Arthur believed with a cool belief, which could be dangerous. Fanaticism could waver, be diverted and reversed because it swam with the emotions; cool belief would stand fast.
Whispering shreds of explanation rustled in the air.
Lindley’s head ached again, but he ached more with anger at the talented misrepresentation which could seduce even Arthur’s Gangoil-bred cynicism. They were close to the stage, so close that he had seen the tic of irritation with which Parker had noticed his returned presence. Knowing what he did, while he knew it to be reasonless and stupid, driven by miseries and lightheaded with fresh pain, he spoke to Arthur in a voice that carried clearly over the mutterings around them:
‘This teaching has failed ever since it was first conceived and it will fail again.’
Eyes swung to him. Yes, sheep, that man’s back. Arthur hissed something he did not hear because his senses were concentrated on the stage. Around him voices threatened and he did not care.
Instantly Campion bellowed, ‘QUIET!’
They obeyed him. Campion was invincible. If he needed proof, that command gave it. He could do nothing here. He surrendered to his bursting head.
But Campion did not intend him to retire on a simple confession of enough. He called down from the stage, ‘Why must it fail, Jim?’
Lindley gathered strength for hopeless dialogue. ‘For the same reason it always did.’
‘Tell us all the reason, Jim. Tell it loudly.’ The scorn was gentle. We’ll hear what he has to say; we are nothing if not reasonable.
‘It’s a counsel of perfection, Ian. Beyond human capability.’ His head hammered in a fresh onslaught.
Campion was genial. ‘Yeshua didn’t think so.’
‘He died for not thinking so.’
‘Oh, no, Jim! He died because he started his revolution without first enlisting the law as his ally. There must be temporal as well as philosophic strength.’
Parker spread his arms and gave his crackling laugh and the crowd laughed with him, prompted to see Lindley as light relief.
‘And even so, Jim, he had a victory in the end, didn’t he? Even your materialist century admitted that.’
The crowd began to enjoy the exchange. A microphone appeared under Lindley’s nose, giving him through it benefit of the soundscreen.
In pain and humiliation he howled, ‘He gave the world the greatest single cause of venality and speciousness and hypocrisy and murder in all of history. And you’ll do the same because you ask more than men can give. Utter honesty is a fanatical dream. The ability to lie is a survival trait.’
‘Survival for liars, Jim! Men have imagined they could live without honesty, that hidden thought could be both shield and weapon. But now there are only two choices – honesty and understanding, or brutality and slavery to greed, machines and the rule of force. We must survive by honesty because there will be no survival without it.’
Parker seized the moment to throw them a slogan: ‘No man can serve two masters. Ye cannot serve Man and Mammon.’
The impudence of the substitution almost silenced Lindley. Then he shrieked and cawed again through his bitterness, ‘You want to eliminate hypocrisy, yet every word you speak is distortion and double dealing! Try telling your crucified Jesus how the end sanctifies the strategy! From his cross he’d spit on you for turning him into a con man’s trick on leaderless youngsters!’
The pain expanded and engulfed him; he was already unconscious when Arthur caught him. He did not hear Campion’s explanation of how Yeshua himself had recognised that the road to heaven lay through hell, or Parker’s inspired rehandling of the resurrection story.
9
He came to in the cathedral, in God’s fastness of soaring stone forms and space for prayer to rise, but from which God most probably had withdrawn in favour of Parker’s revised model.
This time they had found him something soft and warm to lie on. Arthur fussed round him, making the most of his position behind the scenes of excitement. His head was calmer, which probably meant a bloodstream awash with drugs.
Campion was with him, cross-legged on the floor, his favourite pose when talking with groups of youngsters. Light from the high brackets shed a mild patina on his red hair. His face was troubled with the first genuine feeling Lindley had seen in him that day.
‘I may never see you again, Jim. After all, we have already parted in every significance. You’ll go from here to hospital.’ The troubled look deepened to a determination on choice of words. ‘When you recover there will be a job for you to do. Not with me, of course.’
‘Thank you, no. I can support myself writing and teaching pre-Collapse history.’
Campion said – and he was ashamed – ‘We can’t allow that.’
Lindley struggled to sit up. Arthur tut-tutted but helped him. ‘I suppose you can’t. Once you’ve started on the old game of rewriting history you can’t afford a perfectionist at large. Is Parker still practising New Testament exegesis out there?’
‘Yes.’
‘When he begins to overtake you, will you have him crucified? If, that is, he doesn’t wash his hands over your death first?’
Campion was unmoved. ‘Only losers destroy each other. We’re starting with thirty thousand disciples and a country, not twelve simple men and a dream. You dislike our methods. In a way I see your reasons, but I don’t follow your logic. So long as they learn tolerance and the love that eventually goes with it, what do the means matter?’
‘You can’t build truth on a lie, but you are far too committed to retreat. Forget the argument. What’s your job for me? Where will you bury my inconvenient voice?’
‘In the sky.’
‘The moon?’
‘Aboard Columbus. Or one of the sister ships we will build.’
Lindley exhaled on a rasping protest. ‘You can’t be serious! Parker’s project? Back into space? Not me. No. Not again.’
Campion’s unchanging face told him the matter was decided, and the bleakness of half a lifetime in black emptiness was insupportable.
‘No, Jim!’
It was only a cry of despair, unrecognised, ignored. He had become an obstacle. Pity was precluded.
Campion explained, as if he had not spoken, ‘Computation tells us we will have, with our depleted resources, another impossible population problem in about two centuries. Resources we can mine to some extent from the planets, but living space … So the time to begin exploring for habitable systems is now. With the improvements already proposed for the ramjet there should be thirty or forty within reasonable reach. Earth-like planets.’
Lindley conjured a poor laugh, a chatter of revengeful contempt. ‘Who’s been fooling you? The astronomers? Bouncy amateurs like young Peter? Do you know what an astronomer means by an Earth-like planet? He means a planet roughly the same size – plus or minus a factor of two with all the gravity differences implied – with a suitable inclination to the ecliptic to provide seasons for an Earth-like ecology – with suitable concentrations of the essential elements in accessible strata – at the right distance from the solar body and in an elliptical orbit not too narrow, not too deep – and with an atmosphere that will sustain life.’
‘We know the mathematical limits to the possibilities.’
‘But there’s a joker in the pack. It’s called “atmosphere that will sustain life”. What sort of atmosphere, my hypocrite Brother in God? You don’t find primitive planets with free oxygen in their atmospheres. And the few that have them may be pretty thoroughly occupied.’ Campion’s emotionless attention was deflating but he ploughed on. ‘Life comes before oxygen. Oxygen is strong poison to primitive proteins; they have to evolve to deal with it, a little at a time. They are born in methane and ammonia in conditions of constant ionisation; after millions of years they mutate into forms which break down oxygen-bearing rock into just the quantities which will support them without poisoning and eroding the planet. It is life which creates the liveable atmosphere – and it takes
about three thousand million years from the birth of the planet. What are your chances of finding one that fills the requirements, including being the right age? The universe is full of Earth-like planets, but you can’t live on them. You can scour the sky with ten thousand copies of Columbus and Earth will choke to death before you locate the new paradise.’
Campion said, ‘Gangoil.’ As he expounded, Lindley realised how little he had ever been trusted, that he had known nothing of the extent of the dream. ‘Doctor David has already a group preparing bacterial and algal forms which will separate oxygen from suitable compounds at accelerated rates. We aim to terraform – I think that’s the word – suitably positioned planets in a few decades instead of millions of years. Then, of course, we will be able to produce colonising types to exist under abnormal conditions and make intelligently directed adjustments to hasten adaptation to the requirements of normal men. Genetic manipulation will coexist with and support evolution. If even one or two worlds are marginally ready by 2200 we will have won the gamble. The prize is worth the trial.’
Lindley was aware of tears – of weakness, disappointment, vulnerability, loneliness. He mumbled, ‘Parker will crew the ships with Raft-clone, won’t he? I can’t live with them. It isn’t possible.’
Campion rose straight up to his feet, with the muscular grace of his father. ‘Of course it is. We’ll attend to that.’
‘Life imprisonment with zombies!’ Irrelevant complaint faded as the meaning of the words penetrated. ‘No, Ian! No!’
‘It’s for the best, Jim. You’ll see that when you think it over. You’ll never be happy in this world, and to adjust you to it would create a vegetable nonentity. But we can fit you to be contented within a small group, like a space crew, no matter who they are. It’s the best I can do for you and I doubt if anyone could do more.’
‘Best!’ He struggled to his knees, pleading, abject, divested of pride. ‘No, Ian! Kill me, please kill me. Don’t take my identity, my mind! I’d rather be dead!’
‘You wouldn’t rather anything of the sort. I didn’t expect to hear such rubbish from a psychiatrist. Oh, for Yeshua’s sake!’
He turned in disgust from the abandoned animal that wept at his feet.
He was on a stretcher, arms and feet constricted by straps. Clone-brothers carried at his head and heels and Arthur moved ahead, apologising a way through the crowd.
He was at peace, purged by the climax of spiritual cowardice.
Nobody paid attention to him. He was past, completed, historical, and they were enmeshed in Parker’s crackling declamation. The man seemed to be hammering the idea of all-embracing tolerance still.
‘ “For if ye like them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?
‘ “And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?” ’
Poor bastards. Perhaps some of them dream of the perfect communication – the feast of love. Wait till the telepaths – the monsters they manufacture for their convenience – show them what humanity is like!
Lindley recited quietly, ‘ “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do even so to them.” That’s in the Sermon on the Mount, too. And it’s two-edged. You’ll find out, kids.’
Arthur bent over him. ‘What did you say?’
They came out through the fringe of the crowd and he saw the brazen upper rim of the sun barely above the horizon in a red sky.
‘I pronounced a curse on your generation.’
The last arc of sun drowned in a welter of blood.
‘Well, I must say! We’re only doing our best for you. Some people are never satisfied!’
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Also by George Turner
Ethical Culture
Beloved Son (1978)
Vaneglory (1981)
Yesterday’s Men (1978)
Other Novels
The Sea and the Summer (1987) (aka Drowning Towers)
A Pursuit of Miracles: Eight Stories (1990)
Brain Child (1991)
The Destiny Makers (1993)
Genetic Soldier (1994)
Down There in Darkness (1999)
Non-Fiction
John W. Campbell: Writer, Editor, Legend (1977)
In the Heart or in the Head: An Essay in Time Travel (1977)
The Unrelenting Gaze: George Turner’s Non-Fiction: A Selection (2000)
Dedication
For JOHN BANGSUND
without whose encouragement and
bullying I might have spent the
time writing something else
Star Fire
INGO SWANN
MIND-KILL!
Young, wealthy, idealistic, Dan Merriweather has developed his astonishing paranormal powers to the point when he can manipulate matter and penetrate any man’s mind, anywhere on earth. Soon, through ‘mind voyages’, he has uncovered the terrifying fact that both the Americans and Russians possess installations which are developing Man’s limitless psychic potential – as a horrific weapon of mass-destruction.
Despite Dan’s precautions, his existence becomes known. The Russians are on his trail. A psychic American general sets out to track him down. To the international war merchants he represents a danger to be eliminated. Or a precious commodity – the ultimate weapon of terror. But he has prepared a strange and eerie hiding place to wait while he prepares his own plan for the future of the world. Soon comes his ultimatum to its leaders:
STOP THE MADNESS – OR I BEGIN TO DESTROY …
0 7221 8303 8
FICTION
£1.25
George Turner (1916-1997)
George Reginald Turner was an Australian writer and critic, best known for the science fiction novels written in the later part of his career. His mainstream novel, The Cupboard Under the Stairs won the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s highest literary honour. His best-known SF novel, The Drowning Towers, was published in the UK under the title The Sea and Summer, and won the second Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1988. George Turner was named as a Guest of Honour for the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention held in his home town of Melbourne, but died before the event.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © George Turner 1978
All rights reserved.
The right of George Turner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in 2018 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 22511 4
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
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