You serve an empire. Be emperor, yourself “Madness,” breathed the commander, but he was not so sure.
After all, this was what every man of every nation of every star planet had ever wanted, in his most secret dreams. A planet all his own. Handsome men to obey his every command, gloriously beautiful women to falling love with him.
And wealth, John Craig. Walk on!
Athalla trotted beside him on bare feet as he passed between the standing forms of men in armor and in loose, rich garments, between the women who might have been Aphrodites of the stars, they were so beautiful. Craig admitted to himself that he was tempted. What man would not be?
The chamber ended at last, before a shimmer in curtain of a thousand colors, colors that ran reds an blues and greens and whites and yellows all together in a saraband of brilliance. Through its shifting texture—he guessed it to be some form of energy—he could make out another chamber just as large.
There were no men and women in this next room, however.
Instead, he stared at the treasures of a million years. Gold lay heaped in coins and ingots beside great mounds of jewels. Massive golden chains lay piled in a profusion of thick links. He bent, tried to lift one chain, and could not, it was so heavy. There were tables of rare woods and ivory here, that held coffers filled to their brims with jewels.
Craig scooped into the jewels and lifted two handfuls of them into the air. His heart was thumping excitedly. He held here the ransom of a dozen planets in green emeralds the size of birds eggs, red rubies, pure white diamonds glittering with rainbow colors where the light struck them.
What price can a man set on duty On loyalty? John Craig did not know. He did know that were he to renege, to turn against Empire and serve this god Rhythane, no man would ever know. The enigma would expand outward, it would eat away the nearer planets and then the farther planets—farewell, dear Elval good-bye, old pal Dan!—until the only livings things in the universe would be the men and women who serve the emperor John the First.
The Commander sighed for the man he was.
This wealth is yours, John Craig.
Yes, it would go into his vaults when he was lord of Rhyllan. He would build great stone chambers and groined vaults to hold these jewels, these golden ropes, the ingots. There was a pressure of excitement and triumph building in his chest.
A fairy book world was this Rhyllan. What he might imagine, he might have with the help of its omnipotent god. This dancer who stood so close that he might touch her soft skin if he chose to do so, could be his to enjoy. So too, would Fiona herself if he wanted her, even Elva Marlowe, he supposed. Rhythane could search his mind, make him a twin of the golden woman.
His eyes ran around the room.
Ah, over there! Row on row of ornate gilded armor stood beside pedestals which held great helms crested by birds and animals. Huge shields quartered and emblazoned with heraldic designs glimmered in the indirect lighting of the vast room.
And swords! Exquisite products of the blacksmith's craft they were, thrust point-deep into blocks of wood, their long blades runed and scrolled with decorations. The hilts were braided with red and black ropings, their cross-pieces and quillons were fancifully carved and crusted with precious jewels. Here a sword-pommel was a gigantic diamond, there it might be an emerald to match the green velvet mountings of the scabbard displayed beside it.
Perhaps because he lived so much with weapons, Craig had a great affection for them. His hands went out almost reverently to grips, letting his fingers tighten as if he would draw the sword and wield it.
The blade hanging by its scabbard was a poor thing compared to these masterpieces.
All yours, man of Empire. Yours alone!
Craig let his fingers trail from the sword. “What do I do? Where do I go to swear this allegiance?” he asked.
There was a little silence. Then, almost sorrowfully, he heard the thought inside his head.
I did not think you would yield quite so clearly. I was prepared to grant you even more. But since you have, good! Walk on.
Craig stode forward. When he was past the swords, he turned and looked back, seeing Athalla frozen rigid in mid-motion, the pseudo-life gone out of her. Shrugging, he kept walking.
There was a flight of stone steps at the very end of the vast chamber. Craig took them one at a time, thinking they must go down into the very bowels of the planet.
Now he became aware of a vast throbbing, as if a gigantic heart were pounding far below his feet. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up as he asked himself: Can the planet be—alive? Is this some alien life-form with weird and wondrous powers, this Rhythane?
There was no answer from the god. Along a metallic corridor, down more steps. Then a door slid open ahead of him, and the voice in his mind bade him enter. The room was small, all red and gray metal in varying degrees of brightness. The doors slid shut and now Craig understood, as he felt movement, that he was in an elevator. It went down, down.
The throb grew louder. At last the car settled to a halt and the doors slid back. Craig stepped forward onto a metal platform that down into what might once have been the molten interior of the planet. There was only cool metal here, forming a great cup holding a white something which pulsed with unending energy as if it were a titanic heart.
The white energy was rimmed by what seemed to be a vast glass wall. Placing his hands against the rail, he stared down into that heart of brightness.
I am Rhythane, man of Empire.
This is my essence, this orb of energy which renews itself upon itself, as does the sun which warms the planet Rhyllan. I am eternal, all-powerful and all-knowing, for I can search the hearts and the minds of men.
Craig grinned wryly, “You must think us poor specimens.”
Beside perfection, anything is a poor specimen. In humanoids, the people of Rhydd, who created me, their descendants and the crewmen from the star-ships I trapped in the worlds of time, all of them try to fight against me—and fail.
"The Rhydd created you?" Craig asked in surprise.
To save themselves from extinction, yes.
The massive white energy ball sensed his interest and explained that many, many eons ago, when the black enigma did not exist, the people of Rhydd lived here on the planet Rhythane. They evolved from the dawn era when man lived in caves and fought with stones and flint weapons, as all humanoid races have done who evolved from those earliest ancestors.
As copper followed stone, and iron followed copper, the men of Rhythane grew in stature and in understanding as men have done all across the stars. The people of Rhydd discovered atomic energy, solar power, the secret of anti-gravity by which they could go out into space.
There were stars above Rhythane in those days; and man dreamed of traveling to the planets of those stars, if any existed. They went to their neighbor planet, Rhyllan, but they did not remain there, for the tug of homesickness was too great. Always they came back to their home world, Rhythane.
And then—
Far out in the deeps of space they saw The Danger. It was a cosmic storm, caused by the collision of a great comet with a solar wind of magnetic particles. The dust and frozen gases of the comet became filled with deadly radio-activity. It swept onward—straight for the planet Rhythane,
In time, it would have destroyed all life on the planet. Roused to a unity of goal and effort such as the Rhydd had never experienced, their scientists built a vast electronic computer deep underground, in various levels. Fed by a new and improved atomic power plant, it did the brain-work necessary to help the humans escape destruction.
Build a wall about the system, advised the computer, and it told them how to do it. A vast black cloud of a frequency unguessed by the Rhydd could dissipate that radioactivity when it struck, absorbing it. A hundred ships were built to go out to the rim of their solar system and lay the seeds which would build the cloud.
As the computer advised, so it was done. Now the people of Rhydd lived inside a clo
ud which blotted out the stars, but they were safe. And life went on. The computer that had saved them was added to, built upon, until its relays went unfathomable miles down through the crust of their planet. The reactor was spread out across many tiers, connected until it made a honeycomb of unlimited power deep beneath the surface,
The old power plants were torn down. The computer itself—jokingly, the people named it the heart of Rhythane—broadcast the staggering energies which kept their cities warm in winter, cool in summer, which fueled their surface cars and aircraft.
Even the spaceships which quested back and forth in their snug little corner of space were geared to work only by the energy which the computer sent out to them.
Of course, the heart of Rhythane was no longer a mere computer. It was a massive mechanical brain, and also a mechanical power source. Its beneficial rays made every man handsome and strong, every woman beautiful. It cultivated vast tracts of vegetation for edibles to feed its people, it taught man how to raise and shelter the animals they ate, so that none should go hungry or want for any delicacy.
The years passed into a century, became two and then three hundred years. The people of Rhydd had forgotten all they ever knew about independence, For so long a time had they depended on this heart of Rhythane, they knew no other way of life.
Always, scientists improved on their own creation. Instead of a series of tiers holding the many atomic reactors, with the advice and calculations of the mechanical brain they built a single giant orb of radioactive gases, like a small sun. Connecting hookups fastened that core of radiant energy to every other part of the vast honeycomb of computers and other atomic power sources.
Now the people of Rhydd owned a god, in truth. The heart of Rhythane possessed all the knowledge of the race. Men had forgotten the information they had fed into the memory banks over the centuries, but the sun-orb did not forget. It possessed memory, it held within its intricate system of relays and tubes the ability to make judgments by studying cause and effect. In such manner, the one-time machine became a living, intelligent brain.
For another century, the heart of Rhythane waited, familiarizing itself with its powers and abilities. At its requests—sufficiently disguised to fool the scientists of their world—the people of Rhydd began a series of investigations which resulted in life itself being transferred to the heart of Rhythane. An awesome battery of many frequencies was set up to bombard the sun-orb. Just so had life begun in the ancient seas of the planet. The thinking machine duplicated those conditions, to give itself life.
With life and its super-human intelligence, together with its almost unlimited powers, the heart of Rhythane knew arrogance. It did not need the race of Rhydd. It was sufficient unto itself.
Yet it did not destroy the people who had caused its creation. No, there was a better way than that. It would send them into space, to that other planet, to Rhyllan. And there it would cause their downfall.
As it planned, so it performed. The machine formed a seepage of deadly gases, and prevented the scientists from discovering where the leak originated. When it was asked the question, the living machine advised that the people of Rhydd permit it to make the proper corrections in the crust shift that caused the gas. Until then, life would not be safe on Rhythane. The people must travel across space to Rhyllan, the sister planet.
The machine helped the people build great ships motorless—which would be towed across the hundred million miles between Rhythane and Rhyllan. One by one, every man, woman and child on Rhythane was transported across the void to their new home. Until at last, the heart of Rhythane was alone. The living sun-orb did not know loneliness, not at first. It was busy broadcasting energy to the other planet, that the Rhydd might build their great cities like Uphor and inhabit them, and live as they had lived, dependent on the heart of Rhythane.
Parasites they had become, parasites they remained.
The thing that was to become Rhythane the god was not happy with the people who created it, for that very reason. They knew it was no god, only a sun-orb with unimaginable powers. Long it brooded in the isolation of this planet it had pre-emptied. It decided that it would create its own people, the Toparrs.
From the miles—deep relay circuits and its memory banks it drew out the needed information, and from the planet itself it drew the water and the chemicals needed to form the yellow half-men. It made the worker—Toparrs, who could speak, and the fighter Toparrs, who could only telepath, and after many years, priests who might do both.
During these years, it ignored the Rhydd people on the neighboring planet. Unable to travel back to Rhythane—the motor that had towed them to their new planetary home had returned to Rhythane—they retrogressed. Slowly they sank back down the evolutionary trail to barbarism. Forced to rely on their own resources without the energy which the sun-orb broadcast, they lacked the skills and knowledge to do more than simply exist.
It took a long time, a little more than two centuries. The cities they had built—like Uphor—grew cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer without the Rhythane-powered atomic plants. The people left the cities, slowly and by tens and twenties, until there were few of them still inhabited.
In the meantime, and while the Rhydd were still inhabiting the cities, the Toparrs struck. Some last vestige of sympathy in the sun-orb showed itself when it armed them only with lances, bows, arrows, swords. These weapons the Rhydd did not possess, but they could hammer them out from metals they owned. The fighting went on for many years.
Some inventive genius among the people of the Rhydd invented a crude gun. It was then, after the Toparrs had tasted terrible defeats on a number of occasions, that the heart of Rhythane invented the tarath and with it, armed its yellow half-human warriors. From that moment on, the defeat of the humans was assured.
The sun-orb had decided, over the centuries and with the aid of its stored knowledge, that it was a god. According to all the definitions, it was. It knew everything in this sector of space which there was to know. It possessed the power of creation. It gave of its godlike powers to sustain the life of one form of intelligence, it created creatures of limited intelligence.
The idea was suggested by the Rhydd themselves, who related after such along time only vague memories of a greater world than Rhyllan, where all their needs were taken care of by something called the heart of Rhythane. After a time, it became on! Rhythane, synonymous with all that was good, that was powerful; in short, a god. Rhythane was both god and planet, and a legendary Eden out of which they had come long and long ago.
Then Rhythane who was become a god decided that he should be worshiped. The Toparrs, with the aid of Rhydd captives would build a temple to him in a city of his choosing. Until now, the Toparrs had lived a nomadic life, dwelling intents like barbarians. Rhythane developed three time warps, to separate the past, the present, and the future. The past showed to the rest of the Enigma space merely an uninhabited world such as had existed before the migration of the Rhydd. The present was the normal flow of time, in which the Rhydd lived. The future was to be his world, and the world of the Toparrs.
As Rhythane thought, so it acted. It created the warping belts that every Toparr wore, that created a field of warp-space powerful enough to transfer a human being into past, present or future. There were safeguards built inside the belt that protected the humanoid body from the wrenching of the awesome forces of time and space caused by the turning of the control device. A warp field formed outside the belt through which the Toparr who wore it might slide was safeguarded by the null-force field generated by the inner portion of the belt.
The years wore on into centuries and the centuries into millennia, The people of the Rhydd were hunted almost to extinction. The Toparrs built their cities in the Beyond which was the future. There they lived, and with captive Rhydd and their children built the old temple to Rhythane.
After a time, the old temple became inadequate. I could not enter into it, fully. It could not contain my
essence. And so I sent word to the lanth, my priest, that he must build me a new and greater temple.
As Rhythane said, so it was done. Before the temple was completed, almost before it was well begun, the fighting ships of the Empire landed in the Then-time, the past, or what their crews supposed to be an uninhabited world. It was easy to swing them over into the Now-time, or the normal present and send Toparrs to capture them.
You know the rest, man of Empire. "Show me,” said Craig. "Show me this marvel of electronic engineering that is Rhythane the god.”
You could not make the journey in ten times ten days. I go deep, deep into this planet. Its solid rocks are honeycombed with corridors filled with machinery. Remember, the people of Rhydd lived here on Rhythane for many centuries before they migrated to Rhyllan. I was their sole concern, for I was their power and their knowledge, their laboratory and library, and the very hand that fed them.
"Nevertheless,” said the commander.
Then come, walk with me. He walked away from the catwalk and along an intersecting corridor. Everywhere on either side and from floor to ceiling of the tunnel, there were banks of glass and metal, of flashing lights and humming power tubes. It was like being in the bowels of a complicated machine. In effect, he thought, this was just what Rhythane was; no more, no less.
And since it was a machine, it could be destroyed. Or—shut off. Craig felt a stab of regret move inside him, remembering Athalla and the other women, the vast treasures that Rhythane had collected across the centuries. All this might be his, were he to let Rhythane make him emperor.
A strange creature is a man. He is loyal, honest, sincere. Craig thought of Dan Ingalls, of Rolf Olsen, of Fiona and Elva Marlowe, and understood that no wealth might tempt him from what his heart and mind told him was his duty.
He put out a hand and touched a switch. He threw it over. Instantly the flashing lights along this section of the corridor went black.
Man of Empire—restore that switch!
Beyond the Black Enigma Page 12