Excalibur And The Atom Part 9

"Mythology contains many a mention of it, though few regard it as the disaster it was. You see, only one of these forces has been fully operating on earth. The other is crippled, subdued."

"What happened?"

Morgan wrinkled her brow. "First, let me explain what the effect of this imbalance is. If you put a cup on a table, and extend your hand to pick it up, you are moving directly toward an established aim. If you shove your arm all the way, as far as it will go, you'll push the cup all the way across and send it cras.h.i.+ng to the floor on the other side. Yet no one can deny that your force was applied to the desired end, in the right direction, with the correct motivations.

"There is nothing evil or dangerous or harmful on this planet except excess. There's no such thing as a deadly poison; there's just too much of a poison. Too much pleasure is pain; too much fear (a fine survival characteristic) or too much anger (and that's another) means madness."

"I think I see. Then which of these powers was crippled?"

"The power of darkness-destruction-anabolism."

"You're out of your head! This planet's loaded with it!"

She shook her head sagely. "It's building-building gone out of control. It's the cause of technology's outstripping the spirit. Every nation that smashes every other nation does it through a desire to construct something-a political philosophy, an empire, a personal fortune or a personal power. It's construction that's killing us off. It's cancer!"

"I never thought of it that way."

"Humans don't. How can they? They're born to it. But that can all be changed. It's up to you."

"Me?"

"You. Only you have the power to give the Grail to Merlin."

"What has that to do with it?"

"Remember your reading about him? What was his parentage?"

"He was-he was born of a virgin."

"That's right. That is the way the guidances are placed on a planet. Merlin's the antichrist-yes. But don't recoil from that word. I tell you it has nothing to do with evil-everything to do with balance."

"What would the world be like with that force in it?"

"That requires a whole new system of thought. It's hard to put into human language. Have you ever heard of someone committing a crime for his own benefit?"

"All the time."

"Well, try to imagine a culture in which it would be impossible to construct that sentence, because 'crime' and 'benefit' couldn't exist in the same idea-sequence!"

He was quiet for a long time. At last he said, "Mankind as a unit of free things, eh? Each with the full consciousness of the whole species?"

She shrugged. "Action is a light force, inhibition a dark one. The name you have for rational inhibition is conscience. Imagine all mankind with a cohesive conscience, and you'll get the picture."

Guinn wet his lips. "And what about you? And the Druids?"

"There's a long word for me. I'm a metempsychotic. I get transferred complete from one body to another, with complete memory. That's how I can do the things I do. None of it's magic. It's just that for me there have been no dark ages. It's all soundly scientific. The money in your wallet? A kind of teleportation. The chair that moved by itself? Telekinesis.

"The same thing's true of the Druids. 'Druid' isn't the name of a religious sect, by the way; it's a t.i.tle, like 'chancellor' or 'minister'. They're metempsychotics too, but for the dark powers. I'm neutral. I imagine I'm a sort of recording device for the Great Ones."

"And how did the one force get crippled?"

"These guidances are put among humans in human terms. The antichrist was baptized! His mother confessed her visitation to a man who had the power to do it. And that is Merlin-fully possessed of the dark powers, but unable to use them for their intended purposes!"

"And the Grail?"

"Pure and simple, a power source. That jewel is a reservoir of vital energy. It was left in charge of a line of kings-the most cohesive form of authority at that time-and of them, the revered Arthur pen Dragon...I hope I'm not knocking over any childhood idols."

"Not mine," said Guinn sullenly.

"King Arthur was a petty, self-righteous little martinet with a weak mind and a strong arm. He fell in accord with a renegade Druid who got him to turn the Grail completely to the powers of light. It shouldn't be denied them, of course; but neither should it be monopolized. The Grail itself, in its symbolized chalice form, was put into an immaterial form, keyed to the very special aura of a certain kind of man, a man who couldn't exist as long as the dark powers were crippled! who couldn't exist as long as the dark powers were crippled!

"So we-Merlin and I-searched until we found suitable material, and then made what environmental changes we could until we got one. You. Percival almost made it, but not quite. He wasn't-well-dirty enough."

"Thanks."

"It's been tough sledding. Merlin had to keep his powers under forced draft by any means he could. That ritual you saw is one of the ways. The combination of auras of hypnotized animals, a virgin, oak, mistletoe and fresh-killed mammals is a tremendous recharge. With the Grail it won't be necessary."

"And Mordi?"

"A madman. Happened to be a genealogist and found that he was of the true pen Dragon stock-the last of the pure line, most fortunately. Got to fooling around with old rituals and found that the Druids, even Merlin himself, were bound to him. He wanted the Grail as a personal power-source-which, G.o.d knows, it certainly is."

Guinn drove thoughtfully for a while. Then, "I called him Mordred." Morgan laughed. "There may be more pattern behind this than anyone-even Merlin and I-know. For we have a Gareth and his Lynette; we had a Percival, the good man who almost had the Grail. And Mordred, the deputy King who turned so evil."

"There was a gasp from the back seat. Lynn said, "Mordi-he saw the Grail. He'll live eight days?"

"At least," said Morgan cheerfully. And Guinn, holding the wheel, saw a flash of that bodiless head, blinking and tonguing up at him. Then he thought of Gary propped up against the cave entrance, dying, and watching...and he drove without speaking.

"So it's up to you, chum," said Morgan. "Give Merlin the Grail, and restore some balance to this rock, or don't, and we'll keep on building Babel."

"Excalibur and the atom, is that it? Wait. The atom bomb is a disruptive dark-power device if anything ever was. Right?"

"Right," said Morgan. "A feeble victory for Merlin's side. It's the H-bomb we're worried about. That's fusion fusion-that's building. Darling, if you give Merlin the Grail, that d.a.m.ned thing...won't...work!"

Garry said, weakly, "Hey, boss. Just who are you?"

When Guinn didn't answer, Morgan laughed and said, "He's Hadley Guinn. He got his last name from the only name anyone knew his mother by. It was Guinevere. He called himself Hadley because he got sick and tired of getting kidded about his real name." She hugged him. "In a couple thousand years, he'll get over that."

Guinn took a deep breath and said it, all by himself-the one word that had been anathema to him all his life, that had poisoned the whole Round Table legend for him.

"Galahad," he said. "By G.o.d, I'm Galahad, that's who I am!"

And when they test the H-bomb, you'll know what he decided.

Administrivia: From: Baby is Three-Volume VI: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon