Asteroid Man (12 page)

Something landed quite near him with a wet, rather heavy splashing sound. The creature mumbled something and began prostrating itself on the floor and backing away, leaving the net-enmeshed Greg squatting helplessly in the beam of light. He turned his eyes away from the direct radiance, back toward the shambling creature that was now making its withdrawal. He saw what it was that had flown through the air. The voice had thrown the creature a piece of raw meat. The thing had it in his misshapen claws and was even now tearing and biting at it, as it backed out of its master's presence.

"A touching little display of devotion and gratitude, don't you think?" said the voice.

Greg looked at the light and with great difficulty tried to focus.

"You won't be able to see me unless I so desire," said the voice. "My rooms are designed that way." It was as deadly as a striking snake, that voice issuing from a shadowy form. "I have one or two questions I'd like to ask you first," it went on. "Then perhaps, if I feel inclined, I may enlighten your curiosity before I have you destroyed."

Greg's courage had returned. He was remembering that he was a Masterson, that he came of a family who feared no creature living or dead, let alone a disembodied voice working in shadows.

"That is, if you can destroy me," he answered quietly.

"I should have no difficulty in destroying you," said the voice. "I am well served here. I have but to raise a finger, and one of my many servants would despatch you as they would squash a fly."

"They'd probably eat me as well," said Greg. "They look pretty civilized!" The voice still showed no emotion, but Greg felt that he was annoyed and decided to keep on the same track.

"Where are you from?" demanded the voice.

"I'm a genie," said Greg. "I came out of a bottle."

"Very amusing," said the voice coldly. "Since you do not wish to tell me, I will tell you. Five ships came up to investigate my world. There were five men in each ship. There are twenty-four corpses, or there were, till I disposed of them and the wreckage on the outside of my world. You bear a striking resemblance to the other bodies. I take it that you were the sole survivor of that crash."

"I might have been," said Greg; "then I might not. I might have popped up out of a rat-hole like you did."

"What a strange sense of humor you have," answered the voice. "Are all your people the same?"

"Oh, I'm quite serious by comparison with some of them," said Greg. "You'd be surprised."

"I am never surprised," answered the voice even more coldly. "That is one of the disadvantages of being omnipotent."

Greg decided that this insane creature lurking in the shadows was a megalomaniac with a paranoia as big as Mount Everest. That at least would help. Sometimes an insane opponent was less dangerous than a normal one, if you only knew how to play him. Greg wished that he majored in psychology instead of astro-physics and engineering.

"Oh, so you you're never surprised, aren't you?" he gibed mockingly.

"As I told you before, I am omnipotent. I know all things."

"Well, who's going to win the Derby next year?" ventured Greg. "I'll put a shilling on it for you."

"What is the Derby?" said the voice.

"I thought you knew all things," said Greg.

"I know all important things," said the voice. "I am not concerned with trifles."

"Well, the Derby's a horse race," said Greg. "It has a tradition that goes back for centuries—quite an event on my planet."

"I see," said the voice; "some sort of sport. Sport, the amusement of lesser minds." He laughed superciliously. "I was telling you how you got here, wasn't I?" it went on.

"You were," said Greg, "and I was telling you you were wrong."

"I'm never wrong," said the voice, and again Greg detected that slight trace of annoyance. "I was telling you that you were the sole survivor of those twenty-five men who crashed when I put out my attractor beam."

"That's what it was, was it?" said Greg. "I thought it was a couple of dime magnets out of Woolworth's." The voice failed to understand the allusion.

"Now," it went on coldly, "after your ship crashed, you began exploring the surface of my world. You tried out some primitive type of hand weapon, I believe. I had rather absent-mindedly shut off the force field which prevents such tilings from detonating in the belief that all of your people had been killed."

"It's not as omnipotent as it thinks," Greg decided mentally.

"You were then pursued by my guardian of the outer surface."

"Oh, you mean that cute little pussy cat with the big claws?" joked Greg.

"You may call it that if you wish; you would have found out how friendly it was had you not been able to escape into the tunnel. It is a singularly savage and omnivorous beast. I designed it myself."

"Oh! quite the little tin god, aren't we?" said Greg. "Designing living creatures just like that."

"I design and re-design living creatures," said the voice. "It is one of my hobbies. My servants are all products of my laboratories."

"How very nice for them," said Greg. "I must say you turned out a darn good job. I can smell them half a mile away. Let's say that was something that went wrong."

The voice was growing really angry now. "None of my processes ever go wrong, as you will discover to your cost. Your movements were checked in my central control room from the moment you entered the passage."

"I don't believe you," answered Greg. "If that's the case, you've been an awful long time finding me, and I even went to sleep."

"Yes, that is true. But I knew you could not escape. My outer guardian resealed your bolt hole."

"That wasn't the real reason it resealed it," said Greg. "It resealed it so that you didn't lose too much of your atmosphere." The voice gave a strange clucking sound, as though it were really irritated. Got him on a raw spot, thought Greg.

The creature that confronted him obviously was even more paranoid and maniac than he had thought originally. It couldn't bear to be contradicted or proved wrong. If I make it angly, it'll make a mistake, thought Greg, and relapsed into silence.

"I overheard your conversations with one of my other captives."

"Oh, yes," said Greg.

"Attractive, is she not?" the voice went on.

Now Greg was caught on the raw. There had been a horrid undercurrent in the way the creature had uttered those words.

"There's one question I'd like answered," said Greg, quickly changing the subject. "How is it that you overcome these language difficulties? When you spoke to that thing, you weren't using this language."

"Oh, that's a mental process," said the voice. "I'm rather proud of it. I perfected it several centuries ago. You've probably noticed that the girl has the same ability. It is one of the little things I've taught her. You see all sounds, basically, are merely expressions of thought. Sounds are irrelevant to the higher mind. It's quite simple. If you can just direct your mental perception to the conscious thought which someone else is expressing, it will translate itself in your mind, in your ears almost, as words. Once you've done this for a few moments, you will be quite conversant with any language there is. That is the basis of my development."

"I speak to you in your language, and to the creatures in theirs. It has become subconscious and automatic with me. I have but to listen for a few minutes, and my mind analyzes any thought language formations that you are transmitting. Once I have analyzed them, then the speech centers of my brain retranslate them into your language."

"That's a pretty useful trick," agreed Greg.

"It's extremely useful," said the voice. "It means that even if you knew a hundred different languages and tried to deceive me by speaking in any one of them, I should still be able to follow you absolutely perfectly."

"Don't believe you!"

"Try it," said the voice.

"I'm no great shakes as a linguist, but one little party trick I used to have was counting in various languages."

"I should think that would be adequate," said the voice. "Which language would you like me to count in for you?"

"What about this?" said Greg. "If I begin," he started counting in French, "
un, deux, trois, quatre—"
The voice went on: "
'Cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix
. That enough for you?" said the voice.

"What about this, then?" said Greg, and began counting backwards in German, "
Zehn, neun, acht
."

"Quite enough," said the voice, and went on: "
Seben, sechs, funf, vier, drei, zwei, eins
."

"How's this?" said Greg. "I'll start in the middle and you finish me. We call this language Italian on earth—
cinque, sei, sette
."

"
Otto
," said the voice, "
nove, dieci
. Then there is
uno, due, tre, quattro
, and that completes the first ten decimal numbers."

"We used to call this language Spanish," said Greg. "Do you know that one, too?"

"I know all of them."

"Uno, dos, tres, quatro."

"Simple," said the voice. "
Cinco, seis, siete, ocho, hueve, diez
. Does that satisfy you?"

"More than satisfies me," said Greg wearily. He racked his brain. "I bet you can't get this though—"

"You're nothing if not determined," said the voice.

"Nothing," said Greg, and meant it. "
En, ett, tva, tre, fyra
."

"Ah," said the voice, for Greg was speaking in Swedish. He thought that that of all languages, would have caught this peculiar, superbly intelligent being.

"
Fern
," said the asteroid man quietly, "
sex, sju, atta, nio, tio
."

Greg gave it up as a bad job.

"Are you satisfied now with my linguistic ability?" said the voice ironically.

"I shall have to be," said Greg.

The spaceman became suddenly aware of an intense burning curiosity building up inside him, curiosity that superimposed itself upon his fear, that superseded the fear, that drove out the fear. The curiosity suddenly forced itself to the fore of his mind and became a vitally prime instinct.

He had to know more about the creature that controlled the asteroid. It became almost an obsession with him to discover more, to find out more. He wondered if the asteroid man's paranoia would provide him with the knowledge that he sought. If he posed his questions carefully, could be to trick the other into answering them? It was no mean accomplishment if he could pull it off. Dare he risk his own small intellect against the mighty mental powers of this strange being from God alone knows Where? Yet he knew that this instinct of his was very closely allied to even more important instincts of self-preservation. He had to find out more about the asteroid man before he could begin thinking in terms of retaliation or even escape. You can't fight an unknown enemy, no matter how great warrior you may be. It is the same in every field of human conflict, from the battle of disease to the battle of aliens from the stars. You must know with what you are dealing. You must analyze, you must focus, you must understand the enemy before you can destroy it. You must learn what makes it tick, and then you can learn what makes it stop ticking.

"How long have you been running this asteroid?" he asked suddenly. The face hidden in the shadows behind the powerful, penetrating light beams moved a little to one side, as though the asteroid man were considering the question.

"Why?" replied the voice monosyllabically.

Play on the paranoia, Greg told himself. Flatter the brute. "I was just thinking what a great achievement it was to be able to move an asteroid. I wondered how long you had been able to do it, and whether you had only found out by accident."

"Nothing is an accident," said the asteroid man. "Nothing, do you understand." He rolled the word around his tongue as though he liked the sound of it. "Nothing is an accident," repeated the asteroid man as though he enjoyed the phrase. "Everything is caused. Even in your puny type of society, there is no real accident. The difference between the puny mind and the great one is that the lesser mind does not understand the power that controls, and therefore believes in elemental forces outside itself." The face shrouded in shadows leant toward Greg. He longed for a glimpse of it and yet at the same time felt afraid to see it. He wondered if there was a dual purpose behind those shadows. The asteroid man wanted him in the light, that was an obvious reason, but was there a second? Did the asteroid man wish to remain unseen because of some hideous disfigurement, or some strange difference about his profile? Greg was filled with a mixture of dread and curiosity. The creature continued to speak.

"I'll answer those of your questions which suit me. I'll answer them because I contain some minor human foibles even yet, even after all the millennia that have passed since I shared a place in gregarious society."

"My name is Ultimus. I am the End."

"Did you make that up yourself?" asked Greg quietly.

"That is of no consequence unless I will it to be so. My name is Ultimus, the End of all knowledge, the Great One, the Infinite One. Many many millennia ago, no matter how your people count time, long, long before your earth became civilized, long before your primeval ancestors had dragged themselves out of the slime, I existed."

Greg wondered if he was lying. Oddly, irrelevantly the words of a sang ran through his mind, a song that had been known and sung in colleges and universities and jazz groups for centuries. I was a traditional song,

Strange, irrelevant words reminded Greg of other days, long dead days of carefree student happiness, days of roistering with the boys. Days when beer had flowed like water. Days around an electric organ, thumping out time with glasses. Days in which nothing mattered but bonhomie and camaraderie. Days in which passing an astro-physics degree seemed remote futures away—part of another life. A life that for him was dead but not forgotten. He wondered if the asteroid man could be as old as he thought he was. It was in the cards that it was just part of the creature's paranoia to claim infinite age; on the other hand, it might be a simple statement of fact. The asteroid man was speaking again.