Complete Short Fiction, page 333
Grosvenor had a hard time fighting down his excitement. With tense patience, he had the bird-being get up from a sitting position, raise its arms, lower them, and walk back and forth along the roost. Finally, he made it sit down again. He must have been keyed up, his brain responsive to the slightest suggestion. Because he had barely started to concentrate again when his whole being was Hooded by a message that seemed to affect every level of his thought and feeling. More or less automatically, Grosvenor translated the anguished thoughts into familiar verbalisms.
“. . . The cells are calling, calling. The cells are afraid. Oh, the cells know pain! There is darkness in the Riim world. Withdraw from the being—far from Riim . . . Shadows, darkness, turmoil . . . The cells must reject him . . . but they cannot. They were right to try to destroy the being who came out of the great dark. The night deepens. All cells withdraw . . . but they cannot . . .”
Grosvenor thought exultantly: “I’ve got them!” After a minute of tremendous excitement, he grew sober. His problem was greater than theirs. If he broke his connection with them, they would be free. By avoiding him thereafter, they could go on to achieve the purpose of their disruptive attack . . . destruction of the Space Beagle. He would still have the problem of overcoming Morton and the others. He had no alternative but to go on with his plan.
He concentrated first on what seemed the most logical intermediate stage:—the transfer of control to another alien. The choice, in the case of these beings, was obvious.
“I am loved!” he told himself, deliberately producing the sensation which had confused him earlier. “I am loved by my parent body, from which I am growing to wholeness. I share my parent’s thoughts, but already I see with my own eyes, and know that I am one of the group . . .”
The transition came suddenly, as Grosvenor had expected it might. He moved the smaller, duplicate fingers. He arched the fragile shoulders.
Then he oriented himself again to the parent Riim. The experiment was so completely satisfactory that he felt ready for the bigger jump that would take him into association with the nervous system of a more distant alien. That, also, proved to be a matter of stimulating the proper brain centers. Grosvenor came to awareness standing in a wilderness of brush and hill. Directly in front of him was a narrow stream, and beyond it, an orange sun rode low in a dark purple sky that was spotted with fleecy clouds. Grosvenor made his new control turn completely around. He saw that a small roost building, the only habitation in sight, nestled among the trees farther along the stream. He walked toward the building and looked inside. In the dim interior, he made out several roosts, one with two birds sitting on it, both with eyes closed. It was quite possible, he decided, that they were participating in the group assault on the Space Beagle.
From there, by a variation of the stimulus, he transferred his control to an individual on a part of the planet where it was night. The transition this time was even faster. He was in a lightless city, with ghostly buildings and catwalks. Swiftly, Grosvenor moved on to association with other nervous systems. He had no clear idea why the “rapport” was established with one Riim, and not with another who fitted the same general requirement. It could be that the stimulations affected some individuals slightly faster than it affected others. It was even possible that these were descendants or body-relatives of his original parent-control. When he had been associated with more than two dozen Riim all over the planet, it seemed to Grosvenor that he had a good, over-all impression.
It was a world of brick and stone and wood, and of a neurological community relationship that would probably never be surpassed. A race had by-passed the entire machine-age of man, with its penetration of the secrets of matter and energy. Now, he felt, he could safely take the next-to-the-last step of his counter-attack. He concentrated on a pattern which would characterize one of the beings who had projected an image to the Space Beagle. (He had, then, a sense of a small but noticeable lapse of time.) Then he was looking forth from one of the images, seeing the ship through an image.
His first concern was with how the battle was progressing, but he had to restrain his will to know because to come aboard was only part of his necessary pre-conditioning. He wanted to affect a group of perhaps millions of individuals, and had to affect them so powerfully that they would have to withdraw from the Space Beagle, and have no recourse but to stay away from it.
He had proved that he could receive their thoughts, and that they could receive his. His association with one nervous system after another would not have been possible unless that was so. Now he was ready. He thought into the darkness:
“You live in a Universe; and within you, you form pictures of the Universe as it seems to you. Of that Universe you know nothing and can know nothing except for the pictures, but the pictures within you of the Universe are not the Universe . . .”
How could you influence another’s mind?—By changing his assumptions. How could you alter another’s actions?—By changing his basic beliefs, his emotional certainties.
Carefully, Grosvenor went on: “And the pictures within you do not show all about the Universe, for there are many things which you cannot know directly, not having senses to know. Within the Universe there is an order, and if the order of the pictures within you is not as the order of the Universe, then you are deceived . . .”
In the history of life, few thinking beings had ever done anything illogical—within their frame of reference. If the frame was falsely based, if the assumptions were untrue to reality, then the individual’s automatic logic could lead him to disastrous conclusions.
The assumptions had to be changed. Grosvenor changed them, deliberately, coolly, honestly. His own basic hypothesis behind what he was doing was that the Riim had no defense. These were the first new ideas they had had in countless generations and he did not doubt that the impact would be colossal. This was a fellah civilization, rooted in certainties that had never before been challenged. There was ample historical evidence that a tiny intruder could influence decisively the future of entire fellahin races.
Huge old India had crumbled before a few thousand Englishmen. Similarly, all the fellah peoples of ancient Earth were taken over with ease, and did not revive till the core of their inflexible attitudes was forever shattered by the dawning realization that there was more to life than they had been taught under their rigid systems. The Riim were peculiarly vulnerable. Their method of communication, unique and wonderful though it was, made it possible to influence them all in a single intensive operation. Over and over, Grosvenor repeated his message, adding, each time, one instruction that had to do with the ship. The instruction was:
“Change the pattern you are using against those on the ship, and then withdraw it. Change the pattern, so that they can relax, and sleep . . . then withdraw it . . . do not attack again . . .”
He had only a vague notion as to how long he actually poured his commands into that tremendous neural circuit. He guessed about two hours. Whatever the time involved, it ended as the relay switch on the encephalo-adjuster automatically broke the connection between himself and the image in the wall of his department. Abruptly, he was aware of the familiar surroundings of his own department. He glanced at where the image had been and tensed as he saw that it was still there, but shook his head slightly. He could hardly expect a definite reaction this soon. The Riim, also, were recovering from a connection that had just been broken.
As Grosvenor watched, the pattern of light from the image changed subtly. Grosvenor’s head drooped sleepily, He sat up jerkily, remembering. The instructions he had given—to relax and sleep—this was the result. All over the ship, men would be sleeping as the new hypnotic pattern extended its inhibitory paralysis over the hemispheres of the brain.
About three minutes went by. Suddenly, the double image of the Riim vanished from the glistening wall in front of him. A moment later, Grosvenor was out in the corridor. As he raced along, he saw that unconscious men lay everywhere but that the walls were bright and clear, Not once on his journey to the control room did he see an image.
Inside the control room, he stepped gingerly over the sleeping form Of Captain Leeth, who lay on the floor near the control panel. With a sigh of relief, Grosvenor threw the switch that energized the outer screen of the ship.
Seconds later, Elliott Grosvenor was in the control chair, altering the course of the Space Beagle.
THE END
THE WIZARD OF LINN
Second of three parts. In the small-minded Empire of Linn, only one man had wit to see the larger, deadlier scale—and even Clane could not know how desperate the situation was!
Synopsis
The “child of the gods” had made progress. Born a despised mutation into the ruling family of the half-barbarous, decadent Linnan empire about 12,000 A.D., he had grown up almost unnoticed by those in the family and government who schemed endlessly for power. Contemptuously relegated to the temples for training, he learned something of the inner nature of matter from a few wise men who had guessed the secret behind the atom gods. By the time his potential enemies realised that he might be dangerous to their plans, he was too powerful to be destroyed.
He explored the gigantic pits—where the atom gods were believed to dwell—and found remnants of many destroyed cities. From these husks of what had once been megalopolitan centers, he gathered odds and ends of machinery and weapons, including a sphere of energy that absorbed or disintegrated all energy and matter it touched. The sphere, reacted to the thought of the person who knew the cues to which it responded.
His discoveries explained many things. They explained the half-mythical stories about a long-dead wonderful civilization that had apparently existed some thousands of years before. They gave a clearer picture of how a bow and arrow culture could exist side by side with simple-type spaceships that any skilled metal worker could build. But the mystery of the forgotten disaster remained unexplained.
With the help of the sphere of energy, Clane defeated the invasion of Czinczar and his barbarian army from Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The captured Czinczar convinced him that the vague stories about an alien creature named, the Riss—ancient books mentioned the name—were true. The barbarian leader showed the mutation the dead body of a large nonhuman creature. To him, its presence indicated that the Riss were back in the solar system.
Within a few months, a gigantic Riss battleship arrived on Earth. The invader destroyed all human beings who came near it, and rejected attempts at communication. Lord Adviser Jerrin—Clone’s brother—who was a careful man of great integrity, had no solution to the problem. He was beset on the one hand by a wife, Lilidel, who was pathologically suspicious of Clane’s political aspirations, and on the other hand by his own suspicions of Clane and—paradoxically—of Lilidel.
He realized finally that he had no recourse but to seek Clane’s help against the enemy. He subsequently agreed to witness a test attack against the Riss battleship with the sphere of energy—an object which he now saw for the first time.
The sphere failed to damage the battleship, and Clane who knew something of the processes involved concluded that the weapon was too small to absorb so vast a machine. Its failure, however, did not invalidate its use against the Riss themselves, the problem being to get aboard the battleship.
By sacrificing a large portion of the Linnan fleet in a feint, he successfully boards the invader, and the sphere quickly destroys all Riss aboard. However, the fate of the big ship is observed by interstellar television from the Riss home planet. Clane, who did not even know that such instruments existed, realises that a Riss fleet can now be expected.
Meanwhile at Jerrin’s headquarters, an emotionally sick Lilidel poisons her husband when she learns that Jerrin plans to make Clane—and not their son C ala j—his heir. When Clane finds out what has happened, he reluctantly decides to allow the group behind Lilidel to vote seventeen-year-old Calaj to be Lord Adviser. He intends to concentrate his energy against the Riss.
During the attack against the Riss battleship, the bold and skillful barbarian leader, Czinczar, successfully captured the sphere of energy from Clane—without, however, knowing how to use it. He subsequently denies that he possesses it, and resists all Clane’s desperate efforts to get it back. In the end Clane decides that the sphere is less important than the co-operation of Czinczar in the fight against the Riss. He orders the entire barbarian army aboard the lower half of the gigantic captured battleship. The upper half is occupied by a Linnan army.
Before going aboard, every man has to be “photographed” in order to be immunized against a “protective” resonator which guards the Riss ship.
Before boarding the ship himself, Clane goes to the city of Linn. There, an apparent attempt to assassinate him turns out to be an. attempt to gain his attention on the part of a young noblewoman, Lady Madeline Cor gay. She wants to marry him. Clane, who has always been shunned by the aristocracy, gratefidly accepts the offer, and they are married.
On the day that the newly elected—by the Patronate—Lord Adviser Calaj arrives in the city of Linn, Clane visits the Central Palace, and studies the body of the dead Riss that is there. He also makes a personal call on Calaj, and compels the half-demented boy to sign a document which will help the country to prepare for the Riss invasion. He gives the boy some advice, but realizes he is much more of a mental case that he had previously realized.
As he prepares to leave Earth, he foresees that hard days are ahead for all those who depend on the Calaj government.
X.
“But what did you sign?” Lilidel raged. “What was in the document?”
She paced the floor of his apartment in a frenzy of distress. Calaj watched her sullenly, annoyed at her critical attitude. She was the one person who could make him feel like a small boy, and he was silently furious at her for reminding him once again that he should have read what he had signed.
He was not anxious to think about Clane’s appearance at the palace five weeks before, and it was annoying that the incident remained as fresh in his mother’s mind as the day it had happened. “Why should I read the document?” he protested. “It was just one more paper. You people are always bringing me something to sign; what’s one more? And anyway, he’s my uncle, and after all, he didn’t make, any trouble about my becoming Lord Adviser.”
“We can’t let him get away with it,” Lilidel said. “You can just picture him laughing to himself, thinking we’re afraid to act against him openly.”
That also was the latest of an endless repetition. Psychoneurotic
Calaj could not help wondering if his mother was not a little crazy.
Lilidel raged on: “We’ve sent queries to all the governors, with instructions to scrutinize official documents, with particular emphasis on checking back with us on anything relating to the military establishment.
“Of course”—her tone grew bitter—“asking some of those people to co-operate is like talking to a blank wall. They pay about as much attention to us as if they were the government and we merely hirelings.”
Calaj shifted uneasily. His mother’s assumption of the word “we” rankled. She had no official position, and yet she acted as if she was the Lord Adviser, and he only her son and heir. He remembered, not for the first time, that Clane had said something about asserting himself. The trouble was, how could he possibly ever dare to oppose his mother and all these dominating people?
It’s time I did something, he’ thought.
Aloud he said: “But what’s the good of all this? Our spies report that he isn’t at any of his estates?” He added, with a sly dig that had become one of his defenses against his mother’s dominance, “You’ll have to locate him before you do anything against him publicly, and even then I’d hold Traggen in front of me, if I were you. As head of the camp legions, Traggen should do the dangerous work.” Calaj stood up.
“Well, I think I’ll drop over to the games.”
He sauntered out.
Lilidel watched him depart uneasily. She was not aware that, in Clane’s estimation, her action of poisoning Jerrin had set up conflicts inside her that were not resolvable. But, in spite of the murder, way in the back of her mind, she applied her dead husband’s standards of dignity to the great position which Calaj now had.
It had been a tremendous shock to her when Calaj had insisted that the festival celebrating his appointment be extended beyond the three days originally set for it, free to the people, but at colossal expense to the government. The games were still continuing, his interest in them unabated.
Already, there had been even more disturbing incidents. A group of youths, returning with Calaj from the games to the palace, were astounded to hear him suddenly burst out: “I could kill all of you! Guards, kill them!” The third time he shrieked the order the nearest guard, a big brute of a man, noticed one of Calaj’s companions had his hand on a half-drawn sword. In one synchronized movement, he slashed at the boy with his saber, nearly cutting him in two. In the resulting confusion, nine of the eleven young noblemen were, slaughtered. The remaining two escaped by taking to their heels.
Lilidel had had no alternative but to report it as an attempted assassination. At her insistence, the two boys who had escaped were dragged through the streets at the end of hooks, and eventually impaled against the pilings of the river’s edge.
Standing there in his apartment—where she had to come these days, if she hoped to see him—Lilidel had the unhappy conviction that what had happened was only the beginning.
During the weeks that followed, she discovered that Traggen had selected several companies of bully boys to act as Calaj’s personal guards, and that the men had orders to accept the slightest command given by the Lord Adviser. She could not help suspecting Traggen’s motives, but she could find no fault openly with his orders. It was natural that the Lord Adviser Calaj should have automatic obedience to his commands. What was unnatural were the commands that Calaj gave, and all too obviously Traggen the schemer could have no direct control over that.
