Man of Two Worlds

by Raymond F. Jones

  “Not while Igon was running things,” Ketan smiled. “He never lost control.”

  “He’s gone?” asked Javins.

  Ketan nodded.

  “Igon was the Director?” Elta asked unsteadily. “I don’t understand—”

  “There is a lot to tell you yet. but we haven’t won the fight. I’ve got to call Zeeter.”

  He returned to the chamber and called the Operations Center and the commander.

  “Ketan,” the old leader acknowledged. “We thought you were gone.”

  “Never mind. Tell me how it1 stands.”

  “Kronweld’s gone. I suppose you know. But that isn’t all. The Edge is breaking down and Fire I,and is erupting like never before. It looks as if the whole land is breaking up!”

  “Just a minute. Let me look.1 I’ll contact you again.”

  Ketan swung the view away from the Center and swept it back to-1 wards Kronweld.

  Outside the valley the view swept along the snow-covered peaks and valleys and down to the barren! plains. Ketan suppressed an exclamation. Vast chasms were opening in the ground, great cracks that stretched for endless distances across the bleak plain. As he swept along he saw a herd of Bors running madly from the thunderous opening of the ground. A chasm suddenly burst open before them and they plunged on, screaming and bellowing, into the depths.

  Further on, a great storm lashed the sky and sent bursts of lightning against the plain. Spouts of smoke and flame were opening up far from the boundaries of Fire Land.

  He sped on to Fire Land itself. The great molten lake he had crossed with Varano was a seething inferno, hurling waves of lava far beyond its shores. A new volcano threw I puffs at the sky, puffs that contained chunks of half solid rock as big as a building.

  Flames of radioactive radiation darted across the length and breadth of the Land. The death fire of incalculable numbers of atoms scintillated in a continuous auroral glow that leaped and touched the sky and flung itself back to the rocks and fires, only to burst forth again in a mad, unending oscillation.

  Ketan felt moisture upon his brow and rivulets of it running down his face as he watched the dying world.

  “The entire land is breaking up,” Elta said sadly. “The radiations of the generators and projectors must have set it off.”

  Ketan brought the view still farther back until he was at the boundary where Fire Land met the Edge. The sight that met his eyes almost ‘forced him to look away from the awful terror and sheer beauty of it.

  The very Edge itself seemed to be aflame.

  A curtain of fire reached to infinity above and beyond on either side of Kronweld. The thing was like an infinite falls of flaming liquid. The flames rippled through the spectrum from violet and blue through the scale into deep and terrible reds that tumbled and sped ever downward into the lake of lava below.

  In a moment of infinite regret, Ketan knew that now he would never understand the secrets of the Edge.

  He turned away and cried out to the Illegitimate. “William Douglas ! We’ve got to bring them here. Can the Illegitimates take care of them ?”

  “You mean all of the valley—?” “Take them to Danfer,” Javins burst in. “They can’t go to the primitive villages of the Illegitimates.”

  Ketan pressed his lips in a thin line. “There are nearly twenty thousand of them. We’ll bring the Restorationists to the city. You will direct their resettlement, Javins. The Kronweldians we will send to the villages. Are they capable of taking care of so many?” William Douglas nodded. “Almost. I had nearly completed my work of organization. I wonder if Igon anticipated—”

  “You will direct their resettlement there, then. I’ll get some position operators from the valley and you can use one panel to communicate with the separate villages.” “Why not the city?” Javins pleaded.

  “This is better,” Ketan said. But in his mind he was thinking of that first day when he walked along the streets of the village among the Illegitimates. He was thinking of those firm, defiant faces and the inspiration that had been upon him then— if only they could mingle with Kronweld and learn and teach with them.

  There would be conflict, he knew. But out of it would come understanding and the leaders who must assist him. The Illegitimate villages would become cities and the cities would become the nuclei of the new civilization.

  In time, when they had learned of their heritage and the new world, the Kronweldians would slowly filter up to their places at the top, but it would be after they had earned it.

  Ketan went back to Zeeter. “We will transfer everyone as rapidly as possible. Gather the Kronweldians a hundred in a group and we will bring them through. We will control their positioning from here. At the same time you send the Restora-tionists, as many as possible at a time, to Danfer. Abandon everything. There is no time to transfer anything but the population.”

  Zeeter looked stunned for an instant as if unable to comprehend the magnitude of the catastrophe, then he spoke crisply and firmly. “I’ll give the orders.”

  Technicians came from the valley and swarmed through the pinnacle. Those who were there for the first time stifled their amazement and curiosity and worked in a frenzy under the direction of Richard Simons and Dorien and Ketan.

  From the vast stock of machines and materials in the pinnacle they produced a mesh to protect the entire rock for there were yet three and possibly four Statist projectors at large. There would be no safety until they were hunted down and destroyed. Under the command of Zeeter, the generators that had been in Danfer were stationed in protective formation, ready to attack the moment one of the enemy machines should appear.

  There were many hundreds of Statists yet to be accounted for. The emergency police guard of the Restorationists was given the task of seeking them out and eliminating their menace.

  Standing behind the position operators, Ketan and Elta watched the swift transfer of the Kronweldians to the villages. Nearly a thousand trained administrators from the Restorationists were assisting in the gigantic task and William Douglas was capably directing the entire operation.

  “There’s some of the Council,” said Ketan. “It’s Anot and Nabah. I wonder what they think now of their tight little world where they knew almost everything there was to know?”

  “It’s the end for them,” said Elta slowly. “Their world has shattered and they have died with it. Such minds as theirs would have become closed and dogmatic in any environment. But only a few in Kronweld were as intractable as they. With the wiping out of superstitions, new knowledge will flood into most of the minds and you will have the leaders and teachers of which Richard Simons dreamed. I see it now.”

  “Igon told me you had gained an understanding. I hoped it was true.”

  By the time the last group was transferred the entire world of Kronweld was a mass of flame from the Edge to the valley of the Restorationists. Flames burst out of the ground and engulfed the great

  Operations Center. Its needle spire tipped crazily and hung a moment in the sky as if reluctant to give up its commanding position. Then it crashed and lava sucked it into itself with,molten, savage lips.

  Ketan turned off the scene and closed the Gateway. He went behind the panel for a moment and shifted the setting of the gauge.

  He stole a moment then with Elta and .they went down into the eternal gardens of the pinnacle where soft clouds like balls of white cotton were brushing the sky.

  Conscience-guilty, Ketan knew that he must not remain here, that the task’ of the Restoration had only begun, but just for a moment— Elta turned her face up to his and he saw worry and fear lining her brow. “What—”

  “Ketan, why did you have to rebel at. wearing the day cloak in Kronweld? Oh, why couldn’t you have conformed in just one thing?” He smiled. “That was when I first went to the House of Wisdom. I had to have something to rebel about, but I never did go without it for long. It was too uncomfortable.”

  Elta’s ey
es shone suddenly as if a burst of sunlight had fallen upon her face. “You mean there is a chance for us then, like the rest of them ?”

  Ketan’s mind went back to that night in a dark cave in the Kyab and he thought of Mary and William Douglas. “I’m sure there is,” he said, “if that’s what you want.” A tremor went through him and all the old fears and tight, mind-inclosing walls came back.

  It was the unnatural man of Kronweld that Hameth—or Igon— had warned him against and Ketan tried to shake him off.

  “More than anything else in the world,” Elta said. She drew close and laid her head against his shoulder. “I want it more than anything else.”

  Ketan turned her face up to his and his eyes responded to the glow in hers.

  “I’m sure you’ll get what you want,” he said. “I’m very sure of it.”

  THE END.