by Anthology
Ato was already bleeding badly from a deep slash in his shoulder. As he rallied his men around him, someone threw a knife that buried itself in the right side of his chest. He stumbled and went down to his knees. Then he struggled up, and as he stood straight he reached down to his waist and clutched the little slug-horn of moon-metal that his father had given him. His head went back as he raised the horn to his lips. Like Childe Roland, who came at last to the Dark Tower, he blew one unheard blast.
* * * * *
Suddenly the room was filled with lights, flashing and dancing everywhere. Whispering.
A stillness fell upon the room and the shambles. Men paused as they lifted their knives or braced themselves for a last thrust.
For a single breath, all was in silence.
Then a light began to whisper. "Ato, it is I, your father, Wolden. We have learned the secret of time and space and we have come for you, my son. But before we go, we must rid ourselves of the mischief-makers."
The lights darted down upon Grim Hagen's men. And as they touched them, the cold of space came flowing through. They fell one by one. And the hoar-frost covered them like spiderwebs across the faces and bodies of long-dead mummies.
There was a spattering sound, as of sleet falling against a distant roof. A strange smell filled the air.
And one by one Grim Hagen's men went down.
Chapter 18
All this happened while Grim Hagen was rushing toward Odin and Maya. A thin trickle of blood was flowing down the corner of Hagen's mouth. Odin heard the voices. Out of the corner of his eye he saw some men go down. The room felt cold now, and a thin breeze was going through it, as though blown gently across the star-spaces.
He saw a light dart down toward Grim Hagen.
But at that instant Grim Hagen reached him and swung his sword. Jack Odin stepped aside. His foot slipped upon the unsteady planking of the improvised balcony. He thrust for Grim Hagen's throat, but his blade went high and wide. It gashed Grim Hagen from the lower corner of his chin clear back to the jawbone. Blood streamed and as Odin slipped to his knee Grim Hagen swung again.
Then Maya was between them, both hands grasping Hagen's sword-arm. Hagen's free hand closed about her wrists. He swung her aside and the point of his sword came down to rest upon her throat.
"Now," Grim Hagen screamed, and his voice was the shriek of a man who has nothing left to lose. "Let no light come near me and Maya or we die together. Wolden, I caught scattered words about your work as I fled through space. I held the stars and planets in my hands and I flung them away, for they were no more than the sparks that fly out from flint. They were worthless and I flung them away. And there was nothing to match my desire. Not even Maya. Now, listen, if you care for her life."
The descending lights hesitated and drew back. Jack Odin righted himself and chanced a thrust at Hagen. The thrust failed as Grim Hagen moved Maya between them.
"No more of that, Odin. Drop your sword or she dies. Drop it now!"
And Odin lowered his hand and let his sword fall to the table beneath him.
Grim Hagen continued: "The ship is yours. This world is yours. Let me have your secret, Wolden. I would not care to be with such as you. I would laugh at space with the comets. I would make the stars cringe. I would watch the generations go by like falling snow. I would—"
"No, you would be like Lucifer, wreaking his vengeance upon the planets," the voice of what had been Wolden interrupted in a whisper. "No, Grim Hagen, even if I gave you what you asked, all space would seem as hell to you."
Grim Hagen smiled an evil smile. "So. But it is I who make the bargain. Even yet. Maya goes with me. Remember!"
But at that instant Maya got one hand free and thrust the sword aside.
It was all the time that Jack Odin needed. Reaching forward he grasped Grim Hagen's sword with his bare hand. It cut to the bone. And then he had Hagen's wrist with his free hand. He twisted. A bone cracked and he shook the blade from Hagen's grasp. Maya leaped to one side. Then Hagen's fingers were pushing Odin's face back and Odin was clutching at Hagen's throat.
They stood there swaying. Then they tumbled down the rude stairway of tables that Ato had fashioned for his last stand.
They rolled to the blood-stained floor beneath. And Odin never knew how either of them survived the fall.
The lights hovered above them, waiting for an opening. Maya took up a fallen sword and came following after.
Grim Hagen's fingers were feeling for Odin's eyes. Odin got a bloody fist against Hagen's face and shoved him back. Then he rolled on top of him and got the man's throat between his hands. Hagen's fists worked like pistons as he beat at Odin's face. Odin felt the blood dripping down upon his hands and upon Hagen's throat but he held on. At the last, Grim Hagen screamed and clawed like an animal. And then it was over. The hands stopped clawing. There was one last sob of pain and hate that was cut off in the middle. Then Grim Hagen was still. And Odin, with his face dripping blood, held on while Maya and the others struggled to tear his hands free from the man he had killed.
* * * * *
With the death of Grim Hagen the fight was over. None of Hagen's Brons or Aldebaranians were left. The Lorens threw down their arms and swore loyalty to Val.
A cot was improvised for Ato. The lights hovered around him, whispering cheerfully and ignoring all others.
Val, Odin and Maya tried to count the survivors. Of the fifty who had lived through the fighting, only eighteen were Brons. The rest were Val's men.
"There are a hundred more on the two ships," Maya told Odin. "Oh, Jack, we have Nea to thank for most of this. Nea and Wolden. After you and your men left, Nea took her Kalis, as she called them, and some of her people. They came through the barrier and made their way to the Old Ship. They surprised the few guards that Grim Hagen had left. They freed me and the other prisoners. Then we got our little army together and came to help. Without Nea, it could never have been done." She buried her face on Odin's shoulder. "Oh, Jack, when we were kids together we used to laugh at her."
He patted her shoulder comfortingly, for he could think of nothing to say. He had seen soldiers like Nea—cast-offs from their home-towns gallantly going to their deaths. It was something that he could not understand. And being honest, he had nothing to say.
Clean-up was begun. Jack Odin left Val of the Lorens to take over. Then he rushed to the stairway where last he had seen Gunnar. The fires had burned out. The steps were blackened. A few smoking corpses were still upon the stairs.
Odin's face was covered with blood. His strength was nearly gone. But he went up the stairs two steps at a time, his spent breath whistling through his bloody nostrils.
* * * * *
There at the top of the stairs he found Gunnar. And Gunnar's dead lay thick about him.
Gunnar had moved himself to a sitting position against one of the railings. His chin was upon his great chest and his eyes were closed as though he slept. But when Odin knelt beside him, he opened one eye and looked up with a twisted smile upon his broad face. One side of his face was barely recognizable. Gunnar was badly burned. He had been thrust through at least a dozen times. But Gunnar lived.
"Eh, Nors-King," he whispered, sitting up straight as Odin steadied him in his arms. "It was a long time to wait. And I thought sometimes that I would not make it. But I held on, for I knew you would come. Oh, it has been a long wait—and it took all my strength."
"As fast as I could," Odin answered in a choking voice. "As fast as I could, O Chief of the Neeblings. For Ragnarok is past, and the tree of life still reaches into the stars. The twilight is past and new suns and new earths are quickened. And Gunnar still lives."
"Part of him." Gunnar blinked his good eye. "What happened down there? Oh," he gasped in pain, "to have missed the fighting!"
"Maya lives and I live. Ato is wounded. Wolden came at the last to help us, Gunnar. We won. And I have killed Grim Hagen with my bare hands, even as I promised."
"Good, Nors-Ki
ng. I knew always that one of us would kill him. Oh, it was a grand fight. But Gunnar will sharpen his sword no more. There was a ford near my father's house where the clear water ran fresh over the stones. That might help me. But it is far away. And my father too. You tell Freida that we did not make the long trip in vain."
"If I can," Odin promised.
"Oh, you can. For we have won the stars and nothing is beyond us—except youth, maybe."
Gunnar closed his eyes and slept for a few minutes while Odin held him in his arms. Then Gunnar awoke.
He smiled at Jack Odin and murmured:
"To awake on the sea of the stars—"
Jack Odin had heard Gunnar sing those words before. They belonged to an old Norse lullaby that Gunnar's mother had crooned to him when he was a little boy.
Then Gunnar died.
And Odin knelt over him, tears streaming down his broken face.
Chapter 19
Six months had passed since the battle.
The city of the violet dome was rebuilt. The ashes of the dead had been strewn upon the mossy plains. The two ships now stood in peace and gazed at each other across the expanse of moss and grass that had replaced the cinders left from the fighting.
Another city was being built a few miles away.
Ato had soon recovered from his wounds, and as ship's captain had married Maya and Odin.
So it was over. But Odin and Maya had asked for Gunnar's ashes, and had buried them out there on the plain, beneath a gaunt tree which was something like a mesquite. Gunnar would have liked that. Twisted, gnarled, and tough, the tree spread out its branches above him; and a bird had built its nest there and sang its old song of stars and men and time.
The Lorens were a happier people. One of the first things that the lights had done was to plunge back into space. Within a few days they returned, trailing a huge dust-cloud behind them. It must have been the last salvage from the explosion that Odin had witnessed back there in space. The cloud trailed out in one great streamer and slowly circled the ancient sun. Slowly the spirals came nearer to the fires. The sun fed. Its old warmth returning, it smiled at its lone child. The air of the planet of the Lorens grew warmer and fresher. The plains seemed to shake themselves as a new spring returned to enliven the land and take up its old work of helping life to begat new life. Out there in empty space, Odin fancied, Death lowered his scythe and smiled and shrugged his lean shoulders as he went away to harvest other suns.
Oh, it was a wonderful spring. The trip was over, but what a haggard few had beached the boats at the vast edge of space!
The few surviving Brons were happy now. Those who had been Grim Hagen's slaves out of their loyalty to Maya were offered anything that they wished. However, it turned out that most of them wanted little except peace and rest.
The families of Brons that survived were now building their houses above ground—although the Lorens had generously offered them quarters below the city. The Brons wanted no more of caves or tunnels. They preferred to live up there on this world's surface and take their chances with frost and flood.
Opal had been beautiful and wonderful. It had been like living eastward in Eden, but Eden's gardens were no more. And perhaps it would be better to face the elements and meet them head-on instead of seeking shelter. For time and chance were working everywhere—even in Eden—and as Gunnar had always said, a fighting heart could carry a man to the last.
* * * * *
The days and the nights were longer than on earth. The work was long and hard. But the world of the Lorens was being rebuilt. And at night, Odin usually set an hour aside to work on his notes.
At times he talked with Wolden, although he could never be completely at ease when talking to a light. Nor could he understand half the things that Wolden told him. Wolden quoted formulas on time and space, mass and speed. Odin guessed that the belt which he had once used so briefly embodied a No-Time and No-Space factor. But this was beyond him.
As for Ato, he grew moodier every day. At last he came to see Maya and Odin one evening. Sitting by the fire—for the nights there were chilly—he talked to them of his decision.
"It was a great fight," he said. "And I will always remember it. If Nea had lived, I might have felt differently. But Wolden and the others say that they will not stay here much longer. I have decided to go with them. Theirs is a sort of Nirvana, a timeless, dimensionless existence. Yesterday and tomorrow, near and far, are one—"
Maya shivered. "It sounds like a frightening existence. I don't understand it at all. It is as though they had become spirits without dying."
"Perhaps," said Ato thoughtfully, looking into the fire. "You may be right. But they say it is wonderful to be freed from the shackles of space and time. You remember the belt, Odin? Wolden has merely improved upon it. Soon, I think, I will put on the belt that they brought for me and go forth with them like Laelaps to invade the night."
He paused a minute and then added cautiously, "They have brought two more belts with them. For you two, if you should decide—"
Maya shivered. Odin laughed, as he shook his head. "No. I am a man. Just flesh and blood, Ato. And I choose to stay here and take the blows of time. To endure to the end—even as my fathers before on earth—"
Maya snuggled against his shoulder as she nodded her agreement.
Ato smiled. "I thought so—But we will say no more about it. There is one thing that you may not understand. Wolden has tried to tell you. But he is a scientist, and his words are different and difficult to follow. You and I have fought shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps I can explain—"
Then he talked for nearly an hour about the passing of time—and how a ship could circle the universe at the speed of light—and upon returning it might find its home-port nothing but dust and memories. For while their hearts were beating once a month out there in space tide after tide of years had flowed over their homes and their loved ones.
It was a sad, bewildering speech. It reduced time to nothing—and both Maya and Odin felt a lump of ice in their throats as Ato talked.
But even after he had finished, they shook their heads and clung together. A chill wind from space seemed to be blowing through the room, whispering of time's vagaries, and how space had different clocks, and how the affairs of men were swept by time and chance down to a sunless sea.
For the last time Jack Odin and Maya refused Ato's offer. Eden was behind him. Immortality was lost. But Adam and Eve held close to each other there at the edge of space—and as they left Eden behind an old sad nobility clung to them. Something brave and beautiful, like the last leaves of autumn glinting in the setting sun.
* * * * *
The notes that Doctor Jack Odin sent me are ended. But even as before he wrote a short letter and added it to the package at the last.
Dear Joe: (he began)
Wolden and Ato have agreed to deliver this message and the attached notes. Wolden says that it is a terrible experience to go from the fourth-dimensional light of his into a time-bound world. He will not again obligate himself as a messenger boy.
I promised to let you know how we fared. And here is the tale, if you can piece it together. And I suppose you can, for you always liked to monkey around with words. (From this distance, I would say that putting words together has been both the curse and the blessing of your entire life.)
I fear that I cannot understand Ato's and Wolden's talk. But let me put it this way. We traveled fast and furiously through space. And all the while, Father Time was laughing at us. You will remember how Grim Hagen aged on Aldebaran while we sped after him in what seemed to be only a few weeks. Well, if we left in The Nebula now and plunged back to earth we would arrive there two hundred years from the day that we took off. And from what I saw of your civilization at the last, I have no desire to see it two hundred years later.
Bewildering, isn't it? Nea always said that we would have to use new concepts and develop new mores if we ever conquered space. She was right.
T
heoretically, you are gone and forgotten for two centuries. And yet, Wolden assures me that he can deliver this to you in short order. Therefore, time does not exist as we know it. Or is it a river that can be navigated?
Our home is finished. Maya and I are happy. This is a peaceful planet. Val's people are philosophers. They only fought out of desperation.
My sword and Gunnar's are growing rusty upon the wall. I have a small office now, and will probably end up as a country doctor. The two ships are still out there on the plain. Our children, if they wish, can man them and go out into space. But as far as we are concerned we go no more a-hunting.
The notes that I am sending you are fairly complete. It is nearly midnight and the fire is burning low. Maya is nodding beside me. So—happy at last—parsecs away and years away—I wish my old friend a hearty fare-thee-well—and
IT IS A TALE THAT IS TOLD.
Best wishes,
Jack Odin, M. D.
* * *
Contents
THE SYNDIC
By C. M. Kornbluth
There have been a thousand tales of future Utopias and possible civilizations. They have been ruled by benevolent dictatorships and pure democracies, every form of government from extreme right to absolute left. Unique among these is the easy-going semi-anarchistic society ruled by THE SYNDIC.
"It was not until February 14th that the Government declared a state of unlimited emergency. The precipitating incident was the aerial bombardment and destruction of B Company, 27th Armored Regiment, on Fort George Hill in New York City. Local Syndic leaders had occupied and fortified George Washington High School, with the enthusiastic co-operation of students, faculty and neighborhood. Chief among them was Thomas 'Numbers' Cleveland, displaying the same coolness and organizational genius which had brought him to pre-eminence in the metropolitan policy-wheel organization by his thirty-fifth year.