The First Protector ec-2

by James White

  The dark-haired son was looking thoughtful, the redhead's grip on his weapon had eased and he was frowning in perplexity while their mother's face was showing suspicion rather than fear. Her eyes moved from Declan to her two sons and the king before she turned them on him again.

  "But what," she said, speaking for the first time, "is to happen to us?"

  "I am reliably informed," said Declan, without saying that the information had come from the very knowledgeable diplomat and spy, his friend Brian of Tirconnel, "that your kingdom has seen difficult times over the years since I was last here, with cattle raids along the southern border and incursions by neighboring tuaths seeking expansion and who thought that a king too ailing to take up arms against them would offer little resistance. But there was resistance, from you and your sons, who with great effort and difficulty and at times subtle statecraft, were able to maintain the kingdom within its original borders. Those difficulties would be reduced, and I would be grateful, if you were to remain here to advise and assist me in the future ordering and defense of this land of ours. However…"

  The woman and her sons were watching him intently as he raised a cautionary finger toward her and went on, "… You may remain as queen but neither of your sons will inherit the throne. If at any time you should think otherwise, and plot against me, you will be banished and your sons will not live long to regret their error. Is this clearly understood by all of you?"

  They did not reply but their expressions said that it was. It was his father who broke the silence.

  "I, too, regret an error," he said in a voice so weak and close to a whisper that it sounded like the wind rustling through long grass.

  A once powerful, broadly built, and fearless warrior king shaven down to a near-skeleton by age and wasting illness was a pitiable sight, Declan thought, and he felt the last of his anger and hatred drain from his mind. He moved closer, seeing out of the corner of his eye the redheaded son's hand tighten on his sword hilt and then loosen again.

  Before Declan could speak, his father went on, "I regretted it soon after you left us, no, were driven to leave by me. A child cannot be held responsible for the death of his mother in childbirth. Perhaps the midwife shared some of the fault, but none of it was yours. But in the madness of my grief and stupidity I would not see this until long after you were gone." His voice strengthened a little. "I hereby forbid my queen, her sons and you, Liam Mor, or any of my people to raise a hand to defend me, for I know what I have done and the fate I deserve.

  'Tell me, Declan, am I to die?"

  "Yes…" said Declan.

  He took a long step forward and going down on one knee he grasped his father's hand, but carefully because the fingers were as fragile as the bones in a bird's wing.

  "… But not before you have seen my wife, Sinead," he went on, "and held on your knees the boy and girl who bear our name. And not before you yourself as the reigning king are ready to die surrounded by your family and friends.

  "With your permission I will leave you now," he went on quickly, because emotion in grown men, especially in himself, made him uncomfortable. "Liam Mor will want to stand down his men and I must withdraw mine and set up camp. You have many matters to discuss among yourselves. Take time to consider them well and then send word of the result to me."

  He bowed again, looked into his father's shining eyes, then turned quickly to leave.

  They were approaching the courtyard when a sudden, flat-handed blow struck his back, sending him staggering almost to his knees.

  "Young Declan," said Big Liam, "that was well done. You will be a good king."

  In his ear ornament he heard the voice of Sinead saying softly, "He is wrong, Declan. I have had a timesight. You will be a great king."

  –

  And so it came to pass that Declan returned to his home and his father to the position of Ionadacht, the first lieutenant of the clan and heir to the kingdom. With him came Sinead and the two children, who increased in number to five-another boy and two more girls, all of whom grew up to be as strong and tall as himself or small and slender and comely like their mother. After a period of initial distrust and polite hostility, the queen and her two sons accepted the situation and worked hard and well for the kingdom. When his father succumbed to his illness, the old queen followed him to the grave within a few days. She had been a hard, ambitious, and gifted woman and healthy for her years, but it seemed that she had not the will to go on living without his father and there was nothing that Sinead's healing arts could do about that. Her two sons married well into the reigning families of neighboring tuaths, for love, Declan suspected, as well as statecraft, because the two princesses were beauteous and the two small kingdoms concerned joined with his and made it one of the strongest in all Connaught.

  But strangely and in spite of many urgings, Declan made no attempt to use his power to expand further. His specially trained and fiercely able soldiers had either married locally or been rewarded and gone their own ways while his own young people were trained to replace them if or when the need should arise. Although he had learned the ways of war in many foreign countries as well as from orbital observations of great generals at work, Declan was an exceptionally gifted commander in the field who seemed more concerned with the maintenance of peace and the prosperity that went with it than the waging of war, and he became respected more than he was feared throughout the great provincial Kingdoms of Hibernia.

  –

  Twice he was invited by his peers to the Hill of Tara, there to submit himself for election to the position of Ard-Ri, the High King, a station open only to those of proven courage and exemplary character. But graciously he refused the ultimate honor saying that he had matters requiring attention at home which involved him in enough responsibility.

  The matters included secret visits to and by Ma'el. There was a small, natural cavern under the castle that had been used as a store in times of siege. Declan had caused it to be deepened and enlarged and had then sealed off its only known entrance with a massively thick wall of stone and by tumbling the roof of its access tunnel. It was thought that the chamber housed Declan's treasure and that there was a secret entrance, but if so its position had never been revealed to anyone, not even to the children or his most trusted advisors. This was because the most used way in and out was by the operation of the dimension-folding mechanisms on Ma'el's spacecraft.

  Declan and his queen, Sinead, grew old; their children, with the exception of their first-born boy twin and heir called Mai after his godparent, left them to prosper or otherwise to be happy in other parts of Hibernia or far beyond, and the kingdom was stable and its people as content as they could hope to be in a still violent and uncertain land.

  But there were other matters of importance for the present as well as the far future for them to discuss and settle with the person they still regarded as their friend and master in his laboratory under the Hill above the Strand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  From the final comments and entry In the report on sapient Earth peoples, cultures, levels of technology, and future philosophical development by Investigator Ma'el on the concluding Day

  131,278…

  I have already forwarded my strong recommendation to the Synod that Earth and its people not be approached or exploited in any fashion by the Taelons until they have achieved their full intellectual and philosophical maturity, and my reasons for advocating that they then be given the status of our first non-Taelon Companions were given in detail. But my recommendations are being and will be ignored. I know this because I have given the timesight to the human species and one of them, the being Sinead, who sees far into the future with remarkable detail and clarity, has seen the presence of the Taelons on Earth nearly two millennia hence, as well as some evidence of smaller, clandestine visits in the interim.

  "For this reason I intend to conceal the full report lest it reveals present weaknesses which would enable you to take advantage of these people. Two copies w
ill be hidden elsewhere awaiting the arrival on the future scene of a Taelon or a local Protector with, I trust, more philosophical insight and social responsibility than the Synod is currently displaying.

  "It remains only for me to bid farewell to my short-lived Earth friends and protectors without revealing too much of what their race's future is to be.

  'The report of Ma'el the Investigator is concluded."

  –

  It was a small but strongly built crypt with walls and arching roof of well-fitted stone that would survive, Sinead said, until its discovery two millennia hence by the future protectors Marquette and Boone. By then it would be covered by a drinking house in a small town called, by the people of the time, Strandhill. Its exact location would be given, in the Taelon language, by a message inscribed on a mosaic close to but not in the tomb of Declan…

  "I hate talking about your tomb like this," she said, looking from Ma'el to Declan with tears close to her eyes. "You should not be walking on the hillside and climbing about in this hole in the ground. Your legs aren't what they were and, I don't want even to think about you dying."

  "It will happen sometime," Declan said, smiling. He rested his hand briefly on her head which, in spite of her advancing years, was still thickly covered by long hair that remained the color of a starless night. He felt the aching in his chest, the constant thumping of the veins in his head, and the even more intense pain of the inevitable separation from her, and silently he added, "It will be sometime soon."

  When she remained silent he went on softly, "It seems wrong to me that my memories, our memories, and the thoughts and dangers, and most of all the love of the past and present that we share, should die with us. That would be wasteful on somebody's part. Do you remember that Algonquin medicine man telling us about the body of his newly dead chief? He said that the body was but an empty tent whose former occupant had gone somewhere to do something else." He laughed gently. "I would not like to spend all my time in his happy hunting grounds chasing buffalo, but wherever I do go, I would like you to follow me there."

  "I will," she said. For a moment she blinked her eyes rapidly, then she laughed and said, "Declan, you're beginning to sound like a follower of the Christus. Master, where do the Taelons go when they die?"

  Ma'el inclined his head in the way that meant he was not going to answer the question, but this time he surprised them.

  "My race is long-lived," he replied, "and, except in rare and usually calamitous circumstances, our lives end only when we consider that they have been lived to their full intellectual and emotional capacity and we choose to end them. We have, therefore, no great desire to live another even longer and possibly eternal life. For us this remains a subject for philosophical debate and speculation but we have, however, no direct proof that an afterlife does not exist. The Kimera are said to have gone somewhere, but… perhaps I will be surprised."

  "But if you don't have to die, Ma'el," said Sinead, "please stay with us. We don't want to lose you, not yet."

  "And I do not want to part from you," said Ma'el, looking into the heavy casket with its stone lid that awaited him, "who are my protectors, trusted assistants, and only true friends. But it is better that we part now for two reasons. By the Taelon measure of longevity, you have not long to go, and you should live the remainder of your lives knowing that you will be free of my interference and, more importantly, that the two of you may have accomplished more for the ultimate survival of both our species than any other human beings in your past and future history. There remains only the one service that you can do for me."

  "You know," said Sinead quietly, "that it will be done."

  "I know," said Ma'el, "but in the time left to you I must know that you fully understand my instructions and that they will be carried out."

  Sinead nodded calmly. She had not taken offense at Ma'el's words because she knew that he was deeply troubled and no criticism had been intended.

  "It is plain from your timesightings," Ma'el went on, "that the Synod has and will ignore my recommendations, as they would my report if 1 were to transmit it. Instead there is one copy of it left in the spacecraft hidden under your castle and another concealed in a location unknown to you. Sometime in the far future they will be discovered by someone who will study my report and, I hope, fully understand its implications."

  Ma'el paused for a moment, stepping into the casket and sitting rather than lying down in it before he continued, "They must understand the significance of the mosaic, and of the faces and symbols surrounding mine. This planet's sapient species is a particularly savage and cruel one, although not by the standards of some of those found among the stars. There are wars fought, viciously and utterly without mercy, in which thousands lose their lives for ridiculous or trivial reasons. There are totally unnecessary and incredibly painful human sacrifices, and torturing and bloody violence performed for a few moments of gratification such as those perpetrated by many of the Caesars, although they were not the only offenders by far. Countless lives of members of an already short-lived species are being shortened further, all too often without mercy, without reason or even without thought. To a civilized entity this planet is horrendous, a cultural nightmare which is, regrettably, only one world among many. But it is not entirely bad, and that is what gives me hope.

  "For even amid the worst of the carnage and suffering," he went on, "there is increasingly being displayed a high order of bravery, of self-sacrifice and of compassion allied to an indomitable will to survive and surmount the worst that man or nature can throw against you. The behavior of the Followers of the Christus in the Roman arena is only one example. There is a small but growing awareness that showing mercy is not a weakness but a philosophical strength, and that might is not necessarily right.

  "I have observed this in you, Declan," he continued, "and seen its increasing presence in others. The cause stems from the influences of the small but growing number of thinkers and philosophers and lawgivers who have arisen among you, but mostly it is due to the prophets and teachers who are awakening in you the racial conscience of what is truly right by spreading the words of your various gods who, for the most part, teach love and respect rather than blind hatred of a neighbor regardless of their strength, weakness, opposing beliefs, or skin pigmentation…"

  Without interrupting his measured flow of words, Ma'el slowly lay back and folded his hands across his chest. The high sides of the casket gave his voice an added resonance as he went on, "If this trend continues, and if you are given enough time to benefit from it, your people will reach a degree of philosophical maturity and civilization unparalleled among the cultures of the explored galaxy, and will remain strong with these qualities intact so that we will be able to withstand any threat from the Jarridians or anyone else. That is the reason for the background subjects of the mosaic. They are there for those who will later have the ability to see and understand the implicit philosophical message that the people of Earth and the Taelon should be joined as equals.

  "Together we would be unbeatable. But if we fight each other, all hope for the survival of this world and the countless others that fill the night sky will be lost. Farewell, my friends, and please go now."

  "But, but we can still talk," Sinead protested, tears coming to her eyes. "About the old times, the things we did together and, we've time to say a proper good-bye. You aren't dead yet."

  "No," Ma'el replied gently, "nor do I intend to die for some time." He tapped the back of one hand with the fingers of the other. "You have seen what lies under this shell, the seemingly insubstantial patterns and structures of force that are my true body. Know, then, that all the physical work that you can do for me is completed. In the fullness of time and if our plans reach fruition, you will have the thanks of the entire Taelon species, and you already have mine. But from now onward I must work without this physical body covering, and alone.

  "Please, close me in."

  As the heavy cover was sliding into place, Ma'el
looked up at them with his large, soft eyes and lifted one hand in a gesture that was more like a benediction than a farewell.

  –

  After the death of King Declan the years passed quickly for Sinead. She grew old and feeble and even her long, night black hair was showing the gray streaks of dawn although her mind, she told herself, remained young. Deliberately she took little part in the affairs of the kingdom, because her son the king and his queen loved her but were sure that she was too old and frail to be burdened with the affairs of state. So she pleased herself greatly by playing with her grandchildren until they, too, became young men and women with children of their own, and she was left with the time-sightings and her memories that were so clear in sight and sound and touch that she was almost reliving them.

  Some of the timesightings were so strange that she could not understand what she was seeing and others, especially those concerning the almost magical devices and abilities of the healers of that future time, made her gasp with excitement and wonder. Some were so terrifying that she was glad they were of a distant time and could not affect her as a person. Others were happy because in them she saw another and younger Declan, although that was not his name, who was a Protector of a Taelon Companion called Da'an. She felt pride in his daring adventures and almost jealous because he loved a comely young woman of the future who was not herself.