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nekronic infection was far worse than any manlike machine, no matter how
perfected.
"Because the Mechandroids would probably obey it instead of us," Paynter told
me. "The
Mechandroids are vulnerable because they're partially human. A second-stage
type probably wouldn't ba. When you consider the knowledge and skills the
Mechandroids already have and if they're applying them to the creation of a
mutation of their own why, such a monster could easily be invulnerable.
Suppose it worked on absolute logic? That might call for the extinction of all
life-
forms! I don't know. No one knows. How can anyone think like a mutation from
the Mechandroid type?"
I shook my head. "Don't ask me. I've got my own problems. Those four asleep in
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the time-axis.
There must be an answer somewhere, Paynter. There must be!"
"There is an answer." He said it so soberly that I felt an instant's chill in
my own mind. I had good reason to feel a chill. Paynter went on in a very
somber voice. "Now I'll tell you the truth, Cortland," he said.
XV CRUMBLING FLESH
THE four silent figures lay deep in their age-old slumber in the chamber under
the mountain. I saw them there again. I could feel the weight of the helmet on
my head and I was this time fully aware of the Swan Garden around me and the
sound of Paynter's breathing at my side. But I was seeing the projection of a
three-dimensional film. I was looking into the chamber as a camera's eye had
looked.
"This is the official record we made when we opened the cave," Paynter said
invisibly at my elbow.
"Now watch carefully what happens. No one knows this but you and myself and
the few technicians who were on the spot. We
so so well, watch and you'll see."
Nothing moved in the cave. Nothing had moved, I suppose, for a thousand years
or more, not since all motion ceased when we sank into our long slumber. But
now lights began to flash from beyond the gray egg of nothingness that walled
us in. Paynter's technicians were at work, trying to break that shell, trying
to hatch out what? Something terrifying. I knew that by the tone of
Paynter's voice.
The lights flashed and faded, glowed again, paled. Now the camera drew back
and I could see
Paynter himself, standing beside a group of workers and a battery of machines.
All were intent upon the egg of time that held the sleepers.
It was curious to hear Paynter speak then the Paynter of the cavern, speaking
in the film, not the
Paynter who sat beside me. Duplication piled upon duplication.
"What are the chances?" I heard him ask. "Are they going to wake?"
Murmurs answered him. After awhile, during which his eyes were very thoughtful
upon the sleepers
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upon the woman among the sleepers in particular, I heard him say in a musing
voice, "We should have one of the entertainers here. If this is actually a
time involvement, as you say, then these people will have been asleep a long
while and they'll feel bewildered when they wake.
"We need someone like-Wee yes, Topaz-to speed their adjustment." (I knew why
he had thought of
Topaz. I knew he had seen, without realizing it, the face of Topaz implicit in
Dr. Essen's sleeping face.)
"Send for Topaz," he said firmly, his voice echoing in the cavern as ours had
echoed once, a thousand years or many thousand of years before.
(Now perhaps this is as good a place as any for a word about the language he
was speaking. It was certainly English but not as familiar a language as I
write down. Any living tongue rapidly accumulates new words and phrases, drops
old ones, assigns new meanings to words already in use, so that the
colloquialisms of one generation are gibberish to the generation before it.
(The English we were speaking was changed, not a living language.
Matter-transmission had spread civilization over a vast area and some common
tongue was a necessity, but it couldn't be a tongue that changed or it would
soon cease to be a common language. So it wasn't easy to follow what these
people said around me-but it wasn't impossible either.) The camera ground on
for about thirty seconds more and then blurred briefly. Beside me Paynter
spoke in a quick, impatient voice.
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