“Is it?” The old man chuckled. “Do you think I like doing it by myself? And since we’d have to feed you and care for you even if you did no work, your help will be pure profit to me.”
Derek had little hope for any great revelation from the work. Either there wasn’t much of a secret to the tools, or there was something so tricky that they felt sure Kayel and he couldn’t discover it.
The work seemed to confirm his doubts. Any child could have handled it, with no more than five minutes of instruction. Skora had teleported in a big tub of soft white clay from a bank of the stuff beyond the village. They had to pack this inside metal molds, press them down firmly and let them rough-dry until they would hold their shape. Then they went into the kiln to be baked. Finally, Skora inspected them, throwing out the defective ones along with his own hand-formed failures.
The priest answered Kayel’s stumbling questions without any hesitation. The material wasn’t important, so long as the final product had the right shape and the markings on it were clear. They had a few metal tools, but these were rare and too heavy for normal use.
“You can think of them as instructions,” he suggested. “There is too much to remember easily, and these help. They—well, they describe a stress in space, more or less.”
“Then plastics would work? Because if they would, there are a thousand pounds of thermoplastic in the ship’s stores, and we’d save a lot of time here,” Kayel suggested.
Skora apparently thought it was a fine idea. He questioned the physicist about what to look for, and the stock of plastic was suddenly in front of them. They began boring small holes in the molds for pouring the plastic to make unbreakable amulets, and the work went faster after that.
On the way back to Lari’s that night, Kayel shook his head positively. “Nothing, Derek! Nothing can be concealed in our own plastic. The secret has to be in their god.”
A god who wasn’t immortal, though he had lived for at least twelve hundred years; a god who taught the children somehow, though he had been dead for a hundred years. A god who could fling a seventy-thousand ton ship quintillions of miles instantly!
Derek lingered after the second day of work. He took the bottle of beer from the priest and dropped to a seat. “Skora, I’m still curious about your god. And this time, I’ll try to behave myself. How long did:he live?”
“Since before the sun exploded. Let’s see.” The priest tipped the capped bottle up without thinking. Beer seemed to appear just beyond the seal and run into his mouth. “He was about sixty of your years old then. He came here to see us about five years before the trouble, I think. I could find out, if you like.”
Derek took his eyes off the other’s drinking habits and swallowed his own drink, trying to find some point of exploration. “I haven’t heard any stories about his creating the world or your people, at that. No legends of that?”
“Of course not. We evolved on Terra, like your people; and this planet grew from the usual space whorl.” The old man chuckled. “This isn’t a religion—though I’m afraid sometimes it’s beginning to degenerate. God had some strange ideas that are getting distorted lately. Many of us have a belief in some divine spirit, Derek, but we try not to confuse that with god. He was just a man. Kayel knows more than he did, though not the same—and all of us are stronger than he was.”
“He didn’t teach you to worship him, then?”
“He didn’t know.” Skora shook his head sadly. “He thought we would, mostly be dead. He didn’t care and couldn’t know what happened to us. He was unconscious. And when he revived, he was sure we were dead. With his stores all ruined and nobody to save him, he went crazy. He began blasting his way out and brought down a rock on his skull. Naturally, with his medulla crushed, he died. It was just as well. He couldn’t move the rocks to get out and he’d have been afraid of the world we’d made.”
It made no sense at all. Their god couldn’t even move rocks out of his own way. Yet the rains fell, in spite of the fact that the amulets were nothing but symbols. The power had to come from some source. “So he was destroyed. Yet you say he still is!”
“He’s there, and the young learn from him still. We had to find out how to build the time-negation drive from him since you came.” Skora found another beer, remembering to open this one. He was mellowing from the liquor. “Derek, I don’t know. He’s dead and he’s deteriorating—slowly, but the changes are there. We’ve always been in danger of becoming superstitiously dependent on him without realizing how much so we are. But now, some of us are worried. As he deteriorates, he may warp our children. Sometimes I’ve thought of digging him up and destroying him.”
“Why don’t you?” Derek suggested softly.
“I’ve thought of it. As senior priest for Vanir, I could. But it’s hard… emotional attachment, I suppose. And fear of what would happen.”
Derek frowned. “Suppose I were to destroy him?”
The old priest looked up, studying him, resolution coming slowly. “You could! Of course, you could! Derek, one more beer! Then go home. And be back here early. We’ll do it!”
Skora’s hands were trembling as he reached for the bottles.
6
Siryl would have none of it.
“Nonsense,” she told them after she had heard the story, along with Kayel. “Primitive cultures don’t breed agnostics. Skora was just drunk or testing you! Probably saving face by trying not to act superstitious. Derek, if you break any more taboos—”
“They aren’t primitive! Damn it, Siryl, if you can’t get that much through your pathological skull, go outside and watch it rain for a while!”
She stiffened and then cloaked herself in professional calm. “A culture,” she recited, almost by rote, “observed in situ may have certain apparently inconsistent developments, usually as a result of some isolated individual genius or accidental discovery. These, however, do not violate the fundamental attitudes and emphases, the cultural gestalt, but are inevitably assimilated emotionally. That means, Derek, that they can have a machine left over from pre-Collapse days that makes miracles—but they still think it’s magic. If you’ll drop your persecution complex and listen to—”
He grimaced, and then grinned slowly. “My hairy-chested persecution complex, you undefiled prude!”
She drew in her breath harshly and marched out of the room, white to her lips. Kayel looked sick, starting after her and turning back. “You shouldn’t have done that, Derek!” he protested. He sighed, shook his head, and sat down slowly, reaching for his pipe. “I wonder what we’ll find—and whether Skora will do it?”
Derek had his own doubts, but they found the old man ready the next morning, with Wolm behind him, carrying a supply of amulets and two battery torches he must have pulled from the Sepelora. The priest looked as if he had been unable to sleep, and the porch where the school was usually held was locked up tightly.
He saluted them, his eyes still troubled but with no doubt in his voice. “The place is on the other side of Vanir, deep in a cave our ancestors built. He expected the explosion toward the last and had the one of them who could use his power dig two such caves—one for him, one for us. He had a machine… We almost starved and died of asphyxiation, until that one who could use the power found from god how to bring food and keep fresh air coming from another world.”
He sighed, and his eyes ran across the landscape and the growing fields. “When we came out years later, the world was a cinder, and god had to teach us to restore it and to farm it. At first, we thought of moving to another world. Even the air here had to be brought in. But we stayed near god. Well, let’s go!”
There was an abrupt, sickening shift of scenery and they were standing at the base of a mountain that stretched up as one of a huge chain, barren and forbidding. Only a few stunted plants existed there, and the sun was purpling the sky in the west. Ahead of them was a cliff that stretched up nearly half a mile, and there were two rubble-filled holes in it, near them.
The
priest motioned to one of them, and Wolm moved ahead. He had what seemed to be a huge umbrella without covering. He pointed the ribs toward the fallen rocks, twisting it slowly and feeling the swiveled handle of clay. He came to the stones and continued walking. The rock seemed to flow away from the device, compacting itself against the walls of the older passage that was there.
“This is the way he taught Moskez, the only one of us who could learn the power,” Skora explained. “God came across space from Terra to study us with other scientists. When the enemy began exploding suns, he stole us to help him, taking all .the supplies he could carry. We built this cave for him, and the one beyond for ourselves. Fortunately, the sun’s explosion was a weak one.”
He was worried, but oddly determined. They were moving downward and forward. Then they hit a clear passage that wound down and down. It must have taken a great depth to protect them from the solar blowup. Ot^er peonle had tried it, without this digging device, and had failed.
They reached a long section where the passage was clear, and foul, air’rushed out at them. Skora reached for an amulet and cold, clear atmosphere blew in rapidly. Derek wondered why the old man didn’t simply teleport them into the cave where their god lay, but decided to let the question go. It was probably only a means of delaying the accomplishment. His legs ached, and Kayel was panting, but they went steadily down.
Finally it flattened out and another five minutes of walking brought them into a partially clear chamber. There was a great radium motor on one side, whirring softly. In the center stood a huge glass case, covered with thick layers of ice from the ages of slow atmospheric seepage. Oxygen tanks were beside it and stores of food and equipment lay about, all rotted and useless now. Wolm scraped off the ice at a gesture from the priest, and Derek stared into the tank.
Doubled up on the floor of the case was an old man, his face hidden by one arm, his neck bent at an imnossi-ble angle. He was naked and fat, with the waxy color of frozen flesh. One hand lay near a heavy notebook and the other clutched an archaic type of heat-projecting rifle. A rock lay near the wound on the back of his neck, and another had wedged itself into the hole at the top of the case, sealing it with the layer of ice around it. From the breakage inside the case, it was obvious that he had gone mad, to wind up shooting at the ceiling above him. The cooling system must have been cut off before he revived, but it had somehow gotten turned on again during his insane frenzy.
“Suspended animation!” Kayel said. “There were accounts that it had been developed. But no details on the cooling, chemicals in the blood, the irradiation frequencies. Skora, was he a biologist or biophysicist?”
“No, he stole the parts from the place where our people were studied,” the priest said. “Another man meant to use it, but god took it. And he didn’t adjust it right. He wanted to wait fifty years, but it was twelve hundred before it released him. We left him because we needed him and he was preserved in this.”
Wolm had drawn closer to the case, trembling. Now
he bent his white face down and stared into the case. Skora stood beside the boy, indecision working on him.
“What do we do now?” Derek asked, as gently as he could.
The old man sighed. “I don’t know. The enzymes of his body are bringing a slow decay, despite the cold. And things go wrong with the teaching of the young… but without him, god is gone and Vanir may have no power. If I could only be sure—”
He waited, while Derek stared at the case and its machinery. At first, he had wondered if it might not conceal the great machine that could perform the miracles he had seen. But Kayel had looked it over at once and had shaken his head. It seemed to be no more than it was supposed to be. And that left only their god—a fat, dead god who had gone insane because of his weakness and his fear.
“No!” Wolm broke. The boy’s shoulders heaved. He buried his face against the case, shouting and clawing at the ice. “No! Skora, you can’t. He is all we have. He’s holy! Don’t touch him! God will come again! I saw it. It is Ms thought! You can’t—”
Skora’s fingers moved .on the amulet savagely. Wolm’s body snapped out of existence, while flakes of ice trickled down where he had been.
The priest looked sicker than before. “I sent him home,” he said. “Derek, that is what our youngsters learn now. There is decay, and distinctions are going. The old emotional superstitions are stronger than later logic, and all children used to have them. Now they creep through into the minds of our young. A decaying mind and an insane one—and our children absorb that knowledge.”
He sighed heavily. “And I—even I must have absorbed some of it. I can’t destroy him! It’s—horror! Derek, it’s up to you. Do what you will. I’ll wait fifteen minutes for you and keep the air pure here for you. But I can’t even watch!”
He was suddenly gone, too.
Kayel swallowed thickly, his neck bobbing against tight muscles. He reached for his pipe, then stuffed it back. “But if he loses his power when the body is destroyed, he can’t keep air for us or get us out?”
Derek kicked at the glass case. Kayel hesitated, and then joined him. It broke finally, and they waited while the blast of freezing air wheezed out, foul and miasmic. Derek reached for the weapon, but it was too cold to touch. He kicked it around with his foot until he could point it toward the corpse, while he found a bit of cloth he could use to cover the trigger.
Kayel knocked his arm aside before he could fire. The little man pointed toward the notebook and began hastily ripping off his shirt. He scooped up the book and spread it out on a low couch, ripping off the thin plastic that protected it. “We still have fourteen minutes, Derek. And this may be our only chance to find the secret.”
The captain stepped back, feeling relief wash over him. He had been bracing himself to take the chance, but the excuse to delay it was welcome. If burning the body destroyed the power of god, Vanir would be just another primitive world—and they would almost certainly die before they could get out. If the power remained, there would still be the need to warn the Federation of the menace hers—and no clue on which to operate.
Kayel flipped the cover back and skimmed through a few pages as quickly as he could turn them. It was obviously written in Classic, heavily interspersed with strange mathematics like none Derek had ever seen. From Kayel’s puzzled glance, they were equally strange to him. He turned to the front again. Then he pointed. “Aevan—god is Aevan!”
The book was described on the first page grandiloquently as the diary and records of A. Evan, the discoverer of metadynamics, the only true science of all time—the full and final work, from which the notes the world had been unready for had been extracted.
The body of the book began with the man’s need for people with unusually developed “ability” for his experiments, and his discovery of the border world of Vanir, where scientists had bred small groups for special abilities and were studying them.
In one of those little colleges, he had found the children he needed, and one child had proved capable of manipulating space as Aevan had been sure was possible. Moskez had even been able to force a few of the other children to bridge the difficult gap and begin work on it. There were long experiments and formulae for levitation, teleportation, penetrability, and other things. It ended on a note of self-adulation for his own success, in spite of the poor material he’d had with which to work.
Derek frowned and went back carefully, looking for the missing factor. The mathematics looked good, and in time Kayel could probably figure them out. But Aevan had been unable to make them work himself. It had taken some other ability.
He found it finally, in a footnote he’d skipped. It was telepathy. Aevan had known that the mental power needed was related to telepathy, and had been forced to find a group which had been bred for that. The boys on Vanir who succeeded had had more than eleven generations in which to build up such power.
Telepathy! And since the Collapse, while Vanir went on with its exclusive breed of telepaths
, the rest of the worlds had had no such power—the psychologists had proved that it had been bred out of humanity, if it had ever existed. Yet without it, the mathematics would be useless. Only Vanir could have infinite power.
There the children had been forced to use it to survive. The single advanced one had somehow taught the others, and they had stolen their ideas for survival from the mind of Aevan. In suspended animation, his thoughts were nearly still, but his memories remained, and they could be tapped. Even dead, the memory cells were preserved for a time, though now they were deteriorating at last.
The amulets were only traditions to help them—they had used them as children, probably, to remember and feel the complex mathematical formulae, and the use of the tools had become so closely associated with the power that nobody questioned it now.
Derek tossed the book to Kayel and reached for the trigger. Nothing visible came from the weapon, but the body of the god—or Aevan—charred and began to vanish, along with most of the wall of the case behind it. Fourteen minutes had gone by.
He began to tense as the seconds drifted by, picturing Skora standing up there without the symbol of the power he had used, uncertain of his own powers, afraid to try them! If the man couldn’t work without the familiar—
Abruptly, they were back at the foot of the mountain, outside the tunnel they had cleared. Skora stood there, his face strained and white and his hands shaking; but his eyes were burning with the end of more than a thousand years of slavery to a useless custom and the fear of its loss.
“It worked—the tools still have power!” His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting.
Derek had one final test. He turned toward the priest, keeping his lips sealed and trying to throw the words silently out of his mind toward the other. Not the tools, Skora. They were only memory aids. All you need is the knowledge and power that you have in your own mind. You were bound to a superstition!
The Best of Lester del Rey Page 22