Oh, yes, thought Ramacan. It's happened before, in Earth's bloody old past. Nations that knew nothing but war and suffering, became molded by them, glorified the harsh virtues that had enabled them to survive. A militaristic state can't afford peace and leisure and prosperity; its people might begin to think for themselves. So the government looks for conquest outside the borders—Needful or not, there must be war to maintain the control the military.
How human are the Procyonites now? What's twisted them in the centuries of their terrible evolution? They're no longer men, they're fighting robots, beasts of prey, they have to have blood.
“You saw us shell the Stations from space,” said Felgi. “Rebirth, Creator, Transmitter—they're radioactive craters now. Not a machine is running on Earth, not a tube is alight—nothing! And with the creators on which their lives depended inert, Earthlings will go back to utter savagery.”
“Now what?” asked Ramacan wearily.
“We're standing off Mercury, refueling,” said Felgi. “Then it's back to Procyon. We'll use our creator to record most of the crew, they can take turns being briefly recreated during the voyage to maintain the ship and correct the course. We'll be little older when we get home.
“Then, of course, the Council will send out a fleet with recorded crews. They'll take over Sol, eliminate the surviving population, and recolonize Earth. After that—” The mad fires blazed high in his eyes. “The stars! A galactic empire, ultimately.”
“Just so you can have war,” said Ramacan tonelessly. “Just so you can keep your people stupid slaves.”
“That's enough,” snapped Felgi. “A decadent culture can't be expected to understand our motives.”
Ramacan stood thinking. There would still be humans around when the Procyonites came back. There would be forty years to prepare. Men in spaceships, here and there throughout the System, would come home, would see the ruin of Earth and know who must be guilty. With creators, they could rebuild quickly, they could arm themselves, duplicate vengeance-hungry men by the millions.
Unless Solarian man was so far gone in decay that he was only capable of blind panic. But Ramacan didn't think so. Earth had slipped, but not that far.
Felgi seemed to read his mind. There was cruel satisfaction in his tones: “Earth will have no chance to re-arm. We're using the power from Mercury Station to run our own large duplicator, turning rock into osmium fuel for our engines. But when we're finished, we'll blow up the Station too. Spaceships will drift powerless, the colonists on the planets will die as their environmental regulators stop functioning, no wheel will turn in all the Solar System. That, I should think, will be the final touch!”
Indeed, indeed. Without power, without tools, without food or shelter, the final collapse would come. Nothing but a few starveling savages would be left when the Procyonites returned. Ramacan felt an emptiness within himself.
Life had become madness and nightmare. The end....
“You'll stay here till we get around to recording you,” said Felgi. He turned on his heel and walked out.
Ramacan slumped back into a seat. His desperate eyes traveled around and around the bare little cabin that was his prison, around and around like the crazy whirl of his thoughts. He looked at the guard who stood in the doorway, leaning on his blaster, contemptuously bored with the captive. If—if—0 almighty gods, if that was to inherit green Earth!
What to do, what to do? There must be some answer, some way, no problem was altogether without solution. Or was it? What guarantee did he have of cosmic justice? He buried his face in his hands.
I was a coward, he thought. I was afraid of pain. So I rationalized, I told myself they probably didn't want much, I used my influence to help them get duplicators and plans. And the others were cowards too, they yielded, they were cravenly eager to help the conquerors—and this is our pay!
What to do, what to do? If somehow the ship were lost, if it never came back—The Procyonites would wonder. They'd send another ship or two—no more—to investigate. And in forty years Sol could be ready to meet those ships—ready to carry the war to an unprepared enemy—if in the meantime they'd had a chance to rebuild, if Mercury Power Station were spared
But the ship would blow the Station out of existence, and the ship would return with news of Sol's ruin, and the invaders would come swarming in—would go ravening out through an unsuspecting galaxy like a spreading plague—
How to stop the ship—now?
Ramacan grew aware of the thudding of his heart; it seemed to shake his whole body with its violence. And his hands were cold and clumsy, his mouth was parched, he was afraid.
He got up and walked over toward the guard. The Procyonite hefted his blaster, but there was no alertness in him, he had no fear of an unarmed member of the conquered race.
He'll shoot me down, thought Ramacan. The death I've been running from all my life is on me now. But it's been a long life and a good one, and better to finish it now than drag out a few miserable years as their despised prisoner, and—and—I hate their guts!
“What do you want?” asked the Procyonite.
“I feel sick,” said Ramacan. His voice was almost a whisper in the dryness of his throat. “Let me out.”
“Get back.”
“It'll be messy. Let me go to the lavatory.”
He stumbled, nearly falling. “Go ahead,” said the guard curtly. “I'll be along, remember.”
Ramacan swayed on his feet as he approached the man. His shaking hands closed on the blaster barrel and yanked the weapon loose. Before the guard could yell, Ramacan drove the butt into his face. A remote corner of his mind was shocked at the savagery that welled up in him when the bones crunched.
The guard toppled. Ramacan eased him to the floor, slugged him again to make sure he would lie quiet, and stripped him of his long outer coat, his boots, and helmet. His hands were really trembling now; he could hardly get the simple garments on.
If he was caught—well, it only made a few minutes’ difference. But he was still afraid. Fear screamed inside him.
He forced himself to walk with nightmare slowness down the long corridor. Once he passed another man, but there was no discovery. When he had rounded the corner, he was violently sick.
He went down a ladder to the engine room. Thank the gods he'd been interested enough to inquire about the layout of the ship when they first arrived! The door stood open and he went in.
A couple of engineers were watching the giant creator at work. It pulsed and hummed and throbbed with power, energy from the sun and from dissolving atoms of rocks—atoms recreated as the osmium that would power the ship's engines on the long voyage back. Tons of fuel spilling down into the bins.
Ramacan closed the soundproof door and shot the engineers.
Then he went over to the creator and reset the controls. It began to manufacture plutonium.
He smiled then, with an immense relief, an incredulous realization that he had won. He sat down and cried with sheer joy.
The ship would not get back. Mercury Station would endure. And on that basis, a few determined men in the Solar System could rebuild. There would be horror on Earth, howling chaos, most of its population would plunge into savagery and death. But enough would live, and remain civilized, and get ready for revenge.
Maybe it was for the best, he thought. Maybe Earth really had gone into a twilight of purposeless ease. True it was that there had been none of the old striving and hoping and gallantry which had made man what he was. No art, no science, no adventure—a smug self-satisfaction, an unreal immortality in a synthetic paradise. Maybe this shock and challenge was what Earth needed, to show the starward way again.
As for him, he had had many centuries of life, and he realized now what a deep inward weariness there had been in him. Death, he thought, death is the longest voyage of all. Without death there is no evolution, no real meaning to life, the ultimate adventure has been snatched away.
There had been a girl once, he rem
embered, and she had died before the rebirth machines became available. Odd—after all these centuries he could still remember how her hair had rippled in the wind, one day on a high summery hill. He wondered if he would see her.
He never felt the explosion as the plutonium reached critical mass.
* * * *
Avi's feet were bleeding. Her shoes had finally given out, and rocks and twigs tore at her feet. The snow was dappled with blood.
Weariness clawed at her, she couldn't keep going—but she had to, she had to, she was afraid to stop in the wilderness.
She had never been alone in her life. There had always been the televisors and the transmitters, no place on Earth had been more than an instant away. But the world had expanded into immensity, the machines were dead, there was only cold and gloom and empty white distances. The world of warmth and music and laughter and casual enjoyment was as remote and unreal as a dream.
Was it a dream? Had she always stumbled sick and hungry through a nightmare world of leafless trees and drifting snow and wind that sheathed her in cold through the thin rags of her garments? Or was this the dream, a sudden madness of horror and death?
Death—no, no, no, she couldn't die, she was one of the immortals, she mustn't die!
The wind blew and blew.
Night was falling, winter night. A wild dog bayed, somewhere out in the gloom. She tried to scream, but her throat was raw with shrieking; only a dry croak would come out.
Help me, help me, help me.
Maybe she should have stayed with the man. He had devised traps, had caught an occasional rabbit or squirrel and flung her the leavings. But he looked at her so strangely when several days had gone by without a catch. He would have killed her and eaten her; she had to flee.
Run, run, run— She couldn't run, the forest reached on forever, she was caught in cold and night, hunger and death.
What had happened, what had happened, what had become of the world? What would become of her?
She had liked to pretend she was one of the ancient goddesses, creating what she willed out of nothingness, served by a huge and eternal world whose one purpose was to serve her. Where was that world now?
Hunger twisted in her like a knife. She tripped over a snow-buried log and lay there, trying feebly to rise.
We were too soft, too complacent, she thought dimly.
We lost all our powers, we were just little parasites on our machines. Now we're unfit—
No! I won't have it! I was a goddess once—
Spoiled brat, jeered the demon in her mind. Baby crying for its mother. You should be old enough to look after yourself—after all these centuries. You shouldn't be in circles waiting for a help that will never come, you should be helping yourself, making a shelter, finding nuts and roots, building a trap. But you can't. All the self-reliance has withered out you.
No—help, help, help
Something moved in the gloom. She choked a scream. Yellow eyes glowed like twin fires, and the immense form stepped noiselessly forth.
For an instant she gibbered in a madness of fear, and then sudden realization came and left her gaping with unbelief—then instant eager acceptance.
There could only be one tiger in this forest.
“Harol,” she whispered, and climbed to her feet. “Harol.”
It was all right. The nightmare was over. Harol would look after her. He would hunt for her, protect her, bring her back to the world of machines that must still exist. “Harol,” she cried. “Harol, my dear—”
The tiger stood motionless; only his twitching tail had life. Briefly, irrelevantly, remembered sounds trickled through his mind: "Your basic mentality should be stable for a year or two, barring accidents.... “ But the noise was meaningless, it slipped through his brain into oblivion.
He was hungry. The crippled paw hadn't healed well, he couldn't catch game.
Hunger, the most elemental need of all, grinding within him, filling his tiger brain and tiger body until nothing else was left.
He stood looking at the thing that didn't run away. He had killed another a while back—he licked his mouth at the thought.
From somewhere long ago he remembered that the thing had once been—he had been—he couldn't re-member
He stalked forward.
“Harol,” said Avi. There was fear rising horribly in her voice.
The tiger stopped. He knew that voice. He remembered—he remembered—
He had known her once. There was something about her that held him back.
But he was hungry. And his instincts were clamoring in him.
But if only he could remember, before it was too late—Time stretched into a horrible eternity while they stood facing each other—the lady and the tiger.
THE END
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