"That City is really Nekropolis and there are no outlying villages to carry on, no outlying cultures rising toward fruition. In all that world there is only the one great City where mankind survives. And they aren't men – they are gods. Gods, sir!"
"Then it can't really be a nekropolis," I objected.
"It need not be. That's up to us."
"How?"
"You saw my hearth. Dr. Essen showed you the stain of plague that is creeping across it. Oh yes, my friend, that stain is spreading! Slowly, but with a rate of growth that increases as it goes. The negative matter – no, not even negative. Not even that. But it happened to the world of the Face. That whole planet is nekronic matter except for the City itself.
"You didn't sense that from your first experience with the Record? No? You will. The people in the City can't save themselves by direct action on the world around them. They appeal to us. We can save them. I don't yet know how. But they know or they wouldn't have appealed in just the way they did."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Let me get this straight. You're asking me to accept a lot, you know. The only premise I've got to believe in is the – the Record. But what do you want from me, personally? How do I come into it? Why me?"
De Kalb shifted in his chair, sighed heavily, opened his fingers and peered at the orange he held as if he had never seen it before. He grimaced.
"Sir, you're right. I accept the rebuke. Let me give you facts. Item, the Record. It is, in effect, a book. But not a book made by human minds. And it must, as you know, be experienced, not read. Each time you open the box you will get the same flash of complete vision, and each time you will forget a little less as your mind is conditioned. But there will always be facets of that tremendous story which will elude us, I think. Our minds can never wholly grasp what lies inside that box ...
"It was found in Crete. It had lain there perhaps three thousand years, perhaps five thousand – I think, myself, a million. It came into my hands half by accident. I could not open it. Off and on I tried. That is my habit. I used X-rays to look through the substance of the box. Of course I saw nothing.
"I detected radioactivity, and I tested it with certain of the radio-elements. I exposed it to supersonics. I – well, I tried many things. Something worked. Something clicked the safety, so that one day it opened. You see – " He looked at me gravely. "You see, it was time."
"Time?"
"That box was made with a purpose, obviously. It was sent to us, with a message. I say to us but the aim was less direct. It was sent through time, Mr. Cortland – through time itself – and the address said simply, 'To be opened only by a skilled technological civilization.' "
"All right," I said. "Suppose it came through time. Suppose it's an appeal for help. I didn't get that, but I'm willing to believe I might if I opened the box often enough. But why do you assume this is a living issue, here and now? You imply the fate of the City depends on us. If that box is as old as you say, isn't it more likely the City of the Face existed somewhere in the prehistoric past?
"They made a record – I can't deny that. They cast it adrift in time like a note in a bottle and it floated ashore here and we read it. Sure. But it makes a good enough news-story for me the logical way – a relic of a dead civilization a million years old. That I could write. But – "
"You are not here to write a news story, sir!" De Kalb's voice was sharp.
"That's what my contract says I'm here for."
"You were chosen," De Kalb said heavily. "You were chosen. Not by Allister. Not by me." He shifted uneasily. "Let me go on a little." He peered at the orange, tossed it up and caught it with a smack in his palm. "I opened the box for the first time," he said, "in my studio.
"You've seen it. I saw the box unfolding like a flower. For the first time in a million years – opening up in four dimensions, or perhaps more than four, with that tesseract motion which the eye can only partly see. But that first time, sir – something more happened." He paused, hesitated, said in a reluctant voice, "Something came out of the box."
I waited. Dr. Essen, who had scarcely moved since this talk began, got up abruptly and went to stand at the window, her back to us, looking out over the great brown tumble of mountains beyond.
"It came out of the box," De Kalb said in a rapid voice, as if he didn't want to talk about this and was determined to get it over as fast as he could. "It passed me. It leaped toward the fireplace. And it was gone. When I looked, I saw nothing. But that evening I noticed the first spot of the stain upon the stone. In the stone. It meant little to me then – I had not yet learned enough from the Record to be afraid. But I know now."
4. THE LAURENTIAN STORY
Again I waited. This time I had to prompt him.
"Know what?"
"The nekron," he said. "It's growing. It will never stop growing, until – " He paused, shrugged. "We have to believe they're in the future," he said. "We have to help them. They made sure of that. For unless we do the nekron will grow and grow until our world is like theirs – dead matter. Inert. Nekronic. I call it that because it is death.
"An absolutely new form of matter, the death of energy. It breaks a supreme law of our universe, the law of increasing entropy. Entropy trends toward chaos, naturally. But the nekron is the other extreme, a pattern, a dead null-energy pattern of negation."
"You mean," I demanded, "that the people of the City deliberately set a trap for the man who first opened the box?"
"They had to. They had to make sure we'd answer their appeal to save ourselves."
"Then you're convinced they exist in the future, not the past?"
"You saw the Face. You were aware, you say, of the waves of civilization rising and falling between our time and theirs? How can you doubt it, then, Mr. Cortland?"
I was silent, remembering.
"It doesn't matter," De Kalb went on. "That question is purely academic. Past or future is all one in the time-fabric you will understand better after you've opened the box again."
"But," I said, "how can we help them? If they can't destroy the menace to their own world, whatever it is, how could we? It's ridiculous. And anyhow, if time-travel was possible for the box – which I don't for a moment really accept – how could it be possible for tangible, living men from our time? And if it were, how could you be sure you weren't dashing off to save a city that would prove when you found it to be already dead? Overwhelmed a million years ago? How is it – "
"No, no, Mr. Cortland!" De Kalb held up a large hand with an orange balanced on its palm. "You have so much to learn! Allow me the intelligence to think of those objections myself! Surely you don't imagine all that hadn't occurred to me already?
"The answer is that the nekron can be destroyed – or at least that the problem it poses can be solved. I believe it can be solved only by this method – three men and one woman must go into the future age that holds the Face of Ea. For that, apparently, was the original plan of the people of the Face."
"What makes you so certain of that?"
"A number of factors. The Record was sent to our civilization, remember?"
I had him there. "But it was found in Cretan ruins, you said."