Complete Short Fiction, page 390
In their study of Ou-Dan, the great beings were delayed for many minutes, perhaps even an entire hour, by an attitude that radiated from him. Ou-Dan so thoroughly dismissed and downrated the human-Silkie relationship that his emotion about it was a barrier. Thus, for a decisive time, the Nijjans did not note in his mind that the Special People were a unique human group.
During that vital period, Baxter extended the information about the Nijjans to the Special People, Cemp and he met with the Space Silkies and talked to the computer. And so, when the five Special People were captured, Earth was as ready as Earth would ever be.
The Nijjans secured the basic clue from all five of their human prisoners. Moments later, the knowledge of Logic of Levels was going down the Nijjan line of planets, multimillions of them.
IX
On G’Tono’s planet was a tall mountain that rose thousands of feet sheer from the ground. On top of that mountain stood the palace of G’Tono.
Inside the throne room, the octopus-people hurried and bustled and shuffled in a steady stream of activity, partly ritual and partly in relation to the five human prisoners and to the Space Silkie, Ou-Dan.
The quintet of Special People were beginning to fed a little easier; were no longer so certain that they would be murdered out of hand. Ou-Dan, who had been internally damaged as a result of his interrogation, lay unconscious in one comer, ignored by all except a few guards.
Across the room from the humans—a distance of more than a hundred yards—was a great, glittering throne chair. On the chair sat a figure even more glittery in his natural state than any of the inanimate objects that framed him—
. . . G’Tono himself!
About a dozen of the octopus-people lay face down on the marble in front of their tyrant. Their gentle bulbuous faces pressed against the bard floor. It was a priceless privilege for those who were there, and every half hour the dozen or so personages reluctantly gave up their places to another group of the same size, all of whom were equally appreciative.
GTono paid no attention to these, his servant-people. He was engaged in a mental conversation with N’Yata, 2400 light-years away, and the subject of their concern was in fact the fate of the prisoners.
GTono believed that the five Special People and Ou-Dan had served their purpose and should be put to death on the betray principle. N’Yata felt that no final decision should be made about prisoners until the Earth-Silkie situation was entirely resolved, which could only happen if all the Silkies were destroyed.
She pointed out that the betray idea did not apply except where it was part of a control system. No control existed as yet for human beings and would not until a Nijjan took over Earth as his domain.
G’Tono was beginning to feel very boldly masculine in relation to N’Yata. And so be took the attitude that her answer showed a loveable feminine weakness, a caution unnecessary now that the human-Silkie problem was solved. For all Nijjan purposes, the procurement of the Logic of Levels concept ended the danger.
“You seem to believe that something can still go wrong,” he protested.
“Let’s wait,” said N’Yata.
G’Tono replied scathingly that Nijjans, after all, had their own rationality, long-tested by experience. It was not necessary to await the outcome of a logical sequence once it had been reasoned through.
He thereupon listed for N’Yata the reasons why the Silkies were defeated for all practical purposes:
Nijjan attacks—said G’Tono—would in future he made in such a way that no Silkie could ever again hitch a ride as the Silkie, Cemp, bad so skillfully done. Furthermore, the vast majority of Nijjans, though allowing through their mind-barriers the information about Logic of Levels, had fortunately refused to be involved in the actual struggle.
G’Tono explained, “Contrary to our initial irritation with their refusal to participate, what they have done—or rather, not done—is really favorable to our side.” He broke off for purposes of clarifying his point. “How many helpers do we have?”
“You saw most of them,” N’Yata answered. “About a hundred.”
The smallness of the number momentarily gave pause to G’Tono. He bad a natural cynicism about things Nijjan; yet his rationalization seemed true to him . . . It was true that Nijjans had a hard time getting along with one another. So many proud individuals, each with his planet—of which he, or she, was absolute ruler. Where everyone, without exception, was a king or a queen, egos had a tendency to soar out of sight.
Once in a while, of course, a queen would accept a communication from a king, as N’Yata had done with him. And at certain times kings were receptive to a communication from a queen. G’Tono had observed with jealousy that the hundred-odd who had responded to N’Yata’s call for volunteers were all males . . .
But that very aloofness of the great majority was now, G’Tono argued, a sign of the indestructibility of the Nijjan race. Scattered all over the universe, out of contact with their own kind, individual Nijjans an their total numbers couldn’t be hunted down in a million years, even assuming that somebody existed with the ability and power to kill Nijjans; but there was no such person, group or race.
“And now that we have the only dangerous Silkie weapon, Logic of Levels, our position is absolutely impregnable,” G’Tono pointed out.
N’Yata replied that she was still studying Logic of Levels and that it wasn’t the mistakes Nijjans might make in the future that worried her; indeed, she conceded that the chance of additional errors was unlikely. The question was, could G’Tono and she recover from the errors that had already been made?
G’Tono was astonished. “The only mistake that would matter,” he objected, “would be if we had left this Silkie, Cemp, some means of forcing me or you to transport him here by out space control system. Though I,” he continued scornfully, “would certainly like to be the first to know of such a method, I find myself wondering, would he dare to come? Because what could he do in a direct confrontation with me, who is more powerful than any Silkie?”
He had been thinking hard while he was speaking, and now he saw an opening in her logic and a way of gaining his own point, made earlier.
“As I see it,” he said, “the one way in which we might be vulnerable is through these prisoners. So I think you will agree that instant extermination is a safety precaution, if nothing more. Don’t try to interfere!”
He did not wait for N’Yata’s reply, but sent a high-level energy blast at the two women and three men, and at the helpless Ou-Dan. All six prisoners were literally dissolved into their component elements; death was as rapid as that.
Having taken the action, G’Tono proceeded with his listing of favorable points. “After all,” he said, “lacking space control, Silkies are trapped on or near Earth or at best are subject to the slow speeds of ordinary space travel. I estimate that in three Earth weeks I could perhaps expect to have an Earth ship arrive at my planet. Whereupon, if you were to invite me, I could visit you for a whale. And, frankly, what could they do? Where could they look? A Nijjan can disappear into a distance in a split-instant.”
He stopped, feeling suddenly dizzy.
N’Yata telepathed sharply, “What’s happening?”
“I—” faltered G’Tono.
That was as far as he got. The dizziness had become an all-enveloping madness, and he fell from this throne chair to the marble floor. Fell hard, rolled over onto his back and lay there like one dead.
X
The Nijjans had lied. That was what snatched Cemp’s most intense interest.
A quick check of records by the computer had established, with thousands of detailed documentations, that the Special People could not possibly have been Nijjans. And so it was a lie.
Hard to believe that the Nijjans could have exposed one of their number to a counter-attack on that level. But it looked as if they had.
Cemp shared his analysis with Charley Baxter and watched Baxter become excited. The thin man said, “You’re right, Nat! A lie is a complete disaster in a world where people understand the energy flows involved.”
And could control them as Silkies could.
Because an existing object is truth incarnate. There it is—whatever it is—unparadoxical, without an opposite.
It cannot not-be. Or at least it cannot not-have-been; if it was matter and has been converted to energy, or vice versa, it still exists in some aspect of its ever-form.
A lie about such an object is a mental attempt to alter the “is” of it. Basically, the effort implicit in the lie is to create a dichotomy where none can exist. There is no opposite, yet the he says there is.
Hence, the moment a dichotomy is evoked in somebody’s mind, there is a confusion created.
It was too potentially great a possibility to miss.
In telling his plan to Baxter, Cemp pointed out, “You’ll have to send a ship after me, because I’ll be stranded there!”
“You don’t think the method of getting you to Nijja will also get you away?” Baxter asked, doubtfully.
“No. Somebody will be riding herd on all this, and they’ll notice.”
“It’ll take three weeks for a ship to get there,” Baxter objected.
Cemp couldn’t take the time to consider that. The pace of this battle was super-speed. Since the struggle had begun out there between G’Tono and himself, the enemy had taken time only to make brief studies of new data before striking again.
“After all,” said Cemp, “I can’t be sure how successful I’ll be. I expect to get whoever told the lie, but that won’t solve the problem. And I’ll set it up so that whoever helps him is doomed also. But a chain reaction like that can only go so far before somebody gets wise.”
Baxter spoke again, urgently, “Now that these beings have Logic of Levels, they’ll be able to trigger it in you even as you’re triggering it in them. Have you thought of that?”
Since there was no defense against Logic of Levels, Cemp hadn’t even considered it. There being no point in thinking about it, now that it had been called to his attention . . . he didn’t.
He converted to Nijjan and projected the thought: “I want you to recall the moment when the message arrived telling you the lie that you were a Nijjan.”
Between such experts as Baxter and himself, it required less than a minute to make a study of the wave patterns and to measure the subtle variations of the Nijjan version of the telepathic band of the Special People—and to superimpose on that exact band and that individual variation all two hundred and seventy-eight dichotomies, known to be the most confusing of the verbal opposites that had mentally tangled human beings since the beginning of language:
. . . Right-wrong . . . good-bad . . . justice-injustice . . .
A living brain receiving for the first time such a madness in the time of a few seconds could go into a state of total confusion.
At key points along that train of words, Cemp placed large, hypnotic-type command loads designed to influence the receiving Nijjan brain during the confusion to—
First, utilize Cemp’s own previous experience to transport him through space.
And, second, set up a basic Logic of Levels in the receiving Nijjan brain.
Cemp arrived—it was part of his hypnotic command to GTono—outside the atmosphere of G’Tono’s planet. As he descended toward the surface, he saw that there was a great city below and a huge ocean beside it.
He landed on an isolated beach of that ocean where the thunder of the surf and the smell of sea briefly enticed him. Ignoring that sudden desire for the feel of water, he walked toward the city. Arrived at the outskirts, he boldly entered the first of the odd-shaped dwellings he came to; odd in that the doorways were low and broad, and, inside he had to stoop because the ceilings were less than six feet. There were three chunky octopus-like aliens inside. But he saw them; they never saw him. Cemp manipulated the hallucinatory mechanisms of the three, whereupon they observed him as one of themselves. After studying their minds, Cemp carefully went to a nearby street, climbed up to a roof, and watched the octopus-beings who went by.
As Cemp had already correctly analyzed, these aliens were not dangerous to him, and they were very definitely not up to defending themselves. After reading the minds of several hundreds, Cemp did not detect a single suspicious thought. The fundamental goodness of the beings he did observe decided him on his next move.
Minutes later, he walked in on several leading members of the government, hallucinated them into seeing him as a human being and thought at them, “Where is the one who can betray?”
The tense creatures had drawn away from him. They did not understand the significance of his question, for they said that on Nijja no one ever betrayed anyone.
The answer amused Cemp in a steely-grim fashion. It meant, as he had suspected, that there was only one betray cycle in action on the entire planet: the true Nijjan as the betrayer, and then ah these beings who must conform.
He directed another thought “Has this planet always been called Nijja?”
They knew of only one other name. Anthropological studies of their antiquity indicated that, at the time the common language had begun some indeterminate thousands of years before, the name had been Thela, meaning Home of the Brave. Nijja, on the other hand, in their language meant Home of the Pure.
Obviously, the name would have to have a meaning in their language as well as in that of the true Nijjans. A different meaning, of course.
“I see,” said Cemp.
And he did see.
With that, he asked one more question, “Where can I find the one who requires purity?”
“Oh, you can see him only through the police.”
“Where else?” thought Cemp to himself, sarcastically.
Whereupon, the exact, proper time having gone by, and the exact moment for G’Tono to awaken having come, he directed a thought on the Special People telepathic band. He said, “I am that Silkie who confronted you after you killed my Silkie associate—and I’m sure now it was you who killed him. As I now understand it, this planet illustrates what you meant when you stated Nijjans had no home planet in the ordinary sense. All planets controlled by a Nijjan are part of the Nijjan system—the nearest place, in other words, where a single ruling Nijjan could be located. Is that correct?”
Along with the message, Cemp projected the thought that would trigger the Logic of Levels cycle he had set up in G’Tono’s brain. Having done so, Cemp spoke again to the focal point nearly three hundred miles away, “You’d better talk to me before it’s too late.”
It was moments after that when Comp sensed a peculiar sensation in his transmorpha system. N’Yata, he thought. He remembered Baxter’s fear that he also might be attacked, and here it was. It interested him intensely to observe that it was the mechanism for changing form that was affected; not surprising, really, but nobody had known. By the time he had that thought, he had already accepted his personal disaster. Prom the beginning he had had to consider himself expendable.
Cemp felt briefly sad for Joanna. He presumed that he would die, and her life would now have to go on without him. As for what might happen to the Nijjans—Cemp felt a chill, recalling what the computer had predicted: that the Nijjans Logic of Levels would be bigger than what had happened to the Glis.
Again he wondered: What could be bigger than that?
The awareness remained with him only fleetingly. Abruptly, he didn’t have time to consider anything except what was happening to him.
XI
For Cemp there was, first of all, a kaleidoscope of visual images.
He saw Nijjan bodies and faces—if the upper part of the pyramidal shape could be considered a face. The images streamed by, not exactly silently—for thoughts came from some of them.
Cemp himself seemed to be floating along in a timeless void. Each set of Nijjan thoughts came to him separate and distinct:
“. . . But how did he do it? . . .”
“What exactly is happening?—”
“Why not kill him and then solve the problem, ourselves? . . .”
“—Because we don’t even know what part of the Nijjan brain was utilized for the attack, that’s why. Besides, we have no proof yet that we can kill him. In this Silkie, Logic of Levels seems to be a time phenomenon. In us, it’s of course the space thing—” As these thoughts and others like them whispered into Cemp’s awareness, he was conscious of a developing stir in the greater distance of the Nijjan world. Other minds, at first a few, then many, then tens of thousands turned their attention in amazement and took note of him and had their thoughts . . . and were hooked into G’Tono’s disaster.
. . . Like an anthill deep into which somebody has kicked, the Nijjan system began to roil and churn with innumerable reactions. What they were afraid of briefly held Cemp’s astonished interest:
—Two bodies cannot occupy the same space or . . . two spaces the same body; there was danger that this would now happen.
More basic: the space-time continuum, though it was a self-sustaining mechanism of immense but finite complication, needed Nijjans to survive: that was the thought. So that if a Nijjan were over-stimulated, space might have a reaction.
. . . That was how Lan Jedd had been killed: a Nijjan consciously over-stimulating himself in some small, precise way elicited a reaction in the space occupied by Lan’s body.
Push at the universe, at space. A Nijjan might be affected. Push at a Nijjan, the universe would push back or adjust to the push in some fundamental way.
What are they implying? thought Cemp, staggered. What are they saying?
Between the universe and the Nijjans, a symbiotic relation. If one was unstable, so was the other.
And the Nijjans were becoming unstable.
As Cemp’s awareness reached that point, there was a flash of alarmed agreement that extended through every observing Nijjan mind. Whereupon, N’Yata telepathed to Cemp:
