The Best of AE van Vogt Part 13

The s.p.a.ce Silkie landed and transformed to human form, then stood and waited for Cemp to do likewise.

"Nothing doing 1" said Cemp curtly. "Ask him to come out here."

O-Vedd shrugged. As a human he was short and dark. He walked off and vanished into a doorway.

Cemp waited amid a silence that was broken only by the faint hum of power from the buildings. A breeze touched thesupersensitivespy-ray extensions that he maintained in operation under all circ.u.mstances. The little wind registered through the spy mechanism but did not trigger the defense screens behind it.

It was only a breeze, after all, and he had never program-med himself to respond to such minor signals.

He was about to dismiss it from his mind, about to contemplate his re-action to the s.p.a.ce Silkies-he liked the crowd he had seen-when he thought sharply, Abreeze here!

Up went his screen. Out projected his perceptors. He had time to notice, then, that it was indeed a breeze but that it was being stirred by a blankness in the surrounding s.p.a.ce. Around Cemp, the courtyard grew hazy; then it faded.

There was no planetoid.

Cemp increased all signal sensitivity to maximum. He continued to float in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, and off to one side was the colossal white circle that was the sun. Suddenly, he felt energy drain from his body.

The sensation was of his Silkie screens going up, of his system resisting outside energy at many levels.

He thought in tense dismay,I'm in a fight. It's another attempt to kill me.

Whatever it was, it was automatic. His own perception remained cut off, and he was impelled to experience what the attacker wanted him to.

Cemp felt like a man suddenly set upon in pitch darkness. But what was appalling about it was that his senses were being held by other forces, preventing awareness ofthenature of the attack. What he saw was- Distance disappeared!

There, spread over many miles of s.p.a.ce, was a group of Silkies. Cemp saw them clearly, counted in his lightning fas.h.i.+on two hundred and eighty-eight, caught their thoughts, and recognized that these were the renegade Silkies from Earth.

Suddenly, he understood that they had been told where the Silkie planetoid was and were on their way "home".

Time was telescoped.

The entire group of Silkies was transported in what seemed an instant to within a short distance of the planetoid. Cemp could see the planetoid in the near distance-only a few miles away, twenty at the maximum.

But to him the baffling, deadly, fantastic thing was that as these marvelous events ran their course at one level of his perception, at another level the feeling remained that a determined attempt was being made to kill him.

He could see, feel, be aware of almost nothing. But throughout, the shadowy sensations continued. His energy fields were going through defensive motions. But it was all far away from his awareness, like a human dream.

Being a fully trained Silkie, Cemp watched the internal as well as the external developments with keen observation, strove instant by instant to grasp the reality, monitored incoming signals by the thousands.

He began to sense meaning and to formulate initial speculations about the nature of the physical-world pheno-menon involved. And he had the feeling of being on the verge of his first computation, when, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

The s.p.a.ce scene began to fade. Abruptly, it winked out.

He was back in the courtyard of the buildings that housed the magnetic-power complex. Coming toward him from the open doorway of the main building was O-Vedd. He was accompanied by a man who was of Cemp's general human build-over six feet and strongly muscled. His face was heavier than Cemp's, and his eyes were brown instead of gray.

As he came near, he said, "I am E-Lerd. Let's talk."

8.

"To begin with, I want to tell you the history of the Silkies," E-Lerd said.

Cemp was electrified by the statement. He had been braced fora bitterquarrel, and he could feel in himself a mult.i.tude of readjusting energy flows ... proof of the severity of the second all-out fight he had been in. And he absolutely required a complete explanation for the attacks on him.

At that moment, caught up as he was in a steely rage, nothing else could have diverted his attention. But ... the history of the Silkies! To Cemp, it was instantly the most important subject in the universe.

The Silkie planetoid, E-Lerd began, had entered the solar system from outer s.p.a.ce nearly three hundred years before. It had, in due course, been drawn into a Sol-Neptunian orbit. On its first encirclement of the Sun, Silkies visited the inner planets and found that Earth alone was inhabited.

Since they could change form, they studied the biological structure necessary to function in the two atmospheres of Earth-air and water-and set up an internal programming for that purpose.

Unfortunately, a small percentage of the human popula-tion, it was soon discovered, could tune in on the thoughts of Silkies. All those who did so in this first visit were quickly hunted down and their memories of the experience blotted out.

But because of these sensitive humans, it became neces-sary for Silkies to seem to be the product of human biologi-cal experiments. An interrelations.h.i.+p with human females was accordingly programmed into Silkies, so that the human female ovum and the male Silkie sperm would produce a Silkie who knew nothing of Silkie history.

In order to maintain this process on an automatic level, the Special People-those persons who could read Silkie minds-were maneuvered into being in charge of it.

Thereupon, all but one of the adult Silkies returned to their planetoid, which now went to the remote end of its...o...b..t. When it came again into the vicinity of Earth, more than a hundred years later, cautious visits were made.

It became apparent that several unplanned things had happened. Human biologists had experimented with the process. As a result, in the early stages, variants had been born. These had propagated their twisted traits and were continuing to do so, growing ever more numerous.

The actual consequences were: a number of true Silkies, capable of making the three-fold transformation at will; cla.s.s-B Silkies, who could transform from human to fish state, but could not become s.p.a.ce people; and a stable form, Variants!

The last two groups had largely taken to the oceans. Accordingly it was decided to leave the cla.s.s-B Silkies alone but to make an effort to inveigle Variants into gigantic s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps filled with water where they would be isolated and prevented from interbreeding.

This plan was already underway by the time the Silkie planetoid made its round of the sun and again headed out toward far Neptune.

Now they were back, and they had found an unfortunate situation. Somehow, Earth science, virtually ignored by the early visitors, had achieved a method for training the Silkie perception system.

The Earth Silkies had become a loyal-to-Earth, tight-knit, masterful group of beings, lacking only the Power.

Cemp "read" all this in E-Lerd's thought, and then, because he was amazed, he questioned him about what seemed a major omission in his story. Where had the Silkie planetoid come from?

E-Lerd showed his first impatience. "These journeys are too far," he telepathed. "They take too long.

n.o.body remembers origins. Some other star system, obviously."

"Are you serious?" Cemp was astounded. "You don't know?"

But that was the story. Pry at it as he might, it did not change. Although E-Lerd's mind remained closed except for his telepathed thoughts, O-Vedd's mind was open. In it Cemp saw the same beliefs and the same lack of information.

But why the tampering with human biology and the inter-mixing of the two breeds?

"We always do that. That's how we live-in a relations.h.i.+p with the inhabitants of a system."

"How do you know you always do that? You just told me you can't remember where you came from this time or where you were before that."

"Well ... it's obvious from the artifacts we brought along."

E-Lerd's att.i.tude dismissed the questions as being irrelevant. Cemp detected a mind phenomenon in the other that explained the att.i.tude. To s.p.a.ce Silkies, the past was unimportant. Silkiesalways did certain things, because that was the way they were mentally, emotionally, and physically constructed.

A Silkie didn't have to know from past experience. He simply had tobe what was innate in Silkies.

It was, Cemp realized, a basic explanation for much that he had observed. This was why these Silkies had never been trained scientifically. Training was an alien concept in the cosmos of the s.p.a.ce Silkies.

"You mean," he protested, incredulous, "you have no idea why you left the last system where you had this interrelation-s.h.i.+p with the race there? Why not stay forever in some sys-tem where you have located yourself?"

"Probably," said E-Lerd, "somebody got too close to the secret of the Power. That could not be permitted."

That was the reason, he continued, why Cemp and other Silkies had to come back into the fold. As Silkies, they might learn about the Power.

The discussion had naturally come around tothat urgent subject.

"What," said Cemp, "is the Power?"

E-Lerd stated formally that that was a forbidden subject.

Then I shall have to force the secret from you," said Cemp. There can be no agreement without it."

E-Lerd replied stiffly that any attempt at force would require him to use the Power as a defense.

Cemp lost patience. "After your two attempts to kill me," he telepathed in a steely rage, "I'll give you thirty seconds-"

"What attempts to kill you?" said E-Lerd, surprised.

At that precise moment, as Cemp was bracing himself to use logic of levels, there was an interruption.

An "impulse" band-a very low, slow vibration-touched one of the receptors in the forward part of his brain. Itoperated at mere multiples of the audible sound range directly on his sound-receiving system.

What was new was that the sound acted as a carrier for the accompanying thought. The result was as if a voice spoke clearly and loudly into his ears.

"You win," said the voice. "You have forced me. I shall talk to you myself-bypa.s.sing my unknowing servants."

9.

Cemp identified the incoming thought formation as a direct contact. Accordingly, his brain, which was programmed to respond instantaneously to a mult.i.tude of signals, was trig-gered into an instant effort to suction more impulses from the sending brain ... and he got a picture. A momentary glimpse, so brief that even after a few seconds it was hard to be sure that it was real and not a figment of fantasy.

Something huge lay in the darkness deep inside the planetoid. It lay there and gave forth with an impression of vast power. It had been withholding itself, watching him with some tiny portion of itself. The larger whole under-stood the universe and could manipulate ma.s.sive sections of s.p.a.ce-time.

"Say nothing to these others." Again the statement was a direct contact that sounded like spoken words.

The dismay that had seized on Cemp in the last few moments was on the level of desperation. He had entered the Silkie stronghold in the belief that his human training and Kibmadine knowledge gave him a temporary advantage over the s.p.a.ce Silkies and that if he did not delay, he could win a battle that might resolve the entire threat from these natural Silkies.

Instead, he had come unsuspecting into the lair of a cosmic giant. He thought, appalled,Here is what has been called "the Power".

And if the glimpse he had had was real, then it was such a colossal power that all his own ability and strength were as nothing.

He deduced now that this was what had attacked him twice. "Is that true?" he telepathed on the same band as the incoming thoughts had been on.

"Yes. I admit it."

"Why?" Cemp flashed the question. "Why did you do it?"

"So that I would not have to reveal my existence. My fear is always that if other life forms find out about me, they will a.n.a.lyze how to destroy me."

The direction of the alien thought altered. "But now, listen; do as follows. ..."

The confession had again stirred Cemp's emotions. The hatred that had been aroused in him had a sustained force deriving from the logic-of-levels stimulation-in this instance the body's response to an attempt at total destruction. Therefore, he had difficulty now restraining additional auto-matic reactions.

But the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. So, presently he was able, at the request of the monster, to say to E-Lerd and the other Silkies, "You take a while to think this over. And when the Silkies who have defected arrive from Earth, I'll talk to them. We can then have another discussion."

It was such a complete change of att.i.tude that the two Silkies showed their surprise. But he saw that to them the change had the look of weakness and that they were relieved.

"I'll be back here in one hour!" he telepathed to E-Lerd. Whereupon he turned and climbed up and out of the court-yard, darting to an opening that led by a roundabout route deeper into the planetoid.

Again the low, slow vibration touched his receptors. "Come closer!" the creature urged.

Cemp obeyed, on the hard-core principle that either he could defend himself-or he couldn't. Down he went, past a dozen screens, to a barren cave, a chamber that had beencarved out of the original meteorite stuff. It was not even lighted. As he entered, the direct thought touched his mind again: "Now we can talk."

Cemp had been thinking at furious speed, striving to adjust to a danger so tremendous that he had no way of evaluating it. Yet the Power had revealed itself to him rather than let E-Lerd find out anything.

That seemed to be his one hold on it; and he had the tense conviction that even that was true only as long as he was inside the planetoid.

He thought ...Take full advantage!

He telepathed, "After those attacks, you'll have to give me some straight answers, if you expect to deal with me."

"What do you want to know?"

"Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you want?"

It didn't know who it was. "I have a name," it said. "I am the Glis. There used to be many like me long ago. I don't know what happened to them."

"Butwhat are you?"

It had no knowledge. An energy life form of unknown origin, traveling from one star system to another, remaining for a while, then leaving.

"But why leave? Why not stay?" sharply.