The Arsenal of Miracles

by Gardner Fox

  “We aren’t going to stay here,” Bran told her, “but there’s something I want you to see outside the tele-doors—the machine on the Crenn Lir worlds that still works.”

  Her curiosity was caught at once. Her every hope for her people was based on the assumption that somewhere in space she could find ancient artifacts of the Crenn Lir, a few of their formidable weapons. Perhaps this machine that Bran spoke of might be what she needed.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Let’s go look at it.”

  The same type bronze doors through which they had entered the tele-door chamber on Makkador were here. Bran pushed them open and sunlight flooded the room. Peganna shaded her eyes as she looked out over a landscape charred black as by some olden cataclysm. She saw gray rocks thrusting up through the ruined ground, but nothing else. No bit of color, no bud or leafy thing broke the dead monotony of the blackness and the rocks.

  Only in the distance…

  She turned to look up at Bran. “Is it one of their cities?”

  “What’s left of it. The machine is there.”

  “I want to see it, Bran. So much!”

  He nodded, and they set off across the dead landscape. It was a depressing place, all gray rock and charred ground. No life of any sort existed here, as far as he knew. No intelligent beings or animals trod its surface. The destruction that had overtaken this planet had been a most deadly one.

  As they walked, Peganna shaded her eyes while she blinked up at the sun. It was a red giant that filled half the sky but gave only a comparatively feeble warmth for all its size. She commented on this and asked its name.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he told her. “I stayed here overnight once, just to see the star patterns. There weren’t any. Only two stars were visible.”

  “Only two?”

  “I had no telescope, just my eyes.”

  “But—no stars!”

  “It must be a very remote planet,” Bran reflected, “set so far from the other Crenn Lir worlds as to be on the very perimeter of its empire.”

  “Maybe this wasn’t a Crenn Lir world at all.”

  “Perhaps, though the architecture of the city resembles theirs. My own belief is that this was once a distant Crenn Lir planet, the one most remote from its fellows and most liable to attack by an enemy. None of the other planets I’ve been on have this charred look.”

  Black dust rose about their calves as they walked. The air was fresh, the wind gentle. Whatever tragedy had overtaken the planet—Bran had named it Deirdre of the Sorrows, he told Peganna—was lost in the folds of Time. Any radioactivity or other deadly after-effects had been dissipated long ago.

  The city grew larger to their eyes. In olden times it had been a mighty metropolis. Now it was only a pile of rubble extending for many miles. Tumbled stones lay like giant play blocks standing on end or lying on their sides. Here and there part of some ancient tower rose upward like the finger of a dead colossus buried amid the debris. They found the shattered remnants of a road after a while and this made walking easier.

  Soon they were in the outskirts of the city. Up this close the building blocks proved to be gigantic, carved by supernormal means out of solid granite. Here and there they could detect the outlines of massive buildings, even the twisted remains of a metal object, distorted by an unimaginable force into an unrecognizable mass of metal.

  “It’s so gloomy, so sad,” Peganna whispered.

  “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” nodded Bran. He smiled down at her. “Or don’t you know your Irish history?” He told her a little of that Irish maiden who had unwittingly caused the death of so many fine men and brought tears to the eyes of Ulster women. “Can you think of a better name for such a place?”

  She shook her head, reflecting on the desolation which must have come upon this world during the terrible holocaust that destroyed it. Her sadness seemed to penetrate her body, creating a rhythm with her thudding heart before she realized this throbbing came from an outside source.

  Bran touched her arm, pointing. “See there, Peganna.”

  It was a great cube of shining metal that looked like highly polished steel. Fifty feet high, it was equally wide and equally long. It gleamed brightly in the sunlight and from it came the dull throbbing that formed an ache in the ears after a while.

  Bran walked up to it, laid the flat of his hand against it. “It’s smooth and warm and something inside is pulsing away steadily… without stop, without pause.”

  Peganna came up beside him and put her white hand beside his brown one. Now she could feel warmth and the sound that seemed trapped inside. There was no break in the metallic sides, no sign of an opening, even of a slit into which the edge of so much as a bit of paper might be thrust.

  “What is it?” she wondered. “Has it any purpose?”

  “I thought you could tell me, since your people learned the Crenn Lir language.”

  Her silver hair quivered as she shook her head. “There was no mention of any such machine in the writings we saw. Of course, most of our translations were done from stone fragments. This machine might be a more recent invention, so recent that there was no public acknowledgment of it graved in stone. And every other writing material seems to have perished with time.”

  Bran let his eyes assess the humming metal square. “It must serve a purpose. It’s been working now for a million years, I’d guess. Or however long it’s been since the Crenn Lir planets were destroyed.”

  “And maybe before that. Maybe this is what powers the tele-doors.” She glanced at Bran. “Someday I want to come back, Bran, to study this more closely. But right now—I’m more interested in the well of Molween.”

  “Molween is far away. We’d best go back to the tele-door.”

  They turned and walked away. In their footprints black dust stirred and shifted, then settled down to its eons-old rest.

  The great machine hummed on.

  FOUR

  THROUGH THREE black doors and two roseate ovals Bran and Peganna traveled before they put foot on the planet Molween. The Crenn Lir had another, unknown name for this world; Molween was an Empire term given it by an explorer five hundred years before who had vaned down on its surface after coming out of hyperspace. In those days, before the invention of the hyperspatial compass, men had no way of knowing where in space they would emerge from that misty universe through which man first traveled to the stars. It was a hit or miss proposition all the way.

  Twice since then had men set foot on Molween, each time returning to confirm the story told by that initial explorer. There was a well on Molween. It did grant wishes, after a fashion. What a man asked for, the well gave, the men said.

  One man told of a needed bearing for a damaged motor that the well supplied. Another said he asked for gold, and produced a golden ingot as proof of what he claimed. They always added that the well did not grant every wish, for some reason, only an occasional one. But it was enough to begin the legend.

  “Did you make a wish, Bran?” asked Peganna as they emerged from the tele-door into a small chamber in the walls of which were set dioramic displays behind glass panes.

  “I did. I asked for a map of the planet. There wasn’t any answer.” He paused, waiting for Peganna who stood staring into a dioramic display of green desert across which a tiny deer fled before a pack of howling dune wolves. She murmured, “The law of the universe. The strong destroy the weak.” Her chin firmed as she swung on him. “I intend to be weak no longer, Bran Magannon.”

  He nodded understandingly. “The Empire Counsel only understands a show of force, at times.”

  Her eyes never left his face. “I intend to ask the well for a weapon, a weapon against which there is no defense.”

  “I hope you get it.”

  She moved ahead of him, hips swaying, toward the bronze door that opened to the touch of her palm so that she went out into the sunlight and stood a moment breathing in crisp, cool air. She made a wistful picture in her white chlamys with its hood
thrown back so that her silver hair blew free about her white face. She is so small to be a queen, so lonely and so lovely. In his heart he cursed the stupidity of officialdom that had denied her people the right to live among them, to become a part of Empire.

  He wondered if a weapon would help her.

  She walked ahead of him down metal steps to broad grasslands stretching away toward the horizon, broken only here and there with stands of tall, stately trees. Molween had survived the disaster that had overwhelmed her sister planets in rather good fashion, Bran thought. All it seemed to lack was people.

  When he mentioned this to Peganna, suggesting that her people come here, she shook her head. “We tried a few of the Crenn Lir planets and found there is an unknown force that makes us ill, very ill. Almost as if a curse still hangs over the Crenn Lir worlds.”

  “I never felt it,” he said.

  “You never stayed long on any one planet, Wanderer. The force never had a chance to build up in you.”

  “And on Miranor, where your people now live?”

  She shrugged. “The force is weak. We’ve developed drugs that counteract its effects for a little while. But to go on like that is intolerable. This is a period of marking time for the Lyanir, Bran. Until I find what I want from the well of Molween.”

  They walked across the grasslands with the wind blowing sweet and clean in their faces. Bran Magannon realized that he felt fully alive for the first time in years, walking here with the woman he loved. It was as if, by not being near her, he had been half dead. When they were under the shadows of a tree, he put a hand on her arm and drew her back to him. He kissed her hungrily, thrilling to the softness of her mouth. She trembled in his arms like a wild thing in the hands of a hunter.

  “Bran, I’m so afraid. So afraid!”

  There were tears in her eyes; he kissed them away while she sobbed laughter. “I’m so alone, so alone,” she whispered.

  “Not now. Not with me beside you.”

  “But you’re an Earthman. Not a Lyanir.”

  “I’m a man, first of all. My first duty is to the race of men whether they wear the star cluster of Empire or the twin axes of Lyanol.”

  Her eyes glowed up at him. “Oh, Bran! You mean that, don’t you? Knowing you’re with me all the way means so much. So much!”

  He grinned at her, still locking her in the grip of his arms. “Did you honestly doubt me? While men like Alvar Drexel control the Intergalactic Fleet for Empire, I want no part of it. My hope is that by uniting the Lyanir with the men of Empire—we can make something better than either.”

  “To do that, we need a weapon to compel Empire to accede to our demands.” She said it almost as a question, looking up into his eyes.

  “It’s the only thing I can think of that will put the fear of the Lord in them. And to force the Empire to do something, you’ve got to shake them up pretty badly.”

  Her hand caught his, warm fingers gripping him tightly. “Then come on, Bran. Come on!”

  Laughter trailed from her lips as she ran through the high grasses like a wood nymph. Just so had she been those years before on the treaty planet, Kuleen. Bran sorrowed for the years they had been apart and ran with her.

  In the distance now they could see the topless towers of a Crenn Lir city. There was no char of ruin here as there had been on Deirdre, however. The buildings of this world had crumbled in upon themselves with age. There was an air of desolation about them that came with abandonment, not with destruction.

  “It’s as though the people living here just packed up and went away,” Peganna murmured as they moved across the smooth streets.

  “Or—died off,” he growled.

  “As suddenly as all that? Leaving everything almost as it had been while they were alive?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  She eyed him wonderingly. “What could possibly cause such a thing? Neither Empire nor the Lyanir know a power as great as that.”

  “I know, I know. It’s what worries me.”

  She seemed startled but only tightened the grip of her hand on his as they walked. There was a new eagerness in her stride, reflecting the troubled attitude of her thoughts.

  Then the buildings on either side of them opened to a great square where once had been set metal rods and chains connecting them, surrounding a metal platform that shone in the sunlight as though it were brand new. Built upon the metal platform was an oval structure resembling a towering sea wave rushing shoreward. Set into that curving lip was a smooth black oval that glittered like glass.

  Bran gestured with his hand. “The well of Molween, acushla.”

  Peganna shivered. Her hand fell from his and moved to her upper arm, stroking slowly as if to restore its circulation. Cold and suddenly frightened, her eyes seemed held hypnotically by that black opening.

  “Bran, suppose it doesn’t work?”

  “Then we’ve lost a little time, no more.”

  His big hand at the small of her back urged her forward. Just so might a supplicant have approached her god ages ago on Earth, with fear etched on her face and in the writhings of her fingers twisting together. Her eyes touched him and fell away. Her lips quivered as she sought to cry a protest and could not.

  She stood before the oval on a blue metal band, putting a hand up to her hair, pushing it back. Her lips were a little open.

  “What shall I say, Bran?”

  “Ask for the perfect weapon.”

  She nodded, then touched her lips with a tonguetip. “I need a weapon, the perfect weapon,” she said slowly. “Give it to me, please.”

  The black oval glittered, mute.

  Peganna uttered a cry of dismay. “Bran, it won’t work. It’s refused me! After I counted so much on it.”

  “Don’t panic,” he told her. “Maybe you didn’t ask the right way. Maybe you have to speak in the Crenn Lir tongue. No—that isn’t so, if the men who found the well told the truth. They wouldn’t have known the language.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  He said slowly. “The thing may work by some sort of mental telepathy. Try that. Try picturing a weapon in your mind.”

  Peganna concentrated. One after another she visualized the weapons of the Lyanir, of the space navies of the Empire. She even thought of handguns and swords, but the black oval remained dead.

  She began to sob in her frustration.

  “The Crenn Lir had weapons. We know from what we learned of their language and from the paintings we found. Fantastic weapons, some of them, that operated on principles entirely unknown to us. Why doesn’t it bring them to me? Why?”

  “Maybe it can’t, Peganna. They may not exist any more.”

  Her shoulders slumped as she nodded. “I suppose not. It’s been so long—so many centuries. But I felt sure… There was a vault that contained all their weapons, sealed away against the ravages of time, which they hoped any who survived the catastrophe could go and open.”

  Peganna buried her face in her hands, muffling her words. “There must be a way to open that vault—a key of sorts—a word or symbol…”

  “Keep talking!”

  His words were like an electrical stimulation to the woman. Peganna lifted her head, stared with wet eyes at the black oval that was growing lighter, paling to a faint rose. She found herself looking into swirling reds and pinks and lavenders, as if tinted smokes were being blown about by titanic winds, shifting, whirling, driving back and forth, mingling with one another.

  “… a vault of arms, a place where the Crenn Lir could go if any were left alive, to get their weapons, the artifacts of their sciences. There must be a key to that vault—a way to open it! Give me that key. Give the key to me, to Peganna of the Silver Hair.…”

  A blue egg formed in the oval and moved toward her.

  It fell from the oval and bounced across the blue metal dais and rolled to the booted feet of Bran Magannon. He bent down and picked it up.

  The reds and pinks and lavenders of the ova
l blackened swiftly. In an instant it was dark and dead. Peganna gave a sigh and stepped off the dais, staring at the blue egg.

  “What is it, Bran?”

  “Who knows? A key of some sort, I guess.”

  His fingers turned it over and over. It was a jewel, they saw when the light struck it, of a crystalline hardness fashioned so that thin red lines ran this way and that inside the blueness. In the hand it was heavy. Cold. Of the size of a chicken egg, it was like nothing Bran the Wanderer had ever seen.

  Peganna began to laugh, standing before him with back-thrown head. “We have the key and—we don’t know where the lock is that it opens!”

  When she grew hysterical between laughter and weeping, Bran drew her into his arms and cradled her head on his chest. He put his words into the thick silver hair that tickled his lips.

  “Easy now, mavoureen. There’s no need for panic. Somewhere the vault exists. All we have to do is find it.”

  “Do you know how many planets we’d have to search? Over a thousand! And the vault may be hidden so cleverly that—”

  She broke off to weep more fiercely.

  Bran said slowly, “For a moment I thought the metal square on Deirdre that hums might be the vault. But there’s no place on it in which to put the egg.”

  “Maybe all we need do is touch it to its surface,” Peganna said hopefully, rubbing wet cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “I don’t think so, but we can try.”

  Peganna sought to make her voice light, but the undertone of bitter disappointment could not be hidden. “At least we have the key, Bran.”

  “It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing.”

  He put the blue egg into his belt pouch.

  Tiredness was an ache in both of them. They had traveled many worlds through the tele-doors. On some of them it had been day; on some night. Time had become for them only an eternity of movement. Peganna looked pale and drawn, and there were lines at the corners of Bran’s eyes.

  “We’ll stay here a while,” he announced.