Felony by James Causey (christmas read aloud TXT) 📖

idnight.

Vogel stood in darkness, leaning against the wall. He was tired. He had maintained this vigil for three hours. His right leg was numb and he started to shift position, then froze as he heard footsteps. Three aisles over, a light exploded, blindingly. He held his breath.

From outside in fabrication came the muffled clang of drill press and power brake, the sounds of the night shift. He waited. Three aisles over, something moved. Someone fumbled in the stock bins, collecting shaped pieces of metal, grunting with the effort of piling them on the salvage bench, now panting with impatience while assembling the parts. There was a hammering, a fitting together, a flash of light, a humming of power and finally a sob of relief.

Vogel's hand slipped into his coat pocket and grasped the gun. He moved silently.

Amenth stood at the salvage bench, adjusting studs and connecting terminals. Vogel stared at the final assembly.

It was a helmet. A large silvery helmet, connected to a nightmarish maze of wiring, mounted on a rectangular plastic base. It hummed, although there was no visible source of power. Amenth put on the helmet with a feverish haste. Vogel chuckled. Amenth stood motionless. Then as his hand darted toward a stand, Vogel said sharply, "Don't!"

Amenth stared at the gun.

"Take it off!" Vogel's voice was iron.

Amenth slowly took off the helmet. His eyes were golden with tears. "Please," he said.

"Mars or Venus?" Vogel said. "Which?"

"N-neither. You could not grasp the concept. Let me go. Please!"

"Where?" Vogel prodded. "Another dimension?"

"You would call it that," the alien whispered. Hope brightened his face. "You want something? Wealth? Power?"

It was the way he said the words, like a white trader offering his aborigine captors glass beads to set him free.

Vogel nodded toward the circuit. "That hookup—you tap the gravitational field direct? Cosmic rays?"

"Your planet's magnet force lines. Look, I'll leave you the schematic diagram. It's simple, really. You can use it to transmute—" He babbled on with a heartbreaking eagerness, and Vogel listened.

"In my own world," said Amenth brokenly, "I am a moron. A criminal moron. Once, out of a childish malice, I destroyed beauty. One of the singing crystals." He shuddered. "I was punished. They sent me here—to the snake pit. Sentence for felony. This—" he indicated the helmet—"would have fused three seconds after I used it. So, incidentally, would this entire shop. I had no time to construct a feedback dispersion."

"Tell me about your world," Vogel said.

Amenth told him.

Vogel's breath hissed softly between his teeth. All his life an unformed vision had tormented him, driven him toward perfection. Abruptly the vision was reality. He smiled, moved forward. "You shouldn't have told me."

Amenth saw the intent in his eyes and started to beg. Vogel clipped him behind the ear.

He put the helmet on, gingerly. The electrodes tingled against his temple and his grin was wry as he thought of Alice. Then he depressed the stud.

Vogel sobbed.

olor blinded him, rainbows blared in sweet, sparkling thunder. He whimpered, covering his eyes. The music drowned him in a fugue of weeping delight. Slowly he raised his head.

He stood ankle-deep in gold crystals that stretched out forever in a splendid sea of flame. The crystals sang softly, achingly, to a silver sun in an emerald sky. A grove of blue needle trees tinkled in ecstasy on his left. And beyond those trees....

The city sang.

White spires foamed skyward in impossible cataracts of glory. A glissando of joy burned his eardrums, and he could not face that living splendor. It was the city beyond dreams, beyond legend, the city where all dreams end. He strode toward it, raptly.

The crystals screamed. The blue needle forest lashed wildly, and terror shivered through the air in shrieking dissonance.

From the blue forest, people ran. Beautiful people, with great golden eyes and scarlet tunics. They could have been Amenth's brothers and sisters. They stared, horror and revulsion twisting their faces. They started toward him.

Vogel understood.

If destroying beauty on this world was a crime, then killing ugliness must be a duty.

On this world, he was ugly—

—JAMES CAUSEY

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Felony, by James Causey