The Best Of Lester Del Rey Part 17

"He's there, and the young learn from him still. We had to find out how to build the time-negation drive from him since you came." Skora found another beer, remembering to open this one. He was mellowing from the liquor. "Derek, I don't know. He's dead and he's deteriorating-slowly, but the changes are there. We've always been in danger of becoming superst.i.tiously dependent on him without realizing how much so we are. But now, some of us are worried. As he deteriorates, he may warp our children. Sometimes I've thought of digging him up and destroying him."

"Why don't you?" Derek suggested softly.

"I've thought of it. As senior priest for Vanir, I could. But it's hard . . .

emotional attachment, I suppose. And fear of what would happen."

Derek frowned. "Suppose I were to destroy him?"

The old priest looked up, studying him, resolution coming slowly. "You could!Of course, you could! Derek, one more beer! Then go home. And be back here early. We'll do it!"

Skora's hands were trembling as he reached for the bottles.

6.

Siryl would have none of it.

"Nonsense," she told them after she had heard the story, along with Kayel.

"Primitive cultures don't breed agnostics. Skora was just drunk or testing you! Probably saving face by trying not to act superst.i.tious. Derek, if you break any more taboos-"

"They aren't primitive! d.a.m.n it, Siryl, if you can't get that much through your pathological skull, go outside and watch it rain for a while!"

She stiffened and then cloaked herself in professional calm. "A culture," she recited, almost by rote, "observed in situ may have certain apparently inconsistent developments, usually as a result of some isolated individual genius or accidental discovery. These, however, do not violate the fundamental att.i.tudes and emphases, the cultural gestalt, but are inevitably a.s.similated emotionally. That means, Derek, that they can have a machine left over from pre-Collapse days that makes miracles-but they still think it's magic. If you'll drop your persecution complex and listen to-"

He grimaced, and then grinned slowly. "My hairy-chested persecution complex, you undefiled prude!"

She drew in her breath harshly and marched out of the room, white to her lips.

Kayel looked sick, starting after her and turning back. "You shouldn't have done that, Derek!" he protested. He sighed, shook his head, and sat down slowly, reaching for his pipe. "I wonder what we'll find-and whether Skora will do it?"

Derek had his own doubts, but they found the old man ready the next morning, with Wolm behind him, carrying a supply of amulets and two battery torches he must have pulled from the Sepelora. The priest looked as if he had been unable to sleep, and the porch where the school was usually held was locked up tightly.

He saluted them, his eyes still troubled but with no doubt in his voice. "The place is on the other side of Vanir, deep in a cave our ancestors built. He expected the explosion toward the last and had the one of them who could use his power dig two such caves-one for him, one for us. He had a machine . . . We almost starved and died of asphyxiation, until that one who could use the power found from G.o.d how to bring food and keep fresh air coming from another world."

He sighed, and his eyes ran across the landscape and the growing fields. "When we came out years later, the world was a cinder, and G.o.d had to teach us to restore it and to farm it. At first, we thought of moving to another world.

Even the air here had to be brought in. But we stayed near G.o.d. Well, let's go!"

There was an abrupt, sickening s.h.i.+ft of scenery and they were standing at the base of a mountain that stretched up as one of a huge chain, barren and forbidding. Only a few stunted plants existed there, and the sun was purpling the sky in the west. Ahead of them was a cliff that stretched up nearly half a mile, and there were two rubble-filled holes in it, near them.

The priest motioned to one of them, and Wolm moved ahead. He had what seemed to be a huge umbrella without covering. He pointed the ribs toward the fallen rocks, twisting it slowly and feeling the swiveled handle of clay. He came to the stones and continued walking. The rock seemed to flow away from the device, compacting itself against the walls of the older pa.s.sage that was there.

"This is the way he taught Moskez, the only one of us who could learn the power," Skora explained. "G.o.d came across s.p.a.ce from Terra to study us withother scientists. When the enemy began exploding suns, he stole us to help him, taking all .the supplies he could carry. We built this cave for him, and the one beyond for ourselves. Fortunately, the sun's explosion was a weak one."

He was worried, but oddly determined. They were moving downward and forward.

Then they hit a clear pa.s.sage that wound down and down. It must have taken a great depth to protect them from the solar blowup. Ot^er peonle had tried it, without this digging device, and had failed.

They reached a long section where the pa.s.sage was clear, and foul, air'rushed out at them. Skora reached for an amulet and cold, clear atmosphere blew in rapidly. Derek wondered why the old man didn't simply teleport them into the cave where their G.o.d lay, but decided to let the question go. It was probably only a means of delaying the accomplishment. His legs ached, and Kayel was panting, but they went steadily down.

Finally it flattened out and another five minutes of walking brought them into a partially clear chamber. There was a great radium motor on one side, whirring softly. In the center stood a huge gla.s.s case, covered with thick layers of ice from the ages of slow atmospheric seepage. Oxygen tanks were beside it and stores of food and equipment lay about, all rotted and useless now. Wolm sc.r.a.ped off the ice at a gesture from the priest, and Derek stared into the tank.

Doubled up on the floor of the case was an old man, his face hidden by one arm, his neck bent at an imnossi-ble angle. He was naked and fat, with the waxy color of frozen flesh. One hand lay near a heavy notebook and the other clutched an archaic type of heat-projecting rifle. A rock lay near the wound on the back of his neck, and another had wedged itself into the hole at the top of the case, sealing it with the layer of ice around it. From the breakage inside the case, it was obvious that he had gone mad, to wind up shooting at the ceiling above him. The cooling system must have been cut off before he revived, but it had somehow gotten turned on again during his insane frenzy.

"Suspended animation!" Kayel said. "There were accounts that it had been developed. But no details on the cooling, chemicals in the blood, the irradiation frequencies. Skora, was he a biologist or biophysicist?"

"No, he stole the parts from the place where our people were studied," the priest said. "Another man meant to use it, but G.o.d took it. And he didn't adjust it right. He wanted to wait fifty years, but it was twelve hundred before it released him. We left him because we needed him and he was preserved in this."

Wolm had drawn closer to the case, trembling. Now he bent his white face down and stared into the case. Skora stood beside the boy, indecision working on him.

"What do we do now?" Derek asked, as gently as he could.

The old man sighed. "I don't know. The enzymes of his body are bringing a slow decay, despite the cold. And things go wrong with the teaching of the young .*

. . but without him, G.o.d is gone and Vanir may have no power. If I could only be sure-"

He waited, while Derek stared at the case and its machinery. At first, he had wondered if it might not conceal the great machine that could perform the miracles he had seen. But Kayel had looked it over at once and had shaken his head. It seemed to be no more than it was supposed to be. And that left only their G.o.d-a fat, dead G.o.d who had gone insane because of his weakness and his fear.

"No!" Wolm broke. The boy's shoulders heaved. He buried his face against the case, shouting and clawing at the ice. "No! Skora, you can't. He is all we have. He's holy! Don't touch him! G.o.d will come again! I saw it. It is Ms thought! You can't-"

Skora's fingers moved .on the amulet savagely. Wolm's body snapped out ofexistence, while flakes of ice trickled down where he had been.

The priest looked sicker than before. "I sent him home," he said. "Derek, that is what our youngsters learn now. There is decay, and distinctions are going.

The old emotional superst.i.tions are stronger than later logic, and all children used to have them. Now they creep through into the minds of our young. A decaying mind and an insane one-and our children absorb that knowledge."

He sighed heavily. "And I-even I must have absorbed some of it. I can't destroy him! It's-horror! Derek, it's up to you. Do what you will. I'll wait fifteen minutes for you and keep the air pure here for you. But I can't even watch!"

He was suddenly gone, too.

Kayel swallowed thickly, his neck bobbing against tight muscles. He reached for his pipe, then stuffed it back. "But if he loses his power when the body is destroyed, he can't keep air for us or get us out?"

Derek kicked at the gla.s.s case. Kayel hesitated, and then joined him. It broke finally, and they waited while the blast of freezing air wheezed out, foul and miasmic. Derek reached for the weapon, but it was too cold to touch. He kicked it around with his foot until he could point it toward the corpse, while he found a bit of cloth he could use to cover the trigger.

Kayel knocked his arm aside before he could fire. The little man pointed toward the notebook and began hastily ripping off his s.h.i.+rt. He scooped up the book and spread it out on a low couch, ripping off the thin plastic that protected it. "We still have fourteen minutes, Derek. And this may be our only chance to find the secret."

The captain stepped back, feeling relief wash over him. He had been bracing himself to take the chance, but the excuse to delay it was welcome. If burning the body destroyed the power of G.o.d, Vanir would be just another primitive world-and they would almost certainly die before they could get out. If the power remained, there would still be the need to warn the Federation of the menace hers-and no clue on which to operate.

Kayel flipped the cover back and skimmed through a few pages as quickly as he could turn them. It was obviously written in Cla.s.sic, heavily interspersed with strange mathematics like none Derek had ever seen. From Kayel's puzzled glance, they were equally strange to him. He turned to the front again. Then he pointed. "Aevan-G.o.d is Aevan!"

The book was described on the first page grandiloquently as the diary and records of A. Evan, the discoverer of metadynamics, the only true science of all time-the full and final work, from which the notes the world had been unready for had been extracted.

The body of the book began with the man's need for people with unusually developed "ability" for his experiments, and his discovery of the border world of Vanir, where scientists had bred small groups for special abilities and were studying them.

In one of those little colleges, he had found the children he needed, and one child had proved capable of manipulating s.p.a.ce as Aevan had been sure was possible. Moskez had even been able to force a few of the other children to bridge the difficult gap and begin work on it. There were long experiments and formulae for levitation, teleportation, penetrability, and other things. It ended on a note of self-adulation for his own success, in spite of the poor material he'd had with which to work.

Derek frowned and went back carefully, looking for the missing factor. The mathematics looked good, and in time Kayel could probably figure them out. But Aevan had been unable to make them work himself. It had taken some other ability.He found it finally, in a footnote he'd skipped. It was telepathy. Aevan had known that the mental power needed was related to telepathy, and had been forced to find a group which had been bred for that. The boys on Vanir who succeeded had had more than eleven generations in which to build up such power.

Telepathy! And since the Collapse, while Vanir went on with its exclusive breed of telepaths, the rest of the worlds had had no such power-the psychologists had proved that it had been bred out of humanity, if it had ever existed. Yet without it, the mathematics would be useless. Only Vanir could have infinite power.

There the children had been forced to use it to survive. The single advanced one had somehow taught the others, and they had stolen their ideas for survival from the mind of Aevan. In suspended animation, his thoughts were nearly still, but his memories remained, and they could be tapped. Even dead, the memory cells were preserved for a time, though now they were deteriorating at last.

The amulets were only traditions to help them-they had used them as children, probably, to remember and feel the complex mathematical formulae, and the use of the tools had become so closely a.s.sociated with the power that n.o.body questioned it now.

Derek tossed the book to Kayel and reached for the trigger. Nothing visible came from the weapon, but the body of the G.o.d-or Aevan-charred and began to vanish, along with most of the wall of the case behind it. Fourteen minutes had gone by.

He began to tense as the seconds drifted by, picturing Skora standing up there without the symbol of the power he had used, uncertain of his own powers, afraid to try them! If the man couldn't work without the familiar- Abruptly, they were back at the foot of the mountain, outside the tunnel they had cleared. Skora stood there, his face strained and white and his hands shaking; but his eyes were burning with the end of more than a thousand years of slavery to a useless custom and the fear of its loss.

"It worked-the tools still have power!" His voice was hoa.r.s.e, as if he had been shouting.

Derek had one final test. He turned toward the priest, keeping his lips sealed and trying to throw the words silently out of his mind toward the other. Not the tools, Skora. They were only memory aids. All you need is the knowledge and power that you have in your own mind. You were bound to a superst.i.tion!

Skora smiled wearily, his eyes moving toward the book Kayel still held. He nodded thoughtfully. "Superst.i.tion? I suppose you're right," he admitted. "Or conditioned reflexes of thought. Until about the age of nine, it was easier for a young telepath to explore the pa.s.sive, unresisting mind of G.o.d than that of a busy adult. Eventually, it became the only way for them to learn in our culture. Now I suppose we'll have to train teachers for the children."

Kayel was staring at them, his mind busily adjusting to the new conditions.

"Telepathy!" he said, without fear, but with a growing sense of wonder, as he knitted his brows and stood silently while Skora seemed to listen. Derek wondered why his own mind wasn't curling up in horror at being read. But what difference would it make? He'd helped Vanir, but the Federation could never use the secret.

Skora sighed at last. "Sanity, new morals, many other things, Kayel. We only deceived you about our ability to read minds, and that for your own good. We were, afraid it might be too disturbing. And we're doubly grateful now. If there is anything we can do . . ."

"Send us home on the Sepelora," Derek suggested.

"The affairs of the rest of the universe are not ours, Derek," the old man answered, and he seemed genuinely sorry. "We can't risk having them brought tous by returning you. The decision of the majority went against me. Now all I can do is make you welcome here on Vanir."

Derek stared up at the sky where the Sepelora lay out of reach but ready to carry them home. He let his eyes fall again to the planet that was to be their prison. He had come to like the people and to feel more at ease among them in many ways than among his own race. But there had been hope, until now.

"All right," he said at last. "Keep your world, Skora, Live on it comfortably while the rest of the human race nearly kill themselves in another war. You'll be safe. Dredge up a few more tricks from Aevan's notes. You like being alone- most provincials do. And it won't matter in your time. But when the children of my people find mechanical ways of doing what you do with your minds-when they sweep in here with ten battles.h.i.+ps for each that your people can handle- remember that you could have joined us and saved us from the enemy that burned this planet once already. When that happens, cry for the brotherhood of men.

See what they think of a single planet that kept its secrets to itself. Oh, d.a.m.n it, send us back to Lari's and let us alone!"

Skora reached for the amulet. Then he threw it away and stared at them, frowning in concentration without the help of tools. His hands clenched at his side.

They stood in Derek's bedroom.

'" ' 7.

Derek lay wearily on the bed while Kayel's low voice went on explaining things to Siryl. The woman had resented their going off without her, even though she had wanted no part of the trip. But now her hurt scorn had cooled down to an unbelieving interest. In a way, the captain thought, she had been right all along. But she didn't seem to be enjoying it. He started to turn over.

Siryl screamed thinly. By the time he could look, she was throwing Aevan's notebook away and whimpering. "No!" Her voice was low now, but rising slowly toward hysteria as Derek got off the bed. "No. No! It can't be telepathy!"

"It is," Derek a.s.sured her. "I tested it. So did Kayel."

Her face contorted, and she swung toward him, groping for support. She found his shoulder and buried her face in it, clinging to him, her nails digging into his back as she strained closer. "Take me away! Derek, take me away. I can't stand having them read my mind-every thought I ever had, every wish. . .

. Derek!"

He reached up to disentangle the hands that were trying to dig through his backbone. "Siryl-" he began.

She flung herself from him and groped toward the door. But Kayel was there, his tortured face sympathetic. The little man caught her, and she dragged herself against him. He drew her closer while she sobbed, standing the pain of her hysteria as if he were being -knighted.

"I'll protect you, Siryl. Some way I'll protect you. They aren't going to read your mind. I won't let them." He was scowling furiously with some effort as he tried to comfort her. His eyes turned toward Derek. "Maybe if they know about their G.o.d now, they're upset! Maybe they won't think too well. Get Lari, Derek-she's not very suspicious, I hope. And don't think about anything except that Siryl's sick."

The woman had whimpered at the mention of Lari's name. Kayel drew her down beside him, rubbing her hair gently. "There, there, baby. n.o.body is going to read your mind now."

Derek found Lari in the kitchen, naturally, and brought her back with him. She was wearing her big ap.r.o.n with the amulet pockets, and moved ahead of him with the bowl in her hands clattering against one of them while she went on stirring-the picture of a quiet housewife, Derek thought bitterly. With the power of a G.o.d!

"Lari," Kayel told her, "Siryl's sick. We're not just like you. We're neurotics-we have been since the Collapse. We need things you don't have whichare on the Sepelora-Ferad will need them, too. Can you send Siryl and Derek up for them? They'll know where to find the drugs."

Derek started to protest. But this was more important to the physicist than escape. He was being the s.p.a.ce knight who could slay monsters for his lady.

The captain glanced at Lari, trying to keep his thoughts down. She puzzled over it, but seemed completely unsuspicious. It must have been a hard day for her already, and her mind wasn't on the request.

"I guess so," she answered. "If I sort of pretend G.o.d is still there and use the amulet. I'll have to concentrate. You stir this till I work it." She handed the bowl to Kayel, who took it quickly, keeping the swirling bubbles in the mixture going.

Lari pulled out the amulet and clutched it firmly. She bent over it, hesitated, and looked up. "No sense in two of you going for a few drugs," she commented, and clenched her hand.

Derek found himself in the control room of the Sepelora, beside a new bank of instruments. He let out a yell of protests at the miscarriage of Kayel's plans, but his finger hit the red b.u.t.ton that was still marked FIRING PIN.

There was no way he could go back for them, nothing he could do to help. And he was still captain of the s.h.i.+p, in the service of the Federation, with a job to do.

The Sepelora came to life. There was no blanking out of the ports, but the stars began rus.h.i.+ng by at an incredible rate, while the radar checked them and threw the s.h.i.+p about to :av6id a direct hit. They were making better than a thousand light-years an hour!

Derek found the instructions beside the new panel and began setting their course for Sirius. He had no idea of how the machines worked, but that would be for experts if he got back; and it was something to aid the Federation, at least.

He could feel the breath of fear blowing down his neck as he worked frantically. Lari might not be able to handle a time-negation field. She might have to waste tune in hunting for Skora. Or perhaps none of them could work through this. Perhaps there was no way to locate him. He could be sure of nothing, except that each thousand light-years gave him a slight added reason for hope-but sure that it wasn't enough reason, even so.

He wondered about Siryl and Kayel. She might be sick at their failure, but she was probably female enough to appreciate the attempt Kayel had made more than the fact that he hadn't delivered. And she'd been rocked by telepathy enough to seek comfort where she could find it and in the strongest manner.

Then he went back to worrying, staring back in the direction of Vanir. He had no idea of how far they could reach. Maybe they could throw things farther than they could suck them in. The Waraok had been tossed two hundred thousand light-years. But the people of Vanir had gone out only a few light-years to bring supplies. Maybe he was already safe.

He began to think so as the hours drifted by. And he began to appreciate the time-negation field more as he saw the simplicity of the generators. He could already construct another set from memory, if he had to. With this, the Federation still might win.

Worry over pursuit kept him from sleeping until fatigue finally took over.

That day and the next went by. Then the next.

He went to bed with more confidence. He'd underestimated the speed of the new drive and was already half the distance back to Sirius-they should have stopped him before that, since he was now near some of the outer fringes of the Federation. He considered landing on one, but decided against it. The farther he went, the better. And the new drive should be taken directly to headquarters.

In the so-called morning, his head was aching as if the back of his skull wereabout to split, and the wqrry had returned. There was no reason for it, except the jinx that had become such a part of him. He swallowed anodynes and fought off some of the pain, but it kept coming back, as if something were bursting inside.

He made his way up to the control room, while the feeling that he had lost grew stronger and stronger inside him. He should have remembered that the anodyne was a depressant. It wouldn't do to go into a fit of depression now, while he was nearing home.