The Reflected Men - A. E. VAN VOGT

I

Time, 5:10 P.M. The crystal was less than fifteen minutes from reactivation.

To Edith Price, the well-dressed young man, who came into her library was typical of the summer visitors to Harkdale. They lived apart from the townspeople, of whom she was now one. She wrote down his name -- Seth Mitchell. And, assuming he wanted a temporary library card, she pushed the application form across the counter toward him.

It was only when he thrust it back, Impatiently, that she actually for the first time listened to what he was saying.

Then she said, 'Oh, what you want is a piece of crystal!'

'Exactly,' he said. 'I want returned to me a small stone which I presented to the museum part of the library some years ago.'

Edith shook her head. 'I'm sorry. The museum room is being reorganized. It's closed to the public. I'm sure no action will be taken about anything in it until the job is done, and even then Miss Davis, the librarian, will have to authorize it. And it's her day off today, so you can't even talk to her.'

'How long will it take -- to reorganize?'

'Oh, several weeks,' said Edith casually.

The effect of her words on the man -- so clean-cut, so typical of the well dressed, successful men she had known in New York -- startled her. He became very pale, mumbled something indistinguishable, and when he turned away, it was as if some of the life had gone out of him.

Staring at the retreating figures of library patrons was not something Edith was normally motivated to do. But his reaction was so extreme that she watched him as he walked unsteadily off toward the main entrance of the library. At the door a squat, thick-built man joined him. The two men conversed briefly, then went out together. Moments later Edith caught a glimpse of them through a window, getting into a brand-new Cadillac. Seth Mitchell slid in behind the wheel.

The costly automobile, and the fact that another man was involved, gave importance to an otherwise minor incident. Edith slipped off her stool, making suitable gestures to Miss Tilsit. Very openly she secured the key to the women's rest room as she covertly palmed the key to the museum room -- and went off.

A few moments later she was examining the display of stones.

* *

There were about thirty altogether. According to the sign beside them, they had long ago been the result of a drive among local boys to find valuable minerals and gems. Edith had no difficulty in locating the one the young man had wanted. It was the one under which a faded card announced: 'Donated by Seth Mitchell and Billy Bingham'.

She slid back the side of the case, reached in carefully, and took it out. It was obvious to her that very little discrimination had been used in the selection. The forces that had fashioned this stone seemed to have been too impatient. The craftsmanship was uneven. The result was a stone about two and a half inches long by one and a half inches wide at its thickest; a brownish, rocklike stuff which, though faceted, did not reflect light well. It was by far the dullest-looking of the stones in the display.

Gazing down at the drab, worthless stone, Edith thought: Why don't I just take it to his hotel after work tonight, and bypass all the red tape?

Meaning Miss Davis, her enemy.

Decisively, she removed the names of the two donors from the case. After all these years, the label was stuck on poorly, and the yellowed paper tore to shreds. She was about to slip the stone into her pocket, when she sadly realized she was wearing that dress -- the one without pocket.

Oh, damn! she thought cheerfully.

Since the stone was too big to conceal in her hand, she carried it through the back stack corridors, and was about to toss it into the special wastebasket which was used for heavy debris, when she noticed that a broken flowerpot half full of dirt was also in the basket. Beside the dirt was a paper bag.

It required only seconds to slip the crystal into the bag, empty the dirt on top of it, and shove the bag down into the basket She usually had the job of locking up the building, so it would be no problem to pick up the bag at that time and take it with her.

Edith returned to her desk...

And the stone began at once to utilize the sand in the dirt on top of it, thus resuming a pattern that had been suspended for twenty-five years. During the rest of the evening, and in fact all through that night, all the possible Seth Mitchells on earth remembered their childhood. The majority merely smiled, or shrugged, or stirred in their sleep. Most of those who lived outside the Western Hemisphere in distant time zones presently resumed their normal activities.

But a few, everywhere, recalling the crystal, could not quite let the memory go.

* *

At the first slack period after filching the stone, Edith leaned over and asked Miss Tilsit, 'Who is Seth Mitchell?'

Tilsit was a tall, too-thin blond with horn-rimmed glasses behind which gleamed unusually small but very alert gray eyes. Edith had discovered that Tilsit had a vast, even though superficial, knowledge of everything that had ever happened in Harkdale.

'There were two of them,' said Tilsit. 'Two boys, Billy Bingham and Seth Mitchell.'

Thereupon, with visible relish, Tilsit told the story of the disappearance of Billy twenty-five years before, when he and his chum, Seth Mitchell, were only twelve years old.

Tilsit finished, 'Seth claimed they had been fighting over a piece of bright stone that they had found. And he swore that they were at least fifty feet from the cliff that overlooks the lake at that point, and so he always insisted Billy didn't drown -- which is what everyone else believed. What confused the situation was that Billy's body was never recovered.'

As she listened to the account, Edith tried to put together the past and the present. She couldn't imagine why an adult Seth Mitchell would want a reminder of such an unhappy experience. Still, men were funny. That she knew, after waiting five years for a worthwhile male to come along and find her. So far she seemed to be as well hidden and unsearched for in Harkdale as she had been in New York.

Tilsit was speaking again. 'Kind of odd, what happens to people. Seth Mitchell was so crushed by his friend's death that he just became a sort of shadow human being. He's got a farm out toward Abbotsville.'

Edith said sharply, 'You mean Seth 'Mitchell became a farmer?'

'That's the story.'

Edith said nothing more, but made a mental note that perhaps Tilsit was not as good a source of local information as she had formerly believed. Whatever Mitchell was, he hadn't looked like a farmer!

She had to go and check out some books at that point, and so the thought and the conversation ended.

II

A few minutes after nine-thirty, Edith parked her car across the street from the entrance to the motel in which -- after some cruising around -- she had spotted Seth Mitchell's distinctive gold Cadillac.

It was quite dark under the tree where she waited, and that was greatly relieving. But even in the secure darkness, she could feel her heart thumping and the hot flush in her cheeks. She asked herself, 'What am I doing this for?'

She had the self-critical belief that she was hoping would end up in a summer romance. Which was pretty ridiculous for a woman twenty-seven years old, who -- if she shifted her tactic from waiting the pursuing -- ought to concentrate on genuine husband material.

Her thought ended abruptly. From where she sat, she could see the door of the cabin beside which the Cadillac was parked. The door had opened. Silhouetted in the light from the interior was the short, squat man she had seen with Mitchell that afternoon. As Edith involuntarily held her breath, the man came out and closed the door behind him.

He emerged from the main motel entrance, stood for a moment, and then walked rapidly off toward the business section of Harkdale, only minutes away.

And only minutes back, she thought glumly.

Watching him, her motivation dimmed. Somehow, she had not considered the short, heavy-set man as being really associated with Seth Mitchell.

Defeated, she started her motor. As she drove home, she suddenly felt degraded, not by what she had done, but by what she suspected she had intended to do.

What her future path should be was not clear to her. But not this way, she told herself firmly.

Arrived at her apartment, Edith shoved the bag containing the crystal into the cupboard under her sink, ate apathetically, and went to bed.

* *

And in the motel, the squat man returned, scowling. 'The Stone wasn't there. I searched the whole museum,' he told Seth Mitchell, who lay on one of the beds, gagged and bound hand and foot.

Seth Mitchell watched uneasily as the other untied his feet. The man said impatiently, 'I've been thinking about you. Maybe the best thing is just to drive you back to New York. Once I get away, the police'll never find me again.'

He removed the gag. The younger man drew a deep breath. 'Look,' he protested, 'I won't even go near the police.'

He stopped, blank and afraid, and choked back a surge of grief. The possibility that he might be killed was an idea that his brain could contemplate only for a few moments. Not Seth Mitchell, who had all those good things going for him, finally, after years of finagling around the edges of success!

The squat man had come up to him in his office parking lot at noon that day, smiling deceptively, a short man -- not more than five-feet-four -- and stocky. He looked, in his grayness, like an Arab. A well-dressed Arab in an American business suit. As he came up, he said, 'Where is the crystal you and Billy Bingham found?'

What might have happened if Seth had instantly answered was, of course, now impossible to analyze. But he did not immediately remember the crystal, so he had shaken his head.

Whereupon the man took his hand out of his coat pocket. A pistol glittered in it. Under the threat of that gun, Seth had driven to Harkdale, had shown the stranger the ledge beside Lake Naragang where he and Billy had fought. And it was there, on the spot, that he recalled the crystal; and so he had reluctantly gone to the library, aware of the weapon behind him all the time that he talked to the young woman at the desk.

Abruptly remembering that conversation, Seth said desperately, 'Maybe that woman librarian -- '

'Maybe!' said the other noncommittally.

He untied Seth's hands, and then stepped back, motioning with the gun. They went out to the car and drove off.

As they came opposite the lake, the man said, 'Pull over!' After Seth complied, the shot rang out, and the murder was done.

The killer dragged the body to a cliff overlooking the lake, tied rocks to it, and dumped it into the deep Water below.

He actually drove on to New York, left the car in Seth's parking lot, and after spending the night in New York, prepared to return to Harkdale.

During that night Edith slept restlessly, and dreamed that all possible Edith Prices marched past her bed. Only half a dozen of those Ediths were married, and even in her dream that shocked her.

Worse, there was a long line of Edith Prices who ranged from fat to blowsy to downright shifty-eyed and mentally ill. However, several of the Ediths had a remarkable high-energy look, and that was reassuring.

Edith woke to the sound of the phone ringing. It was the library caretaker. 'Hey, Miss Price, better get down here. Somebody broke in last night.'

Edith had a strange, unreal feeling. 'Broke into the library?' she asked.

'Yep. Biggest mess is in the museum. Whoever it was musta thought some of the stones in there were the real stuff, because they're scattered all over the floor.'

III

To Edith Price, the lean young man in overalls was just another inarticulate farmer.

She wrote down his name -- Seth Mitchell. A moment went by, and then the name hit her. She looked up, startled.

The haunted face that stared back at her was sun- and wind-burned, with gaunt cheeks and sick eyes. Nevertheless, the man bore a sensational resemblance to the Seth Mitchell of yesterday, it seemed to Edith.

She thought, a light dawning: This is the Seth Mitchell that Tilsit knew about! There must be a Mitchell clan, with cousins and such, who were look-alikes.

Her mind was still fumbling over the possibilities when she realized the import of the words he had mumbled. Edith echoed, 'A stone! A crystal that you presented to the library museum twenty-five years ago!'

He nodded.

Edith, compressing her lips, thought: All right, let's get to the bottom of this!

During the moments of her confusion, the man had gotten a bill out of his billfold. As he held it out to her, she saw that it was twenty dollars.

She had recovered her self-control, and said now, conversationally, 'That's a lot of money for a worthless rock.'

'It's the one I want,' he muttered. She didn't hear several of the words that followed, but then she said clearly, '... the time Billy disappeared.'

There was silence while Edith absorbed the impact of the notion that here indeed was the original Seth Mitchell.

She encouraged him, finally, 'I've heard about Billy A very unusual incident.'

Seth Mitchell said, 'I yelled at him to get away, and he vanished.' He spoke tautly. His eyes were an odd, discolored gray from remembered shock. He spoke again: 'We both grabbed at it. Then he was gone.'

He seemed only dimly aware of her presence. He went on, and it was as if he were half-talking to himself, 'It was so shiny. Not like it became later. It went all drab, and nobody would believe me.'

He paused. Then, intently, 'All these years I've been thinking. I've been awful slow to see the truth. But last night it came to me. What else could have made Billy disappear when I called him? What else but the stone?'

Edith decided uneasily that this was a problem for a psychiatrist, not a librarian. It struck her that the simplest solution would be to give this Seth Mitchell the worthless rock he wanted.

But of course that would have to be carefully done. Her one, indiscretion so far had been her questioning of Tilsit the day before -- asking about Seth Mitchell. Throughout the police investigation of the breaking and entering of the library museum, she had maintained a careful silence about her own involvement

So the sooner she got rid. of the stone in her kitchen, the better.

'If you'll give me your address,' she requested gently, 'I'll ask the head librarian, and perhaps she'll get in touch with you.

The address he reluctantly gave her was a rural route out of Abbotsville.

She watched him then, wondering a little, as she shuffled off to the door and outside.

On her way home that night, Edith drove by way of the motel. The gold Cadillac was gone.

So that little madness was over, she thought, relieved.

* *

She had her usual late dinner. Then, after making sure the apartment door was locked, she. took the paper bag from under the sink -- and noticed at once, uneasily, that there was less dirt in the bag.

A momentary fear came that the stone would be gone. She spread a newspaper and hastily emptied the bag, dirt and all, onto it As the earth tumbled out, a brilliance of color flashed at her.

Wonderingly, she picked up the beautiful gem.

'But it's impossible,' she whispered. 'That was dull. This is -- beautiful!'

It glittered in her hand. The purple color was all alive, as if thousands of moving parts turned and twisted inside it. Here and there in its depths a finger of light Stirred up a nest of scarlet fire. The crisscross of color and flame flickered so brightly that Edith felt visually stunned.

She held it up against the light -- and saw that there was a design inside.

Somebody had cut a relief map of the solar system into the interior of the stone, and had colored it. It was quite a good example -- it seemed to Edith -- of The cutter's art. The purple-and-red overall effect seemed to derive from the play of light through. the coloring of the tiny 'sun' and its family of planets.

She took the stone back to the sink. There was a fantasy in her mind, she realized, in which she pictured the jewel as having magical powers. Remembering what the farmer Seth Mitchell had said, about yelling at Billy Bingham in the presence of the stone ... maybe the sound of a human voice would have an effect....

She tried that right away, speaking words.

Nothing happened. The picture remained unchanged. She spelled words, articulating each letter.

Nothing.

She ran the gamut of sounds possible in her own voice from a low contralto to a ridiculously piercing soprano -- nothing!

Once more, she noticed the design inside, and held the stone up against the light to see it better. And she was visually tracing the outline of the solar system in the crystal when she had a sudden thought and, with abrupt determination, said in a clear voice: 'Billy Bingham -- the boy -- I want him back ... now!'

After she had spoken, during the silent moments that followed, she felt progressively foolish.

Of the long-missing Billy, there was no sign. Thank God! she thought, breathless.

* *

Edith rose early the next morning; her mind was made up. It was time she got rid of something that was threatening to undermine her good sense.

As she looked at the crystal, she saw that the interior scene had changed. It was now a human body outlined in purple and red points of light.

The outline, she saw presently, was actually extremely detailed, showing the bone structure and the principal organs. There was even a faint flow which suffused the shape, suggesting a fine mask of nerves and blood vessels.

She was examining it, absorbed, when abruptly she realized what she was doing.

Firmly, she put the stone into a small box, filled it with new soil -- crystals, she had read, needed nutrients -- wrapped it, and addressed it to Seth Mitchell, Rural Route 4, Abbotsville.

Shortly, she was driving to the post office. It was not until after she had mailed the package that her first realization came that she had done it again. Once more she had acted on impulse.

Too late, the cautioning thought came: Suppose Seth Mitchell wrote the library a note of thanks. Unhappily, she contemplated Miss Davis' joy at the discomfiture of the college graduate who had been forced upon her by the library board. It would be impossible to explain how the flame of romantic compulsion had motivated her to steal the crystal ... and how once that possibility faded, her only desire had been to dispose of the evidence; which she had now done.

Edith had a sudden grieving thought: Why don't I just get on the next bus to New York and leave this crazy little town forever?

It was an extremely depressing moment The feeling she had was of an endless series of similar wrong decisions in her life. She sat there in her car at the curb, and thought of that first young man at college. A long-hidden memory burst into view, of how she had actually lost him through an impulse, she had been caught by the God-is-dead-so-now-you're-God movement, in which what you did to other people no longer mattered; you didn't have to feel guilty.

In her self-pitying mood, it struck her with abrupt anguish: If I hadn't joined the guilt-free generation, right now I would be Mrs. Richard Staples.

The realization reminded her of her dream, and that unique remembrance escalated her out of her apathy What an odd concept. Involuntarily, she laughed, and thought: Sending the crystal to the least of all possible Seth Mitchells had not been good sense.

Thinking about that, her fear faded. How funny! And what an odd dream to have had.

How could one ever know what way was best, what decision, what philosophy, how much exercise? And, best for what?

* *

Edith was already at her desk in the library when Tilsit came in with the look on her face. In her six months in Harkdale, Edith had come to recognize Tilsit's expression of 'I've-got-special-information'.

'Did you see the paper?' Tilsit asked triumphantly. Edith presumed the paper referred to was the Harkdale Inquirer, a daily of four pages. She herself still read the Times, though she loyally subscribed to the local sheet.

'Remember you asking me the other day about a man called Seth Mitchell?' Tilsit asked.

Edith remembered only too we!!, but she put on a blank face.

Tilsit unfolded the paper in her hands and held it up. The headline was: BILLY BINGHAM FOUND?

Edith reached automatically, and Tilsit handed the paper to her. Edith read:

-=-

BILLY BINGHAM FOUND?

'A twelve-year-old boy staggered out of the brush near Lake Naragang shortly after ten o'clock last night and tried to enter the house where Billy Bingham lived twenty-five years ago. The present tenant, John Hildeck, a carpenter, took the bewildered youngster to the police station. From there he was transported to the hospital.

-=-

That was as far as Edith read. Her body bent to one side, her arms flopped limply. She stooped over, and the floor crashed into her.

When she came out of her faint on the cot in the rest room, the remembrance was still there, bright and hard and improbable, of how she had commanded the crystal to bring back Billy Bingham, somewhere between nine and ten the previous night.

IV

In Miami.

The Seth Mitchell in that singing city had a private vocabulary in which he called God (or, as he sometimes thought of Him, Nature or Fate) the 'Musician'. In this exclusive terminology, his life had been tuneful, and the music a symphony, or at least a concerto.

Somebody up there evidently regarded him as a suitable instrument.

For he had money, girl friends, a fabulous career as a gambler on the edge of the underworld -- all without restrictions, for his orchestra was well disciplined and responsive to his baton. Not bad for a small-town boy who had not learned the melodies of city life till he was over twenty.

But now, suddenly, the Musician had sounded a sour note. Mitchell had in his hand the Harkdale Inquirer, in which was the account of the return of Billy Bingham.

He studied the newspaper's photograph of a frightened-looking boy who did seem to be about twelve old. It looked like Billy Bingham, and it didn't. Mitchell was surprised that he wasn't sure. The Inquirer apologized for having lost its photocut of the real Billy, and explained that Billy's parents had moved to Texas -- it was believed. No one knew where.

The news story concluded: 'The only other person who could likely identify the claimant is Seth Mitchell, Billy's boyhood chum. Mitchell's present address is unknown.'

Mitchell though, sarcastically: The Inquirer ought to examine its out-of-state subscription list.

* *

The next day.

As he walked into room 312 of the Harkdale hospital, he saw that the youngster in the bed to the right of him was putting down his magazine, and looking frightened. Mitchell said with a reassuring smile, 'Billy, you don't have to worry about me. I'm here as your friend.'

The boy said uneasily, 'That's what the big man told me, and then he got nasty.'

Mitchell didn't ask who the big man was. There was a chair near the bed. He drew it up, and said gently, 'Billy, what seems to have happened to you is almost like a fairy story. But the most important thing is that you mustn't worry.

Billy bit his lip, and a tear rolled down his cheek. 'They're treating me as if I'm lying. The big man said I'd be put in jail if I didn't tell the truth.'

Mitchell's mind leaped back to the days when he had been questioned by just such impatient individuals about the disappearance of Billy. His lips tightened. He said, 'Nothing is going to happen if I can help it. But I'd like to ask you a few questions that maybe nobody else thought of. You don't have to answer if you don't want to. How does that strike you?'

'Okay.'

Mitchell took that for a go-ahead signal. 'What kind of clothes was Seth wearing?'

'Brown corduroy pants and a gray shirt.'

The reality gave Mitchell his first disappointment He had hoped the description would jog his memory. It didn't. Of all the reality of that distant day, he had not been able to recall what particular pair of ragged trousers he had had on.

'You wore corduroys also?' It was a shot in the dark.

'They're in there.' The boy pointed at the chest in one corner.

Mitchell stood up, opened the indicated drawer, and lifted out a skimpy pair of cheap corduroys. He examined them shamefacedly, but with an eye to detail. He put them back, finally, disappointed. The identifying label had been torn off. He couldn't remember ever having seen them before.

Twenty-five years, he thought drearily. The time was like a thick veil with a few tattered holes in it Through the holes, he could catch glimpses of his past, mere instants out of his life, each one illuminated because of a particular momentary impact, and none actually fully visible.

'Billy.' Mitchell was back in the chair, intent. 'You mentioned trying to grab a shining stone. Where did you first see it?'

'On the ledge. There's a path that come up from the lake.'

'Had you come up that way before?'

The other shook his head. 'A few times, when it was cold, Usually Seth and I liked to stay near the water.'

Mitchell nodded. He remembered that., 'This bright stone you saw -- how big was it?'

'Oh, it was big.'

'An inch?'

'Bigger. Five inches, I'll betcha.' Billy's face was bright with certainty.

Mitchell paused to argue out the error of that with himself. The stone had been roughly two and a half inches at its longest, and somewhat narrower and thinner. A boy who had had only a glimpse would not be the best judge of its size.

The reasoning made Mitchell uneasy. He was making excuses, where there should be none allowed. He hesitated. He wanted to find Out if Billy had actually touched the crystal, but he didn't quite know how he should lead up to the question. He began, 'According to what you told the paper, you admitted that your chum -- what's his name?' He waited.

'Seth. Seth Mitchell.'

' -- Seth Mitchell saw the stone first. But you still tried to get it, didn't you?'

The boy swallowed 'I didn't mean any harm.'

Mitchell had not intended to imply moral disapproval. He said hastily, 'It's all right, Billy. When I was a boy, it was the guy who got a thing that owned it. None of this seeing-first stuff for us.' He smiled.

Billy said, 'I only wanted to be the one who gave it to the museum.'

The thunder of that vibrated through Mitchell's mind. 'Of course,' he thought, 'now I remember.'

He even realized why he had forgotten. The museum-library had accepted the stone, which had become dull during the days he had carried it in his pocket, with reluctance. The librarian had murmured something about not discouraging small boys. With those words she had discouraged him so completely that he had needed an actual naming of the fact to remember it.

It was hard to believe an impostor would have such detailed recollections. And yet, that meant that Billy Bingham, when he disappeared, had --

His brain poised, stopped by the impossibility of this situation. His own doctor had already told him that mental disturbances, such as this boy had, were usually traced to an overactive imagination.

Mitchell drew a deep breath. 'All right. Now, two more questions. What time of day was it?'

'Seth and I went swimming after school,' said Billy. 'So it was late afternoon'.

'Okay. According to the paper, it wasn't until nearly ten when you got back to your house. Where were you from four-thirty in the afternoon till ten o'clock at night?'

'I wasn't anywhere,' said Billy. 'Seth and I were fighting over the stone. I fell. And when I picked myself up, it was pitch dark.' He was suddenly tearful. 'I don't know what happened. I guess he just left me lying there, somehow.'

Mitchell climbed to his feet, thinking suddenly: This is ridiculous. I ought to have my head examined.

Nevertheless, he paused at the door and flung one more question toward the bed, 'Has anyone else called you -- besides the police, I mean, and the big man, and me?'

'Just a woman from the library.'

'Library?' Mitchell echoed blankly.

'She wanted to know the exact time I woke up beside the lake. Her name is Edith Price, and she works in the library. Of course, I didn't know.'

It seemed meaningless. Mitchell said quickly, simulating a friendliness he no longer felt, 'Well, Billy, I guess I'd better let you get back to your comic book. Thanks a lot.'

He went out of the room and out of the hospital. He paid his bill at the hotel, got into his rented car, drove to the airport, and flew back to Miami. But the time the plane landed, the old, disturbing music from his childhood had faded from his mind.

It seemed to Mitchell that the Musician had let him down. To ensure that it never happened again, he resolved to cancel his subscription to the Harkdale Inquirer.

* *

In Chicago.

Seth Mitchell (of the Seth Mitchell Detective Agency) stared at the man who had just walked into his office as if he was seeing a hallucination. Finally he blinked and said: 'Am I crazy?'

The stranger, a well-set-up young man in his mid-thirties, sat down in the visitor's chair, and said with an enigmatic smile, 'The resemblance is remarkable, isn't it?'

He spoke in a firm baritone; and except that Mitchell knew better, he would have sworn it was his own voice.

In fact, afterward, in telling Marge Aikens about the visitor, he confessed, 'I keep feeling that it was me sitting there.'

'But what did he want?' Marge asked. She was a slim blond, taking her first look at thirty, and taking it well; Mitchell intended to marry her someday when he could find another associate as efficient. 'What did he look like?'

'Me. That's what I'm trying to tell you. He was my spitting image. He even wore a suit that reminded me of one I've got at home.' He pleaded uneasily, 'Don't be too hard on me, Marge. I went to pieces. It's all vague.'

'Did he give you his address?'

Mitchell looked down unhappily at the interview sheet, 'It's not written down!'

'Did he say if he intended to come to the office again?'

'No, but he gave me this thousand dollars in bills, and I gave him a receipt. So we're committed.'

'To what?'

'That's the silliest part of it He wants me to find an onyx crystal. He says he saw it quite a while back in a small-town museum south of New York. He can't remember just where.'

'That's going to be either very hard or very easy.' Marge was thoughtful; she seemed to be considering the problem involved.

'Let me finish,' said Mitchell grimly. 'I know where that crystal is. Just think of what I said. I know that region like a book. I was born there, remember?'

'It had slipped my mind,' said Marge. 'You think you can locate the crystal because -- '

Mitchell said, 'It's in the museum annex of the public library in the town of Harkdale, where I was born. And now -- get this. I presented that crystal to the library, and, what's even more amazing, I dreamed about that stone the other night.'

Marge did not let him get off the subject. 'And he came to you? Out of the scores of detective agencies in Chicago, he came to the one man in the world who looks like him and who knows where that crystal is?'

'He came to me.'

Marge was pursing her beautiful lips. 'Seth, this is fantastic, You shouldn't have let him get away. You're usually so sharp.'

'Thanks.' Dryly.

'Why didn't you tell him where it is?'

'And lose a thousand dollars? My dear, a detective is sometimes like a doctor. People pay him for information he already has.'

Marge held out her hand. 'Let me see that interview sheet' As she read it, she said without looking up, 'What are you going to do?'

'Well, I told him the truth, that I've got several days of workload to get rid of; and then -- '

He fell silent, and the silence grew so long, the woman finally looked up. She was relieved at the expression she saw on his face, for it was the shrewd, reasoning look that was always there when he was at his detective best.

He caught her glance, said, 'It would be a mistake to appear in Harkdale until three or four mysteries have been cleared up. Like, how come there's two of us.'

'You have no relations?'

'Some cousins.'

'Ever see them?'

He shook his head. 'Not since I was around nineteen, when my mother died.' He smiled grimly. 'Harkdale is not a town one goes back to. But scotch that thought you've got. None of my cousins looked like me.' He shuddered. 'Ugh, no.'

Marge said firmly, 'I think when you do finally go, you ought to be disguised.'

'You may count on it!' was the steely reply. 'This calls for all our ingenuity,'

* *

Elsewhere on earth, about two dozen of the total of l,8l 1 Seth Mitchells -- among whom was the best of all possible Seth Mitchells -- also considered the crystal, remembered their dreams of a few nights earlier, and had a strange, tense conviction of an imminent crisis.

As the Seth Mitchell in Montreal, Canada, described it to his French-Canadian wife, 'I can't get over the feeling that I'm going to have to measure up. Remember, I mentioned that to you when I awakened the other morning.'

His wife, a pretty blond who had a French-Canadian woman's practical contempt for such fantasies, remembered it well, and wanted to know, measure up to what?

Her husband said unhappily, 'I have a feeling I could have made, better decisions, made more of myself, I am not the man I could have been.'

'So what?' she wanted to know, 'Who is? And what of it?'

'Kaput. That's what's of it.'

'How do you mean?' sharply

'Kaput' He shrugged. 'I'm sorry to be so negative, my dear. But that's the feeling. Since I didn't measure up, I'm through.'

His wife sighed. 'My mother warned me that all men get crazy ideas as they approach forty. And here you are.'

'I should have been braver, or something,' he moaned.

'What's wrong with being a tax consultant?' she demanded. Her husband seemed not to hear, 'I have a feeling I ought to visit my hometown.' He spoke in an anxious tone.

She grabbed his arm. 'You're going straight to Dr Ledoux,' she said. 'You need a checkup.'

Dr Ledoux could find nothing wrong. 'In fact, you seem to be in exceptionally good health.'

The Seth Mitchell of Montreal had to concede that his sudden alarm was pretty ridiculous.

But he decided to visit Harkdale as soon as he cleared up certain business.

V

The man's voice came suddenly, with a slight foreign accent 'Miss Price, I want to talk to you.'

In the darkness, Edith saw the speaker, and saw that he stood in the shadows between the garage and the rooming house where she lived, barring her way.

Seeing him, she stopped short.

Before she could speak, the voice continued, 'What did you do with the crystal?'

'I -- don't -- understand.'

She spoke the words automatically. She could see her interrogator more clearly now. He was short and broad of build. Abruptly, she recognized him as the man who had been with the Seth Mitchell look-alike in the gold Cadillac.

'Miss Price, you removed that crystal from the display cabinet. Either give it to me or tell me what you did with it, and that'll be the end of the matter.'

Edith had the tense feeling of a person who has acted unwisely and who therefore cannot possibly make any admissions, not even to a stranger.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' she half-whispered.

'Look, Miss Price.' The man stepped out of the shadows. His tone was conciliatory. 'Let's go into your apartment and talk this over.'

His proposal was relieving. For her apartment was only a little suite in a rooming house in which the other tenants were never more than a wall away.

Incredibly -- afterward she thought of it as incredible -- she was instantly trusting, and started past him, unsuspecting. And so the surprise as he grabbed her was total. One of his arms engulfed both her arms and body. Simultaneously, he put a hard, unyielding palm over her mouth and whispered, 'I've got a gun!'

Half-paralyzed by that threat, she was aware of her captor carrying her toward the back alley. And she allowed him to shove her into a car that was parked against a fence.

He climbed in beside her, and sat there in the almost dark of the night, gazing at her. It was too dark to see the expression on his face. But as the seconds went by, and he made no threatening move, her heart slowed in its rapid beating, and she finally gasped, Who are you? What do you want?'

The man chuckled satirically and said, 'I'm the worst of all possible Athtars from the thirty-fifth century.' He chuckled again, more grimly 'But I turned out to have a high survival faculty.'

His voice tightened. 'Where I come from, I'm a physicist I sensed my danger, and I analyzed a key aspect of the nature of the crystal in record time. In dealing with human beings, it operates on the vibrations a body puts forth from all its cells. In re-creating that vibration, it creates the person. Conversely, in canceling the vibration, it uncreates him. Recognizing this -- and since I was not its orientation in my era -- I simply put up a barrier on the total vibration level of my own body, and thus saved my life when it uncreated all the lesser Athtars.'

The man added somberly, 'But evidently, by defeating it, I remained attached to it. on some other level. As it fell back through time to the twentieth century, I fell with it. Not -- unfortunately -- to where and when it went Instead, I arrived last week beside that ledge overlooking Lake Naragang.'

He finished in a wondering tone, 'What a remarkable, intricate internal energy-flow system it must have. Imagine! In passing through time it must have detected this twenty-five-year inactive period, and its reawakening, and dropped me off within days of its own reactivation.'

The voice became silent; and there was the darkness again. Edith ventured a small movement; she changed her position on the seat to ease a growing discomfort in one leg. When there was no countermovement from him, she whispered, 'Why are you telling me this? It all sounds perfectly mad!'

Even as she uttered the stereotype, she realized that a quality of equal madness in herself believed every word that he had spoken. She thought in a spasm of self-criticism: I really must be one of the lesser Edith Prices. She had to fight to suppress an outburst of hysterical laughter.

'From you,' said the worst of all possible Athtars, 'I want information.

'I don't know anything about a crystal.'

'The information I want,' said the man in an inexorable voice, "is this: At any time recently have you had a thought about wishing you had taken a different path in life instead of ending up in Harkdale as a librarian?'

Edith's mind flashed back to her series of impulses after she had mailed the crystal -- and back farther to some of the times she had thought about in that moment. 'Why, yes,' she breathed.

'Tell me about one of them,' said the man.

She told him of the thoughts she had had of just getting on a bus or train and leaving.

In the darkness the man leaned back in the seat. He seemed surprisingly relaxed. He said with a chuckle, 'Are you the best of all possible Edith Prices?'

Edith made no reply. She was beginning to have the feeling that perhaps she could confide in this man; should tell him where the crystal was.

Athtar was speaking again: 'I have a conviction that the Edith Price who is the twentieth-century orientation for the crystal is on that bus, or is heading for safety somewhere else. And that therefore you are under the same threat as I am -- of being uncreated as soon as the crystal selects the perfect Edith Price.'

For Edith, terror began at that moment.

During the minutes that followed, she was only vaguely aware of words mumbling out of her mouth.

Listening to her revelation, Athtar suppressed an impulse to murder her out of hand. He played it cautiously, thinking that if anything went wrong, this Edith was all he had to help him to trace the other Ediths.

So he spoke reassuring words, put her out of the car, and watched her as she staggered off ... safe ... she thought.

VI

The note read: 'He wasn't there. It wasn't there. The farm was deserted. Did you lie to me? Athtar.'

Edith felt a chill the first time she read the words; particularly she reacted to the last line with fear. But on her tenth of twelfth reading, she was more determined. She thought: If this whole crazy business is real, I'd better -- what? Be brave? Consider the problem? Act with decisiveness?

It was Saturday.

Before going to work, she bought a small Browning automatic at the Harkdale Hardware. She had often gone target-practicing with the second of her two college boyfriends, the one who had a gay philosophy that God was dead, and that therefore one need only avoid jail -- and otherwise do anything one pleased. Eventually, he departed without marrying her, presumably feeling guiltless about having lured her away from a man who might have offered her a wedding ring.

But this man did show her how to shoot an automatic firearm, and so she put the little pistol into her purse -- and felt a hardening of her conviction that it was time this Edith started measuring up.

One doubt remained: Was willingness to shoot in self-defense a step forward, or a step away, from being the best of all possible Edith Prices?

At the library that day, Tilsit was waiting for her with another news item:

-=-

YOUNG FARMER MISSING

Seth Mitchell, Abbotsville farmer, has not been at his farm for several days. A neighbor, Carey Grayson, who called on Mitchell yesterday to buy seed grain, found his cows unmilked, a horse in the stable starving, chickens unfed, and no sign of life around the house. Grayson fed the animals, then contacted Mitchell's cousin in a neighboring county and notified the sheriff's office, An investigation is under way.

-=-

Edith handed the paper back with a meaningless comment But she was thinking: So that's what Athtar had discovered.

In spite of her resolve, she trembled. It seemed to her that there was no turning back; she must carry forward inexorably with all the thoughts that she had had.

Sunday.

She had driven to New York and parked two blocks from the little hotel for women only where she had formerly lived. Surely, she told herself, that was where at least one Edith duplicate could have gone.

From a phone booth she called the hotel and asked for Edith Price. There was a pause, then, 'I'm ringing,' said the woman desk clerk's voice.

Instantly breathless, Edith hung up. She sagged limply inside the booth, eyes closed. It was not clear to her even now what she. had expected. But the only hopeful thought in her mind was: Can it be that I'm the only Edith who knows that there are others? And does that give me an advantage over the unknowing ones?

Or was there already somewhere an Edith Price who had naturally become the best of them all?

Her thought ended. She realized that a short, stocky man was standing beside the booth, partly out of her line of vision. There was something familiar about him.

The familiarity instantly grew sensational. She straightened and she turned.

Athtar!

The Edith Price who stepped out of the phone booth was still shaky and still not brave. But in two days fear and threat and gulps of terror had transformed her. She had been a vaguely sad, wish-my-mistakes-won't-doom-me young woman. Now, at times she trembled with anxiety, but at other times she compressed her lips and had thoughts that were tough and realistic.

The sight of Athtar caromed her into anxiety. Which was just as well, the tough part of her analyzed realistically. She didn't trust the worst of all possible Athtars. And he would feel safer with a frightened Edith, she was sure.

Seen close in broad daylight on a deserted New York street on Sunday morning, Athtar -- short, broad, with a thick face and gray cheeks -- was surprisingly as she remembered him. Totally unprepossessing.

He said softly, 'Why don't you let me talk to her?' Edith scarcely heard. The first question of her forty-eight-hour, stop-only-for-sleep, stream of consciousness siphoned through her voice. 'Are you really from the thirty-fifth century?'

He gave her a quick, shrewd look, must have realized how wound up she was, and said receptively, 'Yes.'

'Are they all like you? Your height, your complexion?'

'It was decided,' said Athtar in a formal tone, 'that a body built thicker and closer to the ground has more utility. That was several hundred years before I was born. And so, yes. No one is over 177 centimeters.; That is, five feet, six inches.'

'How do you know you're the worst of all possible Athtars?'

'In my time,' was the reply, 'it is a felony for anyone but a member of the Scientists' Guild to have a weapon. Hence, political and economic power is part of the prize of the struggle for position in the Guild. On my way to becoming a tougher member, I wished many times to be there, relatively safe, among the faceless, unarmed masses. And the crystal, in creating other Athtars, solidified those wishes.'

There was an implication here that getting tougher was not the answer; not the way. Edith sighed her disappointment, and remembered her other questions. She told him, then, about the two pictures she had seen in the crystal, the one of the solar system and the other of the outline of a human body. Did he know what the pictures meant?

'When I first saw it,' said Athtar, 'the scene inside was of our galaxy. Later, it became the solar system. So what ,you saw was probably a carry-over from my time, where we occupy all the planets. And what I saw must derive from a time when man has moved out to the galaxy. It could mean that the crystal adjusts to the era in which it finds itself. Though why a human being, instead of the planet Earth in this era, is not obvious. Was the outline that of a woman or a man?'

Edith couldn't remember it that clearly.

Standing there in the bright, sunny day and on the dirty, narrow street, Athtar shook his head. There was awe in his ugly face. He said wonderingly, 'Such a small object; such a comprehensive ability.' He added, half to himself, 'It's got to be potential flow patterns. There are not enough atoms in such a crystal to act as a control board for so much,'

He had already, by implication, answered her next question, but she asked it anyway.

Athtar sighed, 'No, the crystal is definitely not from the thirty-fifth century. It appeared suddenly. I picture it as having fallen backward through time from some future era in drops of fifteen hundred years.'

'But why would they have sent it back?' Edith asked, bewildered. 'What are they after?'

The chunky little man gave her a startled 1ook. 'The idea of the crystal having been sent back for a purpose had not previously occurred to me. It's such a colossally valuable machine, we assumed it got away from them accidentally,' he said. He was silent; then, finally: 'Why don't you let me go and see this second Edith Price? And you go back to Harkdale? If I find the crystal, I'll report with it to you there.'

The implication seemed to be that he planned to cooperate with her. What he meant was that the crystal would be no good to him until he had found and murdered the Edith to whom it was oriented.

The tough part of Edith hesitated at the idea of trusting this man. But it occurred to her that he might have thirty fifth-century weapons and that therefore he was being generous from a position of total strength in offering to cooperate.

With such fear thoughts in her mind, and having no plans of her own, she agreed.

She watched him get into a shining new automobile and drive off down the narrow street. It was a middle-sized car, she noted absently. She had never been one who kept track of auto designs, so by the time she wondered what make it was, it was too late. Equally belatedly, it struck her that she ought to have looked at the license-plate numbers.

She stood there, and she thought sarcastically: What a third-rate Edith Price I am!

She was vaguely aware of a car pulling up at the near by curb. A young woman climbed out of it and casually walked toward her as if to go into the phone booth.

She stopped suddenly, stepped over beside Edith, and said, 'You're Miss Price?'

Edith turned.

The other woman was a bright, alert, thirty-year-old blond, and Edith had never seen her before. She had no sense of being threatened, but involuntarily she backed away several steps.

'Y-yes,' she said.

The woman turned toward the car and called, 'Okay, Seth.'

Seth Mitchell climbed from the car and came rapidly toward them. He was well dressed, like the Seth Mitchell in the gold Cadillac, but there was a subtle difference. His face had a firmer, more determined expression.

He said, 'I'm a detective. Who is that man you were talking to?'

And thus the story, as well as Edith knew it, was presently shared.

* *

They had gone into a coffee shop for their tense discussion. To Edith it was both relieving and disturbing to realize that these detectives had been in Harkdale for two days and had traced her down as a result of her call to the hospital, inquiring about Billy Bingham. Having thus spotted her, they had become aware that the squat man was also keeping track of her movements. And so that morning, not one but three cars had headed for New York -- Edith's, Athtar's, and theirs.

The exchange of information took time and several cups of coffee -- though Edith rejected the final cup, with the sudden realization that coffee was probably not good for people, and that the crystal might judge her on it at some later time. She smiled wanly at how many restraints she was placing on herself. Exactly as if God was no longer dead.

When they came out of the restaurant, Seth Mitchell phoned the other Edith Price. He emerged from the phone booth uneasy.

'The switchboard operator says that Miss Price went with a man about twenty minutes ago. I'm afraid we're too late.'

From Edith's description, he had already come to the conclusion that Athtar was a dangerous man. They decided to wait for the second Edith to return. But though they remained in New York until after eleven that night, the young woman did not come back to her hotel.

* *

She never would return. For some hours, a bullet in her brain, her body, weighed down by stones, had been lying at the bottom of the East River.

And Athtar had the crystal.

To his intense disappointment, that Edith was not the crystal's orientation.

Accordingly, he spent the evening and a portion of the night fitting together parts in the construction of a special weapon. He had a peculiar prescience that he would need its superfine power the following day against the Edith who, he believed, was back in Harkdale.

VII

Since it was late, and since, after all, they could phone the second Edith again by long distance, in the morning shortly after eleven -- the three of them, Edith and the detectives, set out for Harkdale in the two cars. Seth Mitchell, at Edith's request, drove her car. Marge Aikens followed in the larger machine.

En route, Detective Mitchell told Edith that he believed she was the original Edith, and that it was to her that the crystal was still oriented. He considered also that her analysis of Seth Mitchell, the farmer, as the worst Seth, had doomed that unfortunate Mitchell duplicate. The crystal accepted her judgment and probably uncreated Seth, the farmer, when the package with the crystal addressed to him had barely been deposited in the post office.

Edith was taken aback by the detective's logic. 'But,' she stammered, 'I didn't mean it that way.' Tears streamed down her cheeks. 'Oh, that poor man!'

'Of course you didn't mean it,' was the reply. 'And so just to make sure that I heard you correctly, tell me again in what sequence that judgment of yours came. Was it before or after your various impulses to leave Harkdale?'

'Oh, after.'

"And did I hear you correctly, that you thought of going into the post office, and asking for the package you had mailed to be returned to you?'

'Yes, I had that thought' She added, 'But I didn't do it.'

'I would analyze that at least one other Edith did go back in,' said Mitchell.

'But it's all so complicated,' Edith said. 'How would any Edith just go, leaving clothes, money, car?'

'I've been thinking of my own background on that,' said Mitchell. 'Evidently the crystal can excise all confusions like that. For example, I never again even thought of going back to Harkdale. It didn't even cross my mind.'

He broke off. 'But there are no blanks like that in your mind?'

'None that I can think of.'

Seth. Mitchell nodded. 'That's what I heard. So I think I've got the solution to this whole crazy business -- and we don't even have to know where the crystal is.'

* *

What he analyzed was simple. In bringing back Billy Bing ham at her command, the crystal had deposited the boy nearly two miles away. True, at the time, she had been holding the crystal in her hand. But that didn't apply to her negative thought about farmer Seth Mitchell, which had occurred after she had mailed the crystal and was approximately a hundred yards from the post office.

So if she had indeed uncreated the mentally ill farmer, then the distance of the crystal's human orientation -- in this instance one of the Edith Prices -- from the crystal was not a factor.

When he had finished, Edith did not speak at once.

'You don't agree?' said the detective.

'I'm thinking,' Edith said. 'Maybe I'm not really the orientation.'

'We'll test that tomorrow.'

'What about Athtar?' Edith asked. 'I keep feeling he may have special weapons. And besides, the crystal cannot affect him. What about that?'

'Let me think about Athtar,' said the man.

While she waited, Edith was reminded of what Athtar had asked about the figure in the crystal: Was it of a man or a woman?

It was her first time for trying to remember, and so she sat there in the darkness next to the man, and was aware of two separate lines of thought in her mind.

The first: She attempted to visualize the human design in the crystal.

The second --

VIII

She watched his profile, as he drove in silence. And she thought: How brilliant he is! Yet surely a mere detective, no matter how keen his logic, cannot be the best of all possible Seth Mitchells. A man in such a profession has got to be somewhere in the middle -- which in this competition is the same as the worst.

And he disappeared.

For many seconds after she had that thought, the suddenly driverless car held to its straight direction. Its speed, which had been around seventy, naturally started to let up the instant there was no longer a foot on the accelerator.

The only error was when Edith uttered a scream, and grabbed at the wheel, turning it. The machine careened wildly. The next second she grasped it in a more steadying way; and, holding it, slid along the seat into a position where presently she could apply the brake. She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. She sat there, dazed.

The detective's aide, Marge, had slowed as soon as she saw that there was a problem. She now drew up behind Edith, got out of the car, and walked to the driver's side of the other machine.

'Seth,' she began, 'what -- '

Edith pushed the door open and climbed, trembling, out onto the road. She had a mad impulse to run somewhere. Her body felt strange, her mind encased in a blank anguish. She was vaguely aware of herself babbling about what had happened.

It must have taken a while for the incoherent words to reach through to the blond woman. But suddenly Marge gasped, and Edith felt herself grabbed by the shoulders. She was being shaken; a breathless voice was yelling at her, 'You stupid fool! You stupid fool!'

Edith tried to pull away, but Marge's fingers seemed embedded in the shoulders of her dress.

The shaking became pain. Her neck hurt, then her arms. Edith thought for the first time: I must be careful. I mustn't do or say anything that will affect her.

With that thought, sanity returned. For the first time she saw that Marge was in a state of hysteria. The shaking was actually an automatic act of a person almost out of her mind with grief.

Pity came. She was able to free herself by a simple action. She slapped Marge lightly on the cheek, once, twice, three times. The third time, the woman let go of her and leaned against the car, sobbing. 'Oh, my God!' she said.

A wind was blowing out of the darkness from the west. Car headlights kept glaring past them, lighting the scene briefly. The two women were now in a relatively normal state, and they discussed the problem. Edith tried to recreate Marge's employer with the same command that she had used for Billy Bingham.

'Seth Mitchell, the detective, back here, now!'

She had had a feeling that it wouldn't work -- the Seth Mitchells were undoubtedly due to be eliminated one by one -- and it didn't. The minutes ticked by. Though she yelled the command in many variations into the night, there was no sign of the vanished Seth whose presence had for a long half-day brought to the whole situation the reassurance that derives from a highly intelligent and determined mind.

In the end, defeated, the two women in their separate cars drove on to Harkdale. Since Marge had a room reserved at the Harkdale Hotel, she went there, and Edith drove wearily to the rooming house where she lived.

It was nearly four o'clock when she finally limped into her little suite. She lay down without undressing. As she was drifting off to sleep, she had a tense fear: Would the best of all possible Ediths be this sloppy about personal cleanliness?

Literally hurting with exhaustion, she rolled off the bed, undressed, bathed, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, changed the linens and climbed into a clean pair of pajamas.

She awakened with a horrible start shortly after 5:30 with the thought that conformism might not be it. Such toiletry amenities as she had performed were products of early training and did not necessarily have anything to do with life and living as it should be.

She fell asleep imagining a series of rebel Ediths, each one of whom had some special characteristic that was noble and worthy.

The next time she awakened, it was light outside. It occurred to her that all of her concepts, so compulsively visualized, where probably being created somewhere by the crystal. And so undoubtedly there were already beatnik and hippie Ediths as well as rougher, tougher types.

For the first time she realized what a mad whirl of possibilities she had considered in the previous thirty-six hours. Ediths who were hard-boiled and could coldly shoot to kill, or, conversely, were superfeminine, sweet, tantalizing temptresses.

'And it's all unnecessary,' she whispered, lying there. 'The decision will probably be made as arbitrarily as my own impulsive condemnation of the inarticulate farmer and the courageous -- but presumably not perfect -- detective.'

Having no standards that applied to the twentieth century; the crystal had uncreated a powerful and good man on the passing judgment of the person to whom it had by chance become oriented. Accordingly, the future looked grim for all Seth Mitchells and Edith Prices, including the original.

When she next awakened, it was time to get up and go to work -- and think some more about what the perfect Edith would be like.

As she dressed, she looked out of her window with its distant view of the blue waters of Lake Naragang, and the nearby downtown section that at one place, opposite the Harkdale Hotel, crowded the water's edge. Pretty little town, Harkdale. She remembered that on her arrival she had thought that at least here she could be more casual in her dress than in New York.

Edith gave a curt, rueful laugh as that thought struck her. She had come full circle during the night, back to the notion that appearance would count. Trying to think feminine -- 'After all, I am a woman' -- she put on her frilliest dress.

Yet in some back closet of her brain there was a fearful conviction that all this was in vain. The crisis was imminent; she might be dead -- uncreated -- before this day was out

It seemed ridiculous to go to work on the day you were going to die. But she went.

As she moved about her duties, Edith was conscious of her subdued manner. Twice, when she unthinkingly looked into the rest-room mirror, she was startled by the pale face and sick eyes that looked hack at her.

'This is not really me,' she told herself. 'I can't be judged on this.'

Surely the crystal wouldn't reject her because she was in a daze. Every passing minute, fleeting images of other Ediths passed before her mind's eye; each one had in it the momentary hope that maybe it held the key to the best. There was an Edith living out her life as a nun; another chaste Edith, married but holding sex to a minimum, placing all her attention on her children; and an Edith who was a follower of Zen Buddhism.

She had, earlier, put through a call to Marge Aiken at the Harkdale Hotel. About two o'clock Marge called back. She reported that she had phoned New York and discovered that the second Edith had not returned to her hotel at all the previous night.

After imparting this grim news, Marge said, 'And so, if Athtar contacts you, don't be alone with him under any circumstances until he produces the Seth Mitchell in the gold Cadillac and the Edith in New York.'

After that call, more images, mostly of saintly and good-hearted, unsophisticated Ediths, now haunted her. Somehow, they stemmed from her childhood conditioning, against which she had rebelled in college, as seen through a child's unnoticing eyes.

Into this haze of thoughts, Tilsit's voice suddenly intruded: 'Phone call for you, Edith.'

As she picked up the phone, Edith was vaguely aware of Miss Davis' disapproving face in the background. Though it was the first day she had received personal calls in her six months in the library, the chief librarian had the outraged expression of an employer whose patience has been tried beyond reason.

Edith forgot that as she heard the familiar voice on the phone -- Athtar's.

The man said, 'I want to see you right after work.'

Edith said, in a suddenly faint voice, 'At the Harkdale Hotel -- in the lobby.'

IX

Athtar stepped out of the phone booth from which he had called. A cruel smile twisted his broad face. For him there were two possibilities of victory, now that he had the crystal.

The first solution was to kill its current orientation -- Edith. He intended to take no chances with that She would never, he was resolved, reach the Harkdale Hotel.

However, murder of his only Edith had one unpleasant possibility. Though he had analyzed that she was the orientation, if it should happen that she was not, then, in destroying her he would remove his source of information for tracing other Ediths.

It was a chance he was resolved to take. But, as a precaution, he had already removed the crystal from the nutrient soil on which it fed. He was not certain how long it would be before the stone was deactivated by starvation, but he deduced not more than two weeks. Whereupon it would orient to whoever reactivated it. To himself, of course.

Now that he had a special barrier-penetrating weapon, he firmly believed that before this day was over he would be in sole possession of the remarkable machine of all time and space -- the crystal.

* *

The Harkdale Hotel was a summer resort hostelry. Its prices were high, and as a result it had made money. Wisely, some of the money had been spent on decoration, fine furniture, and a sophisticated staff.

The clerk on day duty had his own definition of a sophisticated desk clerk: a person with a memory so good that he can forget with discretion.

He was such a clerk. He described himself as an import from fine hotels. His name, he said, was Derek Slade. He had -- he always explained -- asked for an assignment to a small resort town, because he had a certain childhood nostalgia for village life. So discreet, however, was Derek, that on this fateful day he allowed four Seth Mitchells to register. Each time he believed it was the same man but with a different woman; and he was just beginning, he told himself, to enjoy the situation, when Seth Mitchell arrived for the fifth time; only this time he had no woman with him.

Yet it took Derek only a moment to figure it out This smooth male, Seth Mitchell, had four women in different rooms, and evidently he wanted a separate room for himself. Why? Derek didn't try to analyze the matter further, Life -- he had often said -- was full of surprises. He would observe the fact, not speculate about it.

Derek spoke in a low tone, 'You may count on my discretion, Mr. Mitchell.'

The Seth Mitchell across the desk from him raised his eyebrows, then nodded with a faint smile.

Derek was pleased. The remark ought to be good for a twenty-dollar tip.

He was still congratulating himself when the elevator door opened and another Seth Mitchell stepped out and walked toward the desk. As he came up, the Seth Mitchell who had just registered turned to follow the bellboy carrying his bags to the elevator.

The two Seth Mitchells almost bumped into each other. Both took evasive action. Both murmured polite nothings, and were about to pass each other when Derek recovered.

It was one of his perfect moments. He raised his voice, spoke with that exact right note of authority: 'Mister Mitchell.'

The two Seth Mitchells were already in a mildly confused state. Their name, uttered in that peremptory tone, stopped them.

Derek said, 'Mr. Seth Mitchell, I want you to meet Mr. Seth Mitchell. Gentlemen, please wait there a moment'

He let them kill their own time -- one of them seemed to recover quickly, the other remaining bewildered -- while he phoned the rooms of the previously registered Seth Mitchells. He had to call all four rooms, but presently there in front of him stood five Seth Mitchells.

Of all the people present, the one most completely unnoticed was Derek Slade. He wouldn't have had it any other way, for he could watch.

Four of the five Seths were gulping and stuttering at each other. The fifth had stepped off to one side with a faint smile. Almost as one, the four suddenly became embarrassed, and so Derek's cool voice caught them again at the right moment: 'Gentlemen, why don't you go into the conference room over here and talk this whole matter over?'

As they started for the conference room, Marge Aiken entered the hotel -- in time to catch a profile view of the last Seth Mitchell to enter the room. She became very pale and then rushed forward.

'Seth!' she cried out tearfully. 'For God's sake, I thought you were dead!'

She stopped. She had grabbed the nearest man by the arm. He turned, and the something different about him flustered her.

* *

Afterward, when everybody had been told what Marge knew, and after they had heard about Edith, the woman detective suggested that she call Edith at the library and have her come over at once, instead of later.

Three of the Seth Mitchells objected. Listening to each in turn, Marge glanced along the line of sensationally familiar faces, and saw in all but one man's eyes a haunting apprehension. Yet there was in all of them the same bright intelligence that she had seen so often in her own employer.

The Seth from Montreal said, 'Our first act must be to protect ourselves from that young woman's automatic judgments, such as she rendered on farmer Mitchell and detective Mitchell.'

A second, slightly deeper-voiced Seth was concerned about Athtar. 'In killing Edith Price Number Two, Athtar must have got the crystal, and then discovered that the dead Edith was not the orientation. Therefore,' he said, 'our initial act must be to protect the Edith who is the orientation.'

So the first real problem was getting her safely to the hotel, not what she would do when she got here.

The third Seth said the problem was not so much Edith's judgment of men; it was her stereotyped thoughts about how a woman should be. Presumably, the crystal had dutifully created a long list of Edith Prices who were simply ordinary human beings with varying moral standards, or with slightly different beliefs about how to get along in the drab world of the twentieth century.

'As an example of how differently I would want her to handle her control of the crystal, one of the first Edith Prices I wish her to create is one that has ESP. Why? So that she can understand this whole situation and what to do about it.'

His words brought a hopeful reaction. It was an obviously good idea - if it could be done.

A fourth Seth, who had sat gray and silent, now spoke up: 'It would be interesting if such ESP ability included being able to spot the Seth Mitchell who' -- he nodded at Marge -- 'paid your boss a thousand dollars to locate the crystal.'

The Seth who had arrived at the hotel without a wife -- and who had reflected none of the fear that the others felt -- stirred, and smiled cheerfully. 'You need look no further. I'm he.'

When the chorus of questions and excitement finally died down, he continued, 'To answer your basic question, I also dreamed, as you all did. And just as the worst Athtar found himself with the address of one of the Seth Mitchells in his mind, in the same way the morning after the dream the address of detective Mitchell in mine.'

'But why didn't you come for the crystal yourself? Why pay a thousand dollars?'

The bachelor Mitchell smiled again. I hate to tell you people this, and it is to your advantage not to let Miss Price know, but according to the thoughts I had after my dream, I am the best of all possible Seth Mitchells.'

Many minutes chattered by before his audience was again calmed down, and he was able to answer the substance of all the words they had projected: 'I don't know why I'm best. But I hired someone to come here in my place because I sensed danger, and I came here today believing that this was the crisis. I can't tell you what I'll do about it. I don't even have the feeling that my role is decisive I simply believe that something will present itself, and I'll do it.'

He finished simply, 'I don't think we should devote any more time to me. We have many vital things to do, and only until Edith Price comes off the job to do them. Let's get started.'

They were law-abiding people; so they now contacted the police, who checked the motel where the Seth Mitchell of the gold Cadillac had registered. Then they phoned his office in New York on the basis of his license-plate number and found that the car was there, the man missing for many days. A warrant was accordingly issued against a squat man whose only known name was Athtar.

* *

Since the police of Harkdale were few in number, after dark Athtar was able to drive into town and into the library parking lot without being observed. He had timed his arrival for about a minute after the library officially closed.

Dimness. A lingering twilight that had barely transformed into night: A few library patrons were still maneuvering in the library parking lot when Edith emerged from the rear door.

She noted with a vague surprise that a town fire truck, engine riming, was standing near the door. But she was already having qualms about the forthcoming journey to the hotel -- so far away, it seemed to her suddenly. And so the sight of the big truck was reassuring instead of astonishing.

To get to her own car, she had to go around the fire truck. As she started forward to do so, the big machine surged into motion with a gigantic thunder of its engine. Edith stopped, teetered, then leapt back out of the way -- barely in time.

As it came abreast of her, the truck jammed on its brakes and screeched to a halt directly in front of her.

Somewhere beyond the big machine, a purple flash lighted the sky.

X

Though Edith did not see it, the purple light had its origin in one of the maneuvering cars. Like a tracer bullet, the light flashed from the auto to the fire truck. As it hit, it made a sound of a pitch never before heard on earth: a deep, sustained, continuing spat of chemical bonds by the quadrillion snapping in metal.

The tiny bullet penetrated the thick steel frame of the fire truck, and reformed itself a micromillimeter at a time from the steel molecules. It did not slow as it passed through the heavy machine. Indeed, there was no thickness of metal of the twentieth century that could have held it back by even one foot a minute of its forward speed. Not the armor plate of a battleship, nor the solid mass of the earth itself.

It was a rifle bullet, and so its path was straight -- through air and through metal. It also would have been straight through Edith, except that its speed was that of a bullet, immense but finite.

And so it transited the fire truck while the truck was still in motion. The bullet carried along inside the moving vehicle during a measurable time of several split seconds and missed Edith by twenty inches.

Unchecked, it struck the library wall, moved on through, emerged from the far side, and zipped off into the night. Its kinetic energy being a precise quality, it bored forward another hundred yards, and then rapidly fell.

Moments later, two plainclothes police officers discharged their rifles at the figure that was dimly visible inside the car from which the purple-glowing bullet had been fired.

The screech of bullets striking his own machine, startled Athtar. But he had a molecular reinforcing unit putting out a field that hardened the glass and the metal of the auto; and so the bullets failed to penetrate.

What bothered him was that he had only a few bullets, and in the dark he couldn't gauge the extent of the trap that had been set for him. So now, hastily, he put his car into drive, stepped on the gas, and drove rapidly out of the parking lot.

A police car fell in behind him, flashing its red lights at him. Though it or its weapons were no danger to him, he feared a roadblock. He turned up several side streets, and in only a few minutes of driving lured the police car onto a street near the lake on the far side of the Harkdale Hotel, an approach that he had thoroughly explored on foot earlier.

Satisfied, he opened the car window on the driver's side, slowed, leaned Out, looked back, took quick aim at the engine of the other machine, and put a purple-glowing bullet through the crankcase. There was a shattering crash. The stricken motor almost tore itself apart, screaming metallically. The auto itself came to a bumpy halt.

Athtar hurriedly circled back to the Harkdale Hotel. A first queasy doubt had come that for a reason that was not clear his time was running out. Yet it still seemed true to him that all he need do was sneak into the hotel and discharge a single bullet at one, and only one, beating heart.

Minutes later, after squeezing through a kitchen window of the hotel, he found himself in a shadowy storeroom on a concrete floor. As he fumbled his way to a door, he had a fleeting mental image of his colleagues of the great Science Guild viewing him in such a lowly action. Of course, Athtar told himself scornfully, what they thought would not matter after he got control of the crystal. There would be dramatic changes after he got back to his own time: a few hundred Guild members were scheduled for extermination.

Cautiously he pulled open the door. It was as he started through the hallway beyond that he became aware of a faint sound behind him. He spun around and jerked up his gun.

Instant, unbearable pain in his arm forced the gun back down and his finger away from the trigger. Almost at once the gun dropped from his nerveless hand, clattering to the floor. Even as he recognized that thirty-fifth-century technology was being used against him, he saw that a short, squat man was standing in the doorway of the storeroom from which he himself had just emerged

Athtar's arm and hand were now inexorably forced by intolerable pain to reach into his inside breast pocket, take out the crystal, and hold it out to the other man.

The second Athtar did not speak. He drew the door behind him shut, accepted the crystal, and bending down, picked the gun up from the floor. Then he edged past his prisoner, stepped through the door beyond, and closed it behind him also.

At once, all the muscle pressures let go of the worst Athtar. Instantly desperate, he tried to jerk open the storeroom door, intending to escape by the same window he had entered. The door was locked, and it had an unnervingly solid feel to it Athtar whirled toward the other door.

When he found it locked also, and with that same solid resistance to his tug, he now finally recognized that he was trapped by molecular forces from his own era. There was nothing to do, as the minutes lengthened, but to sit down on the concrete floor and wait.

Sitting there, he had the partly mixed reaction that the drama of the crystal would now play on without him. What seemed good about it was the distinct conviction that perhaps he was well out of it; perhaps this was a more dangerous situation than he had let himself be aware of. Would it have been dangerous for him? The intuition wasn't that definite.

He had recognized his assailant as the best of all possible Athtars. So now he told himself he was glad it was the best Athtar and not himself who would be present while these twentieth-century human beings tried to save themselves.

The Price woman was being cleverer than he had anticipated. Which meant that the automatic programming of the crystal to uncreate all but the best would force her to the most desperate actions. Or so it seemed to the worst Athtar.

Better not to be around when such extreme events were transpiring.

* *

The best of all possible Athtars walked through the hotel lobby to the conference room. The five Seth Mitchells were grouped outside the door, out of the line of vision of Edith, who was inside. Athtar gave the agreed-on signal and handed the worst Athtar's automatic pistol to one of the Seths. They were thorough. They searched him, and then passed him on to Marge Aikens, who stood in the doorway.

To Marge, Athtar gave another agreed-on signal. Having thus established his identity as the friendly Athtar, whom Edith had re-created as a first step, he was now admitted inside the room.

Athtar placed the crystal on the conference table in front of Edith. As her fingers automatically reached toward it, he placed a restraining hand on her wrist.

'I have a feeling,' he admonished, 'that this time when you pick it up -- when the true orientation, you, picks it up -- that will be the moment of crisis.'

His voice, and his words, seemed far away. She had -- it seemed to her -- considered those thoughts, and had those feelings, in approaching the decision to recreate him -- the best Athtar. That, also, had been a crisis..

As she nevertheless hesitated out of respect for his knowledge and awareness, Edith noticed two impulses within herself. One was to go into a kind of exhaustion, in which she would act on the basis that she was too tired to think all that through again.

The second impulse was a clearer, sharper awareness, which had come to her suddenly at the library after she realized that the worst Athtar had tried to kill her.

Abruptly, then, the problems that had disturbed her earlier faded. Whether it was better to be tough and be able to shoot, or be soft and feminine, had no meaning. The real solution was infinite flexibility, backed by unvarying intention.

One handled situations. That was all there was to it.

As she remembered that perfect thought, the impulse toward exhaustion went away. She turned to Marge and said matter-of-factly, 'Shall I tell him what we discussed while he was down in the storeroom?'

Marge nodded tensely.

Athtar listened with what appeared to be an expression of doubt, then said, 'Having the crystal recreate one of its makers could be exactly what those makers are waiting for you to do.'

'That's exactly what we thought,' said Edith. And still she felt no fear. She explained, 'Our thought is that, since the crystal is programmed to find the best of each person, and the best Athtar turned out to be a reasonable person and not a criminal, then the makers of the crystal understand the difference. We may therefore assume that the society of the future is normal and will not harm us.'

She added, 'That's why we recreated you -- as a check.'

'Good reasoning,' said Athtar, cautioning, 'but I sense there's something wrong with it.'

'But you have no specific thought?' she asked.

'No.' He hesitated, then shrugged. 'As a start,' he said, why not pick up the crystal -- just pick it up -- and see if my feeling about that being sufficient has any substance?' He explained, 'If I'm wrong there, then we can dismiss my doubts.'

'You don't want me to look at the design?'

The Seths had discovered that that was the key to her control of the stone. By questioning her closely, by eliciting from her the thoughts she had had on the three occasions that it had performed its miracle for her, it had became apparent that when she mentally or visually traced the interior picture and gave a command, it happened -- literally.

Athtar answered, 'No, I sense that they're ready.'

His words, the implication of ultraperception that reached over, perhaps, thousands of years, startled Edith, and held her unmoving, but only momentarily.

'The truth is,' said Edith aloud, completing her thought, 'we all feel that we have no alternative.'

Without any further delay, she reached forward and picked up the crystal.

Then she gasped.

The man who walked out of the corner of the room, where he had materialized, was a giant. Seven, eight, nine feet -- her mind kept reassessing the height, as she strove to adjust to the enormous reality.

The size, the blue harness clothing -- like a Roman centurion guard in summer uniform -- the bronze body, the large face with eyes as black as coal, unsmiling and firm; and in his bearing, conscious power unqualified by doubt or fear.

He said in a bass voice, in English, 'I am Shalil, the best of all possible.'

XI

For a long moment Edith waited for him to complete the sentence. She presumed that the final word would be his name. At last, with a shock, she realized the sentence was finished. The crystal makers had sent the most qualified individual of their entire race to handle this situation.

In the doorway, Marge cringed away from the monster with a moan. At the sound, two of the Seth Mitchells leaped into view from where they had been standing. As they caught the blonde woman's half-fainting body, they also saw the apparition, and froze with glaring eyes. That brought the other three Seths crowding into the doorway.

As of one accord, obviously unwisely and therefore -- as Edith realized later -- under unnoticed control, they moved into the room, bringing Marge with them. The Seth who brought up the rear pulled the door shut behind him.

And there they were, as the best Athtar stirred and said in a sharp tone, 'Miss Price -- uncreate him! He does not mean well.'

The giant grimaced. 'You cannot uncreate men.' He spoke again a perfect English in the same bass voice. 'Naturally, I, and only I, now control the crystal. The term "mean well" is relative. I mean well for my own time and my own group.'

His eyes, like black pools of dark shiningness, glanced over the five Seths and the two women, and then settled on Athtar. 'Which of you are the biologically original human beings?' he asked.

There wag a speed to him and a purposefulness that was disturbing all by itself. Edith clutched the crystal, and then she glanced uncertainly over at the Seths, silently appealing for suggestions. But they were staring at the giant and seemed unaware of her seeking gaze.

Yet it was one of the Seths who said abruptly, 'Athtar, in what way doesn't he mean well?'

Athtar shook his head. 'I don't sense the details,' he said unhappily. 'It's a feeling. They sent the crystal back here for their purpose. His question about original human beings points a very significant direction. But don't answer it -- or any other question.'

It seemed a small, useless denial. Even as it was uttered, the huge man strode toward the door. The little group of Seths separated before him automatically. The giant opened the door and peered out into the hotel lobby. After a single, swift survey, he pushed the door shut, and faced about.

'I deduce,' he said, 'that the people of this era are the originals. That's who we want for our experiments.'

Athtar said tautly to the Seths, 'One of you has the worst Athtar's gun. Shoot him!'

The instant the words were spoken, the pistol floated into view, avoided the fingers of the two Seths who tried to grab it, and darted over to Shalil's palm. He slipped the weapon into a pocket of his simple blue garment

The best Athtar glanced at Edith. 'Well,' he said glumly, 'I've done my best.' He faced the monster. 'What happens to me?'

Those wonderful black eyes studied him again, more carefully. 'The crystal is communicating data to me,' he said. 'You and the other Athtar are from an era where the people have already been biologically altered?'

Athtar was silent. The giant grimaced, and thereupon analyzed substantially what the worst Athtar had told Edith in New York, adding only that he had the impression that vast amounts of bodily organ transplants for medical purposes had preceded the first big decision to chance the race itself.

Athtar glanced apologetically at Edith. 'He has it so accurately,' he said, 'that I see no additional danger in asking him a question.'

Without waiting for a reply he addressed the huge man: The decision made in the thirty-first century, nearly four hundred years before my time, was that small, heavy bodies had more survival potentiality than tall, thin ones. I see that in your era a much taller, bigger, more powerful man than any we have even imagined is the norm. What is the rationale?'

'Different problems,' answered Shalil. 'In my era, which by your reckoning would correlate to the ninety-third century, we are space people.' He broke off. 'Since we have no interest in you at present, I propose to send you and the other Athtars back to your own time.'

'Wait!' The best Athtar spoke urgently. 'What do you intend to do with these people?' He waved toward Edith and the Seths.

Again there was a grimace on the huge face. 'They are crystal patterns now,' was the stem reply. 'But all we actually want for our experiments are the best Seth Mitchell and the beet Edith Price. The other 1810 Seths and -- he hesitated, then -- 723 Ediths are free to go. We set the crystal to find the best specimens.'

'But why?'

'Something has gone wrong. We need to restudy human origins.'

'Do you need these specific persons, or will you merely have the crystal duplicate them in your own era?'

'There's only one of each. If any of them is created in any other time, he becomes uncreated here.'

'What will you do? Dissect them?'

'In the end, perhaps. The experimenters will decide.' Sharply. 'Never mind that. The program is laid out on a crash basis, and the subjects are urgently needed.' His voice grew imperious. 'Miss Price, give me the crystal. We're not needlessly cruel, so I wish to send the Athtars home.'

Athtar urged, 'Miss Price, don't give it to him. His statement that he totally controls the crystal may not be true yet, but it may become true the moment he has possession of it. These far-future beings must be persuaded to accept another, less arbitrary solution to their problem.'

Edith had been standing, watching the fantastic giant, listening to the infinite threat that was developing out of. his blunt words. Suddenly, what had seemed an utterly desirable goal -- to be the best -- had become the most undesirable.

But she observed that she was still not afraid. Her mind was clear. And she realized that the millions of tumbling thoughts and feelings of all these days, which had suddenly fallen into an exact order in her mind earlier that night, remained orderly.

Her own reaction was that Athtar was wrong and that she had, in fact, lost control of the crystal.

Obvious that they would have had some preemptive system, by which they could regain its use at a key moment.

But she intended to test that.

She glanced at and into the crystal, and said firmly, 'Whoever can defeat this giant -- be here now!'

Moments after she spoke, the crystal was snatched from her fingers by the same kind of unseen force as had taken the automatic pistol from one of the Seths earlier. She looked up and watched helplessly as it also floated over to the giant's palm. The huge man's black eyes gleamed triumphantly at her, as he said: 'That was a good try. But all your allies are in this room. There's nobody else.'

'In that case,' said a man's voice quietly, 'I imagine that, regardless of consequences, my moment has come.'

Whereupon the bachelor Seth Mitchell walked forward and stood in front of the giant.

For some reason the monster man merely regarded him. There was a long pause. Edith had time to gaze at the Seth and to savor the mere humanness that he represented. She saw that he was well dressed in a dark gray suit, that his lean face was firm, his gray eyes calm and fearless. At some deep of her mind, she was proud that at this key moment such a Seth Mitchell existed. Yet, though she was still not afraid herself, she was aware of her hopes sinking.

The silence ended.

The great being from the far future said in a deliberate tone, 'I hope you realize that you are condemning the other Seths in thus forcing your identity on me. In this era the crystal has no alternative but to uncreate them.'

Behind Edith, Marge cried out faintly.

Edith whirled. For several seconds, then, she was blank, not knowing what ailed the young blond woman. Marge seemed to be choking, and after a moment Edith ran over to her, and caught her arm, and put one arm around her waist.

'What's the matter?' she cried.

Marge continued to choke, and the words when they finally came were almost inaudible: 'They're gone, the other Seths!'

Edith looked around, and it was then that the reality finally penetrated her blankness. Where the four Seths had been standing near the door, there was no one. She had an impulse to run to the door and glance out of it. The feeling was, surely, that they had stepped outside for a moment.

Abruptly, she realized.

They had been uncreated.

'Oh, my God!' she said, and it was a sob.

She caught herself, for the giant was speaking again: 'Other than that,' he said, 'the best of all possible Seth Mitchells merely seemed a good specimen, and not dangerous.'

Seth Mitchell spoke in the same quiet tone as before, I said, regardless of consequences.'

He glanced back toward the two women. 'Since the Seths remain crystal patterns, they're no more in danger now than they would be if this creature is able to carry out his threat. That probably even applies to the Seth of the gold Cadillac and the Edith who presumably was killed in New York.'

To Shalil he said, 'I think you'd better put the Athtars up in their own time.'

There was an ever so slight pause; the giant's eyes changed slightly, as if he were thinking. Then: 'It's done,' he said.

Edith glanced to where Athtar had been, with the same automatic second look as before, and the same gasping intake of her breath.... And then with a conscious effort she had control once more.

Athtar had disappeared.

With a grimace, Shalil surveyed the best of all possible Seth Mitchells, said, 'You really benefited from the crystal, didn't you?' He spoke in his softest bass. The intent expression, as if he were listening, came into his face. 'You own... one... three, four corporations.'

'I stopped when I was worth ten million,' said the best Seth. He turned to look at Edith apologetically. 'I couldn't imagine having use for even that much money. But I had set it as a goal, so that's what I did.'

Without waiting for her reply, he once more faced the gigantic enemy. 'All the Seth Mitchells,' he said, 'are the results of a boy's dreams based on what information he had. He undoubtedly observed that there are tax experts, and lawyers, and doctors, and tramps, and policemen. And in a town like Harkdale it would include being aware of summer and resort visitors, many of them highly personable people from New York. And on the level of a boy's daydreams it would mean that until they were uncreated just now there was a cowboy Seth Mitchell, an African hunter Seth, a sea captain, an airline pilot, and probably even a few glamorous criminals.'

He broke off. 'I have a feeling you wouldn't understand that, because you don't have any boys anymore where you are, do you?'

The giant's eyes did an odd thing. They shifted uncertainly. Then he said, 'We are crystal duplicates. Thus we shall presumably live forever if we can solve the present tendency of the cells to be tired.'

He added reluctantly, 'What's a boy?'

'Maybe there's your problem,' said Seth Mitchell. 'You've forgotten about children. Gene variation.'

The best Seth continued to gaze up at the great being. 'I'm the creation,' he said gently, 'of a boy who for a long time after Billy Bingham disappeared, was under exceptional adult pressure and criticism, and as a result had many escape fantasies.'

The steady, determined voice went on, 'Picture that boy's fantasy of total power: somebody who would handle mean adults who acted as if you were lying and who treated you nasty... and someday you'd show them all. How? It may not have been clear to the boy Seth who felt that resentment, But when the time came, you'd just know, and of course you wouldn't be mean about it the way they had been. There'd be a kind of nobleness about you and your total power.'

The two men, the best of all possible Seth Mitchells from the twentieth century and the best of all possibles from the ninety-third century, were standing within a few feet of each other as these words were spoken.

'Perhaps,' the best Seth addressed the giant softly, 'you can tell better than I what the crystal would create out of such a command.'

'Since nobleness is involved,' was the harsh reply, 'I feel that I can safely test that boy's fantasy to the uttermost limit.'

Whereupon he spoke sharp, commanding words in a strange language.

Edith had listened to the deadly interchange, thinking in a wondering dismay: God really is dead! These far future people had never even heard of Him.

Her thought ended. For the giant's deep bass tones had suddenly ceased.

Something hit Edith deep inside of her body. Around her the room dimmed. As from a vast distance, she heard Seth Mitchell's voice say apologetically, 'Only thing I know, Miss Price, is to send you along with him. Seems you've got the solution in what you just thought, whatever that was. The crystal will make that real. Hope it works.'

A moment after that she was falling into infinity.

XII

The body of Edith lay unconscious on a contour rest-space in one corner of the crystal administrative center. Periodically, a giant walked over to her and routinely checked the instruments that both watched over her and monitored the invisible force lines that held her.

A slow night went by. A new day finally dawned. The sunlight that suffused the translucent walls also revealed half a dozen giants, including Shalil, gathered around the slowly breathing -- but otherwise unmoving -- body of the young woman from the twentieth century,

To wake or not to wake her?

They discussed the problem in low, rumbling voices. Since they were all scientists, capable of appreciating the most subtle nuances of logic, what bothered them was that the small female being presented an improbable paradox.

Outward appearance said she was helpless. At the instant of the best Seth's command to the crystal, Shalil had been able to put Edith into a coma, and she had arrived in that degraded condition in the ninety-third century.

Or rather, she had been uncreated in her own time, and had been re-created by the crystal in their time, already unconscious.

Accordingly, she herself had not for even a split instant had any control of her own destiny.

What disturbed her captors was that there now radiated from her, and had ever since her re-creation, an undefinable power. The power was not merely ordinary. It was total.

Total power! Absolute and unqualified! How could that be?

Once more they gave attention on both hearing and telepathic levels, as Shalil repeated his accurate account of what had transpired while he was in the twentieth century. The story, already familiar, reiterated the same peak moments: the ordinariness, the unthreatening aspect, of all the people of the past that Shalil had confronted.

Again they were told the climax, when the best Seth assumed that the crystal would evolve an unusual energy configuration out of a boy's fantasies of power. Clearly -- at least, it was clear to the huge men -- the crystal's response to that command established that it had originally been oriented to the best Seth, and its energies mobilized for later expression, when Seth Mitchell was a boy. From that energy response by the crystal alone, the giants reasoned unhappily: 'There is more potential in these crystals than we have hitherto analyzed.'

And how could that be?

But there was even worse.

In giving his command to Edith, the best of all possible Seth Mitchells had implied that he had received a feed-back message from her, presumably by way of the crystal, indicating that she would all by herself now be able to defeat the entire science of the ninety-third century.

Once Shalil took control of the crystal, such a feedback of information -- whether true or false -- should not have occurred. And Seth's command, by any known scientific analysis, was impossible.

True, they did not know all there was to know about the crystals. There were several unexplained areas of phenomena, which were still being researched. But it had long been argued that nothing major remained to be discovered.

Furthermore, they believed that, under strict scientific control, the crystals had created the supreme possibilities of the biologically manipulated beings of their own time period. Every conceivable potentiality of the cells, and of the total gestalt of those cells, had been reasoned through. And the crystal had dutifully created each possibility for them: levitation, telepathy, control of distant matter on a thought level, and so on.

The only other implication: Original, unmanipulated human beings might have special qualities that had been lost to their biologically manipulated descendants.

Unquestionably, that culminative decision had made her the best of all possible Edith Prices. But such a person would have been meaningless in the twentieth century. And since she hadn't visualized the scene inside the crystal when she made it, that was not the source of her present power.

That was something else Something fantastic, unheard of, beyond all their science.

XIII

A giant grunted, 'I think we should kill her.'

A second huge man growled an objection. He argued: 'If the attempt to destroy her brought a reaction from the absolute power that radiated from her, the power would be uncontrolled. Much better to deduce on the basis of Shalil's report the low-level ways in which her mind functions, awaken her, and inexorably force responses from her.'

Everybody thought that was a good idea. Accordingly, they made their deductions. Each new one added to their growing conviction that they could retain complete mastery of the situation.

'And if something goes wrong,' one giant bubbled, 'we can always render her unconscious again by instantaneous uncreation and re-creation by the crystal.'

Shalil reminded gruffly, 'What about that odd decision she had reached, in her attempt to be the best of all possible Ediths, to handle situations with infinite flexibility?'

A groan of contempt greeted the remark. 'With her lifetime conditioning,' one huge scientist rumbled despisingly, 'she couldn't possibly deal with each situation according to its merits.'

Edith, they criticized, would never even know what the real issues of a situation were.

They completed their increasingly confident consideration by deciding that when Edith awakened she should appear to herself to be completely free...

* *

She was lying on grass. It touched her fingers and her face, The fresh smell of it was in her nostrils.

Edith opened her eyes, and simultaneously raised her head.

Wilderness. A primeval forest. A small brown animal with a bushy tail scurried off into the brush, as she climbed hastily to her feet, remembering.

She saw the giant in the act of picking himself up fifteen feet to her left. He seemed to be slow about it, as if he were groggy.

It was a misty day, the sun still high in the Sky. To her right, partly visible through foliage, was a great, gray hill of soil. To her left, the land fell away, and the mist was thicker. After a hundred yards it was an almost impenetrable fog.

Almost, but not quite, impenetrable. Vaguely visible in the mist was a building.

Edith barely glanced in that direction. Instead, she faced the giant squarely and said, 'Where are we?'

Shalil gazed at her warily. It was hard for him to realize that she did not intuitively know. Almost unacceptable that alongside her infinite power was such nadir thinking.

Yet she continued to stand there, facing him. He sensed her concern. And so, reluctantly, he decided that the analysis by his colleagues and himself continued to apply. They had perceived her to be motivated by unnoticed attitudes and forgotten memories, each psychically as solid as a bar of steel. All her life she had followed rules, gone along with group-think behavior.

To school and to college; these were the early norms, adhered to while she was still under the control of her parents. Basically those norms had been unquestioned.

Shalil noticed in her memory an awareness that millions of people had somehow failed to achieve higher education. That was astonishing to him; yet somehow, they had been veered away, by a variety of accidental circumstances.

So in those areas of personal development Edith had gone farther, better, straighter than the average. Yet in college, first time away from her family, she had swiftly been caught up in a group movement of nonconformism. Whatever the motives of the other persons involved, Edith's had been solely an intense inner need to belong to the group.

So, for her, it had been the beginning of aberration, which her behavior ever afterward reflected. Thus, Shalil observed, like a person struggling against invisible force lines; she had fought to return to an inner norm. More study, different jobs, different places to live, association with different men -- the confusion was immense, and it was difficult to determine which of these numerous actions represented a real goal.

Adding to the jumble, everything she did was modified by a very large, though finite, number of small, endlessly repeated actions -- eating habits, dressing habits, working, sleeping, walking, reacting, communicating, thinking: stereotypes.

What bothered Shalil was that he could not find a single point of entry that would not instantly trigger one of the stereotypes. The others had assumed that something would presently come into view in a conscious mind; they had taken it for granted that he would locate it. His instruction was to uncreate her into unconsciousness if he failed to make such an entry, whereupon there would be another consultation.

The possibility of such a quick failure disturbed Shalil. Temporizing, he said aloud, 'This is the Garden of the Crystals in the ninety-third century. Here, in the most virgin wilderness left on our planet, the crystals lie buried in the soil tended by guardian scientists.'

Having spoken, having had that tiny bit of extra time to consider, he decided that the problem she presented would be solvable with a steady pressure of verbal maneuvering by which she was motivated to express one after the other the endless stereotypes that had been detected in her, while he waited alertly for the one through which the crystal -- on his command -- would divest her of the power with which it had (through a factor that the others and he did not know) invested her.

Her primary concern, he saw, was that she would never get back to her own era. Since he knew she could return at once simply by thinking the correct positive thought, his problem was to keep her worried, negative, unaware, deceived, misled.

Shalil became aware that his anxiety about how to proceed was causing a hasty telepathic consultation among his colleagues. Moments later the suggestion was made: 'Divert her letting her win some minor victories, and believe that they are gifts from you.'

It seemed like a good idea, and Shalil carried it out as if it were a directive.

XIV

At the Harkdale Hotel, it was another morning. Marge Aikens came downstairs, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. Almost automatically, she walked over and peered into the conference room. The lights in it had been turned off, the drapes were still drawn; and so the dim emptiness of it was an instant weight on her spirits.

Heavy-hearted, she turned away -- and became aware that a man had come up beside her. She turned about, and faced him with a start.

The hotel day clerk, Derek Slade, stood there, as usual the very mirror of New York male fashion. 'Madame,' he said courteously.

He continued to speak, and after a while his meaning penetrated her dulled mind. He thought he had recognized her as the young woman who had late the previous afternoon gone into the conference room with the five Seth Mitchells.

Where -- Derek wanted to know -- were the four married Seths? The wives had been phoning all night, according to a note on his desk from the night clerk. And a police officer was on the way over, because three Mrs. Mitchells had finally called the authorities.

Marge had an impulse to deny that she was the woman he thought he had seen. But his failure to mention the bachelor Seth captured her attention, and she asked about him.

Derek shook his head. 'Not in his room. Went out early, I'm told.'

Marge stood in the doorway, somewhat blankly considering what might have happened to the best Seth. Why would he have gone out when he had said the previous night that he would have breakfast with her? Then she became aware that Derek Slade's gaze had gone past her shoulder and was seeking the darkened interior of the room behind her.

His jaw grew lax, his eyes grew round.

Inside the room, a man's baritone voice uttered an exclamation.

Marge turned.

The four Seths, who had been uncreated the previous night, were standing near the door. Their backs were to her.

She realized that it was one of the Seths who had exclaimed and that what he had said was, Hey, who turned out the lights?'

Marge had an immediate and totally perceptive awareness of the implications of those words. Her mind leaped back to how Billy Bingham had explained the transition in time: no impression at all of time having passed.

This was the same.

Almost involuntarily she reached into the room to the light switch beside the door, and pressed it. As she did so, a fifth Seth walked forward from one corner of the room, where he had suddenly appeared. He seemed bewildered. Many minutes would go by before he was identified as the Seth of the gold Cadillac, somehow re-created without a bullet in his brain or a drop of lake water on his immaculate suit.

At the moment, Marge had only a fleeting glance for him, for a sixth Seth was suddenly standing on the far side of the conference table. The way he held himself, his quick alertness as he looked around the room, saw the other Seths -- and then flicked his gaze to her with a relieved recognition...

Seeing him, and receiving so many familiar signals that identified Detective Seth Mitchell for her, she became emotionally unglued. Without any of her usual discretion, she let out a scream.

'Seth -- my darling!'

Exactly how she got to him, and he to her, could undoubtedly be reasoned out from the fact that they met at the halfway point around the big table, and desisted in their embrace only when Marge grew aware that Edith Price was standing a few feet away, glancing around very timidly.

Close behind Edith, another Seth appeared. He was dressed in work clothes, and Marge surmised that he therefore must be the farmer.

Marge scarcely more than glanced at him. As she released herself from Detective Seth's embrace, she saw that Edith wore a different dress and had her hair done differently. Despite those swift noticings, it would take a while before Marge clearly, and the others in any way at all, understood that this was the Edith Price who had been murdered in New York by the worst Athtar.

Of the Athtars there was no sign.

And though the minutes fled by -- and finally the bachelor Seth walked into the doorway -- Edith Price, the crystal orientation, did not reappear.

The best Seth explained that he had gone for a walk, and in thinking over all that had happened, had decided that things would work out. He finished hopefully, 'And here, when I get back, you all are. Each of you is a living proof that Edith has found out something of what she can do. Or -- he paused -- 'someone has, and is willing.'

'But what can she do?' One of the Seths asked that, bewildered.

The bachelor Seth smiled his friendly smile, 'I'm rather fond of that young lady, In a way, a total reflection of our own age, yet she thought her way to some kind of best.' He broke off, glanced from one to another of the numerous duplicate faces, and said softly, 'You want to know what she can do. I didn't dare speak of it at the time, but, now, well... If God is dead, then what can replace Him?'

'Then you are God,' parroted Marge. She put her hand over her mouth, exclaimed, 'Oh, my lord -- Edith!'

The best Seth said slowly, 'I wonder what the crystal and Edith are doing with that concept?'

* *

Shalil was in deep trouble. The giant had continued to wait for the purely personal, restrictive thought that, he and his colleagues believed, would presently end any control Edith had of the crystal's future.

But the moments had gone by, and she had kept on uttering her idealistic words, so binding on him and his kind in relation to the people of the past. All the Seths and the Ediths re-created. A cooperative solution for the severe threat to the giant human beings of the ninety-third century -- between the giants, on the one hand, and the Ediths and Seths on the other.

Edith in an outburst of imagination visualized a time corridor between the twentieth and ninety-third centuries. Thriftily she retained control of that corridor for her own group.

It was as she established that enormous connection, and control, that Shalil -- desperate -- had her uncreated. He re-created her, unconscious, on the contour rest-place. The huge scientists gathered around her comatose body and gloomily evaluated the extent of their defeat.

One grudged, 'But let's face it. We can live with what's happened so far.'

The problem was that they had made no headway. Edith still radiated total power; somehow, she continued to evoke from the crystal an energy output that no one had ever analyzed to be potential in it.

Shalil had a tremendous insight. 'Perhaps that's what we need to examine -- our own limitations. Perhaps the real problem is that, in our scientific zeal, we have rejected the enigma.'

After he had spoken, there was a dead silence. He saw that they were shaken. The enigma was the forbidden -- because unscientific -- area of thought: the enigma that is the universe. Why does it exist? Where did it come from?

Since science began, scientists had concentrated on how things worked and what they did.

Never why. Never ever how in the meaning of why.

The thrall of shocked silence ended, as a giant laughed a harsh, determined laugh, 'I don't know anything about the enigma, and do not plan to,' he said, but as a scientist I do know my duty -- our duty. We must bring this small female being to consciousness, inform her of the unqualified extent of her power, and see what she does with it'

'B-but she may kill us all,' protested another. He added, almost plaintively, 'I've never been killed.'

'It will be an interesting experience for you,' replied the first man. 'Quite different from uncreation.'

Shalil interjected matter-of-factly, 'Edith is not a killer.' He broke off. Shrewdly, 'I think this is an excellent plan. I see it as being totally in our favor.'

They perceived what he meant, and accordingly sanctioned the awakening.

Lying there, Edith was brought awake.

After she had calmed herself -- after she was told about her absolute ability, exactly as they had anticipated, she had a first automatic response to the possibility. For prolonged seconds a wild hope suffused her entire being. She wanted, most urgently, to undo the errors of judgment which had led her down the empty road of numerous boyfriends, none of whom took responsibility for her and her capacity to bear children. In a single overwhelm of earnest desire, all the years of frustration since college found their way first to her. eyes in the form of quick tears, and then, when she could speak, to the words: 'Aside from what I've just told you' -- she spoke the qualifying phrase, which retained for her control of access to the twentieth century without even noticing it -- 'all I really want is to be happily married.'

The giants perceived that the person she had in mind for a husband was the bachelor Seth Mitchell.

They accordingly commanded the crystal that the wish she had expressed be carried out forthwith in its exact and limited meaning. And then, safe and relieved, they stood marveling at the difficult concept of marriage,

In an era where everybody lived forever by a process of crystal duplication, they would never, left to themselves, have been able to ask the right question to produce such an answer.

'It is just possible,' Shalil cautiously summed up, 'that the interaction between the unmanipulated human beings of the twentieth century and the manipulated of the ninety-third will actually bring about a lessening of the rigidities of both groups.'

His stern, black gaze dared a denial. After a long moment, he was surprised to realize that no one was offended. Indeed, a colleague murmured reflectively, 'If that should happen, we may even find out what the crystal is.'

But, of course, that was impossible.

The crystal was a space phenomenon. The energy flows in that space, and around it, and out of it, involved individual events, things, persons. But that was a subordinate function -- like the motor center of a human brain that moves a muscle in the tip of the little finger.

The muscle should be movable. Unfortunate if it wouldn't, or couldn't. Yet truth is, if that muscle were permanently incapacitated, it would be unnoticed by the vast brain on the conscious level.

On the flow level of existence, the patterned interactions in and around and out of the crystal exceeded 10 to the 27,000th power times the number of atoms in the universe -- enough interactions for all the life configurations of all the people who ever lived; perhaps enough even for all those who ever would live on Earth.

But, for the crystal, that was minor. As a pattern of time and life flows, it had suspended those flows during twenty-five years in the Harkdale museum. That didn't matter. That was almost-nothing. As a shape of space, its existence was continuous. As space, it occupied a location, and was related. Though it had no flows during the quarter-century, made no recordings, and had no memory and no doing, it nevertheless knew, it was, it had, and it could.

In finding it and tens of thousands of crystals like it, human beings of the eighth and ninth millennia made use of the interactions and flows; never of the space ability. They discovered the principal 'laws' -- the how and the what -- by which the crystals operated, and were determined to find out eventually the rules that would 'explain' certain unknowns in the wave behavior in and around and out of the crystals.

Someday all the interactions of all life and all time would be evenly divided among the crystals. It would then become its true form: one crystal shape, one space. It would then be complete, its intention achieved.

There was no hurry:

And so it waited. And, waiting, fulfilled other goals than its own, minor, unimportant goals involving flows and interactions; reflecting the illusions of motion: events, things, persons, involving nothing, really...

* *

In consequence, in Harkdale today there is a one-story building of unusual design. The building stands on the exact spot were Billy Bingham one disappeared, on the shore overlooking Lake Naragang. It is a solidly built structure and has a certain beauty. On a gold plaque beside the ornate front door are the words:

CRYSTAL, INC.

Owned and Managed by

SETH MITCHELLS AND EDITH PRICES

Not Open to the Public

Resort visitors who stop to look at the sign are often puzzled by the plural names. And long-time residents, when asked, offer the impression that Crystal, Inc., actually deals in the numerous crystals to be found in the rock formations in and around the hills and lake.

There is a large, pretty house with spacious grounds located near the building. In this house dwell Seth and Edith Mitchell.

To the puzzlement of their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Seth Mitchell (nee Edith Price) started their married life by legally adopting a thirteen-year-old boy whom they called Billy Bingham Mitchell.