Marduc came striding up to them, and disregarding Grayson’s presence, seized Sareen by the hand.
“You must give me an answer, Sareen, there is little time! Within two fals the Karnian fleet will be upon us! I have arranged a place of safety to which to send you, and afterward I will come for you. We can go to other, safer worlds, then! There will be for us no need to live here as serfs of Gyron.”
Sareen blazed angrily at the ruddy face of the man who towered above her.
“I? Desert my Lord in his extremity! What do you think me, Marduc. If you have a place of safety, why not reserve it for Lord Nardan?”
“He will never escape! But I have planned it carefully. No one must know but you and I.”
He was couching his words in unfamiliar variants of flow, but Grayson understood him well enough. It was evident he did not think Grayson could follow their words. Grayson apprised him of his mistake.
“And I, Marduc? I do not like you, you know. I have reason to dislike you!”
Marduc turned upon Grayson. Half a head taller, he thrust out a big hand to grip him, as if to bend him to his will. But Grayson pushed the hand aside easily, wondering at the intense angry strength in his own arm. Marduc’s face was filled with passion, with worry, with an anxiety Grayson did not understand.
“You fool, if you put your meddling enemy hands into my business I’ll kill you like I’d crush a flea,” gritted the big officer.
Grayson willed to see what moved behind the mask of flesh, and his vision flashed with blinding quickness into the eery range of his strange sight, A tall pillar of black and grey whorls of mist took the place of the uniformed muscular body of Marduc, within that mist a fiery whirl of sparkling passion thrust through with lances of yellow fear, yellow fear barred with black quivering bars of force-stasis—and over it all a shell of grey will-force, and here and there in the greyness little tattered places where some unknown wound had marred his other self. A twisted writhing core inside all this, burned a flame of red evil, the spine of force about which other living forces revolved!—
Grayson saw that the clean, pink whorls of vibrant beauty that were Sareen were shot too, with thin bars of stasis-fear, and that the inner center of her was bright gold, shimmering and turning speckled over with pure emeralds of sensory centers, and that the touch of this Marduc was causing an angry red irritation to grow upon her arm. With his own strange strength Grayson reached out and struck the polluting arm of force away, sent Marduc spinning half a dozen feet away, and as suddenly as he had willed his new vision, it passed.
THE SOLID world again in place, Grayson saw that Sareen was staring at him with divine wide-eyed gratitude, while Marduc leaned against the wall some distance away, staring at his arm which stuck out of a coat the whole arm of which had burnt away, leaving the arm bare and scorched! Marduc’s eyes were upon Grayson’s with awe and anger struggling in them, and Grayson smiled to see the ignorant anger and pride of him, that thought even yet to kill him. Why, he had only to thrust his other-arm of force into the center of him and pluck out the center fire to extinguish him completely! Or was he wrong about his strength? Strange, this power!
Marduc found his voice. “God or devil, I mean to have your life, alien!”
With these words, the man turned and stumbled away, badly hurt by the look of him. Sareen put out a small sweet hand to touch Grayson’s sleeve.
“What strange powers you have! You must remember such inadvertent acts precisely, how you can create such force is beyond my understanding. We of Azura do not have destructive force inherent to such an extent. Your transposition into our space must have been such as to bring you from a relatively more dense and energy-packed world, you exhibit powers unknown here!”
“I am glad I could help you. That man is never to touch you again. Sareen, there is an evil in him that soils, inures your inner life.”
“You can see that in him? I have often wondered why I detest him? He pursues me, swears undying love for me, wants me to go away with him to some place he has prepared—I cannot get rid of him! But he is well considered, he has a position of great trust.”
“You will get rid of him! I will have to kill him, or he will kill me. Do not trust him in any way.”
“I wonder, Paul, if this Marduc is not the traitor the Ruler has asked me to find, perhaps with your help. It is someone who has access to the records of the fleet, and Marduc is high in the officers councils. I must find out what chance he would have to betray us. Oh, I wonder!”
“He could be a traitor, if paid well enough. Why not?”
CHAPTER THREE
“Each I is the center of all the world
For each I the sun comes up.
And each of us think we’re the only drink
Time’s hand shall ever sup.
Grayson of Azura
THE WAR swept daily closer. Fear grew visibly in Azura. Daily Grayson studied with Sareen, and of their closeness something fine and cherished was born and grew between them, Sareen of Azura and Paul Grayson of another plane of life.
Learning the intricacies of such things as menta-beam projectors, which can be adjusted through vast numbers of pattern variations, and used to pierce the force shells set up about the enemy’s ships, or to blast the minds of the warriors within with powerful flows of thought patterned to cause a paralyzing, brain-dissolving rush of force-flows through the functional centers.
He learned from her swiftly the complex details of a totally new mental science based upon conditions of force and energy-stasis and flux which was new to him. He suspected that these conditions of energy were such as did not even exist in his own universe.
But nowhere in what he learned did he hit on any clue to improving their battle technique in time to meet the gathering fleets drawn from all the worlds of the Karnian Empire.
The Karnians had been growing for centuries, recruiting the outcasts and criminals and malcontents, until at last they thought they had such great power they could overcome any possible resistance.
Once, Grayson learned, these Karnians had been but a small piratical people upon a world untouched by civilized people. They had begun to recruit rapidly, spreading an attractive propaganda of much reward for little effort And as long as their steadily successful conquests kept on, they could pay well, and there was little loss or casualties among their warriors.
So Grayson’s Earthian thought pictured the account of Karnia.
But when he looked at Sareen and willed his new vision into use, he got a different picture of her story of the Karnian forces. And a different picture of what Azura really was.
He got a picture of a series of Azuras, of which this Azura was but one. The lower Azuras produced a lower form of force-being, which ascended then after much schooling, into the higher Azura, there to repeat and so ascend again. Unless it so happened that the force-center of their inner, mysterious energy-being became contaminated with the eerie red fire of evil. Then they were cast out of the world of Azura, to become wanderers in space, and it was these creatures who made up the original Karnian force.
With his strange new vision, Grayson got an immense picture of universe-of-life packed within universe-of-life, graduating from form to form and frame to frame with bewildering intricacies of gradation!—And all of of this unconsciously to those who did not have the power of inner vision. It was quite clear that Azura was a “good” empire filled with immortal creatures of force, who carried about an illusion of solidity perhaps unconscious and inherent, and perhaps only seemingly so. For Grayson could not accept that these people in their own familiar world did not know more about it than he, the newcomer, had already learned.
He saw that Karnia was an evil power, made up of creatures cast out by the natural process of selection—but how did the inhabitants select and cast out and accept if they did not have the power of vision which Grayson found he possessed?
Then he learned from Sareen that at regular intervals were examinations, during which in
struments were used by elected judges, supervised by the hereditary Monarch. These instruments revealed the inner infection of evil, and determined the fitness of the contestants to remain as citizens or be cast out into exile. Grayson came inescapably to the conclusion that here was a world of strange beings unconscious of what they were, who thought of themselves as men and women—but were not truly so at all. Were instead quite another thing—and Grayson was forced into may strange avenues of thought by the Azuran ignorance of the inner life-force. Was his own world one of the steps in the Azuran chain of world-schools, where the force-beings lived through a similar illusory life-time, unknowing their true nature, but believing that the material illusion of life was the whole of life?
GRAYSON at times glimpsed the order behind the seeming confusion caused by this illusion of materiality in which the people of Azura lived, glimpsed an immense system of selection of immortal beings of fluid force in which an illusion of mortality was necessary to keep the business of selection and rejection fair and above-board and equal. Else, had they known they were being tried in a rigid school of natural selection, they would have found ways of circumventing the system, of hiding their deficiencies—and the purity of the upper Azuran world of graduates would have in time become alloyed with beings who had learned to hide the infection of evil, livid upon their core-matrix!
But these speculations upon the mysteries of the Azuran planets of life were of necessity sketchy and to Grayson valueless—for he was himself immersed in the seemingly material machinery of their life, busily preparing to fight off the gathering storm. For the Karnians, confident of final victory, were gathering every unit of their forces in one great fleet for a final devastating blow upon the very center of their chief opponent—upon Azura itself. And Grayson saw that when Azura fell, all organized resistance to the Karnian system of non-selective material life would perish, and the great hidden plan behind the Azuran system of selection would be destroyed!
But to the ordinary Azuran mind, they were a single planet, the head of an Empire of some score of small worlds, faced with a mighty enemy whom they were unable to defeat in battle. They did not see the system behind their Empire, did not know that they were anything more than mortal men!
They did not know they themselves were good, and that the Karnians were evil with an inner fire of destruction eating at their core of energy, did not know that they were part of a system of selection designed to overcome a spreading energy-infection which was destroying the inner fibre of their race! Who was behind the creation of this master-plan to fight a singular unseen disease of energy? Sometimes Grayson was awed by this insight of his, at other times inclined to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses!
At other times he looked upon the mighty body of the singular person-age known to them as Nardan, Lord of Azura, God of the Nether Reaches, agent of the Light—with a vast awe, for he saw that this man was not a man, but an immortal being who had masqueraded for endless centuries as a mortal man for the sake of overcoming that strange disease of red fire which Grayson had glimpsed writhing at the core of Marduc, and here and there within others of Azura, though there were but few. Grayson wondered why, if Nardan was in truth the agent behind this immense plan, he did not see the evil in Marduc and dispose of him? And it occurred to Grayson that Nardan, in taking on the illusion of flesh and material existence for such a long time, might have lost the power of insight, if he had once had it. That Nardan still hoped to save the inner being of Marduc never occurred to Grayson, it did not make sense. One would not endanger an Empire of millions for the sake of one individual.
SO IMMERSED in puzzling speculations as he attempted to orientate himself in a world no part of which behaved in a familiar way or was responsive to natural law as he knew it; Grayson yet spent his time busily studying under the sweet tutelage of Sareen. And with every drop of water in the big water-clock, Grayson knew the destruction of this mysteriously beautiful and fascinatingly intricate life-system came that much nearer.
Sareen was fascinated not by such speculative puzzles. “I am drawn to you, Paul, by the strange lights in your eyes, the terrible strength of your arm, the quick active mind always striding ahead of my own. I do not have your insight, Paul. But it is very sweet to know you are able to look into my soul, to know that from you I have no secrets, nor need any. I have no wish to hide my virgin soul from you, and to me that is very new and good. Since I cannot conceal my affection from you, I revel in the new freedom of love that this fact gives me!”
“We are searching for a force, a weapon, a thought-pattern from which Karnia cannot defend themselves, Sareen. Sweet as it is to me to see your inner self and know that you have almost a mate’s love for me, still we cannot stop our work to talk about it.”
“I am not a man, I cannot keep forever plugging like you!”
“Still, we must, Sareen, until you and your people are free of the threat of war, free to love. Then we will see . . .” and Paul sent her a look that staggered her with its intensity.
“We are not unconscious of the system of gradations of life in the energies you see, Paul. We do know of these things, and know them very well. But we grow so used to the solid sight, that we sometimes forget, this it is that misleads you. W e know, and many among us can will the true sight-power just as you. But when you exposed the burning intensity of inner fire, the soul-strength that flung Marduc away and nearly destroyed his arm—then you displayed powers that are really unusual and new among us. Then I knew truly you were no spy! For that power could be used in battle, introduced into a menta-beam weapon, such a thought-pattern would destroy all opposition!”
“We have been searching for a weapon against Karnia, Sareen, and overlooking that strange incident. Perhaps it is the answer . . .”
“I have not overlooked it my friend, Paul. You are always underestimating me in your thoughts. You have so much to learn, that I have not told you what I plan. If we find nothing else, you will accompany the fleet when we take to space in the last attempt to fight off the conquering Karnians. But up to the last moment, no one will know what is planned. Thus the spy will be unable to convey the data on the thought-patterns to the enemy, for they will not be written down in symbols! They exist only in your brain, a strange new brain among us. You yourself cannot betray this secret for you do not know your power or the symbols to express synthetic generation of the force you alone can generate. See, I am clever, and you think me a simple girl.”
“Perhaps not, Sareen. I understand my own thoughtlessness not to see what you plar. Yes, it would be a lost secret if any other knew it. But does not Marduc know? I used the force upon him!”
“He will not know the symbols! See, he cannot send it to the enemy, even if he wanted to!”
“So we do not even think about it till the time comes.”
“That’s right. We pretend to be very busy looking for such a thing, when all the time we are just enjoying ourselves.”
“You do enjoy my company, Sareen?”
“You have only to look at my heart, you know. Have you never ventured, Paul.”
“You asked me not to pry, Sareen.”
Sareen gave a little exclamation of pique. “Must you be so honorable as to take even a peek? I withdraw the request, for one minute!”
GRAYSON willed his sight to the other range, and Sareen changed bewilderingly from the pink and gold and while lily of Azura to the strange whirling pillar of emerald-gemmed golden force, within which Grayson discovered a changing picture from that which he had glimpsed of her before. Within her breast a strange flowering of new energies had sprung into life, was sending through all that intricately organized golden soul of hers little threads of pure glowing rose and blue, root-fibres of some strange new life within her! A softness and a new sensitivity was in her, the emerald sensory focus-points were changed and larger; there was an aura of ecstatic waiting for some expected miracle of . . .
Grayson switched back to plain seeing again. He looked sob
erly down upon the golden head of Sareen, bowed demurely, her face half-hidden from him, her cheeks rosy with shy sweet knowing what he had seen.
“Sareen! I had not thought that you could have discovered love so quickly! Are you sure? How can this be?”
“You have seen, Grayson. Oh, Paul, how can a living being help it? Can’t you see it growing, spreading all through me? It will choke me to death if you do not see! What can a woman do with love? It possesses me!”
Grayson took the bowed head, raised it, looked into the eyes that were no longer shy pools of veiled blue, but were now liquid and large with emotion. Eyes that said a world of unspeakable intensities of truth to him, and for a moment he was abashed before the mystery of this love, afraid that he himself lacked the ability to produce the complementaries to the forces growing within her. Feared himself inadequate to be to her what her nature needed so very much.
But she did not turn away, held her face waiting for him, radiant and expectant. As he bent to kiss her, her arms went about him, taut with sudden strength. It was then that Grayson learned why all these inhabitants really knew the inner secrets of their stranger world, for the strange seeing came involuntarily upon him with new and dizzying vorticial force! An ecstatic mingling of their fluid force-bodies took place, Grayson saw that this world contained a way of love impossible to wholly material mortals—for their bodies mingled and became one, the strange grey stasis-bars of his own body moved from his material body to space themselves between the stretching oval emeralds of Sareen’s beautiful inner-sensory body. The glowing rose-and-blue of her love swept all through his own grey and gold and a shimmering violet force grew, birthed of that mingling. A new organizational shifting of his inner being took place. Between them rose a new center, a new focus, a single similar core in each of them. Each of them changed, not subtly, but terrifically new and vital growth changes, so that they were each now different people than before. And Grayson realized that the intensifying of his own perceptions during this “kiss” must take place in all such experiences here, so that at such times all Azurans must become conscious of their inner being.
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 14