It took almost a year to select Herber. A year of wild speculation; a year of growing pride at the knowledge of humanity’s certain place in the forefront of the Universal Community; it was the year after the Masters of the Universe flashed through Earth’s atmosphere and broadcast their message.
From nowhere: they came down in their glowing golden ark — more than one hundred and sixty kilometers long, a great patch over the eye of the sun — and without argument demonstrated to every man, woman and child on Earth that they did, indeed, rule the Universe.
They caused rain. They stopped rain. They created rainbows. They caused storm clouds to wipe away the rainbows. They raised sunken continents. They leveled mountains. They opened a shaft to the molten center of the planet. They imbued the mute stones of the fields with the power of levitation and erected monuments of breathtaking beauty. They froze the entire population of Earth in its tracks, stopped death, blotted out all other sound—while the message was telepathically spoken in a thousand different languages and dialects.
The message merely said: “Send us a representative from Earth.”
But certain scientists received more. They were given detailed instructions for the construction of what they called an “inverspace ship.” Other certain scientists were given directions to the Center, to the home world of the Masters; a world far off somewhere across the light–years and across numberless galaxies.
And the inverspace ship had been constructed. The theories seemed so simple . . . now.
But who was to go? The great men and women who pondered the question knew the awesome responsibility of the emissary. Care in the selection became so overwhelmingly paralyzing that it was finally decided the problem was too complex and dangerous to be left in the hands of mere humans. They set the machines to the task.
They linked the Mark XXX, the UniCompVac, the Brognagov Master Computer and thousands of lesser brains, shunted them on-line with the deadfall circuit and the Sanhedrin Network, and coded in the question prepared by three hundred and fifty-five of the world’s top programmers.
The basic program contained random factors and extrapolations in excess of sixteen billion variables. Even with a worldwide hookup it took the mass mind seven months merely to establish the parameters of the equation. It took another four months, sixteen days, for the readout that named Wilson Herber.
Of the billions teeming the planet, only Wilson Herber met all the necessary qualifications for Earth’s emissary to the Masters of the Universe.
They came to Wilson Herber in his mountain retreat, and were initially greeted by threats of disembowelment if they didn’t get the hell away and leave him in peace and quiet!
But judicious reasoning — and the infinitely complex veiled threats of an entire world — eventually brought the ex–statesman around.
Herber was, without challenge, the wealthiest man in the world. The cartel he had set up during the first sixty years of his life was still intact, now entirely run by managers and technicians and executives bound to him by the secret and terrible facts contained in the dossiers in a vault whose location was know only to the old man. The spiderweb organization of Wilson Herber’s holding spanned every utility and human service, drew upon virtually every raw material and necessity anyone might consider of value, controlled – at least in part – the thoughts and movements of every intelligent creature on the face of the planet in a given day. Incalculably wealthy, powerful beyond measure, wise as only one who has it all can be unconcernedly wise, Wilson Herber had set the machine of his cartel to humming, turned it over to lesser mortals, and moved on to the World Federation Hall where he served as a Senior Ombudsman for ten years. Then had assumed the mantle of Coordinator of the Federation. Another ten years’ service to the noblest master of them all, the human race.
Then, five years before the golden ark had come, at the age of eighty-five, early middle-years in a time of anti-agathic DNA rearrangement, Wilson Herber retired, secluded himself utterly.
But judicious reasoning, and cataclysmic threats, brought the wisest, richest, most powerful, most cunning man in the world back to the Hall. That, of course, was what they thought – those who had leveled the threats.
“I’ll take the credentials,” he said to the Coordinator, the assembled Ombudsmen, the Federation Council. “I’ll go out there and let them know we’re ready to join with them.”
Despite the longevity reprogrammed into his DNA, he had eschewed any cosmetic enhancement: he was a shrunken gnome of a man with thin gray hair and leathery dark skin. His eyes were made of ground glass, his chin was a dagger point.
“Establish us on a sound footing with their highest councils,” the Coordinator said, his voice magnificent in the Hall. “Let them know we walk hand-in-hand with them, as equals.”
“Till we learn all they can teach us, at which time we usurp their preeminence, yes?”
The communications web broadcasting Herber’s investiture went to standby on time-delay. The world audience did not hear the remark. Nor did the audience see the Coordinator hem and haw and finally, under Herber’s predatory stare, grin a vulpine grin, shrug, and say, “You always know best, sir.”
Wilson Herber, as was his way, had struck directly to the heart of human nature, to the heart of the mission, to the heart of the problem.
He smiled as he left the Hall. Having struck to the heart, all that was required was that one squeeze the heart till it bled or burst.
The home planet of the Masters slowly materialized out of inverspace.
It shimmered like dew on grass, faded in and out, then solidified. Incredible: the Masters of the Universe had gained control of all time and space: they had devised the ultimate, perfect protection for the home world: it was partially in normal space, partially in inverspace. It existed in the interstices, safe there/not there.
Herber, cushioned in a special travel–chair, sat beside Captain Arnand Singh, watching the shimmering mirage wheeling beneath their ship.
“More impressive than I’d expected, yes, Captain?”
The Moslem nodded. He was a huge man, yet he gave the impression of compression, efficiency. And nobility. “This is almost like a hadj, Mr. Herber.”
“Eh? Hadj? Which is?”
“What my people long ago called a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city. Now here we are, the first humans to make the pilgrimage to the new Mecca . . . ”
Herber cut him off. “Listen, old son; just remember this: we’re the chosen people. Earth is the center, no matter what they think. As good as them, probably better: quicker, stronger, cleverer. And they know it, too. Take my word for it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come all that way to solicit us. They came to us, remember? They gave us the invitation, not the other way around. So get all those old subservient hadj ideas out of your head. Proud, my boy, be proud. We’re coming to establish diplomatic relations, to show them how it should be done.”
Singh did not reply. But he smiled quickly. What bravado the old man displayed. They were the first humans to meet the Masters, and Herber was treating it as though it were a routine business trip to a foreign embassy in New Boston.
All that was flensed from his thoughts as the control panel bleeped the signal for slipout into normal space.
Herber’s diplomatic ship settled down through the many-colored alluvial layers of inverspace and abruptly passed into normal space-time.
In normal space, the home world was even more impressive.
Twelve-kilometer-high buildings of delicate pastel tracery reached for the sky. Huge ships plied back and forth among the five major continents. Artifical suns burned in the quarries. Intelligent fish carried cargo across the great sea. Beams of moted light crisscrossed the sky.
“We can learn a great deal from these people, Singh,” Herber said quietly, almost reverently. His pinched and wrinkled features settled into a familiar, comfortable expression of contemplative expectation. “Form follows function,” he said, whispering the litany. “All this of masters and Master . . . we shall see …”
Herber raised the beamer to his lips. With narrowed eyes and tightened mouth he watched only one of the aspects of the Masters’ knowledge that could destroy his cartel: the great ships carrying cargo through the skies of the home world winked out of existence and reappeared far from the vanishing point. Instantaneous transportation of goods. His voice was strained as he spoke into the beamer:
“We are the emissaries from Earth, here to offer you the fellowship and knowledge of our planet. We hope our friends of the golden world are well. We come as equals and ask landing instructions.”
They waited. Herber watched with hungry eyes. Singh pointed out the spaceport, an enormous, sprawling eighty–kilometer–wide affair with gigantic loading docks, golden ships aimed at the skies, and hundreds of alien ships from as many different worlds. The Captain settled slowly toward the port.
And the answer came back, already translated into English for them. It filled the cabin of the starship that had been built with the science of the Masters for these humans who had come a great distance as equals:
Please go around to the service entrance. Please go around to the service entrance. Please go around …
When I first arrived in New York, the city was in the midst of its Monsoon Season: January to December. After mooching room, board and writing counsel from Lester del Rey and his wife Evelyn for a few days, I moved into one of the great abodes of memorabilia in my life — a hotel on West 114th Street, where already resided Robert Silverberg, the writener, who had been attending Columbia University and selling stories on the side (or vice versa). In the first week of my residence, I completed three short stories. The first was sold to Larry Shaw, then editor of Infinity, and provided rent for several weeks to come. The second sold to Guilty Detective Story Magazine, and provided food for the tummy. The third was prompted by the dreadful weather, the silver rain that fell past my third floor window hour after hour. It did not sell till three years later, to the British magazine Science Fantasy. I rather liked the yarn, and could never understand why American science–fiction magazines were not devious enough to slip in a little straight fantasy every now and then. But since they don’t, I’m pleased to be able to have that third–written story in print again in this country, reminding me of my days of childhood naturalism in New York, when I stood before my grimy window and rather hysterically murmured