Chapter V: Head Start

Leader Kingston shook his head. "Bronson is dangerous to us," he said.

Maddox nodded. "If his tale is believed Earth One will arm against invasion."

"Correct. Properly to save us trouble the invasion must take place against small armed odds. Otherwise, instead of our finding a world decimated and wearied by war, we'll find a world with its wits sharpened and its anger high."

Maddox turned the focus knob to readjust the image that had fuzzed a bit because of a varying line voltage. He pointed to Bronson's image, struggling against the policemen.

"He's in a fix right now," he said.

Kingston nodded dubiously. "But he'll not remain there," he said. "Bronson is suspected of being paranoid right now. Any man coming to high authority with such an unbelievable tale of alien entities or time-divided worlds would be suspected of insanity. But before anybody tries to cure him, they will give him their most extensive tests to prove or disprove his sanity.

"It is a fundamental principle that no man need be subjected to treatments or cure that needs them not. It is a violation of human integrity to attempt to cure a man of delusions who has no instability. Therefore they will apply the last word in checks and tests and discover that Bronson is not insane.

"Once they discover his stability they will admit the shadow of a doubt. Only the completely insane will not admit their error or possibility of error. An honestly sane man will admit--however grudgingly--the possibility of anything, even to alien entities and split time-continua."

"Then--?"

"Then let them listen but once to his flanged-up space resonator. His is a fine spectacle, you admit--about as neat and as efficient as the First Radio Receiver. On such, many people are making many transmissions of all sorts. Obviously, Maddox, the state of the art is higher than the technical efficiency of Bronson's gadget which to men of science will mean that there is something to Bronson's story. Follow?"

Maddox nodded. "The men who know will have sufficient knowledge to evaluate the negative evidence. They know of no such technique."

"Exactly," nodded Kingston. "Precisely. This we must stop!"

"This we can stop," said Maddox.

"How?" demanded Kingston sharply.

Maddox made a wry grin. "Watch," he said. He turned to the kinescope screen once more and watched Ed Bronson prowling the lonely cell....

For the thirtieth time, Ed Bronson paced his tiny cell. It was hopeless. Everything mobile was too large and soft to use as tool or weapon--for either egress or self-destruction. His clothing had been removed forcibly and Ed Bronson seethed angrily, dressed in only his skin.

He realized that he had been a fool. Had he been less violent he might not be so well incarcerated. He should have known that no amount of physical struggle would get him anything. After all he had striven against greater numbers of men who were all trained in the art of handling men possessed of the strength of the insane.

Bronson had only the strength of the indignant, which was far from the unreasonable power of the insane. With the use of a small amount of foresight, Ed Bronson knew that he might have been in a room less bare, perhaps one in which the door had not been bolted, barred and locked.

Bronson, it must be told, was not aware of the fact that the men who held him were also used to prisoners possessed of the cunning of the insane. No amount of cajolery, honest protest, supine acquiescence or willing aid would have made them do other than lock, bolt and bar his door.

What Bronson needed was a friend....

Maddox smiled with grim humor. "We cannot silence him now."

Kingston nodded, his face clearing of its slight frown. "Good man," he breathed.

"Nor," said Maddox, looking at the cell depicted on the kinescope tube, "can we aid him to escape."

"To kill him inside of that room would most certainly prove to them that enough of his tale is true to make them suspicious. Even to open that room and let him out will prove to them that there is more than the agency of a single man at work."

"In other, terser words," grunted Maddox, "he has placed himself in a position where he has life insurance--only in the name of Earth Three."

"And you see to it that he stays alive, suspect and helpless!" snapped Kingston.

"That I shall do," nodded Maddox. "That I shall do!"

"Unless, of course, he is threatened by death with both killer and motive indigenous--or apparently so--to Earth One."

* * * * *

Peter Moray turned to Virginia Carlson and shook his head. "Won't work," he said.

"Why not?" she asked.

Moray explained. His explanation was almost identical to that of Kingston and Maddox. To hurl a man into an asylum for hallucination is all well and good. To protect society, for any number of reasons all directed at the protection of society, from the maniac or to protect the maniac from society is sound.

Yet no man can be incarcerated very long if he is sane and wants to get out. It is as difficult for a sane man to fake insanity as it is for an insane man to fake insanity.

"So what do we do now?" asked Virginia.

"We should have eliminated him at once," snapped Moray. "Confound it, I was sleeping. I thought he might be useful."

"You were wrong," she said. "It seems to me that we might as well give him the works. I'll go down and see that he is taken care of."

* * * * *

Peter Moray nodded. Bronson had seen Moray but had never seen Virginia. In fact, Bronson knew only Virginia's last name. That was a help. Also, Virginia was a very good looking young woman and the power of a beautiful woman who speaks with certainty is great. She was also a capable calculator and could plan her campaign as she went along. Moray nodded, and Virginia headed for the asylum.

In her handbag, Virginia carried a small automatic. Bronson was a threat. The threat must be eliminated. The lover's quarrel perhaps or, better, he was in the asylum for paranoia. Why not have him attack her? Self-defense is a good alibi and her story would be strengthened by the doctor's decision. She smiled cryptically.

Supposing she were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to the gas chamber? By the time the trial came to its end, the invasion would be ready and the first act of the men of Earth Two would be to rescue Virginia from her cell. She had everything to gain, nothing to lose by acting--and there was an entire world dependent upon her.

Confidently Virginia opened the door of Bronson's house and headed down the street. It was her first venture outside along the ways of Earth One.

In the morning, from her home, there were two lights in the sky, one a disc rising in the east, one a blinding glare that rendered the disc ineffective. Albuquerque never really knew night nor had it during the course of Virginia Carlson's life. Here, however, there was but the shining sun and Virginia found the streets a bit sheltered, shadowed, compared to the streets of her home.

But--the thought came to her--this was her home! She walked along the same street as the one she lived on. She looked across the street from Bronson's front steps and saw her own number there. It was a different house but none the less it was her number. It was sandwiched between two other houses whose outlines and architecture she recognized.

The street light was there, recognizable, though this one was not the remaining remnant of the pre-Alamogordo era. The one in her Albuquerque had not been used in the course of her life, though it had not been removed.

The street-car line was still on the next corner, and the cars that ran might have been the same--could they have been? Interested, Virginia waited until one came along and, though she could not be certain, it seemed the same.

It was a matter of interest to find out whether the same cars plied the same tracks in two different time streams. This seemed at once paradoxical and quite possible, for Virginia had seen both her own street address with a new house on the location, and the houses on either side which were older than Alamogordo and recognizable.

Virginia walked on slowly, a number of things running through her mind. Even though the city seemed the same, there was quite a difference. The population was thick here, not thinned out by radiation-sterility. The people were smiling and unafraid. On no face was that look of stark wonder and fear that never left the faces of the people of Earth Two even though they had been born and bred under the blinding light of the Alamogordo Blow-up.

Nor were there the mutants.

That was what made the most difference. In her life and counted among her friends were strange biological forms, often unhuman. There was, for instance, a fellow called Thomas Lincoln whose eyes grew on stalks and was quite a man at work on large machinery because he could see deep within the machine without having to rely on mirrors or the sense of touch.

His eyes, when extended, could either assume the proper distance for perspective, could narrow or widen the angle of perspective--and his mind, trained over the years, made due allowance so that he knew and accepted these differences.

There was Greene, the man whose hands had a palm on either side and whose fingers could bend to make a fist on either the inside or the outside of the arm. This might seem good, but it presented a lack of firmness. Greene's hands were far weaker than Harrison's, whose hands had but three fingers with twin thumbs on either side, making the hand symmetrical.

* * * * *

Her girl-friend, Edna, secreted pure metal instead of pigment and her skin and hair had a metallic sheen that was rather beautiful. In a strong light, Edna's skin and hair were almost luminous, like iridescent paint. There was the fellow that lived on the corner--Virginia never knew his name--who had a double knee and elbow. This made for physical instability.

There were others. Some were interesting from functional standpoints, some were interesting from banal standpoints. Others were just horrible and many were viciously dangerous. But many of them were her friends. Virginia had grown up without one iota of prejudice regarding the shape of a man's body, the color of his skin, or the nationality of his father. For in a life where few men were as simply mutated as to have a mere skin coloration, all of the former prejudices were so minor in the face of the acceptance of the more violent differences that to accept the latter meant complete disregard of the former.

This world contrasted sharply with Virginia's world. To see people walking freely in the streets, pursuing their normal life, was puzzling. Virginia, born in the glare of Alamogordo, under a culture that had devoted itself completely to one main idea or to the secondary or tertiary support of those who pursued that idea, this freedom was inexplicable.

In Virginia's world, there were two classes of people--those who worked directly on the problem of saving their world in one way or another and those who worked to support those who worked on the problem. Farmers produced so much, by law. Book dealers sold so many kinds of books, produced by printers and publishers who did exactly what was needed and no more. Entertainment and relaxation was far from spontaneous.

People did not collect at random and throw a party on the spur of the moment nor could one decide to go out and buy a magazine and read it instead of cleaning out the basement. Though it was admitted as such, it was an emergency dictatorship, with the Alamogordo Blow-up as main dictator. Regulation was the order of the years.

Earth One was, to Virginia, completely unregulated. Women walked along the streets idly, looking in windows and smiling at men. The sign "Bar" intrigued Virginia. She was no stranger to the potable qualities of alcohol, but the concept of an establishment directed at the sole idea of selling drinks had not occurred to her.

This--recall--was Virginia's first experience in living in a world not harassed by fear.

She paused at a window showing an assortment of dresses on well-made forms. In her world, Virginia was a good-looking woman and dressed as well as the next.

In contrast to a world where much time and energy was directed at luxury instead of the sheer, vicious necessity driven of hope and despair--in a world where the accolade of young womanhood is to be permitted her first trip to mother's beauty salon and thereafter make obeisance regularly--Virginia, a beauty in her own world, knew that here she was as conspicuous as a tall telephone pole in a snowbound prairie.

She knew because the window before which she stood reflected her own hand-made dress against the luxurious mannequin inside the window.

Moray had been correct in his assumption that a beautiful woman could get away with more than a plain one. His only mistake was in not judging alien demands for grooming. And yet it was not a true mistake. It was rooted in sheer ignorance.

Virginia wondered. Money? Coinage does not change very often. But the few coins she had in her bag would not cover the two figures to the left of the decimal point--iffing and providing that they were still good.

There was, on her right hand, her mother's diamond. On her left wrist was a wristwatch of quite ancient vintage--Virginia automatically called it "Pre-Blast"--which might bring a few dollars.

Virginia turned from the window and went across the street to a pawnshop. She emerged with a handful of greenbacks, re-crossed the street and entered the ladies' shop. With satisfaction Virginia noted a beautician's place next door and, though rather questioning of the nefarious arts that might go on behind the curtains, Virginia was determined to compete with her contemporary girl-friends on an even basis--perhaps with a fair head start!