GOD, MACHINE-OR LISTENING POST FOR OUTSIDERS?
Horng sat
opposite the tiny, fragile creature
who held
a microphone, its
wires attached to an interpreting
machine. He blinked his
huge eyes slowly, his stiff
mouth fumblingly forming words
of a
language his race had not used
for thirty
thousand years.
"Kor was
. .
. is
. .
. God
. .
. Knowledge."
He had
tried to convey this
to the
small creatures who had invaded
his world,
but they
did not
heed. Their ill-equipped brains
were trying futilely to comprehend
the ancient
race memory of his
people.
Now they
would attempt further to discover
the forbidden
directives of Kor. Horng remembered,
somewhere far back in the
fossil layers of his thoughts,
a warning. They
must be stopped! If he
had to,
he would
stamp out these creatures
who were called
"humans."
Turn
this book over for second complete novel
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Rynason
His mental
quest led him too close
to a
dangerous secret
Manning
His ideas
for colonizing
that world didn't include survival for its native beings.
Malhomme
This ruffian-preacher could be
the one
man that
everyone might have to trust
Mara
She wanted
to save
the aliens,
but did
they want to be saved?
Horng
In the recesses of his brain
was the
key to
a dead
civilization—or a live menace.
. .
.
Kor
Was it
a legend,
a king,
a thing,
or a
trap from another galaxy?
WARLORD OF KOR
by
TERRY CARR
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York 36, N.Y.
WARLORD OF KOR
Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved
THE STAR WASPS
Copyright ©, 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed
in U.SA.
ONE
Lee Rynason sat forward
on the
faded red-stone seat, watching the
stylus of the interpreter as the massive grey
being in front of him
spoke, its dry, leathery mouth
slowly and stumblingly forming the words of
a spoken
language its race had not
used for over thirty thousand
years. The stylus made no sound
in the
thin air of Hirlaj as it
passed over the plasticene
notepaper; the only sounds in
the ancient
building were those of
the alien's
surprisingly high and thin voice coining at intervals and
Rynason's own slightly
labored breathing.
He did not listen to the
alien's voice—by now he had
heard it often enough
so that
it was
merely irritating in its thin dryness,
like old parchments being rubbed
together. He watched the stylus as
it jumped
along sporadically:
TEBRGN MARL
WAS OUR
. .
. PRIEST
KING HERO.
NOT PRIEST BUT ONE
WHO KNEW THAT IS
PRIEST.
Rynason was
a slender,
sandy-haired man in his late
twenties. A sharp scar from
a knife
cut left
a line
across his forehead over his
right eyebrow. His eyes, perhaps
brown, perhaps green—the light on Hirlaj was sometimes deceptive— were soft, but
narrowed with an intent alertness.
He raised
the interpreter's mike and
said, "How long ago?"
The stylus recorded the
Earthman's question too, but Rynason did
not watch
it. He
looked up at the bulk of the
alien, watching
for the
slow closing of its eyes,
so slow
that it could not be called
a blink,
that would show it had
understood the question. The interpreter
could feed the question, direct to the
telepathic alien, but there was
no guarantee
that it would be
understood.
The eyes, resting steadily on him,
closed and opened and in a
few moments
came the Hirlaji's
dry voice.
THE GREAT AGE WAS IN THE
EIGHTEENTH
GENERATION PAST SEVEN THOUSAND
YEARS
AGO.
Rynason calculated
quickly. Translating that to about
8200 Earth-standard years and
subtracting, that would make it about the
seventeenth century. About
the time
of the
Restoration in England, when the
western hemisphere of Earth was still
being colonized. Eighteen
generations ago on Hirlaj. He read
the date
into the mike for the
stylus to record, and sat back
and stretched.
They were sitting amid the ruins
of a
vast hall, grey dust covering the stone floor all
around them. Dry, hard vegetation
had crept
in through
cracks and breaks in the
walls and fallen across the dusty
interior shadows of the building.
Occasionally a small, quick
animal would dart from a
dark wall across the floor to
another shadow, its feet soundless
in the dust.
Above Rynason
the enormous
arch of the Hirlaji dome loomed darkly against the deep
cerulean blue of the sky.
The lines of all
Hirlaji architecture were deceptively simple, but Rynason had already found that
if he
tried to follow the curves and angles he would
soon find his head swimming.
There was a quality
to these
ancient buildings which was not
quite understandable to a
Terran mind, as
though the old Hirlaji
had built
them on geometric principles just slightly at a tangent
from those of Earth. The
curve of the arch drew Rynason's eyes along its silhouette
almost hypnotically. He caught
himself, and shook his head,
and turned
again to the alien before him.
The creature's name, as
well as it could be
rendered in a Terran script,
was Horng.
The head
of the
alien was dark and hairless, leathery, weathered; the light
wires of the interpreter trailed down and across the floor from where they
were clamped to the deep indentations of the temples. Massive boney ridges
circled the shadowed eyes set low on the head, directly above the wide mouth
which always hung open while the Hirlaji breathed in
long gulps of air. Two atrophied nostrils were situated on either side and
slightly below the eyes. The neck was so thick and massive that it was
practically nonexistent, blending the head with the shoulders and trunk, on
which the dry skin stretched so thin that Rynason
could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat arms hung from the
shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which
two sets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly, in
what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous
habit. The lower body was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they could move either forward or
backward, and the feet had four stubby but powerful toes radiating from the
center. The Hirlaji wore a dark garment of something
which looked like wood-fibre, hanging from the head
and gathered together by a cord just below the chest-wall.
Rynason, since arriving on the planet three weeks
before as one of a team of fifteen archaeological workers, had been
interviewing Horng almost every day, but still he often found himself
remembering only with difficulty that this was an intelligent being; Horng was
so slow-moving and uncommunicative most of the time that he almost seemed like
a mound of leather, like a pile of hides thrown
together in a corner. But he was intelligent, and in his
mind he held perhaps the entire history of his race.
Rynason lifted the interpreter-mike again. "Was
Tebron Marl king of all Hirlajr
Horng's eyes slowly closed and opened. TEBRON MARL
WAS RULER LEADER IN THE REGION OF MINES. HE UNITED ALL OF HIRLAJ AND WAS PRIEST
RULER.
"How did he unite the planet?"
TEBRON LIVED AT THE END OF THE BARBARIC
AGE. HE
CONQUERED THE PLANET BY VIOLENCE AND DROVE THE ANCIENT PRIEST CASTE FROM THE
TEMPLE.
"But
the reign of Tebron Marl is remembered as an era of
peace."
WHEN HE WAS PRIEST KING HE HELD THE PEACE. HE ENDED THE BARBARIC AGE.
Rynason
suddenly sat forward, watching the stylus record these words. "Then it
was Tebron who abolished war on Hirlaj?"
YES.
Rynason felt a thrill go through him. This was what
they had all been searching for—the point in the history of Hirlaj
when wars had ceased, when die Hirlaji had given themselves over to completely peaceful living. He knew
already that the transition had been sharp and sudden. It was the last question
mark in the sketchy history of Hirlaj which the
survey team had compiled since its arrival—how had the Hirlaji
managed so abruptly to establish and maintain en era
of peace which had lasted unbroken to the present?
It
was difficult even to think of these huge, slow-moving creatures as warriors . but warriors they had
been, for thousands of their years, gradually building their culture and
science until, apparently almost overnight, the wars had ceased. Since then the
Hirlaji moved in their slow way through their world,
growing more complacent with the passage of ancient generations, growing
passive, and, eventually, decadent. Now there were only some two dozen of the
race left alive.
They
were telepathic, these leathery aliens, and behind those shadowed eyes they
held the entire memories of their race. Experiences communicated telepathically
through the centuries had formed a memory pool which each of the remaining Hirlaji shared. They could not, of course, integrate in
their own minds all of that immense store of memories and understand it all
clearly but the memories were there.
It was at the same time a boon and a trial
for Rynason and the rest of the survey team. They
were trained archaeologists . . as
well schooled as possible on the worlds of this far-flung sector near the
constantly outward-moving Edge, the limit of Terran
expansion. Rynason could operate and if necessary
repair the portable carbondaters of the team, he knew
the fine points of excavation and restoration of artifacts and had studied so
many types of alien anatomy that he could make at least an educated guess at
the reconstruction of beings from fragmentary fossil-remains or incomplete
skeletons ... or exoskeletons.
But
the situation on Hirlaj was one which had never before
been encountered; here he was not dealing with a dead race's remains, but directly with members of that race. It was not
a matter of sifting fragmentary evidence of science, crafts and customs,
finding out what he could and piecing together a composite picture from the remains at hand, as they had done with the
artifacts of the Outsiders, those unknown beings who had left the ruins of
their outposts and -colonies in six galaxies already explored and settled by
the Earthmen; all he had to do here was ask the right questions and he would
get his answers.
Sitting there under that massive dome, with
the quiet-eyed alien before him, Rynason couldn't
completely suppress a feeling of ridiculousness. The problem was that the Hirlaji could not be depended upon to be able to find a particular memory-series in their minds; the race memory was such a
conglomeration that all they could do was strike randomly at memories until the
correct area was touched, and then follow up from there. The result was usually
irrelevant and unrelated information.
But
he seemed to be getting somewhere now. Having spent three weeks with Horng, gradually
learning a little about the ways of his alien mind, he had at last run across
what might be the important turning-point in the history of Hirlaj.
Horng
spoke, and Rynason turned to watch the stylus of the
interpreter as it moved across the paper. TEBRON SPENT HIS YEARS BRINGING
HIRLAJ TOGETHER,
FIRST BY CONQUEST THEN RY .
. . LEADERSHrP
LAW. HE FORRADE . . . SCIENCES
QUESTINGS EXPLORATIONS WHICH DREW HIRLAJ APART. "What were these
sciences?"
Horng
closed and opened bis eyes.
MANY OF THEM ARE FORGOTTEN.
Rynason looked up at the alien, who sat quietly on a rough stone benchlike seat. "But your
race doesn't forget."
THE
MEMORIES ARE VERY FAR BACK AND ARE HARD TO FIND. THERE HAS BEEN NO EFFORT TO
RETAIN CERTAIN MEMORIES.
"But you can remember
these if you try?"
Horng's head dipped to one side, a characteristic
movement which Rynason had not yet managed to
interpret. The shadowed, wrinkled eyes closed slowly. THE MEMORIES ARE THERE.
THEY ARE THE SCIENCES OF KOR. MANY OF THEM ARE WARLIKE SCIENCES.
"You've mentioned Kor
before. Who was he?"
KOR WAS IS GOD KNOWLEDGE.
Rynason frowned. The interpreter automatically
translated terms which had no reliable parallel in Terran
by giving two or three related words, and usually the concept was fairly clear.
Not quite so with this sentence.
"God
and knowledge are two different words in our language," he said.
"Can you explain your term more fully?"
Horng
shifted heavily on his seat, his blunt fingers tapping each other. KOR WAS IS EXISTENCE WHICH WE WORSHIP OBEY ADMIRE FOLLOW. ALSO
ESSENCE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE QUESTING.
Rynason,
watching the stylus, pursed his lips. "Mm," he said softly, and
shrugged his shoulders. Kor was apparently some sort of god, but the
interpreter didn't seem capable of translating the term precisely.
"What were the
sciences of Kor?"
TheTe was a silence as the stylus finished moving across the paper, and Rynason looked up at Horng. The aliens
eyes were closed and he had stopped the constant motion of Ms leathery grey fingers; he sat immobile, like a giant statue, almost a part of the complex of the hall and the crumbling
domed building'. Rynason
waited.
The
silence remained for a long time in the dry air of the empty hall. Rynason
saw from the corner of his eye one of the dark little scavengers darting out of
a gaping window. He could almost hear, it seemed, the noise of the
brawling, makeshift town the Earthmen had established a little less than a mile away from the Hirlaji
ruins, where already the nomads and adventurers and drifters had erected a cluster of prefab
metal buildings and were settling in.
"What were the sciences of Kor?" Rynason asked again, not wanting to think of the cheapness
and dirt of the Earth outpost which huddled so near to the Hirlaji
domes.
He felt Horng's
quiet gaze, heavy with centuries, resting on him. THEY WERE
ARE THOSE SCIENCES QUEST-INGS WHICH KOR PROCLAIMED INFORMED WERE SACRED
PART OF THE ESSENCE.
"Part
of Kor?"
Horng's head dipped to one side. APPROXIMATELY.
"How
is this known? Tebron broke the power of the priesthood, didn't he?"
TEBRON
REPLACED THE PRIESTS. THE KNOWLEDGE was GIVEN TO TEBRON.
"Including the information that these
sciences were prohibited?"
Horng shifted forward, like a massive block
of stone wavering. His fingers moved briefly and then rested. THE MEMORIES ARE
BURIED DEEPLY. TEBRON PROCLAIMED THIS PROHIBITION AFTER COMMUNICATING WITH
KOR.
Rynason's
head jerked up from the interpreter. "Tebron
spoke with Kor?"
After
a pause, Horng's dry voice came. APPROXIMATELY.
THERE WAS . . . COMMUNICATION RAPPORT. TEBRON WAS KING PRIEST.
"Then
Tebron made this prohibition in the name of Kor. When
did this occur?"
THE KNOWLEDGE PROHIBITION
WAS COMMU*
NICATED TO HIRLAJ WHEN TEBRON ASSUMED POWER RIGHT. "The same day?"
THE DAY AFTER. TEBRON COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTING REPLACING THE
PRIESTS.
Rynason watched Horng's
replies as they were recorded by the
interpreter; he was frowning. So this dawn-era king was supposed to have
spoken, perhaps telepathically, with the god of the Hirlaji.
Could he have simply claimed to have done so in an effort to stabilize his own
power? But the fact that this race was telepathic threw some doubt on
that supposition.
"Are
there memories of Tebron's conversation with KorP" he asked.
Horng's
eyes closed and opened in acknowledgement, and then abruptly the alien rose to
his feet. He moved slowly past Rynason to the base of
a long, sweeping flight of stairs which led upward toward the empty dome,
trailing the wires of the interpreter. Rynason moved
to unplug the wires, but Horng stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up
along the curving ramp to where it ended in a blunt, weathered break two-thirds
of the way up. Rubble lay below the break.
Rynason watched the grey being staring silently up
those broken steps, and asked softly, "What are you doing?"
Horng, still gazing upward, clipped his head
to one side. THERE IS NO PURPOSE. He turned and came slowly back to his stone
seat.
Rynason grinned wryly. He was beginning to get used
to such things from Horng, whose mind often seemed to run in non sequiturs. It
was as though the alien's perceptions of the present were as jumbled as the
welter of memories he held. Crazy old mound of leather.
But
he was not crazy, of course; his mind simply ran in a way that was alien to the Earthmen. Rynason
was beginning to learn to respect that alien way, if not to understand ft.
"Are there memories of Tebron's conversation with KorP"
Rynason asked again.
TEBRON
COMMUNICATED WITH KOR IMMEDIATELY AFTER OUSTING THE PRIESTS. IT OCCURRED IN
THE TEMPLE.
"Are there memories of what was
said?"
Horng
sat silently, perhaps in thought. His reply didn't come for several minutes.
THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED
DEEPLY.
"Can you remember the actual communication?"
Horng's head tilted to one side in a peculiarly
strained fashion; Rynason could see a muscle jumping
where the alien's neck blended with his torso. THE MEMORIES ARE BURIED SO
DEEPLY. I CANNOT REACH THEM.
Rynason
gazed pensively at the interpreter as these words were recorded. What could
have happened dining that conversation that would have caused its memory to be
so deeply buried?
"Can
you find among any of the rest of Tebron's memories
any thoughts about Kor?"
YES.
TEBRON HAD MEMORIES THAT HE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH KOR, BUT THESE ARE FLEETING.
THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.
The Hirlaji was shaking, his entire body trembling with some
sort of tension which even communicated itself through the interpreter, causing
the stylus to quaver and jump forward, dragging a jagged line across the
paper. Rynason stared up at the alien, feeling a
chill down his back which seemed to penetrate through to his chest and lungs.
This massive creature was shaking like the rumbling warnings of an earthquake,
his eyes cast downward from the deep shadows of their sockets; Rynason could almost feel the weight of their gaze like a
heavy, dark blanket. He lifted the interpreter's mike slowly.
"Your
race does not forget," he said softly. "Why can't you remember this conversation?"
Horng's four-digited hands
clasped rightly and the powerful tendons stood out starkly on the heavy wrists
as Horng drew in long breaths of air, the sound of his breathing loud in the
great space under the dome.
THERE
IS NOTHING CLEAR. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.
TWO
The
earthman called
the town Hirlaf too, because the spaceport was there.
It was a new town, only a few months old, but the gleaming alloys of the buildings
were already coated with dirt and pitted by the frequent dust storms that swept through. Garbage littered the alleys; its odor was strange but
still foul in the alien atmosphere. The small, darting creatures were here too,
foraging in the alleys and the outskirts of the town, where the streets ended
in garbage heaps and new cemetaries or faded into the
trackless flat where the spacers touched down.
The
Earthmen filled the streets . . drinking,
fighting, laughing and cursing, arguing over money or power or, sometimes,
women. The women here were hard and self-sufficient,
following the path of Terran expansion in the stars
and taking what
they felt was due them as
women or what they could get as men.
Supply houses did a thriving business, their prices high between shipments on
the spacers from the inner worlds; bars and gambling houses stayed open all
night; rooming houses and restaurants and laundries displayed crude handlettered signs along the streets.
Rynason
pushed his way through a jostling crowd outside the door of a bar. He was supposed to meet the head of his survey team here—Rice Manning, who had been pushing the survey as hard
as he could since the day they'd set foot on Hirlai. Manning was hard and ambitious—a leader of
men, Rynason thought sardonically as he surveyed the
tables in the dim interior. The floor of the bar was a
dirty plastic-metal
alloy, already scuffed and in places bloodstained. The
tables were of the cheap, light metals so common on the spacer-supplied worlds
of the Edge, and they wobbled.
The
low-ceilinged room was crowded with men. Rynason
didn't know many of them by name, but he recognized a lot of the faces. The men
of the Edge, though they lacked money, education, often brains and usually
ethics, at least had the quality of distinctiveness: they didn't fit the
half-dozen convenient molds which the highly developed culture of the inner
worlds fitted over the more civilized citizens of the Terran
Federation. These men were too self-interested to follow the group-thoughts
which controlled the centers of empire, and the seams and wrinkles of their
faces stamped a rough kind of individuality even more
visually upon them.
Of
them all, the man who was instantly recognizable in any crowd like this was
Rene Malhomme; Rynason
immediately saw the man in one comer of the room. He stood six and a half feet tall, heavily muscled and a bit wild-eyed; his greying hair fell in
disorder over his dirty forehead and sprayed out over his ears. He was
surrounded by laughing and shouting men; Rynason
couldn't tell from this distance whether he was engaged in one of his usual
heated arguments on religion or in his other avocation of recounting stories
of the women he had "converted". He waved a black-lettered sign saying REPENTI over his head—but then, he always
did.
Rynason found Manning in the back, sitting under a
cheap print of a Picasso nude with cold light trained on it in typically bad
taste. He had a woman with him. Rynason recognized
her—Mara Stephens, in charge of communications and supplies for the survey
team. She was a strange girl, aloof but not hard, and she carried herself with a quiet dignity. What was she doing with Manning?
He
passed a waiter on his way to the table and ordered a drink. Malhomme saw him as he passed: "Lee Rynasonl Come and join me in repentancel
Give your soul to God and your money to the barman, for as the prophet sayeth, lo, I am dry! Join us!" Rynason
grinned and shook his head, walking past. He grabbed one of the light-metal
chairs and sat down next to Mara.
"You
wanted to see me,"
he said to Manning.
Manning
looked up at him in apparent surprise. "Lee! Yes, yes—sit down. Wait,
we'll get you a drink."
So
he was in that kind of a mood. "I've got one coming," Rynason said. "What's our problem today?"
Manning
smiled broadly. "No problem, Lee; no problem at alL Not unless you want to make one." He chuckled goodnaturedly, a tacit
statement that he was expecting no such thing. "I've got good news today,
by god. You tell him, Mara."
Rynason turned to the girl, who smiled briefly.
"It just came
over the telecom," she
said. "Manning has a good chance for the governorship here. The Council is
supposed to announce its decision in two weeks."
Rynason looked over at Manning, his face
expressionless. "Congratulations. How did this happen?"
"I've
got an inside track; friend of mine knows several of the big guys. Throws
parties, things like that. He's been putting in a word for me, here and
there."
"Isn't this a bit out of your line?" Rynason
said. Manning sat back, a large man with close-cropped dark hair and heavy
features. His beard was trimmed to a thin Une along the ridge of his jaw—a style that was popular on the inner worlds, but rarely seen here on the Edge. "This is my line," he said. "God, this is what I was after when I took
this damned job. Survey teams are a dime a dozen out here, Lee; it's no job for
a man."
"We've got sort of a special case here," Rynason said evenly, glancing at Mara. She smiled at him.
"We haven't run into any alien races before that were
intelligent."
Manning
laughed, and took a long swallow of his drink. "Twenty-six lousy horsefaces—now there's an important discovery for you. No,
Lee, this is peanuts. For that matter, they may be running into intelligent
aliens all over the Edge by now—
communication isn't so reliable out here that we'd necessarily know about it What we've found here isn't any more Important than all the rubble and
trash the Outsiders left behind."
"Still, it is unique
so far," Mara said.
"I'll
tell you exactly how unique it is," Manning said, leaning forward and
setting down his glass with a bang. "It's just unique enough that I can
make it sound important in my report to the Council. I can make myself sound a
little impressive. That's how important it is; no more than that"
Rynason
pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. The waiter arrived with his drink; he
threw a green coin onto the table which was scooped up before it had finished
ringing to a stop, and sat back with the glass in his hand.
"Is
that your pitch to the Council?" he asked. "You're telling them that Hirlaj is an important archaeological area end that's why
you should get the governorship?"
"Something
Hke that," Manning nodded. "That, and my friend at Seventeenth Cluster headquarters.
Incidentally, he's an idiot and a slob—turns on quadsense
telemuse instead of working, drinks hopsbrau from his own sector. I can't stand him. But I did
him a few favors, just in case, and they're paying off."
T think it's marvelous the way our frontier policy
caters to the colonists," Mara said quietly. She was still smiling, but it
was an ironic smile which suddenly struck Rynason as
characteristic of her.
He
knew exactly what she meant. Manning's little push for power was nothing new or
shocking in Terran frontier politics. With the rapid
expansion of the Edge through the centuries, the frontier policy of the
Confederation had had to adapt itself to comparatively slipshod methods of
setting up governments in the newly-opened areas. Back in the early days they'd
tried sending out trained men from each Cluster headquarters, but that had been
foredoomed to failure: travel between the stars was slow, and too often the governors
had arrived after local officialdoms had already-been established, and there
had been clashes. The colonists had almost always backed the local governments,
and there were a few full-scale revolts when the system had been backed too militantly by
Cluster headquarters.
So the Local Autonomy System had been
sanctioned. The colonists would always support their own men, who at least knew
conditions in the areas they were to govern. But since this necessarily limited
the choice of Edge governorships to the roustabouts and drifters who wandered
the out-worlds, the resulting administrations were probably even more corrupt
than they had been under the old system of what had amounted to centralized
graft. The Cluster Councils retained the power of appointing the local
governors, but aside from that the newly-opened worlds of the Edge were
completely under their own rule. Some of the more vocal critics of the Local
Autonomy System had dubbed it instead the Indigenous Corruption System; it was
by now a fairly standard nickname in the outworlds.
The
system made for a wide-open frontier—bustling, wild, hectic, and rich. For the worlds of the Edge were untamed worlds, raw and forbidding,
and the policy of the Councils was calculated to attract the kind of men who
not only could but would open these frontiers. The roustabouts, the low
drifters of the spaceways . . . men who were hard and
strong from repeated knocks, who were looking for a way to work or fight their
way up. The lean and hungry of the outworlds.
Rynason
glanced across the table at Manning. He was neither lean nor hungry, but he had
that look in his eyes. Rynason had been around the
Edge for years—his father had travelled the spacers in the commercial lines—and
he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines, in the spaceports,
in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on Manning
despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression.
"You
don't have to worry about the colonists here," Manning was saying to the
girl. "Ill treat 'em decently. There'll be money to be made here, and I can
make it without stepping on too many toes."
Mara seemed amused. "And what would
happen If you had to
step on them to make your money? What if Hirlaj
doesn't turn out to have any natural resources worth exploiting—a whole
civilization has been here for thousands of years? What if the colony here
starts to falter, and the men move on?"
Manning frowned at her for a moment, then gave a grunting laugh. "No chance of that. It's
like Lee was just saying— this planet is an important discovery—we've got tame
aliens here, intelligent horsefaces that you can lead
around with a rope on their necks. That alone will draw tourists. Maybe well
set up an official Restricted Ground, a sort of reservation."
"A zoo, you mean," Rynason interrupted.
Manning
raised an amused eyebrow at him. "A reserva-"
tion, I said. You know what reservations are like,
Lee."
Rynason glared at the heavier man, then subsided. There was no point in getting into a fight
over ifs and maybe's; in the outworlds you learned
quickly to confine your clashes to tangibles. "Why did you want to see
me?" he said.
^
want your preliminary report completed," Manning said. "I've got to
have my complete report collated and transmitted within the week, if it's to
have any effect on the Council. Most of the boys have got them in already; Breune and Larsborg have promised
theirs within four days. But you're still holding me up."
Rynason took a long swallow of his drink and put it
down empty. The noise and smell of the bar seemed to grow around him, washing
over him. It might have been the effects of the tarpaq
in the drink, but he felt his stomach tighten and turn slightly when he thought
of how Earth's culture presented itself, warped itself, here on the frontier
Edge. Was this kind of mercenary, slipshod rush really what had carried
Earthmen to the stars?
"I
don't know if I'll have much to report for at least a week," he said
shortly.
"Then
give me a report on what you've got!" Manning snapped. "If nothing
else, turn in your transcripts and I'D do the report myself; I can handle it.
What the hell do you mean, you won't have much to
report?"
"Larsborg
said the same thing," Mara interjected.
"Larsborg said he'd have his report ready in a couple of days anywayl"
"111
give you what I've got as
soon as I can," Rynason said. "But things
are just beginning to break for me—did you see my note this afternoonr
"Yes,
of course. The part about this Tedron or whatever his
name was?"
"Tebron Marl. He's the link between their barbaric and
civilized periods. I've only begun to get into it."
Manning
was waving for. more drinks; he caught a waiter's eye
and then turned back to Rynason. "What's this
nonsense about some damned block you ran into? Have you got a crazy horse on
your hands?"
"There's
something strange there," Rynason said. "He
tells me this Tebron was actually supposed to have
communicated with their god, or whatever he was. It sounds crazy, all right.
But there's more to it than that, I'm sure of it. I wanted time to go into it further before I
made my report."
"I
think you've got a nut alien there, boy. Don't let him foul you up; you're one
of my best men."
Rynason almost sneered, but he managed to bring it
out as a grin. The role of protective father did not sit well on Manning's
shoulders. "We're dealing here with a remarkably sane race," he
pointed out. "The very fact that they have total recall argues against any
insanity in them. There've been experiments on the inner worlds for over a
century now, trying to bring out total recall in us,
and not much luck so far. We're a sick, hung-up race."
Manning slapped his hand down on the table.
"What the hell are you trying to do, Lee? Are you trying to measure these
aliens by our standards? I thought you had better sense. Total recall doesn't
necessarily mean a damn thing in them—but when they start telling you
straightforward and cold that they've talked with some god, and then they throw what sounds like an anxiety fit right in front of you
. . . Well, what does it sound like to you?"
Rynason
accepted one of the drinks that the waiter banged down on the table and took a sip. He felt
lightheaded. "It would have been an anxiety fit if Horng had been
human," he said. "But you're right, I do know
better than to judge him by our standards. No, it was something
else."
"What, then?"
He
shook his head. "I don't know. That's the point—I can't give you a decent report until I find
out."
"Then,
dammit, give me an indecent report! Fill it out with some very learned
speculations, you know the type . . ." Manning stopped, and grinned.
"Speaking of indecent reports, what have we turned up on their sex lives?"
"Marc
Stoworth covered that in his report yesterday,"
Mara said. "They're unisexual, and their sex life is singularly boring, if
you'll pardon the expression. At least, Stoworth says
so. If it weren't I'm sure he'd tell us all about it"
Manning
chuckled. "Yes, I imagine you're right; Marc is a good boy. Well look, Lee, I've told you the position I'm in. Now I'm counting on you to get me out of this
spot. I've got to transmit
my report to Council within a week. I don't want to pressure you, but you know I'm in a position to do it if I have to. Dammit, give me a report."
"I'll
turn something in in a few days," Rynason said Vaguely. His brain was definitely fuzzy now from the tarpaq.
Manning
stood up. "All right, don't forget it. Trick it out with some high-sounding guesses if you have to, like I said. Right now I've got to see a man about a woman." He paused, glancing at Mara. "You're busy?"
"I'm busy, yes."
Her face was studiedly expressionless.
He
shrugged briefly and went out, pushing and weaving his way through the hubbub that filled the bar. If was dark outside; Rynason caught a glimpse of the dark street as Manning went
through the door. Night fell quickly on Hirlaj, with
the suddenness of age.
Rynason turned back to the table, and Mara. He looked at her
curiously.
at
"What
were you doing with him, anyway? You usually keep to yourself."
The
girl smiled wryly. She had deep black hair which fell to her shoulders in soft waves. Most of the women here grew their hair down
to their waists, in exaggerated imitation of inner-world styles, but Mara had more taste
than that. Her eyes were a clear brown, and they met his directly. "He was
in a sharp mood, so I came along as peacemaker. You don't seem to have needed me."
"You
helped, at that;
thanks. Was that true about the governorship?"
"Of course. Manning seldom brags, you should know that He's a very capable man, in
some ways."
Rynason frowned. "He could be a lot more useful
on this survey if he'd use his talents on tightening up the survey itself. He's
forcing a premature report, and it isn't going to be worth much."
"Is that what's really
bothering you?" she asked.
He
tried to focus on her through the haze of the noisy bar. "Of course it is.
That, and his whole attitude toward these
people."
"The
Hirlaji? Are they people to you?"
He
shrugged. "What are people? Humans? Or reasoning
beings you can talk to, communicate with?"
"I
should think people would be reasoning beings you could relate to," she
said softly. "Not just intellectually, but emotionally
too. You have to be able to understand them to communicate that
way—that's what makes people."
Rynason was silent, trying to integrate that into
the fog in his head. The raucous noise of the bar had faded into an underwater
murmur around him, lost somewhere where he could not see.
Finally,
he said, "That's the trouble with them, the Hirlaji.
I can't really understand them. It's like there's really no contact, not even
through the interpreter." He stared into his drink. "I wish to hell
we had some straight, telepathers here; they might
work with the Hirlaji, since they're telepathic
anyway. I'd like to make a direct link myself."
After a moment he felt Mara's
hand on his arm, and
realized that he had
almost fallen asleep on the
table.
"You'd better
go on
back to your quarters," she said.
He sat up, shaking his head
to clear
it. "No,
but really—
what do you think
of that
idea? What if I had
a telepather, and I
could link minds with Horng?
Straight linkage, no
interpreter in the middle.
I could
get right
at that
race memory myself I"
"I think you need some sleep,"
she said.
She seemed
worried. "You're getting too
wrapped up in this thing.
And forget about the telepathers."
Rynason looked
at her
and grinned.
"Why?" he said
quietly. "There's no harm
in wishing."
"Because," she
said, "we've got three telepathers coming in the day after
tomorrow."
THREE
Rynason
continued to smile at her for several
seconds, until her words penetrated. Then he abruptly sat
up and
steadied himself with one
hand against the edge of
the table.
"Can you get one
for me?"
She gave a reluctant shrug. "If
you insist,
and if
Manning okays
it. But
is it
a good
idea? Direct contact with a
mind so alien?"
As a matter of fact, now
that he was faced with
the actual
possibility of it, he
wasn't so sure. But he
said, "Well only know once we've
tried it."
Mara dropped
her eyes
and swirled
her drink,
watching the tiny red spots form
inside the glass and rise
to the
surface. There was a brief
silence between them.
"Repent,
Lee Rynason!" The words
burst upon his ears over the
waves of sound that filled
the room.
He turned,
half-rising,
to find
Rene Malhorame hovering over him, his
wide grin showing a tooth missing
in the
bottom row.
Rynason settled
back into his chair. "Don't shout. I'm going to have a headache soon enough."
Malhomme' took the chair which Manning had vacated
and sat in it heavily. He set his hand-lettered placard against the edge of the
table and leaned forward, waving a thick finger.
"You
consort with men who would enslave the pure in heart!" he rumbled, but Rynason didn't miss the laughter in his eye.
"Manning?"
he nodded. "He'd enslave every pure heart on this planet, if he could find
one. As a matter of fact, I think
he's already working on Mara here."
Malhomme turned to her and sat back, appraising her
boldly. Mara met his gaze calmly, raising her eyebrows slightly as she waited
for his verdict.
Malhomme shook his head. "If she's pure, then
it's a sin," he said. "A thrice-damned sin, Lee.
Have I ever expostulated to you upon the Janus-coin that is good and
evil?"
^Often," Rynason
said.
Malhomme
shrugged and turned again to the girl. "Nevertheless," he said,
"I greet you with pleasure."
"Mara,
this is Rene Malhomme," Rynason
said wearily. "He imagines that we're friends, and I'm afraid he's
right."
Malhomme dipped his shaggy head. "The name is
from the Old French of Earth—badman. I have a long
and dishonorable family history, but the earliest of my ancestors whom I've
been able to trace had the same name. Apparendy there
were too many Smiths, Carpenters, Bakers and Priests on that world—the time was
ripe for a Malhomme. My first name would have been
pronounced Reh-nay before the language reform
dropped all accent marks from Earth tongues."
"Considering
your background," Mara smiled, "you're in good company out
here."
"Good
company!" Malhomme cried. "I'm not looking
for good company! My work, my mission calls me to where men's hearts are the
blackest, where repentance and redemption are needed—and so I come to the
Edge."
"You're
religious?" she asked.
"Who is religious in these days?" Malhomme asked,
shrugging. "Religion is of the past; it is dead. It is nearly forgotten,
and one hears Cod's name spoken now in anger. God damn you, cry the masses! That is our
modem religion!"
"Rene
wanders around shouting about sin," Rynason
explained, "so that he can take up collections to buy himself more to
drink."
Malhomme chuckled. "Ah, Lee, you're
shortsighted. I'm an unbeliever, and a black rogue, but at least I have a mission.
Our scientific advance has destroyed religion; we've penetrated to the heavens,
and found no God. But science has not disproved Him, either, and people forget
that. I speak with the voice of the forgotten; I remind people of God, to even
the scales." He stopped talking long enough to grab the arm of a passing
waiter and order a drink. Then he turned back to them. "Nothing says I
have to believe in religion. If that were necessary, no one would preach it."
"Have you been
preaching to the Hirlaji?" Rynason
asked.
"An admirable idea!" Malhomme said.
"Do they have souls?"
"They
have a god, at least. Or used to, anyway. Fellow named Kor, who was god,
essence, knowledge, and several other things all rolled into one."
"Return to Kor!" Malhomme said. "Perhaps it will be my
next mission."
"What's your mission now?" Mara
asked, smiling in spite of herself. "Besides your apparently lifelong
study and participation in sin, I mean."
Malhomme sighed and sat back as his drink arrived. He
dug into the pouch strung from his waist and flipped a coin to the waiter. "Believe
it or not, I have one," he said, and his voice was now low and serious.
"I'm not just a lounger, a drifter."
"What are you?"
"I
am a spy," he said, and raised his glass to drain half of it with one
swallow.
Mara
smiled again, but he didn't return it. He sat forward and turned to Rynason. "Manning has been busily wrapping up the
appointment for the governorship here," he said. "You probably know that."
Rynason nodded. The headache he had been expecting was already starting.
"Did
you also know that he's been buying men here to stand with him in case
someone else is appointed?" He glanced at Mara. "I go among the men
every day, talking, and I hear a lot. Manning will end up in control here, one way or another, unless he's stopped."
TBuying men is nothing new," Rynason
said. "In any case,
is there a better man on
the planet?"
Malhomme
shook his head. "I don't know; sometimes I give up on the human race.
Manning at least has a little Culture in him—but he's more vicious than he seems,
nevertheless. If he gets control here . . ."
"It
will be no worse than any of the other planets out here," Rynason concluded for him.
"Except for one thing, perhaps—the Hirlaji. I don't have much against men killing each
other . . . that's their own business. But unless we get somebody better than
Manning governing here, the Hirlaji will be wiped
out. The men here are already talking . . . they're afraid of them."
"Why? The Hirlaji are harmless."
"Because of their size, and because we don't know anything about
them.
Because they're intelligent—any uneducated man is afraid of intelligence, and
when it's an alien ..." He shook
his head. "Manning isn't helping the situation."
"What do you mean by
that?" Mara asked.
Malhomme's
frown deepened, creasing the dark lines of his forehead into furrows.
"He's using the Hirlaji as bogeymen. Says he's
the only man on the planet who knows how to deal with them safely. Oh, you
should hear him when he moves among his people . . I
envy his ability to control them with words. A little backslapping, a joke or
two—most of them I was telling last year—and he talks to
them man to man, very friendly." He shook his head again. "Manning is
so'friendly with this scum that his attitude is nothing
short of patronizing."
Rynason smiled wearily at Malhomme;
for all the man's wildness, he couldn't help liking him. It had been like this
every time he had run into him, on a dozen of the Edge-worlds. Malhomme, dirty and cynical, moved among the dregs of the
stars preaching religion and fighting the corporations, the opportunists, the
phony rebels who wanted nothing for anyone but themselves. He had been known to
break heads together with his huge fists, and he had no qualms about stealing
or even killing when his anger was aroused. Yet there was a peculiar honesty
about him.
"You always have to
have a cause, don't you, Rene?"
The greying giant shrugged. "It makes life interesting,
and it makes më feel good sometimes. But I don't
overestimate myself: I'm scum, like the rest of them. The only difference is that I know it; I'm j'ust one man, with no
more rights than anyone else, except those I can take." He held up his
large knuckled hands and turned them in front of his face. "I've got
broken bones in both of them. I wonder if the Buddha or the Christ ever hit a
man. The books on religion that are left in the repositories don't say."
"Would
it make any difference if they hadn't?" Rynason
asked.
"Hell,
nol I'm just curious." Malhomme
stood up, hefting his repentence sign in the crook
of one big arm. His face again took on its arched look as he said, "My
duty calls me elsewhere. But I leave you with a message from the scriptures,
and it has been my guiding light 'Resist not evil,' my children. Resist not evil."
"Who said that?" Rynason asked.
Malhomme
shook his head. "Damned if I know," he muttered, and went away.
After
a moment Rynason turned back to the girl; she was
still watching Malhomme thread his way through thé men on his way to the door.
"So now you've met my
spiritual father," he said.
Her
deep brown eyes flickered back to his. "I wish I could use a telepather on him. I'd like to know how he really
thinks."
"He thinks exactly as he speaks," Rynason said. "At least, at the moment he says something,
he believes in it."
She
smiled. "I suppose that's the only possible explanation for him." She
was silent for a moment, her face thoughtful Then she said, "He didn't
finish his drink"
"You're all hooked up," the girl
said. "Nod or something when you're ready."
She was bent over the telepather, double checking the
connectives and the blinking meters. Rynason and Horng
sat opposite each other, the huge dark mound of the alien looming silently over
the Earthman.
He
never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at
him. Except for that one time when they'd run into the stone wall of the block
on Tebron, Horng had displayed a completely even
temperament—unruffled, calm, almost disinterested. But of course if the aliens
had been completely uninterested in the Earthmen's probings
at their history they would never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals to be ordered about by the
Earthmen. Probably the codification of their history would prove useful to the
aliens too; they had never arranged the race memory into a very coherent order themselves.
Not
that that was surprising, Rynason decided. The Hirlaji had no written language—their telepathic abilities
had made that unnecessary—and organization of material into neatly outlined
form was a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality. Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now in the twilight
of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimly through these centuries,
dreaming in their own way of the past. . . and their
way was not the Earthmen's.
So if they cooperated with the survey team on
codifying and recording their history, who was the servant?
Well,
with the direct linkage of minds the work should go faster. Rynason
looked up at Mara and nodded, and she flicked the connection on the telepather.
Suddenly, like being overwhelmed by a
breaking wave of seawater, Rynason felt Horng's mind envelope him. A torrent of thoughts, memories,
pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensory sensations of
the alien came to him sharply, and memories that were strange, ideas that were
incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon his mind. He fought down the fear
that had leapt in him, gritted his teeth and waited for the wave to subside.
It
did not subside; it settled. As the two minds, Earthman and Hirlaji,
met in direct linkage they became almost one. Gradually Rynason
could begin to see some pattern to the
impressions of the alien. The picture of himself came
first: he was small and angular, sitting several feet below Horng's
—or his own—eyes; but more than that, he was not merely light, but pallid, not
merely small, but fragile. The alien's view of reality, even through his direct
sensations, was not merely visual or tactile but interpreted automatically in
his own terms.
The
odor of the hall in which they sat was different, the very temperature warmer. Rynason could see himself reeling on the stone bench where
he sat, and Mara, strangely distorted, put out a hand to steady him. At the
same time he was seeing through his own eyes, feeling her hand on his shoulder.
But the alien sensations were stronger; their very strangeness commanded the
attention of his mind.
He
righted himself, physically and mentally, and began to probe tentatively in this new part of his
mind. He could feel Horng too reaching slowly for contact; his presence was
comfortable, mild, confused but unwomed. As his
thoughts blended with Horng's the present faded
perceptibly; this confusion was merely a moment in centuries, and soon too it would pass. Rynason
could feel himself relaxing.
Now
he could reach out and touch the strange areas of this mind: the concepts and attitudes of an
alien race and culture and experience. Everything became dim and dreamlike: the
Earthmen possibly didn't exist, the dry wastes of Hirlaj
had always been here or perhaps once they had been green but through four
generations the Large Hall had stood thus and the animals changed by the day
too fast to distmgnlsh them even under Kor if he should
be reached ... . why? there was no reason. There was no purpose, no
goal, no necessity, no wishing, questing, hoping . . no curiosity. AD would pass. All was passing even now; perhaps already it was gone.
Rynason shifted where he sat, reaching for the
feeling of the stone bench beneath him for equihbrium,
pulling out of Horng's thoughts and going back in
almost immediately.
A chaos of mind
enveloped him, but he was beginning to familiarize himself with it now. He probed slowly for the memories, down through Horng's
own personal memories of three centuries,
dry feet on the dust and low winds, down to the racial pool. And he found it
Even
knowing the outlines of the
race's history did not help Rynason to place and
correlate those impressions which came to
him one on top of another, overlapping, merging, blending. He saw buildings
which towered over him, masses of his people
moving quietly around him, and thoughts came to him from their minds. He was Norhib, artisan,
working slowly
day by ... he was Rashanah,
approaching the Gate of
the Wall and looking . . he was Lohreen discussing the site where ... he was digging the
ground, pushing the heavy cart, lying
on the pelt of animals, demolishing the building which would soon fall, instructing a child in balance.
A dirt-caked street stretched before him by
night, the stones individually cut and smooth with the passage of heavy feet. "Tomorrow we will set out for the Region of Chalk while there is still time." A mind-voice from a Hir-laji hundreds, perhaps
thousands of years old, dead but alive in the race-memory. Rynason could feel the whole personality there, in the memories, but he passed on.
"Murba has
said that the priests will take him."
"There
is no need for planting this year . . . the soil is dry. There is no purpose."
"The child's mind is ready for war."
He felt Horng himself watching him, beside him or behind him . . . nearby, anyway. The alien heard and saw with him, and stayed
with him like a protector.
Rynason felt his
presence warmly: the calm of the alien continued to relax him. Old leather
mother-hen, he thought, and Horng beside him seemed almost amused. Suddenly he
was Tebron.
Tebron Marl, prince in the Region of Mines, young
and strong and ambitious. Rynason caught and held
those impressions; he felt the muscles ripple strangely through his body as Tebron stretched, felt the cold wind of the flat cut
through his loose garment. It was night, and he stood on the parapet of a heavy
stone structure looking down across the immense stretch of the Flat, spotted
here and there by lights. He controlled all this land, and would control more .
. .
He
was Tebron again, marching across the Flat at the
head of an army. Metal weapons hung at the sides of his men, crudely fashioned
bludgeons and jagged-edged swords, all quickly forged in the workshops of the
Region of Mines. The babble of mind voices swelled around him, fear and anger
and boredom, dull resentment, and other emotions Rynason
could not identify. They were marching on the City of the Temple . . .
He
slipped sideways in Tehran's mind, and suddenly he was in the middle of the
battle. There was dust all around, kicked up by the scuffling feet of the huge
warriors, and his breath came in gasps. Mind-voices shouted and screamed but he
paid no attention; he swung his bludgeon over his head with a ferocity that
made it whistle with a low sound in the wind. One of the defenders broke
through the line around him, and he brought the bludgeon smashing down at him
before he could thrust with his sword; the warrior fell to one side at the last
moment and took the blow along one arm. He could feel the pain in his own mind,
but he ignored it. Before the warrior could bring up his sword again Tebron crushed his head with the bludgeon, and the scream
of pain in his own head disappeared. He heard the grunting and gasps of his own
warriors and the clash of bodies and weapons around him .
..
The Hirlaji could not really be moving so quickly, Rynason thought; it must be that to Tebron
it seemed so. They were quiet, slow-moving creatures.
Or had they
degenerated physically
through the
centuries? Still smelling the sweat
of battle, he found Tehran's
mind again.
There
was still
fighting in the city, but
it was
far away
now;
he heard
it with
the back
of his
mind as he mounted the
steps
of the Temple.
Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of
the last
of the
priest-king forces; he was not needed there. He had, to all intents,
controlled the city since the night
before, and had slept in
the palace
itself. Now it
was time for
the Temple.
He mounted the heavy, steep steps slowly,
three guards at
his back and
three in front of him.
The priests
would be gone
from the
Temple, but there might be
one or
two last-ditch
defenders remaining, and they would
be armed
with the Weapons of Kor . . .
hand-weapons which shot dark beams that could disintegrate anything in their path.
They would be dangerous. Well, there
would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own
men could
remain outside to take care of them while he went in.
He stopped halfway
up the
steps and lifted his head
to gaze up at the Temple walls rising
above him. They were solid stone, built in the
fashion of the Old Ones
. .
. smoothfaced except for the carvings
above the entrance itself. They
too
were in the
traditional style, copied exactly from
the older
buildings which had been
built thousands of years ago,
before the Hirlaji
had even
developed telepathy. The symbols of Kor ... so now at last he
saw them.
Tomorrow he would effect
a mass-linkage
of minds
and broadcast his orders for reconstruction.
That would mean staying up all
night preparing the communication, for it was impossible to maintain complete planet-wide
linkage for too long and Tebron had
many plans. Perhaps it would
be possible to find a way to extend the
duration of mass-linkages if thejcience quest
could be pushed forward fast
enough.
But that was tomorrow's problem—today, right now, it was right that he enter
the Temple.
It was
not only
symbolic of his assumption of
power, but necessary religiously: every new ruler leader within the memory of the race had received sanction from
Kor first.
A
momentary echo-whisper of another mind touched his, and he whirled to his right
to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had been unable to
successfully shield his thoughts. Tebron dropped to
the ground and sent a quick, cool order to his own guards: "Kill
him." The heavy, dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to
shrink back further into the shadows. He was trapped.
But not unarmed. As he dropped to the steps
and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low
vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the
wall behind him as it struck. And then the guards were on the warrior in the
shadows.
They
had brought down several of the temple-guards the night before, and
commandeered their weapons. In a matter of moments this one fell too, his head
and most of his trunk gone. One of the warriors shoved the half-carcass down
the stairs, and bent forward at the knees to pick up his fallen weapon.
So now they had all fourteen of them; if any
more of the temple-guards remained they could be dealt with easily. Tebron rose from the steps and wished momentarily that
those weapons could be duplicated; if his whole army could be equipped with
them . . . But after today that would probably be unnecessary; the entire
planet was his now.
He
walked up the last few steps and stepped into the shadows of the Temple of Kor
. . .
The walls melted around him and Rynason felt his mind wrenched painfully. There was a
screaming all through him, thin and high, blotting out the contact he had held
with Tebron's mind. It was Horng's
scream, beside him, overpowering. Terror washed over him; he tried to fight it
but he couldn't. The shadows of the walls twisted and faded, Tebron's thoughts disappeared, and all that remained was
the screaming and the fear, like a mouth open wide against his ear and hot
breath shouting into him. He felt his stomach turn and
nausea and vertigo threw him
panting out of Teb-ron's mind.
Yet Horng was still beside him
in the
darkness, and as the echoes faded he felt him
there . . . alien,
but calm.
There had been fear in this
huge alien mind, but it
had disappeared
almost immediately with the breaking
of the
connection with Tebron. All that remained in
Horng*s mind now was a
dull quietness.
Rynason felt
a rueful
grin on his face, and
he said,
perhaps aloud and perhaps not, "You
haven't forgotten what hap-penedt here, old
leather. The memories are there,
all right."
From Horng's
mind came a slow rebuilding
of the
fear that he had just experienced,
but it
subsided. And as it did
Rynason probed again
into his mind, searching quickly
for that
contact he had just
lost. He could almost feel
Tehran's mind, began to see the
darkness forming the wall-shadows, when again there was a
blast of the terror and
he felt
his mind
reeling back from those memories.
The screaming
filled his mind and body and
this time he felt Horng
himself blocking him, pushing him back.
But there was no need for
that; the fear was not
Horng*s alone. Rynason felt it too, and he
retreated before its onslaught with an overpowering need to preserve his
own sanity.
When the darkness subsided Rynason became aware
of himself still sitting on the
stone bench, sweat drenching his
body. Horng sat before
him in
the same
position he had been in when
they had started; it was
as if
nothing had happened at alL Rynason wearily raised
one hand
and motioned
to Mara to break the linkage.
She switched off the
telepather and gingerly
removed the wires from his head,
frowning worriedly at him. But
she waited for him to speak.
He grinned at her
after a moment and said,
"It was a bit rough in
there. We couldn't break through."'
She was removing the wires from
Horng, who sat un-moving, staring dully over Rynason's shoulder at the wall
behind him. "You should
have seen yourself when you
were under," she said. T wanted to break the connection before, but I wasn't sure . . ."
Rynason sat forward and flexed the muscles of his
shoulders and back. They ached as though they had
been tense
for an hour, and his
stomach was still knotted tight.
"There's
a real block there," he said. "It's like a thousand screaming birds
flapping in your face. When you get that far into his mind, you feel it
too." He sat staring down at his feet, exhausted mentally and physically.
She
sat on the bench and looked closely at him. "Anything
else?"
"Yes—Horng. At the end, the second time I went
in, I
could feel him, not only
fighting me, but . . . hating me." He looked up at her. "Can you
imagine actually feeling him, right next to you in your mind like you were one
person, hating you?"
Across
from them, the huge figure of the alien slowly stood up and looked at them for
several long seconds, then turned and left the building.
FOUR
Manning's
quarters were
larger than most of the prefab structures in the new Earth town; the building
was out near the end of one of the streets, a single-storied plastic-and-metal
box on a quick-concrete slab base. Well, it was as well constructed as any of the buildings in the Edge planet-falls, Rynason reflected as he knocked on the door. And there was
room for all of the survey team workers.
Manning
himself let him in, grabbing his hand in a firm grip that nevertheless lacked the man's usual heavy joviality.
"Come on in; the others are already here," Manning said, and walked
ahead of him into the larger of the two rooms inside. His step was brisk as
always, but there was
a touch of real hurry in it
which Rynason noticed immediately. Manning was worried about something.
"AD right; we're all
set," Manning said, leaning against a wall at the front of the room. Rynason found a seat on the arm of a chair next to Mara and
Marc Stoworth, a slightly heavy, blond-haired man in
his thirties who wore his hair cut short on the sides but long in back. He
looked like every one of the young corporation executives Rynason
had seen in the outworlds, and probably would have
gone into that kind of position if he'd had the connections. He certainly
seemed out of place even among the varied assortment of types who worked the
archaeological and geological surveys . . . but these surveys were conducted by
the big corporations who were interested in developing the outworlds;
probably Stoworth hoped eventually to move up into
the lower management offices when the corporations moved in.
"Gentlemen,
there's something very wrong about these dumb horses we've been dealing
with," Manning said. "I'm going to throw out a few facts at. you and see if you don't come to the same conclusions that Larsborg and I did."
Rynason leaned over to Mara and murmured,
"What's his problem today?"
But she was frowning.
"He's got a real one. Listen."
Manning
had picked up a sheaf of typescript from the table next to him and was nipping
through it, his lips pursed grimly. "This is the report I got yesterday
from Larsborg here—architecture and various other
artifacts. It's very interesting. Herb, throw that first photo onto the screen."
The
lights went off and the screen in the wall beside Manning
lit up with a reproduction of one of the Hirlaji
structures out on the Flat. It stood in the shadow of an overhanging
rock-cliff, protected from the planet's heavy winds on three sides. Larsborg had apparently set up lights for a clearer picture; the whole building stood out sharply against the
shadows of the background.
"This look
familiar to any of you?" Manning said quietly.
For
a moment Rynason continued to stare uncomprehending
at the picture. He had seen a lot of the Hirlaji
buildings since they'd landed; this one was better preserved but not
essentially different in design. Larsborg had cleared
away most of the dirt and sand which had been packed up against its sides, exposing
the full height of the structure, and he'd apparently sand-blasted the carved
designs over the entrance, but. . .
Then
he realized what he was seeing. The angle of the photo was a bit different than
that from which he'd seen the other structure back on Tentar
XI, but the similarity was unmistakable. This was a reproduction in stone of
that same building, the one they'd reconstructed two years before.
He
heard a wave of voices growing around the room, and Manning's voice cut
-through it with: "That's right, gentlemen: it's an Outsiders building.
It's not in that crazy damned metal or alloy or whatever it was that they used,
but it's the same design. Take a good long look at it before We go on to the next photo."
Rynason
looked . . . closely. Yes, it was the same design a bit cruder, and the
carvings weren't the same, but the lines of the doorway and the cornice . . .
The
next picture flashed onto the screen. It was a closeup
of the designs over the entrance, shot in sharp relief so that they stood out
starkly. The room was so quiet that Rynason could
hear the hum behind the screen in the wall.
"That's
Outsiders stuff too," said Breune. "It's
not quite the same, though . . . distorted."
Tt's carved in stone, not stamped in metal,"
Manning said. "It's the same thing, all right. Anybody disagree?"
No one did.
"All right, then;
let's have the lights back up again."
The lights came on and once more there was a
murmur of talking around the room. Rynason shifted
his position on the seat and tried to catch the thought that had slipped
through his mind just before the screen had faded. There was another similarity . Well, he'd seen a lot of the Outsider buildings
in the past few years; it wasn't necessary to trace all the evidences right
now.
"What
I want to know is, why didn't any of the rest of you see this?" said Manning angrily. "Have you all got plastic for
brains? Over a dozen men spend weeks researching these damn horsefaces,
and only one of you has the sense to see the evidence of his own eyesl"
"Maybe
we should turn in our spades," said Stoworth. .
Manning glared at him. "Maybe you should, if you think this isn't serious.
Let's get this clear: these old horsefaces that so
many of you think are just as quaint as can be have
been building in exactly the same style as the Outsiders. Quaint, are they?
Harmless too, I supposel"
He
stood with his hands on his hips, dropped his head and took a long, deep breath. When he looked up again his forehead was
furrowed into an intense frown. "Gentlemen . .. as I call you from force of habit . . . we've been finding dead cities of the
Outsiders for centuries. They were all over God knows how many galaxies before
your ancestors or mine had Stopped playing
with their tails; as far as we can tell they had a civilization as tightly-knit as our own, and probably
stronger. And sometime about forty thousand years ago they Started pulling out. They left absolutely nothing behind but empty buildings and
a few crumbling bits of machinery. And we've been
following those remains ever since we got out of our own star-system.
"WelL we just
may have found them at last. Right here, on Hirlaj. Now what do you think of that?"
No
one said anything for a minute. Rynason looked down at Mara, caught her smile, and
stood up.
"I
don't think the Hirlaji are the Outsiders," he said calmly.
Manning
shot a sharp glance at him. "You saw the photos."
"Yes,
I saw them. That's Outsiders work, all right, or something a lot like it. But
it doesn't necessarily prove that these . . . how many of them are there? Twenty-five? I don't think these creatures are the
Outsiders. We've traced their history back practically to the point of complete
barbarism. Their culture was never once high enough to get them ofi this planet, let
alone to let them spread all over among the stars."
Manning
waited for him to finish, then he turned back to the rest of the men in the room
and spread his hands. "Now that, gentlemen, Just
shows how much we've found out so far." He looked over at Rynason again.
"Has it occurred to you, Lee, that if these horses are the
Outsiders, that maybe they know a little more than we do? I suppose you're
going to say you had a telepathic hookup with one of them and you didn't see a
thing to make you suspicious . . but
just remember that they've been using telepathy for several thousand years and
that you hardly know what you're doing when you try it.
"Look, I don't trust them—if they're the
Outsiders they've got maybe a hundred thousand years head-start on us scientifically.
There may be only a couple dozen of them, but we don't know how strong they
are."
"That's if they're really the
Outsiders," said Rynason.
Manning
nodded his head impatiently. "Yes,
that's what I'm saying. If they're the Outsiders, which looks
like a sensible conclusion. Or do you have a better one?"
"Well,
I don't know if it's better," said Rynason.
"It may not even be as attractive, for that matter. But have you considered
that maybe when the Outsiders pulled out of-our area they simply moved on
elsewhere? We're so used to seeing dead cities that we think automatically that
the Outsiders must be dead too, which I suppose is what's bothering you about
finding the Hirlaji here alive. But it might be
worse. That whole empire could simply have moved on to this area; we could be
on the edge of it right now, ready to run head-on into a hundred star'systems just crowded with the Outsiders."
Manning
stared at him, and the expression on his face was not quite anger. Something like it, but not anger.
"The
ruins we've found here were built by the Hirlaji,"
Rynason said. "I saw them building when I was
linked with Horng, and these are the same structures. But the design was copied
from older buildings, and I don't know how far back I'd have to search the
memories before I found where they originally got that kind of approach to
design. Maybe back before they developed telepathy. But this race simply isn't as old
as the Outsiders; they came out of barbarism thousands of years after the Outsiders had left
those dead cities we've been finding. The chances are that if the Hirlaji
were influenced by the Outsiders it was sometime
around thirty
thousand years ago . . which means the Outsiders
came this
way when they left those
cities. That would mean that we're following them . . . and we might catch up at any tune."
He
stopped for a moment, then said, "We're moving
faster than they were, and we have no idea where they may have settled again.
One more starfall further beyond the Edge, and we may run into one of their present
outposts. But this isn't ft. Not yet."
Manning was still staring at Rynason, but it was a curious
Stare. "You're pretty sure that what you've been getting out of that horseface's head is real?" he asked levelly. "You trust them?"
Rynason nodded. "Horng was really afraid; that
was real. I felt it myself. And the rest of it was real, too—I could see the whole racial memory there, and nobody could have been making that up. If you'd experienced that. .
."
"Well,
I didn't," Manning said shortly. "And I don't think I trust them." He paused, and after a moment frowned. "But this direct linkage business does seem to be
the best way we have of checking on them. I want you to get busy, Lee, and go after that horses thoughts for us. Don't let him drive you out again;
if he's hiding something, get in there and see what it is. Above all, don't trust
him.
"If
these things are the Outsiders, they could be bluffing us."
Manning stopped talking, and thought a minute. He looked iip under raised eyebrows at Rynason. "And be
careful, Lee. I'm counting
on you."
Rynason ignored
his paternal gaze, and turned instead to Mara. "We'll try it again tomorrow," he said. "Get in a requisition for a telepather
this afternoon; make sure well have one
ready to go first thing in the morning. Ill check back with you about an hour after we leave here
today."
She looked
up at
him, surprised. "Check back? Why?"
"I put in a requisition myself, yesterday. Wine from Cluster II, vintage '86.1 was hoping for some
company." She smiled. "All right."
Manning
was ending the session. ". . . Carl, be sure to get those studies of the
Outsiders artifacts together for me by
tonight. And I'm going to hand back your reports to each of the rest of you; go
through them and watch for those inconsistencies you skipped over the first
time. We may be able to turn up something else that doesn't check out. Go over
them carefully—all the reports were sloppy jobs. You're all trying to work too fast."
Rynason rose with the rest of them, grinning as he
remembered how Marming had rushed those reports.
Well, that was one of the privileges of authority: delegating fault. He started
for the door.
"Lee! Hold it a minute; I want to talk
to you, alone."
Rynason sat, and when all the others had gone
Manning came back and sat down opposite him. He slowly took out a cigaret and lit it.
"My
last pack till the next spacer makes touchdown," he said. "Sorry I
can't offer you one, but I'm a fiend for the things. I know they're supposed to
be non-habit-forming these days, but I'm a man of many vices."
Rynason shrugged, waiting for him to come to the
point.
"I
guess it makes me a bit more open-minded about what the members of my staff
do," Manning went on. "You know —why should I crack down on drinking
or smoking, for instance, when I do it myself?"
"I'm glad you see it that way," Rynason said drily. "Why did you want me to
stay?"
Manning exhaled a long plume of smoke slowly,
watching it through narrowed eyes. "Well, even though I'm pretty easy
going about things, I do try to keep an eye on you. When you come right down to
it, I'm responsible for every man who's with me out here." He stopped, and
laughed shortly. "Not that I'm as altruistic as that sounds, of course—
you know me, Lee. Rut when you're in a position of authority you have to face the
responsibilities. You understand me?"
"You
have to protect your own reputation back at Cluster headquarters," Rynason said.
"Well,
yes. Of course, you get into a pattern of thinking eventually . . . sort of a
fatherly feeling, I suppose, thought I've never even been on the parentage
rolls back on the in-worlds. But I mean it—it happens, I get that feeling. And
I'm getting a bit worried about you, Lee."
Rynason
could see what was coming now. He sat further back into the chair and said,
"Why?"
Manning
frowned with concern. "I've been noticing you witH Mara lately. You seem pretty interested in her."
"Is
she one of those vices you were telling me about, Manning?" said Rynason quiedy. "You want to
warn me to stay away from her?"
Manning
shook his head, a quick gesture dismissing the idea. "No,
Lee, not at all. She's not that kind of a woman. And that's my point. I
can see how you look at her, and you're on the wrong track. When you're out
here on the Edge, you don't want a wife."
"What
I need is some good healthy vice, is that what you mean?"
Manning sat forward. "That puts it
pretty clearly. Yeah, that's about it. Lee, you're building up some strong
tensions on this job, and don't think I'm not aware of it. Telepathing
with that horseface is getting rough, judging from
what you've told me. I think you should go get good and drunk and kick up hell
tonight. And take one of the town women; they're always available. Do you good,
I mean it."
Rynason stood up. "Maybe tomorrow night,"
he said. "Tonight I'm busy. With Mara." He
turned and walked toward the door.
"I'd suggest you get busy with someone
else," Manning said quietly behind him. "I'm really telling you this
for your own good, believe it or not."
Rynason turned at the door and regarded the man coldly.
"She's not interested in you, Manning," he said. He went out and shut
the door calmly behind him.
Manning could be irritating with his
conceited posing, but bis veiled
threats didn't bother Rynason. In
any case,
he had
something else on his
mind just now. He had
finally remembered what it had
been about the carvings over
the Hirlaji building in the photo
that had touched a memory
within him: there was a strong
similarity to the carvings that
he had
seen, through Tebron's eyes, outside
the Temple
of Kor.
The symbols of Xor, Tebron had called them ...
copied from the works of the
Old Ones.
The Outsiders?
FIVE
They
had somi trouble getting cooperation
from Horng on any further mind-probing.
The Hirlaji lived among some of
the ruins out on
the Flat,
where the winds threw dust and
sand against the weathered
stone walls, leaving them worn
smooth and rounded. The
aliens kept these buildings in
some state of repair, and there
was a
communal garden of the planet's dark, fungoid
plant life. As Rynason and Mara
strode between the massive
buildings they passed several of
the huge
creatures; one or two
of them
turned and regarded the couple
with dull eyes, and
went on slowly through the
grey shadows.
They found Horng sitting motionlessly at the edge of
the cluster of buildings, gazing out
over the Flat toward the
low hills which stood black against
the deep
blue of the horizon sky. Rynason lowered the telepather from his
shoulder and approached him.
The alien made no motion of
protest when Rynason
hooked up the interpreter, but when
the Earthman
raised the mike to speak, Horng's dry voice spoke in
the silence
of the
thin air and the machine's stylus
traced out, THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
Rynason paused
a moment,
then said, "We're almost finished
with our reports. We should
finish today." THERE IS NO PURPOSE
MEANING QUEST.
"No purpose to the report?" Rynason said after a moment "It's important to us,
and we're almost finished. There would be even less purpose in stopping now,
when so much has been done."
Horng's
large, leathery head turned toward him and Rynason
felt the ancient creature's heavy gaze on him like a shadow.
WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO THAT.
"We don't think alike," Rynason said
to him. "To me there
Is a purpose. Will you help me once more?" .
There was no answer from the alien, only a
slow nodding of his head to one side, which Rynason
took for assent. He motioned Mara to set up the telepather.
After
their last experience Rynason could understand the
creature's reluctance to continue. Perhaps even his statement that there was no
purpose to the Earthmen's researches made sense—for could the codification of
the history of a dying race mean much to its last members? Probably they didn't
care; they walked slowly through the ruins of their world and felt all around
them fading, and the jumbled past in their minds must be only one more thing
that was to disappear.
And Rynason had not forgotten the terrified waves of hatred
which had blasted at him in Horng's mind—nor had
Horng, he was sure.
Mara
connected the leads of the telepather while the alien
sat mon'onlessly, his dark eyes only occasionally
watching either of them. When she was finished Rynason
nodded for her to activate the linkage.
Then
there was the rush of Horng's mind upon his, the dim
thought-streams growing closer, the greyed images becoming
sharper and washing over him, and in a moment he felt his own thoughts merge
with them, felt the totality of his own consciousness blend with that of Horng.
They were together; they were almost one mind.
And in Horng he heard the whisper of distrust
of fear, and the echoes of that hatred which had struck at him once before. But
they were in the background; all around him here on
the surface was a pervading feeling of . . .
useless-ness, resignation, almost of unreality. The calm
which he had noted before in Horng had been shaken and
turned, and in its place was this fog of hopelessness.
Tentatively,
Rynason reached for the racial memories in that grey mind, feeling Horng's
own consciousness heavy beside him. He found them, layers of thoughts of unknown aliens still
alive here, the pictures and sounds of thousands of years past. He probed among
them, looking again for the memories of Tebron . . and found what he was searching for.
He
was Tebron, marching across that vast Flat which he had seen before, the winds alive around him among the shuffling feet of his army. He felt the
muscles of his massive legs tight with weariness, and tasted the dryness of the
air as he drew in long gasps. He was still hours
from the City, but they would rest before dawn . . .
Rynason turned among those memories, moving forward
in them, and was aware of Horng watching him. There was still the wariness in his mind, and a stir of
anxiety, but it was blanketed by the tired hopelessness he had
seen. He reached further in the memories, and . . .
The
temple-guard fell in the shadows, and one of his own warriors stepped forward to retrieve his
weapon. The remains of the guard's body rolled down three, four, five of the
steps of the Temple, and
stopped. His eyes lingered on that body for only a moment, and then he turned and
went up to
the entrance.
There
was a moaning of pain, or of fright, rising somewhere in his head; he was only
partly aware of it. He walked into the shadows of the doorway and paused. But only for a moment: there was no movement inside, and he stepped forward, down one step into the interior.
Screams
echoed through the halls and corridors of the Temple—high and piercing, growing in volume
as they echoed, buffeting him almost into unconsciousness. He knew they were from Horng, but he fought them, watching
his own steps across the dark
inner room. He
was Tebron Marl, king priest ruler of all Hirlaj,
in the Temple of Kor, and he could feel the stone solid beneath his feet. Sweat
broke out on his back—his own, or Tebron's? But he was Tebron, and he fought the blast of fear in his mind
as though it were a battle for his very identity. He was Tebron.
The
screaming faded, and he stood in silence before the Altar of Kor.
So
this is the source, he thought. For how many days had he fought toward this? It
was useless to remember; the muscles of his body were remembrance enough, and
the scar-tissue that hindered the movement of one shoulder. If he remembered
those battles he would again hear the fading echoes of enemy minds dying within
his, and he had had enough of that. This was the goal, and it was his; perhaps
there need be no more such killing.
He
opened his mouth and spoke the words which he had learned so many years before,
during his apprenticeship in the Region of Mines. The rituals of the Temple
were always conducted in the ancient spoken language; Kor demanded it, and only
the priest-caste knew these words, for they were so old that their form had
changed almost completely even by the time his people had developed telepathy
and discarded speech; they were not communicated to the rest of the people.
"I am Tebron
Marl, long priest leader of all Hirlaj. I await your
orders guidance."
He
knelt, according to ritual, and gazed up at the altar. The Eye of Kor blinked
there, a small circle of light in the dark room. The altar was simple but
massive; its heavy columns, built upon the traditional lines, supported the
weight of the Eye. He watched its slow waxing and waning, and waited; within
him, Rynason's mind stirred.
And Kor spoke.
Remain motionless. Do not go forward.
He
felt a child as a wave of sensitivity spread through all of his skin and his
organs sped for a moment. Then it was true: in the Temple of Kor, the god
leader really did speak.
"I await
further words."
The Eye
held his gaze almost hypnotically
in the
dimness. The voice sounded in the
huge arched room. The sciences
quests of your race
lead you to extinction. The knowledge words offered to
me by
your priests make it clear
that within a hundred years your
race will leave Us planet. You
must not go forward, for that
way lies the extermination of all
your race.
His mind swam; this was not
what he had expected. The god leader Kor had
always aided his people in
their sciences; in the knowledge
word offerings they reported to the Eye the results of their studies,
and often,
if asked
properly, the god leader would clarify
uncertainties which they faced. But now he ordered an
ending to research quests. This
was unthinkable! Knowledge
was godhood;
godhood was knowledge, of the
essence; the essence was knowing understanding. To him, to
his people,
it was
a unity—and
now that unity repudiated itself. Faintly
in the
darkness somewhere he again heard screaming.
"Are we to abandon all progress?
Are the
stars so dangerous?"
The concept wish
of progress
must die within your people.
There must be no
purpose in any field of
knowledge. You must remain motionless, consolidate what you have,
and Uoe
in peace. The Eye
in the
dimness seemed larger and brighter
the longer he looked
at it;
all else
in the
echoing room was darkness. The stars
are not
dangerous, but there is a
race which rises with you, and
it rises
more rapidly. Should you expand into the stars you
will only meet that race
sooner, and they will be stronger.
They are more warlike than
your people; already you are
capable of peace, and that
must be your aim. Remain on
your world; consolidate; cultivate the
fruits of your civilization as it
is, but
do not
go forward.
In that
way, you will have floe thousand
years before that race finds
you, and if you are no
threat to them they will
not destroy
you.
He felt
a rising anger
in him
as the
god leader's
words came to him in the
dark room, and a fear that lay deeper. He was a warrior, and a quester . . .
how could
he give
up all such pursuits,
and how
could he be expected to farce all his people to do
the same?
There would be no hope
wish of advance, no curiosity ...
no purpose.
"Is this other race so much
more advanced than we are?"
he asked.
He heard a low humming from
the altar
and the
Eye grew brighter again. They are not so much ahead of you now ... but
they are more warlike, and will therefore develop more quickly. In both your
races, war is a quest which you use as a release for what is in you. Your
sciences questings and your wars are the same thing .
. . you must suppress both. They are discontentment, and you will find that
only in peace, if at all.
He dipped his head
to one
side, a gesture of acquiescence
or agreement. He couldn't
argue with the god leader
Kor, and he had been wrong
even to think of it.
"How am
I to
suppress the race? Is it
possible to convince each of them
of the
necessity for abandoning forgetting all questing?"
The Eye hummed, and grew brighter
against the darkness of the carved
wall behind it, but it
was some
time before Kor spoke again. It would be impossible to convince every one. The reasons must be kept from them, and kept
from the shared memories; you must not communicate my knowledge words in any
way. Consolidate your power, force peace upon them and lead them into
acceptance. The knowledge questing can be made to die within them. 'Remember
that there will be no purpose . . . in that they must find contentment.
The long
priest leader of all Hirlaj waited a moment, and
was ready to rise
and leave
when the Eye spoke again.
You must abolish the priesthood. The
knowledge which I have given to you must die when you die.
He waited
for a
long time in the dim,
suddenly cold hall for the god
leader to speak again, then
slowly rose and walked to the
door, the image of the
Eye of
Kor still
bright in his vision. He stopped
outside the doorway, hearing the
soft wind of the
city flowing slowly past the
stone archway above
him. One
of his
guards reached out and touched
his mind tentatively, but he blocked his
thoughts and strode heavily down the steps past them.
The
sound of the wind above him rose to a screaming, and suddenly it was as though
he were tumbling down the entire length of the stairway, fragments of sky and
stone and faces flashing past in a kaleidoscope, and the screaming all around
him. He almost reached for his bludgeon, but then he realized that he was not Tebron Marl ...
he was Lee Rynason, and the screaming was Horng and
he was being driven out of those thoughts, tumbling through a thousand memories
so fast he could not grasp any one of them.
He
withdrew from Horng's mind as though from a nightmare; he became aware of his own body, lying in the dust of Hirlaj, and he opened his eyes and motioned weakly to Mara
to break the connection.
When she had done so he slowly sat up and shook his head, waiting for it
to clear. For
awhile he had been an ancient king of Hirlaj, and it
took some time to return to the present, to his own consciousness. He was dimly
aware of Mara kneeling beside him, but he couldn't make out her words at first.
"Are
you all right? Are you sure? Look up at me, Lee, please."
He
found himself nodding to reassure her, and then he saw the expression on her
face and felt the last wisps of alien fog clearing from his mind. There were
tears in her eyes, and he touched the side of her face with his hand and said, T'm all right. But why don't you
kiss me or something?"
She
did, but before Rynason could really immerse himself in it she broke away and said, "You must have
had a bad time with him! It was as though you were dead."
He grinned a trifle sheepishly and said, "Well, it was engrossing.
You'd better unhook the beast; he had a bad
time of it too."
Mara rose and removed the wires from Horng
gingerly. Rynason remained sitting; some of the
meaning of what he had just experienced was coming to him now. It certainly
explained why the Hirlaji had suddenly passed from
their
war era into
lasting peace, and why the
memories had been blocked. But could
he credit
those memories of a voice
of an
alien god?
And sitting in the
dust at the edge of
the vast
Hirlaj plain the
full realization came to him,
as it
could not when he had been
Tebron. Not
only the Temple, but the
Altar of Kor itself had been
unmistakably the workmanship of the
Outsiders.
SIX
They
left Horng sitting dully at
the edge
of the
Flat and retraced their steps through
the Hirlaji ruins, still drawing no notice from the aliens.
Rynason had been
in some
of the
small planerfall
towns where settlements had been
established only to be abandoned
by the
main flow of interstellar traffic . .
. those
backwater areas where contact with
the parent civilization was so slight
that an entirely local culture
had developed, almost as
different from that of the
mainstream Terr an colonies as was
this last vestige of the
Hirlaji civilization. And in some of
those areas interest in Earth
was so slight that the offworlders were ignored, as the
Earthmen were here ... but he
had never
felt the total lack of
attention that was here.
It was
not as
though the Hirlaji
had seen
the Earthmen and grown used to
them; Rynason had the feeling that to the Hirlaji the Earthmen
were no more important than
the winds or the
dust beneath their feet.
As they passed through the settled
portion of the ruins Rynason had to
step around a Hirlaji who crossed
his path.
He walked silently past,
his eyes
not even
flickering toward the Earthlings. Crazy grey
hidepiles, Rynason thought, and he and Mara
hurried out across the Flat
toward the nearby Earth town.
On the
outskirts of the town, where
the packed-dirt
streets faded into loose dust and
garbage was already piled several
feet high, they were
met by
Rene Malhomme. He sat longlegged with his back leaning against a weathered
stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not yet fifty; his
windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding grey dust and
rock—perhaps because it was filled with that dust, Rynason
thought. He stopped and looked down at the worn, tired man whose eyes belied
that weariness.
"And
have you communicated with God, Lee RynasonP* Malhomme asked with his rumbling, sardonic voice.
Rynason met
his gaze, wondering what he wanted. He lowered the telepather
pack from his shoulder and set it in the dust. Mara sat on a low rock beside
him.
"Will an alien god
do?" Rynason said.
Malhomme's eyes rested on the telepather
for a moment "You spoke with Kor?" he asked.
Rynason nodded slowly. "I made a linkage with one of the Hirlaji, and
tapped the race-memory. I suppose you could say I spoke with Kor."
"You
have touched the alien godhead," Malhomme mused.
"Then it's real? Their god is real?"
"No," said Rynason. "Kor is a machine."
Malhomme's head Jerked up. "A
machine? Deus ex ma-china, to quote an ancient curse. We make our own machines, and make gods of them." The tired lines
of his face relaxed. "Well, that's a bit better. The gods remain a myth,
and it's better that way."
Rynason stood over him on the windy Flat still
puzzled by his manner. He glanced at Mara, but she too was watching Malhomme, waiting for him to speak again.
Suddenly,
Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in
his throat. "Lee Rynason, I have called men to
God for so long that I almost began to believe it myself. And when the men
started talking about the god of these aliens . . ." He shook his head,
the spent laughter still drawing his mouth back into a grin. "Well, I'm
glad it isn't true. Religion wouldn't be worth a damn if it were true."
"How did the men find out about
Kor?" Rynason asked.
Malhomme spread his hands. "Manning has been tnllring, as usual. He ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god. And at the same time he says they
are a menace."
"Why?
Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?"
"Of course. Manning wants all the power he can get. If it means sacrificing the Hirlaji, he'll do it." Malhomme
stood up„ stretching himself. "He says they may be the Outsiders, and he's
stirring up all the fear he can. Hell grab any excuse,
no matter how impossible."
"It's
not so impossible," Rynason said. "Kor is
an Outsiders machine."
Malhomme stared at him. "You're sure of
that?"
He
nodded. "There's no doubt of it—I saw it from three feet away." He
told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact
with the memories, the mind, Tebron, and of the
interview with the machine that was Kor. Malhomme listened
with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side, occasionally throwing in
a comment or a question.
As-
he finished, Rynason said, "That race that Kor
warned them about sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race
that would crush them if they left the planet. We haven't found any
other intelligent life . . . just the Hirlaji, and
us."
"And the
Outsiders," said Malhomme.
"No.
This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about the same
level as the Hirlaji themselves.
Remember, the Outsiders had already spread through a thousand star-systems
long before this. No, we're the race they were warned against."
"What
about the weapons?" Malhomme said. "Disintegrators. We haven't got anything that powerful
that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the Hirlaji
had them thousands of years ago."
"Yes,
but for some reason they couldn't duplicate them. It doesn't make sense: those
weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of the Hirlaji, but they had them."
"Perhaps
your aliens were
the Outsiders," Malhomme said. "Perhaps we see around us the remnants
of a great rase fallen,"
Rynason. shook his head.
"But
they must have had some contact with the Outsiders," Mara said.
"Sometime even before Tebron's lifetime. The
Outsiders could have left the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought
was a god . . ."
"That's
just speculation," Rynason said. "Tebron himself didn't really know where they'd come from;
they'd been passed down through the priesthood for a long time, and within the
priesthood they did have some secrets. I suppose if I could search the
race-memory long enough I might find another nice big block there hiding that
secret. But it's difficult."
"And
you may not have time," Malhomme said.
"When Manning hears that the Altar of Kor was an Outsiders machine,
there'll be no way left to stop him from slaughtering the Hirlaji."
"I'm not sure there'll
be any real trouble," Rynason said.
Malhomme's lips drew back into the deep lines of his
face. "There is always trouble. Always. Whoever
or whatever spoke through the machine knew that much about us. The only way you
could stop it, Lee, would be to hold back this information from Manning. And to
do that, you would have to be sure, yourself, that there is no danger from the Hirlaji. You're in the key position, right now."
Rynason frowned. He knew Malhomme
was right—it would be difficult to stop Manning if what he'd said about the
man's push for power was true. But could he be sure that the Hirlaji were as harmless as they seemed? He remembered the
reassuring touch of Horng's mind upon his own, the
calmness he found in it, and the resignation . . but he also remembered the fear, and the screaming, and the
hot rush of anger that had touched him.
In
the silence on the edge of the Flat, Mara spoke. "Lee, I think you should report it all to Manning."
"Why?"
Her face was clouded. "I'm not sure. But
. . . when I disconnected the wires of the telepather,
Horng looked at me ..
. Have you ever looked info his eyes,
up close? It's frightening: it makes you remember how old they are, and how
strong. Lee, that creature has muscles in his face as strong as most men's
arms!"
"He just looked at
you?" said Rynason. "Nothing
else?"
"That's
all. But those eyes . . . they were so deep, and so full. You don't usually
notice them, because they're set so deeply in the shadows of his face, but his
eyes are large."
She stopped, and shook her
head in confusion. "I can't really explain it. When I moved around him to
the other side, I could see his eyes following me. He didn't move,
otherwise-it was as though only his eyes were alive. But they frightened me.
There was much more in them than just . . . not seeing, or not caring. His eyes
were alive."
"That's
not much evidence to make you think the Hirlaji are
dangerous."
"Oh,
I don't know
if they could be dangerous.
But they're not just . . . passive. They're not vegetables. Not with those
eyes."
"All
right," Rynason said. "Ill
give Manning a full report, and we'll put it in his
hands."
He
picked up the telepather pack and slung it over his
shoulder. Mara stood up, shaking away the dust which had blown against her
feet.
"What
will you do," Malhomme asked, "if Manning
decides that's enough cause to kill the Hirlaji?"
"I'll
stop him," Rynason said. "He's not in
control here, yet."
Malhomme flashed his sardonic smile again.
"Perhaps not . . . but if you need help, call to God. The books say
nothing about alien races, but surely these must be God's creatures too. And
I'm always ready to break a few heads, if it will help." He turned and
spat into the dust. "Or even just for the hell of it," he said.
Rynason found Manning that same afternoon, going
over reports in his quarters. As soon as he began his description of the orders
given to Tebron he found that Malhomme's
warnings had been correct.
"What did this machine say about
us?" Manning asked sharply. "Why were the Hirlaji
supposed to stay away from us?"
"Because we're a warlike race. The idea was that if the Hirlaji
stayed out of space they'd have about five thousand years before we found
them."
"How long ago was all
this? I had your report here . . ."
"At
least eight thousand years," Rynason said.
"They overestimated us."
Manning
stood up, scowling. There were heavy lines around his eyes and he hadn't
trimmed his thin beard. Whatever he was working on, Rynason
thought, he was putting a lot of effort into it.
"This
doesn't make sense, Lee. Damn it, since when do machines make guesses? Wrong ones, at that?"
Rynason
shrugged. "Well, you've got to remember that this was an alien machine;
maybe that's the way they built them."
Manning
threw a cold glance at him and poured a glass of Sector Three brandy for
himself. "You're not being amusing," he said shortly. "Now, go
on, and make some sense."
"I'd
like to," Rynason said. "Frankly, my theory
is that the machine was a communication-link with the Outsiders. It could explain
a lot of things—maybe even the similarities in architecture."
Manning
scowled and turned away from him. He paced heavily across the room and looked
out through the plasti-cene window at the nearly
empty, dust-strewn street for a few moments; when he returned the frown was
still on his face.
"Damn it, Lee, you're not keeping your
mind on the problems here. While you were looking into Horng's
mind, how do you know he wasn't spying in yours? You had an equal hookup,
right?"
Rynason nodded. "I couldn't have prevented him
hi any case. Why? Are we supposed to be hiding anything?"
"I
told you not to trust them!" Manning snapped. "Now if you can't even
match wits with a senile horsehead .. ."
"You were the one who
said they might be more adept at telepathy than we are," Rynason said. "It was a chance we had to take."
"There's
a difference between taking chances and handing them information on a silver
platter," Manning said angrily. "Did you make any effort at all to
keep him from finding out too much about us?"
Rynason shrugged. "I kept him pretty busy. All
of the time I was running through Tebron's memories I
could feel Horng screaming somewhere; he must have been too upset to do any
probing in my mind."
Manning
was silent for a moment. "Let's hope so," he said shortly. "If
they find out how weak we are, how long it would take us to get reinforcements
out here . . ."
"They're
still just a dying race, remember," Rynason
said. "They're not the Outsiders. What makes you so sure that they're dangerous?"
"Oh,
come on, Lee I Think! They're in contact with the Outsiders; you
said so yourself. And just remember this: the Outsiders obviously considered it
inevitable that there would be war between us. Now put those two facts together and tell me
the horses aren't dangerous!"
Rynason said slowly, "It isn't as simple as
that. The order given to Tebron was to stop all
scientific progress and stifle any military development, and he seems to have
done just that. The idea was that if the Hirlaji were
harmless when we found them there might be no need for fighting."
"Perhaps. But we weren't supposed to know that they were in contact with the
Outsiders, either—that was probably part of the purpose of the block in the
race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know it, and presumably by
now the Outsiders know it. That changes the picture, and I'd like to know just
how much it changes it."
"They're
not in contact with the Outsiders any longer," said Rynason.
"What makes you so sure of that?"
"Tebron broke the contact—that was in the orders too. The
priesthood, which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the
machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn't appoint a successor; the machine hasn't been used since."
Manning
thought about that,
still frowning. "Where is the
machine?"
"I
don't know. If it hasn't been kept in repair it might not even be usable any more, wherever it
is."
"I'll
tell you something, Lee," said Manning. "There's still too much that we don't know—and too much that
the Hir-laji do know, now. Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we're not as
strong as
they thought we were. It
took us eight thousand years to get here instead
of five thousand. Let's just hope they don't think about
that too much."
He
stopped, and paced to the window again. "Look around
you, Lee—out on the street, in the town. We've hardly put our feet down on this planet; we've got very little in the way of weapons with us and it
will take weeks
to get any more in here;
there's practically no. organization here
yet. We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what
hit us. We're sitting ducks."
He came back to stand before Rynason. "And what about the Outsiders? They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they've been keeping themselves away from us all this time. That's obviously why they pulled out of this sector of space. Up until now we'd thought
they were dead, But now we find they've been in contact with
this planet. . . all right, it was eight thousand years ago. But that's a lot more recent than the last evidences we've had
of them, and they've obviously been watching us.
"Now,
you've been in direct contact with the horses' minds; you've practically been one of them yourself, for awhile. All right, what's their reaction going to be
when they realize
that the Outsiders, their
god, overestimated us? What
will they do?"
Rynason thought about that. He tried to remember the minds he had touched during the linkage with Horng: Tebron, the ancient warrior-king, and the young Hirlaji staring at the buildings of one of the ancient cities, and this old, dying one who had decided not to plant
again one
year . . . and Horng himself, tired and calm on the edge of
the Flat, amid the ruins of a city.
He remembered the others
in that crumbling last home of an entire race slow,
quiet,
uncaring.
"I
don't think they'll do anything. They wouldn't see any point to it." He
paused, remembering. "They lost all their purpose eight thousand years
ago," he said quietly.
Manning
grunted. "Somehow I lack your touching faith in them."
"And
somehow," Rynason said, "I lack your
burning ambition to find an enemy, a handy menace to crush. You argue too hard,
Manning."
Manning
raised an eyebrow. "I suppose I haven't even put a doubt in your mind
about them? Not one doubt?"
Rynason turned away and didn't answer.
Manning
sighed. "Maybe it's time I went out there myself and had a seance with the horses." He set down his glass of
brandy, which he had been turning in his hand as he spoke. "Lee, I want
you to check back here with me in two hours . . . by then I should have things
straightened up and ready to go."
He
strode to the supply closet at one end of the room and took from it a belt and
holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation stunner. "This is
as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except for the heavy stuff. I hope
we never have to use any of that—clearing it for use is a lot of red tape." He looked up and saw the cold expression on Rynason's face. "Of course, I hope we don't have to
use the stunners, either," he said calmly.
Rynason turned without a word and went to the door.
He stopped there for a moment and watched Manning checking over the weapon. He
was thinking of the disintegrators he had seen on the steps of the Temple of
Kor, and of the shell of a body tumbling out of the shadows.
"I'll see you at
600," he said.
SEVEN
Rynason spent
the next two hours in town,
moving through
the windy streets and
thinking about what Manning had said. He
was right, in a way: this was no more than a foothold for the Earthmen, a touchdown point. It wasn't even a community yet; buildings were still going up, prices varied
widely not only between
landings of spacers but also according
to who did the selling. A lot
of the men here were trying
some mining out on the west
Flat; their findings had so far been
small but they brought the only real income the planet had so far yielded. The rest of the town was rising on its own weight: bars, rooming houses, laundries, and diners—establishments which thrived only because there were men here to patronize them. Several weeks
before a
few of the men had tried
killing and eating the small animals who darted through the alleys, but too many of those men had died and the practice had been quickly abandoned. And they had noticed that when those animals foraged in the refuse heaps outside the town, they died too.
A few of the big corporations had sent out
field men to look around, but it was too soon for any industry to have established itself here; all
the planet offered so far was room to
expand. Despite the wide expansion of the Earthmen through the stars, a planet
where conditions were at
all favorable for living
was not to be overlooked; the continuing population explosion, despite tight
regulations on the
inner worlds, had kept up
with the colonization of these worlds, and new room was constantly
needed.
But
the planetfall on Hirlaj
was still new. A handful of Earthmen had come, but they had not yet brought their civilization.with them. They stood precariously on the Flat, waiting for more settlers to come in and
build with them. If there should be trouble before more men arrived ...
At 600 Rynason walked out on the dirt-packed street to
Manning's quarters, He met Marc Stoworth and Jules Lessing-ham coming out the door. They
looked worried. :"What's wrong?" he said.
They
didn't stop as they went by. "Ask the old man," said Stoworth, going past with an uncharacteristically hurried
step.
Rynason went on in through the open door. Manning
was in the front room, amid several crates of stunner-units. He looked up quickly
as Rynason entered and waved brusquely to him.
"Help me get this stuff unloaded,
Lee."
Rynason fished for his sheath-knife and started
cutting open one of the crates. "Why are you unloading the arsenal?"
"Because we may need it. Couple of the boys were
just out at the horse-pasture, and they say the friendly natives have
disappeared."
"Jules
and Stoworth? I met them on the way in."
"They
were doing some follow-up work out there ...
or at least they were going to. There's not a single one of them there, not a
trace of them."
Rynason frowned. "They were all there this
morning."
"They're
not there nowl" Manning snapped. "I don't
like ft, not after what you've told me. We're going to look for them."
"With stunners?"
"Yes.
Right now Mara is out at the field clearing several of the fliers to use in
scouting for them."
Rynason stacked the boxes of weapons and power-packs
on the floor where Manning indicated. There were about forty of them—blunt-barrelled guns with thick casing aound
the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each. They
looked as staticly blunt as anvils, but they could
stun any animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could shake
a rock wall down.
"How many men are we taking
with us?" Rynason asked, eying the stacks on the
floor.
Manning looked up at him briefly. "As
many as we can get. I'm calling a militia;
Stoworth and Lessingham
went into town to round up some men."
So
he was going ahead with the power-grab; Malhomme had
been right. No danger had been proven yet, but that wouldn't stop Manning—nor
the drifters he'd been buying in the
town. Killing was an everyday thing to them.
"How
many of the Hirlaji do you think well
have to kill to make it look important to the
Council?" Rynason asked after a moment, his voice deliberately inflectionless.
Manning
looked up at him with a calculating eye. Rynason met
his gaze directly, daring the man to take offense. He didn't."
"All
right, it's a break for me," Manning shrugged. "What did you expect? There's precious little
opportunity on
this desert rock for
leadership in any sense that you might approve of." He paused. "I
don't know if it will be necessary to IdD any
of them. Take it easy and well see."
Rynason's
eyes were cold. "All right, well see. But just remember, I'll be watching just as closely as
you. If you start any violence that isn't necessary . .
."
"What
will you do, Lee?" said Manning. "Report me to the Council? They'll listen to me before they'd pay attention to complaints
from a nobody who's been drifting around the outworlds for most of his life. That's all you are,
you know, Lee—a drifter, a bum, like the rest of them.
That's what
everybody out here on the
Edge is . . . unless he does something
about it.
"I
hold the reins right now. If I decide to do something that you don't like, you
won't be able to stop me . . . neither you,
nor your female friend."
"So
Mara's against you too?" Rynason said.
"She
made a few remarks earlier," Manning said calmly. "She may regret it soon enough."
Rynason looked at the man through narrowed eyes for a moment, then strapped on a gunbelt and loaded
one of the stunners. He snapped it into me holster
carefully, wondering just what Manning had meant by his last remark. Was it, a threat in any real sense,
or was Manning just letting off steam? Well, they'd see about that too . . . and Rynason
would be watching.
Within
half an hour close to sixty men had collected outside Manning's door. They
were dirty and unshaven; some of them were working in the town, a few were
miners, but most of them were drifters who had followed the advance of the star
frontier, who drank and brawled in the streets of the town, sleeping by day and
raising hell at night They stole when they could, killed when they wanted.
The
drifters were men who had been all over the worlds of the Edge, who had spent
years watching the new planets opened for colonization and exploitation, but
had never got their own piece. They knew the feel of these planetfall
towns on the Edge, and could talk for hours about the worlds they had seen. But
they were city men, all of them; they had seen the untamed worlds, but only
from the streets. They hadn't taken part in the exploring or the building, only
in the initial touchdowns. When the building was done, they signed on to the
spacers again and drifted to the next world, farther out.
Rynason looked at their faces from where he stood in
the doorway, listening to Manning talking to them. They were hard men, mean and
sometimes vicious. Nameless faces, all of them, having no place in the more
developed areas of the Terran civilization. And maybe
that was their own fault. But Rynason
knew that they were running, not to anything, but from the civilization itself.
Running because when an area was settled and started to become respectable,
they began to see what they did not have. The temporary quarters would come
down, to be replaced by permanent buildings that were meant to be lived in, not
just as places for sleeping. Closets, and shelters for
landcars; quadsense
receivers and food integrators. They didn't want to see that . . . because they
hated it, or because they wanted it? It didn't matter, Rynason
decided. They ran, and now they were here on the Edge with all their anger and
frustration, and Manning was ready to give them a way to let it out
At the
side of the mob he
saw a
familiar grey shock of hair-Rene Malhomme. Was
he with
them, thenP Rynason craned his neck for
a better
view, and for a moment
the crowd parted enough to let
him see
Malhomme's face. He
was looking directly toward
Rynason, holding
a dully
gleaming knife flat against his
thick chest . . .
and his
lips were drawn back into the
crooked, sardonic smile which Rynason had seen many times.
No, Malhomme at least was not
part of this mob.
"We already know which
direction they went," M arming
was saying. "Lessingham will be
in charge
of the
main body, and you'll follow him.
If he
gives you an order, take U. This is a serious business; we won't
have room for bickering.
"Some of us will be scouting
with the flyers. Well be
in radio contact with you. When
we find
out where
they are we'll reconnoiter and make
our plans
from there."
Manning paused, looking appraisingly
at the
faces before him. "Most of you
are armed
already, I see. We have
some extra stunners here; if you
need them, come on up.
But remember, the men who carry
the shockers
will be in front, and their business will be
simply to down the horses—any
killing that's to be
done will be left to
those of you who have
knives, or anything lethal."
There was a rising wave of
voices from the crowd. Some men came forward for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a
few of
them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason
watched with narrowed eyes; it
had been a filthy maneuver
on Manning's
part to organize this mob, and
his open
acceptance of their temper was
dangerous. Once they were
turned loose, what could stop
themP
There was a sudden shouting in
the back
of the
mob; men surged
and fell
away, cursing. Rynason
heard scuffling back there, and sounds of
bone meeting flesh. The men
at the front
of the
mob turned
to look
back, and some tried to shove their way through to the
fight.
A scream
came from the midst of
the crowd,
and was answered by an excited, angry swelling
of voices
around the fighting men. Suddenly Manning
was among
them, smashmg bis way through with a
stunner in his hand, swinging
it like a club.
"Get the hell out of the
way!" he shouted, stepping quickly through the men. They
grumbled and fell back to
let him by, but
Rynason heard the
men still
fighting in the rear, and then
he saw
them. There were three of
them, two men and what looked
like a boy still in
his teens.
The boy
had red hair and a dark,
ruddy complexion: he was new
to the
outworlds. The
two older
men had
the pallor
of the
Edge drifters, nurtured in
the artificial
light of spacers and sealed survival quarters on the
less hospitable worlds.
The larger of the
two men
had a
knife, a heavy blade of
a type that
was common
out here;
many of the men used
them as hatchets when
necessary. This one dripped with
blood; the smaller man's
left arm was torn open
just below the shoulder, and hanging
uselessly. He stood swaying in
the dust, hurling a string of
curses at the man with
the knife,
while the boy stood
slightly behind him, staring with
both fear and hatred in his
eyes. He had a smaller
knife, but he held it loosely
and uncertainly
at his
side.
Manning stepped between them.
He had
sized up the situation already, and
he paused
now only
long enough to bite out three
short, clipped words
which told these men exactly what he thought of
them. The man with the
knife stopped back and muttered something
which Rynason didn't hear.
Manning raised the stunner
coldly and let him have
it. The
blast caught the man
in the
shoulder and spun him around,
throwing him into the
crowd; several of them went
down. The long knife fell to
the ground,
where dirt mixed with the
blood on it. There
was silence.
Manning looked around him,
swinging the stunner loosely in his hand. After a
moment he said calmly, but
loud enough for all to hear,
"We won't have time for
fighting among ourselves. The next man
who starts
anything will be killed outright. Now get these men
out of
here." He turned and strode back through the mob
while the" boy and a
couple of the other men took
the wounded
away.
WARLORD OF K0R
Malhomme had
moved further Into
the crowd.
He was strangely silent; usually he
went among these men roughly
and joyially, cursing
mem all with
goodnatured
ease. But now he stood watching
the men
around him with a frown
creasing his heavily lined
face. Malhomme was worried, and Rynason, seeing that,
felt his stomach tighten.
Manning faced the men from the
front of the crowd. He
stared at them shrewdly,
holding each man's gaze for
a few
seconds. Then he grinned,
and said,
"Save it for the horses,
boys. Save it for
them."
Rynason rode out to the
field with Manning, Stoworth, and a
few of
the others. It
was a
short trip in the landcar, and none of them
spoke much. Even Stoworth rode silently,
his usual easy flow
of trivia
forgotten. Rynason was thinking about Manning: he
had handled
the outbreak
quickly and decisively enough, keeping the
men in
line, but it had been
only a temporary measure. They would
be expecting
some real action soon, and Manning
was already
offering them the Hirlaji.
If the
alarm turned out to be
a false
one, would he be as easily
able to stop them then?
Or would
he even
try?
The flyers were ready
when they got to the
field, but Mara was gone. Les
Harcourt met them at the
radio office on the edge of
the field;
he was
the communications
man out
here. He led them
into the low, quick-concrete construction office and
shoved some forms at Manning
to be
signed.
"If there's
any trouble,
you'll be responsible for it,"
he said
to Manning. "The men
can look
out for
themselves, but the flyers are Company
property."
Manning scowled
impatiently and bent to sign
the papers.
"Where's Mara?
Rynason asked.
"She's already taken one
of the
flyers out," Harcourt said, "Left ten minutes ago. We've
got her
screen in the next room." He waved a hand
toward the door in the
rear of the room.
Rynason went
on back
and found
the live
set. The screen, monitored from a
Camera on the flyer, showed
the fb6tb|Ss of the southern mountains over which Mara was flying. They were bare
and blunt; the rock outcroppings which thrust up from the Flat had been
weathered smooth in the passage of years. Mara was passing over a low range and
on to the desert beyond.
Rynason picked up the mike. "Mara, this is Lee;
we just got here. Have you found them yet?"
Her
voice came thinly over the speaker. "Not yét. I thought I saw some movement in one of the passes, but the light Wasn't
too good. I'm looking for that pass again."
"All right. We'll be going up ourselves in a few
minutes; if you find them, be careful. Wait for us."
He
refitted the mike in its stand and rosé. But
as he turned to the door her voice came again: "There they arel"
He looked at the screen, but for the moment he couldn't
see anything. Mara's flyer was coming down put of the rocky
hills now, the Flat stretching before her on the
screen. Ryna-
son could see the pass through which she had been flying,
but there was no movement there; it took him several seconds
to see the low ruins off to the right, and the figures moving
through them. '
The screen banked and turned toward them; she
was lowering her altitude.
"I
see them," he said into the mike. "Can't make out what they're doing,
on the screen. Can you see them any more clearly?"
"They're
entering one of the buildings down there," she said after a moment.
"I've counted almost twenty of them so far; they must all be here."
"Can you go down and see what they're
doing? The sooner we find out, the better: Manning's got a pretty ugly bunch of
so-called vigilantes on the way out there."
She
didn't reply, but on the screen he saw the crumbling buildings grow larger and
nearer. He could make out individual structures now: a wall had fallen , and was half-buried in the dust and sand; an entire
roof had oaved in on another building, leaving only
rubble in the interior. It was difficult to tell Sometimes when the original
lines of the buildings had fallen: they had all been smoothed by the windblown
sand, so that_broken pillars looked almost as though
they had been built that way, smooth and upright, solitary.
At
last, he saw the Hirlaji. They were slowly mounting
the steps of one of the largest of the buildings and passing into the shadows
of the interior. This building was not as deteriorated as most of the Others; as Mara's flyer dipped low over it Rynason could see its characteristic lines unbroken and
clear.
With
a start, he sat up and said hurriedly, "Mara, take another close pass over
that building, the one they're entering."
In a moment she came in again over the smooth
stone structure, and Rynason looked closely at the
screen. There was no mistaking it now: the high steep steps leading up to a collonade which almost circled the building, the large
carvings over the main entrance.
"You'd better set down away from theml" he said. "That's the Temple of Korl" But even as he finished speaking the image on
the screen jolted and rocked, and the flyer dipped even closer toward the
jumbled ruins below.
"They're firing somerhingl" ~
He
saw that she was trying to gain altitude, but something was wrong; the
buildings on the screen dipped and wavered, up and down, spinning.
"Maral Pull
up—get out of there!"
"One of the wings is damaged," she
said quickly, and suddenly there was another jolt on the screen and he heard
her gasp. The picture spun and righted itself, seemed to hang motionless for a
moment, and then the stone wall of one of the buildings was
directly ahead and growing larger.
"Maral"
The
image spun wildly, the building filled the screen, and then it went black; he
heard a crash from the speaker, cut off almost before it had sounded. The room
was silent.
EIGHT
Rynason
staked at the
dead screen for only a
moment; he wheeled and ran back
to the
outer room.
"Let's get those flyers up! Mara's
found them, but they've brought her down." He was
already going out the door
as he spoke.
Manning and
the others
were right behind him as
he dashed out onto the field.
Rynason headed for
the nearest
flyer, a small runabout
which had been discarded as
obsolete on the inner worlds and
consigned to use out here
on the
Edge, where equipment was
scarce. He leaped through the
port and was shutting
the door
when Manning caught it
"Where are
they? What's happened to the
woman?" /
"They, were
shooting something!" Rynason snapped.
The knife-scar over his
right eye stood out sharply
in his
anger. "She crashed—may be badly hurt. She
didn't have too much altitude, though. The hell with where
she is—follow mel"
He slammed the door
and squeezed
into the flying seat While he warmed the engines
he saw
the others
scattering across the field
to the
other flyers. In a moment
the hum
of the radioset told him that their
communications were open.
He saw the props of the
other flyers starting to turn,
and flicked on his mike.
"They're on the other side of
the south
range," he said quickly. "She didn't
give me coordinates, but I
should be able to find the
spot. When we get there,
we land
away from the city and go
in on
foot."
Manning's voice
came coldly through the radioset: "Are you giving orders
now, Lee?"
"Right now I am, yes! If
you want
to try
going in before reconnoitering,
that's your funeral. They have
weapons."
"When we touch ground again I'll
take over," Manning said.
"Now let's get going—Lee, you're first."
But Rynason was already starting his run across the field. When
he had some speed he kicked in the rocket booster and fought the little flyer
skyward. When he had caught the air he banked southward and fed the motors all
he had. He didn't look around for the others; he was setting his own pace.
TheTnountain range was ten miles to the south; they~shouId be able to make it in five or six minutes, he
figured. Below him on the dry Flat he saw the pale shadow of his flyer skimming
across the dust. The drone of the motors filled the compartment.
The
radio cut in again. It was Manning. "What's this about a city, Lee? Is
that where they are?"
"The
City of the Temple," Rynason said. "It's
down among overhanging rocks—no wonder we hadn't seen it before. Doesn't seem to have been used for centuries or more. But
that's where the Temple of Kor is—and the Hirlaji are
all in the Temple."
Static
hissed at him for a moment. "How did they bring her down?" someone
asked. It sounded like Stov/orth.
"Probably
the disintegrators," Rynason said. "The Hirlaji don't have many of them, but they've got enough
power to give us a lot of trouble."
"And
they're using them, eh?" Manning said. "What do you think of your
horses now, Lee?"
Rynason didn't answer.
In a
few minutes they were over the range. Rynason had to
scout for awhile before he found the pass he had Seen
on Mara's screen, but once he saw it below him he followed it out to the other
side. The city was there, lying darkly amid the shadows of the mountains. Rynason banked off and set down half a mile away.
He
waited for the others to land before he left the flyer. He took a pair of binocs from the supply kit and trained them on the city
across the Flat, but he couldn't find Mara's fallen flyer.
When they were all down he clambered out of
the compartment and alighted heavily in the dust Manning strode quickly to
hinv wearing twin
stunners. He took one from
its holster and fingered it thoughtfully
as he
spoke'.
The main party was back in
the pass.
They should be here inside half an hour. Well
storm the temple immediately— we've got them outnumbered."
Rynason made
a dubious
sound deep in his throat,
looking out at the city. He
was remembering
that he had seen it
before from this Flat
. .
. and
had stormed
it before.
The defensive walls were high.
"They can fire down on us
from the walls," he said
in a
low voice. "There's no cover out there—they'd
wipe half of US out before we could
get in."
"We can come around from the
pass," Manning said. "There's
plenty of cover from that
direction."
"And more fortification, tool"
Rynason snapped. "Just
remember, Manning, that city
was built
as a
fortress. We'd have
to come
from the Flat."
Manning paused, frowning. "We've
got to
take them anyway," he said
slowly. "Damn it, we can't
just stand here and wait for
them to come out at
us. What
are they
doing, anyway?"
Rynason regarded
the older
man for
several moments, almost amused. "Right now," he said, "they're
probably having a conference—with
the Outsiders.
That's where the machine is, remember."
"Then the
sooner we attack, the better,"
Manning said. "Marc, get the main
party on. the
hand-radio—tell them to
get here as fast
as they
can." He turned for a
moment to look out across the
Flat at the city. "And
you can
promise them some action," he said.
Stoworth dropped
the radio
from his shoulder and threw
back the cover. He
switched on the power, and
static sounded
in the dry air. He: lifted the mike and a voice cut
through the
static.
"Is anyone
picking this up? Is anyone
there?"
It was
Mera's voice.
Rynason knelt
beside the set and took
the Mike
from Stoworthi
hand. "This is Lee. Are
you hurt?*
"Leer
"I hear you. Are you
hurt?"
"Not
badly. Lee, what are you doing? I saw the flyers land."
"Manning
wants to attack the city as soon as the land party gets here. What's going on
there?"
"rm in the temple. I've been trying to
communicate with
them. I've got an
interpreter, but they don't listen to what I say. Lee, this is incredible here!
They've brought out a lot of weapons . . some of them don't work. The hall is half-filled with dust
and sand, and they move so clumsily! They're trying to hurry, because they saw
you too, but it's like . . . like they've forgotten how. They think they can
get rid of us all, but they . . . It's pitiful—they're
so slow."
"Those
disintegrators aren't slow," Rynason said.
Manning was standing beside him; he dropped a hand on his shoulder, but Rynason shook it off. "Are they using the machine . .
. the altar?"
"They
were using it when they brought me in. I think it is the Outsiders. But they don't seem to know it's just a machine —they
kneel in front of it, and chant. It's so strange, in that language of theirs
.those thin, high voices, and the echoes . . ."
"They're holding you
prisoner?"
"Yes.
I think they want to hold you off till they can get ready for their "own
attack."
"For their
what?" Rynason stood up, and looked toward
the city; he could see no movement there. '
"I
know . . it's incredible.
Lee, they don't know what they're doing. Horng said on the interpreter that
they were, going to drive us off the planet, and then rebuild their cities, and
re-arm. It's somethings to do with Kor, or the
Outsiders. The orders have changed. They think that if they can drive us away
for awhile they can build themselves up to where they can repell
any further touchdowns here."
"This order came from the machine?"
"Yes. There was a mistake, and Horng
realized it after
Warlord of kor
you linked with rum
this morning. The Outsiders, or Kor or whatever it is,
had overestimated
us."
"Maybe then, but notrnow. They're
committing suicide!" Rynason said.
T know,
and I
tried to tell them that.
But the
machine says differently. Lee, do you
think that's really the Outsiders?"
"If it is," he said slowly,
"they wouldn't send the Hirlaji against us without some
help." He thought a minute,
while the wind of the Flat
blew sand against his leg
and static
came from the radio.
"They could be making another
mistake!" Mara said.
"I'm sure-what they told the
Outsiders wasn't true—they think
they're as strong as they
were before. But their eyes .
. .
their eyes are afraid. I fenow it."
"Do they
know what you're saying to
me?"
"No. Lee, I'm not even sure
they know what a radio
is. Maybe they think I carry
my portable
altar with me." Her voice had
taken on a frantic note.
"It's a. .
. a
simple case of freedom of religion,
Lee! Freedom of
religion!"
"Mara! Calm
down! Calm down!" He waited
for a
few seconds; until her voice came
again, more quietly:
"I'm sorry
. . Tit's just that they're so
. .
."
"Forget it. Sit tight there. I
think I know how to
slip in— alone." He switched off.
He stood up and shrugged his
shoulders heavily, loosening his tensed muscles.
Then he turned purposefully to Manning.
"The rest of the party won't
be here
for awhile
yet, so you can't possibly
go in
now. I'm going to try to get Mara out before any fighting starts."
"What if they capture you too?"
Manning said. "I can't hold off an attack too
long—you could be right about
the Outsiders helping them. The sooner
we finish
them off, the better."
Rynason looked
coldly at him. "You heard
what Mara said. We won't have
any trouble
taking them. You can't attack
them while she's in
there, though. Or can you?"
"Lee. I've
told you—I can't take chances.
If the
Outsiders ere in this, it's
a dangerous business. You can go in if you want, but we're not waiting more than half
an hour for you" to get out."
Rynason met his gaze steadily for a moment, then nodded brusquely. "All
right." He turned and moved into the overhanging shadows of the mounains, toward the ancient, alien city.
He
stayed in the shadows as he approached the walls of the fortress, darting
quickly across exposed ground. The Hirlaji were large
and powerful) physical battle with them was of course out of the question. But
he had some things on his side: he was small, and therefore less likely to be
seen; he was faster than the quiet, aged aliens. And he knew the city, the
fortress and the temple, almost as Well as they did.
Perhaps
better, in fact, for his purposes. For while he had shared Tebron's mind he had been . . . not only Tebron, but also Rynason,
Earthman. A corner of his mind had been alert and aware
. . hearing the distant screams of Horng, wondering
about the design of the Altar of Kor. And he had seen other things when he
looked through Tebron's eyes: when the ancient
warlord had stormed the city-fortress, there had been an observer in him who
had said: An Earthman could go in this way, unobserved. A smaller attacker
could slip through here,
could conceal himself where
no Hirlaji could reach.
He
arrived, at last, at the base of the wall where the blunt rocks of the
mountains tumbled to a dead-end against flat, weathered stone. .So far he must
not have; been seen; there had been no disintegrator beams fired at him, no
leathery Hirlaji heads watching from the walls. He
flattened against the stone and raised his eyes to the barriers.
The
wall here had been built higher than the portions which faced the Flat, and it
was stronger. No one! had tried to storm the city from
this position, because it was too well protected. But the walls had been built
against the heavy, clumsy bodies of the grey aliens; with luck, a man could
scale this walk The footholds in the weathered stones
would
be precarious, but perhaps it
could be done. And the
Hirlaji, who regarded
this wall as impregnable, would not be guarding
it.
Sighting upward from flat
against the wall, he chose
his path quickly, and began to
climb. The stone was smooth
but grainy; he dug his fingers
into narrow niches and pulled
himself slowly upward, bracing
himself with footholds whenever he
could. It was laborious, painful work; twice he
lost handholds and hung
precariously until his straining fingers
again found some indentation.
Sweat covered him; the wind
from the Flat whipped
around the wall and touched
the moisture on his back coldly.
But his
face was set in a
frozen grimness and though
his breath
came in gasps he made
no other sound.
When he had neared the top
he suddenly
seemed to reach a dead-end; the
stones were smooth above him.
His arms
ached, bis
shoulders seemed deadened; he clung
numbly to the wall and searched
for another
path. When he found it,
he had to descend ten feet
and move
to the
right before he could re-ascend; as he retraced his
route down the. wall he noticed blood where his torn
fingers had left their mark.
But he could not feel the
pain in his fingers.
At last, when the wall had
come to seem a separate
world of existence which was all
that he would ever know,
a vertical
plane to which he clung
with dim determination, hardly knowing why any longer ...
at last,
he reached
the top.
His groping hand reached up and
found the edge of the
wall; his fingers grasped it gratefully
and he
pulled himself up to hang by
Doth hands and survey the
interior of the fortress.
A deserted floor stretched
before him, shadowed by the
late-afternoon darkness which crept
down from the mountains to rest on the aged
remains of the city. Forty
feet down the walkway he saw
stairs descending, but his head
swam and all he could focus
on clearly
was the
light film of dust and sand
which covered even this topmost
level of the city, blown in shallow drifts against
the walls
which rose a few feet above
the floor
here. There were no footprints
in that
dust; no one had
walked here for thousands of
years.
Wearily, he pulled himself over the last
barrier and fell numbly to the floor, where he lay for long minutes
fighting for breath. His lungs were raw; the thin air of the planet caught and
rasped in his throat. His hands were torn and bleeding, and the knife-scar over
his right eye had begun to throb, but he ignored the pain. He had to clear his
head . . .
Eventually
he was able to stand, swaying beneath the dark sky. Below him he saw the city,
broken and dim, empty streets winding between fallen walls and pillars. Mara's
flyer lay shattered against one of those broken walls; seeing it, he wondered
how badly she had been hurt.
He
moved toward the stairs, and descended them slowly. The stairs of the city were
as he had remembered them from Tebron's memories, and
yet not the same. To the Earthman they were steep: the steps were like separate
levels, three feet across and almost four feet deep. His legs ached at each
step, as the shock of his weight fell on them. ' He
reached the bottom level and paused in the doorway onto the street. It was
empty, but he had to think a moment before he could remember his bearings. Yes,
the. Temple was that way, somewhere down the dusty street. He moved through the
deeper shadows at the base of the buildings, remembering.
Tebron had taken this city at the head of a force
of warriors. To him it had been large and majestic, a place of power and
knowledge. But Rynason, moving wearily through the
dust of the ages which had fallen upon the xity since
the ancient king, found it not merely large, but huge; not majestic, but
futile. And the power and knowledge which it once had held was but a dusty
shadow now. Somewhere ahead, in the Temple, the survivors of that ages-old
culture were trying to bring the city to life again. With or without the
Outsiders, he felt, they must fail. They really wanted to bring themselves back
to life, to reawaken their minds, their dreams, their
own power. But they tried to do it with memories, and that was not the way.
No
one' was guarding the Temple. Rynason went up the
steps as quickly as he could, vaulting from level to
level
trying to stay
in the
shadows, listening for movement. But
sounds did not carry
far in
the air
of Hirlaj; the aliens would
not hear him approaching,
but he
might not hear any of
them either until he
stumbled upon them.
At the top of the stairs
he darted
into the shadows of the collonade which
surrounded the interior. Doorways opened
at intervals of fifty
feet around the building; he
would have to circle to the
side and enter there if
at all.
He slipped
quickly between the columns
and paused
at the
third doorway. He dropped to
the floor,
lay flat
on his
chest and looked inside.
They were
all there—two
dozen heavy grey aliens, sitting,
standing, staring quietly at
the floor.
There was little movement among
them, but nevertheless he could
feel the excitement which pervaded
the Temple.
No, not excitement—anxiety.
Fear. Watching those
huge bodies huddling into themselves,
"he heard an echo of
Horng's screams in
his mind
These creatures
were afraid of battle, of
conflict, and yet they had thrust
themselves into a fight whioh they must lose. Did they
know that? Could they believe
what the machine of the Outsiders
told them, after it had
been proven fallible?
The Eye of Kor glowed dully
in the
dark inner room; two of the
Hirlaji stood silently
before it, watching, waiting. But
the religion of Kor
had played
no part
in the
lives of the Hirlaji for generations.
Now that
the ancient,
muddled religion had been brought to
life again, could it have
the same
hold on them that it had
once had?
Mara was on the floor of
the Temple,
leaning with her back against the
wall. One of the doorways
from the outer collonade
was nearby, hut five of the Hirlaji
surrounded her. And with a start
Rynason noticed that
her left
arm hung
limp and twisted at
her side,
and blood
showed on her forehead. Her face showed no
emotion, but as he watched
she raised her right hand to
run fingers
through her long dark hair, nervously.
She had
not seen
him, but she was waiting.
When he made his move she
would follow him. Rynason slipped back
from
76
v.
the doorway and circled the building again until
be had reached the entrance nearest the girl. He drew
out his stunner from its holster and looked at it for a moment. He would have to
be fast; his weapon would give him no advantage against the disintegrators of
the Hirlaji, but surprise and speed might. And,
perhaps . . . fear.
He
broke around the corner of the doorway at a dead run, firing as he went. Two of
the Hirlaji fell before they could even turn; they
crumpled to the floor heavily. Then he- screamed—a high scream, like Horng's, and as loud as he could make it, a wail, a cry of
anguish and terror and pain. They felt it, and it touched a response in them;
the Hirlaji who surrounded Mara twisted to look at
him, but they instinctively shrank away. He continued to fire, bringing down
three more of them while the confusion lasted. He broke through to Mara, who
was already on her feet; without breaking his stride he grasped her by her
good shoulder and pulled her along with him as he ran through.
But
some of the Hirlaji recovered in time to block their
escape. Rynason.wheeled, looking frantically around the room for an unguarded exit.
None of those within reach were clear. He fired again, and ran for the altar.
One
of the Hirlaji had raised a disintegrator; Rynason caught him with the stunner as he fired, and the
beam of the alien's weapon shot past his leg, digging a pit into the floor
beyond him. Other weapons were raised now; they had only seconds left.
But
they had reached the altar; the two Hirlaji there
moved to block them, but they were unarmed and Rynason
dropped them with the stunner. He pushed Mara past-them and around to the side
of the altar, seeking cover from the disintegrators.
Behind
the altar, there was a space just large enough for them to squeeze through. Rynason's heart leaped; he pointed quickly to it and turned
to fire again as Mara pushed her way into the narrow aperture. A disintegrator
beam hissed over his head; another tore into the wall two
feet away from him. The Hirlaji were trying to keep their fire away from the altar
itself.
Rynason turned and squeezed behind the altar as soon
as Mara was clear. It was tight, but he made it, and once through the narrow
opening they found more room in the darkness. They could hear noise outside as
the Hirlaji moved toward the altar, but it sounded
far away and dim. Mara moved back into the darkness, and he followed.
They
moved perhaps twenty feet into the wall behind the altar before they were
brought to a halt. The passage ended. Well, no matter; if it was not an escape
route, at least it would afford cover from theAweapons of the Hirlaji. Rynason dropped to the floor and rested.
Mara
sat beside him. "Lee, you shouldn't have tried it," she said
anxiously. "Now we're trapped." He felt her hand touch his face in
the darkness.
"Maybe,"
he said. "But we may be able to catch them off their guard again, and if
so we may be able to get out."
She
was silent. He felt her lean against his shoulder wearily, her hair soft
against his neck. Then he remembered that she had been hurt.
"What happened to your
arm? And you were bleeding."
"I
think it's broken. The bleeding was nothing, though: you should see yourself.
You were so tattered and bloody when you came in that I hardly knew you.
Knights should come in more properly shining armor."
He grinned wearily.
"Wait till next time."
"Lee,
where are we?" she said abruptly. Their eyes were becoming adjusted to the
darkness, and they could see rising around them a complexity of machine
relays, connectives, and pieces which did not seem to make sense.
Rynason
looked more closely at the complex. It was definitely Outsiders work, but what
was it? Part of the Altar of Kor, obviously, but the Outsiders telecommunicators had never used such extensive machinery.
Yet it did look familiar. He tried to remember the different types of
Outsiders machinery which had been found and partially reconstructed by the
advancing Earthmen in the centuries
past There weren't many . .
.
Then, suddenly, he had
it, and
it was
so simple
that he was surprised he hadn't
thought of it before.
"This is Kor," he said. "It's
not a
communicator—it's a computer. An Outsiders
computer."
NINE
Maha's
frown deepened; she
looked around them in the
dimness, her eyes taking
in the
complexity and extent of the
circuitry. It faded into
the darkness
behind them; lines ran into the
walls and floor.
"They built
their computers in the grand
manner, didn't they?" she said softly.
"I've seen fragments of them before,"
Rynason said. "This
is a big one—no telling how
much area the total complex
takes up. One thing's
certain, though: it's no ordinary
computer of theirs. Not for
plain math-work, nor even for
specialized computations, like the one
on Rigel II—that was apparently used for astrogation, but
it wasn't
half the size of this. And
navigation between stars, even with
the kind
of drive they must have had,
is nO simple-problem."
"The Hirlaji think it's a
god," she said.
"That raised another problem,"
Rynason mused. "The
Outsiders built it, and
must have left it here
when they pulled back to wherever
they were going ... if
they ever left the planet. But
the Hirlaji use it, and they
communicate with it verbally.
The Hirlaji are apparently responsible for keeping it protected since
then. But why should the
Hirlaji be able
to use
it?"
"Unless they're
the Outsiders
after all?^ said
Mara.
Rynason frowned.
"No, I'm still not convinced
of that.
The clue seems to be that
they communicate verbally with it—
they must have been
using it since before they
developed telepathy."
"Couldn't there
have been direct contact between
the Hirlaji and the Outsiders back
when the Hirlaji
were just evolving out of
the beast
stage?"
"There must have been," said Rynason. "The Temple rituals are conducted in an
even older form of their
language than most remembered—a proto-language that was kept alive
only by the priest caste,
because the machine had been set
to respond
to that
language."
"But aren't primitive languages
usually composed of simple, basic
words and concepts? How well
could they communicate in such
a language?"
"Not very well," Rynason
said. "Which would explain why
the machine seemed to make mistakes—clumsiness of language. So the
Outsiders, maybe, left the machine
when they pulled out, but they
set it
to respond
to the
Hirlaji language because
our horsefaced friends were beginning to
build a civilization of their own and
the Outsiders
thought they'd leave them
some guidance . . ."
He stopped
for a
moment, remembering that first
linkage with Horng, and Tebron's memories. "The
Hirlaji called them
the Old
Ones," he said.
"And that order to Tebron . .
. about
the other
race that they would meet someday.
That was based on Outsiders
observations."
"I wonder when the^,
Outsiders were on Earth," Rynason Said. "Sometime
after we'd started our own
rise, certainly. Maybe in ancient Mesopotamia, or India.
Or later, during
the Renaissance?"
"The time doesn't matter, does it?"
Mara said. "They touched
down on Earth, took note
of us,
and left.
Somehow they thought we were going
to develop
more rapidly than we did."
"Probably before
the Dark
Ages," Rynason said. "Maybe they didn't see
that thousand-year setback coming .
. ."
He stopped, and stood up in
the low
passageway among the ancient circuitry. "So here we are,
second-guessing the Outsiders.
And outside,
their proteges have disintegrators probably left
by the
Outsiders, and they're just waiting
for us
to try to get out."
"Our new-found knowledge isn't
doing us much good, is
it?" she said.
He shook
his head
slowly. "When I was still
on the
secondary senseteach units I met Rene
Malhomme for the
first time. My father worked the
spacers, so I don't even
remember what planet this was
on. But
I remember
the night
I first
saw Rene—he was speaking
from the top of a
blue-lumber pile, shouting about
the corporations
that were moving in. He
was getting all worked
up about
something, and several people in the
crowd were shouting back at
him; I stopped to watch. All
of a
sudden six or seven men
moved in from somewhere and dragged
him down
from where he was standing. There was a fight—people were thrown all around. I hid till it
was over.
"When the crowd finally cleared, there
was -Rene.
His clothes were torn, but he
wasn't hurt. Every one of
the men
who had' attacked him
had to
be carried
away; I think one of them
was dead.
Rene stood there laughing; then
he saw
me hidden in the
darkness and he took me
home. He told me that when
he'd been younger he'd worked
his way
all the
way in to Earth, and studied
some of the cultures there.
He'd learned karate, which was an
ancient Japanese way of fighting."
Rynason took
a deep
breath. "He said everything a"person learns will
be useful
someday. And I believed him."
"A nice parable," Mara said- "We
could use him against the Hirlaji, though."
Rynason was
silent, thinking. If they could
only catch the aliens off guard .
. but of course they couldn't,
now. He let his eyes wander
aimlessly along the circuitry surrounding
them. Tell me, old
Kor, what do we do
now?
After a moment his eyes narrowed;
he reached
up and
traced a connection with his fingers, back
to the
front, toward the altar. It
led direcdy to ..
. the speaker!
The voice of Kor.
WARLORD OF EOR
And
if he could interrupt that connection, put his own voice through the speaker,
out through the altar ...
"Mara,
we're going out. I've found my own brand of karate for our friends out
there."
He
helped her to her feet. She moved somewhat painfully, her broken left arm
hanging stiffly at her side, but she made no protest.
"We've
got to be fast," he said. T don't know how well
this will work—it depends on how much they trust their day-footed god
today." Quickly, he outlined his plan. Mara listened silently and nodded.
Then
he set to work. It was largely guesswork, following those intricate alien
connections, but Rynason had seen this part of such
machines before. He found the penultimate point at which the impulses from the
brain were translated into sound and broadcast through the speaker. He
disconnected this, his torn fingers working awkwardly on the delicate linkages.
"Ready!*"
Mara
was just inside the narrow passage behind the altar. She nodded quickly.
Rynason
twisted himself so that he could speak directly into the input of the speaker.
He raised his voice to approximate the thin, high sounds of the Hirlaji language.
Remain motionless. Remain motionless. Remain
motionless.
The
command burst out upon the altar room of the Temple, shattering the silence.
The Hirlaji turned in surprise to the altar—and stood
still.
Remain motionless. Remain motionless.
It
was the phrase he had heard the machine use so often to Tebron,
king priest leader of all Hirlaj. It had meant something
else then, but the proto-language of the Hirlaji had
no precise meanings; given by itself, it seemed to mean precisely what it said.
"All
right, let's go out!" Rynason said, and the two
of them broke from behind the altar. The Hirlaji
stood completely still; several of those that Rynason
had dropped with his stunner had recovered consciousness,,
but they made no move either. Rynason and the girl
ran right through the quiet aliens; only a few of them turned shadowed eyes to
look at them as they passed. They made the outside collonade
in safety, and paused there.
"They
may see through this in a minute," Rynason said.
"Don't wait for me—get out of the city!"
"You're not
coming?"
"I won't be too far
behind. Get going!"
She
hesitated only a moment, then hurried down the broad
levels of the Temple steps. Rynason watched her to
the bottom, then turned and re-entered the altar room.
Rynason went quickly among them, taking their
weapons. Most of them made no effort to stop him, but a few tightened their
grips on the disintegrators and he had to pry those thick fingers from the
weapons, cursing to himself. How long, would they wait?
There were fourteen of the disintegrators.
They were large and heavy; he couldn't hold them all at once. He dumped five of
them outside the altar room and returned to disarm the rest of the aliens.
Sweat formed beads on his forehead, but he moved without hesitation.
Another
of the Hirlaji tightened his grip when Rynason began to take the weapon from him. He looked up,
and saw the quiet eyes of Horng resting on him. The leathery grey wrinkles
which surrounded those eyes quivered slightly, but otherwise he made no
movement. Rynason dropped his gaze from that contact
and wrested the weapon away.
As
he started to move on to the next, Horng silently dipped his massive head to
one side. Rynason felt a chill go down his back.
In a few more minutes he had disarmed them
all. He set the last three disintegrators on the stone floor of the collonade —and a movement in the distance caught his eye.
It was on the south wall of the city; two men stood for a moment silhouetted
against the Flat, then disappeared into the shadows. In a moment, another man
appeared, and he too dropped inside the wall
So Manning
had already
sent the men in. The
moh was unleashed.
Rynason hesitated
for a
moment, then turned
and went
quickly back into the
altar room. Mara's radio was
there; he lifted it by its
strap and took it with
him out
to the
collonade.
He could see the Earthmen moving
through the streets now, darting from
wall to wall in the
gathering darkness of evening. In a
short time it would be
full night—and Rynason knew that
these men would like nothing
better than to attack in the
dark.
He warmed
the radio
and opened
the transmitter.
"Manning, call
off your
dogs. I've disarmed the Hirlaji."
The radio
spat static at bun, and
for several
seconds he -thought his signal hadn't
even been picked up. But
at last
there was a reply:
"Then get
out of
the Temple.
It's too late to stop
this."
"Manning!"
"I said
get clear.
You've done all you can
there."
"Damn it,
there's no need for any
fighting!"
Manning's voice sounded cold even in
the faint
reception of the hand-radio. "That's for me to decide.
I'm running
this show, remember."
"You're running
a massacre!"
Rynason shouted.
"Call it what you like. Mara
says they weren't so docile
when you broke in."
Rynason's mind
raced; he had to stall
for time.
If he
could get Manning to stop those
men until
they cooled down . .
.
"Manning, there's
no need
for this!
Didn't she tell you that the
altar is just a computer?
These people haven't had anything to do with the
Outsiders since before they can
remember!"
The radio carried the faint sound
of Manning's
chuckle. "So now they're
people to you, Lee? Or
are you
one of
them now?"
"What the
hell are you talking about?"
"Lee, my boy, you're sounding like
an old
horsefaced nursemaid. You linked minds with
them, and you say you
were practically a Hirlaji yourself when you went
into that
linkage. Well, I'm not so sure you ever came out of it. You're still one of theml"
"Is
that the only reason you can think of that I might have for wanting to prevent
a massacre?" Rynason said icily.
"If
they tried to revolt once, they'll try it again," Manning said.
"Well crush them now."
*Tou think that will impress the
Council? Slaughtering the only intelligent race we've found?"
"I'm not playing to the Council!"
Manning snapped. "I've got these men following me, and 111 listen to what they want!"
Rynason stared at the microphone for a moment.
"Are you sure you aren't afraid of your own mob?" he said. ,
"We're coming in, Lee. Get out of there or well cut you down too."
"Manning!"
"I'm switching off."
"Not
quite yet. There's
one more thing, and you'd better hear this onel"
"Make
it fast," Manning said. His voice sounded uninterested.
"If
any of your boys try to come in, I'll stop them myself. I've got the
disintegrators, and I'll use them."
There
was silence from the radio, save for the static. It lasted for long seconds.
Then:
"It's
your funeral." There was a faint
click as Manning switched off.
Rynason stared angrily at the radioset
for a moment, then left it lying at the top of the
steps and went back inside. The Hirlaji stood
motionlessly in dimness; it took awhile for Ryna-son's
eyes to adjust to it. He found the interpreter that Mara had left and quickly
hooked it up to Horng. The alien's eyes, moving heavily in their sockets,
watched him as he connected the wires.
When
everything was ready Rynason lifted the interpreter's
mike. "The Earthmen are going to attack you," he said. "I want
to help you fight them off."
There was
no reaction
from the alien; only those
quiet eyes resting on him like
the shadows
of the
entire past.
"Can you still believe that Kor
is a
god? That's only a machine—I spoke through it myself,
minutes agol Don't you realize that?"
After a moment Horng's
eyes slowly closed and opened
in acknowledgement. KOR WAS
GOD KNOWLEDGE.
THE OLD ONES DIED BEFORE TIME,
AND PASSED
INTO KOR. NOW KOR IS DEAD.
"And all
of you
will be dead tool" Rynason said.
The huge alien sat unmoving. His
eyes turned away from Rynason.
"You've got
to fight
theml" Rynason said. But he could see
that it was useless. Horng
had made
no reply, but Rynason
knew what was in his
thoughts now. THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
TEN
Wearily, Rynason switched
off the
interpreter, leaving the wires still connected
to the
alien. He walked through the
faintly echoing, dust-filled temple and stepped out
onto the collonade around it. It was
almost dark now; the deep
blue of the Hirlaj
sky had
turned almost black and the
pinpoint lights of the
stars broke through. The wind
was rising
from the Flat; it caught his
hair and whipped it roughly
around his head. He looked up
at the
emerging stars, remembering the day when
Horng had suddenly, inexplicably stood and walked to the
base of a broken staircase.
He had
looked up those stairs, past where
they had broken and fallen,
past the shattered roof, to the
sky. The Hirlaji
had never
reached the stars, but they might
have. It had taken a
god, or a
jumbled legacy from an
older, greater race, to forestall
them. And now all they had
was the
dust and the wind.
Rynason could
hear the rising moan of
that wind gathering itself around
him, building to a wailing
planet-dirge among the columns of the Temple. And inside,
the Hirlaji were dying. The knives and bludgeons of
the Earth mob outside would only complete the job; the Hirlaji
were too tired to live. They dreamed dimly under the shadowed foreheads . . . dreamed
of the past. A»d sometimes, perhaps, of the stars.
Behind
the altar, the huge and intricate mass of alien circuits glowed
, and clicked and pulsated . . slowly; seemingly
at random, but steadily. The brain must be eslf-per-petuating to have lasted this long . . . feeding its energy
cells from some power-source Rynason could only guess
at, and repairing its time-wom linkages when
necessary. In its memory banks was stored the science of the race which had
preceded even the ancient Hirlaji. The Outsiders had
sprung up when this planet was young, had fought their way to the stars and
galaxies, and eventually, when aeons of time pressed
down, had pulled in their outposts and fallen back to this world. And they had
died here, on this world, falling to dust which was ground under by the grey
race which had followed them to dominance. "Before time," Horng had
said; that must have meant before the Hirlaji had
developed telepathy, before the period, covered by the race-memory.
But
the Outsiders were still here, alive in that huge alien brain . . . the
science, the knowledge, the strange arts of a race which had conquered the. stars while men still wondered about the magic of lightning
and fire. A science was encapsuled here which could
speak of war and curiosity as discontent, but could say nothing definite of
contentment. An incomplete science? A
merely alien science? Rynason didn't know.
And
the Hirlaji . . . Twenty-six of their race remained,
dreaming under heavy domes through which the stars shone at night and
silhouetted the worn edges of broken stone. Twenty-Six grey, hopeless beings who had not even been
waiting. And the Earthmen had come.
For
a moment Rynason, wondered if the Hirlaji
did not perhaps carry a message for the Earthmen too: that decadence was the
price of peace, death the inevitable end of contentment. The
Hirlaji had stilled
themselves, back
in the
grey past . .
. had
taken their measured quiet and
contentment for thousands of years,
the searching
drives of their race dying within
them. And this was their
end. THERE IS NO PURPOSE.
Rynason shook
himself, and felt thé cold wind
cut through
his clothing; it reawakened
him. Stooping, he gathered up
several of the disintegrators
and brought
them with him to the head
of the
massive stairs up which the
attackers must come. He crouched beside
those stairs, watching for movement
below. But he couldn't see
anything.
Something about the Hirlaji
still bothered him; kneeling in the gathering darkness he
finally isolated it in his
mind. It was their hoplessness, the
numbness that had crept over
them through the centuries.
No purpose?
But they
had lived
in peace for thousands
of years.
No, their
death was not merely one of
decadence ... it was suffocation.
They had not chosen peace; it
had been
thrust upon them. The Hirlaji had been
at the
height of their power, their
growth still gathering momentum .
. and they had to stifle
it. The end in
view didn't really matter: it
had not
been what they would have chosen.
And, having had peace forced
upon them before they
had been
ready for it, they had
been unable to enjoy it; and
the stifling
of scientific
curiosity that had been necessary to
complete the suppression of the
war-instinct had left the Hirlaji with nothing.
But it had all been so
unnecessary, Rynason thought. The ancient Outsiders brain,
computing from insufficient evidence \
probably gathered during a
brief touchdown on Earth, had undoubtedly been able to give
only a tentative appraisal of
the situation. But the
proto-Hirlaji
language was not constructed to accommodate if s
and maybe's,
and the
judgments of the brain were taken
as law
by the
Hirlaji.
Now the
Earthmen for whom this race
had deadened
itself into near-extinction would complete
the job .
because the Hirlaji had learned their mistake
far too
late. 'Rynason shook bis head; there was a sickness in his stomach, a gnawing" anger at the ways of history. It was capricious, cruel, senseless. It played jokes
spanning miUenia.
Suddenly
there were sounds on the stairs below him.
Ry-nason's head jerked up and he saw five of the
Earthmen climbing the stairs, moving as quickly as they could from level to
level, crouching momentarily at each beneath the cover of the steps. He raised one of the
disintegrators, feeling the
rage building up within him.
There
was a humming sound by his ear; the beam of one
of thé stunners passed by him, touching the rock
wall. The wall vibrated at the touch, but the range was too great for the beam
to have done it any damage. They were close enough, though to stun Rynason if they hit him. '
He
dropped flat, looking for the man who had fired. In a moment he found him; a small, lean man
slipped almost silently over the edge of one of the step-levels and rolled
quickly to cover beneath the next. He had got further than Rynason
had realized; only three levels separated them now. He could see, from this
distance in the near-dark, the cruel lines of the man's face. It was a harsh, dirty face, with wrinkles like seams; the man's eyes were harsh
slits. Rynason had seen teo many faces like that here on the
Edge; this was a man with a bitter hatred, looking for the chance to -unleash it upon
anyone who got in his way. And the enjoyment which Rynason
saw gleaming in the man's eyes chilled him momentarily.
In that moment the man leaped to the next
level, sending off a beam which struck the wall two feet from Rynason; he felt the stinging vibration against his body as he lay flat. Slowly he sighted the disintegrator at the
top of the level under
which the man had crouched for cover, and Waited for his next leap. Within him he felt only a bitter cold which matched the wind
whipping above him.
Again
the man moved—but he had crept
to the side of the stairs
before he leaped, and Rynason's shot bit into
the stone beside him as he rolled to safety. Now only one level separated them.
Further down the stairs, Rynason saw the
others moving up behind
the smaller
man. Still more were moving
out from
the other buildings and
darting to the stairs. But
he had
no time to hold them back.
there was silence, except for the
wind.
And the man leaped, firing once,
twice. The second beam took Rynason in the left wrist
and spun
him off-balance
for a
moment. But he was
already firing in return, rolling
to one
side. His third shot
took the man's right shoulder
off, and bit into his neck.
The man
staggered forward two steps, trying
to raise
his stunner
again, but suddenly it clattered
to the floor and he crumpled
on top
of it.
A pool
of blood
spread around him.
Rynason moved
back to the cover of
the side
wall, and watched for the other
men. The first one had
got too
near; Rynason
hadn't realized how easily they
could approach in this near-darkness. He felt the numbness
of the
stunnerbeam spreading nearly to his shoulder;
his left
arm was
useless. Cursing, he trained
the disintegrator
along the line of the
steps and fired.
The disintegrator cut through
the stone
as though
it were
putty, for a range
of twenty
feet. Rynason played the beam back and
forth along the steps, cutting
them down to a smooth ramp
which the attackers would have
to climb
before they could get to
him.
One of them tried to leap
the last
few levels
before Rynason Could cut them, but he sliced the
man in
two through
the chest. The separate
parts of the man's body
fell and rolled back to the
untouched levels below. He had
not had
time to utter even
a cry
of pain.
For a time, now, there was
complete silence in the wind.
Rynason could
see the
inert legs of the last
attacker projecting out over the
edge of the third level
down, and undoubtedly the others
saw them
too. They were hesitating now, unsure of themselves. Rynason stayed pressed to the
stone floor, waiting. The
wind whipped in a rising
moan through the upper reaches of
the building.
Another of
the men
slipped over the edge of
the massive
Stairs, hugging the deeper
darkness at the side of
the stairwall, and slowly inched
his way
up the
newly-flattened ramp. Rynason watched him
coldly, through a grey haze
of fury which was yet tinged
with despair. What use was all this, the killing, the
blood and sweat and pain?
It disgusted
him—yet by its perverse
senselessness it angered him too.
He cut a swathe
through the crawling man, through
head and neck and back. A
gory shell-like hulk slid back
to the
foot of the ramp.
And abruptly
the remaining
men broke
and ran.
One of
them rose and stumbled
down the steep levels of
the stairs,
heedless of his exposure;
with a shock, Rynason. that that it was Rene
Malhomme. Another
followed . . . and
another. There were almost
a dozen
of them
on the
stairs; they all broke and ran.
Rynason sent one
beam after them, biting a
depression into the rock
wall beside them, Then they were
gone.
Rynason moved
back from the head of
the stairs
and leaned wearily against the stone.
His left
arm was
beginning to tingle with returning circulation
now; he rubbed it absently
with his good hand and
wondered if they would try
the sheer walls on
the" other side of the
.Temple. He had scaled one of
these ancient walls, but would
they try itP
Certainly they stood
little chance coming up the
stairs, unless they gathered for a
concerted rush. And who would
lead such a suicidal attack? These
men were
vicious, but they valued iheir lives too. \
Yet he couldn't watch the black
walls. Leaving the stairway unguarded
would be the most dangerous
course of all.
In a few minutes the hand-radio,
forgotten on the stone floor behind him, flashed an
intermittent light which caught his eye in the dusk.
That would be fanning.
Rynason slid
the radio
over to the head of
the stairs
and switched on there, keeping an
eye on
the stairway.
"Lee, do you hear
me?" "I hear you."
His voice
was low
and bitter.
"I'm coming in to
talk. Hold your God damned
fire." "Why should I?"
said Ryrtason.
"Because I'm bringing Mara with me. It's
too bad
you don't trust me, Lee, but
if that's
the way
you want
it I
won't trust you either."
"That's a good idea,"
he said,
and switched
off.
Almost immediately he saw
them come out from behind
the cover of a
fallen wall across the dusty
street. Mara walked in front of
Manning; her head was high,
her face
almost expressionless. The cold wind
threw dust against their legs as they crossed the
open space to the base
of the
steps.
Rynason stood
motionless, watching them come up.
Manning still had his two
stunners, but they were in
their holsters. He kept behind the
girl all the way, pausing
before pushing her up the open
ramp at the top, then
moving even more closely behind her.
Rynason stood with
the disintegrator
hanging loosely in one
hand at his side.
On the collonade Manning gripped the girl
by her
undamaged arm. He nodded to
one of
the doorways
into the temple, and Rynason preceded him
inside.
As they entered Manning lit a
bandlight and set
it on
the floor. The room was thrown
into stark relief, the shadows
of the motionless aliens striking the
walls and ceiling with an
almost physical harshness. Manning paused
a moment
to look
at the Hirlaji, and at the
altar across the room.
"We can
hear each other in here,"
he said
at last.
"What do you want?" said Rynason. There was cool
hatred in his'voice, and the knife-scar
on his
forehead was a dark snake-line in the hard glare
of the
handlight.
Manning shrugged,
a bit
too quickly.
He was
nervous. "I want you out of
here, Lee, and Fm not
accepting any argument this time."
Rynason looked
at Mara,
standing helplessly in the older
man's grip. He glanced
down at the disintegrator in his hand.
Manning drew one of his stunners
quickly, and trained it at Rynason's face. "I said no
arguments. Put the weapon down, Lee."
Rynason couldn't
risk a shot at the
man, with Mara in front of
him. He carefully laid the
disintegrator on the floor. "SKde it over here."
Rynason kicked
it across
the floor.
Manning bent and picked it up, returned the stunner to its
holster and held the disintegrator on him.
"That's
better. Now we can avoid arguments—right, Lee? You've always like peaceful
settlements, haven't you?"
Rynason glared at him, but didn't say anything. He
walked slowly into the center of the room, among the Hirlaji.
They paid no attention.''
"Lee, he's going to. kill theml" Mara burst out.
Rynason was standing now next to the interpreter.
The handlight which Manning had set on the floor
across the room was- trained upwards, and the interpreter was ■ still in
the darkness. He lowered his head as if in thought and switched on the machine
with his foot.
"Is
that true, Manning? Are you going to kill them?" His voice was loud and it
echoed from the walls.
T
can't trust them," Manning said, his voice automatically growing louder in
response to Ryhason's own. He stepped forward,
pushing Mara in front of him. "They're not human, Lee—you keep forgetting
that, for some reason. Think of it as clearing the area of hostile native
animal life—that comes under the duties of a governor, now doesn't it?"
"And what about the men outside? Did you put it that way to them?"
"They
do what I sayj" Manning snapped. "They
don't give a damn who they kill. There's going to be
fighting here whether it's against the Hirlaji or
between the townsmen, As governor, I'd rather they
took it all out on the horses here. Domestic tranquillity,
shall we say?" He was smiling now; he had everything in control.
"So
that's your purpose?" Rynason said. There was
anger in his voice, feigned or real—perhaps both. But his voice rose still
higher. "Is butchery your only goal in life, Manning?"
Manning stepped toward him again, his eyes
narrowing. "Butchery? It's better than no purpose
at all, Leel It'll get me
off of these damned outworlds eventually, if I'm a
good enough butcher. And I mean to be, Lee . . . I
mean to be."
Rynason turned his back on the man in contempt, and
walked past Horng to the base of the ancient altar. He looked up at the Eye of Kor,
dim now when not in use. He turned.
"Is
it better, Manning?" he shouted. "Does it give you a right to live,
while you slaughter the Hirlaji?"
Manning
cursed under his breath, and took a quick step toward Rynason;
his hard, black shadow leaped up the wall.
"Yest
It gives me any right I can
takel"
It
happened quickly. Manning was now beside the massive figure of the alien,
Horng; in his anger he had loosened his grip on Mara. He raised the
disintegrator toward Rynason.
And Horng's
huge fish smashed it from his hand.
Manning
never knew what bit him. Before he had even realized that the disintegrator was
gone Horng bad him. One heavy hand circled his throat; the other gripped his
shoulder. The alien lifted him viciously and broke him like a stick; Rynason could almost hear the man's neck break, so final
was that twist of the alien's hands.
Horng
lifted the lifeless body above his head and hurled it to the floor with such
force that the man's head was stoved in and his body
lay twisted and motionless where it fell.
Afterwards
there was silence in the room, save for the distant sound of the wind against
the building outside. Horng .stood looking down at the broken body at his feet,
his expression as unfathomable as it had ever been. Mara stared in shocked
silence at the alien.
Rynason walked slowly to the mike lying beside the
interpreter. He raised it.
"You can move quickly, old leather, when
there's a reason for it," he said.
Horng turned his head to him and silently
dipped it to one side.
Rynason lifted the broken form of Manning's body and
carried it out to the top of the steps leading down from the temple. Mara went
with him, carrying the handlight; it fell harshly On
Manning's crushed features as Rynason waited atop the
huge, steep stairway. The wind
tore at his hair, whipping it wildly around his
head . .
but Manning's head
was caked with blood.
In a
moment, the men from the
town came out from cover; they
stood at the base of
the steps,
indecisive.
They too
were waiting for something.
Rynason hefted
the body
up over
one shoulder
and drew
a disintegrator with the
hand he had freed. Slowly,
then, he descended the steps.
When he had neared the bottom
the circle
of men
fell back. They were uneasy and
sullen . . . but
they had seen the power of
the disintegrator,
and now
they saw Manning's crushed body.
Rynason bent
and dropped
the body
to the
ground. He looked up coldly at
the ring
of faces
and said,
"One of the Hirlaji
did that
with his hands. That's all—just
his hands."
For a moment everyone was still
. .
. and
then one of the men broke
from the crowd, snarling, with
a heavy
knife in his hand. He stopped
just outside the white circle
of the
handlight, the
knife extended before him. Rynason raised the disintegrator
and trained
it on
him, his face frozen into
a cold mask.
The man
stood in indecision.
And from the crowd behind him
another figure stepped forward.
It was
Malhomme, and
his lips
were drawn back in disgust. He
struck with an open hand,
the side
of his
palm catching the man's neck beneath
his ear.
The man
fell sprawling to the ground,
and lay
still.
Malhomme looked
at him
for a
moment, then he turned to the
men behind
him. "That's enough!"
he shouted.
"Enough!" Angrily, he
looked down at the crumpled
form of Manning's body. "Bury him!" he said.
There was still no movement from
the men;
Malhomme grabbed two
of them
roughly and shoved them out
of the
crowd. They hesitated, looking quickly from Malhomme to the disintegrator in Rynason s hand, then bent to
pick up the body,
Its a;
measure of man's eternal mercy,"
said Malhomme acidly, "that at least
we bury
each other." He stared at
the men in the mob, and
the fury
in his
eyes broke them at last.
Muttering, shrugging, shaking their
heads, they dispersed, going off in
two and threes to take cover from
the wind-driven
sand.
Malhomme turned
to Rynason and Mara, his face
relaxing at last. The hard
lines around his mouth softened
into a rueful smile as he
put his
arm around
Rynason's shoulder. "We can all take shelter
in the
buildings here for the night.
You could use some
rest, Lee Rynason—you look
like hell. And maybe I can
put a'
temporary splint on your arm,
woman."
They found a nearby building where
the roof
"had long ago fallen in, but
the walls
were still standing. While Malhomme ministered to Mara he
did not
stop talking for a moment;
Rynason couldn't tell
whether he was trying to
keep the girl's mind off the
pain or whether he was
simply unwinding his emotions.
"You know, I've preached at these
men for
so many
years I've got callouses in
my throat.
And one
of these
days maybe they'll know what I'm
talking about, so that I
won't have to shout." He shrugged.
"Well, it would be a
dull world, where I didn't have
a good
excuse to shout. Sometimes you
might ask your alien friends up
there, Lee . . .
what did they get out of
choosing peace?"
"They didn't
choose it," said Rynason.
Malhomme grimaced.
"I wonder if anybody, anywhere,
ever will. Maybe the
Outsiders did, but they're not
around to tell us about it.
It's an intriguing question to
think about, if you don't have
anything to drink . .
. what
do you
do, when there's nothing more to
fight against, or even forP"
He straightened up; the
splint on Mara's arm was
set now.
He settled her back
in a
drift of sand as comfortably as possible.
"I've got another question,"
Rynason said. "What
were you doing among those men
who came
at me
on the
steps earlier?"
Malhomme's face
broke into a wide grin.
"That was a suicidal rush on you, Lee. A damned stupid
tactic ... a rush like that is only as strong as the weakest coward in it. All it
takes is one man to break and run, and everybody else will run too. So it was
easy for me to break it up."
Rynason
couldn't help chuckling at that; and once he had started, the tension that had
gripped him for the past several hours found release in a full,
stomach-shaking laugh.
"Rene Malhomme,"
he gasped, "that's the kind of leadership this planet needs!"
Mara smiled up from where she lay. "You
know," she said, "now that Manning is dead they'll have to find someone
else to be governor . . ."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Malhomme.
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