Continuum 1, page 10
part #1 of Continuum Series
Nthenge entered the house.
Kioko said nothing. He embraced Nthenge in the traditional greeting between brothers.
Before Nthenge could speak, Kioko slipped his woodcarver’s knife from his tunic. He plunged the polished stone blade into his brother’s chest. Nthenge grunted with pain and surprise. Kioko yanked out the blade and cut his brother’s throat.
There was a lot of blood. Kioko’s hands were slippery.
In a daze, hardly comprehending what he had done, Kioko followed instructions. He picked Nthenge’s body up in his arms. The weight was negligible; Nthenge had no meat on his bones. Kioko walked out the door carrying the body of Nthenge. It was still warm. It dripped a bright red trail.
Kioko carried the body to his workbench and put it down.
He stood up straight. T have done it,” he said in a loud, strong voice. “I, Kioko, the brother of Nthenge. The Anake are free.”
There were many people crowded around the courtyard. They stood in total silence. There was no movement.
Then — motion.
Ancestral figures moved among the people. Their figures were blurred. They glowed as they walked. They touched the people — soldiers, guards, old men, women, children. They whispered the ancient blessings.
The ancestors gathered around Kioko. One by one, they embraced him.
The strange silence held.
There were old, old stories that told of the ancestors visiting a village of the people, but no living man had seen such a thing with his own eyes. When the ancestors had appeared — magically, as though dropped from the sky — they had collected a crowd in a hurry.
It was a night that would be long remembered. In time, it too would become legend.
The ancestors formed a tight little group when they had finished indicating their approval of Kioko.
They withdrew, silently.
Their glow vanished into the night.
Still, the people did not speak. They waited to hear what Kioko would say.
Kioko stood with his dead brother sprawled on the bench behind him. He searched for the words that would lead the Anake back.
He faced his people and began.
Aboard the lightship, far now from the world of Procyon V, Alex Porvenir fired up one of his smelly pipes and blew an angry cloud of smoke in the general direction of Tucker Olton.
“It’s easy for us,” he said. “We commit a murder and then we just pull out. We’re beyond the range of their concepts, to say nothing of their technology. We have achieved at least one age-old human goal: the perfect crime.”
“We didn’t kill anybody,” Tucker said. “You didn’t kill anybody.”
“Sure,” Alex snorted. “The ancestors did it. Don’t play the fool, Tuck. I’m a big boy now. I made the decision. I’ll take the responsibility.”
“Kioko killed him,” Tucker said doggedly.
“What choice did he have after I bamboozled him? Kioko was just the instrument I used. That’s all.”
Tucker changed tactics. “Nthenge was no loss, Alex.”
“No. I don’t think so either. But he was a human being. We are not gods. Who are we to sit in judgement?”
Tucker managed a grim smile. He understood the older man’s moods; he knew he was being used. He respected Alex enough to put up with it. “Two questions, Alex. If you see an evil — never mind its cause — and take no action, does that earn you a gold star in your hymn book? And how many lives did you save by the death of Nthenge?”
Alex poured himself a drink. “Maybe. Maybe.”
“We’ve restored a balance in that situation. The Kikusai have learned a few tricks too, you know. Kioko is a decent man, and we’ve backed him up with our little ancestor squad. We can use the ancestors again if we have to. There will be a kind of a peace down there for generations.”
“And carvings. Don’t forget our loot.”
“Yes, and carvings. Dammit, Alex, they don’t hurt anybody. If you get really morbid on me, I’m yelling for the medics. We did the best we could.”
“Yes.” Alex downed his Scotch and felt a little better. “We did the best we could. I’ll give us that.”
Tucker nodded. “I’m shoving off to get some sleep. Helen is waiting for you, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“I do have one question.”
“Shoot.”
“What in the hell did happen to the historical Shaka?”
Alex Porvenir grinned and poured himself another drink. “Shaka had two brothers. They assassinated Shaka in 1828. Then one brother killed the other and took over. We simplified it a little on Procyon V.”
Tucker Olton shook his head and left the room.
The Caravans lightship plunged on through the desert of space. Against the stars, against the scale of the universe, the ship was nothing and less than nothing.
It carried a man and beside him a woman.
There was life, and purpose.
And there was a tiny thought, hurtled against the immensity of nothingness:
We try. We learn through our mistakes. We do the best we can.
Maybe we’ll be remembered.
Thomas N. Scortia
The Armageddon Tapes — Tape I
… That the agency of its defeat should have come into being by the merest chance. The all-enveloping menace, the anti-life principle that was the Theos invested the nearest galaxy. It had destroyed race after race until the Angae fled from its implacable advance to the next galaxy. The hive personality of this race was completely alien to the humankind they encountered in the Sol system. Yet the elements of racial consciousness and personality immortality that was the basis of their survival were uniquely suited to the predatory instincts of humans. When the two were mated, the racial fusion presented the most formidable challenge that the Theos had encountered.
That mankind had been evolving to this group mind in its political institutions was obvious from the peculiar empathetic growth of the Holy State after the final Thermonuclear War. That this was a completely atheistic political structure did not detract from its essential mystical base. Indeed, the very nature of the so-called “Holy State” depended on the almost fanatic religiosity that the humanism of the day invested in these institutions so that…
Die Anelan de Galactea — Vol II, Ca 4300
* * *
I am dreaming now, a deep placid sleep in which all sensation is muted. It has been years since I slept in this fashion, years since the calm and the peace of a small death (as some poet once called sleep) is mine.
I have set out to change the world, to destroy the world if need be and now I am content.
(Are you asleep Martin?)
Yes, I am asleep but I’m conscious that you are talking with me… to me… about me… and it really doesn’t matter. You think that in this fashion with your drugs and your flashing lights and your bright instruments, you have captured my psyche — my soul — but it isn’t so. I am aware of you and at any moment I may shake this spell and be among you, giant and potent beyond belief.
(Odd! Paranoid. But we know that he is dangerous. What could have happened during the period when the creatures had him? There’s a profound change in the biochemistry, of course. He takes in cellulose and excretes a complex mixture of purines and pentoses. Who ever heard of a human body manufacturing pentoses?)
I remember about pentoses. Yes, I heard you. I remember from long ago. We had a rhyme. Lyose, xylose, arabinose, ribose. Something, something, something.
(Martin, you are back with Them. Think back. Go back. You are back with Them and They are a part of your life, your being, your every concern.)
Cattle. I was cattle to Them, but They gave me something without knowing that They did, and for that They will eventually be destroyed. I love Them and I hate Them. I will give Them peace and I will give Them sleep and I will arise and give you peace — the peace of a world well ordered and unafraid.
(That’s a recurrent theme. He wants to bring us some kind of peace. What peace, Martin?)
The peace of being, of unthinking. The peace that comes from a universe ordered in a manner that men could never order it.
(Another recurrent theme. Were it not for the fact that he has learned some remarkable things from Them, I would put it down to so much fantasy. He may well be able to implement the fantasy. Does the desire and the power to make a fantasy real make the concept any less a fantasy? A disturbing philosophical question.)
I will make it real. I have the vision and it is clear.
(Martin, listen to me. I am your friend.)
All men are my friends.
(Tell me, how did it happen? How did you come to be with Them?)
How did I come to be Their cow? How did They take me and the others like me and turn us, alien and yet brothers, into a herd for Their sustenance?
(How?)
How old am I?
(Thirty, twenty-five. It’s hard to tell.)
Perhaps only five or six. I don’t remember. I was only three or four when it happened. My mother and father — those are strange words for someone who has had a thousand mothers and fathers… My mother and father were one of the last to die. They might have lived but they were too old and they could not accept the change. So They killed them. Not really. Actually They caused them to die because Mother and Father could not adapt. The children, many of them, could not adapt and they too died.
(What happened to the children?)
They died and they were eaten. Nothing is lost in the Group. They taught me that. Waste becomes a great sin. The waste of flesh and the waste of spirit are equally not to be tolerated.
(What happened in Marksville? Tell us.)
Marksville? That was home. The only home I had ever known. I wasn’t born there but Mother and Father joined the colony when I was only a year old. They told me once… I don’t think I understood at the time… but they told me that the world they grew up in had become too complicated, too restrictive with no privacy and a constant sense that someone was looking at you in your most intimate moments. There weren’t many places left in the world where a man might have the privacy and the peace of mind that come with being his own person.
(That’s treason, I think. Maybe we should erase this part of the tape. No? Well, God knows what will happen to him regardless.)
It was in the north, you know. Somewhere in Canada. I’m not sure exactly, but the winters were very cold so that the tractors and the automobiles had to be wrapped with electrical coils and hooked into the colony power supply at night. Otherwise the blocks would have frozen and they could have been permanently damaged. We lived in a communal hall and the heating plant would blast a surge of hot air across the common room one minute and then in the next minute the deadly cold would seep in until it seemed that it would penetrate to your very marrow.
It was a terribly isolated area. We had a helicopter that flew in supplies and mail. The mail came once a week and there wasn’t very much of that. After all, the old people had cut themselves off from the world and they didn’t want most of their friends knowing where they were. There was a constant fear that someone would come after us and make us return to the old world and the old ways. Even at that age, I felt their fear of being returned to the cities and of the eyes that never stopped watching.
(God, what will happen when our auditor hears this tape? Do you think we dare show it? There’s the doctrine of contamination and I sure as hell don’t want to face an inquisitor.)
I can hear what you’re saying and you have nothing to fear. Let me tell you how They came out of the sky. In one cold afternoon, Their ship came out of the sky. Completely without warning. They were the last of Their kind and They needed Kreels so that They would have food. It was a marvelously sophisticated technique They had for making Kreels and all They needed was a warm blooded organism that used glycogen or a similar starch.
They came out of the sky and at first the people thought that it was some remarkable new ship from the place They had left. The people were frightened but they did not expect to be mistreated, only captured and if need be — what was the word? — reindoctrinated.
The people didn’t flee, at any rate, and when They came out of the ship, the horror was like a blanket. They were large, almost seven feet tall and Their chitinous exoskeletons gleamed golden in the cold north sun. My father thought They looked like something half way between ants and praying mantises.
They came out of the great ship (it turned out that it was only a subsidiary vehicle and the real ship was still orbiting the earth), and They spread a gas over the settlement and all the grown people fell down and lay as if they were dead.
They gathered them up. It was remarkable how gentle They were, these huge insectlike creatures. They were gentle and They carried the human into the ship and found for each of them a single crystal container with all the necessary attachments to support life.
You must understand that They were not predatory or evil. They think differently than we. They see the whole universe quite differently and that much I have learned from Them. They were the last of Their race and They had a right to survive.
We were all placed in our special containers and there were bright hoses that attached themselves to our veins and shining disks that rested against our bare chests and there were probes that insinuated themselves deep into our vitals.
Warm fluids washed our bodies and a deep sense of identity filled our minds until it seemed as if we had always been a part of the Group. We were Kreels, of course, but we were a part of the Group. I know that seems startling to humans. What human thinks of his cattle as being a part of human life? You feed them and milk them and slaughter them and eat their flesh. They are a part of your life stream but you never think of them in this manner. It was not that way with Them. The Kreel were a part of Them, to be nourished and cherished and brought into the totality of the Group and all the while… harvested.
We were aware of the life of the ship and of the beings in the ship, of our fellows who had been brought into the ship and, as time went on, of the others who had been gathered from a hundred distant worlds. We were aware too of the flickering life force of those who could not adapt to these alien conditions and we mourned them as they slowly and quietly expired. I can remember the regret when I felt my father cease to be and soon after that my mother. It was that way with most of the adults and They silently resolved among themselves that They would not try again with adults of our species. We felt Their regret and at the time we forgave Them for it, we were so completely immersed in Their group thinking. Later our hate vied within us with the love we had learned in being close to Them.
The ship returned to space and held communion with the other ships and with the great craft that bore the major part of their race. In my crystal crysalis I could look out with my other senses and see Them moving through dimly lighted passages. I could feel the moist warmth that They needed to survive and smell the mustiness of Their nests and the acrid formaldehyde smell of Their bodies as They touched and talked and stroked each other in a peculiar mixture of communication and empathy.
More than this I and those that survived began to see through Their eyes. We began to understand the way the world and the universe was put together, see the discrete fine points of structure that human eyes and human minds can never comprehend. We watched the use They made of Their own internal energies to move the ships through space and we learned Their ways of manipulating matter and energy. All this while we were being groomed for Their cattle.
(That’s sickening. Do you remember what the boarding party reported? The place stank like a sewer. I suppose our smell must be as repellant to Them but it must have been pretty horrible. If it had not been for Martin, They might have continued gathering Their Kreel and multiplied.)
No, that was not Their purpose. They were a static race waiting only for a chance to find an unoccupied home. They were no menace to us at the time. Only Their way of seeing the universe, Their ideas on community and the individual —
(I tell you, we’d better edit this tape. An Inquisitor will have our hides. No one dares think this way, not and come out with a whole mind… What?… Well, how do I know how to conceal the editing? I’ve never dared conceal anything in my life. I suppose we take our chances. God, how did I get this assignment?)
There came a time when my mind saw that I had changed and that the others about me had changed. It was a subtle physical change in which certain enzymes had been modified. I learned later from a mind I probed that the enclase in the citric acid cycle had been modified and that the muscle phosphorylase too had changed so that the energy source was not now dextrose from the muscle glycogen but a seven-member sugar, a glucoheptose. This was necessary so that the product of the digestive tract should include excreted pentoses. They needed five carbon sugars for sustenance of Their bodies and that was the purpose of the Kreel.
Long ago, native Kreel on Their home planet had provided these but most of the native Kreel had perished in the great disaster. It was a savage thing that destroyed Their world, a great and consuming menace beyond belief. They could not fight it. They could only flee. Fortunately They had learned enough of alien biochemistries during Their space colonization efforts in Their own system to modify warm-blooded creatures. They were assured forever of a source of Their needed food, just so long as They could find creatures with the proper muscle starches and the proper enzyme systems for modification.
They had observed the change Themselves. They came to the deep hold where we lay in our crystal containers and They roused us. They were gentle and considerate and when They discovered that some of us had not survived, I could sense Their regret. They seemed not at all disturbed at the sight of corruption in those who had died and They went about the simple business of disposing of the decaying bodies. The decay was too advanced in some of them to serve in food but in others the tissues were relatively fresh and they were returned to the food stores of the ship.
