Authors: Clifford D. Simak
He glanced around the table and his eyes came to rest on Ann. “But there’s something I do want to know,” he said, “and that is how this precious niece of mine ferreted me out.”
“But, Uncle Howard,” protested Ann, “I didn’t ferret you out. I wasn’t looking for you at all. I didn’t even know you were anywhere around. I thought you were off on one of your crazy expeditions again.”
Charley choked on a mouthful of food. “What’s that?” he asked. “You weren’t hunting for him?” He jerked his thumb at Dr. Carter.
Ann shook her head. “No,” she said. “I was looking for Harry, the Hermit.”
“Cripes,” exploded Charley, “I thought we had found him. I thought your uncle here was the hermit. I thought you knew all along.”
Dr. Howard Carter’s fork clattered on his plate. “Now wait a minute,” he roared. “What’s all this talk about hermits?”
He eyed Ann sternly. “You didn’t tell these men I was a hermit, did you.”
“Hell,” said Kent, “let’s just admit there’s no such a person as Harry, the Hermit. He’s just a myth. I’ve told you so all along.”
Ann explained. “It was this way. I was looking for Harry, the Hermit. Jim Bradley, the famous explorer, told me that if Harry, the Hermit, really existed, Mad-Man’s was the place to look for him. He said Mad-Man’s was the only place where a man could live for any length of time in any comfort. And he said he had reason to believe someone was living in Mad-Man’s. So I started out to look.”
“But,” demanded her uncle, “why did you want to find this hermit? Just curiosity?”
Ann shook her head. “No, not curiosity,” she said. “You see, uncle, it’s dad. He’s got into trouble again—”
“Trouble,” snapped Carter. “Some more of his fool experiments, I suppose. What is it this time? Perpetual motion?”
“Not perpetual motion,” said the girl. “This time he was successful. Too successful. He built a machine that had something to do with space-time, with the interdimensions. He tried to travel to another dimension. That was a month ago.”
“And he isn’t back yet,” suggested Carter.
The girl glanced at him. “How did you know?” she demanded.
“Because I warned him that is what would happen if he went monkeying around with extra-dimensions.”
“But what had the hermit to do with all this?” asked Kent.
“Bradley told me he thought that the Hermit really was Prof Belmont. You know, the great physicist. He disappeared a couple of years ago and never has been heard of since. Bradley thought he might be down here, conducting some sort of experiments. That might have given rise to the hermit legend.”
Charley chuckled. “I heard stories about Harry, the Hermit, ten years ago,” he said. “I judge, ma’am, from what you say, that they’re just getting out to civilization. Nobody gave rise to those stories, they just grew.”
Carter had shoved his plate to one side. Now he leaned forward, resting his arms on the tabletop. “Belmont did come here,” he said. “But he’s dead. The things out there killed him.”
“Killed him!” Ann’s face suddenly was white. “Are you sure of that?”
Carter nodded.
“He was the only man who could have helped Dad,” the girl said tensely. “He was the only man who could have understood—”
“The Ghosts told me,” said Carter. “There’s no mistake. Belmont is dead.”
Charley set down his coffee cup and stared at Carter. “You been talkin’ with them Ghosts, mister?” he asked.
Carter nodded.
“Dim my sights,” said Charley. “Who’d’ve thought them things could talk.”
But Carter paid no attention. “Ann,” he said, “maybe I can do something for you. Perhaps not myself. But the Ghosts can.”
“The Ghosts?” asked Ann.
“Certainly, the Ghosts. What would anyone come here to study if not the Ghosts? There are thousands of them in Mad-Man’s. That’s what Belmont came here to do. When he didn’t come back, and no one was able to locate him, I came out here secretly. I thought maybe he found something he didn’t want the rest of the world to know, so I didn’t leave any tracks for anyone else to follow.”
“But how could the Ghosts help anyone?” asked Kent. “Apparently they are an entirely different order of being. They would have nothing in common with mankind. No sympathies.”
Carter’s beard jutted fiercely. “The Ghosts,” he said, “are beings of force. Instead of protoplasm, they are constructed of definite force fields. They live independently of everything which we know as essential to life. And yet they are life. And intelligent life, at that. They are the true, dominant beings of Mars. At one time they weren’t as they are now. They are a product of evolution. The Eaters evolved by taking on silica armor. The Hounds and beaver met conditions by learning to do with little food and even less water, grew heavy fur to protect them against the cold. It’s all a matter of evolution.
“The Ghosts could solve many of the problems of the human race, could make the race godlike overnight. That is—if they wanted to. But they don’t want to. They have no capacity for pity, no yearning to become benefactors. They are just indifferent. They watch the pitiful struggle of the human race here on Mars, and if they feel anything at all, it is a smug sort of humor. They don’t pity us or hate us. They just don’t care.”
“But you,” said Ann, “you made friends with them.”
“Not friends,” said her uncle. “We just had an understanding, an agreement. The Ghosts lack a sense of co-operation and responsibility. They have no sense for leadership. They are true individualists, but they know that these very lacks have stood in the way of progress. Their knowledge, great as it is, has lain dormant for thousands of years. They realize that under intelligent leadership they can go ahead and increase that knowledge, become a race of purely intellectual beings, the match of anything in the System, perhaps in the galaxy.”
He paused for a moment, drummed his fingers on the table.
“I’m furnishing them that leadership,” he declared.
“But what about dad?” asked Ann. “You and he never could get along, you hated one another, I know, but you can help him. You will help him, won’t you?”
The scientist rose from the table, strode to the chattering, clucking machine at the other side of the room. “My communicator,” he said. “A machine which enables me to talk with the Ghosts. Based on the radio, tuning in on the frequencies of the Ghosts’ thought-waves. Through this machine comes every scrap of information which the Ghosts wish to relay to me. The thoughts were recorded on spools of fine wire. All I have to do to learn whatever has been transmitted over the machine is to put on a thought-translation helmet, run the spools of wire through it, and the thoughts impinge on my brain. I hear nothing, feel nothing—but I know. The thoughts of the Ghosts are impressed into my brain, become my thoughts.”
Charley waggled his beard, excitement and wonder written on his features. “Then you know everything that’s going on all over Mars,” he said. “The Ghosts are everywhere, see everything.”
“I know everything they think is important enough for me to know,” Carter declared. “They can find out anything I might want to know.”
“How do you talk to them?” asked Kent.
“Same process,” said the scientist. “A helmet that broadcasts my thoughts to them.”
He picked up a helmet and set it on his head. “I’m going to find out about your father,” he told Ann.
“But he isn’t in this space-time,” objected Ann. “He’s somewhere else.”
Carter smiled. “The Ghosts know all about him,” he said. “A few weeks ago they told me about a man lost outside of our space-time frame. It must have been your father. I didn’t know.”
He looked squarely at the girl. “Please believe me, Ann. If I had known who it was I would have done something.”
The girl nodded, her eyes bright.
Silence fell upon the room. Finally Carter lifted the helmet from his head, set it back on the metal bench.
“Did you—did the Ghosts know anything about it?” asked the girl.
Her uncle nodded. “Ann,” he said, “your father will be returned. No mortal man could get him back into his normal dimensions, but the Ghosts can. They have ways of doing things. Warping of world lines and twisting of inter-dimensional co-ordinates.”
“You really mean that?” Ann asked. “This isn’t just another of your practical jokes?”
The golden beard grinned broadly and then sobered. “Child,” he said, “I don’t joke about things like this. They are too important.”
He looked about the room, as if expecting something, someone.
“Your father will be here any moment now,” he declared.
“Here!” exclaimed Ann. “Here, in this room—”
Her voice broke off suddenly. The room had suddenly filled with Ghosts, and in their midst stood a man, a man with stooped shoulders and heavy-lensed glasses and lines of puzzlement upon his face. Like a puff of wind the Ghosts were gone and the man stood alone.
Ann flew at him. “Father,” she cried. “You’re back again, father.”
She went into his arms and the man, looking over her shoulder, suddenly saw the man with the beard.
“Yes, Ann,” he said, “I am back again.”
His face hardened as Carter took a step toward them.
“You here,” he snapped. “I might have known. Where there’s anything afoot you’re always around.”
Laughter gurgled in the throat of the bearded giant. “So you went adventuring in the dimensions, did you?” he asked, mockery in his voice. “You always wanted to do that, John. The great John Smith, only man to ever go outside the four dimensional continuum.”
His laughter seemed to rock the room.
“I suppose you got me out,” said Smith, “so you could gloat over me.”
The men stood, eyes locked, and Kent sensed between them an antagonism that was almost past understanding.
“I won’t thank you for it,” said Smith.
“Why, John, I never expected you to,” chortled Carter. “I knew you’d hate me for it. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for your little girl. She came from Landing City across hundreds of miles of deserts and canals to help you. She came down into Mad-Man’s. She’s the one I did it for. For her and the two brave men who came with her.”
For the first time, apparently, Smith noticed Kent and Charley.
“I do thank you,” he said, “for whatever you have done.”
“Shucks,” said Charley, “it wasn’t nothin’. Nothin’ at all. I always wanted to see Mad-Man’s. Nobody ever came down here and came out sane. Most of them that came down didn’t come out at all.”
“If it hadn’t been for my Ghosts neither would you,” Carter reminded him.
“Father,” pleaded Ann, “you mustn’t be like this. Uncle brought you back. He was the only man who could have. If it hadn’t been for him, you would still be out in the extra-dimension.”
“What was it like, John?” asked Carter. “Dark and nothing to see?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Smith, “that is exactly what it was.”
“That’s what you thought,” jeered Carter. “Because you had no sense of perception to see or hear or make any contacts or associations in that world. Did you actually think your pitiful little human senses would serve you in a place like that?”
“What do you know about it?” snarled Smith.
“The Ghosts,” said Carter. “You must not forget. The Ghosts tell me everything.”
Carter looked around the room. “And now,” he said, “I fear that you must go.” He looked at Ann. “I did what you wanted me to do, didn’t I?”
She nodded. “You are turning us out?” she asked.
“Call it that if you wish,” said Carter. “I have work to do. A great deal of work to do. One of the reasons I came to Mad-Man’s was to be alone.”
“Now look here, mister,” said Carter bluntly. “It’s a long pull up Mad-Man’s. A longer pull back to our igloo. You aren’t turning us out without a chance to rest, are you?”
“He’s crazy,” said Smith. “He’s always been crazy. He’s sane only half of the time. Don’t pay any attention to him.”
Carter paid Smith no attention. He addressed Charley. “You won’t have to walk back,” he said. “My rocket ship is out there. Take it.” He chuckled. “You needn’t bother bringing it back. I’ll give it to you.”
“But, uncle,” cried Ann. “What about yourself?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Carter told her. “I won’t need it. The Ghosts can take me any place I want to go upon a moment’s notice. I’ve outgrown your silly rocket ships. I’ve outgrown a lot of things.”
He swept his arm about the room, pointed at the globe of brilliant fire that hung suspended between floor and ceiling.
“Pure energy,” he said. “In there atoms are being created. Millions of horsepower are being generated. An efficient, a continual source of power. Enclosed in a sphere of force waves, the only thing that would stand the pressure and temperature inside the sphere.”
He ceased speaking, looking around.
“That’s only one of the things I’ve learned,” he said. “Only one of the things. The Ghosts are my teachers, but given time I will be their master.”
There was a wild light of fanaticism in his eyes.
“Why, man,” said Kent, “you will be hailed as the greatest scientist the world has ever known.”
The man’s eyes seemed to flame. “No, I won’t,” he said, “because I’m not going to tell the world. Why should I tell the world? What has mankind ever done for me?” His laughter bellowed and reverberated in the domed room. “Find out for yourselves,” he shouted. “Go and find out for yourselves. It will take you a million years.”
His voice calmed. “The Ghosts are almost immortal,” he said. “Not quite—almost. Before I am through with this, I will be immortal. There is a way. I almost have it now. I will become a Ghost—a super-Ghost—a creature of pure force. And when that happens, the Ghosts and I will forsake this worn-out world. We will go out into the void and build a new world, a perfect world. We will live through all eternity and watch and laugh at the foolish strugglings of little people. Little people like mankind.”
The four of them stared at him.
“You don’t mean this, Howard,” protested Smith. “You can’t mean it.”
The wild light was gone from Carter’s eyes. His voice boomed with mockery. “You don’t think so, John?” he asked.
He reached into his shirt front, pulled out something that shone in the light of the radium bulbs. It was a key, attached to a string hung around his neck. He pulled the loop over his head, handed the key to Kent.