More Than Superhuman A. E. Van Vogt

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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
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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 re-createhim 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 re-create
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.'
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She added, 'That's why we re-created 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 sentencewas 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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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