Image of the Beast and Blown

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Image of the Beast and Blown Page 35

by Philip José Farmer


  lings for ten thousand years. But had they revealed

  themselves to any before? That was the important thing.

  "You're getting too excited, Forry," she said. "I know

  you have a thousand questions bubbling in your mind.

  But you'll get things straighter and quicker if you'll just

  listen quietly to my story. Okay? Good! Lean back and

  listen."

  There was a planet the size and shape of Earth rotating

  around a Sol-type sun on the edge of the Andromeda

  galaxy, which was 800,000 light years distant from Earth.

  The sky was a blaze of luminous gas and giant stars shin-

  ing through the gas. The planet of the Tocs had no moon,

  hence was tideless.

  The fifth planet out had two small moons but no seas

  in which tides could occur. This was the dying world of

  the Ogs, an evil race.

  "Geeze!" Forry thought, and the extent of his excite-

  ment could be gauged by his use of the mild expletive. He

  abhorred the use, even in his mind, of the most dilute of

  expletives.

  "Geeze! This is just like Gernsback! Or Early

  Campbell!"

  The Tocs and the Ogs were not human beings. They

  were amphibious creatures who passed back and forth

  from a state of pure energy to that of matter. They formed

  configurations of bound energy in one condition and con-

  figurations of matter in the other. Their shape depended

  on that which they wished to imitate—or to create. But

  they did have limitations of size and shape. The smallest

  body that could be formed was about the size of a large

  fox or, if they took to the air, a large bat. When they ex-

  isted as the smaller animals, they carried the energy ex-

  cess in an invisible form as a sort of exhaust trail. Or

  perhaps the analogy could be energy packed into an

  intangible and transparent suitcase.

  "What is your true shape?" Forry said.

  "You were not to talk," Alys said, flashing white teeth.

  She looked so beautiful and so young that he felt a pang

  of desire. Or was it an ache for his own lost youth?

  "We have no true shape, unless you would call the

  shape we use the most our true one. I suppose you could,

  since long utility of a particular shape results in a certain

  'hardening' of that shape. It becomes more difficult to

  change it as time goes on. And it requires more energy

  to keep it in a nonhuman form. So, since most of us have

  been in the human shape for so long, you might say that

  that is our true shape."

  The Ogs and the Tocs had come into contact when

  space travel was invented. Neither used rockets or anti-

  gravitational machines. They traveled from one place in

  space to another by means of a very peculiar device. That

  is, it was peculiar from the human viewpoint.

  The device was made of a synthetic metal formed into

  the shape of a large goblet or chalice. That particular

  form was required because only that form could gather,

  or focus, the mental energies of a Mover. Perhaps a closer

  translation of the Toc word would be Captain. The Cap-

  tain was the only person who could activate the device

  so that the Tocs could be teleported from one point in

  space to another.

  "Why would the Captain be the only one able to ac-

  tivate the device—this chalice?" Forry said.

  "That is the limitation of this device, let us call it the

  Grail," Alys said. "It has a certain superficial resemblance

  to the grail of your medieval myths, although the inner

  surface has a geometry that would be alien, even terrify-

  ing, to human eyes.

  "The Grail is matter, but it is activated only by a cer-

  tain rare type of energy radiation. Of brainwave radia-

  tion, I suppose you would call it, but there is more to it

  than that. Anyway, the Grail, to act as a spaceship, or a

  teleporter, must be controlled by a Mover, or Captain.

  And there were only about a hundred Captains born

  for every million of us born."

  "Born?" Forry said, his eyebrows raising. "How can an

  energy configuration be born?"

  She waved her hand impatiently and said, "I am speak-

  ing by analogy only. If I have to explain every detail of an

  exceedingly complex culture, we'll be here for twenty

  years. Let me talk."

  The Ogs had discovered their Grails and found their

  Captains the same time as the Tocs. There was travel

  between the two planets almost at once and war a little

  later. The Ogs were evil and wanted to enslave the Tocs.

  Forry had some mental reservations about this. He

  would wait until he had heard the Ogs' side before he

  judged.

  The Tocs had repulsed the Ogs with heavy losses on

  both sides. Finally, there was peace. The Tocs and the

  Ogs then turned their attentions to other worlds. Since

  distance meant nothing to the Grail, since a hundred

  thousand light years could be traversed as swiftly as a

  mile, that is, instantaneously, the universe was open to

  both races.

  But with the billions on billions of habitable planets in

  the universe, and the limited number of Captains, only a

  few could be explored. Earth was one of them, and about

  a thousand Tocs had come here. Almost immediately, the

  Ogs had sent an expedition here also. The peace did not

  extend to planets outside their system, so the Ogs had no

  compunctions about attacking the Tocs.

  The Ogs and Tocs had waged a mutually disastrous war.

  They had destroyed each other's Grail and killed each

  other's Captains. And so they were marooned on Earth.

  "We lived among the humans but not of them," Alys

  said. "Our ability to take different forms gave rise to a

  number of superstitions about the supernatural origins of

  vampires, werewolves, fairies, and what have you. We

  Tocs were the basis of the good fairies, although we

  changed into animal shape, or other shapes, quite often.

  But we weren't hostile to human beings, that is, if they

  followed the proper ethics we weren't."

  Over the ten thousand years, the War, the occasional

  killing of human beings, and suicide cut the original num-

  ber of about two thousand Tocs and Ogs down to about a

  hundred each. However, every Toc or Og whose material

  form was slain was not dead. He became an energy con-

  figuration again and could regain material form. But this

  process took a long time on Earth because the magnetic

  conditions here were not the same as in the mother system.

  "That accounts for ghosts?" Forry said.

  "Yes. Human beings don't have ghosts. When they die,

  they are forever dead. But a Toc or Og who has died in

  material form needs to attach himself to a locale where he

  has both the optimum magnetic conditions and human

  beings. He has to, shall we say, 'feed' off the energy of

  human beings. And when he has gained enough form, in

  a phase which you humans call ectoplasm, he needs blood

  or sex to get a completely materi
al body. The Tocs need

  sex and the Ogs need blood."

  She paused and then said, "One of us recently regained

  corporeal form by contact with Herald Childe. She literally

  fucked herself into flesh. Of course, she was able to do it

  far more swiftly with Childe than she would have with

  one who was completely a human being."

  34

  "What the hell does that mean?" said Forry, who almost

  never swore.

  "I mean that Childe is the only Captain in existence.

  But he doesn't know it as yet."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he was born half-human and raised by human

  parents. Because a Captain has a delicate psychic con-

  stitution and must be handled delicately until he has fully

  matured. Childe is a fully mature man in the physical

  sense, but he is a baby in regard to his psychic powers."

  "Just one minute," Forry said. "I don't want to digress,

  but if you beings can come back to material life after being

  killed, why haven't these Captains that were killed come

  back to life?"

  "Some did and were killed by one side or the other be-

  cause their existence could not be kept secret. Others

  never made it because conditions weren't right. You see,

  if we had a Captain and a Grail, we could not only return

  to our home world. We could also bring all our departed

  comrades back into corporeality. The Toc or Og in his

  pure energy-complex phase is a rather mindless being. He

  has some intelligence, but the main reason he gets back to

  matter is that he has a drive to do so, an instinct. He wan-

  ders around until he happens to come across a locale with

  the proper setup for reconverting him. And reconversion

  takes a long long time generally."

  "Pardon the interruption," Forry said.

  If he had not seen that transformation from middle age

  to youth, he would have thought he was experiencing the

  world's biggest hoax. But he was convinced. He was ac-

  tually talking, face to face, with an extraterrestrial. One

  that would have made the strangest creature of science-

  fiction, or even those in Weird Tales magazine, rather

  mundane.

  He thought, In a sense, she's telling me the story of the

  Martians and Venusians waging an underground war for

  control of Earth. Hugo, you should be here! Oh, boy, if I

  could just flip a switch and let the sci-fi fans and the Count

  Dracula Society in on this!

  And then he sobered. If this was true, and he believed

  it was, this was no mere fiction story or child's delight. It

  was a deadly war.

  "Childe?" he said.

  "Let's go back to 1788," she said. "To the birth of the

  male who would become George Gordon, Lord Byron,

  the famous, if not great, English poet. At the time he was

  born, of course, no one, including us, knew that he would

  become world-famous. Nor did we have any way of pre-

  dicting whether he would become a Captain or just an-

  other human being. Or just another Toc."

  "I'm bursting with questions," he said, smiling. "But I

  refrain."

  "He was our first birth," she said. "On Toc, where con-

  ditions are optimum, births are very rare. That is, births

  from a copulation between, or among, our energy con-

  figuration phases do not happen often. But then that is

  counterbalanced by our lack of a death rate.

  "Here on Earth, we had never succeeded in producing an

  infant in the energy configuration. Then a Captain was

  reconverted into material form. One of us had the idea of

  preserving his genetic abilities in case he should get killed,

  which he was later on. The Captain happened to be living

  near the Byrons at that time, and he became the lover of

  Lady Byron with the purpose of impregnating her. There

  were a hundred of us, almost our full complement,

  gathered together nearby the night she conceived George.

  I suppose it is the only case, except one, where a hundred

  people copulated to produce one baby. We poured our

  mental energies into Lady Byron, and we succeeded. Co-

  existing with the fusion of sperm and ovum was the crea-

  tion of an energy embryo. This embryo was attached, no,

  was fused with the body of the infant Byron. You might

  say that he was the only human being up to then who

  actually had a soul."

  "Pardon me, but how did that energy embryo develop?

  Did it become a separate entity or … ?"

  "It fuses with the nervous system and becomes one with

  the corporeal entity. Not identical but similar. It survives

  after the death of the body.

  "However, this creation of an energy baby requires

  much outpouring of energy on our part. At the same time

  that we were concentrating our metal energies, we were

  fucking like mad corporeally. It was probably the biggest

  gang-bang in history, if you will pardon such language,

  Forry dear. I know you don't like to use dirty words or

  especially to hear them.

  "Unfortunately, though the baby grew up to have some

  remarkable talents, it did not develop the psychic abilities

  of a Captain. Not that that would have done much good,

  anyway, because we did not have a Grail. But we hoped

  to make the metal for one; we had been creating the

  metal, bit by bit, over thousands of years. On Toc we

  could have done it in a year, but here, where the minerals

  are scarce and the materials for building the potentializers

  are even more rare, we took an agonizingly long time

  getting what we needed. Then the Ogs made a raid and

  stole what metal we had.

  "They knew that Byron was to be our Captain. They

  moved in, became acquainted with him, and we could do

  little about it. Then they abandoned him when they found

  out that he lacked the Captaincy.

  "We were in despair for a while. But Byron still had

  the genetic potentiality for a Captain, and we decided to

  take advantage of that. If he couldn't be a Captain, per-

  haps his child could be."

  "Childe?" Forry said, ever alert for the chance to pun.

  She nodded and said, "Exactly. We got specimens of his

  sperm by a method I won't go into and froze it. Not with

  ice or liquid hydrogen but with an energy configuration.

  And we waited.

  "We waited while our enemies, the Ogs, obtained more

  metal, enough to make a Grail. Then we chose a woman

  with suitable genetic qualities, humanly speaking, because

  those have to be considered, too. You wouldn't want the

  Captain to be an inferior physical or mental specimen.

  And we deliberately settled on Mrs. Childe because of

  the name. And its association with Byron, too. After all,

  we use human languages and so we think something like

  humans. Only like, not exactly as."

  "Thus, the Herald Childe from the Childe Harold?"

  "If you said H-E-R-A-L-D, yes. Herald. The Child that

  Heralds the rebirth of our Toc energy ghosts, their re-

  materialization. And our return to the Promised L
and of

  our native planet. The dead shall rise and we shall cross

  the river Zion into the land of Beulah, if I can mix up a

  few quotations. You get the idea."

  "And what about Childe and the Grail?" Forry said.

  Alys Merrie opened her mouth to reply, but she shut it

  when someone beat at the door and shouted.

  35

  At noon, the ringing of the doorbell awakened Childe. He

  staggered out into the front room, past Sybil, who was

  still sleeping, and threw open the door. A gust of rain wet

  him and covered the three men standing on his porch. He

  realized immediately that he should have been more

  cautious, but by then it was too late. The first man

  stepped inside, holding a spray can. Childe held his breath

  and ran towards his bedroom, where he kept a gun. He

  stopped when the man called, "Childe! Your wife!"

  The second man was by Sybil with a knife at her

  throat. The third, Fred Pao or his twin, held an air gun.

  The first man sprayed a gas over Sybil just as she

  opened her eyes and said, "Wha … ?"

  She fell back asleep, and Pao said, "It won't hurt her.

  Now your turn, Mr. Childe."

  He could still run for the bedroom, he thought. But

  these men would cut Sybil's throat if they thought they

  had anything to gain by it. Of course, he might be able to

  kill all three of them with his gun, but what good would

  that do Sybil? On the other hand, if he surrendered,

  wouldn't he and Sybil be as good as dead?

  He did not know. That was the paralyzing factor. He

  did not know. And from what had passed between

  Vivienne and Hindarf he surmised that he was regarded

  as something special.

  "All right," he said. "I surrender."

  The man with the spray can approached him and shot

  the vapor in his face. He wanted to hold his breath, but it

  was foolish putting off the inevitable. After glancing at his

  wristwatch, he breathed in.

  It was thirty minutes later when he awoke. He was

  lying on a comfortable bed and looking up at a canopy.

  He turned his head and saw Sybil beside him. She was

  still unconscious. He got out of bed with some effort,

 

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