The Pritcher Mass

  He woke with a start to find the copter already landed at Central Terminal, Wisconsin Dells. It took him a few seconds to remember what he was doing in the aircraft; and when memory did return it brought first incredulity, then alarm. There could have been a sedative in the hot chocolate. If he had been searched while he was unconscious—he clutched hastily at the pocket of his jumpsuit and the hard shape of the rock reassured him. He glanced around for the woman, but could not see her. Most of the other passengers were already up out of their seats and crowding the aisle on their way out.

  He joined them, left the copter and went down two levels to the Per­sonal Transit System. An area had been roped off for the survivors of the train wreck and they did not have to wait for cars. He got one al­most immediately and programmed it for his condominium in the Upper Dells.

  Five minutes later he was in the subbasement lobby of the con­dominium.

  He had hoped to get quietly to his room on the nineteenth level. In spite of his sleep on the ‘copter he felt as if he had just put in a nonstop forty-eight-hour day. But a fellow apartment owner was checking her delivery box in the lobby and recog­nized him. It was Mrs. Alma Doxiels, a stern, tall, fat woman—one of the condominium party-organizers. "Mr. Sant!" she called. "We heard about the 18:15 wreck on the news. Were you—"

  Chaz nodded, ducking into an ele­vator tube that had a platform rising by at the moment. The platform car­ried him up and away from the con­tinuing sound of her voice.

  "Pray penitent, Mr. Sant. Pray pen—"

  He reached the nineteenth level and was glad to see that nowhere up and down the narrow, silver-car­peted corridor was anyone in sight. He went hastily, to his apartment, stuck his thumb in the lock and strode in, as the apt-comp recog­nized his print and opened the door. He was two strides inside and the door had clicked closed again behind him, when he saw he was not alone. A girl in a sand-green tweed jumpsuit was seated in lotus position facing the red crystal on the tray in his meditation corner. She turned sharply at the sound of his and he saw that her face was drawn and her eyes reddened.

  For a moment he could not place her. Then he remembered. She was another neighbour, from the sixteenth level. They had met at one of Mrs. Doxiel’s gatherings in the condominium party rooms, several moths ago—a long evening, the later hours of which had been more than a little blurred, as far as Chaz was concerned. His imperfect memory the next morning had been that this particular girl had not shared his blurriness and had even given him to understand that she found it more than a little disgusting in him to be that drunk.

  Which did not explain how she happened to be here now in his locked apartment when he himself was away from home. He stared at her, baffled. Then understanding broke through.

  "Did I key the lock to your print, that night?" he asked.

  She scrambled to her feet and turned to face him. She was a tall girl—he remembered that now—with long brown hair and gray eyes, and a soil, gentle face. Not pretty, not beautiful—attractive, in a way that neither of those two words fitted.

  "Yes," she said. "You wouldn't go in unless I let you key it in. I just let you key it to get you to give up and lie down."

  "You didn't . . ." he hesitated, "stay?"

  "No," she shook her head.

  He stood staring at her, knowing what he wanted to ask her but trying to think of some polite way of phras­ing it. She solved the problem for him.

  "I suppose you wonder what I'm doing here now," she said. "I've never been here since that night."

  "That's what I was wondering," he said.

  "The news of the train wreck was on the cube," she said. "A lot of people knew it was the train you take. I thought maybe it would help if I meditated here, at your own cor­ner, for you." She tossed her hair back on her shoulders. "That's all."

  "I see," Chaz said.

  Without thinking he slid his hand into his jumpsuit pocket and brought it out holding the stone. He stepped past her to place it on the tray of sterilized earth next to the flask with the crystal. He turned back to face her; and only then realized how odd it must look—what he had just done.

  "I was bringing it home . . ." he said. He looked more closely at her face and eyes. "But it's strange. I mean you being here, meditating—"

  He broke off, suddenly aware he was talking his way into dangerous areas.

  "And you being one of the lucky people to live through the wreck be­hind sealed doors?" she asked. "Why? Or don't you believe in the aid of meditation?"

  "It's not that," he said, slowly. "I'm trying to see the interlock—per­ceive the chain of connection."

  "Oh?" She sounded both relieved and a little annoyed, for no reason he could imagine. "That's right, of course, it's that Heisenbergian per­ceptive ability you're so concerned with. The one that can qualify you to work on the Pritcher Mass. The one that drives you to drink."

  "It doesn't drive me to drink!" he said; and then, hearing the anger in his voice, he wondered why the way she put things should stir him up. "Sometimes I build up a sort of charge—you wouldn't understand. There's no use my explaining."

  "No, I don't understand!" she sounded as stirred up as he was. "But I don't see why that should stop you from explaining. In fact, you—"

  She checked herself and bit her lip. He stared at her curiously.

  "Owe—" he began but the sound of the door-call interrupted him with its soft chime. "Excuse me."

  He went to the door and opened it. Outside was the woman from the train.

  He stared at her, for a second stopped dead by the shock of seeing her here.

  She had somehow found time to change her jumpsuit—it was not im­possible that she had stepped into a store on the way here and bought a new one. At any rate, the one she wore now was a gray-pink color—an almost startling shade compared to the usual browns, grays and blacks most people wore; and above it she had even touched up her face with artificial coloring.

  She smiled at him.

  "We ought to have a talk," she said. "You see, I saw you with the stone; and you still have it, don't you?"

  She walked forward past him through the door.

  "Yes, I can see it there in your med-corner," she said. "You and I have a lot in common—"

  She broke off, staring at the girl from three levels down. Her face stayed fixed in that stare; and abruptly the artificial color on it seemed to stand out, garish and un­natural.

  Hastily, Chaz closed the door and swung on her.

  "Are you crazy?" he said. "We shouldn't be seen together. Don't you understand that?"

  Still staring at the girl, she an­swered him.

  "I understand you carried away an unsterile object from the wreck," she said, flat-voiced. "I got your name from the man who checked us, on the copier. But you don't know who I am, or anything about me. I can in­form on you, any time."

  "You'd be informing on yourself at the same time!" he said.

  "I don't have anything unsterile that's been brought in from outside," she said. "An anonymous phone call is all it'd take for you. Even if you throw that stone away this minute, the police could find traces of its having been here."

  "Oh?" Chaz said grimly. "Maybe not. What's it matter to you anyway? I saved your life—isn't that enough for you?"

  "No." Now she did look at him. "My life was nothing to write home about anyway. And for all I know I'm infected with rot right now."

  "Don't be crazy!" he said. Once more, he remembered her almost sick fear of being exposed on the train before it had been wrecked. "We were only exposed to the out­side for a matter of minutes. The odds are a million to one against any infection."

  "There's still that chance," she said. "That's why no one is ever let back in once they've been exposed. With my luck, I've probably got it. You've probably got it, too." She looked once more at the girl. "I suppose you've already infected her."

  "Of course not! What're you talk­ing about? What do you want, any­way?" he exploded.

  Her
eyes came back to him.

  "My husband died when we were both twenty-two," she said. I was left with twins and a new baby. Three children. With ten women to every seven men, who wants a widow with three children? I couldn't even qualify for a job. I had to sit home on basic income and bring my family up. Now my kids are in their teens and they don't care about me. If I'm going to die from the rot in a few weeks, I want some little taste out of life."

  She stared directly at him.

  "You've got a job, and extra income," she said. "I want every­thing you can give me." She looked for a last time at the girl. "I was going to suggest something like a partnership; but I see now that wouldn't work."

  She turned around and went to the door.

  "I'll call you," she said. "And you better answer the call after you get it, if I don't catch you in. I've got noth­ing to lose."

  She opened the door and went out. It clicked closed behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, Chaz saw the girl also moving toward the door.

  "Wait!" he said desperately, put­ting out a hand to stop her. "Wait. Please don't go—"

  Then the walls seemed to move in on him, inexorably, and he went spinning off into unconsciousness.

  III

  Chaz was having a curious, fever­ish sort of dream. He was dreaming that the Pritcher Mass was not way out beyond Pluto, but right here on Earth. In fact he had already been at work on the Mass, using his catalyst; and he had startled all the other workers on it with his ability. Al­ready he had made contact with a possible habitable world in a system under a GO star, a hundred and thirty light-years distant. Projecting his consciousness outward from the Mass to that world, he had arrived mentally in an alien city of cartoon-type towers and roadways all leaning at crazy angles. Great snails slid along the roadways, on a thin film of flowing water that clung to every sur­face, vertical as well as horizontal. An insectile alien like a seven-foot-­tall praying mantis had met him and they were talking.

  ". . . You've got an obligation to answer me," Chaz was arguing.

  "Perhaps," said the Mantis. "The fact remains that you're pretty tough-minded. Aggressive."

  "You change schools every three or four months all the time you're growing up," said Chaz, angrily—it was the sort of thing his cousins were always throwing at him—"and you'll be tough, too. You know what it's like to fight your way through a fresh roomful of kids every few months? My father was a construction engi­neer and he was always moving from one job to the next—"

  "That's not the point," said the Mantis. "The point is where do you go from here? Think before you an­swer."

  "I know that one," said Chaz. "There's no limit, of course."

  "There are very definite limits," replied the Mantis.

  Consciousness returned. Opening his eyes, Chaz found himself back in his own apartment. He felt clear­headed again, but utterly weak and listless. For a long moment he was puzzled by his view of the room; and then he realized he was staring at its ceiling. He was lying on the floor with his head on the knees of the brown-haired girl. She knelt, supporting his head, her own face bending over him and her long hair falling about her face and his like a privacy curtain. She was stroking his head and singing to herself, so softly he could hardly hear, some nonsense song.

  "Gaest Thou down we Chicago, sae fair?

  Harp at ye, carp at ye, water and wine.

  Think'st thou my name, but once thou art there,

  So shalt thou be a true love o' mine.

  "Bidst me I'll build thee a cradle o' withys

  Harp at ye, carp at ye . . .”

  Music and words had a faintly fa­miliar ring, although the words were not the same as those he had heard with that tune before.

  "Of course," he said, speaking out loud unthinkingly. "Scarborough Fair. The spell-song!"

  She stopped singing immediately, staring down at him. He got a feeling that he had said the wrong thing, somehow shattering an important moment.

  "Is that what it is?" she said in an odd voice. "It's just an old song my mother used to sing. You folded up, all of a sudden. I . . . didn't know what else to do."

  "It's a mnemonic," he said. "That was the way medieval so-called witches used to remember the in­gredients for a love potion. Parsley, sage, rosemary . . . Wait a min­ute—" he interrupted himself. "But that wasn't the way you sang it."

  "It's only a song," she said. "I didn't know it meant anything. I just had to do something. Are you hurt?"

  More concern sounded in her last three words than she might have in­tended; because she looked away from him as soon as she said it. He felt a tremendous desire not to move at all; but just to keep on lying where he was and let everything else—the sterile areas, the unsterile land, even the Pritcher Mass itself, all go to hell. But, of course, things were not that simple.

  With an effort he sat up. "Hurt?" he said. "No."

  He got to his feet. She got to hers. "You know," he said, "forgive me…but I don't seem to be able to remember your name."

  "Eileen," she said. "Eileen Monvain. You're in trouble, aren't you?"

  He opened his mouth to deny it—but she had been standing here all the time he had been talking to the woman from the train.

  "It looks like it," he said.

  "You actually were . . . outside? In the train wreck?"

  He nodded.

  "So maybe she's right—I've al­ready infected you," he said.

  "Oh, no." Her answer was quick. "You couldn't—but that woman can make trouble for you."

  "I suppose," he said grimly.

  Eileen said nothing, only stood looking at him as if she was waiting for something. He stared back curi­ously for a moment—and then forgot her, as he remembered the catalyst. He turned back to the corner and picked it up. With it in his hand he felt more sure; and he began to think clearly.

  "I'd probably better get out of here," he said.

  "I’ll help you," said Eileen.

  He stared at her again.

  "Why?"

  She did not color or hesitate; but he got the feeling—perhaps it was something the catalyst had stimu­lated in him—that the question em­barrassed her.

  "You're too valuable to be thrown away just because of someone like her," Eileen said. "You're going to do something out on the Pritcher Mass that'll help the human race."

  "How do you know?" Chaz asked.

  "You don't remember?" she said. "You talked to me about it for three hours down in the amusement area, that night of the party; and for nearly an hour up here, standing outside your door, before I could get you to go in and go to bed."

  The ghost of a memory troubled the back of Chaz' mind. For a mo­ment he almost remembered.

  "That's right," he said, frowning. "We sat in the corner booth near the swimming pool; and you kept hand­ing me drinks—"

  "You got your own drinks—too many of them!" she said, swiftly. "Anyway, you told me what it was you hoped to do out on the Mass, when you got there. That's why I was in here praying for you, just now. I didn't want to see you wasted after what you said you'd planned to do on the Mass."

  "Planned?" he said. "I'm only try­ing to get on the staff out there, be­cause it's someplace things are hap­pening—not like here on Earth."

  She looked at him brilliantly, but did not answer. He gave the matter up, turning to the drawers of his built-in dresser and opening them one by one to get any small personal articles that could be stuffed in the pocket of a jumpsuit. Clothes and toilet articles were no problem. He could pick those up as he needed them in any twenty-four-hour store.

  "Maybe if she comes back a few times," he said, "and finds me gone, she'll give up. It's worth the chance, anyway."

  He finished stuffing his pockets, turned and opened the door to the apartment.

  "Here we go," he said, ushering Eileen out into the corridor and fol­lowing her. He closed the door be­hind him, then turned to face her, suddenly feeling a little awkward. "Well, good-bye. And thanks for thinking of me, w
hen you heard about the train wreck."

  "Not good-bye," she said. "I told you I was going to help you. Where do you think you'll go now?"

  "I'll get a PRT car and make up my mind as I go."

  "And what if she's already gone to the police?" Eileen asked. "The police can check and find the record of your credit card. Every credit card used on the Personal Rapid Transit is recorded, you know that!"

  "Then I'll walk to the nearest auto-hire" he broke off.

  "Then you'll have to use your credit card there, too, won't you? You can't rent a u-drive without a credit charge," she said. "There's no regular way you can get out of the Dells without leaving a trail of credit records for Central Computer. I tell you, let me help you. I can get you out another way."

  He gazed at her for a long mo­ment, then suddenly the humor of the situation struck him. He laughed.

  "All right," he said. "What kind a route have you got up your sleeve?"

  "I'll show you," she said. "We'll need help; though. Come down to my apartment first."

  He followed her as they took an elevator disc down to her level. She led the way to an apartment door and pressed her right thumb on the sensitized plate. Reacting to the pat­tern of her thumbprint, the lock snicked back and the door swung open. Glancing in, Chaz saw an apartment like his own and everyone else's in this area of the Dells. Then a chittering, whining noise drew his attention to a corner of the room be­hind an extruded sofa; and a strange creature came out into the center of the apartment.

  It was a black-furred animal which seemed to grow as it emerged; until finally in the center of the room it was the size of a middling-sized dog, only much more heavily furred. It had a long black bushy tail, a sharp muzzle, and eyes that glittered with what seemed to be more intelli­gence than a nonhuman creature should have. Eileen was talking to it in a strange mutter of syllables the moment she opened the door; and when she stopped the creature an­swered with its own chittering, whin­ing and near-barking in something that had all the cadence of a human reply.

  "My pet," said Eileen, turning to Chaz. "He's a wolverine. I call him Tillicum."