The Others by Terry Carr

Author:Terry Carr [Carr, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Anthology
Publisher: Fawcett Gold Medal
Published: 1969-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

They began to persecute him then. He knew that they were in a state as accelerated from his as his was from the normal. To them he was the almost motionless statue, hardly to be told from a dead man. To him they were by their speed both invisible and inaudible. They hurt him and haunted him. But still he would not answer the summons.

When the meeting took place, it was they who had to come to him, and they materialized there in his room, men without faces.

“The choice,” said one. “You force us to be so clumsy as to have to voice it.”

“I will have no part of you. You all smell of the pit, of that old mud of the cuneiforms of the land between the rivers, of the people who were before the people.”

“It has endured a long time, and we consider it as enduring forever. But the Garden which was in the neighborhood—do you know how long the Garden lasted?”

“I don’t know.”

“That all happened in a single day, and before nightfall they were outside. You want to throw in with something more permanent, don’t you.”

“No. I don’t believe I do.”

“What have you to lose?”

“Only my hope of eternity.”

“But you don’t believe in that. No man has ever really believed in eternity.”

“No man has ever either entirely believed or disbelieved in it,” said Charles Vincent.

“At least it cannot be proved,” said one of the faceless men. “Nothing is proved until it is over with. And in this case, if it is ever over with, then it is disproved. And all that time would one not be tempted to wonder, ‘What if, after all, it ends in the next minute?’ ”

“I imagine that if we survive the flesh we will receive some sort of surety,” said Vincent.

“But you are not sure either of such surviving or receiving. Now we have a very close approximation of eternity. When time is multiplied by itself, and that repeated again and again, does that not approximate eternity?”

“I don’t believe it does. But I will not be of you. One of you has said that I am too fastidious. So now will you say that you’ll destroy me?”

“No. We will only let you be destroyed. By yourself, you cannot win the race with destruction.”

After that Charles Vincent somehow felt more mature. He knew he was not really meant to be a six-fingered thing of the pit. He knew that in some way he would have to pay for every minute and hour that he had gained. But what he had gained he would use to the fullest. And whatever could be accomplished by sheer acquisition of human knowledge, he would try to accomplish.

And he now startled Dr. Mason by the medical knowledge he had picked up, the while the doctor amused him by the concern he showed for Vincent. For he felt fine. He was perhaps not as active as he had been, but that was only because he had become dubious of aimless activity.

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