The Arsenal of Miracles

by Gardner Fox

  Ten judges in white robes, with the gold star cluster on their fronts, filed in and took their places behind the mahogany bench, on a curved dais.

  The Chief Justice signaled for the trial to begin.

  ELEVEN

  TO BRAN MAGANNON, the trial was an eternity of sound. The voices of the witnesses droned on and on, punctuated by the staccato objections of his trial counsel making points of law. There was the whirr of the recorder that showed the battle with the Lyanir and the great victory which Bran Magannon had won for Empire, followed by the tapes of the appearances he had made before this same High Tribunal, pleading the cause of the Lyanir.

  Already, contended the Empire, the seeds of treachery were spouting in the heart and mind of its great High Admiral. To reward him for his past record, they had offered him a professorship, with honors. He had spurned this to go out into the stars, perhaps even then hunting a means to strike back at Empire for refusing to admit the Lyanir into its family of planets.

  For ten years, Bran Magannon had wandered.

  Then he had met Peganna of the Silver Hair, on Makkador. By some trick of the devil, he had escaped the Empire search for him. He had gone out to the unknown worlds of the people who called themselves Crenn Lir and from the mists of time had wrenched the secrets of their war arsenals.

  Not for the benefit of the Empire. Oh, no! To place those weapons into the hands of its deadly enemy. His was the hand that would have given the Lyanir the power to destroy the Empire, to smash its worlds, to annihilate its people, unless they bowed to the yoke of a conqueror.

  It was a deadly case the prosecution built.

  Even sitting here and knowing the truth, Bran Magannon was impressed by the apparent treachery of his actions. He could understand how they might be misinterpreted by Empire and its people. The marvel of it was that they did not hate him; he realized that their hate was reserved for the woman he loved, for Peganna.

  Peganna understood it, too. She drooped more and more as the trial went into its second week of testimony. She looked hopeful when Empire admitted that Bran Magannon himself had not sent the ’gram which told Peganna to take the Lyanir off Kuleen to Yvriss, but it was only a momentary thing. In her own mind, she stood convicted.

  Randolph Creel did not want to put Bran Magannon on the stand. It was only at his own insistence, when Creel had all but finished for the defense, that he was sworn in.

  “Will you tell the Tribunal why you came to Earth to plead for the Lyanir when Queen Peganna held them on Kuleen?” asked his attorney.

  “I sought living room for her people, no more.”

  “You did not send the ’gram that told her to move off-planet?”

  “I did not.”

  “Will you tell the Tribunal about your wanderings?”

  “I was heart-sick. I wanted only to be alone with my misery, like a wild animal when it’s wounded. I love Peganna of the Silver Hair. I say it now before the billions of people who are watching and listening to this trial on the ten thousand star worlds. What I did, I did for her—and for the good of the Empire.

  “She and I found the vault. Not to use it to destroy Empire but intending to offer it with its incredible artifacts in exchange for planets where her people might live in peace with and as allies to my own. Unfortunately, Commander Drexel attacked—invading the sovereignty of an alien world—before we could make our offer.”

  The court room buzzed with talk. A gavel rose and fell four times, and the commotion stilled.

  Bran went on: “The race called the Crenn Lir are our ancestors, those of men and of Lyanir. In a sense, then, the Lyanir are our lost brethren. Not aliens. Not enemies. Brothers and sisters of the stars.

  “We fight now over their heritage. It should be shared alike by all. It is not the property of the Lyanir alone, nor that of Empire. It belongs to both. The Lyanir are in the position of the prodigal son returned home, displaced and dispossessed, instead of having squandered an inheritance. The inheritance is in the vault.”

  Bran drew a deep breath. “Condemn us, if you will—but grant the people of the Lyanir a place to live, where they will not have to take pills to stay alive! Do this and the queen and I will consider our sacrifice worthwhile.” He talked on, and Peganna wept.

  When he was done and he looked into the faces of the ten jurists, he knew his plea had failed. He had offered no new evidence. All he had done was make an explanation, an explanation which in their minds had no weight. There was no cross-examination.

  “The witness will step down,” murmured a judge.

  The High Tribunal did not leave the bench. There was no need to do so. The judges had reached their verdict before the trial began. They saw no reason to change it now.

  “The defendants will please stand,” said the Court clerk.

  The Chief Justice said softly, “We find the defendants guilty on all counts, on that of treachery in the case of Bran Magannon, on that of conspiracy to attack the Empire in that of Queen Peganna.”

  There was silence in the courtroom.

  Peganna sat like a stone statue for a moment, then she drooped as if the silver hair on her head were an intolerable weight. Bran reached out to put his hand on her arm and when she lifted her face there was misery in its every feature.

  Peganna, my heart! As accursed as was Deirdre of the Sorrows!

  Bran sat frozen, aware only of his thudding heart and the wildfire in his brain. Fool that he was, not to have seen! Fool! Fool!

  A court clerk was calling his name.

  “Bran Magannon, have you anything to say to the High Tribunal before judgment is pronounced upon you?”

  Bran came easily to his feet. He was a handsome man, still in his white Fleet uniform with all its medals and its ribbons. He squared his shoulders and held his chin high.

  “I have! It comes to my mind now that no judgment shall ever be pronounced upon me or upon the queen of the Lyanir.”

  Peganna gasped and stiffened, staring up at him. The jurists on the high bench stared back at him and somewhere in the courtroom—Bran was certain the voice was that of Commander Alvar Drexel—a man cried out harshly, with disbelief in his throat.

  A judge smiled wanly, “Only a miracle can do that.”

  “Then I bring you a miracle, gentlemen of the Tribunal. Yes, and all you men and women in the star worlds and on Earth itself, and your children and their children after them. I offer you—immortality!”

  It was odd in a way, that no one laughed.

  His ringing tones went out over the heads of the onlookers and across the vast gulfs of space to the Empire planets, and nowhere did a man hoot, so filled with sudden inspiration was the tongue of Bran Magannon.

  “Immortality! For—

  “I have found death out there in the stars. A machine on a dead planet that is killing us all—you and me, our sons and our daughters—and I know how to go back to that machine and do what is needed to destroy it.”

  Utter silence lay like a pall on his shoulders.

  Bran said again, “For a long time I didn’t know what the machine was. Now I realize it was the weapon of the Yann, put there to kill the Crenn Lir race and you, their descendants. But you need not die. Only give freedom to Peganna of the Silver Hair and set me free as well, and I shall take your war fleet to the planet I named Deirdre and—kill death itself!”

  The courtroom was a bedlam. Excited voices rose from every corner. No one heard the Chief Justice with his gavel. Even the men at the spacevision cameras were babbling. Peganna was shaking Bran by the hand, then rising to stand beside him. A light glowed in her green eyes and there was a laugh on her mouth.

  “Bran, Bran—is it true? Can you?”

  “I can, mavourneen—if the High Tribunal wills it.”

  Only when the Tribunal threatened to clear the courtroom was there any quiet. Bran could imagine, as he stood with his arm about the waist of Peganna of the Silver Hair, that voices were raised in this same incredible excitement all over th
e star worlds, in living rooms and salons, in space divers and posh drinking resorts, everywhere that men and women watched the trial.

  The Tribunal judges leaned forward as a man.

  “Is this possible, Bran Magannon?” one of them asked.

  “It is an absolute certainty. To every one looking at me or hearing my voice—everywhere in space—I shall add a thousand years to your lives!”

  “Impossible!” a woman screamed. “But—ohh, God! If it were true!”

  “Test me,” Bran said softly. “Test me for the truth and then decide what you will do. By serum or truth ray—if you care for life and what the future may hold—test whether I speak the truth.”

  The courtroom sensed that truth in his voice and attitude. It erupted with shouts, with excited voices. This time the High Tribunal could not quiet them, so the Chief Justice made a sign to the clerk, to bring Bran Magannon and the queen of the Lyanir into chambers.

  Dusk lay like a purple haze across the Earth as the Solar President rose to his feet when his two visitors came into the Chamber of the Empire. He lifted out of the highbacked chair that was like a throne and moved between the dignitaries of a hundred worlds, reaching out his hands to clasp those of Bran Magannon and Peganna of the Silver Hair.

  “The result of the truth tests was flashed to me less than an hour ago,” he told them. “I have signed the pardons, giving you both liberty. With it I have incorporated the treaty between Empire and the Lyanir, in which your people, Queen Peganna, and my own, will be allies and as equals. Even now ships are taking off for Miranor to bring your people to the planets we have given them.”

  Peganna swayed and gasped her thanks.

  The Solar President turned his magnetic eyes on Bran Magannon, saying, “With your pardon, I have added clauses restoring to you your rank of High Admiral of Space for Life—no matter how long that life may be.”

  Bran bowed his head. He walked with Peganna and the President to the three chairs and seated himself.

  Then he began to speak of the Crenn Lir.

  “They lived a thousand years, each and every one of them, before they were attacked by the Yann. The Yann destroyed all life on their farthermost planet, that I call Deirdre and which they named Ufinisthan and on that planet they put a machine which would have obliterated the Crenn Lir in time, for it shortened their life span to less than a tenth of what it should be. From a thousand years they lived less than half a century because of the rays from that machine that attacks the cellular structure of human bodies.

  “When we found traces of dead bodies around the vault on Miranor, they were all of old men because the Yann machine hastened the aging process in the human cells, perhaps by some as yet unknown form of electromagnetic ray. Being close to the machine, the Crenn Lir aged swiftly. Earth and Lyanol are far from those worlds, yet even so the radiation touches us all.

  “That radiation may affect the deoxyribonucleic acids in our bodies—the DNA molecules which is the stuff of life itself—destroying it or altering its effectiveness so that the body which depends on it for life is robbed of its inherent properties. I’m not sure of this. It’s only my guess. Earth and Lyanirn scientists can study the ray later on and find out what makes it so potent. My only concern is to destroy it. Utterly.

  “I don’t believe that the Crenn Lir understood just what it was the Yann had done—or they would have destroyed the machine themselves. Instead they fled from their worlds in spaceships, seeking to escape the mysterious death that was overcoming them. One or more of those ships reached Lyanol. One or more landed on Earth. Yet even across the vast gulfs of space, the Yann weapons found them. Its rays went everywhere and did their deadly work.

  “As a million years passed, the rays weakened. As you know, the human life span has been increasing over the years. Our life expectancy now is a hundred years. In the Twentieth Century, it was only in the sixties.

  “Destroy the Yann machine and it will be a thousand, perhaps more. I’ll take a fleet out to Deirdre. I’ll aim the weapon that will destroy the machine that has taken from us our birthright, with my own hands.”

  Bran smiled and looked about him. The delegates from the solar and the star planets were quivering with delight. The laser communicators between the Empire planets had been filled to overload with the voices of their people speaking out their minds in ’grams.

  Free Bran Magannon! Free Peganna!

  In exchange for their freedom, accept their gift!

  Bran said, “There are in the holy books, records of men living for long lifetimes. Methuselah, for instance. This may be a recollection of the Crenn Lir days when man did live a thousand years. No one will ever know for sure.

  “But I know that man can and will live that long, once Deirdre is rid of the blight that has been bringing us death for a million long years.”

  The room erupted with applause.

  The ambassadors and diplomats of a hundred star world colonies filed forward then, to be introduced to the living legend who was Bran the Lucky, the Wanderer, who was once again High Admiral of the Empire fleet. Men grasped his hand and women curtsied, as they bowed and curtsied before Queen Peganna.

  There was dancing, with the President claiming Peganna as his First Partner, Bran claiming his wife. Applause blanketed the room as they swung in the stately rhythms of the Star Waltz. Then there were toasts to be drunk, and more speeches listened to, and still more dances.

  During the playing of a popular melody, Peganna pressed against Bran, whispering, “Darling, I’m exhausted. Try and get away as soon as possible.” Her breath tickled his neck as she added, with a faint smile, “I want to talk over our wedding plans.”

  “We’ll be married when the machine on Deirdre is destroyed, acushla. The President had told me it’ll be a state affair, a symbolic joining of our two people. An omen of the peace that has come to both of them.”

  She pinched his arm. “Before, darling. My heart is set on it.”

  “After, my heart. Remember, you’re a queen.” She was silent, but she had not given in so easily. All the way back to their hotel she argued, and even when they were alone in the suite of rooms assigned them. She pointed out that as rayanal of the Lyanir—which he would be when he married her—he would be serving both the Empire and her people.

  Bran said, “I owe it to Empire to perform the act in my official capacity. It’s why we were set free. It’s why I was given back my command.”

  Peganna pouted, but Bran was firm.

  Finally the queen said, “All right, Bran—well throw for it. Your dice, the dice of Nagalang. We’ll use those.”

  Bran grinned and lifted the dice from the pocket of his uniform. “You’re making a mistake, Peganna darling. No man can beat me with these things, nor even a woman.”

  Her chin lifted. “I beat you once in that tavern on Makkador when I wagered the three flame pearls against you.”

  “Only because I let you, mavourneen. Watch now.” He let the cubes roll about in his palm, making tiny sounds. Peganna caught flashing glimpses of the dragon crests of Tarrn and the cats of Bydd. Then Bran let the dice go across the carpet as he hunkered down.

  “I call the cast of a ship of Kriil and a Rim world banner,” he said before they stilled their tumbling, and when they were unmoving, a ship and a banner showed. Bran caught the dice in a hand again.

  “I’ll cast the dragons for you now, my sweet,” he laughed.

  And he did.

  Peganna stared at him. Bran chuckled. “Yes, I lost deliberately to you at the tavern. I’ve always belonged to you, one way or another, so what was the difference if we made it official?”

  He held the dice up so she could see their beauty in the lamplight. “I found them long ago on a star world and I learned after a bit of practice that they responded to my thoughts. There may be a tiny battery of some sort inside each of them that makes them sensitive to brain waves. Or maybe it’s the material of the dice themselves.”

  “Let me roll th
em,” Peganna said thoughtfully.

  “I’ll make you throw the three stars,” he told her as she made her roll.

  From the three stars on each die to Bran Magannon, Peganna moved her eyes. For a moment she looked angry, then she laughed.

  “As Alvar Drexel said, Bran Magannon always has a way out, that none of us can see.” She frowned a moment. “Bran, give me the dice as a wedding present. I want to use them when my counsellors go against my wishes. I’ll give them each a chance to roll against me—and I’ll control each roll. By Kronn! I’ll be one queen who finds herself obeyed every time.”

  In the end, it was decided to take one of the weapons of the Crenn Lir out to the planet called Deirdre and with it destroy forever the weapon which had doomed the worlds of their ancestors. It was poetic justice, of a sort.

  Admiral Magannon commanded the warfleet. For the first time, Lyanir ships ran nose by nose with the space battle-wagons of the Empire, united under the banners of star cluster and double axe.

  Peganna of the Silver Hair aimed the weapon, as Bran had taught her to do. She sighted carefully on the glittering metal and touched the protonic transversal. The machine hummed and the Yann weapon was gone.

  It no longer existed. It had been hurled instantly into the null universe and since positive matter was diametrically opposed to nullity, it could not exist, as darkness may not exist where there is light.

  “It is done,” breathed Peganna.

  “And the trail is ended, acushla.”

  Her lips dimpled into a smile as she nestled against him, enjoying his embarrassed stiffness as the officers under his command diplomatically turned away their faces. On board a Fleet warship, even a queen ought to obey the unwritten law, their backs told her as they moved out of the gun port.

  Peganna only laughed and hugged him.

  “My husband to be,” she whispered into his ear, “the future Lord of the Lyanir, its rayanar. You’re so pompous when you wear that uniform. I liked you better as the Wanderer.”