Star SHort Novels - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

“Yes,” she replied, “dawn is the best time to propitiate the gods.”

  “The gods?” I echoed, staring up into her face.

  She answered without self-consciousness. “Wilbur thinks, and so do all of us, that there are more gods than one. God and Jesus are the greatest and best we think. But the Devil is a god too, and perhaps if he were honored more, he would be more content. Wilbur says you have all tried to act as if there wasn’t any evil. You kill people or starve them and you call it ‘economic necessity,’ but Wilbur says it’s just plain evil and probably the Devil’s work.”

  “But that’s true—such things do grow out of conditions beyond our control. We don’t want to do them.”

  “That’s the reason Wilbur thinks it’s the Devil’s work. Since it does happen, someone must want it done. Wilbur says that things that no one wants done, don’t happen. So, tomorrow morning we will honor him—that doesn’t mean worship. But Wilbur says we can’t resist until we have recognized.”

  I was too amazed to speak any more with Mary Frances at the time. This eleven-year-old talking religion and economics; but talking it like some primitive medicine man with forces of evil to be propitiated. Neither Amy nor I had been churchgoers but we had, like many other people, sent our children to Sunday School, and had taught them to say their prayers. It had always seemed a pretty sight to us to see them kneel at bedtime in their night clothes prattling in their sweet unformed voices the old familiar words. But now to hear them planning to pray in cold blood, meaning it, and in public, and at dawn! And talking of the devil! I was shocked at this revelation of the depths of their naïveté. But this was only another instance of their faulty training. Though when they were receiving that training in Sunday School, we had, of course, no inkling that they would not have sufficient time before they came to power to learn to distinguish between the ideal and the workable.

  I had no intention of attending those services to propitiate the devil, but long before it was light next morning David came into our room.

  “It’s time to get up,” he said.

  “What do you mean coming in here this time of the morning?” I wanted to know.

  “It’s time to get ready for the Services.”

  Then I remembered. “Your mother and I aren’t going.”

  “Wilbur said to bring our parents. There’s going to be a special place reserved for the little ones where they can see. We promised Wilbur we would bring you,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to break my promise. Not to Wilbur.”

  I saw what he meant. ‘Tell Maria to make us some coffee then,” I said. We still had coffee at that time. The electric power was off, but Maria was managing some rudimentary cooking on the barbecue grill in the backyard. She had a kind of scaffolding of boxes and cartons on which she mounted to get at the grill.

  “We aren’t to have any breakfast,” David said, “we’re to pray fasting.”

  I had no doubt that David and Mary Frances were so completely under Wilbur Oren’s power, that if we were to refuse they would simply hustle us into the car and take us there by force. So Amy and I dressed quietly and were waiting for them when they came for us.

  I well remember that ride through the raw, foggy morning. We used the last of our gasoline for the trip and it was months before we were to drive again. It was still some time before sunup and there were no street lights. We moved slowly through the gray gloom. Amy and I huddled together in the back seat, not talking. There were still a number of cars on the road that morning, but the sidewalks were already beginning to fill up with the makeshift wagons in which the Chilekings were transporting the Smalfri of their families to the meeting.

  When we reached the cathedral we found it lit only by the wavering light of candles. High in the groined arches it was still deep night. Great shadows rose and fell across the sup-porting pillars. The air was thick with some heavy, oversweet incense. A Chileking, some beginning student, I suppose, was playing the organ. Over and over he played a monotonous wailing sort of five-finger exercise. The Smalfri were all seated in the front of the cathedral, and behind them and against the walls at the sides ranged the Chilekings, big, heavy, smooth-faced, and intent.

  The cathedral was soon filled and the doors closed. Gray light began to seep through the arched windows. The organ continued its long four-or-five-note wail. Now and then a veering candle flame sent a splash of pale light across one of the faces near me.

  Suddenly over the organ’s monotone came a sound or series of sounds that prickled my skin: something halfway between the brass clang of a cymbal and the muffled beat of a drum. What mumbo jumbo are we to have now I wondered—and as I looked at the Chilekings, lined along the walls, with their big, round faces lit by the flickering candlelight, it was easy to imagine them savages, gathered about some ritual fire. Well, I thought, there isn’t really much difference; children and primitives aren’t far separated.

  Organ wail and drum throb, if drum it was, continued. Then a door to the left of the altar slowly opened and three towering figures emerged and crossed ponderously to a position in front of the altar. The central figure I recognized as that of Wilbur Oren; the other two I did not know. Each was costumed in a habit that had as its basis, vestments of either the Roman or Anglican church. Over this vestment the three Chilekings wore long, red, capelike garments. On the back of each cape was affixed the insignia, then so strange, and now so common of the Antlered Egg. On their heads was something that was neither military shako, nor bishop’s miter, but that somehow resembled both.

  But the strangest thing about those three Chilekings was not their costumes, but the great, life-size figures they bore aloft. The figure carried by the Chileking on Wilbur Oren’s right was obviously a representation of the Christ, though very unlike those commonly seen at that time. The face of that Christ was neither bearded nor thorn crowned, but young and unlined. Christ before Golgotha, before Gethsemane, before the temptation in the wilderness even. The modeling of the face was a little uncertain, but there was no denying that it had great power and sweetness. A young face, full of hope; a Chileking’s conception of a Chileking, in fact.

  The figure on the left was at first difficult to place; it was that of a woman, big-breasted, heavy, rounded, gray-haired, with a face compassionate, double-chinned, and motherly. Motherly—was this the Chileking’s conception of Mary, I wondered? The Fathers of the Church had made her young and comely, Mary the Maiden; but perhaps the Chilekings saw in her only Mary, the real mother. No compromise in the words, “Mary, Mother,” with the image of an untouched virgin.

  The central figure, the one Wilbur Oren held aloft, towered high above the other two. In the half-light that filled the cathedral it looked like an African witch doctor. A hideous black creature with little red eyes that seemed to flicker evilly in the shifting light, and a big, loose-lipped, white mouth. This figure of evil—for he was obviously that, was hung about with various oddments of broken glass, of tufts of hair, of old cartridges and pierced coins. In one respect he was an orthodox devil—he had a tail, sinuous, and scaly. And this figure of evil was, unlike the other two, jointed—for he was kept aquiver with grimacings and jerkings and lurchings.

  We have had time enough now to adapt ourselves to this fantastic mummery of the Chilekings: Antlered Eggs, spirits propitiated, and shrines at every crossroad. These attract little attention now, but then we were accustomed, in such religious practices as we still retained, to a certain dignity of ritual, a certain reassuring decorum. And yet in spite of my distaste for such primitive religious flummery as we were seeing that cold, gray morning, I was deeply impressed. More so, I regret to say, than at my usual place of worship. I was no doubt the victim of a very elementary sort of mass psychology. About me washed great waves of Chileking belief and ardor and 1 was unable to escape a certain degree of submergence in that flood of feeling. We Smalfri, perched uneasily on the edges of our seats so that we might bend our knees, with the tall, grave Chilekings pressing closely in about
us, were like a little band of simians surrounded by water buffaloes or elephants. With us, we felt, were knowledge and wisdom; but what could they avail against this bulk, and this belief? And as the tempo of the services increased and the pitch mounted I began to wonder what they would do.

  As I have said, much of what happened seemed to me farcical; yet in spite of myself, as I’ve already confessed, I was deeply moved. My mind recognized the naïveté, the Huck Finn, caveman quality of the proceedings; and yet because not too long ago (as mankind counts its years) I had bowed my own head before just such images and stamped to just such drum beats, I could not, however cool my thinking, control my pulse beats.

  * * * * * * * *

  Wilbur Oren spoke for a long time. I don’t think he said a sentence worth remembering, nor do I believe the words now attributed to him and known as the “Cathedral Speech,” are authentic in any detail. That speech, the official one, outlines in considerable detail subsequent Chileking policies. I heard that speech and there was nothing of that kind in it. There was nothing in it whatever but a kind of eloquent hysteria, a reiteration of “God wills it,” a shocked, inexperienced boy’s denunciation of what had hurt him. [This, though obviously the report of a shocked Smalfri concerning what has hurt him, I have let stand in spite of its misrepresentation of the Cathedral Speech of Wilbur Oren.] That was all there was to it. Though to say that was all, is not to say it was not effective. It was effective, terribly so. As that high voice continued and daylight came, I could see those big, empty Chileking faces contorted with conviction and washed with tears.

  When Oren finished, the three figures were again held aloft, and all the Chilekings in the building filed past them. And as they passed they held out their hands to a fourth Chileking who had joined the three at the altar. He made a cut in their hands so that a fair quantity of blood flowed from the wound. Then each Chileking held his gashed hand over a big brass or gold bowl so that the blood of all mingled there. I was there and saw all this done, and my gorge rose at the sight of this savage blood-brotherhood ritual. I saw my own children let their blood drip into this pot—David and Mary Frances—and Smalfri all about me shivered. But what could we do? Our day had passed.

  * * * * * * * *

  As I watched that long line of Chilekings file past, and saw them wince as the blade flashed across their hands, and heard them mumble some vow as they pressed the blood out of the cut flesh into that pot, I knew that something portentous was afoot, a revolution beyond anything our world has yet seen. I will not pretend, as many have, that I foresaw all that has happened. But I saw a little that morning—enough to frighten me with grim forebodings.

  I do not know whether this paper is what the Commemorative Committee had in mind when they asked me to write of my experiences during the first days of Subtraction or not. I am an old man and not a professional writer; I have done the best I can. I have tried not to be bitter, but there is no use denying that my life stopped sixty years ago. Since then I have only been an onlooker.

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  * * * *

  For I Am A Jealous People!

  By LESTER DEL REY

  I

  . . . the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves . . . and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low . . . they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish . . . because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets . . .

  ecclesiastes, xii, 3-5.

  There was the continuous shrieking thunder of an alien rocket overhead as the Reverend Amos Strong stepped back into the pulpit. He straightened his square, thin shoulders slightly, and the gaunt hollows in his cheeks deepened. For a moment he hesitated, while his dark eyes turned upwards under bushy, grizzled brows. Then he moved forward, placing the torn envelope and telegram on the lectern with his notes. The blue-veined hand and knobby wrist that projected from the shiny black serge of his sleeve hardly trembled.

  His eyes turned toward the pew where his wife was not. Ruth would not be there this time. She had read the message before sending it on to him. Now she could not be expected. It seemed strange to him. She hadn’t missed service since Richard was born nearly thirty years ago.

  The sound hissed its way into silence over the horizon, and Amos stepped forward, gripping the rickety lectern with both hands. He straightened and forced into his voice the resonance and calm it needed.

  “I have just received word that my son was killed in the battle of the moon,” he told the puzzled congregation. He lifted his voice, and the resonance in it deepened. “I had asked, if it were possible, that this cup might pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, Lord, but as Thou wilt.”

  He turned from their shocked faces, closing his ears to the sympathetic cry of others who had suffered. The church had been built when Wesley was twice its present size, but the troubles that had hit the people had driven them into the worn old building until it was nearly filled. He pulled his notes to him, forcing his mind from his own loss to the work that had filled his life.

  “The text today is drawn from Genesis,” he told them. “Chapter seventeen, seventh verse; and chapter twenty-six, fourth verse. The promise which God made to Abraham and to Isaac.” He read from the Bible before him, turning the pages unerringly at the first try.

  “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.”

  “And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

  He had memorized most of his sermon, no longer counting on inspiration to guide him as it had once done. He began smoothly, hearing his own words in snatches as he drew the obvious and comforting answer to their uncertainty. God had promised man the earth as an everlasting covenant. Why then should men be afraid or lose faith because alien monsters had swarmed down out of the emptiness between the stars to try man’s faith? As in the days of bondage in Egypt or captivity in Babylon, there would always be trials and times when the fainthearted should waver, but the eventual outcome was clearly promised.

  He had delivered a sermon from the same text in his former parish of Clyde when the government had first begun building its base on the moon, drawing heavily in that case from the reference to the stars of heaven to quiet the doubts of those who felt that man had no business in space. It was then that Richard had announced his commission in the lunar colony, using Amos’ own words to defend his refusal to enter the ministry. It had been the last he saw of the boy.

  He had used the text one other time, over forty years before, but the reason was lost, together with the passion that had won him fame as a boy evangelist. He could remember the sermon only because of the shock on the bearded face of his father when he had misquoted a phrase. It was one of his few clear memories of the period before his voice changed and his evangelism came to an abrupt end.

  He had tried to recapture his inspiration after ordination, bitterly resenting the countless intrusions of marriage and fatherhood on his spiritual forces. But at last he had recognized that God no longer intended him to be a modem Peter the Hermit, and resigned himself to the work he could do. Now he was back in the parish where he had first begun; and if he could no longer fire the souls of his flock, he could at least help somewhat with his memorized rationalizations for the horror of the alien invasion.

  Another ship thundered overhead, nearly drowning his words. Six months before, the great ships had exploded out of space and had dropped carefully to the moon, to attack the forces there. In another month, they had begun forays against Earth itself. And now, while the world haggled and struggled to unite against them, they were setting up bases all over and conquering the world mile by mile.

  Amos saw the faces below him turn up,
furious and uncertain. He raised his voice over the thunder, and finished hastily, moving quickly through the end of the service.

  He hesitated as the congregation stirred. The ritual was over and his words were said, but there had been no real service. Slowly, as if by themselves, his lips opened, and he heard his voice quoting the Twenty-Seventh Psalm. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

  His voice was soft, but he could feel the reaction of the congregation as the surprisingly timely words registered. “Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.” The air seemed to quiver, as it had done long ago when God had seemed to hold direct communion with him, and there was no sound from the pews when he finished. “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”

  The warmth of that mystic glow lingered as he stepped quietly from the pulpit. Then there was the sound of motorcycles outside, and a pounding on the door. The feeling vanished.

  Someone stood up and sudden light began pouring in from outdoors. There was a breath of the hot, droughty physical world with its warning of another dust storm, and a scattering of grasshoppers on the steps to remind the people of the earlier damage to their crops. Amos could see the bitterness flood back over them in tangible waves, even before they noticed the short, plump figure of Dr. Alan Miller.