Ross Rocklynne - The Diversifal.pdf - Ross Rocklynne - widez2

THE DIVERSIFAL

ROSS ROCKLYNNE

(Selected from The Best of Planet Stories, 1975)

"NO," said the shadowy man who sat high above the floor on the chair of the

time-machine, "you can't do that."

"Can't, eh?"

"No!"

"Sorry."

For a second, Bryan was shaken with indecision. This is intolerable, he thought. I'll

turn the doorknob. After all, he has no real jurisdiction over any actions. Nor has he,

in spite of the stakes involved, any right to meddle in my life the way he has.

His rebel thoughts endured for only that second. His grip loosened on the doorknob,

his gloved hand fell away. He actually took a few steps backward, as if he would

negate that action which led toward disaster. Then he turned quickly, urged his

undernourished body back up the threadbare hall, into his equally threadbare room.

Off came his shapeless hat, and overcoat which was ripped at seams and pockets,

and he sat down, brain numb, the sensations of his stomach forgotten in the greater

hunger.

Where is she? Who is she!

He did not have the courage to meet the cold eyes of the man who sat in shadowy

outline amongst nebulous, self-suspended machinery, although that being watched

him with merciless inflexibility of purpose. He had only the courage to speak, while

his eyes fixed dully on the gingerbreaded metal bed with its sagging mattress.

"The Alpha Group?"

"The Alpha Group," the shadowy man spoke coldly, in agreement, "Punctus four.

You would have met her."

"I thought so. I felt it."

"You felt nothing of the sort. You have an exaggerated notion of the perceptive

qualities of your psyche."

"I named the Alpha Group," said Bryan wearily.

"Because for the first three or four years of our association, the Alpha Group will

predominate. And because you have come to associate certain of my facial

expressions and tonal qualities with the group. There was no telepathic pick-up from

the girl. She is not aware that you exist. Nor will she ever be aware, as long as you

choose to work in close collaboration with me – and as a humanitarian yourself, you

will not refuse to collaborate."

Bryan leaned back in the worn armchair, grinning twistedly, though his heart was lead

in his breast. He held the longlashed eyes of the god-like creature with a flickering

sidewise glance. "Perhaps you will choose to stop collaborating with me."

The nostrils of the being flared. "No. Never. We will continue-we must continue to

work together until the Alpha, Delta, and Gamma groups are exhausted – "

"Or until – "

"Or until I commit suicide as you suggested."

"Yes."

Bryan lost his tensity, and his fear that he could not bear it, might disobey a

command from this creature. Suddenly, he was amused. Bryan was chained to this

creature, but no less than this creature was chained to him; chained to him for ten

long years, or until he might take his own life.

Creature? Yes'. For certainly any animal that is not homo sapiens is a creature. Even

if he be homo superior, of the year Eight-hundred thousand A.D., and has invented a

time-machine, and has but one powerful, compelling thought in mind – to save the

human race. Or that race of creatures which had stemmed from the human race. That

was it. After fighting and imagining, aspiring and succeeding, for a good many

millions of years, man was about to be snuffed out. So the shadowy being – homo

superior – had told Bryan on that day a week ago when he had appeared in this room.

The human race, far in the future, would destroy itself unless – unless Bryan Barret did

not do something that he had done; did not become something that he had become.

The thoughts of the creature had impinged on his brain clearly after the first

moments of fright. Bryan had listened, and believed.

"So I'm a diversifal," he had muttered. "Bryan Barret, liberal, radical, diversifal."

"You are a diversifal. I can coin no other word for it."

"And she is a diversifal."

"Yes!"

"And, our child would be a mutant."

"Yes.

"I, thought," Bryan had said, his thoughts sinking heavily into a morass of

intangibles, "I thought, if one wants to follow the theory to its logical conclusion,

that there are an infinite number of probable worlds."

"Are there?" The depthless eyes of the being, looking down at Bryan from his

shadowy height above the floor, had been contemptuous with disinterest. "I know of

only two. They are the only two with which I am concerned. A thousand years in my

future they warred – and humanity destroyed itself. This I know. This I must prevent.

From your unborn mutant child my race stems."

"Your race?" Bryan had exclaimed.

"Yes."

"You are seeking to prevent your own world of probability?'

"Yes." The long-lashed eyes flickered. The being leaned forward a little, staring

down at Bryan. "Why not, Bryan Barret? Does it matter? It is my world of

probability which discovered the manner of traveling to the other world. It is my

world which waged the war. It is my world, your world, which is – will be at fault. I

am selfless. You know what it is to be selfless. You can understand. And, after all,

you are the diversifal – the splitting factor."

Bryan was inwardly shaken. The selfless superman. Or, and this was more likely, the

selfless scientist. The picture, in its entirety, had come quite clearly to Bryan Barrett.

He was a diversifal, because in him impinged events any of which might lead to the

creation of a certain time-branch; a time-branch which must not be created if

humanity in a far distant era were to survive. The concept of worlds of if was not

new to Bryan, nor was the idea of the, future of man outside his thoughts. He dealt

with the future, with the liberation of man from his bondage to tyranny. He was

fighting for a future wherein man would know no poverty, no social backwardness;

for a time when man could come into his own, blossom forth and make true use of

the boundless resources that were possible. Small wonder, then, that he could

accept the idea of a man from the far future without trouble, and could decide to

give ten years of his life to the cause for which this man from the future was fighting.

But already the first week of that ten years had become a nightmare.

"You've kept me here," he now told the being, "three days, without any food except

some stale cakes. Why?"

"Because the events of the Alpha Group are worked around your every probable

action like a net. If you left this house before morning, you would meet her." His

sharp-pointed face turned hard. "The psychological data I have on her is sketchy. I

can control your actions. I cannot control hers, nor guess what they would be. And

also, had you left here at any time during the last three days, you would have made

an acquaintance whom you would not see again for eight, perhaps nine years."

"The Gamma Group!"

"The Gamma Group. That acquaintance would show up as a probable event in the

Gamma Group which would lead to tickets to a musical comedy in a New York – " He

stopped speaking, but Bryan Barret, without knowing it, was watching him with

cunning expression. The man from the future sneered. "Your obvious, unconscious

desire to trick me would sicken even you, Bryan. Every word I speak is to your

unconscious merely a clue to her identity. You must fight that."

Sweat started on Bryan's square, thinning face. He bowed forward, feeling as if he

were about to burst. "I can leave here tomorrow morning?" His voice was muffled.

"Yes. And your way of life must change. You will go to Hannicut, editor of The

Daily News-Star, and tell him you'd like to take that job he offered you last year."

Bryan came to his feet in a blaze of anger. "No! You know why I didn't take that

job!"

"I know why. But it is still necessary for you to lose your integrity if we are to

succeed. Go to Hannicut and tell him you're willing to falsify the news either by

commission or omission. Also you -will cancel your membership in the so-called

radical organization, Freedom For All. And in any other liberal organization you may

belong to."

He looked calmly down into Bryan's stricken, agonized face. "I know what those

associations mean to you – and to freedom-loving men everywhere. I am truly sorry. I

conceive the future to be more important than this present, however. This, Bryan

Barrett, is your first step to wealth and power. A financial gulf must be created as an

additional precaution between you and her. A gulf that a poverty-stricken person can

never cross. She is poor. She will always be poor..."

It was strange the way that nightmarish week turned into a month, that month into a

year. Hannicut, editor of The Daily News-Star, performed a blunder from the

viewpoint of the man who owned that newspaper and a hundred others throughout

the world: He printed a story which told the truth about a recent labor-big business

dispute. Hannicut's boss fired him, and in elevating Bryan Barret to the post warned

him never to give labor a break, else he'd go the way of Hannicut.

"Take the job," came the cold thoughts of the man from the future, and his name

Bryan Barret now knew – Entore.

Bryan got the first damp issue back from the pressroom the next day, and looked at

it with sickened eyes. He left the office with his hat pulled low over his eyes.

Newsboys were hawking the edition – big scareheads which told of another strike in

the coalmines, and never mentioned one word about the strike a certain big business

corporation was pulling against the government. Which never said a thing about the

filibuster a certain senator had pulled in Congress to defeat a pro-minority bill.

In the second week of Bryan's editorship, he started to leave the office. Back in

Bryan's hotel suite, Entore, man from the future, sent another wordless command.

"Do not leave the office now."

"No?" Bryan muttered the word from the graying mustache he now wore.

"No. Two men are waiting downstairs – two rowdies front the Freedom For All

League. They are intending to throw bricks."

Bryan's fists clenched. "There are no rowdies in the Freedom For All League. No

matter what the newspapers claim."

"These men once knew you, when you fought tyranny together. They are

law-abiding men. But something has snapped in them. In their eyes, you are a traitor.

They could never punish you by law. They are willing to sacrifice their own lives if

they can kill you."

"Thanks."

Bryan sank into a chair in the corner of his office. His head bowed, and he knew

there was gray in his hair, gray that the last year had put there. Later Entore spoke

again. Bryan left.

He had no sooner reached the street and signaled a taxi than Entore spoke again.

"Do not take that taxi. Walk one block left. The Alpha Group. That taxi will have a

minor street accident. Among those who gather in the crowd will be she."

Bryan stood with his hand upraised. The taxi was sloping in toward him. His heart

thudded. He felt a voiceless, impassioned longing, as if a mind, a human mind, were

reaching across distances and touching his without saying anything. Her mind. Then

he turned and walked one block left and took another taxi. He sat in the taxi, cold

and graying, a man who was rising in power and wealth as the editor of a great

metropolitan daily. A man who by all the rules of human conduct was a quisling of

the worst sort. Yet, could they, his former friends and fellow fighters, know what

hell he was going through now because he was looking farther into the future than

they could ever hope to look? They were fighting against the corruptness of present

civilization. Someday their fight would bear fruit in a nationwide, and later on a

worldwide, Utopia. Bryan Barret had been forced to look farther ahead than that. To

and beyond the year 800,000 A.D. They would never understand.

"Turn your head to the right," came the command.

Automatically Bryan turned his head. "Why?" he asked dully.

"The Gamma Group, seven years from now. Had you kept your eyes on the left side

of the street, Punchis nineteen of the Gamma group would have occurred. You

would have seen a woman who resembled your mother so strongly that later on, this

week you would write a letter to her in your hometown, wondering if she had been in

New York. She would have answered quickly, wondering why you wrote so seldom,

and telling you she hadn't been in New York, but that, come to think of it, she would

make the trip to see you. You would have met her in Penn Station, and in the

excitement would have lost your billfold. A traveler would have found the billfold,

Ross Rocklynne - The Diversifal.pdf

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