tapping feet. There wasn't even a
glimmer of reaction.
Instead, there was a reverse effect. The pounding of music was
insistent. The visitor relaxed. He rationalized and told himself he
would try another time. Now he would observe this phenomenon. But he
became more than just an observer.
The visitor reeled with sensation. The vibrations gripped him, twisted
him and wrung him out. He was limp, palpitating and thoroughly happy
when the record ended and George got up immediately to put on another.
Hours later, drunk with the jazz and the liquor, the visitor went
blissfully to sleep inside George's mind when his host went to bed.
[Illustration]
He awoke, with George, to the experience of a nagging throb. But in a
few minutes, after a shower, shave and breakfast with steaming
coffee, it was gone, and the visitor looked forward to the coming day.
It was George's day off and he was going fishing. Humming to himself,
he got out his reel and flies and other paraphernalia and contentedly
arranged them in the back of his car. Visions of the fine, quiet time
he was going to have went through George's mind, and his inhabitant
decided he had better leave. He had to get on with his exploration; he
mustn't allow himself to be trapped into just having fun.
But he stayed with George as the fisherman drove his car out of the
garage and along a highway. The day was sunny and warm. There was a
slight wind and the green trees sighed delicately in it. The birds
were pleasantly vocal and the colors were superb.
The visitor found it oddly familiar. Then he realized what it was.
His world was like this, too. It had the trees, the birds, the wind
and the colors. All were there. But its people had long since ceased
to appreciate them. Their existence had turned inward and the external
things no longer were of interest. Yet the visitor, through George's
eyes, found this world delightful. He reveled in its beauty, its
breathtaking panorama and its balance. And he wondered if he was able
to appreciate it for the first time now because he was being active,
although in a vicarious way, and participating in life, instead of
merely reflecting on it. This would be a clue to have analyzed by the
greater minds to which he would report.
Then, with a wrench, the visitor chided himself. He was allowing
himself to identify too closely with this mortal, with his
appreciation of such diverse pursuits as jazz and fishing. He had to
get on. There was work to be done.
George waved to a boy playing in a field and the boy waved back. With
the contact of their eyes, the visitor was inside the boy's mind.
* * * * *
The boy had a dog. It was a great, lumbering mass of affection, a
shaggy, loving, prankish beast. A protector and a playmate, strong and
gentle.
Now that the visitor was in the boy's mind, he adored the animal, and
the dog worshiped him.
He fought to be rational. "Come now," he told himself, "don't get
carried away." He attempted control. A simple thing. He would have the
boy pull the dog's ear, gently. He concentrated, suggested. But all
his efforts were thwarted. The boy leaped at the dog, grabbed it
around the middle. The dog responded, prancing free.
The visitor gave up. He relaxed.
Great waves of mute, suffocating love enveloped him. He swam for a few
minutes in a pool of joy as the boy and dog wrestled, rolled over each
other in the tall grass, charged ferociously with teeth bared and
growls issuing from both throats, finally to subside panting and
laughing on the ground while the clouds swept majestically overhead
across the blue sky.
He could swear the dog was laughing, too.
As they lay there, exhausted for the moment, a young woman came upon
them. The visitor saw her looking down at them, the soft breeze
tugging at her dark hair and skirt. Her hands were thrust into the
pockets of her jacket. She was barefoot and she wriggled her toes so
that blades of grass came up between them.
"Hello, Jimmy," she said. "Hello, Max, you old monster."
The dog thumped the ground with his tail.
"Hello, Mrs. Tanner," the boy said. "How's the baby coming?"
The girl smiled. "Just fine, Jimmy. It's beginning to kick a little
now. It kind of tickles. And you know what?"
"What?" asked Jimmy. The visitor in the boy's mind wanted to know,
too.
"I hope it's a boy, and that he grows up to be just like you."
"Aw." The boy rolled over and hid his face in the grass. Then he
peered around. "Honest?"
"Honest," she said.
"Gee whiz." The boy was so embarrassed that he had to leave. "Me and
Max are going down to the swimmin' hole. You wanta come?"
"No, thanks. You go ahead. I think I'll just sit here in the Sun for a
while and watch my toes curl."
As they said good-by, the visitor traveled to the new mind.
* * * * *
With the girl's eyes, he saw the boy and the dog running across the
meadow and down to the stream at the edge of the woods.
The traveler experienced a sensation of tremendous fondness as he
watched them go.
But he mustn't get carried away, he told himself. He must make another
attempt to take command. This girl might be the one he could
influence. She was doing nothing active; her mind was relaxed.
The visitor bent himself to the task. He would be cleverly simple. He
would have her pick a daisy. They were all around at her feet. He
concentrated. Her gaze traveled back across the meadow to the grassy
knoll on which she was standing. She sat. She stretched out her arms
behind her and leaned back on them. She tossed her hair and gazed into
the sky.
She wasn't even thinking of the daisy.
Irritated, he gathered all his powers into a compact mass and hurled
them at her mind.
But with a swoop and a soar, he was carried up and away, through the
sweet summer air, to a cloud of white softness.
This was not what he had planned, by any means.
A steady, warm breeze enveloped him and there was a tinkle of faraway
music. It frightened him and he struggled to get back into contact
with the girl's mind. But there was no contact. Apparently he had been
cast out, against his will.
The forces of creation buffeted him. His dizzying flight carried him
through the clean air in swift journey from horizon to horizon, then
up, up and out beyond the limits of the atmosphere, only to return him
in a trice to the breast of the rolling meadow. He was conscious now
of the steady growth of slim green leaves as they pressed confidently
through the nurturing Earth, of the other tiny living things in and on
the Earth, and the heartbeat of the Earth itself, assuring him with
its great strength of the continuation of all things.
Then he was back with the girl, watching through her eyes a butterfly
as it fluttered to rest on a flower and perched there, gently waving
its gaudy wings.
He had not been cast out. The young woman herself had gone on that
wild journey to the heavens, not only with her mind, but with her
entire being, attuned to the rest of creation. There was a continuity,
he realized, a oneness between herself, the mother-to-be, and the
Universe. With her, then, he felt the stirrings of new life, and he
was proud and content.
He forgot for the moment that he had been a failure.
* * * * *
The soft breeze seemed to turn chill. The Sun was still high and
unclouded, but its warmth was gone. With the girl, he felt a prickling
along the spine. She turned her head slightly and, through her eyes,
he saw, a few yards away in tall grass, a creeping man.
The eyes of the man were fixed on the girl's body and the traveler
felt her thrill of terror. The man lay there for a moment, hands flat
on the ground under his chest. Then he moved forward, inching toward
her.
The girl screamed. Her terror gripped the visitor. He was helpless.
His thoughts whirled into chaos, following hers.
The eyes of the creeping man flicked from side to side, then up. The
visitor quivered and cringed with the girl when she screamed again. As
the torrent of frightened sound poured from her throat, the creeping
man looked into her eyes. Instantly the visitor was sucked into his
mind.
It was a maelstrom. A tremendous conflict was going on in it. One part
of it was urging the body on in its fantastic crawl toward the young
woman frozen in terror against the sky. The visitor was aware of the
other part, submerged and struggling feebly, trying to get through
with a message of reason. But it was handicapped. The visitor sensed
these efforts being nullified by a crushing weight of shame.
The traveler fought against full identification with the deranged part
of the mind. Nevertheless, he sought to understand it, as he had
understood the other minds he'd visited. But there was nothing to
understand. The creeping man had no plan. There was no reason for his
action.