Anderson, Poul - Novel 17

by Inheritors of Earth (v2. 1)

  "Yes, sir," Alec had said.

  And was he? In other words, which picture was true? The one shown him by Mr. Eliot—or the other, the Cargill version? Man or monster? Mechanic or superman? Callous killer or loving father?

  Or both?

  Alec crossed the open grass and crouched beside a budding flower. Was it any different from this? Bending way down, he placed his nose close to the tiny red blossom and he sniffed.

  There were two worlds. In one, this flower was a collection of molecules, capable of being broken down into its component particles. More importantly, it could be explained. The fragrance, the shape, the color—all of this could be explained. But in the other world—a place where things existed in the form they ought to possess—this same flower was only an object of rare and unique beauty, a divine creation of color and scent, form and structure and feeling. Two worlds—and they could not be merged. One must accept either one or the other. The world of science—the world of poetry. The way things were—or the way things ought to be. In the past, Alec had tried to combine the two. He had created life through science, but the thing which had emerged in the end (the android soldiers) had been all science and no life—no poetry. Or take Ah Tran—the new messiah—another presumptuous advocate of fusion: the poetry of compassionate mysticism and the science of natural ecology. It wouldn't work. It could not be done. One or the other—never both.

  Bending down, Alec plucked the flower and held it lightly between his fingers. He made his choice: poetry. He did not want a world where things could be explained. He wanted a place where everything—flowers, androids, gods, fathers— existed in the form they ought rightly to possess.

  Anna's failure to know and decide had driven her mad. That was her own fault, but his too. When he first met her, he now recalled how impressed he had been—glancing into her mind—by the depth of knowledge and wisdom she possessed. To have these qualities close at hand on a more or less permanent basis, he had married her.

  Well, that was another mistake—a failure to choose. Love, marriage, romance—the stuff of poetry—undertaken for reasons of curiosity and study—science again. The marriage had failed. What else?

  He wished he could see her now. Anna. If nothing else, he could at least explain the truth to her. None of them had given him the time. From every conceivable side, they had hemmed him in. Astor, the Inner Circle, Cargill, Sylvia, Anna, General Hopkins. If only they had allowed him to think—he would have seen the truth before it was too late.

  They would, of course, be coming soon. He would not be permitted to remain free for long but, if nothing else, he had found the time to see the truth and that was something they would never be able to take away from him.

  An enormous bang cracked the silent sky. He laughed. Sonic boom. Rocketplane.

  War.

  If nothing else, the generals and admirals—wittingly or not—had finally seen the truth. In the past, they had tried to make of war a thing of fusion—another hybrid of science and poetry. On the one hand, the genuine glory of battle—the expressions of daring and real courage—love and self-sacrifice—patriotism and ideals—the poetry of both victory and defeat. On the other hand were the creations of science: the weapons that grew progressively more powerful—from sticks and stones to hydrogen bombs. Science came to supersede poetry. Men were no longer necessary in order to wage a war. And now, at last, android soldiers. There would be no glory in this new war—no courage or love or self-sacrifice. It was science's war—quick, clean, efficient. And meaningless.

  Enough. Alec stood up. His thoughts had come full circle. They would be coming soon enough and, when they did, he would simply tell them: I am through. No more vain attempts to merge what did not belong together. No more android soldiers. Let them accuse him of murdering Sylvia—he had no idea what Cargill intended to tell them—and he would not demur. A cell. Quiet. Tranquil. Not just prisoners but monks—mystics—often lived in cells. Peace. The perfect domain for someone who now fully accepted the existence of a world where things existed only in their most perfect and inexplicable states.

  He had made up his mind. He turned toward the house. As soon as he did, he saw her. She came close to him. Raising a tentative hand in welcome, he said:

  "Anna."

  Then she fired.

  A beam gun!

  He cried out. The first burst exploded at his feet, digging a hole a meter deep in the soft ground. He looked down at this gaping pit, unable to comprehend the fact of murder, then lifted his gaze and met her eyes. The gun was clenched in her fist.

  He stepped forward. "Anna, no, I—"

  He saw her finger tighten around the trigger. Her face and eyes—her lips—were expressionless.

  She fired again.

  If he hadn't fallen aside at the last possible moment, the beam would have cut him in half. Instead, it struck the thick trunk of a tree behind him. The tree toppled neatly over backward and burst into flames.

  'Anna!" he cried, looking up at her. He crawled forward. If only he could tell her—force her to understand. "Please—I must—I—"

  Once more, she fired.

  The beam dug a furrow through the earth, cutting as straight as a plow, barely brushing the extended fingertips of his left hand. Flowers, shrubs, bushes, small trees blazed with fire. He screamed and shook his left hand. There was no real pain. He looked at the fingers: the tips were gone, neatly and cleanly amputated.

  He screamed and staggered to his feet. "I'm hit!" The next burst of fire was inches away. He stared at the pit and then, holding his wounded hand in his good fist, turned and ran back toward the garden. He went only a few yards. A wall of fire stopped him. The flames leaped high into the air. There had to be a way around but—

  He turned and faced his wife. "No!"

  She came toward him. The flames beat at his bare back, but he could not move. Anna held the gun steadily in front of her. He was screaming, shaking his arms, showing her his wound, but unable to express the truth he knew so clearly.

  She was three yards away. Two. He fell silent, not moving, studying her feet. Her mind was dead. She radiated nothing. What was she? An automaton? An android? A product of pure science—devoid of thought, feeling, love? His wife? Anna?

  Alec closed his eyes, waiting for the end.

  But it never came.

  He fainted.

  Time must have passed. He was lying on the ground. He felt the fire on his bare flesh. He opened his eyes and peeked but Anna wasn't anywhere.

  Instead, it was Cargill who crouched beside him. Cargill shouted: "Hurry! The fire! We've got to get out of here!"

  Alec could see the flames darting through the tops of the trees, spreading toward the house. The air was filled with smoke. He could barely breathe. Cargill helped him to his feet. Together, they ran toward the house.

  It wasn't until he reached the living room—dense with smoke—that Alec refused to go any farther.

  "Anna!" he cried, gesturing toward the garden. "She was there! She was—!" He started to turn back.

  Cargill reached out and grabbed him. "Anna's dead." He tugged at Alec's sleeve.

  "No!" Alec shook away. "I didn't see her! She must be—!"

  "She's dead!" Cargill cried. The fire had reached the roof now. Suddenly, part of the ceiling collapsed, spraying them both with plaster. Ghostlike, Cargill stuck out a pale hand and grabbed Alec by the shoulder: "Hurry!" he cried.

  This time, Alec did not resist. Together, they stumbled toward the door. Cargill kicked it open. They went out. Coughing, weaving, they went down the winding pathway. Neither stopped until they had passed out of direct sight of the house.

  Then Alec fell to the ground and lay there, gasping and heaving. A cloud of smoke rose into the air, forming thick black clouds.

  Alec reached up and touched the top of his head. Something hurt. He felt a smooth round bump—and blood.

  He looked at Cargill, who was sitting calmly in the grass, as if nothing had happened. When Cargill
did not speak, Alec began to swear at him.

  "You did it!" he cried. "You killed her!"

  Twenty-Two

  As soon as the android appeared, the circle formed quickly around him. Twenty-five men and women in a small, white, bare room. Ah Tran sat with his legs crossed underneath him, no different from the other two dozen. He placed himself demurely between two lumpy, plain-faced young women. Recent converts. Sisters. Father as rich as Midas. He bowed his head. He focused his gaze on the floor. His expression was determinedly blank.

  The android stood alone in the center of the circle. Tall—though not exceptionally. Palefaced. Wiry black hair. The android was the sort of person, physically, who might result if all the world's population were mixed in one big vat and from this brew a typical man were created. The android was that man. Typical—average—common. Ah Tran despised his very existence here.

  But, right this moment, the android—Eathen—Arthur---was the single most important person in the whole world.

  Even if he wasn't a person, Ah Tran thought.

  He began to mumble. The others hastily joined in. The android sat down, nodding at the others. For the most part, the disciples were rigidly similar: young, white, handsome, slim, respectable. Of the twenty-four, nine were men and the rest were women. All were equally respectable—at least their parents were. And rich too, of course. The disciples had their faces scrubbed clean— their teeth glistened. What they were—Ah Tran had often searched for the one right term before deciding upon this one—they were dilettantes—amateurs. When Ah Tran called, none had seen any reason not to come running at once. Religious feeling was a thing nowadays limited to the rich. Not faith or acceptance or conviction, but real feeling. None of this was to say that the disciples were not in earnest. They were deadly serious—they believed in Ah Tran as the new messiah. Had he told them to kill, he thought they would have acted at once. But that wasn't what he asked. Instead, he asked each of them to do this: to sit in a circle and surrender his identity, to allow that identity to merge with those of the others until a fused whole was created which would then—through a conduit—be sent spiraling upward toward the heavens. He asked them to do this—and each said yes.

  It was happening already. Experience and practice made the impossible seem easy. He sensed the gestalt forming around him. He remained deliberately outside, laboring at the edges of the growing mass, exuding a careful aura of total contentment and serenity, working to weld the temporary fusion of spirits into a secure and final whole which could then be sent forward to take possession of the waiting void of the conduit.

  The strain of not acting was immense. At the previous sessions, Ah Tran had always acted as the conduit. As such, he had always ensured that the gestalt was properly fused before allowing it to enter and obliterate his own consciousness. But he had told the android not to try that. He had instructed him to commence his own process of obliteration, to create his own void. The android had done so. Where he sat, there was nothing but the vacant husk of his own body. When he thought in these terms, Ah Tran had to resist the impulse to laugh. Gestalt, conduit, fusion of spirits—it was all the old spiritualist mumbo-jumbo that he thought he had taken over for the simple expedient of getting rich. Well, he was rich, but there was something else besides: the mumbo-jumbo—at least this part of it---happened to work.

  So he didn't laugh.

  It wasn't telepathy. He didn't believe in that. But he did believe—the evidence forced him to believe—that separate human minds could merge and that these minds, in unison, were far more powerful than any two minds in isolation. There would be twenty-four minds working here. Ah Tran wasn't ignorant. He knew that many past psychologists had theorized the existence of a unified racial consciousness that existed above and apart from individual memory or awareness. So why couldn't—this was his own theory—that racial consciousness be reformed, welded together, and repaired, and then sent upward into the non-spatial domain which was its proper dwelling place? In the Orient, meditation had long been accepted as the proper technique for achieving salvation, so Ah Tran— when he formed his movement—had of course adopted it as an integral part of his new gospel. But the Eastern mystics were wrong. They practiced meditation as a means by which the ego could be momentarily obliterated. What they failed to recognize was that this was only a first step.

  Ego-death was only another means, it was not an end in itself. Obliterate the ego—yes—but do not stop there, continue on, discover the mass racial wholeness that lies just beyond the next horizon. Ah Tran had done that. Accidentally, it was true. But he had done it and now he knew.

  The fusion continued. Ah Tran felt its presence in an almost physical way. It was the mass racial mind of twenty-four—so far twenty-three but he would be joining them shortly—separate individuals.

  But it was the third step—the one following meditation and ego-death—which had so far eluded them: transcendence, the passing of the fused gestalt into its higher and proper realm of existence.

  Ah Tran looked briefly at the android. What he saw shocked him. The slackness of the android's expression, the ghostly paleness of his flesh, the stillness of his breathing, the absence of tension in his muscles. This man, Ah Tran thought fearfully, though only for a moment, is dead.

  But no. The android was not dead. At least, not in any physical sense. He was not even a man—he was a flesh and blood machine—and, as such, was proving, as Ah Tran and Cargill had hoped, to be the perfect conduit. Ego-death would be simple for him: killing a child was always a simpler process than slaying an adult man.

  Around the circle, the others were ready too. Ah Tran sensed that it was time. Close. Very close. He could feel them—no, it—waiting for him to come.

  But he hesitated. Could the android be expected to bear the strain? In the past Ah Tran had willingly risked his own life and sanity, but now he was demanding that another—an innocent—take these same risks. Did he have that right? His doubts, previously stifled, rose in tremendous unity.

  But he had to decide yes. Not yes, he had that right, but rather yes, it was necessary. Outside these peaceful walls, the future existence of the human race was threatened. It sounded like a line from a creaky old melodrama, but if life could sometimes be seen to follow art, why not melodrama too? Besides, the android wasn't human. What God gave, God could take away; what man (as God) gave, he could also take away. Wasn't that logical? Didn't that make strict sense? Ah Tran shut his eyes. He leaned easily back. He made his mind an utter blank. I am no one. Ah Tran is gone. I am not he. I am no one, not any one, he is dead...

  And when Ah Tran was gone—the spirit which had once been his merged with the fused mass of the gestalt—then the entirety of the twenty-four could finally rush forward to enter and consume the empty vessel which had once been Eathen.

  After that—for a moment that seemed to stretch endlessly—utter silence dominated the tiny room. Twenty-five empty bodies sitting motionlessly, as if all life had been drained from them. Nothing moved, breathed, thought, spoke.

  Then—at the center of the circle—Eathen screamed.

  A moment afterward, he let go a second dreadful cry. The muscles in his arms and legs and chest tightened. He sprang to his feet. He clawed at the top of his skull. He howled. Wailed.

  Finally, he fell over. To his knees. Hands clenched in front of his chest. Fingers interwoven. A brief, fleeting expression of horror passed across his face. Then he fell over on his face and, after that, didn't move.

  Ah Tran was the first of the circle to awake. Seeing Eathen, he rushed forward and knelt down. He turned Eathen over on his back. Leaning down, Ah Tran seemed to be kissing the android. Actually, he was trying to force the air from his own lungs down Eathen's throat. As he labored, the others also awoke and came forward, gathering in a circle to watch the attempted resurrection. When Ah Tran breathed, Eathen's chest expanded. When Ah Tran backed off to rest, nothing happened.

  A minute passed.

  Two minutes.


  One of the disciples—a young, thin, handsome girl-broke the silence: "He's dead."

  "No," said another. "Ah Tran will save him."

  "It's been too long," the girl insisted. "I took a class once. His brain is damaged. Even if—"

  "He's an android. He doesn't have a brain."

  Another, speaking in a voice filled with uncertain awe, said, "Didn't you feel that—that thing up there?"

  "I did, yes."

  "Me too."

  "Yes."

  "I think all of us did."

  Ah Tran continued to force air down Eathen's throat, into his lungs, heart, bloodstream.

  "It was like—I can't explain it. I don't remember." She shook her head.

  "I do." This was the first girl—the one who believed that Eathen was dead. She spread two fingers minutely and showed them to the others. "We were this close. To that place. We were floating up."

  "We were going to make it," said another.

  "I saw the White Light."

  "Oh, that's silly superstition."

  "I saw something."

  "We were going."

  "Yes. Oh, yes."

  "But then something—I don't know—that—that thing. It stopped us."

  "Something lives up there."

  "It came down and stopped us. The pain was awful. It was like hurting without being hurt. The pain was all inside."

  "And—" the girl pointed at Eathen "—it killed him."

  Ah Tran drew away. He leaned back on his haunches and wiped the sweat off his face. He peered down at poor dead Eathen and wondered if death for an android was the same as death for a man. Of course, there was no way of knowing for sure; he had no idea. But he did find it hard to accept that androids might have souls. Wouldn't death for one of them have to have the same insignificance as death for a car or plane—any gadget or machine—not death but merely cessation, a blackness, the end? But Eathen had never been a machine. Ah Tran, who had known him, knew better than that. Eathen had been as close to a man as any creature could possibly come without actually being a man, and maybe that last wasn't true: maybe—by the end—Eathen had indeed become a man. Who could say? Did he have a soul? How was Ah Tran supposed to know that? He was dead—that was all—but the meaning of that death would long remain a veiled mystery.