The Seed of Evil
Page 21
“So far you are making a poor job of dissuasion,” Julian commented.
“What would make such a life unbearable?”
Julian thought for a moment. “Fear of losing it?”
“No. Guilt. The guilt of having stolen it.”
Julian laughed humourlessly. “Do I look like a person who feels guilt?”
“No, but you will change. All change who receive the Seed. Everything looks different after a few million years—even after a few thousand. Yes, perhaps even after a few hundred years you will be tortured by the guilt which you must endure forever—or until——”
Neverdie’s speech was interrupted by hoarse sounds of agony.
“It would be interesting to know how this remarkable device was manufactured,” Julian mused, unmoved by Neverdie’s pain.
The alien seemed to recover enough to resume his explanations. “I will tell you what I know. The origin of the Seed is lost in history, but the legend is plausible. It was created by a race of beings whose name I do not even know, and its purpose was the punishment of a criminal.”
Julian’s attention was diverted by a sound of scratching on the wall of the vault. He hurried to the breach that Neverdie had made, put his ear to it and heard scufflings. Wolves? Or just an animal?
Picking up the death-beamer, he returned to Neverdie. His last remark had puzzled him. “Continue!” he said sharply.
“My strength is failing,” said Neverdie. “Nevertheless—these beings of whom I speak were faced with the problem of dealing with the greatest criminal of their experience, an individual who wilfully committed unspeakably foul acts, and who was without conscience. They decided that the most fitting punishment was first to reform him, and then to cause him to feel ceaseless remorse for his crimes. Immortality achieved both of these aims. And worse. For the other aspect of the life upon which you are so eager to embark is that you are doomed to be hunted by others who desire the immortality which only you possess. Thus those who made the Seed set in motion the chain of events of which you and I are a part. Wherever it goes the Seed attracts to itself the most evil of beings—no one knows how many have fallen into the same trap! The ceaseless hunt to steal immortality!”
“Anything worth having is worth fighting for,” Julian said. “As for this remorse you find so terrible, I feel fairly immune from it.”
“Now you are—— You will change. I have not told you the worst. The worst is that eventually your very existence drags some other unfortunate into committing the same crime, suffering the same punishment—as I did to you. I was not always the harmless creature you know now, Ferrg. Oh, if you only knew—I was a hundred times worse than you! I stole the Seed, as you are stealing it. And I suffer, as you will suffer. I beg you, do not accept the Seed. Die, Ferrg, it is better to die!”
Julian interpreted Neverdie’s argument as a last-minute attempt to con him. Even his claims concerning the miraculous powers of the Seed could be lies. Perhaps the little sphere was a capsule of poison. Julian decided he would have to take a chance on that.
“After coming all this way?” he said. “I’m not backing out now.”
The sphere looked too big to swallow, but experimentally he put it in his mouth. As soon as it touched his lips it seemed to come alive, to be electric. Almost of its own accord it slid easily down his throat and he felt it in his stomach like a big, heavy globe which was slowly absorbed.
A heavy pounding rang all through him, as though he were full of vast cavities.
He seemed to lose touch with his surroundings, to be drawn into something vast and incomprehensible. He seemed to be hanging in an endless void, and suddenly all the people he had ever known flashed before his consciousness in quick succession. There was a lingering image of Ursula Gail as he had last seen her over a glass of wine, her bright hazel eyes regarding him sadly. He saw that all these people had vanished long ago into the void of non-existence, and inexplicably he envied them. Then the scene widened still further and he realised that he was being vouchsafed a vision. He saw that the sequence of events of which he was a part had begun long before the creation of the Seed. Long, long, long back in the vistas of time there had lived a race who had also succeeded in creating an immortal—a true immortal, much more so than any who came into possession of the Seed, which in the course of billions of years would itself perish. They had done it by printing an artificial consciousness into the fabric of space, and it could never be eradicated.
That consciousness was calling him. Its call had caused the Seed to be made in the first place. Somehow, some time, one of the beings enchained by the Seed would, in due course, be lifted out of the material realm to share Aeternus’s state, life without any of the means of life, and without end.
Aeternus’s voice came to Julian: You are my only-begotten son, in whom I am well-pleased. And at that blasphemy he experienced a great fear that he was to be that eternal companion.
Suddenly it was over like a brief nightmare and he was standing beside Neverdie. The alien was speaking, his voice growing weaker.
“Hear them, Ferrg? Hear the Wolves? Do not fear—you will get on well with them. You will be a leader. I remember when I first saw you that I recognised the wolf in you. Welcome to your own people—and thank you for releasing me. If you are lucky one of them might get you soon. However, the Seed will force you to put up a fight. That also is one of its functions——”
Julian said hastily: “What can I do to give the Seed away?” But Neverdie did not answer, and he realised that the Aldebaranian was, at last, dead.
Outside, the wolves began to howl.
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Also by Barrington J. Bayley
Age of Adventure
Annihilation Factor
Collision with Chronos
Empire of Two Worlds
Sinners of Erspia
Star Winds
The Fall of Chronopolis
The Forest of Peldain
The Garments of Caean
The Grand Wheel
The Great Hydration
The Pillars of Eternity
The Rod of Light
The Soul of the Robot
The Star Virus
The Zen Gun
The Knights of the Limits
The Seed of Evil
Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was born in Birmingham and began writing science fiction in his early teens. After serving in the RAF, he took up freelance writing on features, serials and picture strips, mostly in the juvenile field, before returning to straight SF. He was a regular contributor to the influential New Worlds magazine and an early voice in the New Wave movement.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Barrington J. Bayley 1979
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The right of Barrington J. Bayley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
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ISBN 978 0 575 10220 0
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