“That’s it, Doc! That robot god’s going to come to life!”
WILLARD FROWNED. “Um-m.
The gadget isn’t difficult to operate—I’ve learned that much from the recordings. You just think hard, that’s all. But—”
“The god will come to life and summon the Zarno—all of them. The rest of you can escape while I’m keeping ’em busy.”
“Hold on!” the doctor snapped. “Why you? It’s my job, if it’s anybody’s.”
“Sorry,” Garth said. “It doesn’t work out that way. You’re the only guy who can cure the Silver Plague. Unless you get out safely, it’s the end of Earth.” Willard didn’t answer. Garth went on swiftly.
“You could reach the hangar if it weren’t for the Zarno. Well, I’ll get inside that throne and start the ruckus. That’ll give you time.” His voice was emotionless.
“How do you know you could reach that temple-cave? The city’s full of Zarno.” Garth shrugged. “It’s a chance we’ve got to take. The only one.”
Willard chewed his lip. “Why the devil do you have to be the one?”
“Because I know the Ancient Tongue. The robot can talk, can’t it? Well! It’s between you and me, Doc, and you’re the boy who can cure the Silver Plague. You can’t get away from that.”
“I—I suppose so. But—”
“You know the way out. Give me time to reach the temple and begin the ceremony. Then lead the others out. They’ll obey you; they’re in the Noctoli trance. Get ’em to the hangar and light out for Oretown. Be sure to take the recording of the power-source with you.”
“You crazy fool,” Willard said through stiff lips. “What about Moira?”
Garth’s face went gray. “Moira died years ago,” he said carefully. “It was the Silver Plague.”
Doc didn’t reply. But he nodded as though he had unexpectedly learned the answer to a problem that had been puzzling him.
“Okay,” Garth said. “You know what to da Give me time enough to make it. Then get out of here with the others, fast.” Willard’s hand gripped Garth’s. “Ed—”
“Forget it.”
He moved toward the tunnel-mouth. Paula, he saw, was lying near by, her red-gold hair cascading about her pale, lovely face.
Garth stood looking down at her for a long moment. Then he went on, into the tunnel that waited for him. He did not look back.
Cautiously he stepped through the black curtain, ready to retreat at sight of any Zarno. But the cavern was empty.
If he could make it—!
Noiselessly he stole up the passage. Once he froze against the wall at the sound of distant footsteps. But they faded and were gone.
He came out at last into a corridor he recognized. Far away, he saw the flashing gleam of the Zarno’s silicate skins. They were approaching, but apparently had not seen him yet.
He raced for the archway that led into the temple-cavern. If there were any Zarno there, it would be fatal. But luck favored him. The immense room was empty. At the far end the huge robot sat on its jet throne.
Garth sprinted across the floor. He could hear voices growing louder in the distance, and the thumping of the Zarnos’ footsteps, but he dared not risk a glance behind. Could he make it?
He jerked to a halt, springing behind the throne, its bulk temporarily hiding him. The Zarno were in the temple-cave now; he could tell that by their voices. Hastily he sought the secret spring.
A panel opened in the ebon block. It was exactly as he had seen it on the tripodrecording machine, a fair-sized cubicle with light coming faintly through a vision-slit in one wall. Garth wedged himself in and slid the panel shut behind him, gasping with relief. Peering through the slit, he found he could see the entire cavern. Three Zarno were approaching.
The robot, seated on the throne above him, was, of course, invisible. Garth stared around, trying to remember the details of the Ancients’ recording. A helmet transmitter . . . there it was, attached by wires to the low ceiling. Warily Garth slipped it upon his head.
What now?
A flat black plate, like a diaphragm, was set in the wall slightly above his head as he crouched. This hiding-place, he realized, had been built for the larger bodies of the Ancients.
Closing his eyes, he tried to concentrate. Doc Willard had said the helmet-transmitters worked that way. Telepathy—will-power—
“Stand up!” he commanded silently to the unseen robot above him. “Stand up!”
There was a stir of movement. Garth, peering through the slit, saw the three Zarno jerk to a halt.
One of them cried, “The gods return! Kra-enlarnov! The gods!”
GARTH put his mouth close to the diaphragm. His words, amplified, rolled out through the cavern in the Ancient Tongue.
“Yes—the gods return! Summon the Zarno! Let none fail to obey the summons!”
Shouts went up. The Zarno whirled and raced away. For the moment, Garth was alone.
He concentrated on the transmitter again, commanding the robot to move forward to the edge of the dais, till he could see its back.
“Raise your arm. Step back. Forward again. Back.”
It worked. The robot obeyed his mental commands, awkwardly, but—it obeyed.
“Back. Sit on the throne.”
A jarring crash deafened Garth momentarily. He had forgotten how huge the robot was. No doubt the creature should lever itself down gradually into its seat, instead of dropping a ton of metal solidly on the black block.
Footsteps again. The Zarno were beginning to pour into the cavern. Huge as it was, they almost filled it. They flung themselves flat, crawling toward the dais, nodding their misshapen heads in awkward rhythm. Their voices were raised in a deep-throated chant.
Garth concentrated. At his mental command, the robot rose and paced slowly forward.
“Kra-enlar!”
Garth put his mouth to the diaphragm. His voice crashed out.
“The gods have returned! Hear me, O Zarno!”
“We hear!”
“Let no Zarno fail to come to the temple of the gods. Have the guards left their posts?”
“Nay—my!”
“Summon them,” Garth roared. “When the gods speak, all must hearken. Let every Zarno come to me now, or die!”
Some of the creatures raced away and returned with others. The chant continued.
“Have any Zarno failed to heed my summons?”
“None—none! We are here—all!”
Garth nearly shouted with relief. There were almost two thousand Zarno in the cavern, he judged, all genuflecting before the dais. And that meant that the city was unguarded—that Doc Willard could lead the others to the anti-gravity hangar.
If he could hold the Zarno here!
Garth shook his head, feeling oddly dizzy. He tried to concentrate. At his mental order, the giant robot lifted its arms in symbolic, ritualistic gestures he remembered from the tripod-recorder.
But the dizziness persisted. Garth realized that his lungs were hurting. He found it difficult to draw a deep breath.
Air—he needed fresh air! The inhuman lungs of the Ancients probably were able to endure lack of oxygen far better than the human organism. In any case—Garth realized that the air was getting stale.
He investigated the vision-slit. It was barred by a glassy, transparent pane that seemed as hard as steel. Well, it would be necessary to open the panel behind him—a few inches, anyway. Garth’s hand sought for the spring. It was in plain sight; there was no need to conceal it within the throne’s compartment.
He pressed it. There was a low grinding that stopped almost immediately. Garth tried again.
Useless. The mechanism, somehow, was jammed. Probably its mechanism had failed when the huge robot had crashed down on the throne.
That meant—
Garth’s fingers tried to find some purchase on the smooth surface of the panel. He failed . . .
A Zarno called a question. Garth turned back to the eye-slit, trying to fight back h
is dizziness. Heads were lifted, he saw, watching him inquiringly, as though the silicate creatures expected something. Well—
He made the robot move again, its arms reaching out in ancient ceremonial gestures. A gasp of awe came from the Zarno.
Their chant thundered out, deeper, sonorous and inhuman.
GARTH felt the beginning of a throbbing ache in his temples. Pie was trapped here. How long could he stand it? He was human, not one of the Ancients. He needed air—
He held the Zarno, but not for long. Once more bulbous heads were lifted, oval eyes watching him inquiringly. They were expecting something—what? Garth tried to remember what he had seen in the recorder.
More heads were lifted.
Garth made the robot step forward, raising its metal arms. He had to say something—anything that would hold the Zarno quiet for a while, long enough for Doc and the others to escape. Words he had forgotten since childhood came suddenly, unexpectedly to him. The English phrases meant nothing to the Zarno, but the sonorous, powerful chant kept them silent.
“He shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter; and from the noisome pestilence . . . Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day . . . A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee . . .”
The agony flamed up again in Garth’s brain, consuming, terrible. The huge robot body of the dais swayed, caught itself, and the chant thundered out again through the great cavern.
“If I take the wings of the morning; and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me . . .”
The distant, harsh clangor of a bell sounded. Garth had heard it before, when he had crossed the threshold of the black temple in the forest. At the sound the Zarno stirred, and a few of them sprang up.
Garth thrust out his hand, fighting back the pain that tore at him like white flame.
His voice held them—
“The floods are risen, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voices; the floods lift up their waves . . . The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly: but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier—”
He held them. He held them, speaking a tongue they did not know, while his mind shook under the impact of sanity-destroying pain. A slow, sick bitterness crept into his soul. Was this the end—death here, prisoned on an alien world, so far from his home planet?
Death—and for what?
He closed his mind to the thought. Mentally he paced Doc and the others through the tunnel, from the black temple to the hangar. Surely they must have reached it by now! Paula—
That first glimpse he had had of the girl, in Tolomo’s drinking-hell—Moira, he had thought then, for an incredible instant.
Yes, she had been like Moira. If the paths of destiny had led elsewhere than to the Black Forest of Ganymede, the result might have been far distant. He would not be dying here alone, horribly alone. Moira—Paula—
They were the same, somehow. And Garth knew he had to keep going, till he had saved Paula Trent. A little time—a few moments more, to keep the Zarno in check.
He and Moira had been cheated of their lives, their futures in some way he could not quite understand. But there remained Paula. She must not die. She and the others must get through.
“Ed.”
Garth’s heart answered that soundless call. His lips formed the name Moira.
SHE was there, beside him, and he did not question, did not even wonder. It was enough that she had come back. Her brown ringlets curled about the pale face as he remembered, and the blue eyes held love and—something more.
A message.
“What is it, Moira? What—” He reached out hungry arms.
“Ed. It isn’t only us. It’s Earth. Don’t stop now, Ed. A few more minutes to hold the Zarno back; that will be enough. Be strong. A little time more—such a little time, and then you can rest.”
A phantom born of his delirium, Garth knew, but she was no less real for that. He tried to speak and failed. His chest constricted with pain. Outside the altar, the Zarno were stirring uneasily.
“I—I can’t—”
“You must.”
Anger swept through him. “Why? We’ve been cheated of everything, Moira! Our heritage—”
She smiled at him, very tenderly. “The grass is still green on the hills of Earth, my lover. Have you forgotten? The little streams that go laughing down the valleys, and the ocean surging up to the white beaches? There are still sunsets on Earth, and men and women will see them for ages to come. Men who might have been our sons; women who might have been our daughters. And they are our children, Ed, as surely as though we had given them birth. For we are giving them life. There will be a future for mankind because of us. We have given up our own lives that our children may live, and go on to glories we can never know ourselves. It is Earth that needs your help now—and that is something greater than either of us.”
Something greater . . .
The Zarno were beginning to move forward, and some of them were sidling toward the passage. Garth, gasping for breath, summoned all his reserve energy. He seemed to feel Moira’s cool hand on his shoulder, silently urging him on.
Something greater—
“The days of man are but as grass,” he croaked, and the amplified sound went thundering through the temple, halting the Zarno where they stood. They turned again to the altar.
“For he flourisheth as a flower of the field . . . for as soon as the wind goeth over, it is gone—”
He held them, somehow, knowing that Moira stood beside him. Toward the end, Garth was no longer conscious of his surroundings. The Zarno swam before his eyes, changing, altering, and abruptly they vanished. In their place was—was—
He saw Earth, as he remembered it, the loveliest planet of all. He saw the heartbreaking beauty of flaming sunsets over the emerald seas, and the snowy purity of high peaks lifting above baking deserts. He felt the cold blast of Earthwinds on his cheeks, the stinging, exciting chill of mountain streams against his skin. There was the warm smell of hay, golden in the fields; the sharpness of eucalyptus and pine; the breath of the little bright flowers that grow only on Earth.
He heard the voices of Earth. The chuckling of brooks, and the deep shouting of the gale; the lowing of cattle, the sound of leaves rustling, and the crash of angry breakers. The soul of Earth spoke to the man who would never see it again.
He listened, while he chanted the majestic, rolling syllables that kept the Zarno in check. Beside him was Moira. Beneath him, his own world, green and beautiful.
And across the emerald planet men and women came marching, sunlight making a golden path for them as they moved out of darkness into the unknown brightness of the future. They were like gods, great-limbed, lovely, and with eyes fearless as a falcon’s filled with laughter.
Before their marching feet the road of the ages unrolled. Mighty cities reared to the blue skies of Earth, and ships swept out beyond the stars, binding the galaxies and the universe with unbreakable chains of life. Outward and ever outward the circles of humanity and civilization rippled.
Men and women like gods, unafraid, knowing a life greater than ever before—
And they turned questioning eyes on Garth, asking him the question on which their existence depended.
“Will you save us? Will you give us life? Will you give us the future you yourself can never know?”
Garth answered them in his own way, with Moira beside him. For now it did not matter that he was dying; he had found something greater than he had ever known before.
Through the temple his voice rang like brazen trumpets.
“—the wind bloweth . . . and the place thereof shall know it no more . . .”
A PANEL in the wall by his head lit up, making a square of brightness. He strained his eyes at it, discerning a picture. A scanner of some sort. It showed a transparent ovoid slanting up through the black trees of the forest, a
ship with Doc Willard at the controls and eleven men and a girl in the vessel with him—a girl with red-gold hair, going back to Earth, with the knowledge that would save a world from destruction.
He had not failed.
The picture on the scanner darkened. The burning ache in Garth’s lungs grew worse. If he could breathe—
On the dais, the robot swayed, its metal legs giving beneath its weight. The crash of its fall brought the Zarno to their feet, frozen with amazement for a moment. Then they moved forward like a wave.
Garth saw them, dimly, through the vision-slit. A white curtain of pain blotted them out. He was dying; he knew that. The shouts of the Zarno came to him faintly.
“. . . the wind bloweth . . . and the place thereof shall know it no more . . .”
But in that place the seeds of the future would grow. Once more Garth saw the children of Earth’s unborn generations, and this time the question in their eyes was answered. They would live and go on, to the stars, and beyond.
Moira was beside him. Her cool hand touched his; she came into his arms.
And the white curtain flamed agonizingly for the last time.
Then, mercifully, there was no more pain. Under the black throne Garth’s body lay motionless in its strange tomb.
The Zarnos’ cries filled the temple as they mourned their dead god—but the man who had saved Earth did not hear them.
GALLEGHER PLUS
Gallegher, as usual, was in a jam. It wasn’t his fault; it was due to Gallegher-plus, the highly successful—if sufficiently high!—other self.
Gallegher peered dimly through the window at the place where his back yard should have been and felt his stomach dropping queasily into that ridiculous, unlikely hole gaping there in the earth. It was big, that hole. And deep. Almost deep enough to hold Gallegher’s slightly colossal hangover.
But not quite. Gallegher wondered if he should look at the calendar, and then decided against it. He had a feeling that several thousand years had passed since the beginning of the binge. Even for a man with his thirst and capacity, it had been one hell of a toot.
Collected Fiction Page 385