Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  He had been Chief Executive of the mightiest nation in history, but what did it all mean? Mightiest in what? More missiles, sure; more bombers, more submarines, more carriers, more money, more jobs, more goods...but more than what? More than enough? Was that the answer? When we get more than enough, do we head into the downward cycle?

  The President was immersed in gloom, and he couldn’t shake it off. He was tired, and he hurt, and he was heartsick. Speaking of betrayal, the people had betrayed him, hadn’t they? They’d elected him, by God, and brought him into office with one of the most positive mandates in the history of the republic. And now look. Who in hell had they thought they were electing, for God’s sake, Jesus himself? Not even the Son of God could hold this production together. Why did they elect a man to the highest office of the land and then do every damn thing in their collective power to defeat him? Yes, Freud was right. And the United States of America was cycling downward.

  He wondered how near the bottom they actually were. Probably too near. Who would know better than the President? The President knew; the country was going to hell. In a bucket. He’d never believed in omens...but it was Friday the thirteenth, wasn’t it?

  Richard Hunter removed his ginch and climbed in between two buxom lovelies whom he didn’t even know by name. A brilliantly manicured hand immediately closed on his organ, and he felt himself rising to the challenge. She smiled at him and edged her backside toward him, rolling slightly onto one hip and looping a leg over his hip. “You may as well dock,” she told him, smiling languidly. “You can see the screen from this angle, can’t you?”

  He allowed that he could, and also allowed the pilot hand to maneuver him into port. “Just keep it tight,” he requested. “I want to hear.”

  She nodded understandingly, then smiled at the other girl across Hunter’s chest, her muscles already beginning to contract rhythmically.

  Hunter waved in the direction of Brian and received a returning signal acknowledging Hunter’s presence. The big television screen, angled down from the ceiling, suddenly presented the visage of an obviously deeply troubled and exhausted man, as the voice of an unseen announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  Hunter was thinking that the President looked terrible; he felt a harsh twinge of sympathy for this man who, Hunter knew, had done all any man could for a reluctant nation. Another time, another era, Hunter was thinking, and he would have been among the most popular Presidents in history. But look at him now, standing up there trying to talk reason to a nation that’s repudiated him.

  The girl with the brilliant fingernails gasped and clutched at him, crushing her posterior into severe and agitated conjunction. Hunter glanced at her. Her lips formed the word, “Sorry,” and he grinned and winked at her, then returned his attention to the screen. She returned her attentions to where they’d been all along.

  “...and on this historic day,” the President was saying, “I have come before you to apprise you of the Constitutional ramifications of this tragic and traumatic situation. Since shortly after two o’clock this morning, I have been in continuous conference with members of the Cabinet, with members of the White House Staff, and with the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The situation, fellow Americans, is this: Article Two of the...”

  Hunter’s mind began to drift. He knew the story well—the story of the Constitution; of flaws, of stupidity, of the betrayal of a national ideal. He was watching the President’s face, which had been so vibrant and hopeful just a few years earlier— the fact which should have been the face of America. If that had grown so ugly, in a paltry few years of national agony. Hunter felt an almost overpowering sadness; sadness for the man, sadness for the nation he had tried to lead, and sadness for himself. Here he lay on a kinetic pad, naked, his penis buried in a woman he didn’t even know, with the breasts of another woman he didn’t know nestling onto his back, and her pubic mound pressed onto his buttock. Here he lay, watching the ugly face of America pour out its heart-rending story of agony and betrayal, desolation and gloom and doom. And what was he doing here? What was Richard Hunter doing in the face of all this? He covered his face with a forearm and stiffened, almost positive he was going to cry.

  “What’s wrong?” the girl with the fingernails asked solicitously.

  “Nothing,” he said dispiritedly. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that I think I’m going to come.”

  Her eyes flared, and her midsection girded itself about him in a convulsive seizure, and the girl on Hunter’s other side commented inanely, “Say, today’s Friday the thirteenth.”

  “Black Friday,” Hunter groaned. He wrapped his arms about his erstwhile lover and clung to her as though she were the only reality in the world.

  5: THE MYSTERY

  Winfried was not kid. He was 80, Hunter guessed, if he was a day. The eyes were clear and bright, though, even if the frame was drooping a bit. He didn’t wear a ginch, but a silky robe of purest white. He was tall, spare, and somewhat stopped, and sported a neat little goatee.

  “You have a powerful aura,” were his first words to Hunter.

  “Thanks, whatever that means,” Hunter replied, inspecting the old man with a critical eye.

  “You are Sagittarian, of course.”

  “I don’t know what that means, either,” Hunter lied. “I was born December eighth, if you’re talking astrology.”

  “Uh-huh,” Winfried replied, smiling at him. “You are very good at communications, aren’t you. That’s fine, fine. But you have the power, also. You should be a mystic, Hunter.”

  “I’m a mystery all right,” Hunter said, grinning. “Especially to myself.”

  “Don’t deny your essential nature, Hunter,” the old man said, chiding with his eyes. “You have a romantic streak that reaches into your very marrow, do you not?”

  “I, uh..,I’ve suspected as much.”

  “Uh-huh. You think I am kooky; a charlatan; perhaps a black magician.”

  Hunter laughed. “I guess you’re also a mind-reader.”

  “No, not at all. I am a soul reader. You are impressed by mystery, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a query. “Creation itself is a mystery which all of science strives vainly to unravel. Lint; that is all the physical sciences manage to find in their ravelings. Just lint. You do appreciate mystery.”

  “I guess so,” Hunter admitted.

  “The circle is the basic form of astrology. How many degrees in a circle, Hunter?”

  “Three hundred sixty, last time I counted.”

  “Uh-huh. And the Zodiac is defined as twelve subdivisions of the circle. Twelve, Hunter, each of thirty degrees. The number twelve runs rampant throughout creative symbology. Twelve hours to the day, twelve to the night. Twelve months to the year. Twelve units to the dozen, twelve inches to the foot, the apostles. Shall I go on, or are you sold on the number twelve?”

  Hunter was grinning. “I’m sold, I guess.”

  “You should be. You were born in the twelfth month; you are a Sagittarian. You have little respect, apparently, for astrology. How about astronomy?”

  “It’s all right,” Hunter replied, still grinning.

  “Yes, it is. The circle of astrology is very similar, in many ways, to the finite circle of our solar system, with Mother Sun at its center. In each astrological circle, there is a dot at center—Sol, you see. Our planet circles our sun, but it does not merely circle the sun; it also circles itself. Do you understand this?”

  “You mean that earth rotates on its axis.”

  “Ah, yes; but where is this axis on which our planet rotates? It is not fixed, you see. Your astronomers have observed that the earth’s axis oscillates in a circle of its own.”

  “I don’t get you,” Hunter said. “Is this the mystery you were speaking of?”

  “Partly; partly. Did you play with a spinning top as a boy? Of course; all boys spin the top. But some seem better at it than others. Y
ou were good at spinning the top, eh, Hunter?”

  “I did okay.” Hunter was getting restless; the old man’s eyes were beginning to “bug” him.

  “Yes; you did okay. And did you notice the peculiar motion the top always executes at a certain point? Upon reaching a certain speed, the top will always begin to oscillate with its axis. Have you noticed? Our planet performs this same maneuver, you see. Our axis is never fixed, but always in motion-very slowly; very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that one single revolution of the earth’s axis requires 25,920 years. Now: is that not fantastic? How is this for a cosmic time value? I see the question in your eyes: What is the worth of this revolution? What is the significance of it? What do we care about cosmic time values? What do we care about the Precession of the Equinoxes, eh?”

  “What do you mean by ‘cosmic time?’ Is this something on the order of light-years and so forth?”

  “Not at all. Light-years are merely mathematical expressions of earth-bound intellect, a handy encapsulation of planetary time; this is not cosmic time. Look at this, Hunter. Place your hand upon your chest. Feel the breath of life, in and out, in and out. How many times a minute, Hunter? Eighteen times, if you are a normal man. Eighteen times per minute. Slide your hand over; feel the heartbeat. Feel the pump of life, Hunter. How many beats during those eighteen respirations? Seventy-two, Hunter. Are you any good at math, my young friend? I suspect not; you are a Sagittarian. The earthly day is divided into 1,440 units called minutes. 1,440 minutes to the day, eh? Multiply your respiration rate, or eighteen, times the number of minutes in the day. The result, my friend, is 25,920. Does that number sound familiar? Ah, yes. So it does. We mentioned it a while back, in discussing cosmic time. It is the time required for the planet earth to completely rotate its axis, expressed in years. Well. Doesn’t that sound a bit mysterious?”

  Hunter was smiling openly. “Yeah. That’s pretty tricky. How do you arrive at it?”

  Winfried’s eyebrows rose. “It arrives at itself,” he declared dramatically. “This is a curious value, this cosmic unit of 25,920. A man is said to live on an average of seventy-two years of life, all things favorable to a proper expression. And how many times will 25,920 divide itself by seventy-two? Why, look at this! Three hundred sixty, you say? But this is where we came in, is it not? The circle. What’s this? you say. The number seventy-two was mentioned previously also. Seventy-two heartbeats to the minute, 1,440 minutes to the day. eighteen life-giving respirations to the minute; ergo and ipso we are into cosmic time and then back once again to the average lifetime of man on the planet. Does this strike you as mystery, Hunter?”

  Obviously, it did. Hunter was now staring at the old man with an expression of deep interest.

  “And, dear Hunter, don’t forget your precious twelve. There are twelve astrological divisions of the three-hundred-sixty-degree circle, and you are born of the twelfth sign. We count three hundred sixty-five revolutions of the earth as one planetary year. For convenience, let us drop five of the revolutions and say that there are three hundred sixty days to the year, this times our magic number of seventy-two gives us the cosmic unit, 25,920. Now: How long does it take for us to make up the five days dropped for convenience? Why, seventy-two years, of course. Mystery, Hunter? You like mystery? There is connection here with the Cabala—our five lost days and our seventy-two years. There are said to be seventy-two names for God, and each one is accorded five degrees of the Zodiac.

  “That’s very interesting,” Hunter admitted quietly. “Is that the end of the mystery?”

  “Of course not. It is only the very edge of the mystery. Are you a musician, Hunter?”

  Hunter wagged his head in the negative.

  “The musical note sol has a vibrational characteristic of four hundred thirty-two cycles per second. Does the word sol suggest anything to your mind other than music?”

  “It’s the word we use for the sun,” Hunter replied.

  “Yes. And do you know what four hundred thirty-two cycles per second amounts to for one full minute? The cosmic unit again, Hunter: 25,920.”

  “Oh, shit,” Hunter said.

  “Yes. And played two octaves deeper, sol vibrates 25,920 times in four minutes. In rotating about her axis, our earth turns one degree of each of the three hundred sixty in precisely four minutes. And let us not forget our four major compass points, North, East, South, and West; and remember, please, the four seasons, the square, the cube, the four elements. Remember also that the number 1,440 is our daily respiration count, the number four appearing twice in that group. Divide the group by four, and we are back to three hundred sixty again.”

  “Shit,” Hunter repeated, grinning uneasily.

  “Our very lives are cycles of three hundred sixty degrees, Hunter. An important man is alluded to as a ‘wheel,’ a man in difficulty is said to be ‘running around in circles,’ our highest concept of infinity is the closed circle. In astrology we say that Aries rules the head, Taurus the neck, Gemini rules the chest, and so on to Pesces, for control of the feet. Draw a man into this position on a zodiacal chart, Hunter, and you will have pictured him in a fetal position, the way he lay curled into his mother’s womb.”

  “I suppose you could just go on in this vein forever, couldn’t you?” Hunter said. But he was gazing at the Olympian mentor in an entirely new fashion.

  “I could,” Winfried said, smiling benignly.

  “And what does it all mean?”

  “It means that there are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, than you have dreamed of.”

  Hunter’s responding laughter was not at all disrespectful, nor at all convincing. “Hell, I realize that,” he said.

  “Then why do you choose to disbelieve so much, merely because it is clothed in mystery? The ways of the world are mystery, my friend.”

  “Do you really believe in all this stuff, Winfried?”

  “Believe? I do not believe. I know that all is God, and all is law. The courses of the galaxies as they speed through the heavens are as computable as the movement of a train from city to city. It is fixed, Hunter; all is fixed.”

  “I never went for that fatalistic stuff,” Hunter murmured.

  “This is not ‘fatalistic stuff.’ No man is a complete pawn of destiny, but certain crucial events are fixed in the mind of God. These events cannot be avoided, no more than the creator of the heavens and the worlds can be denied.”

  “And what about Hunter’s destiny?” he asked thinly. “Where do I fit into the grand scheme of the universe?”

  “Ah, that is the mystery. You are the unknown ingredient, Hunter. Have you ever thought it curious that your name is Hunter, and that you were born under the sign of the man with the bow—and on the second power of the numeral four?” Hunter shook his head viciously, as though to clear it of unpleasant sensations. “Fruitcake,” he said. “It’s all a big fruitcake.”

  “Ah, yes,” Winfried replied, nodding his head slowly. “The fruitcake, too, is the sweetest of mysteries.”

  “What?”

  “Hunter, I will tell you one thing more. Listen well, and remember that you are Sagittarius. The combined ages of the two men who died today—Younghart and Thompkins—totals ninety years. On the order of four, incidentally, this moves out to the full circle number of three hundred sixty. However, that is aside. The important thing... Look here: Brian is fifty-four years of age. Subtract that from ninety and you get thirty-six; remove your birth number and we have 28—which, I believe, is your present age; is it not? Look, now: the female ovulation cycle is based on twenty-eight days—fourteen days of preparation for new life, fourteen days of preparation for a new ovulation. The gestation period of the human female is two hundred eighty days, and again half of this cycle is realized before the first signs of independent life can be felt in the outer world. Now, Hunter, your age is twenty-eight. Apply the law of halves to this figure, and we are left with fourteen. Fourteen, Hunter. This value, added to Brian’s age, is what? Sixty-eigh
t, is it not? The year of destiny! Now look further! Three hundred sixty-five days to the year; right? Two hundred eighty days of human gestation. Take the difference, and we have eighty-five! See? Remember the principle of halves in the production of new life and we have—rounded—the magic number of forty-three! Still invoking the law of halves, deduct one half of your birth number, and we are left with thirty-nine. Thirty-nine, Hunter! Do you know what that stands for? The number thirty-nine?”

  Hunter admitted that he did not know. “Thirty-nine days from this day, Hunter, a new President and Vice-President of the United States will be inaugurated. A new life, Hunter!”

  “Well, that sounds beautiful,” Hunter replied. “But I don’t see where I—”

  “You really don’t see, do you, Sagittarian? Can you not see the way cosmic destiny weaves the lives of men? Hunter, look at me!”

  “I believe I don’t want to look at you, Winfried.”

  “You may as well face your destiny, Hunter, before it rears up and faces you. It is your influence which bespeaks the new life, Sagittarian. You are the integral part, and you cannot escape it.”

  “What are you saying, Winfried?”

  “The law of halves, young friend. You will be the Vice-President.”

  Hunter was aghast. “Now there would be the mystery to end them all!” he jeered.