Damon Knight: Beyond the Barrier

He crumpled the paper, tossed it aside, stood up. Slowly a plan began to take shape in his mind.

In the first place, he must assume that he was under constant observation, even here in his own apartment. Even if he had the money, he could not take the risk of buying a weapon of any kind.

He looked at his broad, powerful hands, the thick fingers.

Once, challenged by another student, he had bent a piece of iron pipe in half. The aliens had already made it clear that they were afraid of him… and, Naismith told himself grimly, they had good reason.

He set about acting a part for an invisible audience. Preparing to go out, he counted the change in his pockets, closed his fist on the few coins with a gesture of anger.

He walked for an hour through the streets of Beverly Hills, head down, shoulders slumped; then he visited an ex-classmate and tried to borrow money. The man was an electrical engineer named Stevens; he looked startled at Naismith’s request, but handed over five dollars, apologizing, “Sorry I’m a little short this week, Naismith, but if this is any help—”

Naismith took it, walked two blocks as before, then abruptly threw the money into the gutter. He said aloud, “I’ve got to give in to them. I’m licked.” He took a deep breath, turned back and picked up the crumpled bill he had just thrown away.

He smoothed it out, his face set in lines of despair and resignation. When a cab cruised by, he hailed it and gave the aliens’

address. Outside, he was all surrender; inside, all murder.

He knocked at the red door. A voice called, “Come in—the door is not locked.”

The room was as Naismith had seen it before. Churan sat behind his table, staring across at him with hooded amber eyes.

The Lall creature was leaning against a bookcase to his right, arms folded, smoking a cigarette. Neither spoke.

Naismith moved forward. “I’ve come to tell you to call off your dogs.”

Churan’s smile widened slightly; Lall glanced at him and blew a long plume of smoke from her lips.

Naismith measured the distance to the two aliens. Half a step nearer—

“Tell me your plans,” he began, then launched himself into motion. One hand stabbed out for Churan’s throat, the other reached for Lall’s. Both missed their targets; his hands closed on air.

Yet the aliens had not moved. With a chill of horror, Naismith realized that his arms had passed completely through their bodies.

Churan, his face abominably close, began to laugh. After a moment Lall joined in.

Naismith stumbled backward. The two aliens glanced at each other, their eyes welling tears of merriment.

“A nice try, Professor Naismith,” said Lall. “But not good enough.”

Then, in an instant, both aliens were gone. Shaking, incredulous, Naismith nerved himself to step forward again and stare at the place where they had been.

On the floor, between Churan’s chair and the bookcase, lay a small black machine with dull red lights fading in its lenses.

When he leaned down to touch it, a numbing electric shock made him jerk his hand back.

The room was empty. But as he backed away, the aliens’

laughter swelled out again from nowhere, malicious and mocking. Then, close behind him, Lall’s voice whispered in his ear,

“A reminder, Professor—”

As he tried to turn, something struck the side of his head.

The room darkened.

Without transition, he was in the City, floating in the center of a vast chamber of carved and fretted ivory, empty and shadowed. When he moved, the faint sibilance of his garments echoed back in sinister whisperings from the walls: “Shhh…

shhh…”

He knew that he was going to die. He had made his farewells to all his friends and the members of his troupe; had returned his possessions to the central store; and had himself expunged his name from the register of Entertainers. In a real sense, he was already dead: Dar-Yani no longer existed. He was only a nameless and faceless body, a remnant, a fiction, drifting through the memories of the Old City.

It was the first time he had been here since the building of the New City. It was strange to see these once familiar rooms and corridors in their desolation. Built of material substances, painstakingly decorated and ornamented over a thousand years, this had been the real and only City until the growing Zug threat had forced mankind to leave it for new chambers of Zug-proof energy. After the Barrier was put up, it was said, the people would all move back here; but the man who had been Dar-Yani would not live to see it.

An injustice? Perhaps. He thought of the greenskins, and his lip curled. It was all well enough for them to revolt when they felt their case was desperate. But the Entertainers had their traditions.

He paused to listen. The unfamiliar armor was tight around his chest, and his palms were sweaty where they gripped the stock of the gun.

The only sounds were the ceaseless, unnerving whisperings that echoed back from the walls. He hesitated, then moved toward one of the hundred corridors that gave exit from the room.

Here, in this famous concourse, Ito-Yani had given his recitals, holding an audience of thousands spellbound for hours.

Now, like the rest of the Old City, it had been abandoned to those chill monsters which…

He froze, listening with all his body. Down the dimness of the corridor, there had been a faint sound.

When the beast attacks, the training machine had told him, you will have at most two seconds to aim and fire. Should you survive the first blow…

Another sound, nearer.

He backed away from the opening, with a panicky sense that he was not ready, it was too soon, he needed more time…

The noise came again; now he saw a pale glimmer of motion down in the depths.

Every call of his body shrieked its terror; but he stayed where he was, teeth bared, his hand tight on the gun.

Without warning, the distant shape grew near. It floated toward him silently, with incredible speed. Through the view-disk of his helmet he could see its tiny red eyes, its claws outstretched. As if in a nightmare, he strove to bring up the heavy gun, but he could not move fast enough. As the monster loomed nearer, its fanged jaws .opened and—

Naismith sat up on the floor, with the hoarse echo of his own shout echoing in his ears. His head hurt. He was shaking all over, covered with cold sweat. In the darkness, the monster was still looming nearer, still opening its jaws…

The smell of his own fear was thick in his nostrils. His hands found the shape of an overturned chair… Where was he?

He got to his feet, fumbled in his pockets for a match. The flame showed him a littered carpet, books and papers stacked against the walls…

He remembered his last moment of consciousness, and his fingers went to the swelling over one ear.

The match went out. Naismith lit another, found the lamp and turned it on. The machine he had seen on the carpet was no longer there. The apartment was empty.

Naismith sat down for a moment with his head in his hands.

Then, with sudden decision, he rose and went to the visiphone in the corner. He punched a number.

The screen lighted; Dr. Wells’ brown, seamed face looked up pleasantly. “Oh, hello, Naismith. How have you been getting along? Is anything the matter?”

“Wells,” said Naismith tensely, “you told me once there was a crash method we could employ to break my amnesia, if everything else failed.”

“Well, yes, but we’re not down to that yet, man. Be patient, give the routine methods a chance to work. Now, your next appointment—“He reached for his calendar.

“I can’t wait,” Naismith told him levelly. “How dangerous is this method, and what does it involve?”