C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods

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Greater Than Gods

The desk was glass-clear steel, the mirror above it a window that opened upon

distance and sight and sound whenever the televisor buzzer rang. The two

crystal cubes on the desk were three-dimensional photographs of a sort

undreamed of before the Twenty-third Century dawned. But between them on the

desk lay a letter whose message was older that the history of writing itself.

"My darling-" it began in a man's strongly slanting handwriting. But there

Bill Cory had laid down his pen and run despairing fingers through his hair,

looking from one crystal-cubed photograph to the other and swearing a little

under his breath. It was fine stuff, he told himself savagely, when a man

couldn't even make up his mind which of two girls he wanted to marry. Biology

House of Science City, that trusted so faithfully the keenness and clarity of

Dr. William Cory's decisions, would have shuddered to see him now.

For the hundredth time that afternoon he looked from one girl's face to the

other, smiling at him from the crystal cubes, and chewed his lip unhappily. On

his left, in the translucent block that had captured an immortal moment when

dark Marta Mayhew smiled, the three-dimensional picture looked out at him with

a flash of violet eyes. Dr. Marta Mayhew of Chemistry House, ivory whiteness

and satin blackness. Not at all the sort of picture the mind conjures up of a

leading chemist in Science City which houses the greatest scientists in the

world.

Bill Cory wrinkled his forehead and looked at the other girl. Sallie Carlisle

dimpled at him out of the crystal, as real as life itself to the last flying

tendril of fair curls that seemed to float on a breeze frozen eternally into

glass. Bill reached out to turn the cube a little, bringing the delicate line

of her profile into view, and it was as if time stood still in the crystalline

deeps and pretty Salle in the breathing flesh paused for an eternal moment

with her profile turned away.

After a long moment Bill Cory sighed and picked up his pen. After the

"darling" of the letter he wrote firmly, "Sallie."

"Dr. Cory," hesitated a voice at the door. Bill looked up, frowning. Miss

Brown blinked at him nervously behind her glasses. "Dr. Ashley's-"

"Don't announce me, Brownie," interrupted a languid voice behind her. "I want

to catch him loafing. Ah, Bill, writing love letters? May I come in?"

"Could I stop you?" Bill's grin erased the frown from his forehead. The tall

and tousled young man in the doorway was Charles Ashley, head of Telepathy

House, and though their acquaintance had long been on terms of good-natured

insult, behind it lay Bill's deep recognition of a quality of genius in Ashley

that few men ever attain. No one could have risen to the leadership of

Telepathy House whose mind did not encompass many more levels of infinite

understanding than the ordinary mind even recognizes.

"I've worked myself into a stupor," announced the head of Telepathy House,

yawning. "Come on up to the Gardens for a swim, huh?"

"Can't." Bill laid down his pen. "I've got to see the pups-"

"Damn the pups! You think Science City quivers every time those little mutts

yap! Let Miss Brown look after 'em. She knows more than you do about genetics,

anyhow. Some clay the Council's going to find it out and you'll go back to

working for a living."

"Shut up," requested Bill with a grin. "How are the pups, Miss Brown?"

"Perfectly normal, doctor. I just gave them their three o'clock feeding and

they're asleep now."

"Do they seem happy?" inquired Ashley solicitously.

"That's right, scoff," sighed Bill. "Those pups and I will go ringing down the

corridors of time, you mark my words."

Ashley nodded, half seriously. He knew it might well be true. The pups were

the living proof of Bill's success in prenatal sex determination-six litters

of squirming maleness with no female among them. They represented the fruit of

long, painstaking experiments in the X-ray bombardment of chromosomes to

separate and identify the genes carrying the factors of sex determination, of

countless failures and immeasurable patience. If the pups grew into normal

dogs-well, it would be one long, sure stride nearer the day when, through

Bill's own handiwork, the world would be perfectly balanced between male and

female in exact proportion to the changing need.

Miss Brown vanished with a shy, self-effacing smile. As the door

closed behind her, Ashley, who had been regarding the two photograph cubes on

Bill's desk with a lifted eyebrow, arranged his long length on the couch

against the wall and was heard to murmur:

"Eenie-.meenie-minie-mo. Which is it going to be, Wil-yum?"

They were on terms too intimate for Bill to misunderstand, or pretend to.

"I don't know," he admitted miserably, glancing down in some hesitation at the

letter beginning, "My darling Sallie-"

Ashley yawned again and fumbled for a cigarette. "You know," he murmured

comfortably, "it's interesting to speculate on your possible futures. With

Marta or Sallie, I mean. Maybe some day somebody will find a way to look ahead

down the branching paths of the future and deliberately select the turning

points that will carry him toward the goal he chooses. Now if you could know

beforehand where life with Sallie would lead, or life with Marta, you might

alter the whole course of human history. That is, if you're half as important

as you think you are."

"Huh-uh," grunted Bill. "If you predicate a fixed future, then it's fixed

already, isn't it? And you'd have no real choice."

Ashley scratched a match deliberately and set his cigarette aglow before he

said: "I think of the future as an infinite reservoir of an infinite number of

futures, each of them fixed, yet maleable as clay. Do you see what I mean? At

every point along our way we confront crossroads at which we make choices

among the many possible things we may do the next moment. Each crossroad leads

to a different future, all of them possible, all of them fixed, waiting for

our choice to give them reality. Perhaps there's a-call it a Plane of

Probability-where all these possible results of our possible choices exist

simultaneously. Blueprints of things to come. When the physical time of matter

catches up with, and fills in, any one particular plan, it becomes fixed in

the present.

"But before time has caught up with it, while our choice at the crossroads is

still unmade, an infinite number of possible futures must exist as it were in

suspension, waiting for us in some unimaginable, dimensionless infinity. Can

you imagine what it would be like to open a window upon that Probability

Plane, look out into the infinities of the future, trace the consequences of

future actions before we make them? We could mold the destiny of mankind! We

could do what the gods must do, Bill! We'd be greater than gods! We could look

into the Cosmic Mind-the very brain that planned us-and of our own will choose

among those plans!"

"Wake up, Ash," said Bill softly.

"You think I'm dreaming? It's not a new idea, really. The old philosopher,

Berkeley, had a glimpse of it when he taught his theories of subjective

idealism, that we're aware of the cosmos only through a greater awareness all

around us, an infinite mind- "Listen, Bill. If you vision these. . . these

blueprints of possible futures, you've got to picture countless generations,

finite as ourselves, existing simultaneously and completely in all the

circumstances of their entire lives-yet all of them still unborn, still even

uncertain of birth if the course of the present is diverted from their

particular path. To themselves, they must seem as real as we to each other.

"Somewhere on the Plane of Probability, Bill, there may be two diverging lines

of your descendants, unborn generations whose very existence hinges on your

choice here at the crossroads. Projections of yourself, really, their lives

and deaths trembling in the balance. Think well before you choose!"

Bill grinned. "Suppose you go back to the Slum and dope out a way for me to

look into the Cosmic Plan," he suggested.

Ashley shook his head.

"Wish I could. Boy, would you eat that word 'Slum' then! Telepathy House

wouldn't be the orphan child around the City any longer if I could really open

a window onto the Probability Plane. But I wouldn't bother with you and your

pint-sized problerps. I'd look ahead into the future of the City. It's the

heart of the world, now. Some day it may rule the world. And we're biased, you

know. We can't help being. With all the sciences housed here under one

citywide roof, wielding powers that kings never dreamed of- No, it may go to

our heads. We may overbalance into - . . into. . . well, I'd like to look

ahead and prevent it. And if this be treason-" He shrugged and got up. "Sure

you won't join me?"

"Go on-get out. I'm a busy man."

"So I see." Ashley twitched an eyebrow at the two crystal cubes. "Maybe it's

good you can't look ahead. The responsibility of choosing might be heavier

than you could bear. After all, we aren't gods and it must be dangerous to

usurp a god's prerogative. Well, see you later."

Bill leaned in the doorway watching the lounging figure down the hall toward

the landing platform where crystal cars waited to go flashing along the great

tubes which artery Science City. Beyond, at the platform's edge, the great

central plaza of the City dropped away in a breath-taking void a hundred

stories deep. He stood looking out

blind-eyed, wondering if Sallie or Marta would walk this hail in years to

come.

Life would be more truly companionship with Marta, perhaps. But did a family

need two scientists? A man wanted relaxation at home, and who could make life

gayer than pretty Sallie with her genius for entertainment, her bubbling

laughter? Yes, let it be Sallie. If there were indeed a Probability Plane

where other possible futures hung suspended, halfway between waking and

oblivion, let them wink out into nothingness.

He shut the door with a little slam to wake himself out of the dream, greeting

the crystal-shrined girl on his desk with a smile. She was so real-the breeze

blowing those curls was a breeze in motion. The lashes should flutter against

the soft fullness of her lids- Bill squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head

to clear it. There was something wrong-the crystal was clouding- A ringing in

his ears grew louder in company with that curious blurring of vision. From

infinitely far away, yet strangely in his own ears,

a tiny voice came crying. A child's voice calling, "Daddy. . . - daddy!"

A girl's voice, coming nearer, "Father-" A woman's voice saying over

and over in a smooth, sweet monotone, "Dr. Cory. . . . Dr. William

Cory-"

Upon the darkness behind his closed lids a streaked and shifting light moved

blurrily. He thought he saw towers in the sun, forests, robed people walking

leisurely-and it all seemed to rush away from his closed eyes so

bewilderingly-he lifted his lids to stare at- To stare at the cube where

Sallie smiled. Only this was not Sallie.

He gaped with the blankness of a man confronting impossibilities. It was not

wholly Sallie now, but there was a look of Sallie upon the lovely, sun-touched

features in the cube. All of her sweetness and softness, but with it-something

more. Something familiar. What upon this living, lovely face, with its level

brown eyes and courageous mouth, reminded Bill of-himself?

His hands began to shake a little. He thrust them into his pockets and sat

down without once taking his eyes from the living stare in the cube. There was

amazement in that other stare, too, and a halfincredulous delight that

brightened as he gazed.

Then the sweet curved lips moved-lips with the softness of Sallie's closing on

the firm, strong line of Bill's. They said distinctly, in a sound that might

have come from the cube itself or from somewhere deep within his own brain:

"Dr. Cory . . . Dr. Cory, do you hear me?"

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C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods

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