Tom Godwin - The Greater Thing

The heavy door still swung on its hinges. He pushed it open and stepped through, the carbine held before him. Moonlight poured through the broad, high windows, flooding the room with silver. The farther side was in darkness and he again had the impression that, for just a moment, something gray and shapeless moved there. It was gone before he could be sure.

There was a small iron bar to secure the door from the inside. He heard Lorrine click it in place while he examined the room. It was square and devoid of any object but for a small grille in the floor near the farther wall; a conduit leading to some central heating unit, perhaps. It was too small to offer them any hope of escape.

There was another door opposite the one they had entered by, and he made sure it was barred. The screws holding it were red and misshapen with rust; that would be the door by which the police would break into the room.

One of the windows commanded a view of the river and he waited by it, watching. Lorrine walked softly across the room, to stop by the moonlit wall and wait as silently as he. He kept his eyes on the shadows under the trees, the rifle nestled to his cheek, the knowledge of what she waited for cold and sharp within him.

A figure darted across a moonlit space and the carbine in his hands roared twice. The figure ran on, to disappear in another group of trees. He took the other clip from his pocket and shoved it in the carbine. Five shots—count three.

Lorrine was watching him, her back against the moon-silvered wall. “Count three, Johnny. Remember your promise.”

He turned back to the window without answering. He would remember, and there was nothing to say. He watched the shadows along the river again, the rifle ready. The river still tossed the moonbeams from its ripples and he could see the swift roll of its current. It would have carried them to safety but they had come too late. They had hurried to it seeking escape from the death behind, but death had hurried faster. The lines of the verse came back to him—

It had found them.

He snapped a shot at another fleeting shadow, silently cursing the misaligned sights as the figure staggered, then ran on. Four shots—count two.

Something heavy, a battering ram, struck the door with the rusted bar. It creaked and a screw head snapped off, to fly across the room. He fired twice through the door, suddenly sick and weary to his soul and wanting to do what he would have to do, wanting to get it over with.

There was a cry of pain from behind the door and a sound of retreating footsteps. He heard them slop at a distance and speak softly among themselves.

And he had two cartridges left. Their impotent stand was over, their little flare of resistance had come to its end. He turned to Lorrine.

“I guess this is it,” he said slowly. “This is where you and I get off. I’m sorry… I wish—”

He stopped. What did he wish? What does a man wish when he loves a girl with golden hair and he stands before her with the black muzzle of a rifle at her heart? What does he say when she stands as he had known she would stand, with her head back and the golden hair about her shoulders, with the light in her eyes and the radiance about her? What can he say in the last fleeting moments?

“Don’t be sorry, Johnny,” she said, the tightness no longer in her throat.

The battering ram struck the door and it bulged inward. They would break through the next time. He raised the rifle.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said again, “and good-by, Johnny.”

He aimed at the spot where her heart would be fluttering—

The battering ram crashed into the door and he pressed the trigger.

The rifle roared savagely and she stiffened for the briefest moment against the wall, then fell to her knees. She tried to say something, but blood welled from her mouth and choked her. He saw where the bullet had struck her—high, too high. She would die, but with her own blood choking in her throat.

He raised the rifle again, his mind a red flare of impotent rage and regret, then the police were upon him. A rifle butt struck the base of his skull and he felt himself fall to the floor, the darkness of unconsciousness descending upon him. He fought against it and was dimly aware of a voice saying, “She dead?” And the answer, “Dying. Let’s go—Harker’s waiting.” Then the darkness engulfed him and he knew no more.

It had never watched a living thing die, but its own logic told it that avoidance of death should be the strongest of all desires. It knew Lorrine’s thoughts as she waited for death, standing against the wall, and it knew her thoughts as the bullet tore through her and she fell to the floor. It knew her thoughts and it knew she was dying with the thing that had led her to her death, the intangible thing that had motivated her, still strong and undiminished within her.

Even in her dying she revealed nothing that could enable it to understand the reasons for her actions, to find the unknown factor, and its curiosity increased. It had tried with all its logic to understand, and it had failed. Perhaps it was something about her body or mind—something within her that it did not suspect.

The police tramped away with their captive and she was left lying on the floor. It went to her as she died, not caring that she died but eager to find the missing factor; the intangible thing that had impelled her to give up her life for others.

Its abilities were great and it could, without destruction of tissue, reach into every cell of her body. It did so as she died, and it knew every thought she had ever had, every memory, every emotion. In that moment of her death it reproduced within itself her ego.

When it did so it found the missing factor and it understood, at last, why it had been unable to analyze it; why its own mind, alone, could never have analyzed it.

The missing factor was a purpose, and a wisdom that had grown with that purpose for two billion years. It was a field of learning so different to its own learning, covering a period of time so inconceivably long, that its vast intelligence reeled before the magnitude of it.

When it reproduced her ego within itself it reproduced her emotions and motivations and it understood. With the understanding came, for a little while, near-insanity.

Thorne was first aware of the ropes that bound him to the concrete pillar, cutting into his wrists as his weight sagged forward against them. His head cleared and he opened his eyes, then shifted his bound hands behind the pillar until he could stand straight.

He had been taken back up the street, the same street he and Lorrine had followed. He recognized a corner toward the river—the toy shop.

The police were squatting before him, the anticipation stark and naked on their faces. One of them laughed and said, “He’s back with us!”

“Why don’t Harker show up?” another asked querulously. “Why did we have to drag this guy up the street for? Harker ain’t crippled so he can’t walk, is he?”

The first one stared at him speculatively. “You ever let Harker hear you say something like that and you will be!”

“He’s inside that old hotel across the street,” another volunteered. “He’s got the walkie-talkie in there, holdin’ a big confab with field headquarters. I hear the helicopters spotted something suspicious back the way we come and I think we’re gonna have to hotfoot it over there.”

“Yeah?” It was the querulous one. “How far?”