Eando Binder - Anton York, Immortal

Later, when food and water became necessity, York commanded these. Water dripped from the rock overhead, into their mouths. Food, though a more stubborn problem, was solved when York dug up from memory the exact chemical formulae of starches, proteins and sugars, which he had determined as an esoteric research, centuries before. At command, the pliant rock molecules gathered into globules of the nutritious compounds and fell into their hands.

“It’s so incredible!” murmured Vera, munching, as though unable to believe all this had happened.

“The tool of mentality!” responded York. “I’ve hit upon it by accident. It is probably the ultimate in forces, if it is fully developed.”

Some hours later, when they had progressed miles, York almost fell forward on his face. His tunnel had broken through into a large chamber. They stepped forward and saw, in the weird glow of radioactive walls, a gigantic ovoid cavern, its walls and ceiling braced with ten-foot-square ribs of metal.

“Man-made!” whispered Vera in awe, her voice reverberating back in amplified echoes. She sniffed. “Breathable air, but musty. The place seems old-terribly old!”

“I think I know what this must be!” cried York, eyes lighting. “Remember the Three Eternals’ story—Mantis undermining Mu, in their war? This must have been an underground’ headquarters, from which the Atlantides drilled upward for their frightful task!”

Though they had seen many strange things, in the worlds of space, none struck them with more eerie wonder than this relic of an ancient folly on their own world.

Nothing remained in the chamber of twenty thousand years before save the metal ribbing which had withstood subterranean pressurcollapsed.ge. Two great metal doors once leading the away in and out, still held, though by now masses of rock must press against them. The Atlantides had built well.

Yes, one thing remained, they saw. An enormous square block of metal squatted in the exact center of the floor, of no discernible purpose. York and Vera walked past it, on their way to start their new tunnel in the opposite wall.

Vera stopped abruptly, her face shocked. Slowly she turned this way and that, finally fastening her eyes on the metal block as though hypnotized.

“Tony, I heard a telepathic voice—from within this metal block!”

York, at first sceptical, turned back, knowing his wife was more sensitive to faint impulses than he was. Standing close to the side of the block, concentrating, they seemed to hear a dim voice. It was an inarticulate psychic mumble, exactly as, though someone were day-dreaming.

“Someone is in there!” gasped York, walking around the block to find it solid metal on all sides, and at the top.

Finally he stood back, on straddled legs, and fixed his eyes on the metal. A depression formed, matter sloughed away, as his telekinetic beam ate inward. It was York, the scientist who did this, unable to pass by the mystery of a mind voice from within a metal block.

Suddenly there was no more reaction. His mental ray had struck something it could not penetrate, halfway in. Then they heard strange stirrings, and the psychic mumble clicked off. A dim form crept out of the opening York had made. Vera trembled and slipped her hand in. his. What unbelievable thing, imprisoned in metal, had survived-how long—and was coming out?

“A robot!” breathed York, when it stood clear.

It was obviously built in the image of man, but grotesquely disproportioned. Its body, though metallic-looking, Seemed to be as flexible as rubber. Its faceless head bore two gleaming eye mirrors over which shutters blinked rapidly, as though even the dim glow of the cavern blinded it after total darkness.

It looked around slowly, with a queer air of bewilderment. Finally it’s eyes turned to them.

“No, not entirely a robot,” it telepathized clearly, but haltingly. “I have a human brain within my skull-case. My name is Kaligor. Now tell me, what—what world is this?” “Earth!” returned York, surprised. “What else could it be? You are from Atlantis, or perhaps Mu, Kaligor?”

“Atlantis? Mu?” The telepathic voice was uncertain. “Yes, Mu of course. Now I remember! You must forgive my slowness. I have been buried in that block of metal for a long time—since the sinking of Atlantis and Mu. How long is that?”

“Twenty thousand years!” breathed York.

“Only twenty thousand years?” The man-robot seemed astonished. “I had thought it to be much longer—almost eternity!”

York and Vera looked at each other. Before, after only one hour, they had felt themselves going mad. How had this mind, human though metal-housed, survived two hundred centuries.

Kaligor caught their amazement.

“It is a long, queer story,” he vouched. “I nearly did go mad, in the first few hours. Then I took hold of myself and saw that I could save sanity only by rigid mental discipline. There was only one answer—escape fantasies of my own devising. I must have some one thing, a complicated path, along which my thoughts could wind slowly. In those twenty thousand years I have devised, mentally, an entire new Universe! In a framework of six-dimensional geometry!”

He paused, then went on. “I meticulously thought out each separate sun, its weight, size, brilliance, spectrum, and so on. Finishing this, possibly within a century, I took one particular sun, pictured a mythical system of planets around it, and worked out all the elaborate details of their orbits, satellites, eclipses, and such. Still I found I must go on!”

“You hoped for rescue all that time!” cried York. “For twenty thousand years?”

Surely, in all eternity, there had never been a longer wait!

“I’ve been justified, haven’t I?” returned the robot-mind, with grim lightness. “Since you stand before me, my rescuers! Ah, but how slow-footed was time! I dared not stop building my fantasy world. At that moment, I would go insane, realizing my hopeless predicament. To get into greater detail, consuming more time, I peopled one of the worlds with intelligent beings, far different from humans. I devised their complete biological background, to the last cell.

“Sometimes, for what must have been days, I would wrestle with one single problem—for instance, the number of blood vessels in an inner organ. These intelligent beings, though their appearance would strike you with horror, are almost as real to me as you two now! In fact—”

He broke off, began again, his telepathic voice only now beginning to smooth its first halting pace.

“I had these imaginary beings—Wolkians, I called them——war with one another, explore their world, trade and all the other activities of a busy civilization. But still time hung endlessly before me—perhaps all eternity! So I conjured up single characters, in my dream world, and followed their lives from birth to death. I sketched out thereafter dozens of individual histories in complete detail. Some of my creations I grew to hate, some to love. There was brave Mirbel, and lovely Binti, for whom he fought—”

Kaligor’s psychic voice trailed away into an inarticulate mumble again. He started suddenly.

“But you would not understand,” he resumed, “how real these children of my brain are to me. On and on I spun my, formless dream, to keep that crushing thought of my rockbound prison, from my conscious thoughts. I have lived a thousand lives, adventures, dreams. I am even now half wondering if this may not be part of my dream!”

“No, this is real.” York smiled, but at the same time realizing a character in Kaligor’s dream might say the same.

And in that way had Kaligor kept from going mad.

He shook himself suddenly, as though throwing off the last shreds of his age-long dream.