Destiny Times Three
By FRITZ LEIBER, Jr.
Illustrated by Orban
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction March, April 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I.
In ghostly, shivering streamers of green and blue, like northernlights, the closing hues of the fourth Hoderson symchromy, called "theYggdrasil," shuddered down toward visual silence. Once more the ancientmyth, antedating even the Dawn Civilization, had been told—of the treeof life with its roots in heaven and hell and the land of the frostgiants, and serpents gnawing at those roots and the gods fighting topreserve it. Transmuted into significant color by Hoderson's genius,interpreted by the world's greatest color instrumentalists, theprimeval legend of cosmic dread and rottenness and mystery, of wheelswithin cosmic wheels, had once more enthralled its beholders.
In the grip of an unearthly excitement, Thorn crouched forward, onehand jammed against the grassy earth beyond his outspread cloak. Thelean wrist shook. It burst upon him, as never before, how the Yggdrasillegend paralleled the hypothesis which Clawly and he were going topresent later this night to the World Executive Committee.
More roots of reality than one, all right, and worse than serpentsgnawing, if that hypothesis were true.
And no gods to oppose them—only two fumbling, overmatched men.
Thorn stole a glance at the audience scattered across the hillside. Theupturned faces of utopia's sane, healthy citizenry seemed bloodless andcruel and infinitely alien. Like masks. Thorn shuddered.
A dark, stooped figure slipped between him and Clawly. In the lastdying upflare of the symchromy—the last wan lightning stroke asthe storm called life departed from the universe—Thorn made out amajestic, ancient face shadowed by a black hood. Its age put him inmind of a fancy he had once heard someone advance, presumably injest—that a few men of the Dawn Civilization's twentieth century hadsomehow secretly survived into the present. The stranger and Clawlyseemed to be conversing in earnest, low-pitched whispers.
Thorn's inward excitement reached a peak. It was as if his mind hadbecome a thin, taut membrane, against which, from the farthest reachesof infinity, beat unknown pulses. He seemed to sense the presence ofstars beyond the stars, time-streams beyond time.
The symchromy closed. There began a long moment of complete blackness.Then—
Thorn sensed what could only be described as something from a regionbeyond the stars beyond the stars, from an existence beyond thetime-streams beyond time. A blind but purposeful fumbling that for amom