Now it was happening again. A second stage man-machine was being constructed somewhere on some far planet—and Paynter did not know that, and I could not tell him. The post-hypnotic command was too strong for me. I could not betray the secret to Paynter even if I tried.
Which reminded me that Paynter now had my memories. His face was grayish as he watched me.
“That new type of matter we’ve just found in the Andromeda system,” he said. “I know what it is now. You called it the nekron.”
Then he must know as well that I was infected with the—the thing, that I was a carrier, a culture for that swift, slaying thing that no grip could hold.
But he did not mention it. Instead, in a troubled way, he began to talk about Belem.
“Belem was set the problem of opening the Betelgeuse system. Which is simple enough. But the Mechandroids are thorough. I suspect that Belem checked all the possible influential factors, and saw that nekronic matter exists in Andromeda on a planet of a sun ready to become a nova. “When that happens the violent explosion will carry the nekronic atoms, on light radiations, far into interstellar space—far enough to reach and infect Betelgeuse. For some reason I don’t know yet Belem decided the time-axis should be—” He paused, scowling. “Did he leave those notes purposely? Did he want us to open the time-axis chamber, Cortland?”
“How should I know?” I asked. “You’ve got all my memories now, haven’t you?”
“I think he did. But where is Belem now?” I knew that—but I couldn’t tell him.
“Why did Belem disappear? Why have a dozen other Mechandroids disappeared? Why didn’t they announce the problem publicly?”
He had forgotten he was still wearing the helmet. Now he lifted it slowly from his head and I followed his example. “Because they had to work in secret,” he said tentatively. “Now what could they do in secret that they couldn’t do with all the science of the Galaxy to help them? There’s only one thing. The Mechandroids must solve the problems set them—
“They are making a second-stage Mechandroid,” Paynter said flatly. “That must be what’s happening. Scylla and Charybdis then. For a super-Mechandroid is as certain a menace as the nekron itself.”
“But why?” I asked, prompted by a conviction that the devil I knew—the nekronic infection—was far worse than any manlike machine, no matter how perfected.
“Because the Mechandroids would probably obey it instead of us,” Paynter told me. “The Mechandroids are vulnerable because they’re partially human. A second-stage type probably wouldn’t be. When you consider the knowledge and skills the Mechandroids already have—and if they’re applying them to the creation of a mutation of their own—why, such a monster could easily be invulnerable. Suppose it worked on absolute logic? That might call for the extinction of all life-forms! I don’t know. No one knows. How can anyone think like a mutation from the Mechandroid type?”
I shook my head. “Don’t ask me. I’ve got my own problems. Those four asleep in the time-axis. There must be an answer somewhere, Paynter. There must be!”
“There is an answer.” He said it so soberly that I felt an instant’s chill in my own mind. I had good reason to feel a chill. Paynter went on in a very somber voice. “Now I’ll tell you the truth, Cortland,” he said.
15. Crumbling Flesh
The four silent figures lay deep in their age-old slumber in the chamber under the mountain. I saw them there again. I could feel the weight of the helmet on my head and I was this time fully aware of the Swan Garden around me and the sound of Paynter’s breathing at my side. But I was seeing the projection of a three-dimensional film. I was looking into the chamber as a camera’s eye had looked.
“This is the official record we made when we opened the cave,” Paynter said invisibly at my elbow. “Now watch carefully what happens. No one knows this but you and myself and the few technicians who were on the spot. We’ve kept it quiet. It’s so—so—well, watch and you’ll see.”
Nothing moved in the cave. Nothing had moved, I suppose, for a thousand years or more, not since all motion ceased when we sank into our long slumber. But now lights began to flash from beyond the gray egg of nothingness that walled us in. Paynter’s technicians were at work, trying to break that shell, trying to hatch out—what? Something terrifying. I knew that by the tone of Paynter’s voice.
The lights flashed and faded, glowed again, paled. Now the camera drew back and I could see Paynter himself, standing beside a group of workers and a battery of machines. All were intent upon the egg of time that held the sleepers.
It was curious to hear Paynter speak then—the Paynter of the cavern, speaking in the film, not the Paynter who sat beside me. Duplication piled upon duplication.
“What are the chances?” I heard him ask. “Are they going to wake?”
Murmurs answered him. After awhile, during which his eyes were very thoughtful upon the sleepers and upon the woman among the sleepers in particular, I heard him say in a musing voice, “We should have one of the entertainers here. If this is actually a time involvement, as you say, then these people will have been asleep a long while and they’ll feel bewildered when they wake.
“We need someone like—yes, Topaz—to speed their adjustment.” (I knew why he had thought of Topaz. I knew he had seen, without realizing it, the face of Topaz implicit in Dr. Essen’s sleeping face.)
“Send for Topaz,” he said firmly, his voice echoing in the cavern as ours had echoed once, a thousand years or many thousand of years before.
(Now perhaps this is as good a place as any for a word about the language he was speaking. It was certainly English but not as familiar a language as I write down. Any living tongue rapidly accumulates new words and phrases, drops old ones, assigns new meanings to words already in use, so that the colloquialisms of one generation are gibberish to the generation before it.
(The English we were speaking was changed, not a living language. Matter-transmission had spread civilization over a vast area and some common tongue was a necessity, but it couldn’t be a tongue that changed or it would soon cease to be a common language. So it wasn’t easy to follow what these people said around me—but it wasn’t impossible either.) The camera ground on for about thirty seconds more and then blurred briefly. Beside me Paynter spoke in a quick, impatient voice.
“Skip all that. It’s just more experiments. This was the period when they completed the analysis of the clothing and established the period from which it came as mid-Twentieth Century. It was about six hours after that before they breached the shell of force. I was notified and I sent for Topaz and came in myself for the finish. Now watch.”
The cavern took shape again before me. Clear in the bath of what was probably ultra-violet, because it brought the images out so clearly, the four sleepers lay. But this time there was a hum of activity around them. Men passed before the camera, obscuring it now and then, carrying lenses and long glowing tubes and angular things a little like sextants. I heard Topaz’s sweet high laughter and Paynter’s rebuke, “Watch,” Paynter said beside me. “It happened very suddenly.”