The Black Flame

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "But that's exactly the clue they'd want in Urbs!" exclaimed Evanie, her eyes shining. "That's all they need. And think of what you could tell them of ancient literature! We haven't the artists and writers you hadnot yet. The plays of a man named Shakespeare are still the most popular of all on the vision broadcasts. I always watch them." She looked up wistfully. "Was he also a contemporary of yours?

  And did you know a philosopher named Aristotle?"

  Connor laughed.

  "I missed the one by three centuries and the other by twentyfive!" he chuckled.

  "I'm sorry," said the girl, flushing red. "I don't know much of history."

  He smiled warmly.

  "If I thought I could actually earn somethingif I could pay you for all the trouble I've been, I'd go to the city of Urbs for awhileand then come back here. I'd like to pay you."

  "Pay me?" she asked in surprise. "We don't use money here, except for taxes."

  "Taxes?"

  "Yes. The Urban taxes. They come each year to collect, and it must be paid in money." She frowned angrily. "I hate Urbs and all it stands for! I hate it!"

  "Are the taxes so oppressively high?"

  "Oppressive?" she retorted. "Any tax is oppressive! It's a difference in degree, that's all! As long as a government has the right to tax, the potential injustice is there. And what of other rights the Master arrogated to himself?" She paused as if to let the full enormity of that strike in.

  "Well?" he said carelessly, "that's been a privilege granted to the heads of many governments, hasn't it?"

  Her eyes blazed. "I can't understand a man who's willing to surrender his natural rights!" she flared.

  "Our men would die for a principle!"

  "But they're not doing it," observed Connor caustically.

  "Because they'd be throwing their lives away uselesslythat's why! They can't fight the Master now with any chance of success. But just wait until the time comes!"

  "And then, I suppose, the whole world will be just one great big beautiful state of anarchy."

  "And isn't that an ideal worth fighting for?" asked the girl hotly. "To permit every single individual to attain his rightful liberty? To destroy every chance of injustice?"

  "But"

  Connor paused, considering. Why should he be arguing like this with Evanie? He felt no allegiance to the government of Urbs; the Master meant nothing to him. The only government he could have fought for, died for, was lost a thousand years in the past. Whatever loyalty he owed in this topsyturvy age belonged to Evanie. He grinned. "Crazy or not, Evanie," he promised, "your cause is mine!"

  She softened suddenly.

  'Thank you, Tom." Then, in lower tones, "Now you know why Jan Orm is so anxious for the secret of the rocket blast. Do you see?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Revolution!"

  He nodded. "I guessed that. But since you've answered one question, perhaps you'll answer my other one. What are the failures that still haunt the world, the products of the immortality treatment?"

  Again that flush of unhappiness.

  "He meantthe metamorphs," she murmured softly.

  Quickly she rose and passed into the cottage.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE METAMORPHS

  CONNER'S STRENGTH SWIFTLY approached normal, and shortly little remained of that unbelievable sojourn in the grave. His month's grizzle of beard began to be irritating, and one day he asked Jan for a razor.

  Jan seemed puzzled; at Connor's explanation he laughed, and produced a jar of salve that quickly dissolved the stubble, assuring Connor that the preparation would soon destroy the growth entirely.

  But Evanie's reaction surprised him. She stared for a moment without recognition.

  "Tom!" she cried. "You lookyou look like an ancient statue!"

  He did look different from the mildfeatured villagers. With the beard removed, his lean face had an aura of strength and ruggedness that was quite unlike the appearance of his neighbors.

  Time slipped pleasantly away. Evenings he spent talking to newly made friends, relating stories of his dead age, explaining the state of politics, society, and science in that forgotten time. Often Evanie joined in the conversation, though at other times she amused herself at the "vision," a device of remarkable perfection, on whose twofoot screen actors in distant cities spoke and moved with the naturalness of miniature life.

  Connor himself saw "Winter's Tale" and "Henry the Eighth" given in accurate portrayal, and was once surprised to discover a familiarseeming musical comedy, complete to scantilyclad chorus. In many ways Evanie puzzled Tom Connor. There was some mystery about her that he could not understand. Life in Ormon, it seemed to him, was essentially what it had been in his old days in St. Louis.

  Young men still followed immemorial routine; each evening saw them walking, sitting, talking, with girls, idling through the parklike arcades of trees, strolling along the quiet river.

  But not Evanie. No youth ever climbed the hill to her cottage, or sat with her at eveningexcept when Jan Orm occasionally came. And this seemed strange, considering the girl's loveliness. Connor couldn't remember a more attractive girl than this spirited, gentle, demure Evanieexcept his girl of the woods. Not even Ruth of the buried days of the past.

  He mused over the matter until a more sensational mystery effaced it. Evanie went hunting game upriver. Deer were fairly plentiful, and gamebirds, wild turkeys, and pheasants had increased until they were nearly as common as crows once had been.

  The trio carried glistening bows of spring steel that flung slender steel arrows with deadly accuracy, if used properly. Connor was awkward, but Evanie and Jan Orm handled them with skill. Connor bemoaned the lack of rifles; he had been a fair marksman in the old days.

  "I'd show you!" he declared. "If I only had my Marlin repeater!"

  "Guns aren't made any more," said Jan. "The Erden Resonator finished them; they're useless for military weapons."

  "But for hunting?"

  "They're banned by law. For a while after the founding of the Urban Empire people kept 'em hidden around, but no one knew when a resonator might sweep the section, and folks got tired of having the things go off at night, smashing windows and plowing walls. They weren't safe housepets."

  "Well," grumbled Connor, "I'd like one now, even an airrifle. Say!" he exclaimed. "Why not a watergun?"

  "A watergun?"

  "One run by atomic energy. Didn't you say you could detonate itget all the power out at once?"

  "Yes, but" Jan Orm paused. "By God!" he roared. 'That's the answer! That's the weapon!

  Why didn't anybody think of that before? There's what we need to" He broke his sentence in midair.

  Evanie smiled. "It's all right," she said. "Tom knows."

  "Yes," said Connor, "and I'm with you in your revolutionary ambitions."

  "I'm glad," Jan Orm said simply. His eyes lighted. "That gun! It's a stroke of genius. The resonators can't damage an atompowered rifle! Evanie, the time draws near!"

  The three proceeded thoughtfully up the river bank. The midsummer sun beat down upon them with withering intensity. Connor mopped his streaming brow.

  "How I'd like a swim," he ejaculated. "Evanie, do you people ever swim here? That place where the river's backed up by that fallen bridgeit should be a great place for a dip!"

  "Oh, no!" the girl said quickly. "Why should we swim? You can bathe every day in the pool at home."

  That was true. The sixfoot basin where water, warmed to a pleasant tepidity by atomic heat, bubbled steadily through, was always available. But it was a poor substitute for swimming in open water.

  "That little lake looked tempting," Connor sighed.

  "The lake!" cried Evanie, in horror. "Oh, no! No! You can't swim there!"

  "Why not?"

  "You just can't!"

  And that was as much information as he could obtain. Shortly afterward, swinging the halfdozen birds that had fallen to their arrows, they started back for the village.

  But Connor was
determined to ferret out at least that one mysterywhy he should not swim in the lake. The next time he accompanied Jan Orm on a tramp upriver, he plied Jan with questions. But it was futile. He could extract no more from Jan Orm than he had from Evanie.

  As the pair approached the place of the ruined bridge that dammed the stream, they turned a little way inland. Jan's keen eyes spotted a movement in a thick copse.

  "Deer in there," he whispered. "Let's separate and start him."

  He bore off to the left, and Connor, creeping cautiously to the right, approached the grassgrown bank of the watercourse. Suddenly he stopped short. Ahead of him the sun had glinted on something large and brown and wet, and he heard a rustle of movement. He moved stealthily forward; with utmost care he separated a screen of brush, and gazed through it to a little open glade, and on the creature that sprawled there beside the water.

  At first he saw only a fivefoot strip of wet, hairless, oily skin that heaved to the thing's slow breathing. He held his bow ready lest it prove dangerous, and stared, wondering what sort of creature it could be. It was certainly nothing native to the North America of his day. And then, at some sound or movement of his, the beast rolled over and faced him.

  Connor felt sick. He glimpsed short, incredibly thick limbs, great splay feet with webbed toes, broad hands with webbed fingers. But what sickened him was the smooth bulbous face with its tiny eyes and little round redlipped mouth.

  The thing was, or had been, human!

  Connor let out a choking yell. The creature, with a mumble that might have been speech, flopped awkwardly to the bank and into the water, where it cleaved the element like an otter and disappeared with a long, silent wake.

  He heard the crashing of Jan Orm's approach, and his cry of inquiry. But a webbed print in the mud of the bank told Jan Orm the story.

  "Whwhat was it?" Connor choked.

  "A metamorph," said Jan soberly.

  Emptyhanded as they were, he turned homeward. Connor, too aghast to press questions, followed him. And then came the second mystery.

  Connor saw it firsta face, a child's face, peering at them from a leafy covert. But this was no human child. Speechless, Connor saw the small pointed ears that twitched, the pointed teeth, the black slanting eyes squintIll ing at him beadily. The face was that of a young satyr, a child of Pan. It was the spirit of the wilderness incarnate, not evil exactly, not even savage, but just wildwild!

  The imp vanished instantly. As Connor gasped, "What's that?" it was already far beyond arrowshot, headed for the forest. Jan viewed it without surprise.

  "It's a young metamorph," he said. "A different sort than the one at the lake." He paused and stared steadily into Connor's eyes.

  "Promise me something," he muttered. "What?"

  "That you'll not tell Evanie you saw these things." "If you wish," said Connor slowly. It was all beyond him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PANATE BLOOD

  BUT TOM CONNER WAS DETERMINED now to fathom these mysteries. Jan should no longer put him off. He stopped and placed a hand firmly on Jan's arm, forced the man to look into his eyes when Jan would have evaded his gaze.

  "Just what," he said bluntly, "is a metamorph? You must tell me, Jan!"

  There was a moment's uncomfortable silence.

  "That question has been evaded long enough," Connor said firmly, "and I intend to know why. This is my world now. I've got to live in it, and I want to know what others know of itits faults as well as its virtues. Why have you shunned the question?"

  "Becausebecause"

  "Because of Evanie!" supplied Connor.

  "Yes," Jan agreed, reluctantly. "Because of Evanie."

  "What has that monster at the lake to do with her?"

  "Nothing directly." Jan Orm paused. "Before I tell you more, Tom, I'm going to ask you something.

  Do you love Evanie?"

  "I'm very fond of her."

  "But do you love her?" Jan insisted.

  "Yes," said Connor suddenly. "I do."

  A swift thought had come to him before he had reached that decision. The vision of a smiling wood nymph was before his eyes. But only a human being could be loved by a mana coolly lovely girl like Evanie; not a goddess.

  "Why do the youths of Ormon ignore Evanie so, Jan?" Connor asked abruptly. "She's far the loveliest girl in town."

  "So she is, Tom. It's her own doing that they ignore her. They have tried to be friends with herhave tried hard. But shewell, she has always discouraged them."

  "Why?"

  "Because, I think, she feels that in justice to everybody she can't marry."

  "And again why?"

  For a long moment Jan Orm hesitated. "I'll tell you," he said finally. "She's oneeighth metamorph!"

  "What?"

  "Yes, her mother was the daughter of Montmerci the Anadominist. A great man, but half metamorph."

  "Do you mean," asked Connor, aghast, "that she has the blood of that lake monster in her?"

  "No! oh, no! There are two kinds of metamorphs. One sort, the Panate metamorph, is human; the others, the amphimorphs, are justhorrors. Evanie's blood is Panate. But she had conquered her metamorphic heredity."

  "A metamorph!" Connor groaned.

  The picture of that flopping horror rose in his mind, and then the vision of the wild, impish face of the woods child. There was something reminiscent of Evanie in that, the color of her bronze hair, an occasional glint in her deep eyes.

  "Tell me," he said huskily, "about that heredity of hers. Might her child, for instance, turn wild? Or turn into such a horror as anamphimorph?"

  Jan Orm smiled.

  "By no chance! The Panate metamorphs, I tell you, are human. They're people. They're much like usgood and bad, brilliant and stupid, and many of them surpassingly beautiful in their wild way."

  "But just what are they? Where'd they come from?"

  "Do you remember hearing Martin Sair mentioned? He was companion of the Master, Evanie's greatuncle thirty generations removed."

  "The discoverer of immortality? I remember."

  But Connor made no mention of when he had first heard of both Martin Sair and the Masterfrom an uncannily beautiful wood sprite who had seemed to possess all the wisdom of the ages.

  "Yes," Jan told him. "And you must have heard, too, that there were other attempts at making men immortal, in the first century of the Enlightenment. And failures. Some that still haunt the world. Well, the metamorphs are those failures."

  "I see," said Connor slowly.

  "They're a mutation, an artificial mutation," Jan explained. "When Martin Sair's discovery became known, thousands sought to imitate him. It was understood that he was working with hard radiations, but just what was a mysterywhether as hard as the cosmic rays or as soft as the harder xrays.

  Nevertheless, many charlatans claimed to be able to give immortality, and there were thousands of eager victims. It was a mania, a wave of lunacy. The laboratories of the tricksters were packed.

  "There were four directions of error to be made; those who had not Sair's secret, erred in all four.

  People who were treated with too hard radiations died; those treated with too soft rays simply became sterile. Those treated with the right rays, but for too long a time, remained themselves unchanged, but bore amphimorphs as children; those treated for too short a time bore Panate metamorphs.

  "Can you imagine the turmoil? In a world just emerging from barbarism, stiil disorganized, of course some of the freaks survived. Near the sea coasts amphimorphs began to appear, and in lakes and rivers; while in the hills and forests the Children of Nature, the Panate type, went trouping through the wilderness."

  "But why weren't they exterminated?" asked Connor tensely. "You've bred out criminals. Why let these creatures exist. Why not kill them off?"

  "Would you favor such a measure?"

  "No," Connor said, adding in impassioned tone: "It would be nothing less than murder, even to kill the swimmers! Are theyintelligent?"

>   "In a dim fashion. The amphimorphs are creatures cast back to the amphibious stage of the human embryo just above the gilled period. The others, the Panates, are strange. Except for an odd claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed thingsof houses or clothingthey're quite as intelligent as most of us. And they're comparatively harmless."

  Connor heaved a sigh of relief. "Then they aren't a problem?"

  "Oh, there were consequences," Jan said wryly. "Their women are often very beautiful, like the marble figures of nymphs dug up in Europe. There have been many cases like Evanie's. Many of us may have a drop or so of metamorphic blood. But it falls hardest on the first offspring, the hybrids, miserable creatures unable to endure civilized life, and often most unhappy in the wilds. Yet even these occasionally produce a genius. Evanie's grandfather is one."

  "What did he do?"

  "He was known as Montmerci the Anadominist, half human, half metamorph. Yet his was a powerful personality. He was strong enough to lead an abortive revolution against the Master. Both humans and metamorphs followed him. He even managed to direct a group of amphimorphs, who got into the city's water supply and erupted into the sewers by hundreds."

  "But what happened to the revolution?"

  "It was quickly suppressed," Jan said bitterly. "What could a horde armed with bows and knives do against the Rings and ionic beams of Urbs?"

  "And Montmerci?"

  "He was executeda rare punishment. But the Master realized the danger from this wild metamorph. A second attempt might have been successful. That's why Evanie hates Urbs so intensely."

  "Evanie!" Connor said musingly. "Tell me, what was it that led to her father's marrying aa"

  "A cross? Well, Evan Sair was like Evanie, a doctor He came upon Meria, the daughter of Montmerci, down in the mountain region called Ozarky. He found her there sick just after the collapse of the uprising. So Evan Sair cared for her and fell in love with her. He brought her here to his home, and married her, but she soon began to weaken again from lack of the open woods and sunlight.