He veered and doubled his tracks. The horses were charging up on him swiftly. Conn was filled with a sickening sense of dismay. As the silent explosions continued to flare around him he felt like a blind man running in the unknown.
Horst shouted: "There he goes!" and his voice was dangerously close.
Conn prayed as he ran.
A cross-fire of explosions burst at his toes. As Conn threw his hands up to seared eyes and plunged forward, the ground underneath him gave way. He shot under and crashed in a mass of wheat stems and earth. Dazed, he struggled up from the debris and was horribly aware of furry figures around him, closing in. A multitude of hands seized him.
A voice said: "One sound out of you—"
Conn nodded.
III
The searchers continued to shout. As their horses milled, Conn felt the concussion of hoofs on the earth. Little driblets of dirt trickled down. In the dark he heard the tense breathing of the men around him.
"Too close to the surface!" one whispered. "I warned you. There was less than five feet between the apex of the shaft and the surface."
"Shoring," came the answer. "It would have been all right if we could have got the timbers in place. Not enough time!"
"Anyway," whispered a third, "Who'd have thought the damned Swasts would go blasting in their wheat fields? 'Twas the blast that broke through. The blast and this!" He shook Conn.
Dirt trickled down Conn's neck. He was afraid to brush it away. Then someone gasped, and the grip on his arm tightened. Hoofs were punching the ground above them, and cascades of earth and stones began to thud down.
He could even hear the heavy panting of the animals and the creak of leather harness. Conn heard Schiller cursing his horse. If one of those horses fell through—
"We've got to get back!" came a whisper. "We can't just stand here and wait for hell to break! We'll be crushed—"
Conn stared. Overhead was the four-foot hole the explosion had made and through which he'd fallen. It looked as though he was standing at the pit of a fifteen-foot crater with a narrow mouth. Like an upside-down funnel. On either side of him what had been the shaft was choked solid with earth. More was still dropping, packing still more tightly around them.
"How are we going to get back?" The speaker gazed up anxiously. "Once the Swasts sight us they can shoot us down like rats. We haven't even got lances to make a fight of it."
"Get back? We'll dig, of course."
"Through the debris? It'll take hours."
"Not through the debris!" The speaker tapped the hard floor impatiently. "We'll dig under. Three-level-twenty crosses under here. Less than three feet down. Dig, man, dig!"
The man who had spoken yanked Conn to one side. The other two immediately began to sink their picks into the earth. The hard surface turned over slowly. At last the softer earth began to come up. They dropped their picks and shoveled furiously.
Overhead Conn heard Schiller growl in the distance: "Gone back to one of his rat holes. Keep your eyes on the ground, Horst. Maybe we can spot the entrance."
Horst cursed faintly. "I'm a fool!" he said. "I might have suspected. But who could know they'd kill six men for the sake of a ruse? Dismount, Schiller. We can beat through on foot!"
One of the diggers exclaimed. "Timber!" he whispered. "I've struck the overhead beams—"
"Dig to one side, then, and make it fast!"
The earth flew. Conn saw a small hole widen. He could hear the sounds of earth dropping down to the lower tunnel. Then the tools were tumbled through. They clanked as they landed.
"Big enough!" gasped the digger. "Let's go!"
He dropped his legs and squirmed until his torso slipped under. A moment later he landed. The second man disappeared. The man who held him pushed Conn toward the hole. As Conn squirmed down, he bruised his hip on the timber alongside. He gripped the timber and dropped.
Schiller's voice was close. He yelled: "Horst! Here! Down in this pit!"
As Conn landed, hands yanked him out of the way. A pair of legs spurted through the tunnel head. Horst and Schiller were shouting. The men alongside him seized the legs and pulled down violently. The earth trembled and there was a flare of light as Horst and Schiller began firing. More earth began to drop. Timbers creaked ominously.
"Quick!" said the third man. "They've blasted this shaft, too. It won't hold up another second."
The tunnel was black. It was narrow, Conn felt, and just high enough for a man to crouch and run. As they sprinted down its length, Conn blundered against the heavy beams set in the walls. The concussion dazed him. He reeled and the man behind him stumbled on his heels. There was a whispered curse and the party halted.
"No use," said the man who was evidently the leader. "He don't know the tunnel. We'll have to carry him. Lay down!"
Conn stretched out on the shaft floor. Instantly his ankles and shoulders were gripped and he felt himself being lifted.
"Now!" whispered the leader.
They started off again. Conn swayed like a hammock. He clutched his rucksack with both arms and sickened at the headlong flight through darkness. He winced at each sway, anticipating another violent collision with the wan beams. Far behind them he felt rather than heard the thundering fall of earth. That, he thought, would be the cave-in caused by the Swasts' shots.
Suddenly there was light. The party stopped and dumped Conn down. He got to his feet painfully and saw they were at a fork in the tunnel. Two branches were before them, both broad and high. Spaced at ten-foot intervals overhead were tiny spots of luminescence.
"Right or left?" asked the man who carried the tools.
"Left," the leader said. "We've got to take this fella to Rollins and make our report. Besides, something has to be done about the cave-in."
They hustled Conn down the left tunnel at a brisk pace. Gradually it dipped lower, widened, and deepened until it was an enormous thoroughfare. Other tunnels continually entered it. Conn felt like a blood corpuscle taking a sightseeing trip through a venous system.
After another half mile, they came abruptly upon a vast bulkhead set across the tunnel. It was of heavy wrought iron, set in granite and it looked as solid as Gibraltar. The leader hastened up and knocked, then peered through a small grille that opened. After a few words a small panel slid aside and Conn ducked through with the others.
He was so astonished he halted in his tracks and stared. A breeze struck his face, warm and perfumed. Before him stretched a vast arcade. At least a hundred feet high, twice as wide, it stretched far down like a blazing underground station. It was entirely floored with white sparkling sand, and checkered with small white cottages. The roofs were of tile in scarlet, green and blue. Palms clustered around the cottages, throwing a light shade.
Yes, there was shade. Conn stared up at the roof of the arcade and blinked. It was a solid sheet of luminescence that blazed and bathed him with warmth. There were small crowds of people, all wearing bathing suits, and all looked tanned and healthy. It was an underground beach resort, Conn thought. It looked like a subway version of Miami Beach.
"Nice, eh?" a voice grunted alongside.
Conn turned. The three men who had brought him were shucking the heavy furs that had given them the rabbity appearance. Their leader stood alongside him in sandals and trunks. He, too, was tanned, and his muscles were impressive.
He took Conn down the arcade. As they passed through the crowds Conn gaped at the well-built men and women. The girls, he thought dazedly, looked as though they assembled for a beauty contest, and their scant suits left nothing to the imagination. Not that he objected.
Conn was embarrassed at the way the crowd stared at his clothes and rucksack. He was relieved when he was taken into a large stucco building of two stories and rushed upstairs. By now he was so dizzy that everything seemed to whirl in white blazes before his eyes. He was conscious of marble steps and a broad door. Then he was in a room standing before a table. There were men seated at the table, some young, mo
stly old. They wore official-looking tunics and all had a keenness, almost a harshness, about them that was frightening.
"Well, Bradley?" The man at the head of the table spoke. He was iron-gray. His face was gray under its slight tan, and his eyes had gray lights in them. The lines on his face looked like the creases formed when iron is bent.
"Look what I've got, Rollins," Bradley began without preamble. "It fell into the new shaft we were working at three-level-fifteen—" He jerked a thumb at Conn.
"Fell in!" exclaimed Rollins. The others looked agitated. "Is he a Swast?"
"Certainly he's a Swast," burst forth one of the younger Men. He leaped up excitedly and pounded the table. "That's the man that shot down six of us an hour ago, you know. I told you the story. He used some kind of new percussion gun."
Wearily Conn thought: I'm crazy. We're all crazy. I go back to my world and find King Arthur aloft and Miami Beach below. The Swasts call me Reader and the Readers call me Swast. And who in hell cares-
He said: "I'm not a Swast."
"He's lying!" the young man shouted. He turned to Rollins. "It'll be a great pleasure, Peter, if you'll let me supervise the execution."
"I'm not lying," Conn said. He squared his shoulders. This was going to be tough to explain. "I admit killing six of your men. But it . . . it was a misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding!" Bradley snorted.
"Yes, just that. I've got a long story to tell, but maybe I'm not going to live long enough to tell it. Here's the tail-end, anyway. I came to the top of that hill. I saw two men attacked by twenty. I didn't know who was fighting whom for what, and I didn't care. I just pitched in on the short side. That was the way I was brought up to do things."
"You were brought up to do things impetuously," said Rollins softly, but iron bit through his words. "Sometimes it pays to stop and think of what may lie under appearances."
Conn said: "Yeah. The two babies I helped out turned on me half an hour later. For some peculiar reason or other—"
"To hell with his story," the violent young man blurted. "He's a Swast. He's killed six of our men. The tunnel's caved in at three-eleven-fifteen and God knows what'll happen when the Swasts at the castle find that out—"
"They've found out by now," put in Bradley. "Oh, my heavens!" groaned the young man. "Rollins, this is no time for—"
"One moment!" Rollins said. He eyed Conn curiously. "This man wears strange clothing. You say he used a strange weapon. He says the Swasts turned on him for a peculiar reason. I'd like to know that reason."
"The reason," Conn said, "was books."
There was an appalled silence. In it Conn watched the table, faces and room begin to whirl around his head.
"You said books?" Rollins inquired softly.
"I said books!" Conn shouted. He swung the rucksack off his shoulder and hurled the contents fluttering in the faces of the men. They squawked as the volumes clattered over the table and dove for them. "I said books!" Conn roared, "and what's more I mean books. Books, books, books!"
He turned on Bradley and planted his fist just under the ear. Bradley went down with a groan. Conn dove across the table and pistoned his fists into the violent young man's middle. He took four punches and then folded up with a surprised look on his face. Conn twisted and prepared to charge out through the door. Then the white floor leaped up and smote him full in the face.
IV
Rollins said: "Sorry we had to lay you out."
Conn rolled over and sat up. He was at the edge of a small cot. Around him were myriads of shelves and bottles. Sinks, oil lamps, candles, lots of glittering glass and stoneware. There was no one else around but Rollins.
"This is my lab," Rollins said.
"You mean padded cell," Conn groaned. He stared out the window at the brilliant sparkle and felt hot and feverish. "Listen," he said, "either you're crazy or I'm crazy. If I am, you can go ahead and lock me up. But before you do I've got to tell you something because if I don't get my story out I'm going to tear things apart again—"
"Go ahead," Rollins said quietly. He pointed to the pile of books and canned film lying alongside the rucksack. "I figure you've got quite a story to tell."
"What's the year?" Conn asked.
"2941."
"It is, eh? Oh—Well, all right, Rollins, see if you can work this out. I'm a stranger, see? My name is David Conn. To the best of my knowledge I've neither seen nor heard of Readers, Swasts or any other phase of the life You people seem to live. Now here's the hitch. In the Year 2941, I lived on earth. My earth was a highly civilized and mechanized society. It was a planet entirely covered by one gigantic city. There wasn't a green field, a river or a forest anywhere. Half the ocean beds had been filled in to make room for the city of man—"
"You said earth?" Rollins interrupted. "Our earth?"
"Our earth, our moon, our sun, our stars—the very same. We had already solved the problem of rocket flight and were in contact with the other planets. We had controlled atomic energy. We had even investigated the mechanics of Time, and one of us, a man by the name of Dunbar, had solved the problem."
"Time—" Rollins nodded slowly. "Time travel. I might have known."
"Yes, that's it—" Conn paused and felt a wave of helplessness rush over him. "Yes, Dunbar solved time travel; I was his assistant. In April, 2941, Dunbar and I set up the apparatus in the heart of a granite outcropping—the same hill where I unfortunately killed six of your men. As Dunbar's assistant, I was the first to use the machine. He sent me back a thousand years as a kind of journalist in Time. I had plenty of money, equipment and so forth. I was instructed to return within a year to April, 2941, return to a moment but a few minutes later than that in which I'd left. When I did return—I was here."
"I see," Rollins said. He paced a little and fingered one of Conn's books. The bright light flooded his features and softened them. "And you want me to explain, eh? Well, I'd best begin by saying that theoretically you don't exist here."
Conn reached out a hand and gripped Rollin's arm firmly. "What's this," he inquired, "ghosts?"
"I said 'theoretically.' You and I are cousins, Conn, or better still, step-brothers. I see that your race was strong on the mechanical side—you could build time machines. We couldn't do that, but we have our strength, too. Theory. And I'm afraid you people were weak there."
"I don't like the way you use the past tense," Conn said. "It makes me feel that my world is dead."
"The only correct tense," Rollins answered, "hasn't been invented yet. It would have to be the alternative tense. Sit back a little and let me explain. You're real, don't worry about that. You and your world were always real. In 2941 when you started your journey through Time, you were a reality. In 1941 you were a reality. But now, back in 2941, you're an alternative reality existing in the wrong alternate. That's why I said theoretically you don't exist here."
"Alternative?" Conn said. He felt in his pockets for cigarettes. That was the second wonderful habit he'd acquired in the twentieth century. The first was loving Hilda.
"It's like this," Rollins went on. "The future can never affect the past without becoming part of the past—and thus destroying itself."
"As for instance?"
"Well," said Rollins, "take this set-up. A man enters a house and wonders whether to go upstairs or downstairs. He doesn't know it, but if he goes up he'll meet a girl whom he'll marry and if he goes down he'll meet a man who'll murder him. Now at the moment he enters the house and wonders which to do, there are two alternatively possible futures awaiting him—murder or marriage. His choice decides which of those futures he shall enter and make real for himself, although in theory each alternative future may coexist and be real unto itself."
Conn said: "Ouch!"
"And by the time this man makes up his mind," Rollins continued inexorably, "and starts either up or down—that same choice becomes part of the past—the very same past which affects and controls the future. You couldn't have a future
of marriage without a past of choosing to walk upstairs. See?"
"I think so," said Conn.
"Now then, suppose at the moment of choice, the skies suddenly cleaved apart and a head appeared, saying: 'John Smith, this is your grandson speaking to you from the future. Unless you walk upstairs, you will not meet Dorris Doe, you won't get married, and I'll never exist. Therefore I command you to walk upstairs.'"
Conn laughed.
"In theory," Rollins smiled, "this could happen, because there would be the possibility of such a grandson. However he would never say those words because the past for him—which would be John Smith's future—would of necessity have been Smith's walking upstairs. He would take that for granted. But here's the twist which your Dunbar neglected. If the grandson did appear and in some way affected John Smith's choice so as to send him upstairs, the grandson could never again return to his own present, in other words, to the future."
"Why not?"
"Because the future is controlled and molded by the past. The future in which the grandson existed depended on John Smith standing alone and deciding to go upstairs. Having once appeared to John Smith and influenced him to go upstairs, he has so altered the past that his future no longer exists for him. He will have to return to another future."
"Wait a minute," Conn groaned. "We're weak in theory, same like you said. Put it in simple terms."
"Let's try it with symbols," said Rollins. He picked up a slate and pencil. "Take this equation: SUM OF THE PAST=THE FUTURE. Let ABC represent the past. Then ABC=abc, the future. You see that abc is the only possible logical result of ABC. If the past had been BCA, then the future would be bca. I think you'll see, moreover, that at the moment of present when factors A, B, and C exist, there are six alternatively possible futures: abc, bac, cab and so on."
"I've got that," Conn said.
"Hold on to it, then," Rollins chuckled, "because I'm almost finished. Here's the joker Dunbar neglected. Suppose that in the equation ABC=abc, factor b of alternative future abc traveled back through Time, past the equal sign to visit ABC. Then b becomes a member of the group ABC, and by that very act makes it impossible for him to return, although his own present may continue to exist, it can never again exist for him."