existence. He will live a healthy life, though it is not certain he will grow to be 310. He will not be living a preordained life, but a future of his own choosing. His mortality should be every bit as shaky as anyone's in this era.?
?You've more or less convinced me the vacii must be stopped,? Salsbury said. ?But why? What are they? and where are they from??
?They are an intelligent extra-galactic race. Not only have they conquered faster-than-light travel, but probability travel as well. Or at least one probability line of them has.?
Salsbury looked properly perplexed, and the computer's sensors must have registered the expression.
?Imagine,? the computer said, ?that this is not the only Earth that exists. There are thousands, millions, billions, countless Earths with slightly different histories. There are an infinity of probabilities, all existing in the same space and time, but separated by quasi-dimensional spaces. Traveling from one to the other of these probabilities involves finding the weak spots in the quasi-dimensional spaces, the places where the probabilities almost touch. Once these are found, equipment is erected to weaken these places further until, finally, a bubble develops between the two probabilities, a bubble through which you can pass. At first, living tissue cannot move through the bubble and survive, for it is a vacuum filled with randomly bouncing electrons freed when the quasi-dimensional space is broken down to form the bubble. These electrons have a mass all out of proportion to their size. Tremendous density. They're like bullets that are of micro-micro size; they corrode the flesh, though they do not harm the plasti-steel alloy of the robots specially built to transverse the primitive bubble.
?Once on the other side, the robots can bring through equipment to set up a beam generator from this side of the bubble. When the beams from both sides are locked, the bubble becomes a doorway that even flesh can pass through without difficulty. The vacii have sent robots through to destroy you but have not yet opened the bubble to animal transport. They will do that shortly, as soon as they have killed you, or before.
?But to return to the origins of the vacii, the lizard-men. They landed on an Earth of one of the other probability lines and conquered it. From there, they spread out in both directions on the plane of probabilities, defeating one counter-Earth after another. We are the seventy-sixth to fall. We have not essentially been conquered from space, but from our own other probabilities. Here, at Harold Jacobi's house, in the summer of 1970, the vacii took over this probability. They established as experimental station, then proceeded to worlds beyond ours, into other probabilities.
?Unknown to the vacii manning the station, on this world, our world-the future from which you and I have come-man discovered time travel. It was obvious, at once, to those in our future, that a time machine could be used as a weapon against the vacii rulers. If someone could be sent into the past to stop the vacii takeover of our worldline, the future would be entirely different. Man would be free. And, perhaps, the other vacii empires could fall like dominoes, backwards through the other probability lines they conquered; one Earth becoming free after another.?
That was it. But it was too complicated to grasp all its significances in one sitting. Salsbury could only let it settle into his mind where he could later proceed to try to understand it. The lizards in the wall were aliens. But they were coming from a counter-Earth, not directly from the stars. He had been sent from the future of
?What do you mean by experimental stations?? Lynda asked. ?And what is the future like under the vacii??
?The vacii,? the 810-40.04 said, ?are nearly emotionless creatures. Perhaps they do experience love, pity, and hate among themselves, though to a small degree; but they have no feelings toward men. They look to man as an inferior animal to be experimented with. Where man's personality includes creativity and human interaction, the vacii have only scientific curiosity. They live for their experiments. The purpose of the race is to glean knowledge from the universe, or thus has developed their chief philosophy. Man is not the only race they have brought under their rule. There are other species throughout several galaxies. With each new race it subdues, the vacii begins controlled social experiments. How will men, for instance, react in a world of total anarchy? To find out, the vacii produce a world of anarchy and watch for a few centuries. The experiment
?And on this probability line, in our own future?? Salsbury asked.
?Fascism,? the computer said. ?Man has had his two-hundred-and-eighty-five years of Hitlers. It is not a pleasant place-your future.?
Three-hundred years of fascist rule
?The men who structured this operation were confident of your cooperation up to this point. It was realized that you would begin to grow less like the Puppet and more as a human being, which you are. Whether you would be anxious to help at this point was not known. If you rejected direct briefing through my sensor plates, then a series of senso-tapes was provided to show you the world of your future, show you what it will be like as a vacii experiment.?
A hundred questions had risen now. ?Why,? Salsbury asked, ?couldn't all this knowledge have been implanted in my mind to start, as well as a complete set of orders??
?Because, as you grew younger, all the knowledge in your memory cells would fade. You arrived here with a blank brain and would have arrived blank even if you had been briefed in the future.?
?Then how did I know to kill Harold Jacobi??
?A small chemical tape, impervious to unaging, was built into your brain. It played back your orders on your arrival. While you slept those two weeks in the cave, I filled you in on your background as Victor Salsbury, but there was not time to tell you more, and no room for another chemical tape to have been implanted at the start?
?The senso-tapes,? Lynda said. ?What are they??
?They affect all your senses,? the computer said. If you will each put a hand on one of the glow plates, I will transmit them to you. The nerves in your fingertips are enough to guarantee reception.?
Salsbury grabbed Lynda's hand as she reached out. He spoke to the computer. ?This would be a fine moment to indoctrinate both of us, to turn me into a Puppet again.?
?No,? the 810-40.04 said. ?It would not work. You are no longer receptive.?
He looked skeptical.
?You are too humanized now,? the computer said. ?Surely you can see that.?
He shrugged, reached out as Lynda did, touched the transmission plates on the top of the trunk. They faded into another world.
You are in a cell. Underground. There is no window. Only the gray cement floor, the gray damp walls, and the black iron bars that seal you off from the dimly lighted corridor beyond. You have not been fed your breakfast; it is getting toward the end of the lunch hour as well, and you have had nothing. A rat runs across the floor, stops at your bars and looks in. You realize, for the first time, that you are lying on the floor, on a level with the rat. The rat is looking directly into your eyes, its own eyes gleaming crimson, hot. It shows its teeth, very pointed teeth, in a vicious grin, the grin of every predator since time immemorial. It would like to chew on your eyeballs. You can't let that happen. You try to move and get halfway up, fall back onto the floor. You are so terribly weak. The rat comes closer. You try to think why you are here in this place, why this is happening. You were on the wrong side of some political issue, but you can't remember what it was. It hardly matters in a fascist regime. But it couldn't have been this important, could it? The rat scampers two feet closer. Could it? Closer? You scream. But there is no one interested in your plight.
You have been taken from your home in the middle of the night along with a bag of books the local police-a division arm of the Gestapo-have labeled left-wing. The most damning one was the antitotalitarian novel 1984. They rammed the books into the blue denim bag, handcuffed you, and led you out. They kept shoving you all the way to the patrol car. When you tried to strike at them, they knocked you down and kicked you in the hip. Now you are at the police station, in a small room with featureless walls. There is no furniture except a wooden bench to which you have been tied. They have left you alone for an hour now. You are trembling, waiting to find out what will happen. There is the faint smell of vomit and urine in the air. You wonder what they have done to previous prisoners to make these smells permeate the chamber. Then they come in. Four of them. The chief officer, a fair-skinned, blue-
