A. van Vogt: The Empire of Isher

“So that’s it!” he snapped. “The insulation is to prevent me losing any of that energy. That’s how it can make a ‘weight.’ I have no doubt there is a connection from this suit to that other machine. Well, it’s not too late.”

With a desperate twist, he tried to jerk aside, to evade the clutching hands of the four men who leaped at him. But they had him instantly, and their grips on him were strong beyond his power to break. The fingers of Peter Cadron jerked the zipper tight, and Peter Cadron said:

“Sorry, but when we went into that back room, we also dressed in insulated clothing. That’s why you couldn’t hurt us. And remember this: There’s no certainty that you are being sacrificed. The fact that there is no crater in our Earth proves that you did not explode in the past, and that you solved the problem in some other way. Now, somebody open the door, quick!”

Irresistibly, he was carried forward. And then—

“Wait!”

It was the girl. Her eyes glittered like dark jewels and in her fingers was the tiny, mirrorbright gun she had pointed in the beginning at McAllister. The little group hustling McAllister stopped as if they had been struck. He was scarcely aware. For him there was only the girl, and the way the muscles of her lips were working and the way her voice suddenly cried: “This is utter outrage. Are we such cowards—is it possible that the spirit of liberty can survive only through a shoddy act of murder and gross defiance of the rights of the individual? I say no! Mr. McAllister must have the protection of the hypnotism treatment; surely so brief a delay will not be fatal.”

“Lystra!” It was her father; and McAllister realized by his swift movement how quickly the older man grasped every aspect of the situation. He stepped forward and took the gun from his daughter’s fingers—the only man in the room, McAllister thought, who could dare approach her in that moment with the certainty she would not fire. For hysteria was in every line of her face; and the tears that followed showed how dangerous her stand might have been against the others.

Strangely, not for a moment had hope come. The entire action seemed divorced from his life and his thought; there was only the observation of it. He stood there for a seeming eternity, and, when emotion finally came, it was surprise that he was not being hustled to his doom. With the surprise came awareness that Peter Cadron had let go of his arm, and stepped clear of him.

The man’s eyes were calm, his head held proudly erect. He said, “Your daughter is right, sir. At this point we rise above our fears, and we say to this unhappy young man: ‘Have courage! You will not be forgotten. We can guarantee nothing, cannot even state exactly what will happen to you. But we say, if it lies in our power to help you, that help you shall have.’ And now—we must protect you from the devastating psychological pressures that would otherwise destroy you, simply but effectively.”

Too late, McAllister noticed that the others had turned their faces away from that extraordinary wall—the wall that had already displayed so vast a versatility. He did not even see who pressed the activating button for what followed.

There was a flash of dazzling light. For an instant he felt as if his mind had been laid bare; and against that nakedness the voice of Peter Cadron pressed like some engraving stamp: “To retain your self-control and your sanity—this is your hope; this you will do in spite of everything! And, for your own sake, speak of your experience only to scientists or to those in authority whom you feel will understand and help. Good luck!”

So strong remained the effect of that brief flaring light that he felt only vaguely the touch of their hands on him, propelling him.

He felt himself falling.

The village at night made a curiously timeless pictures. Fara walked contentedly beside his wife along the street. The air was like wine; and he was thinking dimly of the artist who had come up from Imperial City, and made what the telestats called—he remembered the phrase vividly—“a symbolic painting reminiscent of a scene in the electrical age of seven thousand years ago.”

Fara believed that utterly. The street before him with its weedless, automatically tended gardens, its shops set well back among the flowers, its perpetually hard, grassy sidewalks, and its street lamps that glowed from every pore of their structure—this was a restful paradise where time had stood still.

And it was like being a part of life that the great artist’s picture of this quiet, peaceful scene before him was now in the collection of the empress herself. She had praised it, and naturally the thrice-blest artist had immediately and humbly begged her to accept it. What a joy it must be to be able to offer personal homage to the glorious, the divine, the serenely gracious and lovely Innelda Isher, one hundred eightieth of her line.

As they walked, Fara half turned to his wife. In the dim light of the nearest street lamp, her kindly, still youthful face was almost lost in shadow. He murmured softly, instinctively muting his voice to harmonize with the pastel shades of night: “She said—our empress said— that our little village of Glay seemed to her to have in it all the wholesomeness, the gentleness, that constitutes the finest qualities of her people. Wasn’t that a wonderful thought, Creel? She must be a marvelously understanding woman.”

They had come to a side street, and what he saw about a hundred and fifty feet along, it stopped his words. “Look!” Fara said hoarsely.

He pointed with rigid arm and finger at a sign that glowed in the night, a sign that read:

Fara had a strange, empty feeling as he stared at the blazing sign. He saw that other villagers were gathering. He said finally, huskily, “I’ve heard of these shops. They’re places of infamy against which the government of the empress will act one of these days. They’re built in hidden factories and then transported whole to towns like ours and set up in gross defiance of property rights. That one wasn’t there an hour ago.” His face hardened. His voice had a harsh edge in it as he said, “Creel, go home.”

He was surprised when Creel did not move off at once. All their married life, she had had a pleasing habit of obedience that had made life a wonderful thing. He saw that she was looking at him wide-eyed, and that it was a timid alarm that held her there. She said, “Fara, what do you intend to do? You’re not thinking of—”

“Go home!” Her fear brought out all the determination in his nature. “We’re not going to let such a monstrous thing desecrate our village. Think of it—” his voice shivered against the appalling thought—“this fine, old-fashioned community, which we had resolved always to keep exactly as the empress has it in her picture gallery, debauched now, ruined by this…this thing—But we won’t have it; that’s all there is to it.”

Creel’s voice came softly out of the half-darkness of the street corner, the timidity gone from it. “Don’t do anything rash, Fara. Remember it is not the first new building to come into Glay—since the picture was painted.”

Fara was silent. This was a quality of his wife of which he did not approve, this reminding him unnecessarily of unpleasant facts. He knew exactly what she meant. The gigantic, multitentacled corporation, Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Shops, Inc., had come in under the laws of the State with their flashy building, against the wishes of the village council, and had already taken half of Fara’s repair business.