Infinity's Child

by Charles V. De Vet

Closing the library door behind him he walked unhesitatingly down a long hallway. To either side of him, painted on the walls, were murals, depicting peasants in the fields, harvesting grain. Idly he observed the painted figures as he walked, with his brain chilled and numbed of almost all emotion. The painted figures possessed as much reality as anything else about him, he thought disinterestedly.

He walked down steps and across an inner courtyard, his legs moving stiffly, lifelessly.

He continued up the steps on the far side of the courtyard, his mind shutting out everything around him except the door ahead. When he reached there he stopped. Here, he knew, he was at the crossroads. He could move straight ahead through the door, or he could walk around the house and enter the basement through the back. That was the longer way, but probably the safer. And the Force urged the second choice.

A mood of black frustration swept over him and some perverse stubbornness of his human nature rebelled at this supine abnegation. He knew that he was going to die, and his one last defiant act would be to die in a way of his own choosing. He walked straight ahead.

As he opened the door and stepped into a long green-carpeted room he found himself facing three guards. They held guns and the guns were all aimed at him.

Even before he observed that the guards were firing, he felt the killing slugs enter his body. He knew the bullets had reached vital organs and that he was about to die. Within him he felt the Force, angry and rebuking.

He felt a wrench at the core of his body structure—and he was walking—walking—endlessly—down a long corridor. On the walls to either side of him were the figures of harvesters painted on yellow murals. His body was alive and vital. He walked on, through a doorway and out into a courtyard before he realized what had happened. The Force had turned time backward! He was once more on his way to shoot Koski. He was exactly the same as he had been the last time but with the addition of his memories of having been shot. And the silent warning that came to him never to expect another second chance. That could not be repeated.

This time when he came to the fatal door there was no surge of rebellion and he did not hesitate. He walked around the house until he came to the basement entrance. Cement steps led downward. Two guards were waiting for him there. One guard fell as Buckmaster fired, but he knew with a terrible certainty that he would not be able to kill the other in time to save himself.

The guard's bullet crashed into Buckmaster's diaphragm and his body jerked once but it did not stop its determined pacing forward. Buckmaster fired again but even as he did he felt a second bullet enter his body. It pierced his heart and he knew that he was dead. With dimming vision he watched the guard fall over on his side as his own bullet found its mark.

Even as Buckmaster realized that the bitter fever of life was over for him he knew that his body would not stop. Without any directive from the brain it was using the last of the suspended energy in its blood and muscles to walk forward, driving with an awful exertion.