Complete Short Fiction, page 216
The Town palace, after its brief flurry the year before as a Linn residence, had reverted swiftly to its role of agricultural, industrial and clerical center. There were guards within sight of the gate, but they did not bother to question a rather stocky woman slave, who went out with a decisive manner as if she had been sent on an errand by a superior.
It was late afternoon when Alden presented himself at the Covis temple. He was admitted immediately by the astonished junior to whom he revealed his identity.
On the fourth day, the baby was still alive. The main reason was that Tania could not make up her mind.
“I’ve had the turmoil of birth,” she said savagely, “and no woman in her right senses nullifies that casually. Besides—”
She stopped there. The truth was that, in spite of innumerable disadvantages, she could imagine certain uses for a son whom the gods had molded in their peculiar fashion. And in this regard, the urgings of Joquin were not without their effect. Joquin spent most of the fourth morning on the subject.
“It is a mistake,” he said, “to assume that all the children of the gods are idiots. That is an idle tale of the witless mob, which pursues these poor creatures along the street. They are not given an opportunity for education, and they are constantly under pressures so great that it is little wonder few of them ever attain the dignity and sense of mature development.”
His arguments took on a more personal flavor. “After all,” he said softly, “he is a Linn. At worst, you can make of him a trustworthy aide, who will not have the same tendency to wander off to live his own life as will your normal children. By keeping him discreetly in the background, you might acquire that best of all possible slaves, a devoted son.
Joquin knew when to stop pushing. The moment he noticed from the thoughtful narrowing of the woman’s eyes that his arguments were weighing with her, he decided to leave her to resolve the doubts that still remained. He withdrew smoothly, and attended the morning court of the Lord Leader—and there once more urged his suit.
The great man’s eyes were watchful as Joquin talked. Gradually, his satiric countenance grew puzzled. The Lord Leader interrupted at last:
“Old man,” he said curtly, “what is your purpose in thus defending the right to life of a freak?”
Joquin had several reasons, one of them almost purely personal, and another because he believed that the continued existence of the baby might, however slightly, be an advantage to the temples. The logic of that was simple. The baby’s birth had precipitated a crisis, its death would merely affirm that crisis. Conversely, if it remained alive, the reason for the ferocious reaction of the Linns would be negated to some small degree.
He had no, intention of stating that particular reason, and he did not immediately mention his personal hope about the baby. He said instead:
“Never before has a child of the gods been deliberately put to death. It was always assumed the gods had their own obscure purpose in creating monsters in human form. Do we dare test at this time that such is or is not the situation?”
It was an argument that made the other man stare in astonishment. The wars the Lord Leader had fought had thrown him into contact with advanced thinkers and skeptics on several planets, and he had come to regard the gods as a means for keeping his rebellious subjects under control. He did not absolutely disbelieve in them, but he had never in his practical life taken their possible supernatural powers into account.
But he respected this scientist. He climbed to his feet, and walking down the steps, drew Joquin aside.
“Do you actually,” he asked, “believe what you are saying?”
The question was an uncomfortable one. There was a time in Joquin’s life when he had believed nothing. Slowly, however, certain things he had observed had brought a half conviction that the mighty invisible force given forth by the tiniest radioactive substance could have no other explanation. He said carefully:
“In my travels as a young man, I saw primitive tribes that worshiped rain gods, river gods, tree gods and various animal gods. And I saw more advanced races, some of them here on Earth, whose deity was an invisible omnipotent being who lives somewhere in space in a place called heaven. All these things I observed, and in a similar fashion I listened to each group’s particular account of the beginning of the Universe. One story has it that we all came from the mouth of a snake. I have seen no such snake. Another story is that a great flood deluged the planets, though how this could have been done with the available water, I do not know. A third story is that man was created from clay and woman from man.”
He looked at his hearer. The Lord Leader nodded. “Continue.”
“I have seen people who worshiped fire, and I have seen people who worshiped water. And then, as have so many others before me, I finally visited the valleys where our own gods are said to dwell. I discovered their residences on every planet, vast, desolate areas miles deep and miles long and wide. And in these areas, I saw from a safe distance behind lead embankments the incredible bright fires that still burn with unending fury in those fantastic deeps of Earth.
“ ‘Truly,’ I thought to myself, ‘the gods, Uranium, Radium, Plutonium and Ecks are the most powerful gods in the Universe. Surely,’ I decided, ‘no one in his right senses would do anything to offend them.’ ”
The Lord Leader, who had also examined some of the homes of the gods in the course of his peregrinations, said, “Hm-m-m!”
He had no time then for further comment. From somewhere—it seemed terribly near—there was a sharp sound louder than the loudest thunder that had ever bellowed from the skies. It was followed half a minute later by a roar so loud, so furious, that the palace floor trembled.
There was a pregnant pause, not silent. From all directions came the sound of windows shattering with a thousand tinkling overtones. And then, that disturbance was overwhelmed by a third explosion, followed almost instantly by a fourth.
This last was so vast a sound that it was clear to everybody that the end of the world was imminent.
When Alden entered the great Covis temple on the afternoon of the third day after the birth of the Linn baby, he was a tired, hungry man. But he was also a hunted man with the special thoughts of the fugitive.
He sank into the chair that was offered by the junior. And, while the young man was still in process of realizing the situation, Alden ordered him to inform no one of his presence except Horo, chief scientist of the Covis temple.
“But Horo is not here.” the junior protested. “He has but just now departed for The palace of the Leader.”
Alden began briskly to remove his female disguise. His weariness flowed from him. Not here, he was thinking gleefully. That meant he was the senior scientist in the temple until Horo returned. For a man who had had as many thoughts as he had during the afternoon, that was like a reprieve. He ordered that food be brought him. He took possession of Horo’s office. And he asked questions.
For the first time, he learned the only reason so far made public, for the executions at the Raheinl temple. Alden pondered the reason throughout the early evening, and the more he thought the angrier he grew. His thinking at this time must already have been on a very radical plane, and yet, paradoxically, he felt mortified that the gods had been so profoundly insulted in their temples.
Somehow, with a crystalline certainty—that, yet, had in it no disbelief—he knew that they would not show their displeasure of their own volition. The thoughts of a fugitive tended automatically towards such practical convictions. Before the evening was half through, he was examining the possibilities.
Certain processes the gods had favored from time immemorial. Naval captains and other legal owners of spaceships brought ingots of iron to the temples. The ceremonial and money preliminaries being completed, the iron was then placed in close proximity to the uncovered god stuff for one day exactly. After four days, one for each god, the power of the god-stuff was transmitted to the ingot. It was then removed by the offerer to his ship where, with simple ceremonials, it was placed in metal chambers—which any metal worker could make—and by the use of what was known as a pholectric cell—a device also known from the earliest times, like fire and sword and spear and bow—an orderly series of explosions could be started or stopped at will.
When enough of these metal chambers were used, the largest ships that could be constructed by man were lifted as easily as if they were made of nothingness.
From the beginning of things, the god-stuff in all temples had been kept in four separate rooms. And the oldest saying in history was that when the gods were brought too close together, they became very angry indeed.
Alden carefully weighed out a grain of each supply of god-stuff. Then he had four juniors carry a metal chamber from the testing cavern into the garden at the rear of the temple. At this point it struck him that other temples should participate in the protest. He had learned that six of the seven members of the Scientists Council were still at the palace, and he had a rather strong suspicion as to their predicament.
Writing from Horo’s ornate office, he ordered the acting chiefs of the temples of the absent councilors to do exactly what he was doing. He described his plan in detail, and finished:
“High noon shall be the hour of protest.”
Each letter he sent by junior messenger.
He had no doubts. By noon the following day he had inserted his grains of uranium, radium, plutonium and ecks into the pholectric relay system. From what he decided was a safe distance, he pressed the button that clicked over the relays in order. As the wonderful and potent ecks, the last grain, joined the “pile,” there was an explosion of considerable proportions.
It was followed swiftly by three more explosions. Only two of the temples disregarded the commands of the fugitive. They were the fortunate ones. The first explosion blew half the Covis temple into dust, and left the remnant a tottering shambles of dislodged masonry and stone.
No human being was found alive in any of the four temples. Of Alden there was not even a piece of flesh or a drop of blood.
By two o’clock mobs were surging around the foot of the palace hill. The palace guard, loyal to a man, held them off grimly, but retreated finally inside the gates, and the household of the Leader prepared for a siege.
When the pandemonium was at its height half an hour later, Joquin. who had been down in the city, returned by a tunnel that ran through the hill itself, and asked permission to speak to the mob.
Long and searchingly, the Lord Leader looked at him. Then finally he nodded.
The mob rushed at the gates when they opened, but spearmen held thorn back. Joquin pressed his way out. His was a piercing rather than a deep voice, but the rostrum that jutted out from the hill was skillfully constructed to enable a speaker to address vast throngs through a series of megaphones.
His first act was to take the ribbons out of his hair, and let it down around his shoulders. The crowd began to shout:
“Scientist. It’s a scientist.”
Joquin raised his hand. And the silence he received was evidence to him at least that the riots were about to end. The crowd was controllable.
On his own part, he had no illusions as to the importance of this mob attacking the palace. He knew that carrier pigeon messages had been dispatched to the three legions camped outside the walls of the city. Soon, a disciplined force would be marching through the streets, paced by cavalry units made up of provincial troops, whose god was a giant mythical bird called Erplen.
It was important that the crowd be dispersed before those trained killers arrived on the scene. Joquin began:
“People of Linn, you have today witnessed a telling proof of the power of the gods.”
Cries and groans echoed his words. Then again, silence. Joquin continued:
“But you have misread the meaning of the signs given us today.”
Silence only this time greeted his words. He had his audience.
“If the gods,” he said, “disapproved of the Lord Leader, they could just as easily have destroyed his palace as they actually did destroy four of their own temples.
“It is not the Lord Leader and his actions to which the gods objected. It is that certain temple scientists have lately tried to split up the temples into four separate groups, each group to worship one of the four gods only.
“That and that alone is the reason for the protest which the gods have made today.”
There were cries of, “But your temple was among those destroyed.”
Joquin hesitated. He did not fancy being a martyr. He had seen two of the letters Alden had written—to the two temples which had not obeyed the instructions—and he had personally destroyed both letters. He was not sure how he ought to rationalize the fact that a purely mechanical union of god-stuff had produced the explosions. But one thing at least was certain. The gods had not objected to their status of being worshiped four in one temple. And since that status was the only one that made it possible for the scientists to remain strong, then what had happened could be the gods way of showing that it was their purpose, too.
Joquin recognized uneasily that his reasoning was a form of sophistry. But this was no time to lose faith. He bowed his head before the shouting, then looked up.
“Friends,” he said soberly, “I confess I was among those who urged separate worship. It seemed to me that the gods would welcome an opportunity to be worshiped each in his own temple. I was mistaken.”
He half-turned to face the palace, where far more important ears were listening than any in the crowd below. He said:
“I know that every person who, like myself, believed the separatist heresy is now as convinced as I am that neither the four gods or their people would ever stand for such blasphemy.
“And now, before there is any more trouble, go home, all of you.”
He retreated rather hastily back into the palace grounds.
The Lord Leader was a man who accepted necessities. “There remains one undetermined question,” he said later, “What is your real reason for keeping my daughter-in-law’s baby alive?”
Joquin said simply, “I have long-wanted to see what will happen if a child of the gods is given a normal education and upbringing.”
That was all he said. It was enough. The Lord Leader sat with eyes closed, considering the possibilities. At last, slowly, he nodded his head.
I was to be allowed to live.
THE END.
FILM LIBRARY
Their novelty films were remarkable—but no novelties. Not, that is, at the time they were filmed—
The hundred delegates to the electronic manufacturers convention, who had attended the showing, were drifting towards the doors. Several wives had been present, and their voices mingled with the deeper tones of the men. The sounds faded swiftly into the distance of the hotel, but Senor Pedro del Corteya, looking up suddenly from what he was doing, saw that he was still not alone.
He continued rewinding the reel, then he put it back into its can, and began to pack away the projector. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched the other with the curious, speculative intentness of the Latin. At last, his job completed, he turned.
“Is it me you wish to speak to, senor?”
The big man hesitated, then he came forward. He was a tall, chunky, fortyish individual with brown eyes and skimpy hair.
“Odd picture you showed us there tonight.”
Corteya smiled his personal acceptance of the compliment. “You were amused, senor?”
Again that hesitation, then, “Where did you get it?”
Corteya shrugged. These direct Americans. Did the man expect him to hand over his trade secrets? He said as much.
“Do you think I am a tool, senor? Perhaps you are planning to start up in opposition to my business. You have plenty of money, maybe, and I go broke when you undercut my prices.”
The stranger laughed. But he drew out a card, and handed it over. Corteya read:
Walter Dorman
President
Electronic Company of America
Corteya looked at it, then handed it back. He saw that Dorman was staring at him hard. The man said finally with a tiny note of incredulity in his voice, “You still don’t believe I’m not after your hide.”
Corteya shrugged, “What is it you wish to know, senor?”
“That film?”
Corteya raised his hands in a gesture of deprecation. “A ten minute novelty.”
“Very smoothly done, if you ask me.”
“All the world, senor, knows that Hollywood is wonderful.”
“Hollywood never made a picture as good as that.”
Corteya smiled his if-you-say-so-it-must-be-so smile. For the first time, then, he let his mind go back over the picture he had shown. He couldn’t remember it very dearly. It was his custom to watch the audience not the film. Nevertheless, he recollected that it had been about an automatic electric stove that merely had to be supplied with the appropriate ingredients, and it would mix them, and serve up the finished meal piping hot at any desired time. He had shown the same film two weeks earlier at a local dieticians meeting, and the audience had laughed heartily at the nonexistent device.
Corteya said, “Senor, I obtain my films from several film libraries. Where they secure them, I do not know. They compete for my business. All I do is look over their catalogues, and order films when I need them.”
He lifted his shoulders. “It is so simple as that.”
“Have you had any other novelties like the one tonight?”
“A few. I cannot remember.”
“Do they all come from the same film library?”
Dorman’s persistence was beginning to wear. “I really cannot remember, senor. To me it is all ordinary business.”
“Have you any similar films on hand right now?”
“You mean here? No!”
“I mean at your office.”
