New Writings in SF 23 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  The crashed starship was about three miles from the vault. Julian arrived there to find that Neverdie had crawled out and lost consciousness. He lay on a bank of green-and-purple flowers.

  Julian was adapting quickly to his situation. To his senses the ages he had lain in the time-vault took on the subjective value of a few minutes only, and he required no lengthy reorientation. He took out the anaesthetic spray in case Neverdie should awaken and prove troublesome; but its contents had either denatured or leaked away and no spray issued. Tossing it to one side, he considered the problem of transporting Neverdie to his time-vault and hit on the idea of making a sledge.

  Taking out his knife he cut down some nearby saplings and after one or two false starts fashioned a rough vehicle that, he thought, would serve. Then he ventured inside the creaking starship to see what he could find.

  Tumbled about the small cabin were a number of objects that were strange to him. He would come back for them later, he promised himself. Luck was once again with him, for there was also a kind of rope-like harness that would be ideal for lashing his prisoner to the improvised sledge, and Julian set to work again with gusto, heaving the alien on to the shafts he had bound together with long grass and securing him in place. Once or twice Neverdie nearly came round and his diaphragm buzzed weakly. Julian ignored him.

  Strapped to the underneath of his carapace Neverdie had an instrument with a narrow foot-long barrel that looked as though it might be a weapon. Julian took it from him and examined it. Though it was not designed for the human hand, his thumb found a stud. He pointed the barrel at a tree and pressed the stud. A dull red beam the colour of glowing iron traversed the space between and the tree suddenly changed colour and collapsed into fragments.

  He smiled and thrust the weapon into the belt of his utility garment along with the other guns he already carried.

  Hauling the load along the rough turf to his time-vault soon had him sweating, but he kept at it. He calculated that he had less than a mile to go when he was interrupted, first by a loud rustling in a nearby clump of vegetation, and then by the appearance of two of the inheritors of the Earth.

  In a way they were grotesquely manlike. They could walk almost as easily upright as they could on all fours. Their forepaws were adapted for grasping, the toes having developed into tough, stubby fingers. In one of those paws the leading wolf carried a stone axe.

  Julian looked at them, stunned. In like manner they stared back at him. Then the leader crouched, snarled and came at him in a bounding run with the axe upraised. Frantically Julian dropped the staves of the sledge and clawed at the pistol he carried in his belt. Gleaming yellow eyes stabbed into his brain. Then Julian drew and fired.

  The shot rang out loudly. The wolf hurtled to the ground and lay there panting, blood beginning to ooze from the wound. The second creature paused for a moment, then turned and fled with a loping gait.

  Taking careful aim, Julian squeezed the trigger again. The round failed to fire. Cursing, he pulled out Neverdie’s weapon and destroyed the fleeing animal with its red beam.

  Experiment revealed that every other round in his gun was dead. He had unknowingly played a game of Russian Roulette in reverse, and had come up with the only bullet that could have saved him. Luck was indeed with him today. And with Neverdie’s weapon he would have no trouble in defending himself—if its charge lasted long enough.

  Keeping a wary look-out, he continued on his way. Already he had identified his attackers as being descended from some wolf-like ancestor, but he wasted no time in thinking out the implications of that. The task in hand required all his concentration.

  He encountered no more wolves before reaching the time-vault. Once inside, he first attended to making himself secure, finding the piece of vault wall that Neverdie had excised and using it, together with a workbench, to close the opening up again. It wouldn’t hold against a determined assault, but he still had the alien gun.

  Then he carried Neverdie into the vault’s second chamber and strapped him to the main worktable. That done, he took time to rest, during which Neverdie awoke.

  He could see that the alien had recovered, though no word came from him. Instead, Neverdie seemed to be looking around him, as if assessing his position. Finally Julian got up and began to inspect his equipment. At last Neverdie addressed a question, his voice slightly ragged through the diaphragm.

  ‘I suppose it is no good trying to dissuade you?’

  ‘Absolutely no good.’

  Privately Julian was worried. Much of his equipment was still in good order—that part of it made of non-decaying material, like the surgical instruments. But much of it was useless. He no longer had any reagents, for instance, and would be hard put to make any chemical investigations. Almost all the research he could do was surgical anatomy.

  The depressing fear of failure began to overcome him once again, but he made an effort to pull himself together. Perhaps torture would be the most effective method, he told himself, of finding out what he wanted to know.

  He walked over to Neverdie and began laying out instruments. ‘I haven’t any anaesthetic,’ he said in an apologetic tone. ‘Unfortunately your species has a rather high nervous sensitivity, hasn’t it? Make it easy on yourself, Neverdie. Co-operate and it will be quicker and less painful.’

  As he spoke he wondered how much pain would induce him to give up an immortality he had already gained. Not any amount, in his opinion. Doubtless Neverdie was similarly motivated.

  Nevertheless he got to work on the alien, who was strapped upside down like a huge overturned beetle. Some of his manipulations were torture, pure and simple, but some of them were a survey of Neverdie’s anatomical and nervous systems. Neverdie gave vent to recurrent strangled shrieks and squirmed a good deal as far as his bonds would allow; but that was all. Julian remained aware of the need not to kill his subject and proceeded with care, but he did not feel over-anxious on that score. An immortal being must be physically capable of surviving quite drastic bodily disorder, he reasoned. After a while he absentmindedly left off torture for its own sake and gave himself up to the enjoyment of study.

  Nestling just below the brain was a spherical object, like a pearl two inches in diameter.

  A massive nerve ganglion surrounded the shining ball, but no nerves, either axons or dendrites, appeared to be actually attached to it. The arrangement was like a nest containing a beautiful, perfect egg. To Julian’s mind the sphere was an artificial object, not native to Neverdie’s body, and he spent some time examining it.

  ‘What will happen if I remove that pearly sphere just below your brain?’ he asked, making sure that the alien was conscious.

  There was no answer, so Julian, slowly and cautiously, did as he had threatened. He held the pearl up to the light in a pair of calipers and stared at it in fascination. He felt entranced, attracted, drawn on. The sphere seemed to radiate something into his mind, like a candle in otherwise absolute darkness.

  A shuddering sigh whispered from Neverdie’s voice diaphragm. ‘It’s done, then,’ he said slowly, as though through a mist of pain.

  ‘Is this what I was seeking?’ murmured Julian.

  ‘The Seed... The Seed of Evil.’

  Julian placed the pearl on the palm of his hand. It felt smooth and cool.

  ‘You have nothing to defend any longer,’ he said. ‘Why not explain it all?I would appreciate it.’

  With great effort Neverdie replied. ‘It was not myself I sought to protect, but you. Let me make one last effort to dissuade you. The Seed you hold in your hand is the means to immortality, as you call it. Properly speaking it is biological permanence. All that is necessary is for the Seed to enter your body. To swallow it will be enough, for it will migrate to the most appropriate place, whereupon it will undertake to readjust all the body’s functions with such perfection that it achieves ... biological perpetual motion. All the processes which normally cause decay are rendered null and void. The Seed’s properties are even
more remarkable than that. It will repair the most appalling injuries to its host; even if the body is completely destroyed it will lie quiescent until coming in contact with biological material, even if only humus, when it will endeavour to reconstruct that body, and usually it will succeed. Thus it is almost impossible to die, impossible even to commit suicide. The only way the arrangement can end is for the Seed to be taken away and given to someone else, whereupon it will forsake the old body and serve the new, for it is able to adapt itself to any conceivable living form in the universe.’

  ‘So far you are making a poor job of dissuasion,’ Julian commented.

  ‘What would make such a life unbearable?’

  Julian thought for a moment. ‘Fear of losing it?’

  ‘No. Guilt. The guilt of having stolen it.’

  Julian laughed humourlessly. ‘Do I look like a person who feels guilt?’

  ‘No, but you will change. All change who receive the Seed. Everything looks different after a few million years— even after a few thousand. Yes, perhaps even after a few hundred years you will be tortured by the guilt which you must endure forever—or until-’

  Neverdie’s speech was interrupted by hoarse sounds of agony.

  ‘It would be interesting to know how this remarkable device was manufactured,’ Julian mused, unmoved by Neverdie’s pain.

  The alien seemed to recover enough to resume his explanations. ‘I will tell you what I know. The origin of the Seed is lost in history, but the legend is plausible. It was created by a race of beings whose name I do not even know, and its purpose was the punishment of a criminal.’

  Julian’s attention was diverted by a sound of scratching on the wall of the vault. He hurried to the breach that Neverdie had made, put his ear to it and heard scufflings. Wolves ? Or just an animal ?

  Picking up the death-beamer, he returned to Neverdie. His last remark had puzzled him. ‘Continue!’ he said sharply.

  ‘My strength is failing,’ said Neverdie. ‘Nevertheless— these beings of whom I speak were faced with the problem of dealing with the greatest criminal of their experience, an individual who wilfully committed unspeakably foul acts, and who was without conscience. They decided that the most fitting punishment was first to reform him, and then to cause him to feel ceaseless remorse for his crimes. Immortality achieved both of these aims. And worse. For the other aspect of the life upon which you are so eager to embark is that you are doomed to be hunted by others who desire the immortality which only you possess. Thus those who made the Seed set in motion the chain of events of which you and I are a part. Wherever it goes the Seed attracts to itself the most evil of beings—no one knows how many have fallen into the same trap! The ceaseless hunt to steal immortality !’

  ‘Anything worth having is worth fighting for,’ Julian said. ‘As for this remorse you find so terrible, I feel fairly immune from it.’

  ‘Now you are - You will change. I have not told you the worst. The worst is that eventually your very existence drags some other unfortunate into committing the same crime, suffering the same punishment—as I did to you. I was not always the harmless creature you know now, Ferrg. Oh, if you only knew—I was a hundred times worse than you! I stole the Seed, as you are stealing it. And I suffer, as you will suffer. I beg you, do not accept the Seed. Die, Ferrg, it is better to die!’

  Julian interpreted Neverdie’s argument as a last-minute attempt to con him. Even his claims concerning the miraculous powers of the Seed could be lies. Perhaps the little sphere was a capsule of poison. Julian decided he would have to take a chance on that.

  ‘After coming all this way?’ he said. ‘I’m not backing out now.’

  The sphere looked too big to swallow, but experimentally he put it in his mouth. As soon as it touched his lips it seemed to come alive, to be electric. Almost of its own accord it slid easily down his throat and he felt it in his stomach like a big, heavy globe which was slowly absorbed.

  A heavy pounding rang all through him, as though he were full of vast cavities.

  He seemed to lose touch with his surroundings, to be drawn into something vast and incomprehensible. He seemed to be hanging in an endless void, and suddenly all the people he had ever known flashed before his consciousness in quick succession. There was a lingering image of Ursula Gail as he had last seen her over a glass of wine, her bright hazel eyes regarding him sadly. He saw that all these people had vanished long ago into the void of non-existence, and inexplicably he envied them. Then the scene widened still further and he realised that he was being vouchsafed a vision. He saw that the sequence of events of which he was a part had begun long before the creation of the Seed. Long, long, long back in the vistas of time there had lived a race who had also succeeded in creating an immortal—a true immortal, much more so than any who came in possession of the Seed, which in the course of billions of years would itself perish. They had done it by printing an artificial consciousness into the fabric of space, and it could never be eradicated.

  That consciousness was calling him. Its call had caused the Seed to be made in the first place. Somehow, sometime, one of the beings enchained by the Seed would, in due course, be lifted out of the material realm to share Aeternus’ state, life without any of the means of life; and without end.

  Aeternus’ voice came to Julian: You are my only-begotten son, with whom I am well-pleased. And at that blasphemy he experienced a great fear that he was to be that eternal companion.

  Suddenly it was over like a brief nightmare and he was standing beside Neverdie. The alien was speaking, his voice growing weaker.

  ‘Hear them, Ferrg ? Hear the Wolves ? Do not fear—you will get on well with them. You will be a leader. I remember when I first saw you that I recognised the wolf in you. Welcome to your own people—and thank you for releasing me. If you are lucky one of them might get you soon. However, the Seed will force you to put up a fight. That also is one of its functions-’

  Julian said hastily: ‘What can I do to give the Seed away?’ But Neverdie did not answer, and he realised that the Aldebaranian was, at last, dead.

  Outside, the wolves began to howl.

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