The Old Man of the Stars

by John Burke

  I saw Southerden, through their eyes, as they had seen it during the first few weeks after their arrival. They had been happy then. Their vague idealism became exultant. Life was simple and full of promise.

  The fishing village of Southerden stood at the entrance to a small harbour. Behind it, the hills rose gently to farmland above. The arc of the bay formed a protective arm—it enclosed the village from the wind, and the hills helped to cut it off from the world that its inhabitants had left.

  Fishing and farming—two of the oldest means by which man had learned to exist on this planet. Basic and primitive.

  The sea and the land, offering their eternal challenge.

  Those men and women who had turned their backs on the regime of the Newmen accepted the challenge as their ancestors had accepted it. In the rhythm of village life they found satisfaction. Their children grew up gradually, and gradually learned to plough the land and draw fish from the sea. They fumbled their way towards elementary knowledge. Children here were the taught, and not the teachers.

  It was deliberate retrogression. They were swimming against the tide of human progress. But there had always been such stubborn recusants, and the Newmen could afford to be tolerant.

  That was one of the first essentials on which I seized. The Communities, of which Southerden was only one, owed their continued existence to the tolerance of the very people whom they most hated. If the Newmen had wished to abolish the Communities, they could have done so without effort. Only their goodwill—or, rather, their indifference—made it possible for these groups to go on existing.

  We were here on sufferance.

  Other folk in Southerden might take this for granted, or might never pause to consider it. But I was infuriated by the arrogance of it. To the Newmen we were all beneath contempt—we were not even worth the trouble of abolishing; we were quaint, foolish, insignificant...not to be taken seriously.

  But I knew myself to be as good as the Newmen.

  The seed of hatred planted in my mind by my parents germinated. Soon it would thrust up its first shoots. Soon it would blossom.

  * * * *

  When I was old enough to be taken out for short walks without arousing the suspicion of the villagers, I often went with Myrna to the river mouth, half a mile along the coast from Southerden.

  The river cut through the hills like a saw slicing through a barrier. But the river itself was the barrier. On this side lived the Community; on the other were Newmen.

  Not all the Newmen lived in towns and cities. Agriculture was still important—particularly as practised by these highly-trained, gifted experts, who tackled it with the devastating brilliance their successive generations showed in every subject. Newmen living in the country were in no way mentally retarded—prospective parents could attend mass clinics in the nearest towns and receive a modification of the original pulse injection. It was an expensive process compared with the radiation blankets of the cities; but it was nevertheless cheaper than a radiation grid system over the whole countryside would have been.

  I stared across the river at farms on the slopes on the opposite side.

  Smooth, silent machines clambered over the ground. Robots went gliding swiftly about their business. An occasional human being would come out to inspect the work, and would, perhaps, look across the river at us. Once a middle-aged man waved condescendingly.

  Over the sea, aerial magnetic fishing went on with ruthless efficiency. Sometimes our old fishing smacks would run across the line of the aircraft, and then they would switch off and wait—again condescending, contemptuous, tolerant....

  One day I was left alone in the small garden at the back of the cottage. Sunk in thought, I unlatched the gate and walked out. My steps led me down the road towards the river. I was singing to myself—a song that I knew without having ever heard it; a song my mother had known as a child.

  The words shaped themselves automatically. Without realizing it, I was singing aloud, strongly.

  Realization came when I found myself suddenly face to face with old Clayton. There was no time to change my expression, to look bewildered, to put on the gestures and stumbling uncertainty of a child. From the look in his rheumy eyes I knew that he saw me clearly—he saw that I was not as other children in the Community were.

  * * * *

  I confronted them all in the Community meeting place, a wooden building on the waterfront.

  At first Clayton had tried to take the law into his own hands. He had tried to have me driven away—to throw Henning, Myrna, and myself out—without any more ado. I can still hear him screaming:

  “Get ’em away from here—the child-governed—they’re dangerous. Out with them, before it’s too late.”

  But I talked him down. My puny child-body quivered with an instinctive, animal fear, which I could not control, but I stood my ground and out-argued the old man. It was not too hard. I had reached far beyond his simple intelligence. I knew what thoughts and ideas to appeal to, what breaches to concentrate on in his defences. I could out-think that surly, limited mind of his.

  I talked him into allowing a public hearing. It was in accordance with the traditions of the Community—the old, revered traditions. When he had agreed and gone away to arrange it, he must have been puzzled as to how he had let himself be manoeuvred into such a position.

  So I sat on the platform with Henning and Myrna, and with Clayton and a couple of other older people who had founded the Southerden Community.

  And I said: “My mother and father didn’t want me to be a memory inheritor. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know I was going to be like this.”

  “But now that you are,” growled Clayton, “there’s no place for you here.”

  “I belong here.”

  “You can’t stay.”

  “I not only can,” I said, “I must. For your sakes more than my own. For all our sakes.”

  People in the body of the hall rustled and whispered. There were murmurs of mistrust.

  Clayton said: “We want none of your sort here. The Communities were founded for those of us who didn’t want any part in a world where children run mad.”

  “You’ve got to adjust. You’ve got to face certain problems. You can’t—“

  “We aim to keep this place the way it was when we started. Freedom from the Newmen—that’s the whole idea.”

  “You can’t just stand still,” I said. “You can’t allow yourselves to stagnate.”

  “He talks about stagnation. D’you see?” Clayton appealed to the audience, spreading his arms wide. His horny right hand clenched into a brown, knotted fist. “Like the rest of them. He wants progress, as they call it. He’s here to fool us. He’ll work on us—try to push us into spawning Newmen—”

  “No,” I said. “But the Newmen will be encroaching on us if we don’t plan. Not this year, maybe, or next. But as the newer generations come along, they’ll start to covet our land. They’ll start to think of abolishing the reservation laws and taking us over.”

  “They’ve promised—”

  “Promised! They’ll find good reasons for evading their guarantees. As time goes on and their scientific progress becomes swifter, they’ll be less and less patient with the scattered Communities. They’ll want our land, and they’ll want those of us who live on it to be out of the way. They put up with us now because the climate of opinion is in favour of tolerance. But soon....”

  I went on fervently and persuasively. I hammered it into them. Naturally suspicious and resentful, they were very ready to believe in the eventual deceitfulness of the Newmen.

  And they were right to believe. I knew that. The workings of the minds of the Newmen were easily comprehensible to me. The progressive temperament was something I could understand—the urge to move onwards, to lose patience with reactionaries, to pursue remorselessly that ultimate scientific perfection.

  Only Clayton stood out. His pride was at stake. He refused to believe in the menace I hinted at, though if one
of his own people had put it to him he would have been the most outspoken on the subject. He saw me as a usurper. There he, too, was right. In time I would take over from him. It had to be. I saw that. Already I was beginning.

  He growled: “You’re up to no good. I don’t know what schemes you’ve got, but they’re not good for us. You’re one of them.”

  “In a way I am,” I quickly admitted. “Enough so to know the way they think and how they’re likely to act. I’m aware of their potentialities—and of my own. But remember that I’ve inherited from my parents an instinctive revulsion against the Newmen and all their ways.”

  It was difficult to put across. He would not be convinced. But after a while he grudgingly held his peace. He could not realize how irrevocably I had, in my own mind, already declared war on the Newmen.

  “The day will come,” I assured the Community, “when we shall restore the old order to our country. The day will come when we turn off the evil machine, and the radiation will cease to be.”

  * * * *

  I was twelve when I killed old Clayton.

  I had been very busy in the intervening years. I travelled about the country visiting other Communities, inculcating the spirit of antipathy towards the Newmen and fanning the flame where it already burned. It was easy for me to get about, even to penetrate the cities—it was obvious that I was one of the Newmen, and I was allowed into the cities without protest. Adults there treated me with respect. I made my contacts. In the Communities there was widespread suspicion of the promises given by the Newmen. They were ready to listen to me. And in the cities there were surprising numbers of older people anxious for an excuse to revolt against the young folk who dominated them.

  Perhaps there would always be this stratum of the disaffected. Just as younger generations in the past had broken away from their parents and defied the beliefs of their parents, nowadays the parents were resentful. As one generation succeeded another, there would always be this envy and unrest among those who felt themselves being left behind.

  In some of the Communities I met one or two others like myself. Henning and Myrna had not been the only couple to delay leaving the city until it was too late. I heard stories of some who had been sent back; but there were others who had been allowed to stay. They might prove dangerous rivals. Or so I thought at first. Then, as I cautiously explored, I found that none of them constituted a serious menace. Not one had the strength of purpose that was a legacy to me from my parents. They would be my lieutenants—none of them would aspire to becoming the commander.

  The organization was gradually built up. Patience was essential.

  At first, as I travelled and preached the doctrine of eventual resistance to the Newmen, I was met with scepticism and suspicion. Then, as time went on, I received more and more support.

  “The Newmen won’t be patient for ever. The Newmen will forget their promises sooner or later. The Newmen will want our lands—and our children.” That was the message I preached. Repetition drove it into the minds of the Community dwellers.

  Before very long it was they who were impatient for action. They clamoured for an armed uprising. They wanted to set up sabotage groups at once, which would infiltrate into the cities and destroy the power plants.

  I insisted on patience. Nothing would be achieved without long-term planning. We were puny—the Newmen were not altogether unjustified in regarding us as insignificant. When we finally struck, we had to know precisely what we were doing. There would be no second attempt if the first one failed.

  I restrained the rebellious elements. A grand strategy would take years to develop. We must be sure of every man and every detail before we moved. Our contacts must be perfect, our lines of communication infallible. Surprise was everything.

  The length of time involved was, I admitted, a danger in itself. In all that time, in all the quite separate groups that were held together only loosely by my travels and my growing organization, surely there would be one traitor? Word would leak out somehow.

  But the years went on; the plans matured slowly; and still the Newmen did not pounce. Nobody defected from our ranks. The mere fact that people had turned their backs on the Newmen in the first place seemed to be sufficient guarantee of their sincerity.

  I moved in and out of the cities, and aroused no suspicion. I established my contacts, and none of them broke. The resistance movement took shape.

  But there was still Clayton.

  Old enough to be the grandfather of most of the members of the Southerden Community, he grew more and more bitter and surly as time went on. He had set himself up as the grand old man of the village, and it irked him to see me assuming control. I knew that he hated me. I knew that if ever an opportunity. presented itself, he would treat me as he wanted to treat all the other Newmen. Given an opportunity, he would have got rid of me.

  Which is why I felt quite justified in doing what I did.

  I had gone for an evening stroll along the shore, thinking out one or two problems of co-ordination. The rhythm of my steps kept my mind moving steadily in a similar rhythm.

  Next week, I thought, I must go up north. The Newcastle group needed an encouraging word; Immured in their artificial city, they were growing restless. They wanted to overturn the children who surrounded them giving orders and wrenching life more and more out of its old pattern.

  If, after that, I could go on for a few days to....

  “Hello,” said old Clayton.

  I came out of my reverie with a start. I was annoyed. I did not like being disturbed in the middle of making plans.

  I said, coolly: “Good evening.”

  He looked down at me and shook his head wonderingly.

  Then he glanced up at the sky.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come to think of it, it is a good evening. Fine light on the water down there by the shore, isn’t there?”

  I hadn’t noticed. I turned to look. Presumably he was right. But what did light on the water matter?

  We were only a few yards from the edge of the riverbank, shored up here where it emerged into the sea. Beyond, lights blazed on a hillside farm, and there was a faint, gentle hum that drifted across to us.

  Abruptly, Clayton said: “You’d like to be one of ’em, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said—not because I didn’t know, but because this was how conversation was carried on in the Communities; it caused a bad impression if I seized on a point too quickly and flashed out a comprehensive answer. Here, one did not tackle a subject directly—one nudged gently towards it.

  “You’d like to be over there,” he snarled, waving his hand derisively across the river. “You’re one of ’em. Don’t tell me different.”

  “You are well aware,” I said, “that all my energies are devoted to planning for the day when the regime of the Newmen can be ended. I’m one of you. I disapprove of the rule of children as much as you do. It upsets the natural order of things. The balance of the human race has been seriously disturbed, and I am as determined as you are that one day it must be set right.”

  “So that you can be boss?”

  “The question doesn’t arise.”

  The dying sun struck a queer, fierce red spark from his eyes. He said: “Oh, yes, it does. Jealousy—that’s all that drives you.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad,” he said. “I can see straight. I can see that you couldn’t go back to the cities because you’d be nothing there. A nonentity. Kids of your age’d be ahead of you, and when the next lot came along you’d be one of the slaves, like every other grown man and woman in those places. So you want to rule this place instead—”

  “I want to re-establish the old order,” I insisted.

  “And put yourself in charge? The glorious liberator, eh? The one-eyed man, king in the country of the blind....”

  We stood on the edge of the bank now. I had not remembered walking there. I was conscious only of my hatred for this man—a hatre
d to match his own for me. Because he was old, he thought he had the right to be offensive to me. The old had many lessons to learn.

  I said: “You don’t understand. You never will understand.”

  “I understand why this Community was formed,” he said. “And I understand what will happen to it if you have your way. A war—destruction. All for your own glory. All because you’re lost, son. Lost. Neither one of us nor one of them.”

  I thrust my face into his in the gathering dusk, and shouted: “I’m one of you. The only one with any foresight. The only one who can save you.”

  “Lost,” he repeated. “And because you’re lost, we’ve got to pay for it. It’s a heavy price.”

  It was then that my patience gave out. In that instant I saw that he might still ruin everything. With his malicious tongue and his refusal to face the harsh truths of our time he might turn people against me. I could afford to run no risks. For the sake of the future—the future of the Community—action had to be taken.

  So I killed him.

  * * * *

  He saw it coming, and laughed. I remember his laugh even now. I remember it in the same way as I remember experiences from my mother’s and father’s memories—it is etched on my mind, unforgettably, the way they are.

  His eyes widened as I struck him. His harsh laugh rang in my ears for a long moment, and then fell away as he plunged from the bank. There was a splash as he struck the surface of the water.

  I swayed, and then turned and went away. By the time I got back to Southerden, I had evolved a story that made the best possible use of the incident. There was no point in wasting it—it could be employed to stiffen the spirit of resistance in the Communities.

  I quickened my pace as I reached the end of the village street, and looked around wildly. The first person I saw was Tom Bentley, a middle-aged man who shared one of the fishing smacks with my father.

  “Hello, there, Peregrine,” he said doubtfully, as I called to him.

  Always they respected me, now; but always they were uneasy in my presence.

  I said, breathlessly: “Something’s happened along by the river. I’m sure one of our people is in trouble there.”