Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Oh, they gave the old man a hard time, all right. They went through his house with a fine-toothed comb. They dug up his yard, his cellar, and generally put him through it, figuring he was a natural to hang a murder rap on. But there was just nothing to be found, and they couldn't manufacture evidence when there was nothing to show that McIlvaine ever knew that Richardson planned to have a little fun with him.

  "And no one had seen Richardson there. There was nothing but McIlvaine's word that he had heard what he said he heard. He needn't have volunteered that, but he did. After the police had finished with him, they wrote him off as a harmless nut. But the question of what happened to Richardson wasn't solved from that day to this."

  "People have been known to walk out of their lives," I said. "And never come back."

  "Oh, sometimes they do. Richardson didn't. Besides, if he walked out of his life here, he did so without more than the clothing he had on. So much was missing from his effects, nothing more."

  "And McIlvaine?"

  Harrigan smiled thinly. "He carried on. You couldn't expect him to do anything less. After all, he had worked most of his life trying to communicate with the worlds outside, and he had no intention of resigning his contact, no matter how much Richardson's disappearance upset him. For a while he believed that Guru had actually disintegrated Richardson; he offered that explanation, but by that time the dust had vanished, and he was laughed out of face. So he went back to the machine and Guru and the little excursions to Bixby's...."

  "What's the latest word from that star of yours?" asked Leopold, when McIlvaine came in.

  "They want to rejuvenate me," said McIlvaine, with a certain shy pleasure.

  "What's that?" asked Alexander sourly.

  "They say they can make me young again. Like them up there. They never die. They just live so long, and then they rejuvenate, they begin all over. It's some kind of a process they have."

  "And I suppose they're planning to come down and fetch you up there and give you the works, is that it?" asked Alexander.

  "Well, no," answered McIlvaine. "Guru says there's no need for that—it can be done through the machine; they can work it like the disintegrators; it puts you back to thirty or twenty or wherever you like."

  "Well, I'd like to be twenty-five myself again," admitted Leopold.

  "I'll tell you what, Mac," said Alexander. "You go ahead and try it; then come back and let us know how it works. If it does, we'll all sit in."

  "Better make your will first, though, just in case."

  "Oh, I did. This afternoon."

  Leopold choked back a snicker. "Don't take this thing too seriously, Mac. After all, we're short one of us now. We'd hate to lose you, too."

  McIlvaine was touched. "Oh, I wouldn't change," he hastened to assure his friends. "I'd just be younger, that's all. They'll just work on me through the machine, and over-night I'll be rejuvenated."

  "That's certainly a little trick that's got it all over monkey glands," conceded Alexander, grinning.

  "Those little bugs on that star of yours have made scientific progress, I'd say," said Leopold.

  "They're not bugs," said McIlvaine with faint indignation. "They're people, maybe not just like you and me, but they're people just the same."

  He went home that night filled with anticipation. He had done just what he had promised himself he would do, arranging everything for his rejuvenation. Guru had been astonished to learn that people on Earth simply died when there was no necessity of doing so; he had made the offer to rejuvenate McIlvaine himself.

  McIlvaine sat down to his machine and turned the complex knobs until he was en rapport with his dark star. He waited for a long time, it seemed, before he knew his contact had been closed. Guru came through.

  "Are you ready, McIlvaine?" he asked soundlessly.

  "Yes. All ready," said McIlvaine, trembling with eagerness.

  "Don't be alarmed now. It will take several hours," said Guru.

  "I'm not alarmed," answered McIlvaine.

  And indeed he was not; he was filled with an exhilaration akin to mysticism, and he sat waiting for what he was certain must be the experience above all others in his prosaic existence.

  "McIlvaine's disappearance coming so close on Richardson's gave us a beautiful story," said Harrigan. "The only trouble was, it wasn't new when the Globe got around to it. We had lost our informant in Richardson; it never occurred to Alexander or Leopold to telephone us or anyone about McIlvaine's unaccountable absence from Bixby's. Finally, Leopold went over to McIlvaine's house to find out whether the old fellow was sick.

  "A young fellow opened up.

  "'Where's McIlvaine?' Leopold asked.

  "'I'm McIlvaine,' the young fellow answered.

  "'Thaddeus McIlvaine,' Leopold explained.

  "'That's my name,' was the only answer he got.

  "'I mean the Thaddeus McIlvaine who used to play cards with us over at Bixby's,' said Leopold.

  "He shook his head. 'Sorry, you must be looking for someone else.'

  "'What're you doing here?' Leopold asked then.

  "'Why, I inherited what my uncle left,' said the young fellow.

  "And, sure enough, when Leopold talked to me and persuaded me to go around with him to McIlvaine's lawyer, we found that the old fellow had made a will and left everything to his nephew, a namesake. The stipulations were clear enough; among them was the express wish that if anything happened to him, the elder Thaddeus McIlvaine, of no matter what nature, but particularly something allowing a reasonable doubt of his death, the nephew was still to be permitted to take immediate possession of the property and effects."

  "Of course, you called on the nephew," I said.

  Harrigan nodded. "Sure. That was the indicated course, in any event. It was routine for both the press and the police. There was nothing suspicious about his story; it was straightforward enough, except for one or two little details. He never did give us any precise address; he just mentioned Detroit once. I called up a friend on one of the papers there and put him up to looking up Thaddeus McIlvaine; the only young man of that name he could find appeared to be the same man as the present inhabitant's uncle, though the description fit pretty well."

  "There was a resemblance, then?"

  "Oh, sure. One could have imagined that old Thaddeus McIlvaine had looked somewhat like his nephew when he himself was a young man. But don't let the old man's rigmarole about rejuvenation make too deep an impression on you. The first thing the young fellow did was to get rid of that machine of his uncle's. Can you imagine his uncle having done something like that?"

  I shook my head, but I could not help thinking what an ironic thing it would have been if there had been something to McIlvaine's story, and in the process to which he had been subjected from out of space he had not been rejuvenated so much as just sent back in time, in which case he would have no memory of the machine nor of the use to which it had been put. It would have been as ironic for the inhabitants of McIlvaine's star, too; they would doubtless have looked forward to keeping this contact with Earth open and failed to realize that McIlvaine's construction differed appreciably from theirs.

  "He virtually junked it. Said he had no idea what it could be used for, and didn't know how to operate it."

  "And the telescope?"

  "Oh, he kept that. He said he had some interest in astronomy and meant to develop that if time permitted."

  "So much ran in the family, then."

  "Yes. More than that. Old McIlvaine had a trick of seeming shy and self-conscious. So did this nephew of his. Wherever he came from, his origins must have been backward. I suspect that he was ashamed of them, and if I had to guess, I'd put him in the Kentucky hill-country or the Ozarks. Modern concepts seemed to be pretty well too much for him, and his thinking would have been considerably more natural at the turn of the century.

  "I had to see him several times. The police chivvied him a little, but not much; he was so obviously innocent of everything tha
t there was nothing for them in him. And the search for the old man didn't last long; no one had seen him after that last night at Bixby's, and, since everyone had already long since concluded that he was mentally a little off center, it was easy to conclude that he had wandered away somewhere, probably an amnesiac. That he might have anticipated that is indicated in the hasty preparation of his will, which came out of the blue, said Barnevall, who drew it up for him.

  "I felt sorry for him."

  "For whom?"

  "The nephew. He seemed so lost, you know—like a man who wanted to remember something, but couldn't. I noticed that several times when I tried to talk to him; I had the feeling each time that there was something he wanted desperately to say, it hovered always on the rim of his awareness, but somehow there was no bridge to it, no clue to put it into words. He tried so hard for something he couldn't put his finger on."

  "What became of him?"

  "Oh, he's still around. I think he found a job somewhere. As a matter of fact, I saw him just the other evening. He had apparently just come from work and he was standing in front of Bixby's with his face pressed to the window looking in. I came up nearby and watched him. Leopold and Alexander were sitting inside—a couple of lonely old men looking out. And a lonely young man looking in. There was something in McIlvaine's face—that same thing I had noticed so often before, a kind of expression that seemed to say there was something he ought to know, something he ought to remember, to do, to say, but there was no way in which he could reach back to it."

  "Or forward," I said with a wry smile.

  "As you like," said Harrigan. "Pour me another, will you?"

  I did and he took it.

  "That poor devil!" he muttered. "He'd be happier if he could only go back where he came from."

  "Wouldn't we all?" I asked. "But nobody ever goes home again. Perhaps McIlvaine never had a home like that."

  "You'd have thought so if you could have seen his face looking in at Leopold and Alexander. Oh, it may have been a trick of the streetlight there, it may have been my imagination. But it sticks to my memory, and I keep thinking how alike the two were—old McIlvaine trying so desperately to find someone who could believe him, and his nephew now trying just as hard to find someone to accept him or a place he could accept on the only terms he knows."

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SUN KING

  By Gaston Derreaux

  The people of Par'si'ya forgot their God, and worshipped only murder, and sin. But then the virgin Too-che gave birth to a male child....

  When the soldiers of the city Oas saw that their King had not the backbone to enforce his own decree when it hurt himself, they one and all took up stones, and they stoned King So-qi to death.

  Before the flood, even before Egypt's greatness, the world was divided into three main countries, named Jaffeth, Shem and Arabin'ya. There were other less populated lands and places; Uropa in the west, Heleste in the north, and the two great lands of the far west, called North and South Guatama.

  Now, at the juncture of the borders of the three greatest countries, lay a mighty city, named Oas. It was the capital city of the Arabin'yan nation called Par'si'ya.

  Its Temple of Skulls was the greatest known to any traveler, but the temples built to the god, Mazda, and his son, Ihua'Mazda, were empty and unadorned—the people had forgotten God.

  So-qi, King of Oas, sent out his armies throughout Jaffeth (China), conquering and slaying, bringing back ever more skulls for the Golgotha temples, more gold and more slaves for the enriching of King So-qi. His harem was the greatest of buildings of the mighty city, and his wives beyond man's ability to count.

  Too-che was one of the finest ornaments of the city of Oas. Too-che was slim, her breasts were two mounds of magic, her eyes were pools of mystic green depths, her legs were subtle, sinuous beauty.

  But Too-che was a virgin, and in all that city of a million sinful souls, she alone held aloof from the sins of the flesh.

  Which was very strange, for Too-che became big with child, though she had not been with a man!

  Which came to the ears of So-qi, upon his great black throne supported on a tower of human skulls, in his palace of Gran, across from the great Golgotha, which was built entirely of human skulls—the skulls of people conquered by the armies of Par'si'ya, over which the city of Oas reigned.

  So-qi shook his big belly under the lion's skin, let slip his serpent skin headdress, and let the battle axe that was his symbol of office drop from his hand as he shook with mirth at the great and thumping lie told by Too-che.

  "I suppose her child was fathered by Mazda, peering into her womb with his All-light," laughed So-qi, for in Oas it was not the fashion to worship the God Mazda anymore. The great skull temples had their priests and their sacrifices, but no more did people bow down in the temples of Mazda, or have anything but ridicule for those few who did still worship in the old way.

  His serpent skin headdress and battle axe scepter, too, were relics from the past. Just as the belief in Mazda. But more potent relics, by far. With them he was the Sun King, Lord of Battles, Master of Life and Death, Creator of the Universe, Lord of Souls, Maker of the Law, etc. Without them he was just old So-qi, getting fatter and more stupid every day.

  "Bring this harlot before me, to see if she can produce a miracle to prove her child is not a common one. If she cannot, she will be stoned to death at once, do you hear! I have no time to be bothered with the lies of every sinning woman who seeks to hide her bastard's origin."

  Asha, the philosopher who had told his king of the birth of the child, nodded his head sadly and left the presence. Why did kings have to get so blown up as to be inhuman? He sympathized with the girl and her predicament. If it had been his to say, he would have had the child proclaimed divine a thousand times in preference to shedding one drop of her blood. But then, he had seen Too-che sauntering home from the well, with her water jar on her head, and her hips the focal point of all eyes in the street. Asha smiled, and took his grey-headed, bent, unnoticed figure down the back streets to the house of Too-che.

  As he went, he pondered gloomily on the fate of this great city under the heartless and ignorant So-qi. Surely something dreadful would happen to Par'si'ya, lying as it did at the juncture of the lands of the three mightiest kingdoms of the world. Jaffeth (China), Shem (Africa) and Arabin'ya. Any one of them could crush them, did they get themselves organized for it. And So-qi preyed upon them all ruthlessly, knowing they could never stop warring interiorly long enough to attack him.

  Old Asha thought of the future, which his star studies were supposed to give him power to foretell, and of the great flood that was to come and wipe out all the old boundaries and nations. He thought of the peculiar grey-blue sky, which the Wise men had taught him bore up within its whirling self vast oceans of water, waiting for the time to drop the whirling water-shell upon them all. He thought of Uropa, the great land in the west, and all her peoples. He thought of Heleste, that mighty and gracious land in the North, and all her beautiful and strong and courageous people. And he thought of the two great lands of the far west, called North and South Guatama. And he was sad, for they were all to die in the great deluge to come! But the time was not yet come.

  Sadly he pushed among the stalwart copper-colored men of Oas, gazing a little wistfully at the women's proud breasts and the strong young thews of their lovers beside them. If only he were young again.... Asha sighed, and knocked upon the low, rude door of the house of Too-che.

  The smile of the beautiful Too-che made him welcome, very proud to have the wise man from the court inquire after her child.

  "He worries me, wise Asha," said Too-che, moving slim and supple as a panther to sit protectively beside the little cradle of bent ash bows lashed together with strips of hide. "He talks like a man grown, and him not yet weaned!"

  "Hmmm." Old Asha looked down upon the over-large infant solemnly looking back at him. He nearly fainted when the tiny red lip
s opened, and a strange, small voice, cultured and adult, said:

  "I am not the child you see, but your God, Mazda, speaking through the child's lips!"

  Asha pondered for only a moment, then turned in anger upon the woman, Too-che.

  "I pitied you, harlot, because the King has ordered your death if you did not produce a miracle. But I did not think you would hide a man behind the child's cradle to befool me, old Asha! What do you take me for?"

  Too-che broke into tears, bending her graceful neck and sobbing to hear that the king had decreed death for her. But the peculiar voice came again from the child's mouth.

  "Take me in your arms, Asha."

  Feeling very foolish, but unable to refuse for some mysterious reason, Asha bent and picked up the child.

  "O man, temper thy judgment with patience and wisdom."

  Asha knew now that it was the child's voice truly, and at last asked:

  "Why do you come in such a weak and helpless guise, O Lord Mazda? I had hoped to see a God appear in stronger shape."

  "Nevertheless, through this helpless child in your arms, this city shall be overthrown, yourself made King of Kings, and I shall deliver all the slaves and strike off all the bonds from the old time. Mazda will have this city for his own, or it will be destroyed forever."

  Now Asha was filled with wonder, and asked the babe of many abstruse things, receiving answers beyond his understanding. So, at last convinced, he put the babe down, turned to Too-che.

  "Listen, maiden who in my eyes is without fault. I cannot go to my King and tell him one word of what this child has revealed, for I would only die with both of you as a liar and worse. You must take this child and hide him away from the eyes and the ears of the men of this city. You in your innocence do not understand the ways of kings and courts and warriors and such things. Flee, for if you are here tomorrow, you will die and your child will die with you."