Chapter III

At Humanac's controls Roger Staghorn leaped to his feet in alarm as he saw what was happening on the screen.

Peccary had collapsed now. The two men were draping him across the bearded man's saddle. There wasn't an instant to lose! Staghorn leaped to the transmitter cell where Peccary's material body was seated, his eyes peacefully closed. Staghorn flipped the switch to disengage Peccary's consciousness from Humanac's circuits.

Nothing happened. Peccary's body remained as before, blissfully asleep.

Good lord, of course nothing happened! How could it? Peccary had just been knocked cold; at the moment he didn't _have_ any consciousness! Staghorn opened the circuit again and whirled back to the control console.

He looked at the screen. All three men were mounted again. The bearded leader gestured them on.

They set spurs to their horses and galloped away, taking the unconscious Peccary with them.

"No!" Staghorn shouted at the fleeing images. "No, Dr. Peccary! Stay in focus!" The horsemen paid no heed--nor did Staghorn expect them to, rationally. His shouts were only involuntary expressions of despair. Grasping the geographic locator, he twiddled it wildly, managing to keep the three riders in focus for several blocks as they sped down a street of the deserted town.

Then they rounded a corner and he lost them.

By the time he got a focus on the area around the corner they were gone. For several minutes he continued to search, shifting the focal point all over town, but in vain. Dr. Clarence Peccary was lost inside Humanac's labyrinthean brain!

Staghorn was stunned. There would be no difficulty in keeping Peccary's physical body alive indefinitely by intravenous feeding, but it was as good as dead while separated from its sense of identity. Worse yet were the probable consequences to Humanac of having a free soul loose in its mathematical universe. These were too dire to contemplate. The machine's reliability might be altogether ruined and Staghorn's life work destroyed. Under the circumstances there was but one course of action. He had to find Dr. Peccary and get him back into focus, so that he could be disengaged from the computer.

First Staghorn focused the geographic locator on the town square, the point from which Peccary had been abducted; from there he could begin tracking him. Next he set the time control so that it would automatically disengage the transmitter units in exactly three hours.

Whether or not he could find Dr. Peccary in that period of time Staghorn had no way of knowing; but at least he should be able to get himself back into focus at the proper moment. Then, in case he'd failed to find Peccary, he could reset the time clock and try again.

Next he opened a second transmitter unit, sat down on the little seat and pulled the helmet down on his head. As sensations of vastness and lost dimensions spread through him, he reached out and pressed down the switch that would pour his own brain impulses into Humanac's circuits.

* * * * *

Instantly, as with Dr. Peccary, Staghorn found himself standing in the little park.

He examined his hands and slapped his sides a few times, taking time to assimilate the fact that he felt perfectly solid. Ah, Bishop Berkeley was right all the time! The universe was subjective--a creation of consciousness!

He left off these speculations and recalled himself to his mission.

Glancing around, he saw that people were beginning to reappear. They came up from basements and out of the doors of the dilapidated houses and buildings. If there had been a panic, there was no sign of it now. The men and women moved indolently, returning toward the park and the sunlit streets. All were so much the same age and of such similar beauty that it was difficult to distinguish individual members of the same sex. But he finally recognized the girl Dr. Peccary had identified as Jenny Cheever. She had an attractive strawberry birthmark on her hip.

She strolled back into the park accompanied by a young man. The two of them took possession of the bench where Jenny had been seated earlier. They sat well apart from each other, silently contemplating the other passers-by.

Feeling that his knowledge of Jenny's name constituted a sort of introduction, Staghorn approached the couple. The man paid no attention to him but Jenny watched him curiously. Staghorn was not a man over whom women swooned, and it occurred to him that she found something odd about his dark suit and thick spectacles. He seemed to be the only man in town wearing either.

"How do you do," he said to her. "I believe you're Ben Cheever's daughter."

She continued to examine him languidly, slowly stroking a heavy strand of her auburn hair. "Am I?" she said at last. "It's been so long I've forgotten. But then I had to be someone's daughter and since my name is Cheever, you may be right. I don't remember you. We must have met ages and ages ago."

"This is the first time we've met. You were pointed out to me by a friend."

She considered this with a puzzled air, and, idly curious, said, "Do you want to marry me?"

"Good heavens, no!"

Jenny didn't seem to be insulted by his abruptness. "I just wondered why you'd speak to me," she said. "Because if you want to marry me you have to wait. I've promised to marry him first." She gestured to the man on the bench with her. The man looked at Staghorn for the first time.

"Yeah," he said.

* * * * *

"I see," said Staghorn. "And when is this ... merry event to take place?"

"Some day," Jenny said indifferently. "When we both feel like it. There's no use rushing things. I don't want to use up all the men too soon."

"Use them up?"

"He'll be my twenty-fifth husband."

"Yeah," said the man. "She'll be my thirty-second wife."

"Your marriages can't last very long," said Staghorn. Despite the physical attractiveness of both Jenny and her escort, Staghorn began to feel clammy in their presence. He had an impression of deep ill health, a sense of unclean, almost reptilian lassitude.

"They get shorter all the time," said Jenny, and turned away as though the conversation bored her. The man too had lost interest.

Staghorn stood ignored for a moment and then spoke bluntly.

"Who are the Atavars?"

The word produced the first genuine reaction. Jenny leaped to her feet. The man turned red.

"Don't say that word!" Jenny said.

"I'm sorry. I'm a stranger."

"No one can be that much of a stranger!"

"It's indecent," the man said. He stood up and touched Jenny's arm. "I feel my blood pounding. Let's go get married."

Jenny nodded and, with a cold glance at Staghorn, moved away with her companion. Staghorn was tempted to follow and demand an answer to his question when he saw Miss Terry approaching. Miss Terry was more likely to have the information he needed, and in any case--since she was only in her fifties--she was less than half of Jenny Cheever's age. He hoped this would make a difference in her attitude. That she was capable of emotion he already knew. Her expression, as she approached, was disconsolate.

Staghorn bowed low before her and introduced himself. "Good afternoon, Miss Terry. I'm a stranger to you but since you're a teacher by profession, you may have heard of me. I'm Dr. Roger Staghorn." He straightened, twisted his lips into a smile and waited for Miss Terry to associate his name with those scientific achievements that had so startled the world a hundred years earlier. To his chagrin Miss Terry only gazed at him blankly and shook her head.

* * * * *

"No," she murmured. Then tears formed in her eyes and she tried to move on. Staghorn stopped her.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm aware of your recent loss. Your pupil, Paul."

Her tears dropped more freely. "Sooner or later I knew they'd get him. The only child in town. And now I have nothing to do. Nothing at all!"

"They? Just who are they--the Atavars?"

Miss Terry turned pale. "Don't say it," she pleaded. "In time I'll forget."

"But where have they taken Paul? And what will they do with him?"

"He'll die, of course." She spoke these words almost indifferently, then wept copiously as she added, "But I'll live on with nothing to do!"

"Then why didn't someone stop them?" He gestured angrily at the handsome young males wandering through the park. "All these men--why don't they rescue Paul?"

This suggestion so shocked Miss Terry that she stopped weeping. "That's impossible! There'd be violence. Someone might get killed!"

"They think of _that_ with a boy's life at stake?" Staghorn felt his rage rising. He was an irascible man by nature and had controlled himself so far only because he knew he was part of an illusion. The sense of illusion was fading rapidly, however. The guiding principles of morals and ethics were themselves abstractions and therefore operated just as powerfully in an abstract universe. He grasped Miss Terry by the arm.

"I'll go after him myself. Where do I find him?"

"You can't find him! If you follow they'll capture you too!"

"I'll chance that! Where have they gone?"

"I can't tell you! They might punish me!"

Staghorn shook her heartily, ignoring the fact that she was over fifty. "Tell me! It so happens that besides Paul, they've captured Dr. Clarence Peccary, and I'm responsible for his life!"

At this statement Miss Terry let out a cry of horror. "They've caught Dr. Peccary? No! No!"

"They most certainly have. So hurry up and tell me--"

"We'll all die!" wailed Miss Terry. "We'll all die!"

"In that case it can't hurt you to tell me."

"The mountains!" cried Miss Terry. "High Canyon!"

It was with great difficulty that Staghorn forced directions from her. The news of Peccary's capture had unsettled her entirely. But despite the roughness with which he was forced to use her, no one came to her rescue. Several young men and women gathered at a safe distance to watch, but they did nothing to interfere.

* * * * *

Staghorn finally elicited the information that High Canyon was several miles north of town and could be reached by following a dirt road. To his inquiry as to where he could rent a car, Miss Terry went blank again. There were no cars. They had been abolished before Miss Terry was born. She thought there might be one in the museum.

Staghorn glanced at his watch.

He'd already been in the transmitter thirty minutes. He had only two and a half hours to get to High Canyon, rescue Dr. Peccary and Paul and return to the square. He dared not cut it too fine. He'd have to be back with a few minutes to spare.

So, after learning the location of the museum, he took off at a run.

It was evident that at some period in the past the town had gone through a surge of prosperity, for there were several quite majestic buildings whose cornerstones bore dates of the late twentieth century. But it was also clear that during the last fifty years not only had few new enterprises been started but the old ones had been allowed to languish. The museum even lacked an attendant at the door--unless one gave this title to the bust of Dr. Peccary which stood on a pedestal just inside the entrance. The plaque beneath the bust noted that Dr. Peccary had given the museum to the city in 1985 "to preserve for our immortal posterity a true picture of the world of mortals."

In the seven and a half decades since, however, this true picture had suffered badly.

In the absence of curtains and draperies, and in the nudeness of the mannekins whose purpose could only have been to display twentieth century costumes, Staghorn gained a hint as to where the populace got at least a part of the rags they wore. He didn't pause to examine details, however. A wall directory with a faded map of the building had given him the location of the wing of twentieth century machines. He headed there at once, passing by displays of tractors, bulldozers, jackhammers and other commonplaces before reaching the automobiles.

There was an excellent selection of standard and sports models, all a uniform gray under their coats of dust--and all of them out of gas.

After so long a time it was doubtful if any would have run anyway. He had simply hoped that one lone attendant might have kept one in working condition.

In the next room, however, he found the reward for his effort. Bicycles. He chose a racing model.

A few minutes later he was pedaling rapidly northward on the dirt road that led to High Canyon.