The Universe Maker (4 page)

A girl's high-pitched voice said, "Darn you, I've got my spitter on you." It sounded like "spitter." "Put up your hands."

In the reflections of the flashlight, Cargill glimpsed a dull metal gadget that looked like nothing else than an elongated radio tube. It pointed at him steadily.

The girl raised her voice in a yell. "Hey, Pa, I've caught myself a Tweener." The word sounded like

"Tweener." The girl went on excitedly, "Come on, Pa, and help me get him aboard."

Afterward, Cargill realized this was the moment he should have tried to escape. It was the unnatural weapon that held him indecisive. Had it been an ordinary gun he'd have dived off into the darkness—or so he told himself when it was too late.

Before he could decide, a roughly dressed man loped out of the darkness. "Good work, Lela," he said. "You're a smart girl."

Cargill had a quick glimpse of a lean, rapacious, bearded countenance. And then the man had taken up a position behind him and was jabbing another of the
tubelike
weapons into him.

"Get going, stranger, or I'll spit you."

Cargill started forward reluctantly. Ahead of him a long, snub-nosed, snub-tailed structure loomed vaguely out of the darkness. The light from the flash reflected from the object's glassy surface. And then—

"Follow Lela through that door."

Now there was no escape. The man and the weapon crowded behind him. Cargill found
himself
in a large, dimly lighted room, amazingly well constructed and looking both cozy and costly. Urged across the carpeted floor, he moved through a comfortable lounge into a narrow corridor and toward a tiny room that was even more dimly lighted than the first one.

A few moments later, while the man glowered in the doorway, the girl fastened a chain around Cargill's right and left ankles. A key clicked twice; then she was drawing back, saying, "There's a cot in that corner."

His two captors retreated along the corridor toward the brighter light, the girl babbling happily about having "caught one of them at last."

The man said, "Maybe we'd better cast adrift. Maybe
there's
more of them."

The light in Cargill's room went out. There was a jerk and then a slow upward movement. Cargill thought, amazed,
an airship!

His mind jumped back to what Ann Reece had shouted at him: "Watch out for the Planiacs!" Had she meant—this? Carefully, in the darkness he edged towards the cot the girl had indicated. He reached it and sank down wearily.

He spent about a minute fumbling over the chain with his fingers. The metal was hard, the chain itself just over a foot long, an excellent length for hobbling a man.

He was suddenly too tired to think further. He
lay
down and fell asleep immediately.

Cargill had a lazy sensation of drifting along. For some reason he resisted waking up, and kept sinking back into the darkness. Throughout that early dreamy stage he had no memory of what had happened or of where he was. Gradually, however, he grew conscious of motion underneath him. He stirred and felt the chain clasps against his ankles. That jarred him and brought the beginning of alarm. With a start he woke up.

His eyes took in the curving metal ceiling, and all too swiftly he remembered. He reached down and touched the chain. It was cool and hard and convincing to his touch, and gave him an empty feeling. And then, just as he was about to sit up, he realized he was not alone. He started to turn his head. He caught a glimpse of what was there barely in time to bring his hands up in front of his face.

A whip cracked across his fingers and licked at his neck, stinging and burning the skin. "Get up, you lazy good-for-nothing." The man who stood in the doorway was already drawing the whip for another blow.

With a gasp Cargill swung his legs from the cot to the floor. In a black rage he was about to launch himself at the figure when the metallic rattle of the chain reminded him that he was desperately handicapped. That dimmed his fury and brought a sense of disaster.

Once more the whip struck at him. Cargill ducked and managed to get part of the blow on the sleeve of his coat. The thin sharp end flicked harmlessly past his shoulder against the metal wall.

Again the whip was drawn back.

He had already recognized his assailant as the companion of the girl the night before. Seen in the light of day he was a scrawny slovenly individual about forty years old. Several days' growth of beard darkened his face. His lips were thin. His eyes had a curiously crafty expression, and his face was a mask of bad temper. He wore a pair of greasy trousers and his filthy shirt, which was open at the neck, revealed a flat hairy chest. He stood with an animal-like snarl on his face. "Darn your hide, get going."

Cargill thought: "If he tries to hit me again, I'll rush him."

Aloud he temporized. "What do you want me to do?"

That seemed to add new fury to the man's anger. "I'll
learn
you what I want!"

The whip came up and it would have flashed down except for Cargill’s lunge from the cot. The violent impact of their corning together nearly took his breath away but it smashed his assailant against the metal door jamb.

The man released a screech and tried to pull back. But Cargill had him now. With one hand he clutched the fellow's shirt and with the other he clenched and struck at the narrow bony jaw.

It was a knockout. A limp body collapsed to the floor. Cargill followed, kneeling awkwardly, and with trembling fingers started to search the other's pockets.

From farther along the corridor, the girl's voice said, "All right, put up your hands or I'll spit you."

Cargill jerked up, tensed for action. He hesitated as he saw the weapon,
then
reluctantly drew back from the man's body. Stiffly, he sat down on the cot.

The girl walked forward and dug the toe of her shoe into her father's ribs. "Get up, you fool," she said.

The man stirred and sat up. "I'll kill him," he mumbled. "I'll murder that blasted Tweener." It still sounded like "Tweener."

The girl was contemptuous. "You aren't going to kill anybody. You asked for a kick in the teeth and you got it. What did you want him to do?"

The man stood up groggily and felt his jaw. "These darn Tweeners," he said, "make me sick with their sleeping in, and not knowing what to do."

The girl said coldly, "Don't be such a fool, Pa. He hasn't been trained yet. Do you expect him to read your mind?" She squeezed past him and came into the little room. "And besides, you keep your dirty hands off him. I caught him, and I'll do any beating that's necessary. Give me that whip."

"Look, Lela Bouvy," said her father, "I'm the boss of this floater and don't you forget it." But he handed her the whip and said sullenly, "All I want is some breakfast and I want it quick."

"You'll get it. Now beat it." She motioned imperiously. "I'll do the rest."

The man turned and slouched out of sight.

The girl gestured with her thumb. "All right, you, into the kitchen."

Cargill hesitated, half-minded to resist. But the word, kitchen, conjured thoughts of food. He realized he was tremendously hungry. Silently he climbed to his feet and hobbled clumsily through the door she indicated. He was thinking, "These creatures could keep me chained up here from now on."

The despair that came was like a weight, more constricting than the chain that bound him.

The kitchen proved to be a narrow corridor between thick translucent walls. It was about ten feet long and at the far end was a closed transparent door, beyond which he could see machinery. Both the kitchen and the machine room were bright with the light that flooded through the translucent walls. Cargill glanced around, puzzled. There was no sign of a stove or of any standard cooking equipment. He saw no food, no dishes,
no
cupboards. Looking for lines in the glass-like walls, he saw hundreds that were horizontal, vertical, diagonal, curving and circular. They seemed to have no purpose. If any of them marked off a panel or a door he couldn't see it.

He turned questioningly to the girl. She spoke first. "No clouds this morning. We'll be able to get all the heat we want."

He watched, interested, as she reached up with one hand, spread it wide and touched the top of the wall where it curved toward the ceiling. Only her thumb and little finger actually touched the glass. With a quick movement she lightly ran her hand parallel to the floor. A thick slab of the glass broke free along an intricate series of lines and noiselessly slid down into a slot. Cargill craned his neck. From where he stood he could just see that there was a limpidly transparent panel inside, behind which were shelves. What was on the shelves, he could not see.

Casually, the girl slid the panel sideways. For a moment her body hid what she was doing. When she drew back, she held a plate on which were raw fish and potatoes. It looked like trout, and surprisingly it had been cleaned. Yet neither Bouvy nor his daughter looked as if they would do anything in advance of need.

He shrewdly suspected the presence of kitchen gadgets that could automatically scale and fillet a fish.

The girl took a few steps toward him. Once more she ran her little finger and thumb along the upper wall. Another section of the sunlit wall slid down and there was a second panel with shelves behind it. Opening the panel, she placed the plate on one of the shelves.

As she closed the panel a faint steam
rose
from the fish, turning it a golden brown. The potatoes lost their hard whiteness and visibly underwent the chemical change to a cooked state.

"That'll do, I guess," said Lela Bouvy. She added, "You better get yourself a bite."

She took out the plate with her bare hands, paused at the refrigerator to take out an apple and a pear from a bottom shelf and walked out, still carrying the plate.

Cargill was left alone in the kitchen. By the time she returned for her own breakfast, he had eaten an apple, cooked himself some chicken legs and potatoes and was busily eating when she paused in the doorway.

She was rather a pretty thing if one allowed for a certain sullenness of expression. So it seemed to Cargill. Her hair was not too well combed but it was not tangled, and it had a pleasant shine that indicated she lavished some attention on it. Her eyes were a hot blue, her lips full, and her chin came to a point. She wore dungarees and an open-necked shirt which partly exposed a very firm tanned bust.

She said, with a suspicious tone in her voice, "How did a smart-looking Tweener like you come to get caught so easy?"

Cargill swallowed a large mouthful of potato in several quick gulps and said, "I'm not a Tweener."

The hot blue of her eyes smoldered with easy anger. "What kind of a smarty answer is that?"

Cargill cleaned up what was left on the plate and said, "I'm being honest with you. I'm not a Tweener."

She frowned. "Then what are you?" She stiffened, the anger leaving her eyes, making them appear to change color. She whispered, "Not a Shadow?"

Before he could pretend or even decide not to, she answered her own question. "Of course you aren't. A Shadow would know all about this ship and how the kitchen works without having to watch me first. They fix our ships for us floater folk when the repair job is too hard for us to figure out."

The moment for pretense, whatever its possibilities might have been, was past. Cargill said grudgingly, "No, I'm not a Shadow."

The girl's frown had deepened. "But a Tweener would've known that too." She looked at him warily. "What's your name?"

"Morton Cargill."

"Where are you from?"

Cargill told her and watched those expressive eyes of hers change color again. Finally she nodded. "One of those, eh?" She seemed disturbed. "We get a reward for people like you."

She broke off. "What did you do—back where you came from—to start the Shadows after you?"

Cargill shrugged. "Nothing." He had no intention of launching into a detailed account of the Marie Chanette incident.

Once more the blue eyes were flashing. "Don't you dare lie to me," she said. "All I've got to do is to tell Pa that you're a getaway and that'll cook your goose."

Cargill said with all the earnestness he could muster,

"I can't help that. I really don't know." He hesitated,
then
said, "What year is this?"

The moment he had asked the question he felt breathless.

He hadn't thought about it before. He hadn't had time. The clock in the glass-walled room in Shadow City had indicated that it was May 6th but not the year. Everything had happened too swiftly. Even his hazy questions to Ann Reece during those first minutes after arrival had been so weighted with emotion that the possibilities of being actually in the future hadn't fully penetrated.

Which future? What year? What had happened during the centuries that must have passed? Where? How? Who? He caught his whirling mind, fastened it down,
brought
it to focus. The most important fact was—what year?

Lela Bouvy shrugged and said, "Two Thousand Three Hundred and Ninety-One."

Cargill ventured, "What I can't understand is how the world has changed so completely from my time." He described the United States of 1954.

The girl was calm. "It was natural. Most people want to be free, not to have to live in one place or to be tied to some stupid work. The world isn't completely free yet. We floater folk are the only lucky ones so far."

Cargill had his own idea of a freedom where individuals depended on somebody else to repair their machines. But he was interested in information, not in exploding false notions. He said cautiously, "How many floater folk are there?"

"About fifteen million."

She spoke glibly but Cargill let the figure pass.

"And the Tweeners?" he asked.

"Three million or so." She was contemptuous. "The cowards live in cities."

"What about the Shadows?"

"A hundred thousand, maybe a little more or less. Not much."

Cargill guessed that she could not possibly know that those figures were accurate. She didn't appear the type of person who would be well-informed on such matters. But she did provide a picture of the age, and it filled a gap in his knowledge. He visualized wilderness, a few cities,
vast
numbers of floaters prowling at random through the lower skies. He nodded half to himself, parted his lips, and began: "I gather that the Shadows rule the roost."