The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories (65 page)

“A fairy tale,” Basset muttered. “A story.”

“Coincidence. The story was a social satire, nothing more. A social satire, a work of fiction. It just seems like this place. The resemblance is only—”

“What are you two talking about?” Carmichel said.

“This place.” Bassett pulled away. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’re caught in a mind web of some sort.”

“What’s he talking about?” Carmichel looked from Basset to Groves. “Do you know where we are?”

“We can’t be there,” Basset said.

“He made it up. A fairy tale. A child’s tale.”

“No, a social satire, to be exact,” Groves said.

“What are they talking about, sir?” Siller said to Commander Carmichel. “Do you know?”

Carmichel grunted. A slow light dawned in his face. “What?”

“Do you know where we are, sir?”

“Let’s get back to the globe,” Carmichel said.

Groves paced nervously. He stopped by the port, looking out intently, peering into the distance.

“More coming?” Basset said.

“Lots more.”

“What are they doing out there
now?”

“Still working on their tower.”

The little people were erecting a tower, a scaffolding up the side of the globe. Hundreds of them were working together, knights, archers, even women and boys. Horses and oxen pulling tiny carts were drawing supplies from the city. A shrill hubbub penetrated the rexenoid hull of the globe, filtering to the four men inside.

“Well?” Carmichel said. “What’ll we do? Go back?”

“I’ve had enough,” Groves said. “All I want now is to go back to Terra.”

“Where are we?” Siller demanded, for the tenth time. “Doc, you know. Tell me, damn it! All three of you know. Why won’t you say?”

“Because we want to keep our sanity,” Basset said, his teeth clenched. “That’s why.”

“I’d sure like to know,” Siller murmured. “If we went over in the corner would you tell me?”

Basset shook his head. “Don’t bother me, Major.”

“It just can’t be,” Groves said. “How
could
it be?”

“And if we leave, we’ll never know. We’ll never be sure. It’ll haunt us all our lives. Were we really—
here?
Does this place really exist? And is this place really—”

“There was a second place,” Carmichel said abruptly.

“A second place?”

“In the story. A place where the people were big.”

Basset nodded. “Yes. It was called—What?”

“Brobdingnag.”

“Brobdingnag. Maybe it exists, too.”

“Then you really think this is—”

“Doesn’t it fit his description?” Basset waved toward the port. “Isn’t that what he described? Everything small, tiny soldiers, little walled cities, oxen, horses, knights, kings, pennants. Drawbridge. Moat. And their damn towers. Always building towers—and shooting arrows.”

“Doc,” Siller said. “Whose description?”

No answer.

“Could—could you whisper it to me?”

“I don’t see how it can be,” Carmichel said flatly. “I remember the book, of course. I read it when I was a child, as we all did. Later on I realized it was a satire of the manners of the times. But good Lord, it’s either one or the other! Not a real place!”

“Maybe he had a sixth sense. Maybe he really was there. Here. In a vision. Maybe he had a vision. They say that he was supposed to have been psychotic, toward the end.”

“Brobdingnag. The other place.” Carmichel pondered. “If this exists, maybe that exists. It might tell us… We might know, for sure. Some sort of verification.”

“Yes, our theory. Hypothesis. We predict that it should exist, too. Its existence would be a kind of proof.”

“The
L
theory, which predicts the existence of
B
.”

“We’ve got to be sure,” Basset said. “If we go back without being sure, we’ll always wonder. When we’re fighting the Ganymedeans we’ll stop suddenly and wonder—was I really there? Does it really exist? All these years we thought it was just a story. But now—”

Groves walked over to the control board and sat down. He studied the dials intently. Carmichel sat down beside him.

“See this,” Groves said, touching the big central meter with his finger. “The reading is up to
liw,
100. Remember where it was when we started?”

“Of course. At
nesi.
At zero. Why?”

“Nesi
is neutral position. Our starting position, back on Terra. We’ve gone the limit one way. Carmichel, Basset is right. We’ve got to find out. We can’t go back to Terra without knowing if this really is…
You know.”

“You want to throw it back all the way? Not stop at zero? Go on to the other end? To the other
liw?”

Groves nodded.

“All right.” The Commander let his breath out slowly. “I agree with you. I want to know, too. I have to know.”

“Doctor Basset.” Groves brought the Doctor over to the board. “We’re not going back to Terra, not yet. The two of us want to go on.”

“On?” Basset’s face twitched. “You mean on beyond? To the other side?”

They nodded. There was silence. Outside the globe the pounding and ringing had ceased. The tower had almost reached the level of the port.

“We must know,” Groves said.

“I’m for it,” Basset said.

“Good,” Carmichel said.

“I wish one of you would tell me what it is you’re talking about,” Siller said plaintively. “Can’t you tell me?”

“Then here goes.” Groves took hold of the switch. He held it for a moment, sitting silently. “Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Basset said.

Groves threw the switch, all the way down.

Shapes, enormous and confused.

The globe floundered, trying to right itself. Again they were falling, sliding about. The globe was lost in a sea of vague misty forms, immense dim figures that moved on all sides of them, beyond the port.

Basset stared out, his jaws slack. “What—”

Faster and faster the globe fell. Everything was diffused, unformed. Shapes like shadows drifted and flowed outside, shapes so huge that their outlines were lost.

“Sir!” Siller muttered. “Commander! Hurry! Look!”

Carmichel made his way to the port.

They were in a world of giants. A towering figure walked past them, a torso so large that they could see only a portion of it. There were other shapes, but so vast and dim they could not be identified. All around the globe was a roaring, a deep undercurrent of sound like the waves of a monstrous ocean. An echoing sound, a booming that tossed and bounced the globe around and around.

Groves looked up at Basset and Carmichel.

“Then it’s true,” Basset said.

“This confirms it.”

“I can’t believe it,” Carmichel said. “But this is the proof we asked for. Here it is—out there.”

Outside the globe something was coming closer, coming ponderously toward them. Siller gave a sudden shout, moving back from the port. He grabbed up the Boris gun, his face ashen.

“Groves!” Basset cried. “Throw it to neutral! Quick! We’ve got to get away.”

Carmichel pushed Siller’s gun down. He grinned fixedly at him. “Sorry. This time it’s too small.”

A hand was reached toward them, a hand so large that it blotted out the light. Fingers, skin with gaping pores, nails, great tufts of hair. The globe shuddered as the hand closed around them from all sides.

“General! Quick!”

Then it was gone. The pressure ceased, winking out. Beyond the port was—nothing. The dials were in motion again, the pointer rising up toward
nesi.
Toward neutral. Toward Terra.

Basset breathed a sigh of relief. He removed his helmet and mopped his forehead.

“We got away,” Groves said. “Just in time.”

“A hand,” Siller said. “Reaching for us. A big hand. Where were we? Tell me!”

Carmichel sat down beside Groves. They looked silently at each other.

Carmichel grunted. “We mustn’t tell anyone. No one. They wouldn’t believe us, and anyhow, it would be very damaging if they did. A society can’t learn something like this. Too much would totter.”

“He must have seen it in a vision. Then he wrote it up as a children’s story. He knew he could never put it down as fact.”

“Something like that. So it really exists. Both exist. And perhaps others. Wonderland, Oz, Pellucidar, Erewhon, all the fantasies, dreams—”

Groves put his hand on the Commander’s arm. “Take it easy. We’ll simply tell them the ship didn’t work. As far as they’re concerned we didn’t go anywhere. Right?”

“Right.” Already, the vidscreen was sputtering, coming to life. An image was forming. “Right. We won’t say anything. Just the four of us will know.” He glanced at Siller. “Just the three of us, I mean.”

On the vidscreen the image of the Senate Leader was fully formed. “Commander Carmichel! Are you safe? Were you able to land? Mars sent us no report. Is your crew all right?”

Basset peered out the port. “We’re hanging about a mile up from the city. Terra City. Dropping slowly down. The sky is full of ships. We don’t need help, do we?”

“No,” Carmichel said. He began to fire the brake rocket slowly, easing the ship down.

“Someday, when the war is over,” Basset said, “I want to ask the Ganymedeans about this. I’d like to find out the whole story.”

“Maybe you’ll get your chance,” Groves said, suddenly sobered. “That’s right. Ganymede! Our chance to win the war certainly fizzled.”

“The Senate Leader is going to be disappointed,” Carmichel said grimly. “You may get your wish very soon, Doctor. The war will probably be over shortly, now that we’re back—empty handed.”

The slender yellow Ganymedean moved slowly into the room, his robes slithering across the floor after him. He stopped, bowing.

Commander Carmichel nodded stiffly.

“I was told to come here,” the Ganymedean lisped softly. “They tell me that some of our property is in this laboratory.”

“That’s right.”

“If there are no objections, we would like to—”

“Go ahead and take it.”

“Good. I am glad to see there is no animosity on your part. Now that we are all friends again, I hope that we can work together in harmony, on an equal basis of—”

Carmichel turned abruptly away, walking toward the door. “Your property is this way. Come along.”

The Ganymedean followed him into the central lab building. There, resting silently in the center of the vast room, was the globe.

Groves came over. “I see they’ve come for it.”

“Here it is,” Carmichel said to the Ganymedean. “Your spaceship. Take it.”

“Our time ship, you mean.”

Groves and Carmichel jerked. “Your
what?”

The Ganymedean smiled quietly. “Our time ship.” He indicated the globe. “There it is. May I begin moving it onto our transport?”

“Get Basset,” Carmichel said. “Quick!”

Groves hurried from the room. A moment later he returned with Doctor Basset.

“Doctor, this Gany is after his property.” Carmichel took a deep breath. “His—his time machine.”

Basset leaped. “His
what?
His time machine?” His face twitched. Suddenly he backed away. “This? A time machine? Not what we—Not—”

Groves calmed himself with an effort. He addressed the Ganymedean as casually as he could, standing to one side, a little dismayed. “May we ask you a couple of questions before you take your—your time ship?”

“Of course. I will answer as best I can.”

“This globe. It—it goes through time? Not space? It’s a time machine? Goes into the past? Into the future?”

“That is correct.”

“I see. And
nesi
on the dial, that’s the present.”

“Yes.”

“The upward reading is the past?”

“Yes.”

“The downward reading is the future, then. One more thing. Just one more. A person going back into the past would find that because of the expansion of the universe—”

The Ganymedean reacted. A smile crossed his face, a subtle, knowing smile. “Then you have tried out the ship?”

Groves nodded.

“You went into the past and found everything much smaller? Reduced in size?”

“That’s right—because the universe is expanding! And the future. Everything increased in size. Expanded.”

“Yes.” The Ganymedean’s smile broadened. “It is a shock, is it not? You are astonished to find your world reduced in size, populated by minute beings. But size, of course, is relative. As you discover when you go into the future.”

“So that’s it.” Groves let out his breath. “Well, that’s all. You can have your ship.”

“Time travel,” the Ganymedean said regretfully, “is not a successful undertaking. The past is too small, the future too expanded. We considered this ship a failure.”

The Gany touched the globe with his feeler.

“We could not imagine why you wanted it. It was even suggested that you stole the ship to use—” the Gany smiled—”to use to reach your colonies in deep-space. But that would have been
too
amusing. We could not really believe that.”

No one said anything.

The Gany made a whistling signal. A work crew came filing in and began to load the globe onto an enormous flat truck.

“So that’s it,” Groves muttered. “It was Terra all the time. And those people, they were our ancestors.”

“About fifteenth century,” Basset said. “Or so I’d say by their costumes. Middle Ages.”

They looked at each other.

Suddenly Carmichel laughed. “And we thought it was—We thought we were at—”

“I knew it was only a child’s story,” Basset said.

“A social satire,” Groves corrected him.

Silently they watched the Ganymedeans trundle their globe out of the building, onto the waiting cargo ship.