“The Great Edge? What is that?” asked John Edwards.
“Wait,” said William Douglas. “You are in a forest called Kyab. We call the planet Earth. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No”
“Tell us about your world.”
He would rather have heard about theirs, Ketan thought. But there was some urgency about their manner that invited his co-operation, that they might understand each other as quickly as possible. He sensed a fleeting impression that they had somehow half expected him, that they could explain all the mystery of his exodus from Kronweld.
“Kronweld is flat, shaped like a half circle.” Ketan drew a diagram in the dirt floor. “On one side is the Great Edge. No man knows what that is, except that it is a curtain of blackness that reaches beyond our limits to understand. Encompassing Kronweld on the circular portion is Fire Land. It is a land of molten pools that explode into the air, of burning ground and hot gases that rise from it. Only a few, including myself have ever gone through it into the region beyond, which we call Dark Land because the globes are never visible there due to the smoke and ash that blows from Fire Land. There is animal and plant life there unknown in Kronweld.”
“How many of there are you?” Ketan didn’t comprehend at first. When he did, he stopped. How could he tell them? They had no units in common.
William Douglas saw his hesitation. He drew a square on the ground with ten divisions on a side. “Ten,” he said, indicating the side. He pointed then to the square. “One hundred.”
Ketan drew a square and indicated a side. “One hundred,” he said.
“Ten thousand of them,” said William Douglas slowly. “Surely there must be more.” He looked at Ketan questioningly. “Do any ever come into Kronweld through the Great Edge?”
“That’s the way all are born into Kronweld! Tell me: W7hat do you know of it?” Ketan demanded. This world must not be as alien as he believed. These men knew of the Great Edge and the mystery that was beyond the Temple of Birth.
But William Douglas was shaking his head. “We know nothing of it for certain. It is only something that many of us have guessed at for a long time without any basis for our beliefs.
“In our world there is a law that requires all the new born to be examined for criminal or destructive traits. When these are found in a baby it is destroyed. That is all. There are some of us who do not believe that those—at least not all of them—who are supposed to be destroyed are actually killed. We have believed that they are sent— somewhere ”
“Where ?”
William Douglas shook his head. “Beyond… beyond the Great Edge perhaps. To Kronweld?”
“But we of Kronweld are not criminals, destroyers! Those are the Statists, so you said,” protested Ketan.
“It’s long and involved,” said William Douglas. “We ourselves do not know even where to look for clues. All we know is that life is something hardly better than death among us. Let me tell you:
“I didn’t say what we are called, did I? We are called the Illegitimates. It means that we are those who have no right to live. We are those who have not been examined by the Selector. Our parents and theirs before them, refused to risk
submitting their children and chance seeing their lives snuffed out without mercy.
“The law requires that all new born be brought within one month to the Selector. I have seen only the great central Selector in Danfer. Others controlled by it are scattered throughout the land. It is the most terrible sight in the world. Hundreds of parents come each day to the building and place their babies in the care of the machine. It is a great, monstrous creation that fills one end of a huge hall. The babies are carried automatically through the depths of it where every feature and psychological attribute of their minds is analyzed and charted.
“Most of them return from the machine to the arms of their waiting parents. Some of them never emerge -from the machine.”
Those were the faces he had seen, Ketan thought There was the vast and crying multitude that had called out to hint He had seen the great hall of the Selector.
“I saw the parents of such a baby one day,” said William Douglas. “They took their baby into the hall with hundreds of others. I saw them go into the receiving room and wait. They were there all day, and they sat watching others who had come in after them receive their babies and go away. Neither the man or the woman said a word. At night they got up and went out —without their baby. They hadn’t made a sound or spoken a word. But I looked into their eyes as they passed me. The sight of those eyes will be with me until the end of my life.”
There was a silence which Ketan broke at last. He had to know about that scene back in the cave. He spoke softly to William Douglas.
“Your child—”
After a long moment William Douglas looked up. “Mary and I were Illegitimates. Our parents had been. We went back on a special mission to try to find out something about the Statists. We bore false brands, to simulate those marked on every individual examined by the Selectors. I was a‘ surgeon there and was appointed once to see the Director himself, the head of the Statists, but the appointment was suddenly canceled, and I found out they were suspicious of us. They would have killed us both if they had seized us, but Mary was to have a child soon, we had to go. We made it to the Village Dornam and the night we arrived it was destroyed by a casual Statist hunter who discovered it. Mary and I had to flee.”
Though Ketan had never known a relationship between himself and another individual such as existed between all these here, he could sense the feeling that was within William Douglas. Because of Elta he could understand the man’s emotion towards his Mary. And dimly, through the thick layer of conditioning, he could sense the reaction towards that new life that should have existed and never had.
It was a world of terrible, in comprehensible conflicts, this land into which he had come. It was like men fighting in the night, none knowing who or what his opponent was.
And yet Kronweld itself had been just such as this. For untold tara perhaps, conflict had raged beneath the surface of Kronweld and he had known nothing until those brief days when he had plunged into the maelstrom.
Somehow, he felt sure that the conflicts in the two worlds were related, yet he did not see how. Missing strands of information which neither he nor the Illegitimates seemed to possess must span the gap.
“Why have you believed that those who disappear are not dead ?” Ketan asked. “Apart from what I have told you, I mean.”
“They have always made us believe that the Selector culled out the criminals, the destroyers, the tyrants. But we have criminals with us. And the Statists themselves surpass any tyranny that existed in past ages, yet they came into existence after the Selector was in use.
“But more than that. There have been times—few, to be sure, but enough that their evidence cannot be ignored—when those in the Selector hall have seen, as if through a gateway, other men dressed in strange garb. You see, those rejected by the Selector are brought out to a sort of altar which is visible to all except the parents whose children are within the machine. These are prevented from seeing the rejection of their own, because it is such a terrible sight that they would create a disturbance.
“The rejects on the altarlike support are surrounded by electrodes that inclose them completely in a ball of flame and when the flame dies there is no trace of the infant.
“It is on this altar, between these electrodes, when the fire is dying, that men have been seen. And other times, when no infant is on the altar there comes a faint glow sometimes and half ghostly figures are seen between the electrodes. It is these things that have made us believe that—well, something besides death occurs there.”
“I have seen such a light,” said Ketan. “I saw it in the Chamber of Birth in the Temple in Kronweld. It lies next to the Great Edge and when the gateway opens, there is a great flame that seems to burn a hole in the Edge itself. When it dies, another infant lias been born
in Kronweld.
“It must be the same thing. It is too similar to be merely a coincidental phenomenon.”
“Perhaps. Many of us have hoped for years for some such explanation. The reason I first spoke of the Statists to you is that those men have been seen in the hall of the Selector. I thought perhaps you knew of us, we’re fighting the Statists, too. But how is it that you knew the word, yet nothing about them?”
Ketan explained as briefly as possible what he knew of the inexplicable events preceding his plunge through the Great Edge. The two Illegitimates listened with mixed emotions of wonder and surprise, but as he finished, William Douglas nodded as though his own convictions were confirmed.
”The Statists are there. Why, or what they intend to do, I don’t know, but it seems pretty obvious that Kronweld possesses a science that the Statists do not have. How could that be? Why should the Statists want the destruction of Kronweld if, as seems possible, they have deliberately built it up. Can you think of any explanations, Ketan ?”
“No. My only concern is to get back. I’ve got to go back and see what has happened to Elta.”
“If she is a Statist, perhaps she is already here, among her own people.”
“She couldn’t be I I’ve known her—”
“How long?”
“All my life.”
“Is she older than you? Did she come through the Edge first?” “A couple of tara. Perhaps three of your years.”
“When did you actually meet her. Was it long enough after your ‘birth’ so that she might not have come through in the same manner as you?”
“She is not one of the Statists!” said Ketan.
The Illegitimates made no answer. Ketan needed none. He was thinking of Matra and her accusations at the Karildex. But even she had become reconciled to Elta and trusted her in the thing that she wanted to do. But what was Elta’s purpose. Where was Matra?
Ketan’s mind swirled with the unanswered questions and their thousand implications. He was roused by the voice of William Douglas, he was aware the man must have been speaking for some time.
“The thing we would like to know is what this mysterious pinnacle means. Plow did you know there was such a thing here? Why do you desire so strongly to find it?”
Ketan wondered how he could explain something to them that he could not explain to himself. Carefully, picking each word from the meager vocabulary he shared with them, he told him of his dreams and visions, and the voice that he had heard. “It’s as if I were being drawn .by some force located in the pinnacle,” he said. “I can imagine how that must sound to you, but it’s true. There’s something there, something for me alone. There is a power there, a power created by man that is reaching out for me. How it knows who or what or where I am, I don’t know, but it’s drawing me on. I almost believe that if I should close my eyes and begin walking I would be drawn to it, so strongly has that sense of attraction been with me.”
Both the Illegitimates were silent. William Douglas was looking into the distance where John Edwards said he thought the pinnacle might be.
At last he turned. “I can’t find a place for it in either your story or ours. It seems to have no meaning. I would be prepared not to be dismayed if it turns out to be a figment of imagination. Some early conditionings, perhaps, brings it back, even though you do not remember seeing such a place when you are not under a strain.”
“There is such a place,” said John Edwards, with certainty. “If it’s as you describe, I can take you there. I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen it from the Mesas. It’s called ‘Valley of the Winds’ because of its perpetual sandstorms. There is nothing but rock and desert. I don’t see what you expect to find there.”
“It’s inside,” said Ketan. ‘‘Inside?” William Douglas’ face set in sudden decision. “We’ll go tomorrow. Whatever is there, and however you know of it, it inav turn out to be a key to the overthrow of the Statists.”
“There is one other thing—” Ketan spoke in sudden confusion.
“What ?”
“I am not—exactly what I may seem to you. In order to enter the Temple of Birth it was necessary for me to adopt a disguise. I should like to remove that if possible.”
“Of course,” said William Douglas. “Some more durable clothing —I’ll see that you are supplied.”
“And a considerable amount of boiling water.”
“Naturally.” Apparently he assumed it was for a bath, Ketan thought.
Ketan spent the entire remainder of the day alone in the room. He stripped off the tattered filmy garments he had worn from the Temple and with a knife he had borrowed,
he hacked slowly at the half softened plastic. He called for endless kettles of boiling water with which he tried to melt the resistance plastic. The heat went through to his flesh and he was boiled and mangled by the time he was finished.
It was a poor job, but the rest of the stuff would have to wear off. He donned the rough, skin garments and then realized that they had brought him a woman’s dress. He laughed to himself as he thought of the probable reaction of William Douglas. He sent word for him to come.
It was near dark and the village was preparing to cat, when William Douglas came in.
“Come and get something to eat,” said William Douglas. “I’ve just about finished our preparations for tomorrow. I—” he stopped, staring at Ketan.
Ketan lowered his voice that he had maintained at falsetto pitch until now. “I’d like some man’s wear. This doesn’t seem quite appropriate.
“Well, I’ll be—” William Douglas exclaimed. “So that was the disguise.”
XVII.
With an unreasonable reluctance Ketan allowed himself to be led out into the midst of the villagers. He was both anxious to discover what the community life of the Illegitimates was like, and at the same time half fearful of contacting them because of a fearfully mounting conviction of his own abnormal conditioning.
Made of clay bricks, the two- to four-room dwellings were grouped irregularly in the clearing of the valley and separated by crooked, winding pathways that alternately narrowed and widened.
It was difficult for Ketan to comprehend the way of life that these poor conditions represented. That it was not all due to the harried conditions of life created by the frequent attacks of the Statists was obvious.
The people themselves reflected ignorance and lack of Seeking in their faces. Ketan walked among them and looked in vain for the face of a Seeker, one who could plan and build for better conditions than these. But there were none.
The faces were, rather, such faces as Ketan had rarely, if ever seen in Kronweld. They were faces that spoke something to him that he did not understand, the faces of men and women who defied the Statists and risked their lives every day in their defiance. They were the faces of men and women who would rather live in the crudity and ignorance of these forest villages than submit their children or themselves to the tyranny of the Selector.
Somehow, Ketan liked what he saw there, in spite of the repulsive surroundings. If Kronweld had a few men with faces like theirs, he thought, there would be no forbidden Mysteries there. If some day these people and the people of Kronweld could merge, their attainments would be limitless.
He walked beside William Douglas through the drifting villagers who wandered from house to house, chatting in the streets, nodding in easy deference to William Douglas. The two were walking towards the other end of the village where they were to eat at the place William Douglas had been staying.
They passed a building with a pile of what looked like metal wreckage to Ketan piled beside it. William Douglas saw his glance.
“Statists’,” he said. “They are machines the Statists build to carry themselves through the air. Planes or airships they call them here, but, of course, you have developed such in Kronweld.”
Ketan shook his head. “There was no need, so we never produced any such machine. The possibilities of constructing one interested me for a long ti
me, but I never built one. How did you get them?” “They are poor machines, not like the ones men built a thousand years ago. Sometimes they fail and are forced to land. We capture the Statists and kill them, and bring their machines, which are almost always wrecked, here. It was a hunter in just such a machine that destroyed the two villages, Domain and Brent.”
Another time, and Ketan would have liked to have examined the machines, but the possible principles w’ere obvious and he felt a greater urgency in his other problems now.
They resumed their way. Nearly there, they noticed a knot of villagers gathered at the end of the street. They were gathered about someone in their midst and one was pointing down the street to themselves.
Suddenly William Douglas uttered a cry. “Carmen!”
He started to run, leaving Ketan behind. Then a woman broke out from the gathered knot and raced towards him. They met halfway in a tight, long-lasting embrace. The woman was crying happily. “Bill! I thought I’d never see you again. I’ve been to every village—”
When Ketan came up they failed to notice him for a long moment, lie stood watching, unable to comprehend the relationship of these two. What kind of people were they, who could watch as William Douglas had watched his companion die only two days before and now—
They turned towards him then, and William Douglas said, “This is Ketan. There’s a long story about him that you’ll have to hear. And this is my sister, Carmen.” Ketan took the hand she held out towards him. Sister? He wondered. It was a word he had not heard. But it implied a relationship between them that he could not comprehend.
William Douglas saw the consternation on his face. He started to smile, then a deeper sense and a touch of pity removed it from his lips.
“My sister,” he repeated. “It means that the same man and woman gave us life—we have the same mother and father.”
Carmen said nothing’, but looked strangely from Ketan to William Douglas.
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