by James Blish
Except, he recalled suddenly, that that band couldn't possibly be an “audio” band. Nobody ever spoke directly to the Message Tree — only to the single Lithian who stood in the center of the Tree's chamber. How he got the substance of the message transformed into radio waves had never been explained to any of the Earthmen.
And yet suddenly there was a voice.
“ — a powerful tap on the Tree,” the voice said in clear, even, cold Lithian. “Who is receiving? Do you hear me? I do not understand the direction your carrier is coming from. It seems inside the Tree, which is impossible. Does anyone understand me?” Silently, the count thrust a microphone into Ruiz' hand. He discovered that he was trembling.
“We understand you,” he said in Lithian in a shaky voice. “We are on Earth. Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” the voice said at once. “We understood that what you say is impossible. But what you say is not always accurate, we have found. What do you want?”
“I would like to speak to Chtexa, the metallist,” Ruiz said. “This is Ruiz-Sanchez, who was in Xoredeshch Sfath last year.”
“He can be summoned,” said the cold, distant voice. There was a brief hashing sound from the speaker; then it went away again. “If he wishes to speak to you.”
“Tell him,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, “that his son Egtverchi also wishes to speak to him.”
“Ah,” said the voice after a pause. “Then no doubt he will come. But you cannot speak long on this channel. The direction from which your signal comes is damaging my sanity. Can you receive — a sound-modulated signal if we can arrange to send one?”
Michelis murmured to the count, who nodded energetically and pointed to the loudspeaker.
“That is how we are receiving you — now,” Ruiz said. “How are you transmitting?”
“That I cannot explain to you,” said the cold voice. “I cannot speak to you any longer or I will be damaged. Chtexa has been called.”
The voice stopped and there was a long silence. Ruiz-Sanchez wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Telepathy?” Michelis muttered behind him. “No, it fits into the electro-magnetic spectrum somewhere. But where? Boy, there sure is a lot we don't know about that Tree.”
The count nodded ruefully. He was watching his meters like a hawk but, judging from his expression, they were not telling him anything he did not already know.
“Ruiz-Sanchez,” the loudspeaker said. Ruiz started.
It was Chtexa's voice, clear and strong.
Ruiz beckoned at the shadows, and Egtverchi came forward. He was in no hurry. There was something almost insolent in his very walk.
“This is Ruiz-Sanchez, Chtexa,” Ruiz said. “I'm talking to you from Earth — a new experimental communications system one of our scientists has evolved. I need your help.”
“I will be glad to do whatever I can,” Chtexa said. “I was sorry that you did not return with the other Earthman. He was less welcome. He and his friends have razed one of our finest forests near Gleshchtehk Sfath, and built ugly buildings here in the city.”
“I'm sorry, too,” Ruiz-Sanchez said. The words seemed inadequate, but it would be impossible to explain to Chtexa exactly what the situation was — impossible, and illegal. “I still hope to come some day. But I am calling about your son.”
There was a brief pause, during which the speaker emitted a series of muted, anomalous sounds, almost yet not quite recognizable. Evidently the Lithians' audio hookup was catching some background noise from inside the Tree, or even outside it. The clarity of the reception was astonishing; it was impossible to believe that the Tree was fifty light-years away.
“Egtverchi is an adult now,” Chtexa's voice said. “He has seen many wonders on your world. Is he with you?”
“Yes,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, beginning to sweat again. “But he does not know your language, Chtexa. I will interpret as best I can.''
“That is strange,” Chtexa said. “But I will hear his voice. Ask him when he is coming home; he has much to tell us.”
Ruiz put the question.
“I have no home,” Egtverchi said indifferently.
“I can't just tell him that, Egtverchi. Say something intelligible, in heaven's name. You owe your existence to Chtexa, you know that.”
“I may visit Lithia some day,” Egtverchi said, his eyes filming. “But I am in no hurry. There is still a great deal to be done on Earth.”
“I hear him,” Chtexa said. “His voice is high; he is not as tall as his inheritance provided, unless he is ill. What does he answer?”
There simply was not time to provide an interpretive translation; Ruiz-Sanchez told him the answer literally, word by word from English into Lithian.
“Ah,” Chtexa said. “Then he has matters of import to his hand. That is good, and is generous of the Earth. He is right not to hurry. Ask him what he is doing.”
“Breeding dissension,” Egtverchi said, with a slight widening of his grin. Ruiz-Sanchez could not translate that literally; the concept was not in the Lithian language. It took him the better part of three long sentences to transmit even a dubious shadow of the idea to Chtexa.
“Then he is ill,” Chtexa said. “You should have told me, Ruiz-Sanchez. You had best send him to us. You cannot treat him adequately there.”
“He is not ill, and he will not go,” Ruiz-Sanchez said carefully. “He is a citizen of Earth and cannot be compelled. This is why I called you. He is a trouble to us, Chtexa. He is doing us hurts. I had hoped you might reason with him; we can do nothing.”
The anomalous sound, a sort of burring metallic whine, rose in the background and fell away again.
“That is not normal or natural,” Chtexa said. “You do not recognize his illness. No more do I, but I am not a physician. You must send him here. I see I was in error in giving him to you. Tell him he is commanded home by the Law of the Whole.”
“I never heard of the Law of the Whole,” Egtverchi said when this was translated for him. “I doubt that there is any such thing. I make up my own laws as I go along. Tell him he is making Lithia sound like a bore, and that if he keeps it up I'll make a point of never going there at all.”
“Blast it, Egtverchi — “ Michelis burst in.
“Hush, Mike, one pilot is enough. Egtverchi, you were willing to co-operate with us up to now; at least, you came here with us. Did you do it just for the pleasure of defying and insulting your father? Chtexa is far wiser than you are; why don't you stop acting like a child and listen to him?”
“Because I don't choose to,” Egtverchi said. “And you make me no more willing by wheedling, dear foster father. I didn't choose to be born a Lithian, and I didn't choose to be brought to Earth — but now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that's what pleases me.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“There's no reason why I should explain that, but I will. I came to hear my father's voice. Now I've heard it. I don't understand what he says, and he makes no better sense in your translation, and that's all there is to it as far as I am concerned. Bid him farewell for me — I shan't speak to him again.”
“What does he say?” Chtexa's voice said.
“That he does not acknowledge the Law of the Whole, and will not come home,” Ruiz-Sanchez told the microphone. The little instrument was slippery with sweat in his palm. “And he says to bid you farewell.”
“Farewell, then,” Ghtexa said. “And farewell to you, too, Ruiz-Sanchez. I am at fault, and this fills me with sorrow; but it is too late. I may not talk to you again, even by means of your marvelous instrument.”
Behind the voice, the strange, half-familiar whine rose to a savage, snarling scream which lasted almost a minute. Ruiz-Sanchez waited until he thought he could be heard over it again.
“Why not, Chtexa?” he said huskily. “The fault is ours as much as it is yours. I am still your friend, and wish you well.”
“And I
am your friend, and wish you well,” Chtexa's voice said. “But we may not talk again. Can you not hear the power saws?”
So that was what that sound was!
“Yes. Yes, I hear them.”
“That is the reason,” Chtexa said. “Your friend Xlevher is cutting down the Message Tree.”
The gloom was thick in the Michelis apartment. As the time drew closer for Egtverchi's next broadcast, it became increasingly apparent that their analysis of the UN's essential helplessness had been correct. Egtverchi was not openly triumphant, though he was exposed to that temptation in several newspaper interviews; but he floated some disquieting hints of vast plans which might well be started in motion when he was next on the air. Ruiz-Sanchez had not the least desire to listen to the broadcast, but he had to face the fact that he would be unable to stay away from it. He could not afford to be without any new data that the program might yield. Nothing he had learned had done him any good thus far, but there was always the slim chance that something would turn up.
In the meantime, there was the problem of Cleaver, and his associates. However you looked at it, they were human souls. If Ruiz-Sanchez were to be driven, somehow, to the step that Hadrian VIII had commanded, and it did not fail, more than a set of attractive hallucinations would be lost. It would plunge several hundred human souls into instant death and more than probable damnation; Ruiz-Sanchez did not believe that the hand of God would reach forth to pluck to salvation men who were involved in such a project as Cleaver's, but he was equally convinced that his should not be the hand to condemn any man to death, let alone to an unshriven death. Ruiz was condemned already — but not yet of murder.
It had been Tannhauser who had been told that his salvation was as unlikely as the blossoming of the pilgrim's staff in his hand. And Ruiz-Sanchez' was as unlikely as sanctified murder.
Yet the Holy Father had commanded it; had said it was the only road back for Ruiz-Sanchez, and for the world. The Pope's clear implication had been that he shared with Ruiz-Sanchez the view that the world stood on the brink of Armageddon — and he had said flatly that only Ruiz-Sanchez could avert it. Their only difference was doctrinal, and in these matters the Pope could not err…
But if it was possible that the dogma of the infertility of Satan was wrong, then it was possible that the dogma of Papal infallibility was wrong. After all, it was a recent invention; quite a few Popes in history had got along without it. Heresies, Ruiz-Sanchez thought — not for the first time — come in snarls. It is impossible to pull free one thread; tug at one, and the whole mass begins to roll down upon you.
I believe, O Lord; help me in mine unbelief. But it was useless. It was as though he were praying to God's back.
There was a knock on his door. “Coming, Ramon?” Michelis' tired voice said. “He's due to go on in two minutes.”
“All right, Mike.”
They settled before the Klee, warily, already defeated, awaiting — what? It could only be a proclamation of total war. They were ignorant only of the form it would take.
“Good evening,” Egtverchi said warmly from the frame. “There will be no news tonight. Instead of reporting news, we will make some. The time has come, it is now plain, for the people to whom news happens — those hapless people whose grief-stricken, stunned faces look out at you from the newspapers and the 3-V 'casts such as mine — to throw off their helplessness. Tonight I call upon all of you to show your contempt for the hypocrites who are your bosses, and your total power to be free of them.
“You have a message for them. Tell them this: tell them, 'Your beasts, sirs, are a great people.'
“I will be the first. As of tonight, I renounce my citizenship in the United Nations, and my allegiance to the Shelter state. From now on I will be a citizen—”
Michelis was on his feet, shouting incoherently.
“ — a citizen of no country but that bounded by the limits of my own mind. I do not know what those limits are, and I may never find out, but I shall devote my life to searching for them, in whatever manner seems good to me, and in no other manner whatsoever.
“You must do the same. Tear up your registration cards. If you are asked your serial number, tell them you never had one. Never fill in another form. Stay above ground when the siren sounds. Stake out plots; grow crops; abandon the corridors. Do not commit any violence; simply refuse to obey. Nobody has the. right to compel you, as non-citizens. Passivity is the key. Renounce, resist, deny!
“Begin now. In half an hour they will overwhelm you. When—”
An urgent buzzer sounded over Egtverchi's voice, and for an instant a checkerboard pattern in red and black blotted out bis figure: the UN's crash-priority signal, overriding the bypass recording circuit. Then the face of the UN man looked out at them from under its funny hat, with Egtverchi underlying it dimly, his exhortations only a whisper in the background.
“Dr. Michelis,” the UN man said exultantly. “He's done it. He's overreached himself. As a non-citizen, he's right in our hands. Get down here — we need you right away, before he gets off the air. Dr. Meid too.”
“What for?”
“To sign pleas of nolo contendere. Both of you are under arrest for keeping a wild animal — a technicality only; don't be alarmed. But we have to have you. We mean to put Mr. Egtverchi in a cage for the rest of his life — a soundproof cage.”
“You are making a mistake,” Ruiz-Sanchez said quietly.
The UN man's face, a mask of triumph with blazing eyes, swung toward him briefly.
“I didn't ask what you thought, Mister,” he said. “I have no orders concerning you, but as far as I'm concerned, you've been closed out of this case entirely. If you try to force your way back in, you'll get burned. Dr. Michelis, Dr. Meid? Do we have to come and get you?”
“We'll come,” Michelis said stonily. “Sign off.” He did not wait for the UN man, however, but killed the set himself.
“Do you think we should do it, Ramon?” he said. “If not, we'll stay right here, and the hell with him. Or we'll take you along if you want.”
“No, no,” Ruiz-Sanchez said. “Go ahead. No balking on your part will accomplish a thing but getting you both in deep trouble. Do me one favor, though.”
“Gladly. What is it?”
“Stay off the streets. When you get to the UN offices, make them keep you there. As arrested citizens, you have the right to be jailed.” Michelis and Liu both stared at him. Then comprehension began to break over Michelis' face.
“You think it will be that bad?” he said.
“Yes, I do. Do I have your promise?”
Michelis looked at Liu and nodded grimly. They went out The collapse of the Shelter state had already begun.
XVIII
The beast Chaos roared on unslaked for three days. Ruiz-Sanchez was able to follow much of its progress from the beginning, via the Michelises' 3-V set. There were times when he would also have liked to look out over the sun porch rail, but the roar of the mob, the shots, explosions, police whistles, sirens, and unnamable noises had driven the bees frantic; under such conditions he would not have trusted Liu's protective garments for an instant, even had they been large enough for him. The UN squads had made a well-organized attempt to bear Egtverchi off directly from the broadcasting station, but Egtverchi was not there — in fact, he had never been there at all. The audio, video and tri-di signals had all been piped into the station via coaxial cable from some unspecified place. The necessary connections had been made at the last minute, when it became obvious that Egtverchi was not going to show up, by a technician who had volunteered word of the actual situation; a sacrifice piece in Egtverchi's gambit. The network had sent an alert to the proper UN officers at once, but another sacrifice piece saw to it that the alert was shunted through channels. It took nearly all night to sweat out of the QBC technician the location of Egtverchi's studio (the stooge at the UN obviously did not know) and by that time, of course, he was no longer there either. Also by that time, the news
of the attempted arrest and the misfire was being blared and headlined in every Shelter in the world.
Even this much did not get to Ruiz-Sanchez until somewhat later, for the noise in the street began immediately after the first announcement had been made. At first it was disconnected and random, as though the streets were gradually filling with people who were angry or upset but were divided over what, if anything, they ought to do about it. Then there was a sudden change in the quality of the sound, and instantly Ruiz-Sanchez knew that the transformation from a gathering to a mob had been made. The shouting could not very well have become any louder, but abruptly it was a frightening uniform growl, like the enormous voice of a single animal.
He had no way of knowing what had triggered the change, and perhaps the crowd itself never knew either. But now the shots began — not many, but one shot is a fusillade if there have been no shots before. A part of the overall roar detached itself and took on an odd and even more frightening hollow sound; only when the floor shook slightly under him did he realize what that meant.
A pseudopod of the beast had thrust itself into the building.
Ruiz-Sanchez realized that he should have expected nothing else. The fad of living above ground was still essentially a privilege, reserved to those UN employees and officials who knew how to get the necessary and elaborate permissions, and who furthermore had enough income to support such an inconvenient arrangement; it was the twenty-first century's version of commuting from Maine — here was where they lived.
Ruiz-Sanchez checked the door hastily. It had elaborate locks — left over from the last period of the Shelter race, when the great untended buildings had been natural targets for looters — but they had gone unused for years. Ruiz-Sanchez used them all now.
He was just in time. There was an obscene shouting in the corridor just outside as part of the mob burst into it from the fire stairs. They had avoided the elevator by instinct — it was too slow to sustain their thoughtless ferocity, too confined for lawlessness, too mechanical for men who were letting their muscles do their thinking.