The Best of AE van Vogt Part 15

There was silence.

"Can you and will you?" Cemp demanded.

"No. It's impossible." The response came reluctantly.

"But you could, if you wanted to, bring Earth back to size."

"No. But I now wish I had not taken your planet," said the Glis unhappily. "It has been my policy to leave alone inhabited worlds that are protected by powerful life forms. I simply could not bring myself to believe that any Silkie was really dangerous to me. I was mistaken."

It was not the kind of repentance that Cemp respected. "Why can't you ... unsqueeze it?" he persisted.

It seemed that the Glis could create a gravity field, but it could not reverse such a field. It said apologetically, "It would take as much power to undo it as it took to do it. Where is there such power?"

Where, indeed? But still he could not give up. "I'll teach you what antigravity is like," Cemp offered, "from what I can do in my own energy-control system."

But the Glis pointed out that it had had the opportunity to study such systems in other Silkies. "Don't think I didn't try. Evidently antigravity is a late manifestation of matter and energy. And I'm an early form-as you, and only you, know."

Cemp's hope faded suddenly. Somehow, he had kept believing that there was a possibility. There wasn't.

The first grief touched him, the first real acceptance of the end of Earth.

The Glis was communicating again. "I can see that you and I now have a serious situation between us.

So we must arrive at an agreement. I'll make you the leader of the Silkie nation. I'll subtly influence everything and everyone to fit your wishes. Women-as many as you desire. Control-as much as you want. Future actions of the planetoid, you and I shall decide."

Cemp did not even consider the offer. He said grimly, "You and I don't think alike. I can just imagine trusting you to leave me alone if I ever took the chance of changing to human form." He broke off, then said curtly, "The deal as I see it is a limited truce while I consider what I can do against you and you figure out what you can do to me."

"Since that's the way you feel," was the harsh reply, "let me make my position clear. If you begin any action against me, I shall first destroy Earth and the Silkie nation and then give you my attention."

Cemp replied in his own steely fas.h.i.+on, "If you ever damage anything I value-and that includes all Silkies and what's left of Earth-I'll attack you with everything I've got."

The Glis said scornfully, "You have nothing that can touch me-except those defense screens that reverse the attack flow. That way, you can use my own force against me. So I won't attack.

Therefore-permanent stalemate."

Cemp said, "We'll see."

The Glis said, "You yourself stated that your levels of logic wouldn't work on me."

"I meant not directly," said Cemp. "There are many indirect approaches to the mind."

"I don't see how anything like that can work on me," was the reply.

At that moment, Cemp didn't either.

12.

Through miles of pa.s.sageways, up as well as down and roundabout, Cemp made his way. The journey took him through long chambers filled with furniture and art objects from other planets.

En route he saw strange and wonderful scenes in bas-relief and brilliant color on one wall after another.

And always there were the planets themselves, glowingly beauti-ful, but horrifying too, in his awareness that each one represented a hideous crime.

His destination was the city of the Silkies. He followed the internal pathway to it because he dared not leave the planet-oid to take an external route. The Glis had virtually admitted that it had not antic.i.p.ated that he, its most dangerous enemy, would survive. So if he ever left these caves, he would have no further choice, no chance to decide on what the penalty-if any-or the outcome should be and no part at all in the Silkie future. For he would surely never be allowed to return.

Not that there was any purpose in him-his grief was too deep and terrible. He had failed to protect, failed to realize, failed in his duty.

Earth was lost. It was lost quickly, completely, a disaster so great that it could not even be contemplated for more than instants at a time.

At intervals, he mourned Joanne and Charley Baxter and other friends among the Special People and the human race.

By the time he was sunk into these miseries, he had taken up an observation position on top of a tree overlooking the main street of the Silkie city. There he waited, with all his signal systems constantly at peak alert.

While he maintained his tireless vigil, the life of the Silkie community had its being around him. The Silkies continued to live mostly as humans, and this began to seem significant.

Cemp thought, shocked,They're being kept vulnerable!

In human form, they could all be killed in a single flash of intolerable flame.

He telepathed on the Glis band: "Free them from that compulsion or I'll tell them the truth about what you are."

An immediate, ferocious answer came: "You say one word, and I shall wipe out the entire nest."

Cemp commanded, "Release them from that compulsion, or we come to our crisis right now."

His statement must have given the Glis pause, for there was a brief silence. Then, "I'll release half of them. No more. I must retain some hold over you."

Cemp considered that and realized its truth. "But it has to be on an alternating basis. Half are free for twelve hours, then the other half."

The Glis accepted the compromise without further argu-ment. Clearly, it was prepared to recognize the balance of power.

"Where are we heading?" asked Cemp.

"To another star system."

The answer did not satisfy Cemp. Surely the Glis didn't expect to go on with its malignant game of collecting inhabited planets.

He challenged, "I feel that you have some secret purpose."

"Don't be ridiculous, and don't bother me any more."

Stalemate.

As the days and the weeks went by, Cemp tried to keep track of the distance the planetoid was covering and the direction it was going. The speed of the meteorite had reached nearly a light-year per day, Earth time.

Eighty-two of those days pa.s.sed. And then there was the feel of slowing down. The deceleration continued all that day and the next. And for Cemp, there was finally no question-he could not permit this strange craft which was now his home to arrive at a destination about which he knew nothing.

"Stop this s.h.i.+p!" he ordered.

The Glis replied angrily, "You can't expect to control such minor things as this!"

Since it could be a deadly dangerous scheme, Cemp replied, "Then open yourself to me. Show me everything you know about this system."

"I've never been here before."

"All right, then that's what I'll see when you open up."

"I can't possibly let you look inside me. You may see something this time that will make me vulnerable to your techniques."

"Then change course."

"No. That would mean I can't go anywhere until you die about a thousand years from now. I refuse to accept such a limitation."

The second reference to Silkie age gave Cemp great pause. On Earth no one had known how long Silkies could live, since none born there had died a natural death ... He himself was only thirty-eight years of age.

"Look," he said finally, "if I have only a thousand years, why don't you just sit me out? That must be only a pinpoint in time compared with your lifespan."

"All right, we'll do that!" replied the Glis. But the decelera-tion continued.

Cemp telepathed, "If you don't turn aside, I must take action."

"What can you do?" was the contemptuous response.

It was a good question. What, indeed?

"I warn you," said Cemp.

"Just don't tell anyone about me. Other than that, do anything you please."

Cemp said, "I gather you've decided I'm not dangerous. And this is the way you act with those you consider harm-less."

The Glis said that had Cemp been able to do something, he would already have done it. It finished, "And so I tell you flatly, I'm going to do asI please; and the only restriction on you is, don't violate my need for secrecy. Now, don't bother me again."

The meaning of the dismissal was clear. He had been judged helpless, categorized as someone whose desires need not be considered. The eighty days of inaction had stood against him. He hadn't attacked; therefore, he couldn't. That was palpably the other's logic.

Well ... what could he do?

He could make an energy a.s.sault. But that would take time to mount, and he could expect that the Silkie nation would be wiped out in retaliation and Earth destroyed.

Cemp decided that he was not ready to force such a calamity.

He was presently dismayed to realize that the Glis's a.n.a.lysis was correct. He could keep his mind shut and res-pect its need for secrecy-and nothing more.

He ought, it seemed to him, to point out to the Glis that there were different types of secrecy.

Gradations. Secrecy about itself was one type. But secrecy about the star system ahead was quite another. The whole subject of secrecy- Cemp's mind poised. Then he thought,How could I have missed it?

Yet, even as he wondered, he realized how it had happened. The Glis's need to withhold knowledge of itself had seemed understandable, and somehow the naturalness of it had made him bypa.s.s its implications. But now ...

Secrecy,he thought.Of course! That's it!

To Silkies, secrecy was an understood phenomenon.

After a few more seconds of thinking about it, Cemp took his first action. He reversed gravity in relation to the planetoid ma.s.s below him. Light as a thistledown, he floated up and away from the treetop that had been his observation post for so long. Soon he was speeding along granite cor-ridors.

13.

Without incident, Cemp reached the chamber containing Earth.

As he set his signals so that all his screens would protect that precious round ball, Cemp permitted himself another increment of hope.

Secrets! he thought again, and his mind soared.

Life, in its natural impulse, had no secrets.

Baby gurgled or cried or manifested needs instant by instant as each feeling was experienced. But the child, growing older, was progressively admonished and in-hibited, subjected to a thousand restraints.

Yet all his lifethe growing being would want openness and unrestraint, would struggle to free himself from childhood conditioning.

Conditioning was not of itself logic of levels, but it was related-a step lower. The appearance was of a control center; that is, a rigidity. But it was a created center and could be repeatedly mobilized by the correct stimulus. That part was automatic.

The decisive fact was that, since the Glis had conditioned itself to secrecy-it was conditionable.

Having reached this penultimate point in his a.n.a.lysis, Cemp hesitated. As a Silkie, he was conditioned to incapaci-tate rather than kill, to negotiate rather than incapacitate, and to promote well-being everywhere.

Even for the Glis, death should be the final consideration not the first.

So he telepathed, "In all your long span, you have feared that someone would one day learn how to destroy-you. I have to tell you that I am that feared person. So unless you are prepared to back down from those insolent statements of a little while ago, you must die."

The answer came coldly. "I let you go to your planet. Earth because I have the real hostages under my complete control-the Silkie nation!"

"That is your final statement?" Cemp questioned.

"Yes. Cease these foolish threats. They are beginning to irritate me."

Cemp now said, "I know where you come from, what you are, and what happened to others like you."