House of Many Worlds Read online

  It would have been more reassuring if his voice hadn't trembled ever so slightly on the final syllable.

  II

  IT WAS, she thought, like being inside a globe filled with nothing. Even the ground beneath her feet seemed not to be. Mack Fraser's arm and body were the only tangibles—and for once she was of no disposition to sneer at tangibles. She missed them.

  "What do you think, Mack?" she asked him and her voice sounded small and uneven and a long way back from her lips.

  "I'm not thinking," said Mack. "I'm only waiting."

  How long they stood there in blackness Elspeth could not tell. Without being able to see anything or to hear anything beyond the noises they made themselves it was impossible to judge anything. There was a bitter gathering coldness that made her shiver and cling more closely to her companion. She didn't know what good muscles could be in such surroundings, but she was suddenly and overwhelmingly glad that Mack was a strong man.

  "Put your watch to your ear," she whispered. "You can tell from its ticks how long this is lasting."

  "What good will that do?" Mack countered, but she felt the shift of his weight as he lifted his left hand. Then, after a moment, he said, "That's funny. It seems to have stopped."

  "Oh, fine!" said Elspeth. At least the failure of Mack's wristwatch was something on which to take out the frustration that had taken hold of her. She didn't want to take it out on Mack— not just then. He might get angry and step away from her. She could not bear the thought of being alone in this black —nothingness.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the darkness was gone. They could see the path, leading exactly as before to the big white house with its white pillars atop the gentle rise of Spindrift Key's one gentle hill. Below them the gravel of the path made scuffling noises under their feet. Above were the stars.

  Acting from an inner urgency she did not at the moment understand, Elspeth studied them. They were as they had been before they—went out. The Big Dipper hung in the same spot and the neatly spaced jewels in Orion's belt had not slipped a notch.

  "It's just the same," she said. She became aware of the fact that she was still glued closely to Mack's side, that his right arm was still holding her tightly. She said, "Well, really!" and disengaged herself with gentle firmness.

  He looked down at her for a moment. She was a tall girl, a good five nine, and tall people had never bothered her before. But she had resented Mack's height ever since they had been thrown together for this assignment by Orrin Lewis in Manhattan more than three days before. She disliked the idea of looking up to him.

  "Very well," he said and his voice was as unreadable as the darkness that had surrounded them moments before. "We might as well go on to the house."

  He strode off and Elspeth was forced to hurry without dignity to keep up with him. She cursed him silently for a heel. Damn him, he knew she would not dare get far from him lest the darkness return again. She wished, not for the first time, that she were the sort of conniving wench who instinctively made certain that all available men were willing to serve her.

  She had the looks when she chose to do something about them. Most female poets, she thought, were creatures of surpassing ugliness. Perhaps that was why they were poets. Aware of their inability to arouse masculine passion they turned to verse as a sublimation.

  There had been a few who were otherwise, of course. Elinor Wylie was one. And perhaps Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for all that her father's twisted pathology and her ill-health had hardly given her capacity for arousing passion. And Sappho—but then, what did anyone at this late date actually know about Sappho?

  "Hey! Watch yourself." One of Mack's long arms reached out and grabbed her. She had been on the point of blundering into the perfectly clipped boxwood hedge at the right of the path.

  Mack said, "Do these things happen to you often?"

  "Shut up," she told him. "I hate backseat drivers."

  "Some drivers need them—to stay out of ditches—or even on a path," he reminded her bluntly. She concentrated on keeping up.

  The path widened in front of the house whose pillars rose at least twenty-five feet in simple square serenity, collonading a wide portico beyond which french windows gleamed in rectangular softness though the petticoats of their drapes. The lines of the house itself, enhanced by the dimness of the night, were even better proportioned at close hand than when seen at a distance.

  "It's lovely," breathed Elspeth, looking up at it.

  The large front door was opened slowly and a girl came out. Her features, cut sharply in relief by the light from the windows on either side of her, were as arresting to Elspeth as her figure, equally well revealed, was to Mack. Elspeth heard the quickening of his breath but forgot to be disgusted in her absorption.

  "Miss Marriner—Mr. Fraser?" the girl said. Her voice, without alien accent, was softly contralto. It sounded as if its owner had mastery of many tongues. She smiled and said, "We're very glad you're here. Won't you come inside?"

  "Thanks—thanks very much," said Elspeth when Mack seemed too dumfounded to reply. They entered a long high-ceiled hall that seemed to extend to the rear of the house. Three quarters of the way back a circular staircase of white with a dark mahogany rail, seemed to rise in graceful contempt for the law of gravity.

  SOFT Persian carpet covered much but not all of the fine parquet. Light sparkled from a crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling fifteen feet above. Dado and high wall paneling bespoke the tastes of a century twice gone; and a pair of authentic looking old portaits in simple gold frames were the only other decoration. Chairs and tables were mahogany—old and beautiful.

  Seen in full light, the girl who had greeted them was breathtaking. Her hair, which hung in loose, soft waves to her shoulders, might have matched the deep red glow of the mahogany. Her figure, though it was not tall, was perfectly proportioned—a fact which the sleeveless white silk shirt, parted to the waistline, burgundy shorts and espadrilles did nothing to conceal.

  Yet for some reason such informality, in this instance, did not clash with her surroundings. The old house was meant to be lived in—lived in by folk of charm, beauty and dignity. The girl had all three. Yes, there was dignity in the face framed by the mahogany hair— dignity and a sort of timeless poise that was startling in one who looked so very young.

  "I'll take you to Mr. Horelle," she said softly, leading the way through a door to the right which took them into a library whose whiteoak wainscoting, unstained but polished with loving care for generations, had assumed the patina of a treasured meerschaum pipe. "He is very anxious to talk to you."

  "About what?" asked Mack, Ever, thought Elspeth, the diplomat. Good old Mack. When bigger feet were made to crash through more fragile greenhouses, Mack would be their owner. But the girl in burgundy shorts seemed amused. There were quick little lights in her oddly shaded hazel eyes as she looked quickly at the photographer.

  "Mr. Horelle will tell you that," she said demurely.

  Briefly Elspeth wondered why it was that so many women—some of them creatures of undoubted intelligence, beauty and breeding—seemed to find quick response within themselves to men like Mack. It was a refutal of every principle of civilization, it was brutalizing, it was the crudest sort of masochism.

  They went through another doorway with a flat-curved arch and Elspeth stopped thinking about it. They were obviously in a sort of den or study at one end of the big house. It was an exquisite room—yet a comfortable one. Light hand-tooled leather with Florentine gilt-work at its edges was inset in the vast satinwood desk. A huge globe rose behind it in a window embrasure to the left—and in a like embrasure to the right was a celestial orb.

  Directly above and behind the desk, which dominated the room, a large portrait hung against the wall. It was old —obviously, by the scarlet hues of its shadows and its ivory blacks, a Gilbert Stuart. It was of a surpassingly lovely woman in white, a woman in the neo-classic gown and ringlets of the early nineteenth centur
y, a woman who was puzzlingly, hauntingly familiar to Elspeth.

  "Don't you recognize her?" The gentle voice of the man who sat in the chair behind the big desk brought her out of her abstraction. She looked at him and saw that he was old and beautiful— beautiful as the saints are beautiful— and very wise. The whiteness of his skin and hair, the blue of his eyelids and the veins of his temples and the backs of his hands made Elspeth think of one thing and one thing only—alabaster.

  "It is a failing of great age," he told her, and she wondered whether he were telepathic or whether she had spoken her thought aloud. But the charm of his faint smile eased her embarrassment. It was obvious that here was a very great man.

  "Our skin grows thin, our blood sluggish," he went on and made a gesture of deprecation. "The effect of alabaster is not uncommon. But enough of myself. I believe Juana has told you by this time that I am anxious to talk with you, Miss Marriner and Mr. Fraser. Won't you sit down—and by all means smoke if you wish?"

  His gracious manners put them both at their ease in the large room.

  THEY sat in old leather armchairs that embraced them with the softness of clouds. Juana found a perch on a red-and-white leather hassock, where she drew one slim tanned leg up beneath her. Dammit, Juana thought, the child was beautiful—if she were a child. There was a timelessness behind her perfect poise.

  "You are Mr. Horelle?" Mack asked bluntly. "May I ask how you knew our names ?"

  "It is hardly a mystery," said their host, again with his faint wise smile. "I was informed that you would almost certainly find your way here. If you had not—" he paused, gestured with one thin hand—"there would have been others. But perhaps not in time."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand," said Mack, puzzled.

  "I shall try to explain," said Mr. Horelle. "But first I must ask you to listen with open minds. For by this time you must know that Spindrift Key is not exactly what it seems."

  "So we just learned over on the mainland," said Mack. He lit a cigarette and regarded Mr. Horelle with anticipation.

  "I judge you have lived here for many years," said Elspeth, seeking to put in a dash of tact. "This house—the island— they are like a well thumb in these surroundings. They show the taste of secure generations, the loving care of someone—" She bogged down and felt herself blushing. Mack was regarding her as if she were an utter idiot but Mr. Horelle merely nodded his thanks.

  "If I told you how many years I have lived here you would not believe me," he said quietly. "Suffice it to say that it has been a very long time. There were others before me—ever since Spindrift Key became a tangential point."

  "What's that? Mack asked aggressively, suspiciously.

  "I'm the one who is to write the story," Elspeth reminded him. "You're here to take pictures. Let me ask the questions."

  "It's a very good question," said Mr. Horelle. "Let me state first that Spindrift Key is a tangential point. I don't suppose either of you knows much about the tangency of time—or parallel time-tracks, if you wish."

  Elspeth glanced covertly at Mack and was pleased to notice that he looked baffled. She turned eagerly to Mr. Horelle and said, "But I know a little. It's a theory that whenever an important decision in world history is made the world goes both ways with different subsequent histories. Oh damn! That doesn't sound very clear but it's the best I can do."

  "Tommyrot!" said Mack rudely.

  "On the contrary," said Mr. Horelle, "it is absolutely true. Hold on." He held up a hand as protests bubbled up behind Mack Fraser's lips. "I know what you are going to say. But it takes a great deal more than a petty personal decision to split the space-time continuum in which our universe exists.

  "A nova, the destruction of a planet, even the momentous man-made events that affect the history of this minor speck of space-dust we call Earth—these things leave their marks in varying degrees. For a while after they occur—the time span varies according to the severity of the shock to the continuum—a tangential zone remains through which, to those who know the key, it is possible to affect a transfer between worlds."

  "But what has happened here in this forsaken place?" Mack inquired, unable to restrain himself longer.

  "Spindrift Key is thrice tangential," said Mr. Horelle gently but with an undertone of quiet assurance that could not be denied. "Almost four centuries ago an Englishman named Raleigh put inside the Capes on his return to England after founding a colony at Roanoke. He decided that this island and the mainland behind it offered a more favorable site for his colony. He planned to move it here before returning home."

  "And—?" said Elspeth, fascinated in spite of herself.

  "In one world he did so and the entire history of this continent was altered," said Mr. Horelle. "In that you come from conditions arose which caused him to postpone making the move."

  A BUTLER with a face like a kindly hound dog appeared silently and put a tray of bottles, ices, glasses and soda on an ancient cherry table against one side wall. For a brief spell the talk was light and general. Then Mr. Horelle resumed his talk.

  "In January of 1813 the American privateer Patriot, Captain Overstocks commanding, was wrecked by the so-called Bankers or pirates who made a business of decoying ships on the shoals. She was running the British blockade off the Capes with a safe-conduct arranged between Governor James Alston of South Carolina, bound for New York."

  "Alston ..." said Elspeth. She looked again at the portrait and recognized it as that of Theodosia Burr, only daughter of Aaron Burr and wife of James Alston. "Of course," she said and her eyes grew bright. "Then that's one of the things from the Patriot"

  Mr. Horelle smiled faintly, looking more like an alabaster saint than ever in the soft lighting. "I regret to say it qualifies as pirate loot," he told them. "Many things in this house do. My ancestors, some of them—" He made a deprecatory gesture.

  "I'd like to take a shot of it," said Mack alertly. He looked happier now that he was back on ground that he could understand. But their host's next words put the furrow back on his brow.

  "Actually Alston was able to obtain the safe-conduct because he and Burr were both trafficking with the British. There was an uprising planned both in the South and in New England which would have changed the entire course of history. In your world, the shipwreck prevented it. In others—" He let his voice fade briefly.

  Then, leaning forward, "And more recently, when a pair of brothers named Wright were experimenting with heavier-than-air craft at near-by Kittyhawk they made many of their crucial plans in this very room. I think you can compute the potentialities of that.

  "So Spindrift Island is a strong tangential point. It is, actually, a multiple gateway, its older tangencies maintained by the importance of more recent events. I trust you understand."

  "Everything," said Mack bluntly, "except what it has to do with us."

  "Everything," said Mr. Horelle in turn. His smile returned. "You have been selected, both of you, to carry out an extremely delicate and difficult assignment between worlds."

  "I'm getting out of here right now," said Mack, rising.

  "I very much fear you may find it difficult," said their host. "You see, when you stepped ashore a transfer was effected. You may have noticed some— odd phenomena."

  "The darkness," said Elspeth. She felt a rushing return of her fear. All at once the old room, the old man, the lovely girl, ceased to be decorative, friendly and interesting. She felt as if she had been dropped suddenly into a chamber of horrors.

  "You mean we're not on the same world we started out on?" said Mack, rising. "Buncombe! I'm going back to Corey and the pier. Come on, Elspeth, let's get started. Thanks for the drinks and the story. Mr. Horelle, but it has a ring of roquefort to me."

  "I fear you may find some changes made," said their host drily, ignoring the insult. "Perhaps Miss Marriner will await your return here. I'll discuss your assignment more fully when you get back. Juana—see that Mr. Fraser doesn't get lost."

  Mack looked
first at Elspeth, who had not risen. She was definitely interested and cared not a fig whether the story were true or not. A story was a story and this was a gorgeous one that stirred her poetic soul. Besides, she had no intention of spending another night on a corn-husk lodging house mattress.

  "I'll go alone, thanks," said Mack bitterly but Juana, soft and far more appealing than a kitten, moved close to him, and Elspeth could see his defenses crumble.

  "It might interest you to know," said Mr. Horelle with his smile of quiet amusement, "that Juana herself is from another world than your own."

  Mack looked her up and down and grinned crookedly. "If they are all cut from your stencil, Juana, show me the way. In the meantime I'll settle for you in the here and now."

  To Elspeth's annoyance the gentle Juana did not bridle at Mack's vulgarity. Rather she seemed to enjoy it. She laughed and took his arm and, as they passed through the arch into the library said, "Remember, Mr. Fraser, I'm really out of this world."

  "Just call me Mack, honey," said the photographer. Elspeth, still sitting in her chair, felt disturbed beyond all reason. Somewhere, deep within herself, she wished she were small and lissome and darkly beautiful instead of tall and too fair and with straight light hair so fine that it was always blowing out of shape.

  "If you will give an old man some time," said Mr. Horelle, "I should like to explain to you certain elements of your assignment. I think you will find it important."

  "By all means," said Elspeth, bringing herself back with a wrench from Mack and Juana.

  "It is always a trifle startling at first," said Mr. Horelle gently, "but there are a certain number of us—a very small number by the way—whose job it is to watch these tangential points. We call ourselves—without much originality— the Watchers. Thanks to the fact that natural cataclysms have a great deal to do with the actuality of tangency only a few of the points are habitable."