Baby Is Three (41 page)

“Here are the formulae for each theoretical universe in a limited series of four inter-recurrent continua …”

There followed a series of mathematical gobbledegook which was completely unintelligible to everyone in the room but Glory Gehman. She listened intently, her high-arched brows drawn together in deep thought. She drew out a tablet and stylus from her pocket and began to calculate rapidly as the voice went on.

“Now notice the quantitative shift in the first phase of each cycle. To achieve an overall resonance there has to be a shift. To put it in simple terms, if you drew a hyperbolic curve with a trembling hand, the curve is the overall resonance of the whole series of small cyclic motions. And there’s only one way in which that can have a physical effect—in the continuum itself. Each cycle occurs in a slightly altered condition of space-time. That accounts for the super-density of the Ffanx and everything they owned and handled. What was normal to us was rarefied to them. We saw them as dense little androids, and they saw us as rarefied-molecule giants. There must be some point in the cycle where they are rarefied in terms of our condition. But space characteristics are only part of the continuum. The time-rate must alter with it.

“According to my calculations you have been here for something more than seven but less than eight-and-a-half months, and are waiting with considerable patience for the three-year minimum it would take to prepare the cyanide capsule for the Ffanx world.

“It’s with mixed feelings that I inform you that the Ffanx war was over twenty-two Earth years ago. Dr. Gilbert Gesell died in a Ffanx raid that closed the Gateway. The Gateway has been opened again momentarily, but something has gone wrong with it—I don’t know what. I must tell you too that in terms of Earth standards you cute cuddly creatures are in the neighborhood of seventy-five feet tall.

“So check your figures before you fly off the handle and kill any small dense creature which arrives through a Gateway wearing a breathing helmet. It might be Dr. Gesell’s little boy Garth, grown up to be all of seven inches tall, and recording into your tape at its highest speed and playing it back slowly …”

“I’m clinging to the fishnet just under the level of the table-top. Treat me gently, sisters. I’ve come a long way.”

There was a concerted lunge for the drape, a concerted reaction of horror away from it. “Ffanx,” someone blurted. “Kill it!”

“We have to kill it,” said the blonde. “We can’t take chances, Glory.” Behind her voice was the concentrated horror of the conquest of Earth … the forcefield pens … the hollow, piteous presence of the handful of “returned” women. “This could be a new Ffanx trick, a new weapon …”

“The math is …”

“The hell with the math!” screamed a girl from the edge of the crowd.

“She’s right!”

“She’s
right!”

“Kill it!”

Garth stepped over to the table top and walked toward the tape machine. The circle of women widened instantly. Garth muscled the huge controls, placed his helmet firmly against the microphone, and chattered shrilly as the tape raced through the guides. Then he rewound, stopped the spools, and began the playback:

“I got that, and I must say I expected it. You’ll follow your own consciences in the end, but be sure it’s your conscience and not your panic that you follow. I want to tell you this, though: Earth is a mess. There’s a new dark age back there. It’s slipped into a tribal state—polyandrous in some places, feudal in others, matriarchal in many. You three thousand women, and the daughters that many of you will bear, will mean a great deal to Earth.”

The chattering ran high.

“Polyandrous?”

“One woman—several husbands.”

“Lead me to it! Poly wants an androus!”

“If he’s seven inches high here, we’d be seventy-five feet tall there. Oh my!”

Garth’s voice cut in. “You’ll want to know how you can get back to Earth size, or how to get to Earth when its size corresponds to
yours. I can tell you. But I’m not going to. If you can argue about my life, I can bargain with it.”

A pause. “Now tell me if you’ve killed that boy over there.” Slyly, Garth added, “Go look at him again. He’s six-three, and a hundred and two percent man.”

One, two, two more drifted over to the big table, to look with awed eyes at the magnificent miniature.

Glory, as if sensitive to a voice-tone she had noticed, snatched up the mike. “No, he isn’t dead. He would have been, but he fired with a blaster just as I put the neo-tourmaline soaker field on him. The blaster threw out all the energy the crystal could absorb.”

Garth held up his arms for the mike. When his voice came again, it said, “Glory, get together the best math minds you have here. I want to give you some raw material to work on.”

There was a sudden crash of sound. To Garth it was a great thudding bass that struck at his helmet like soft-nosed bullets. To the women it was a shrill siren-alarm.

Glory yelped, “Get the ’copter warm. Asta, Marion, Josephine this time. Jo—check the transistor leads on the direction finder in the plane. It kept losing a stage of amplification this morning.” She turned to the microphone. “That’s a Gateway. We’ll damn soon find out whether the Ffanx war is over or not. I’m going to park you with your friend there. Just pray that these cats will obey orders while I’m gone.” She dropped the mike and raced to the big table. “Butch. Put that one in with the other. If you touch either one of them until I get back, so help me I’ll pry you loose from your wall eyes. You hear me.”

“You’ll be sorry for that,” snapped the blonde. “When you find out that these lousy Ffanx have been sending out a homing signal for their playmates—they’re telepathic, you know—then you can apologize.”

“On bended knee,” said Glory. “Meantime, A-cup, do as you’re told.” She ran out.

“Come on. Orders is orders.”

Garth watched them come. He took one step backward, then relaxed. He had shot his bolt, and all he could do was to wait. The
pudgy one picked him up gingerly, tried to carry him at arm’s length, found he was too heavy, and hurried across the floor with him. She set him down gently on the table. One of the women hurried up with a small edition of the cage. Garth stepped in and a gate was sealed. A tube was fitted to it, and Garth heard air hissing in. He was grateful for the increased pressure, his skin had felt raw and distended for hours.

The pudgy one lifted the small cage bodily and set it on top of the larger glass cell in which Bronze lay. A lever was flipped, and Garth dropped ungracefully into the large one.

His first act was to run to Bronze and feel his pulse. It was weak but steady. Garth unbuckled his helmet and pulled it off, then knelt by Bronze.

“Bronze …”

No answer.

“Bronze!”

No answer.

“Bronzie boy … look at all those women.”

“Gug?” Bronze’s eyes opened and he blinked owlishly.

Garth chuckled. “Bronze, you were after women. Look, man.”

Bronze’s gaze got as far as the glass wall, tested its shaky focus, and then penetrated outward. He sat bolt upright. “For me?”

Then he keeled over in a dead faint.

Garth sat and chafed his wrists, laughing weakly. Then, after a while, he went to sleep.

The pudgy one was relieved after a while. Butch waved away her own relief and stayed, elbows on the table, head low, glaring hatred and fear at the men. There was some sort of distant call. All the other women left. But the big blonde still stayed.

Garth had a dream in which he was chasing a girl in a brown cowl. She ran because she feared him, but he chased her because he knew he could show her there was nothing to fear. As he gained on her, he heard Bronze’s voice.

“Garth.” It was very quiet. Intense, but weak.

Garth sat up abruptly. Something hard and sharp whacked him
in the forehead. There was a gout of blood. He fell back, dazed, then opened his eyes. He saw that Butch had maneuvered the point of the scalpel within a few inches of his forehead as he slept. He could see her looking at him, her face twisted in slow-motion convulsions of laughter. The all but inaudible boom of her voice was a tangible thing threatening the glass.

Garth turned to Bronze. He was lying on his back with one of the U-shaped clamps on his throat. It was pressing just tight enough to pin him down, just tight enough to keep his face scarlet. His breath rasped. “Garth,” he whispered.

Garth staggered to his feet. Blood ran into his eyes. There was another deep hoot of laughter from outside. Garth wiped the blood away and staggered toward Bronze. The scalpel whistled down and across his path. He dodged, but lost his footing and fell.

There was a thunderous pounding on the table. Butch was apparently having herself a hell of a time.

Garth looked at the scalpel. It hung limply. He crawled toward Bronze. A tweezer-clamp shot out and caught his ankle. He pulled free of it, leaving four square inches of skin in its serrated jaws. He went on doggedly. He reached Bronze, put a foot on each side of the big man’s neck, got a good grip on the U-clamp and pulled it upward. Bronze rolled free, his great lungs pumping. The flat of the scalpel hit Garth between the shoulder-blades and knocked him sprawling next to Bronze.

“How long have we been here?” asked Bronze painfully.

“Day—day and a half. On Earth, that’s eight, nine months. Wonder what Viki’s doing?”

He looked around, suddenly sat up. Butch was gone.

“Here come the rest of them. We’ll know pretty soon.”

They stood up and watched the slow, distance-eating march of the giants.

“They’re carrying something … Will you look at those faces, Bronze!”

“They look wild.”

“Glory … See her? The tall cool one.”

“I see a tall one,” said Bronze, deadpan.

“She’s putting something on the big table here. Hey, what is that thing?”

“Looks like a tombstone.”

Garth said, “I’ve heard of making the prisoner dig his own grave, but this—”

The stone was put in the small box and aired. Big hands lifted it and set it on their roof.

“Get out from under.”

The stone dropped, teetered. Garth leapt up and steadied it. It settled back on its base.

It was a rough monolith, about three feet tall, cut from soft, snow-white limestone. In it was a chamber with a glass door.

“Will you ever look at that,” breathed Bronze.

Garth stared.

Cut into the stone were the words,

T
HE
G
ATEWAY
OF
G
ESELL

“I don’t get it,” said Garth.

Bronze said, “Look in the thing. The little door.”

Garth peered, and saw a plastic scroll. He opened the door, took out the scroll and unrolled it. In exquisitely neat script it read:

There was a long quiet.

“Escaped,” said Garth. “Escaped.”

There was a thump over their heads. The airlock box had been placed there. There was a speaker baffle into it. It dropped. Bronze caught it, handed it to Garth.

Garth looked out through the wall and saw Glory, her calm face suffused, her eyes misty.

“Garth Gesell, you’ve read the scroll. I brought it because I didn’t want you to wait; I didn’t want you to just hear about it. She fixed your Gateway, Garth, and shoved the stone through so we’d find it. Then, when we were whooping and bawling properly, she let us find her.

“We couldn’t have trusted any calculations, any statements. But we examined her and she’s Escaped—oh, beyond question. That we could trust. For the one thing the Ffanx would never spend, not even to bait a trap for the biggest game, was a single drop of extradiol, which she carries unmolested. Viki’s given us back a world, Garth, just by loving you …

“Are you ready to start on the calculations?”

Garth leaned against the wall near the speaker. Standing upright seemed to make his heart labor. “Not until I’ve seen Viki,” he said.

There was a pause. Then Glory’s voice again, “Bronze. Put on that helmet.”

Unquestioningly, Bronze did. The airlock box thumped above them. Garth sat down and leaned against the wall. His heart would not be quiet.

Bronze was suddenly beside him, helmeted. He clasped Garth’s shoulder so hard it hurt, and as suddenly was gone. There was a slight scuffling sound. Garth turned. Bronze, in the lock, was lowering someone into the cage. Then the upper box was taken away.

She stood and looked at him gravely, unafraid. But this time there was a world of difference.

He put out his arms. He, or she, moved. Perhaps both. He pressed her cheek against his, and when he took it away, both were wet. So one of them wept.

Perhaps both.

With her mathematical staff, Glory said, “He was quite right about the shift, you see. He and Viki and Bronze can go back through their own Gateway. But we’ll have to open another. We go to a world where we will be only three times the size of the natives. There we build still another Gateway. And that will be Earth, and we’ll be home.”

“If it’s as easy as that,” asked the pudgy one, “Why did we have to be so cautious? Why didn’t we go straight to that intermediate world and wait there?”

“Because,” said Glory Gehman, “the intermediate world is the Ffanx planet. Do you see?”

Earth keeps a solemn festival at the meadows of Hack and Sack, through whose blue arch came first death, and then life.