Fantastic Four, page 17
“I’ve already explained, this isn’t the end of Earth. The Fantastic Four, remember?”
“Even so.”
“Surfer—Norrin—I was raised by my stepfather,” Alicia said, “a very bad man. Thanks to that, I’ve learned not just how to forgive but how to see the best in anyone. I’m also quite convinced that there isn’t an evil bone in your body and that I couldn’t hate you if I tried. So, go on. Zenn-La. Shalla-Bal. I want to know all about them.”
There was a pause, and then the Silver Surfer said, “Very well.”
A Long Time Ago…
…ON A planet far, far away.
Zenn-La.
A marvel of the universe.
Zenn-La.
A glinting gem of a world that seemed to have achieved perfection.
Zenn-La.
Where war, crime and illness were just dimly remembered stories.
Where all challenges had been conquered, all injustices overcome, all ambitions achieved.
Where people lived nigh-on endless lives devoted solely to the pursuit of pleasure.
Where machines and computers catered to their every need, freeing them to indulge their whims.
Zenn-La, a name that many might—and did—consider synonymous with heaven.
All except one man.
Norrin Radd.
* * *
NORRIN RADD, alone among Zenn-Lavians, was discontented.
Others were happy to drift along in a state of constant idleness, questioning nothing, accepting everything, treating the extraordinary comfort and ease of their existences as simply their due.
Not Norrin Radd.
Norrin could not ride the conveyor-belt walkways through Zenn-La’s teeming, majestic cities without wondering when people had become too lazy to move their legs.
He could not attend one of the parties that always seemed to be going on somewhere and not wish he was anywhere else, away from these laughing, jabbering fools.
He could not ride the monorail cars that wound through the wildlife parks and fail to think how the docile captive animals below weren’t much different from the people staring down at them.
He could not see schoolchildren sitting in their rows, hooked up to instant-learning hypno-cubes, without asking himself whether an education so easily acquired was worth having.
He could not view the proceedings of the Zenn-Lavian parliament, where politicians debated for hours on end with the utmost solemnity about complete trivia, and not feel despair at the pointlessness of it.
As often as possible, Norrin would take himself off to some remote, uninhabited wilderness spot, in order to get away from all the endless, mindless prattle, the sybaritic wallowing in luxury, the soul-sapping mechanization. There, by himself, he would ruminate on the meaninglessness of life on Zenn-La. He firmly believed that people were supposed to strive, to struggle, to yearn. They were not supposed to have everything handed to them on a plate. It robbed them of their drive to improve.
He would dictate thoughts like these into his speech journal, recording his dissatisfaction—although who would ever read his musings, or care about them, he did not know.
“Those to whom no distant horizons beckon,” he stated on one occasion, “for whom no tests and trials remain, though they have inherited a universe, they possess only empty sand.”
And on another occasion, he said, “We may have achieved utopia, but it was gained for us by those who came before. We have not earned it. Therefore it is not truly ours.”
And on yet another: “My people have lost the spirit of high adventure, the thrill of discovery, the longing to inquire further. I, however, refuse to suffer such a fate. I will not chase the fleeting phantom of hedonism. I will not fritter away a centuries-long lifetime in decadence and self-gratification. But how? How may I escape the tyranny of a golden age and become the free, whole man I know I am meant to be?”
One of his frequent haunts was the Museum of Antiquity. Here were stored the few surviving scraps of Zenn-La’s imperfect past. He was drawn time after time towards the Weapon Supreme, a relic of the era of war that had riven the planet several millennia ago. It was still functioning, kept operational simply to prove how unnecessary it now was; the Zenn-Lavians could fire it if they wanted to, and the fact that they never did only went to show their total lack of bellicosity.
At the museum, too, there were immersive-reality dioramas where you could relive parts of history as though you were actually present. You could watch your savage, fur-clad forebears, from pre-civilized times, slaying the huge marauding beasts that preyed upon them. You could bear witness to battles from the ten-thousand-year-long age of wars, when Zenn-Lavian fought Zenn-Lavian to the death over such petty bones of contention as territory and resources. You could see the period of enlightenment that followed, born from a desire to renounce conflict and embrace peace and wisdom.
Thereafter came the great expansion, when pioneering astronauts answered the siren call of outer space and traveled far and wide through the galaxies, searching for wonders. Fearlessly they probed the unknown, planting the flag of Zenn-La on countless worlds.
And then it seemed that the Zenn-Lavian race had gone too far, seen too much, found more than it ever wished to; and no longer did people care about the distant stars and the universe’s other lifeforms. They withdrew to their mother world, never to venture forth again. They grew insular and inward-looking.
Or that was Norrin’s opinion, at any rate. They gave up on all they could have accomplished, all that potential, to concentrate purely on personal enjoyment.
Norrin seldom left the Museum of Antiquity without feeling justified in his sense of disgruntlement. While others went there to remind themselves how fortunate they were to live when and where they did, he went to have his innermost doubts validated.
* * *
THERE WAS no one Norrin could share these feelings with.
No one, that is, apart from Shalla-Bal.
Anyone else with whom he broached the subject either turned a deaf ear or called him ridiculous. “Why complain?” he was told. “Why find problems where there are none? What is so wrong with being happy?”
Only Shalla-Bal tolerated his grumblings, and then grudgingly.
She and Norrin had met as children, and over the years, as they matured into adulthood, love had blossomed between them. At first Norrin had found it difficult to express his attraction to Shalla-Bal. His intense, brooding introversion made him distant and reticent. She, however, intuited the depth of their bond better than he did, and gradually broke down his defenses until at last he was able to admit he loved her. She in turn declared that she had never not loved him.
Since then, they had been as close as any couple could be, although now and then Norrin’s dark moods did put a strain on their relationship. Shalla-Bal repeatedly insisted that he should stop obsessing on his unhappiness. Everything he could ever want or possibly need was right here on Zenn-La.
“It is right here, indeed, in me,” she would say, pressing his hand to her heart. “In the love we share. Why can you not accept that, Norrin? Is it so difficult? I know that the rest of Zenn-La seems hollow and empty to you, but this—what we have between us—is solid and true.”
Her words would soothe his troubled breast, at least for a time. Her beauty and her compassion, her kindness and her kisses— these should be enough for anyone. More than enough.
Yet still, inevitably, the gnawing ache would return. The shadows would darken in Norrin’s soul. The hunger—for endeavor, for fulfilment, for more—would grip him, and nothing could truly assuage it, not even Shalla-Bal’s reasoned arguments and soft caresses.
Then came the day, the fateful day, when everything changed.
* * *
ZENN-LA’S DEEP-SPACE scopes registered the sudden approach of a planet-sized starship at the outermost periphery of their range. It was on course for Zenn-La itself, and the scopes detected unimaginable levels of power contained within it. What the starship presaged, what designs its occupants had on Zenn-La, remained unclear, but the very fact of its arrival was cause for concern.
Parliament was hastily convened, but the politicians dithered and quarreled among themselves. Never in living memory had they been confronted with a situation like this, and they had no idea how to respond.
In the end they agreed to leave the decision-making to Zenn-La’s computers. The computers, after all, ran everything, controlled everything. Zenn-Lavians had long ago surrendered mastery of the minutiae of day-to-day living to them. The computers would know what to do.
The computers made their calculations and were definitive in their conclusion.
Attack.
And so the Weapon Supreme was deployed. The curators at the Museum of Antiquity oversaw the preparations, making sure the device was in full working order, as they had done for generations—the difference being that now, for the first time in eons, the thing was actually going to be fired.
The Weapon Supreme was wheeled out into the open. Its enormous barrel was trained skyward. A firing solution was entered.
All of Zenn-La watched, either at first hand or on their telescreens. Watched, and waited, and held their breath. Each person felt a trepidation such as they had not known before. This event was unprecedented. Never had so drastic a step been taken.
The Weapon Supreme used the planet’s molten core for its power source, and it had been designed to be the ultimate deterrent, unleashing a huge, focused pulse of antimatter mighty enough to shatter a moon. Its creation had, in fact, helped bring Zenn-La’s era of warfare to an end and usher in the ensuing eternal peacetime. When you had a single weapon easily capable of destroying the whole world, the risk of continued conflict, and possible self-annihilation, became just too great.
The land trembled as the Weapon Supreme was fired. Buildings were rocked. Mountains cracked. Seas surged. A vast, iridescently shimmering beam shot up out of the atmosphere and struck the approaching starship.
Its aim was dead on target. The starship was lost from view amid a brilliant, coruscating explosion that, for a time, outshone the sun in the Zenn-Lavian sky. Surely it had been destroyed.
Although it had come at a cost, this outcome was nonetheless greeted with joy by the population. Whatever threat the menacingly vast starship may have presented, it had been neutralized. Zenn-La was damaged but saved. Already the machines were beginning to make repairs, shoring up broken buildings, restoring power wherever there had been an outage, and healing the injured. In no time, things would be back to normal. Zenn-Lavians could return to their lives of blissful cossetedness.
So it seemed, for just a few heady minutes…
Until it became apparent that the starship had survived the assault.
And not just survived: it was intact. It had shrugged off the full force of the Weapon Supreme as though the Zenn-Lavians had hit it with nothing more powerful than a flyswatter.
As the starship loomed ever larger in near space, terror seized the populace. Terror like none they had known before. They turned to the computers for advice, but the computers could offer little of any use. That was perhaps the most terrifying thing of all: these electronic brains which people had relied on for so long were suddenly impotent. They began spitting out gibberish answers, as though succumbing to a kind of madness.
One man, and perhaps one man alone, saw the worldwide crisis as an opportunity.
Norrin Radd.
* * *
NORRIN RADD knew that Zenn-La was sorely endangered, even if he didn’t know the exact nature of the peril. He also knew that someone had to do something about it, and reckoned that that someone was Norrin Radd.
He hurried to Shalla-Bal, to inform her of his intentions. Her residence was strewn with debris—window shards, broken ornaments, pieces of cracked ceiling tile—as a result of the firing of the Weapon Supreme. Domestic robots were making inroads into cleaning it all up.
“If the starship contains an invading army, as seems likely,” he said to her, “that gives me someone I can parley with. I am going to fly out in a spacecraft and do just that.”
“Why, Norrin?” Shalla-Bal said. “Whoever is in that ship means us ill. Otherwise our computers would not have counseled attacking it. Whether the occupants mean to subjugate us or destroy us, either way Zenn-La, as we know it, is doomed. Stay with me. If the end is coming, let us meet it together, in each other’s embrace.”
“No!” He held her by both arms. “I will not surrender meekly. I refuse to. Don’t you understand, Shalla-Bal? This is what I have been searching for my whole life. A true test of my mettle. A chance to prove that I have fighting spirit, even if everyone else has lost theirs.”
“But if you were beside me, both of us proclaiming our love even as catastrophe descends, would that not be defiance enough?”
“Shalla-Bal, I do love you, and that is why I cannot be by your side now,” Norrin said. “To save you—and every Zenn-Lavian, but you above all—I would try anything, dare anything, face any hazard. I would risk my life for you, and if I were to lose it in the name of protecting you, I would think that a price worth paying.”
“Is that so, Norrin? Or is it that you seek glory and are merely claiming to do so in my name, in an attempt to justify the deed?”
“Shalla-Bal, I—”
“Go, Norrin.” She pushed him away. Tears glistened in her emerald-brilliant eyes. “Go and chase your destiny, vainglorious as it is. Nothing I can say is going to stop you. Just know that you have broken my heart. Think on that as you depart on this futile mission of yours.”
Norrin’s own heart was breaking as he left Shalla-Bal in the wreckage of her home. He was wounded by her accusations and refused to admit they might have some truth in them. He consoled himself with the thought that if he was successful and managed to avert the coming disaster, he would return a hero. Shalla-Bal would acknowledge that he had been right all along, as would all Zenn-Lavians. He would have shown everyone, by example, how vital it was to be bold, to be willing to risk everything. He would have shone a bright light on the passivity of their lives, and this might rouse them out of their apathy and inspire them to become again the venturesome race they had once been.
He commandeered a small, personal-use spacecraft, one designed for taking joyrides into low orbit. He took off and was soon escaping Zenn-La’s gravity well and hurtling through the void towards the starship.
Never had he beheld so colossal a construct. It was like a loop of metal twisted in on itself, both simple and elaborate, stately in a way, but intimidating too. Even as he approached, he noted that its progress towards Zenn-La had slowed, and by the time he reached it, it had come to a complete standstill. He didn’t know whether this was pure coincidence, or if the starship’s occupants had detected the presence of his craft and recognized him to be an ambassador from the nearby planet.
He had his answer a few moments later when a hatch opened in the starship’s hull. Clearly this was an invitation to come aboard.
Soon Norrin was treading warily through immense, gleaming halls, hearing the susurration of unseen machinery all around him and the echo of his own footfalls. He walked for hours, it seemed, encountering no one. The proportions of the starship’s interior—from doorways to staircases—suggested it was built for giants, beings easily three times his height. But where were they?
After a while, he began to wonder whether the ship was uncrewed. Perhaps it was entirely automated, journeying through space on some kind of cruise control. Perhaps those traveling inside it were long dead, and the starship was simply carrying on without them, mindlessly following a preprogrammed flight plan.
Alternatively, the occupants might all be held in suspended animation somewhere amid this world-sized labyrinth, perhaps refugees from some fallen civilization. They were waiting for a habitable planet to hove into view; and once one did, such as Zenn-La, they would be awoken and swoop in to colonize it.
Norrin imagined these and many other scenarios to explain the apparent absence of life aboard the ship.
That was until he at last came across a living being.
* * *
THE MAN was a giant, just as Norrin had surmised.
He was, moreover, no mere man.
He stood, proud and imposing, in a cathedral-like chamber filled with light—so much light, Norrin could scarcely look at it. It hurt his eyes.
Squinting against the dazzle, Norrin perceived that the giant was bathing in the light. No, more than that. He was drawing it into himself, suffusing himself with it. The light was pure energy, and it sizzled and frothed around the giant like sea foam, before vanishing into his body.
It was an awesome sight, and Norrin felt it was one that mortals were not meant to behold.
Gradually, the light faded. The giant drew a deep, satisfied sigh. Then he turned and gazed down upon the quailing Norrin. A few last flickers of dissipating energy rippled up and down his blue-and-magenta garb. His eyes, through the narrow slits in his high-crowned helmet, were dark and baleful.
“I know who you are, Norrin Radd,” he said, “and I know why you have come here.”
“H-How?” Norrin stammered.
“I am Galactus. All is known to me.”
“Galactus.”
The word dredged up a dim recollection in Norrin’s brain. Once, in the Museum of Antiquity, he had stumbled across a reference to an entity by that name. It was contained in a report made by one of Zenn-La’s most intrepid astronauts, Daquan Caddo, who had voyaged farther and visited more corners of the cosmos than his peers. Caddo had heard rumors of a godlike being, Galactus, who roved the universe seeking worlds to devour. He dismissed the idea, thinking it to be nothing more than interstellar folklore, or some sort of baseless traveler’s tale—the sort of scary story that could be shared over a drinking table, to bring a pleasurable little shudder to listeners.
But Galactus, it turned out, was real.
