Michael Holt called his family together. Three wives, the eldest near his own age, the youngest only seventy. Seven sons, ranging in age from sixty to a hundred thirteen. The wives of his sons. His grandchildren. His top echelon of robots.
He assembled them in the grand hall of Holt Keep, and took his place at the head of the table, and stared down the rows at their faces, so like his own, and said quietly, “I am going to pay a call on Lord McDermott.”
He could see the shock on their faces. They were too well disciplined to speak their minds, of course. He was Lord Holt; and his word was law, and he could, if he so pleased, order them all put to death on the spot. Once, many years before, he had been forced to assert his parental authority in just such a way, and no one would ever forget it.
He smiled. “You think I’ve gone soft in my old age, and perhaps I have. But McDermott has had a stroke. He’s completely paralyzed from the neck down. He wants to tell me something, and I’m going to go. His screens are down and he’s sending all his robots out of the house. I could have blasted the place apart if I wanted to.”
He could see the muscles working in the jaws of his sons. They wanted to cry out, but they did not dare.
Holt went on, “I’m going alone except for a few robots. If there’s been no word from me for half an hour after I’m seen entering the house, you’re authorized to come after me. If there’s any interference with the rescue party, it will mean war. But I don’t think there’ll be trouble. Anyone who comes after me in less than half an hour will be put to death.”
Holt’s words died away in a shiver of echoes. He eyed them all, one at a time. This was a critical moment, he knew. If they dared, they might decide among themselves that he had gone mad, and depose him. That had happened before too, in other families. They could topple him, reprogram all the robots to take commands from them instead, and confine him to his wing of the house. He had given them evidence enough, just now, of his irresponsibility.
But they made no move. They lacked the guts. He was head of the household, and his word was law. They sat, pale and shaken and dazed, as he rolled his chair past them and out of the grand hall.
Within an hour, he was ready to go. Winter was in the fourth of its seven months, and Michael Holt had not left the house since the first snowfall. But he had nothing to fear from the elements. He would not come in contact with the frigid air of the sub-zero plain. He entered his car within his own house, and it glided out past the defense perimeter, a gleaming dark teardrop sliding over the fresh snow. Eight of his robots accompanied him, a good enough army for almost any emergency.
A visual pickup showed him the scene at McDermott Keep. The robots were filing out, an army of black ants clustering around the great gate. He could see them marching eastward, vanishing from sight beyond the house. A robot overhead reported that they were heading for the river by the dozens.
The miles flew past. Black, twisted trees poked through the snow, and Holt’s car weaved a way through them. Far below, under many feet of whiteness, lay the fertile fields. In the spring, all would be green, and the leafy trees would help to shield the view of McDermott Keep, though they could not hide it altogether. In winter, the ugly copper- colored house was totally visible. That made the winters all the more difficult for Holt to endure.
A robot said softly, “We are approaching the borderlands, your lordship.”
“Try a test shot. See if his screens are still down.”
“Shall I aim for the house?”
“No. A tree just in front of it.”
Holt watched. A thick-boled, stubby tree in McDermott’s front palisade gleamed a moment, and then was not there.
“The screens are still down,” the robot reported.
“All right. Let’s cross the border.”
He leaned back against the cushion. The car shot forward. They left the bounds of Holt’s own estate, and entered McDermott’s. There was no warning ping to tell them they were trespassing. McDermott had even turned off the boundary scanners, then. Holt pressed sweaty palms together. More than ever he felt that he had let himself be drawn into some sort of trap. There was no turning back, now. He was across the border, into McDermott’s own territory. Better to die boldly, he thought, than to live huddled in a shell.
He had never been this close to McDermott Keep before. When it was being built, McDermott had invited him to inspect it, but Holt had of course refused. Nor had he been to the housewarming; alone among the lords of the planet, he had stayed home to sulk. He could hardly even remember when he had left his own land at all. There were few places to go on this world, with its fifty estates of great size running through the temperate belt, and whenever Holt thirsted for the companionship of his fellow lords, which was not often, he could have it easily enough via telescreen. Some of them came to him, now and then. It was strange that when he finally did stir to pay a call, it should be a call on McDermott.
Drawing near the enemy keep, he found himself reluctantly admitting that it was less ugly at close range than it seemed from the windows of Holt Keep. It was a great blocky building, hundreds of yards long, with a tall octagonal tower rising out of its northern end, a metal spike jabbing perhaps five hundred feet high. The reflected afternoon light, bouncing from the snowfield, gave the metal-sheathed building a curiously oily look, not unattractive at this distance.
“We are within the outer defense perimeter,” a robot told Holt.
“Fine. Keep going.”
The robots sounded worried and perturbed, he thought. Of course, they weren’t programmed to show much emotional range, but he could detect a note of puzzlement in what they said and how they said it. They couldn’t understand this at all. It did not seem to be an invasion of McDermott Keep—that they could understand—but yet it was not a friendly visit, either.
When they were a hundred yards from the great gate of McDermott Keep, the doors swung open. Holt called McDermott and said, “See that those doors stay open all the time I’m here. If they begin to close, there’ll be trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” McDermott said. “I’m not planning any tricks.”
Holt’s car shot between the gate walls, and he knew that now he was at his enemy’s mercy. His car rolled up to the open carport and went on through, so that he was actually within McDermott Keep. His robots followed him through.
“May I close the carport?” McDermott asked.
“Keep it open,” Holt said. “I don’t mind the cold.”
The hood of his car swung back. His robots helped him out. Holt shivered momentarily as the cold outside air, filtering into the carport, touched him. Then he passed through the rising inner door, and, flanked by two sturdy robots, walked slowly but doggedly into the keep.
McDermott’s voice reached him over a loudspeaker. “I am on the third floor of the tower,” he said. “If I had not sent all the robots away, I could have let one of them guide you.”
“You could send a member of your family down,” Holt said sourly.
McDermott ignored that. “Continue down the corridor until it turns. Go past the armor room. You will reach a dropshaft that leads upward.”
Holt and his robots moved through the silent halls. The place was like a museum. The dark high-vaulted corridor was lined with statuary and artifacts, everything musty-looking and depressing. How could anyone want to live in a tomb like this? Holt passed a shadowy room where ancient suits of armor stood mounted. He could not help but compute the cost of shipping such useless things across the light-years from Earth.
They came to the dropshaft. Holt and his two robots entered. A robot nudged the reversing stud and up they went, into the tower Holt had hated so long. McDermott guided them with a word or two.
They passed down a long hall whose dull, dark walls were set off by a gleaming floor that looked like onyx. A sphincter opened, admitting them to an oval room ringed by windows. There was a dry, foul stench of death and decay in the room. Andrew McDermott sat squarely in the midd
le of the room, nesting in his life-capsule. A tangled network of tubes and pipes surrounded him. All of McDermott that was visible was a pair of eyes, like shining coals in the wasted face.
“I’m glad you came,” McDermott said. His voice, without benefit of electronic amplification, was thin and feeble, like the sound of feathers brushing through the air.
Holt stared at him in fascination. “I never thought I’d see this room,” he said.
“I never thought you would either. But it was good of you to come, Holt. You look well, you know. For a man your age.” The thin lips curled in a grotesque twisted smile. “Of course, you’re still a youngster. Not even two hundred, yet. I’ve got you by thirty years.”
Holt did not feel like listening to the older man’s ramblings. “What is it you wanted?” he asked without warmth. “I’m here, but I’m not going to stay all day. You said you had something vital to tell me.”
“Not really to tell,” McDermott said. “More to ask. A favor. I want you to kill me, Holt.”
“What?”
“It’s very simple. Disconnect my feed line. There it is, right by my feet. Just rip it out. I’ll be dead in an hour. Or do it even more quickly. Turn off my lungs. This switch, right here. That would be the humane way to do it.”
“You have a strange sense of humor,” Holt said.
“Do you think so? Top the joke, then. Throw the switch and cap the jest.”
“You made me come all the way here to kill you?”
“Yes,” McDermott said. The blazing eyes were unblinking now. “I’ve been immobilized for a year, now. I’m a vegetable in this thing. I sit here day after day, idle, bored. And healthy. I might live another hundred years, do you realize that, Holt? I’ve had a stroke, yes. I’m paralyzed. But my body’s still vigorous. This damned capsule of mine keeps me in tone. It feeds me and exercises me and—do you think I want to go on living this way, Holt? Would you?”
Holt shrugged. “If you want to die, you could ask someone in your family to unplug you.”
“I have no family.”
“Is that true? You had five sons…”
“Four dead, Holt. The other one gone to Earth. No one lives here any more. I’ve outlasted them all. I’m as eternal as the heavens. Two hundred thirty years, that’s long enough to live. My wives are dead, my grandchildren gone away. They’ll come home when they find they’ve inherited. Not before. There’s no one here to throw the switch.”
“Your robots,” Holt suggested.
Again the grim smile. “You must have special robots, Holt. I don’t have any that can be tricked into killing their master. I’ve tried it. They know what’ll happen if my life-capsule is disconnected. They won’t do it. You do it, Holt. Turn me off. Blow the tower to hell, if it bothers you. You’ve won the game. The prize is yours.”
There was a dryness in Holt’s throat, a band of pressure across his chest. He tottered a little. His robots, ever sensitive to his condition, steadied him and guided him to a chair. He had been on his feet a long time for a man of his age. He sat quietly until the spasm passed.
Then he said, “I won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too simple, McDermott. I’ve hated you too long. I can’t just flip a switch and turn you off.”
“Bombard me, then. Blast the tower down.”
“Without provocation? Do you think I’m a criminal?” Holt asked.
“What do you want me to do?” McDermott said tiredly. “Order my robots to trespass? Set fire to your orchards? What will provoke you, Holt?”
“Nothing,” Holt said. “I don’t want to kill you. Get someone else to do it.”
The eyes glittered. “You devil,” McDermott said. “You absolute devil. I never realized how much you hated me. I send for you in a time of need, asking to be put out of my misery, and will you grant me that? Oh, no. Suddenly you get noble. You won’t kill me! You devil, I see right through you. You’ll go back to your keep and gloat because I’m a living dead man here. You’ll chuckle to yourself because I’m alone and frozen into this capsule. Oh, Holt, it’s not right to hate so deeply! I admit I’ve given offense. I deliberately built the tower here to wound your pride. Punish me, then. Take my life. Destroy my tower. Don’t leave me here!”
Holt was silent. He moistened his lips, filled his lungs with breath, got to his feet. He stood straight and tall, towering over the capsule that held his enemy.
“Throw the switch,” McDermott begged.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Devil!”
Holt looked at his robots. “It’s time to go,” he said. “There’s no need for you to guide us. We can find our way out of the building.”
The teardrop-shaped car sped across the shining snow. Holt said nothing as he made the return journey. His mind clung to the image of the immobilized McDermott, and there was no room for any other thought. That stench of decay tingled in his nostrils. That glint of madness in the eyes as they begged for oblivion.
They were crossing the borderlands, now. Holt’s car broke the warning barrier and got a pinging signal to halt and identify. A robot gave the password, and they went on toward Holt Keep.
His family clustered near the entrance, pale, mystified. Holt walked in under his own steam. They were bursting with questions, but no one dared ask anything. It remained for Holt to say the first word.
He said, “McDermott’s a sick, crazy old man. His family is dead or gone. He’s a pathetic and disgusting sight. I don’t want to talk about the visit.”
Sweeping past them, Holt ascended the shaft to the command room. He peered out, over the snowy field. There was a double track in the snow, leading to and from McDermott Keep, and the sunlight blazed in the track, making it a line of fire stretching to the horizon.
The building shuddered suddenly. Holt heard a hiss and a whine. He flipped on his communicator and a robot voice said, “McDermott Keep is attacking, your lordship. We’ve deflected a high-energy bombardment.”
“Did the screens have any trouble with it?”
“No, your lordship. Not at all. Shall I prepare for a counterattack?”
Holt smiled. “No,” he said. “Take defensive measures only. Extend the screens right to the border and keep them there. Don’t let McDermott do any harm. He’s only trying to provoke me, but he won’t succeed.”
The tall, gaunt man walked to the control panel. His gnarled hands rested lovingly on the equipment. So they had come to warfare at last, he thought. The cannon of McDermott Keep were doing their puny worst. Flickering needles told the story: whatever McDermott was throwing was being absorbed easily. He didn’t have the firepower to do real harm.
Holt’s hands tightened on the controls. Now, he thought, he could blast McDermott Keep to ash. But he would not do it, any more than he would throw the switch that would end Andrew McDermott’s life.
McDermott did not understand. Not cruelty, but simple selfishness, had kept him from killing the enemy lord, just as, all these years, Holt had refrained from launching an attack he was certain to win. He felt remotely sorry for the paralyzed man locked in the life-capsule. But it was inconceivable that Holt would kill him.
Once you are gone, Andrew, who will I have to hate? Holt wondered.
That was why he had not killed. No reason more complicated than that.
Michael Holt peered through the foot-thick safety glass of his command-room window. He saw the zone of brown earth, the snowfield with its fresh track, and the coppery ugliness of McDermott Keep. His intestines writhed at the ugliness of that baroque tower against the horizon. He imagined the skyline as it had looked a hundred years ago, before McDermott had built his foul monstrosity there.
He fondled the controls of his artillery bank as though they were a young girl’s breasts. Then he turned, slowly and stiffly, making his way across the command-room to his chair, and sat quietly, listening to the sound of Andrew McDermott’s futile bombardment expending itself harmlessly against
the outer defenses of Holt Keep, and soon it grew dark as the winter night closed quietly down.
THE SIXTH PALACE
A month and a half after “Neighbor,” I was back to Fred with “The Sixth Palace”—February, 1964, published in the February, 1965 Galaxy. But that didn’t mean a return to my old bang-’em-out prolificity of the 1950’s. Now that I had had had a taste of what it was like to tackle any kind of science-fictional theme and handle it to my own taste without fear of rejection, I was becoming more and more enthusiastic about writing stories for Pohl. He was pleased too, and encouraged me to keep going. By the summer of 1964 he and I were discussing my doing a series of five novellas for him—the “Blue Fire” stories, as I called them, which became the novel To Open the Sky. I had told Fred at the outset that my contributions to his magazine would probably be few and far between, because I was more interested in writing non-fiction, and at the beginning that was true: but, bit by bit, the no-rejections deal I had worked out with him had lured me back into the regular production of science fiction. I did the first of the “Blue Fire” stories in November, 1964, the second in December, the third in March, 1965. For someone who had planned to dabble in s-f only on a part-time basis, I was suddenly getting very active again after six or seven years away from the center of the scene.
I don’t, incidentally, remember where I found the quote from Hebrew mystical literature that was the spark for the story. Long ago I asked no less an authority than Avram Davidson, but he didn’t know its source either. I do wonder where it came from.
~
Ben Azai was deemed worthy and stood at the gate of the sixth palace and saw the ethereal splendor of the pure marble plates. He opened his mouth and said twice, “Water! Water!” In the twinkling of an eye they decapitated him and threw eleven thousand iron bars at him. This shall be a sign for all generations that no one should err at the gate of the sixth palace.
— Lesser Hekhaloth
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