A Stone & a Spear Read online

  'Yes. You certainly have changed."

  "And so can other men. There is a way. I need your help desperately, Curt — "

  The face of the aging biochemist contorted again with unbearable pain. His forehead beaded with sweat as he clenched his skull between his vein-knotted hands.

  "Dell! What is it?"

  "It will pass," Dr. Dell breathed through clenched teeth. "I have some medicine — in my bedroom. I'm afraid I'll have to excuse myself tonight. There's so much more I have to say to you, but we'll continue our talk in the morning, Curt. I'm sorry — "

  He stumbled out, refusing Curt's offer of aid with a grim headshake. The fire crackled loudly within the otherwise silent room. Curt felt cold at the descending chill of the night, his mind bewildered at Dell's barrage, some of it so reasonable, some of it so utterly confused. And there was no clue to the identity of the powerful force that had made so great a change in the once militant scientist.

  Slowly Curt mounted the staircase of the old house and went to the room Dell had assigned them. Louise was in bed reading a murder mystery.

  "Secret mission completed?" she asked.

  Curt sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm afraid something terrible is wrong with Dell. Besides the neurotic guilt complex because of his war work, he showed signs of a terrific and apparently habitual pain in his head. If that should be brain tumor, it might explain his erratic notions, his abandonment of his career."

  "Oh, I hope it's not that!"

  IT SEEMED to Curt that he had slept only minutes before he was roused by sounds in the night. He rolled over and switched on the light. His watch said two o'clock. Louise raised up in sharp alarm.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  "I thought I heard something. There it is again!"

  "It sounds like someone in pain. It must be Dell!"

  Curt leaped from the bed and wrestled into his bathrobe. As he hurried toward Dell's room, there was another deep groan that ended in a shuddering sob of unbearable agony.

  He burst into the scientist's room and switched on the light.

  Dell looked up, eyes glazed with pain.

  "Dr. Dell!"

  "Curt — I thought I had time left, but this is as far as I can go — Just remember all I said tonight. Don't forget a word of it." He sat up rigidly, hardly breathing in the effort of control. "The responsibility for the coming destruction of civilization lies at the doors of the scientist mercenaries. Don't allow it, Curt. Get them to abandon the laboratories of the warriors. Get them to reclaim their honor — "

  He fell back upon the pillow, his face white with pain and shining with sweat. "Brown — see Brown. He can tell you the — the rest."

  "I'll go for a doctor," said Curt. "Who have you had? Louise will stay with you."

  "Don't bring a doctor. There's no escaping this. I've known it for months. Wait, here with me, Curt. I'll be gone soon."

  Curt stared with pity at the great scientist whose mind had so disintegrated. "You need a doctor. I'll call a hospital, Johns Hopkins, if you want."

  "Wait, maybe you're right. I have no phone here. Get Dr. Wilson — the Judge Building, Towson — find his home address in a phone book."

  "Fine. I'll only be a little while."

  He stepped to the door.

  "Curt! Take the lane down to the new road — behind the farm. Quicker — it cuts off a mile or so — go down through the orchard—"

  "All right. Take it easy now. I'll be right back."

  Curt frantically got dressed, ran down the stairs and out to the car. He wondered absently what had become of the cadaverous Brown, who seemed to have vanished from the premises.

  THE wheels spun gravel as he started the car and whipped it out of the driveway. Then he was on the stretch of lane leading through the grove. The moonless night was utterly dark, and the stream of light ahead of the car seemed the only living thing upon the whole landscape. He almost wished he had taken the more familiar road. To get lost now might mean death for Dell.

  No traffic flowed past him in either direction. There were no buildings showing lights. Overwhelming desolation seemed to possess the countryside and seep into his soul. It seemed impossible that this lay close to the other highway with which he was familiar.

  He strained his eyes into the darkness for signs of an all-night gas station or store from which he could phone. Yma\y, he resigned himself to going all the way to Towson. At that moment

  lie glimpsed a spark of light far ahead.

  Encouraged, Curt stepped on the gas. In less than ten minutes he was at the spot. He braked the car to a stop, and surveyed the building as he got out. It seemed more like a power substation than anything else. But there should be a telephone, at least.

  He knocked on the door. Almost instantly, footsteps sounded within.

  The door swung wide.

  "I wonder if I could use your — " Curt began. He gasped. "Brown! Dell's dying — we've got to get a doctor for him — "

  As if unable to comprehend, the hired man stared dumbly for a long moment. His hollowcheeked face was almost skeletal in the light that flooded out from behind him.

  Then from somewhere within the building came a voice, sharp with tension. "Brown! What the devil are you doing? Shut that door!"

  That brought the figure to life. He whipped out a gun and motioned Curt inward. "Step inside. We'll have to decide what to do with you when Carlson finds you're here."

  "What's the matter with you?" Curt asked, stupefied. "Dell's dying. He needs help."

  "Get in here!"

  Curt moved slowly forward. Brown closed the door behind him and motioned toward a closed door at the other end of a short hall. They opened it and stepped into a dimly lighted room.

  Curt's eyes slowly adjusted and he saw what seemed to be a laboratory. It was so packed with equipment that there was scarcely room for the group of twelve or fifteen men jammed closely about some object with their backs to Curt and Brown.

  Brown shambled forward like an agitated skeleton, breaking the circle. Then Curt saw that the object of the men's attention was a large cathode ray screen occupied by a single green line. There was a pip on it rising sharply near one side of the two-foot tube. The pip moved almost imperceptibly toward a vertical red marker over the face of the screen. The men stared as if hypnotized by it.

  THE newcomers' arrival, however, disturbed their attention. One man turned with an irritable growl. "Brown, for heaven's sake — "

  He was a bony creature, even more cadaverous than Brown. He caught sight of Curt's almost indecently robust face. He gasped and swore.

  "Who is this? What's he doing here?"

  The entire montage of skull faces turned upon Curt. He heard a sharp collective intake of breath, as if his presence were some un

  foreseen calamity that had shaken the course of their incomprehensible lives.

  "This is Curtis Johnson," said Brown. "He got lost looking for a doctor for Dell."

  A mummylike figure rose from a seat before the instrument. "Your coming is tremendously unfortunate, but for the moment we can do nothing about it. Sit here beside me. My name is Tarron Sark."

  The man indicated a chair.

  "My friend, Dr. Dell, is dying," Curt snapped out, refusing to sit down. "I've got to get help. I saw your light and hoped you'd allow me to use your phone. I don't know who you are nor what Dell's hired man is doing here with you. But you've got to let me go for help!"

  "No." The man, Sark, shook his head. "Dell is reconciled. He has to go. We are awaiting precisely the event you would halt — his death."

  He had known it, Curt thought, from the moment he entered that room. Like vultures sitting on cliffs waiting for the death of their prey, these fantastic men let their glance slip back to the screen. The green line was a third of the way toward the red marker now, and moving more rapidly.

  It was nightmare — meaningless —

  'I'm not staying," Curt insisted. "You can't prevent me from helping Dell
without assuming responsibility for his death. I demand you let me call."

  "You're not going to call," said Sark wearily. "And we assumed responsibility for Dell's death long ago. Sit down!"

  Slowly Curt sank down upon the chair beside the stranger. There was nothing else to do. He was powerless against Brown's gun. But he'd bring them to justice somehow, he swore.

  He didn't understand the meaning of the slowly moving pattern on the 'scope face, yet, as his eyes followed that pip, he sensed tension in the watching men that seemed sinister, almost murderous. How?

  What did the inexorably advancing pip signify?

  NO ONE spoke. The room was Stirling hot and the breathing of the circle of men was a dull, rattling sound in Curt's ears. .

  Quickly then, gathering sudden momentum, the pip accelerated. The circle of men grew taut.

  The pip crossed the red line — and vanished.

  Only the smooth green trace remained, motionless and without meaning.

  With hesitant shuffling of feet, the circle expanded. The men glanced uncertainly at one another.

  One said, "Well, that's the end of Dell. We'll soon know now

  if we're on the right track, or if we've botched it. Carlson will call when he's computed it."

  "The end of Dell?" Curt repeated slowly, as if trying to convince himself of what he knew had happened. 'The pip on the screen — that showed his life leaving him?"

  "Yes," said Sark. "He knew he had to go. And there are perhaps hundreds more like him. But Dell couldn't have told you of that — "

  "What will we do with him?" Brown asked abruptly.

  "If Dell is dead, you murdered him!" Curt shouted.

  A rising personal fear grew within him. They could not release him now, even though his story would make no sense to anybody. But they had somehow killed Dell, or thought they had, and they wouldn't hesitate to kill Curt. He thought of Louise in the great house with the corpse of Haman Dell — if, of course, he was actually dead. But that was nonsense. . . .

  "Dell must have sent you to us!" Sark said, as if a great mystery had suddenly been lifted from his mind. "He did not have time to tell you everything. Did he tell you to take the road behind the farm?"

  Curt nodded bitterly. "He told me it was the quickest way to get to a doctor."

  "He did? Then he knew even better than we did how rapidly he was slipping. Yes, this was the quickest way."

  "What are you talking about?" Curt demanded.

  "Did Dell say anything at all about what he wanted of you?"

  "It was all wild. Something about helping with some crazy plans to retreat from the scientific world. He was going to finish talking in the morning, but I guess it wouldn't have mattered. I realize now that he was sick and irrational."

  "Too sick to explain everything, but not irrational," Sark said thoughtfully. "He left it to us to tell you, since you are to succeed him."

  "Succeed Dell? In what?"

  SARK suddenly flipped a switch on a panel at his right. A screen lighted with some fuzzy image. It cleared with a slight dial adjustment, and Curt seemed to be looking at some oddly familiar moonlit ruin.

  "An American city," said Sark, hurrying his words now. "Any city. They are all alike. Ruin. Death. This one died thirty years ago."

  "I don't understand," Curt complained, bewildered. "Thirty years — "

  "At another point in the Time Continuum," said Sark. "The future. Your future, you understand. Or, rather, our present, the one you created for us."

  Curt recoiled at the sudden venom in Sark's voice. "The future?" That was what they had in common with Dell — psychosis, systematic delusions. He had suspected danger before; now it was imminent and terrifying.

  "Perhaps you are one of those who regard your accomplishments with pride," Sark went on savagely, ignoring or unaware of Curt's fear and horror. "That the hydrogen bombs smashed the cities, and the aerosols destroyed the remnants of humanity seems insignificant to you beside the high technical achievement these things represent."

  Curt's throat was dry with panic. Irrelevantly, he recalled the painfired eyes of Dell and the dying scientist's words: "The responsibility for the coming destruction of civilization lies at the doors of the scientist mercenaries — "

  "Some of us did manage to survive," said Sark, glaring at the scene of gaunt rubble. Curt could see the veins pounding beneath the thin flesh of his forehead. "We lived for twenty years with the dream of rebuilding a world, the same dream that has followed all wars. But at last we knew that the dream was truly vain this time. We survivors lived in heremetically sealed caverns, trying to exist and recover our lost science and technology.

  "We could not emerge into the Earth's atmosphere. Its pollution with virulent aerosols would persist for another hundred years. We could not bear a new race out of these famished and rickety bodies of ours. Unless Man was to vanish completely from the face of the Earth, we had only a single hope. That hope was to prevent the destruction from ever occurring!

  Sark's eyes were burning now. "Do you understand what that means? We had to go back, not forward. We had to arm to fight a new war, a war to prevent the final war that destroyed Mankind."

  "Back? How could you go back?" Curt hesitated, grasping now the full insanity of the scene about him. "How have you come back?" He waited tautly for the answer. It would be gibberish, of course, like all the mad conversation before it.

  <*rpHE undisturbed flow of time X from the beginning to the end — neither of which we can experience — we call, the Prime Continuum," Sark replied. "Mathematically speaking, it is composed of billions of separate bands of probability running side by side. For analogy, you may liken it to a great river, whose many insignificant tributaries merge into a roaring, turbulent whole. That is the flow of time, the Prime Continuum.

  "You may change one of these tributaries, dam it up, turn it aside,

  let it reach the main stream at a different point. No matter how insignificant the tributary, the stream will not be the same after the change. That is what we are doing. We are controlling critical tributaries of the Prime Continuum, altering the hell that you scientists have so generously handed down to us.

  "Dell was a critical tributary. You, Dr. Curtis Johnson, are another. Changing or destroying such key individuals snips off branches of knowledge before they come into fruit."

  It was an ungraspable answer, but it had to be argued against because of its conclusion. "The scientists are not bringing about the war," Curt said, looking from one fleshless face to another. "Find the politicians responsible, those willing to turn loose any horror to gain power. They are the ones you want."

  "That would mean destroying half the human race. In your day, nearly every man is literally a politician."

  "Talk sense!" Curt said angrily.

  "A politician, as we have come to define him, is simply one willing to sacrifice the common good for his own ends. It is a highly infectious disease in a day when altruism is taken for cowardice or mere stupidity. No, we have not mistaken our goal, Dr. Johnson. We cannot hasten the maturity of the race. We can only hope to take the matches away so the children cannot burn the house down. Whatever you doubt, do not doubt that we are from the future or that we caused Dell's death. He is only one of many."

  Curt slumped. "I did doubt it. I still do, yet not with conviction. Why?"

  "Because your own sense of guilt tells you that you and Dell and others like you are literally the matches which we have to remove. Because your knowledge of science has overcome your desire not to believe. Because you know the shape of the future."

  "The war after the Third World War — " Curt murmured. "Someone said it would be fought with stones and spears, but your weapons are far from stones and spears."

  "Perhaps not so far at that," said Sark, his face twisting wryly. He reached to a nearby table and picked up a tomato and a carrot. "These are our weapons. As humble and primitive as the stones and spears of cavemen."

  "T^OU'RE joking
," Curt reJL plied, almost ready to grin. "No. This is the ultimate development of biological warfare. Man is what he eats — " "That's what Dell's sign said." "We operate hundreds of gardens and farms such as Dell's. We work through the fertilizing compounds we supply to these farms.

  These compounds contain chem« icals that eventually lodge in the cells of those who eat the produce. They take up stations within the brain cells and change the man — or destroy him.

  "Certain cells of the brain are responsible for specific characteristics. Ways of altering these cells were found by introducing minute quantities of specific radioactive materials which could be incorporated into vegetable foods. During the Third War wholesale insanity was produced in entire populations by similar methods. Here, we are using it to accomplish humane purposes.