Our quest for our Probability Engine and its talismans has occupied
many major units even of our own time. We have prosecuted it with
diligence, because we were aware of the dangers that might arise if
the engine were misused. We built several similar engines to aid us
in the search, but it turned out that the catastrophe in our cosmos
which swept away the engine and cast one of the talismans up on your
time-stream and planet, was of an unknown sort, making the route of the
talisman an untraceably random one. We would have attempted a canvass
of reality, except that a canvass of an infinitude of infinitudes is
impossible. Now our quest is at an end.
I will not attempt to picture ourselves to you, except to state that
we are one of the dominant mentalities in a civilized cosmos of a
different curvature and energy-content than your own.
Regarding the Probability Engine--it was never intended to be used
in the way in which you have used it. It is in essence a calculating
machine, designed to forecast the results of any given act, weighing
all factors. It is set outside space-time, in order that it may
consider all the factors in space-time without itself becoming one
of them. When we are faced with a multiple-choice problem, we feed
each choice into the engine successively, note the results, and act
accordingly. We use it to save mental labor on simple decision-making
routines, and also for the most profound purposes, such as the
determination of possible ultimate fates of our cosmos.
All this, understand, only involves forecasting--never the
actualization of those forecasts.
But no machine is foolproof. Just because the Probability Engine
was not made to create, does not mean that it cannot create, given
sufficient mental tinkering. How shall I make it clear to you? I see
from your minds that most of you are familiar with a type of wheeled
vehicle, propelled by the internal combustion of gases, similar
to vehicles used by some of the lower orders in our own cosmos.
_You_ would see in it only a means of transportation. But suppose
one of your savages--someone possessing less knowledge than even
yourselves--should come upon it. _He_ might see it as a weapon--a
ram, a source of lethal fumes, or an explosive mine. No safety devices
you might install could ever absolutely prevent it from being used in
that fashion.
You, discovering the Probability Engine, were in the same position as
that hypothetical savage. Unfortunately, the engine was swept away from
our cosmos with all its controls open--ready for tinkering. You poked
and pried, used it, as I can see, in many ways, some close to the true
one, some outlandishly improbable. Finally you worked off the guards
that inhibit the engine's inherent creativity. You began to actualize
alternate worlds.
In doing this, you completely reversed the function of the Probability
Engine. We built it in order to avoid making unfavorable decisions.
You used it to insure that unfavorable decisions would be made. You
actualized worlds which for the most part would never have had a remote
chance of existing, if you had left the decision up to the people
inhabiting your world. Normally, even individuals of your caliber
will show considerable shrewdness in weighing the consequences of
their actions and in avoiding any choice that seems apt to result in
unpleasant consequences. You, however, forced the unwise choices to be
made as well as the wise ones--and you continued to do this after your
own race had acquired more real wisdom than you yourselves possessed.
For the Probability Engine in no way increased your mental stature.
Indeed, it had just the opposite effect, for it gave you powers which
enabled you to escape the consequences of your bad judgments--and it
truckled to your delusions by only showing you what you wanted to see.
Understand, it is just a machine. A perfect servant--not an educator.
And perfect servants are the worst educators. True, you could have used
it to educate yourselves. But you preferred to play at being gods,
under the guise of performing scientific experiments on a world that
you didn't faintly understand. God-like, you presumed to judge and
bless and damn. Finally, in trying to make good on your damnations,
you came perilously close to destroying much more than you intended
to--there might even have been unpleasant repercussions in our own
cosmos.
* * * * *
And now, small things, what shall we do with you and your worlds?
Obviously we cannot permit you to retain the Probability Engine or any
of the powers that go with it or the talismans. Also, we cannot for a
moment consider destroying any of the alternate worlds, with a view
to simplification. That which has been given life must be allowed to
use life, and that which has been faced with problems must be given an
opportunity of solving them. If the time-splits were of more recent
origin, we might consider healing them; but deviation has proceeded so
far that that is out of the question.
We might stay here and supervise your worlds, delivering judgments,
preventing destructive conflicts, and gradually lifting you to a higher
mental and spiritual level. But we do not relish playing god. All our
experiences in that direction have been unpleasant, making us conclude
that, just as with an individual, no species can achieve a full and
satisfactory maturity except by its own efforts.
Again, we might remain here and perform various experiments, using the
set-ups which you have created. But that would be abhorrent.
So, small things, there being no better alternative, we will take
away our engine, leaving the situation you have created to develop as
it will--with transtime invasions and interworld wars no longer an
immediate prospect, though looming as a strong future possibility. With
such sufferings and miseries and misunderstandings as exist, but with
the future wide open and no unnatural constraints put on individuals
sufficiently clear-headed and strong-willed to seek to avoid unpleasant
consequences. And with the promise of rich and unusual developments
lying ahead, since, so far as we know, your many-branched time-stream
is unique among the cosmoses. We will watch your future with interest,
hoping some day to welcome you into the commonwealth of mature beings.
You may say that we are at fault for allowing the Probability Engine
to fall into your hands--and indeed, we shall make even stronger
efforts to safeguard it from accident or tinkering in the future. But
remember this. Young and primitive as you are, you are not children,
but responsible and awakened beings, holding in your hands the key
to your future, and with only yourselves to blame if you wantonly go
astray.
As for you individuals who are responsible for all this botchwork,
I sympathize with your ignorance and am willing to admit that your
intentions were in part good. But you chose to play at being gods, and
even ignorant and well-intentioned gods must suffer the consequences of
their creations. And that shall be your fate.
With regard to you, Thorn, your case is of course very different. You
responded to our blindly broadcast influencings, stole a talisman, and
finally summoned us in time to prevent catastrophe. We are grateful.
But there is no reward we can give you. To remove you from your
environment to ours would be a meaningless gesture, and one which you
would regret in the end. We cannot permit you to retain any talismanic
powers, for in the long run you would be no better able to use them
wisely than these others. We would like to continue your satisfying
state of triplicated personality--it presents many interesting
features--but even that may not be, since you have three destinies
to fulfill in three worlds. However, a certain compromise solution,
retaining some of the best features of the triplication, is possible.
And so, small things, we leave you.
* * * * *
From hastily chosen places of concealment and half-scooped fox-holes
around the Opal Cross, a little improvised army stood up. A few
scattered fliers swooped down and silently joined them. The only
uniforms were those of a few members of the Extraterrestrial Service.
Among the civilians were perhaps a score of Recalcitrant Infiltrants
from World II, won over to last-minute co-operation by Thorn II.
The air still reeked acridly. White smoke and fumes came from a dozen
areas where earth and vegetation had been blasted by subtronic weapons.
And there were those who did not stand up, whose bodies lay charred or
had vanished in disintegration.
The ground between them and the Opal Cross was still freshly scored by
the tracks of great vehicles. There were still wide swathes of crushed
vegetation. At one point a group of low buildings had been mashed flat.
And it seemed that the air above still shook with the aftermath of the
passage of mighty warcraft.
But of the great mechanized army that had been fanning out toward and
above them, not one black-uniformed soldier remained.
They continued to stare.
* * * * *
In the Sky Room of the Opal Cross, the members of the World Executive
Committee looked around at a similar emptiness. Only the tatters of
Clawly's body remained as concrete evidence of what had happened. It
was blown almost in two, but the face was untouched. This no longer
showed the triumphant smile which had been apparent a moment before
death. Instead, there was a look of horrified surprise.
Clawly's duplicate had vanished with the other black-uniformed figures.
The first to recover a little from the frozenness of shock was
Shielding. He turned toward Conjerly and Tempelmar.
But the expression on the faces of those two was no longer that of
conquerors, even thwarted and trapped conquerors. Instead there was
a dawning, dazed amazement, and a long-missed familiarity that told
Shielding that the masquerading minds were gone and the old Conjerly
and Tempelmar returned.
Firemoor began to laugh hysterically.
Shielding sat down.
* * * * *
At the World II end of the broken transtime bridgehead, where moments
before the Opal Cross had risen, now yawned a vast smoking pit,
half-filled with an indescribable wreckage of war machines and men,
into which others were still falling from the vanished skylon--like
some vision of Hell. To one side, huge even in comparison with that
pit, loomed the fantastically twisted metal of the transtime machine.
Ear-splitting sounds still echoed. Hurricane gusts still blew.
Above it all, like an escaping black hawk above an erupting volcano,
Clawly flew. Not even the titanic confusion around him, nor the shock
of the time-streams' split, nor his horror at his own predicament,
could restrain his ironic mirth at the thought of how that other
Clawly, in trying to kill him, had insured the change of minds and his
own death.
Now he was forever marooned on World II, in Clawly II's body. But the
memory chambers of Clawly II's brain were open to him, since Clawly
II's mind no longer existed to keep them closed, and so at one bound he
had become a half-inhabitant of World II. He knew where he stood. He
knew what he must do. He had no time for regrets.
A few minutes' flying brought him to the Opal Cross and it was not
long before he was admitted to the Servants Hall. There eleven shaken
old men looked up vengefully at him from reports of disaster. Their
chairman's puckered lips writhed as he accused: "Clawly, I have warned
you before that your lack of care and caution would be your finish. We
hold you to a considerable degree responsible for this calamity. It
is possible that your inexcusably lax handling of the prisoner Thorn
was what permitted word of our invasion to slip through to the enemy.
We have decided to eliminate you." He paused, then added, a little
haltingly, "Before sentence is carried out, however, do you have
anything to say in extenuation of your actions?"
Clawly almost laughed. He knew this scene--from myth. The Dawn Gods
blaming Loki for their failures, trying to frighten him--in hopes that
he would think up a way to get them out of their predicament. The
Servants were bluffing. They weren't even looking for a scapegoat. They
were looking for help.
This was _his_ world, he realized. The dangerous, treacherous
world of which he had always dreamed. The world for which his character
had been shaped. The world in which he could play the traitor's role as
secret ally of the Recalcitrants in the Servants' camp, and prevent or
wreck future invasions of World I. The world in which his fingers could
twitch the cords of destiny.
Confidently, a gargoyle's smile upon his lips, he stepped forward to
answer the Servants.
* * * * *
Briefly Thorn lingered in the extra-cosmic dark, before his tripled
personality and consciousness should again be split. He knew that the
True Owners of the Probability Engine had granted him this respite
in order that he would be able to hit upon the best solution of his
problem. And he had found that solution.
Henceforward, the three Thorns would exchange bodies at intervals, thus
distributing the fortunes and misfortunes of their lives. It was the
strangest of existences to look forward to--for each, a week of the
freedoms and pleasures of World I, a week of the tyrannies and hates of
World II, a week of the hardships and dangers of World III.
Difficulties might arise. Now, being one, the Thorns agreed. Separate,
they might rebel and try to hog good fortune. But each of them would
have the memory of this moment and its pledge.
The strangest of existences, he thought again, hazily, as he felt his
mind beginning to dissolve, felt a three-way tug. But was it really
stranger than any life? One week in heaven--one week in hell--one week
in a frosty ghost-world--
* * * * *
And in seven different worlds of shockingly different cultures, seven
men clad in the awkward and antique garments of the Late Middle Dawn
Civilization, began to look around, in horror and dismay, at the
consequences of their creations.