Cities in Flight

A month after their discharge from the hospital, Schloss, Jake and Retma called a joint conference. Schloss had back the frown he had worn during the last twelve hours of the experiment, and even the traditionally impassive Hevian looked disturbed. Amalfi’s heart turned over in his chest at his first glimpse of their expressions; they seemed to confirm every foggy apprehension of his dream.

“We have two pieces of bad news, and one piece of news which is wholly ambiguous,” Schloss said, without any preliminaries. “I don’t myself know in exactly what order I ought to present them; in that, I’m being guided by Retma and Dr. Bonner. It is their judgment that you all ought first to know that we have competition.”

“Meaning what?” Amalfi said. The mere idea, empty of detail, made him prick up his ears; perhaps that was why Retma and Bonner had wanted it placed first.

“Our missile recorded clear evidence of another body in the same complicated physical state,” Schloss said. “No such object could conceivably be natural in either universe; and this one was enough like ours to make us sure it came originally from our side.”

“Another missile?”

“Without any doubt—and about twice the size of ours. Somebody else in our universe had found out what the Hevians found out, and is investigating the problem further along the same lines that we are—except that they appear to have had a head start of three to five years.”

Amalfi pursed his lips soundlessly. “Any way of guessing who they are?”

“No. We guess that they must be relatively nearby, either in our own main galaxy or in Andromeda or one of its satellites. But we can’t document that; it’s below the five per cent level of probability, according to the City Fathers. All the other alternatives are way below five per cent, but where no solution is statistically significant, we aren’t entitled to choose between them.”

“The Web of Hercules,” Amalfi said. “It can’t be anything else.”

Schloss spread his hands helplessly. “It could well be anybody else, for all we know,” he said. “My intuition says just what yours says, John; but there’s no reliable evidence.”

“All right. That’s the ambiguous news, I gather. What’s the first piece of bad news?”

“You’ve already had it,” Schloss said. “It’s the second piece of news, which is ambiguous, that makes the first piece bad. We’ve argued a long time about this, but we’re now in at least tentative agreement. We think that it is possible—barely possible—to survive the catastrophe.”

Quickly, Schloss held up one hand, before the stunned faces before him could even begin to lighten with hope. “Please,” he said. “Don’t overestimate what I say in the least. It’s only a possibility, a very dim one, and the kind of survival involved will be nothing like human life as we know it. After we’ve described it to you, you may all much prefer to die instead. I will tell you flatly that that would be my preference; so this is not a white hope by any means. It looks black as the ace of spades to me. But—it exists. And it is what makes the news about the competition bad news. If we decide to adopt this very ambiguous form of survival, we must go to work on it immediately. It’s possible only under a single very fleeting set of conditions which will hold true only for micro-seconds, in the very bowels of the catastrophe. If our unknown competitors get there first—and bear in mind that they have a good head start—they will capture it instead, and close us out. It will be a real race, and a killing one; and you may not think it worth the pace.”

“Can’t you be more specific?” Estelle said.

“Yes, Estelle, I can. But it will take quite a few hours to describe. Right now, what you need to know is this: if we choose this way out, we will lose our homes, our worlds, our very bodies, we will lose our children, our friends, our wives, and every vestige of companionship we have ever known; we will each of us be alone, with a thoroughness beyond the experience of the imagination of any human being in the past. And quite possibly this ultimate isolation will kill us anyhow—or if it does not, we will find ourselves wishing desperately that it had. We should all make very sure that we want to survive that badly—badly enough to be thrown into hell for eternity—not Jorn the Apostle’s hell, but a worse one. It’s not a thing we should decide here and now.”

“Helleshin!” Amalfi said. “Retma, do you concur? Is it going to be as bad as that?”

Retma turned upon Amalfi eyes which were silver and unblinking.

“Worse,” he said.

The room was very quiet for a while. At last, Hazleton said:

“Which leaves us one piece of bad news left. That must be a dilly, Dr. Schloss; maybe we’d better have it right away.”

“Very well. That is the date of the catastrophe. We got excellent readings on the energy level on the other side, and we are all agreed on the interpretation. The date will be on or around June second, year Four Thousand one hundred and Four.”

“The end?” Dee whispered. “Only three years away?”