Robert turned to Gail. “And another thing: you can quit worrying. They aren’t going to hurt me. They’re trying their best to get something across to me, I’m sure of it; they’re even afraid that I won’t ever come back through when I leave. But why do they give me things like this?”
Hank looked dubiously at the plastic that became steel. “That,” he said, “is the prize question. I think an answer to that would clear the air a good bit.”
“It would,” Gail agreed. “It might offer some way to communicate with them. But what’s the answer?” She glared at Robert as if he were personally responsible for bringing this new enigma about. “You’re the only one who can tell us. Honestly, I sometimes think you’re just playing tricks on us. Or else you have a touch of imbecile about you.”
Ed Benedict, who had been examining the funny-putty thoughtfully, looked up slowly at Gail, his eyes suddenly wide. “You know, my girl, I think maybe you’ve hit the nail right on the head.”
The room was suddenly still. Robert blinked at his father, frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“These gadgets they’ve given to you,” Ed said. “And the way they’ve tried to keep you from crossing back. And your feeling that they are suddenly, desperately trying to contact you in some way, don’t those seem to add up to something?”
“Not much,” Robert said.
“Well, they do to me. I’m wondering if these gadgets aren’t intended as exactly what you ‘felt’ they were supposed to be.”
“You mean toys?” Robert said.
“Toys. And nothing more.”
Hank Merry shook his head. “It seems to me that this box affair is pretty potent for a toy.
Like handing a loaded pistol to a five-year-old and telling him to go play with it.”
“You mean that it seems to have some pretty potent properties over here,” Ed corrected him. “Not necessarily over there. Robert, what did that box appear like over there?”
“A bunch of fragments,” Robert said. “Certainly not like a box. Just a collection of perfectly impossibly shaped pieces without any functional connection at all. I’ve never seen anything exactly like it before, over there, although I’ve seen things that seemed very similar.
They’ve never stayed with me when I’ve crossed back, before, but now that I think of it—” He scratched his head. “I’m not even dead sure I was supposed to bring it back. Maybe that was some part of the pressure to stay that I felt. Maybe over there that box was a perfectly innocuous, harmless toy like the steel-clay is. Maybe it wasn’t until I brought it back through to this side that it became something dangerous or destructive. Something it wasn’t supposed to be at all!”
“Even so, it doesn’t make sense,” Hank said. “If they’re so upset about something over there, and if you’re their only real contact with this side where the disturbance seems to be coming from, why would they be fooling around giving you playthings?”
“Well, think about it!” Ed Benedict said, suddenly excited. “Assume that they’re really in trouble, desperate trouble of some kind. And assume they think the trouble originates over here. Then take Robert, wandering back and forth for years, without hindrance, to them a person or thing or being that has access to this side. What better liaison could they look for?
What better ambassador, if they could only find some kind of symbol that he could understand and reply to? Wouldn’t they leap at the chance?”
“Probably. But why toys?”
They sat silently for a moment. Suddenly Robert laughed. “Dad, whom do you give toys to in your laboratory?”
Ed Benedict looked startled. “Why, to—to—” He blinked at Robert in amazement, then burst out laughing too. “Of course. What else? I think you’ve hit it on the head!”
“Hit what on the head?” Hank asked, now thoroughly confused.
“The answer. Of course these things are toys! It just never entered my mind—” He broke off. “Look, as Robert knows, we get lots of strange specimens in the Hoffman Center psych-testing labs. Murderers, psychopaths, persecution complexes, the works. We get frightened children and senile old men, mentally impaired youngsters, feeble-mind children, withdrawn children living in such a fog we can’t find any way to reach them. All kinds, and always the same problem: getting through to them. Some patients just won’t talk or respond at all. Some won’t do anything but sit in a corner and blubber, or cringe whenever anybody comes near. Some are so deranged and violent we have to stop them from screaming and climbing the walls long enough even to get their attention. And some may be so far out, so feeble-minded that we can’t even find word-symbols we can use that will register with them.”
Ed Benedict smiled. “In cases like that, when we have to make some kind of contact, there’s a technique we use—simple and kind and often very effective. We approach the deranged or feeble-minded patient and offer him candy. Or a toy.”
“Well,” Gail snapped, “that’s fine for a mental case, or a feeble-minded child. But you can’t pretend that Robert is—”
“Feeble-minded? Not here, I can’t. On this side, Robert is a very bright, clever, perceptive young man. Too bright for his own good, sometimes. He handles problems logically and usually gets the right answers. He uses words and symbols very well, and he’s learning how to use them better all the time, over here. But on the Other Side—” The man looked at his son sadly. “I’m afraid that these toys mean just one thing. As far as the people on the Other Side can tell, Robert is nothing more nor less than a blabbering idiot. And if that is the case, and he is our sole ambassador to these people on the other side, our one and only hope of making meaningful contact with them, then we may be in trouble that nobody can get us out of.”
—17—
For the first time since the transmatter had started working, and the day Robert Benedict had had his first jolt of fright on the Other Side, it seemed that they had nailed down something solid. Something that meant something, that made sense. The point of a wedge driven into an impenetrable surface, a foot in the door, one simple fact that might be true on the far side of that vague, mysterious Threshold they were facing that could also be understood in its true meaning on this side.
And it was a fact they couldn’t use. A depressing, infuriating, frustrating fact that couldn’t be acted upon, tantalizing as it was. A fact that didn’t help, that even seemed to dash all hope of help.
They turned it over in every direction they could think of, sitting there in the Benedict living room with its ruined wall, its strange pile of dust and the two specimens on the table before them—a misshapen lump of black plastic that turned to cast steel on command and a wildly dangerous gray box with beveled edges, sealed seams and four studs along the bottom. Who could say what devastation would result from pressing the other three studs?
None of them cared in the slightest to find out.
Robert lay on the couch, half-dozing part of the time, aching in every bone and so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. Ed and Gail were talking urgently, trying to think through the implications of the idea, unable to hide their concern for Robert, worried at the price these trips through to the Other Side were already chalking up in terms of physical exhaustion, and frightened now at whatever nameless dangers he might face if he crossed through again (or was pulled through again; there was that also to consider now, all the more frightening because there was no way they could think of to prevent it or control it). Hank Merry paced the floor, McEvoy’s panic call still fresh in his mind, with the ever-present awareness that a machine, his machine, his own creation, was somehow not obeying the commands it was given any longer, and was drawing them all into some kind of vortex of fury that he didn’t even dare think of. They talked, and argued, and flared up in anger, and cooled down again, seeking somehow to find some answer that seemed to make some sense or offer some hope.