Bester, Alfred Read online

  The others darted from behind the stage, exclaiming in astonishment-Braugh, Necromancer's costume thrown over his arm, his make-up removed; Finchley like a pair of animated scissors in black habit and cowl, a script in his hand. The organ stuttered, then stopped with a crash, and Sidra Peel burst out of the alcove.

  Theone tried to scream again, but her voice caught and broke. In the appalled silence Lady Sutton cried: "What is it? Something wrong?"

  Theone uttered a moaning sound and pointed to the center of the stage. "Look- There-" The words came off the top of her throat like the squeal of nails on slate. She cowered back against a table upsetting the apparatus. It clashed and tinkled.

  "What is it? For the love of-"

  "It worked-" Theone moaned. "The r-ritual-It worked!"

  They stared through the gloom, then started. An enormous sable Thing was slowly rising in the center of the Necromancer's circle-a vague, morphous form towering high, emitting a dull, hissing sound like the whisper of a caldron.

  "Who is that?" Lady Sutton shouted.

  The Thing pushed forward like some sickly extrusion. When it reached the edge of the black circle it halted. The seething sounds swelled ominously.

  "It is one of us?" Lady Sutton cried. "Is this a stupid trick? Finchley.. Braugh-"

  They shot her startled glances, bleak with terror.

  "Sidra... Robert... Theone... No, you're all here. Then who is that? How did it get in here?"

  "It's impossible," Braugh whispered, backing away. His legs knocked against the edge of the divan and he sprawled clumsily.

  Lady Sutton beat at him with helpless hands and cried: "Do something! Do something-"

  Finchley tried to control his voice. He stuttered: "W-we're safe so long as the circle isn't broken. It can't get out-"

  On the stage, Theone was sobbing, making pushing motions with her hands. Suddenly she crumpled to the floor. One outflung arm rubbed away a segment of the black chalk circle. The Thing moved swiftly, stepped through the break in the circle and descended from the platform like a black fluid. Finchley and Sidra Peel reeled back with terrified shrieks. There was a growing thickness pervading the shelter atmosphere. Little gusts of vapor twisted around the head of the Thing as it moved slowly toward the divan.

  "You're all joking!" Lady Sutton screamed. "This isn't real. It can't be!" She heaved up from the divan and tottered to her feet. Her face blanched as she counted the tale of her guests again. One-two-and four made six-and the shape made seven. But there should only be six- She backed away, then began to run. The Thing was following her when she reached the door. Lady Sutton pulled at the door handle, but the iron bolt was locked. Quickly, for all her vast bulk, she ran around the edge of the shelter, smashing over the tables. As the Thing expanded in the darkness and filled the room with its sibilant hissing, she snatched at her purse and tore it open, groping for the key. Her shaking hands scattered the purse's contents over the room.

  A deep bellow pierced the blackness. Lady Sutton jerked and stared around desperately, making little animal noises. As the Thing threatened to engulf her in its infinite black depths, a cry tore up through her body and she sank heavily to the floor.

  Silence.

  Smoke drifted in shaded clouds.

  The china clock ticked off a sequence of delicate periods.

  "Well-" Finchley said in conversational tones. "That's that."

  He went to the inert figure on the floor. He knelt over it for a moment, probing and testing, his face flickering with savage hunger. Then he looked up and grinned. "She's dead, all right. Just the way we figured. Heart failure. She was too fat."

  He remained on his knees, drinking in the moment of death. The others clustered around the toadlike body, staring with distended nostrils. The moment hardly lasted, then the languor of infinite boredom again shaded across their features.

  The black Thing waved its arms a few times. The costume split at last to reveal a complicated framework and the sweating, bearded face of Robert Peel. He dropped the costume around him, stepped out of it, and went to the figure in the chair.

  "The dummy idea was perfect," he said. His bright little eyes glittered momentarily. He looked like a sadistic miniature of Edward VII. "She'd never have believed it if we hadn't arranged for a se~venth unknown to enter the scene." He glanced at his wife. "That slap was a stroke of genius, Sidra. Wonderful realism-''

  "I meant it.''

  "I know you did, dearly beloved, but thanks nevertheless."

  Theone Dubedat had risen and gotten into a white dressing gown. She stepped down and walked over to the body, removing the hideous devil's mask. It revealed a beautifully chiseled face, frigid and lovely. Her blond hair gleamed in the darkness.

  Braugh said: "Your acting was superb, Theone-" He bobbed his white albino head appreciatively.

  For a time she didn't answer. She stood staring down at the shapeless mound of flesh, an expression of hopeless longing on her face; but there was nothing more to her gazing than the impersonal curiosity of a bystander watching a window chef. Less.

  At last Theone sighed. She said: "So it wasn't worth it, after all."

  "What?" Braugh groped for a cigarette.

  "The acting-the whole performance. We've been let down again, Chris."

  Braugh scratched a match. The orange flame flared, flickering across their disappointed faces. He lit his cigarette, then held the flame high and looked at them. The illumination twisted their features into caricatures, emphasizing their weariness, their infinite boredom. Braugh said: "My-my-"

  "It's no use, Chris. This whole murder was a bust. It was about as exciting as a glass of water."

  Finchley hunched his shoulders and paced up and back of the shelter like a bundle of stilts. He said: "I got a bit of a kick when I thought she suspected. It didn't last long, though."

  "You ought to be grateful for even that."

  "I am.''

  Peel clucked his tongue in exasperation, then knelt like a bearded humptydumpty, his bald head gleaming, and raked in the contents of Lady Sutton's scattered purse. The banknotes he folded and put in his pocket. He took the fat dead hand and lifted it slightly toward Theone. "You always admired her sapphire, Theone. Want it?"

  "You couldn't get it off, Bob."

  "I think I could," he said, pulling strenuously.

  "Oh, to hell with the sapphire."

  "No-it's coming."

  The ring slipped forward, then caught in the folds of flesh at the knuckle. Peel took a fresh grip and tugged and twisted. There was a sucking, yielding sound and the entire finger tore away from the hand. The dull odor of putrefaction struck their nostrils as they looked on with vague curiosity.

  Peel shrugged and dropped the finger. He arose, dusting his hands slightly. "She rots fast," he said. "Peculiar-"

  Braugh wrinkled his nose and said: "She was too fat."

  Theone turned away in sudden frantic desperation, her hands clasping her elbows. "What are we going to do?" she cried. "What? Isn't there a sensation left on earth we haven't tried?"

  With a dry whir the china clock began quick chimes. Midnight.

  Finchley said: "We might go back to drugs."

  "They're as futile as this paltry murder."

  "But there are other sensations. New ones."

  "Name one!" Theone said in exasperation. "Only one!" "I could name several-if you'll have a seat and permit me-" Suddenly Theone interrupted: "That's you speaking, isn't it, Dig?" In a peculiar voice Finchley answered: "N~no. I thought it was Chris." Braugh said: "Wasn't me."

  "You, Bob?"

  `No.

  "Th-then-"

  The small voice said: "If the ladies and gentlemen would be kind enough to-" It came from the stage. There was something there-something that spoke in

  that quiet, gentle voice; for Merlin was stalking back and forth, arching his high black back against an invisible leg.

  "-to sit down," the voice continued persuasively.

  Braugh had
the most courage. He moved to the stage with slow, steady steps, the cigarette hanging firmly from his lips. He leaned across the apron and peered. For a while his eyes examined the stage, then he let a spume of smoke jet from his nostrils and called: "There's nothing here."

  And at that moment the blue smoke swirled under the lights and swept around a figure of emptiness. It was no more than a glimpse of an outline-of a negative, but it was enough to make Braugh cry out and leap back. The others turned sick, too, and staggered to chairs.

  "So sorry," said the quiet voice. "It won't happen again."

  Peel gathered himself and said: "Merely for the sake of-"

  "Yes?''

  He tried to freeze his jerking features. "Merely for the sake of s-scientific curiosity it-"

  "Calm yourself, my friend."

  "The ritual... it did w-work?"

  "Of course not. My friends, there is no need to call us with such fantastic ceremony. If you really want us, we come."

  "And you?"

  "I? Oh... I know you have been thinking of me for some time. Tonight you wanted me-really wanted me, and I came."

  The last of the cigarette smoke convulsed violently as that terrible figure of emptiness seemed to stoop and at last seat itself casually at the edge of the stage. The cat hesitated and then began rolling its head with little mews of pleasure as something fondled it.

  Still striving desperately to control himself, Peel said: "But all those ceremonies and rituals that have been handed down-"

  "Merely symbolic, Mr. Peel." Peel started at the sound of his name. "You have read, no doubt, that we do not appear unless a certain ritual is performed, and only if it is letter-perfect. That is not true, of course. We appear if the invitation is sincere-and only then-with or without ceremony."

  Sick and verging on hysteria, Sidra whispered: "I'm getting out of here." She tried to rise.

  The gentle voice said: "One moment, please-"

  "No!"

  "I will help you get rid of your husband, Mrs. Peel."

  Sidra blinked, then sank back into her chair. Peel clenched his fists and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could begin, the gentle voice continued: "And yet you will not lose your wife, if you really want to keep her, Mr. Peel. I guarantee that."

  The cat was suddenly lifted into the air and then settled comfortably in space a few feet from the floor. They could see the thick fur on the back smooth and resmooth from the gentle petting.

  At length Braugh asked: "What do you offer us?"

  "I offer each of you his own heart's desire."

  "And that is?''

  "A new sensation-all new sensations-"

  "What new sensation?"

  "The sensation of reality."

  Braugh laughed. "Hardly anyone's heart's desire."

  "This will be, for I offer you five different realities-realities which you may fashion, each for himself. I offer you worlds of your own making wherein Mrs. Peel may happily murder her husband in hers-and yet Mr. Peel may keep his wife in his own. To Mr. Braugh I offer the dreamworld of the writer, and to Mr. Finchley the creation of the artist-"

  Theone said: "Those are dreams, and dreams are cheap. We all possess them."

  "But you all awaken from your dreams and you pay the bitter price of that realization. I offer you an awakening from the present into a future reality which you may shape to your own desires-a reality which will never end."

  Peel said: "Five simultaneous realities is a contradiction in terms. It's a paradox-impossible."

  "Then I offer you the impossible."

  "And the price?"

  "I beg pardon?"

  "The price," Peel repeated with growing courage. "We're not altogether na‹ve. We know there's always a price."

  There was a long pause, then the voice said reproachfully: "I'm afraid there are many misconceptions and many things you fail to understand. Just now I cannot explain, but believe me when I say there is no price."

  "Ridiculous. Nothing is ever given for nothing."

  "Very well, Mr. Peel, if we must use the terminology of the market place, let me say that we never appear unless the price for our service is paid in advance. Yours has already been paid."

  "Paid?" They shot involuntary glances at the rotting body on the shelter floor.

  "In full.''

  "Then?"

  "You're willing, I see. Very well-"

  The cat was again lifted high in the air and deposited on the floor with a last gentle pat. The remnants of mist clinging to the shelter ceiling weaved and churned as the invisible donor advanced. Instinctively the five arose and waited, tense and fearful, yet with a mounting sense of fulfillment.

  A key' darted up from the floor and sailed through midair toward the door. It paused before the lock an instant, then inserted itself and turned. The heavy wroughtiron bolt lifted and the door swung wide. Beyond should have been the dungeon passage leading to the upper levels of Sutton Castle-a low, narrow corridor, paved with flags and lined with limestone blocks. Now, a few inches beyond the door jamb, there hung a veil of flame.

  Pale, incredibly beautiful, it was a tapestry of flickering fire, the warp and weft an intermesh of rainbow colors. Those pastel strands of color locked and interlocked, swam, threaded and spun like so many individual life lines. They were an infinity of beads, emotions, the silken countenance of time, the swirling skin of space- They were all things to all men, and above all else, they were beautiful.

  "For you," that quiet voice said, "your old reality ends in this room-"

  "As simply as this?"

  "Quite."

  "But-"

  "Here you stand," interrupted the voice, "in the last kernel, the last nucleus so to speak, of what once was real for you. Pass the door-pass through the veil, and you enter the reality I promised."

  "What will we find beyond the veil?"

  "What each of you desires. Nothing lies beyond that veil now. There is nothing there-nothing but time and space waiting for the molding. There is nothing and the potential of everything."

  Peel, in a low voice, said: "One time and one space? Will that be enough for all different realities?"

  "All time, all space, my friend," the quiet voice answered. "Pass through and you will find the matrix of dreams."

  They had been clustered together, standing close to each other in a kind of strained companionship. Now, in the silence that followed, they separated slightly as though each had marked out for himself a reality all his own-a life entirely divorced from the past and the companions of old times. It was a gesture of utter isolation.

  Mutually impulsed, yet independently motivated, they moved toward the glittering veil"

  I am an artist, Digby Finchley thought, and an artist is a creator. To create is to be godlike, and so shall I be. I shall be god of my world, and from nothing I shall create all-and my all will be beauty.

  He was the first to reach the veil and the first to pass through. Across his face

  the riot of color flicked like a cool spray. He blinked his eyes momentarily as the brilliant scarlets and purples blinded him. When he opened them again he had left the veil a step behind and stood in the darkness.

  But not darkness.

  It was the blank jet-black of infinite emptiness. It smote his eyes like a heavy hand and seemed to press the eyeballs back into his skull like leaden weights. He was terrified and jerked his head about, staring into the impenetrable nothingness, mistaking the ephemeral flashes of retinal light for reality.

  Nor was he standing.

  For he took one hasty stride and it was as though he were suspended out of all contact with mass and matter. His terror was tinged with horror as he became aware that he was utterly alone; that there was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to touch. A bitter loneliness assailed him and in that instant he understood how truthfully the voice in the shelter had spoken, and how terribly real his new reality was.

  That instant, too, was his salvation. "For," Finchley murmured
with a wry smile to the blankness, "it is of the essence of godhood to be alone-to be unique."

  Then he was quite calm and hung quiescent in time and space while he mustered his thoughts for the creation.

  "First," Finchley said at length, "I must have a heavenly throne that befits a god. Too, I must have a heavenly kingdom and angelic retainers; for no god is altogether complete without an entourage."