A Science Fiction Novel
The Star Seekers
By MILTON LESSER
Jacket Design by Paul Calle Endpaper Design by Alex
Schomburg
Ceci'/e Matschat, Editor Carl
Carmer, Consulting Editor
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
Philadelphia • Toronto
Copyright, 1953 By Milton Lesser
Copyright in Great Britain and in the British
Dominions
and Possessions Copyright in the Republic of the Philippines
first edition
To Deirdre Who will one day be seeking the stars herself
The long Journey
rom the day our unknown ancestor
learned the use of fire and, so armed, sallied forth from his dark cave, the
history of mankind has always been the story of seeking and searching. In terms
of travel, the means of getting where you were going was just as important as
the goal itself.
The early inventor who fashioned a dugout
canoe won his people's praise not for getting to the other side of the river
but for floating out over the perilous waters in his flimsy vessel.
The first man who thought to ride a horse
could travel further and faster than anyone else.
When Columbus (and Leif Ericson before him)
sailed his three frail ships to the edge of the world without falling off, the
first long journey was made, and we've been trying to outdo it ever since.
Jules Verne said, "Around the world in
eighty days." Today we do it in four. We span a continent in hours,
breakfasting in New York, eating dinner in Los Angeles.
Right around the corner are space stations
ten thousand miles straight up. That will be a longer journey—and a faster one.
The Moon, Mars, Venus and the other planets
all lie within reach of today's science. Columbus will
move over in the pages of history and make room for the first daring adventurer
who plants our flag on the pumice of Luna and carries it to the ocher
wastes of Mars. It's a good bet
to say the planets will be ours before you who read this book reach the pipe
and slipper age.
But the first really long journey is still a
dream, a twinkle in some imaginative scientist's eye, a blueprint on the
drawing board of a far tomorrow. It is also the greatest adventure of them all,
for to say that mankind will be content with the planets when the gateway to
the stars lies almost within reach is to say that the drive which took us from
stone to bronze to iron to plastic and atoms has disappeared. The distant stars
await us; we will one day thrust aside the final barrier and embark upon the
greatest journey of them all.
First, we'll find to our dismay that the
distance to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, which shines brightly in the
southern sky but is invisible here in North America, is thousands of times
greater than the distance to Pluto, the outermost planet. Alpha Centauri lies
4.3 light years (with light traveling at 186,000 miles per second!) off in the
bleak emptiness of space, and because Einstein's contention that nothing can
travel faster than light must be correct, interstellar travel will pose unique
problems.
If you've ever toyed with a balanced
aquarium, a miniature, self-sufficient world of glass tank, fish, plants, water
and air, you've already solved the problem, at least in theory. For we must
think in terms not of a small spaceship but of an artificial world which
provides its own food, replenishes its own air in a natural process still
superior to anything we've devised and protects its human inhabitants from the
dangers of space.
Traveling at the credible
speed of five thousand miles per second, the ship—which might be a small
asteroid hollowed out for the purpose—will still take two hundred years to
reach Alpha Centauri and the family of planets our future astronomers will have
discovered circling it in orbits like those of Mercury, Venus, Earth and the
other planets of this solar system. Because it takes two hundred years to
conquer the abyss of interstellar space, that means the original crew won't
arrive at Alpha Centauri at all. They will have lived their lives in space,
grown old and died there. But their children will carry on, and their children after them. The
sixth generation will be young and energetic and supplying the new leaders near
journey's end.
Ours, then, will be the story of this sixth
generation. They have known nothing but the walls of the huge ship and the
glimpses of deep space outside. Earth is a legendary place. What remains of
history is folklore. What remains of science: dogma, superstition, magic—both black and white. For without a full external
world for demonstration and proof, science can be nothing but hearsay,
something learned by rote and done by rote but hardly understood at all.
The ship itself is a twenty-mile-in-diameter
globe spinning endlessly through the void. For its occupants, it is the
Universe. To talk of an external world, of space and stars and the old, old
Earth is to talk of the fourth dimension.
Those who planned the voyage, logically
enough, failed to realize this. They arranged a safe, orderly, necessarily
limited world; they did not expect chaos.
They provided everything for a rebirth of our culture. They dreamed of
mankind bridging shoreless space and reaching out part way to infinity.
Through no fault of their own, they bred a
world in which civilization backtracked into a strange, new dark age aboard a
sphere which was both spaceship and Universe.
They paved the way for the greatest adventure
of all—not the trip through space, but the challenge of superstition and
barbarism when science and civilization became necessary factors in survival.
The almost unthinkable journey across twenty-six trillion miles of space became
an accomplished fact. It also became an accomplished failure, for those within
the ship never dreamed their journey would one day end.
On and on they lived their days, those of the
sixth and final generation, doing what they must to keep the ship going because
their parents did it before them, but understanding nothing. Just beyond their
reach lay the final adventure, the supreme test, the loom upon which the entire
trip had been spun. In the warp and woof of superstition and dogma, they saw
nothing.
But since momentous discoveries, like long
journeys and fast journeys, more often than not await the touch of one man's
hand, not of genius but hard work, perseverance, imagination and a touch of
good fortune, perhaps the planners had not been so far awry.
They thought of a logical sequence of events
and got wild, chaotic action. Still, the results would have pleased them.
If science and learning had to be
rediscovered in a labyrinth of false ideas, all the better—for fresh
ideas come from fresh
beginnings. But in a world where everything in the Universe is boiled down to
its bare essentials, ideas do not suffice. Bold action becomes a necessity if
the first really long journey is to end in anything but failure. . . .
Sitting in a house near the
Canadian border in wintertime, with sub-zero winds shrieking through the cold
woodlands outside but steam heat and electric lights keeping you warm,
comfortable and snug, you get to wonder just how far in the future such a story
lies. Man's achievements have a way of building one atop another, accelerating
as they go. The growth of television, of atomic power, of fusion bombs as well
as fission, of jets and rockets and plastic and all the wonder drugs has been
startling. Although the groundwork lies in the past, science has come further
in the last twenty-five years than it has in all of our crowded history.
So—how far in the future does the first
really long journey lie? Not before the day after tomorrow, surely, but
probably a lot sooner than we think.
M. L.
Contents
chapter page
The Long Journey................................................... v
1. The Four Circles...................................................... 1
2. The Jungle................................................................ 9
3.
The Horned Beast.................................................... ..... 14
4.
Pity the Poor Enginer............................................. 20
5.
Town Council..................................................... . 34
6.
A Place Called Urth................................................ ..... 43
7.
Kidnaped!.................................................................. 55
8.
Needle Mountain..................................................... 72
9.
The Revelers.............................................................. 90
10.
DreamWorld............................................................. ..... 108
11.
History in Hiding..................................................... 121
12. The Center of the Universe .... 134
13.
To Wreck a World................................................... 148
14.
Planetfall................................................................... 174
15.
The New Earth.......................................................... 193
Chapter 1 The Four Circles
because his father was an Enginer
and his fathers father and all the men in his family for as far back as history
goes, Mikal knew the time grew - near when
he must make the Journey of the Four Circles and so become an Enginer himself.
For was it not written that when a boy reached his eighteenth year he would don
the tunic and trousers of a man and make the Journey?
Two other youths of Mikal's acquaintance
neared their eighteenth year with him, but with strange feelings he did not
understand, Mikal wished it were otherwise.
"I wish we could get this
silly Journey over with," Harol said on the eve of their departure. Harol,
with his thick, plump body and flabby-jowled face, with the weak mouth and lazy
eyes—what did Harol know of the Journey?
Fil irked Mikal too, in a different way.
Bean-pole thin and with the reddest hair in all Astrosphere, cocky son of the
Chief Enginer, Fil had his own ideas about the Journey of the Four Circles.
"Bring back what trophies you want," he told Mikal and Harol.
"When I return from the other three circles, you will know it. Even my
father will know, and you are aware of my father's trophies."
Mikal had seen them once, the exotic trophies
of the Chief Enginer. There had been something green and brown and somehow
withered. People called it a plant, claiming it came from the Jungle. There had
been something called a
recording tape, small and on a spool, and the Chief Enginer insisted it could
talk, although no one had ever heard it. It came from the Place of Revelers and
strange things were said to happen there. And there had been an evil-smelling
black powder which disappeared in a puff of acrid smoke if you held a flame to
it; that came from Far Labry, land of mystery.
So now Mikal prepared to visit the Jungle,
the Place of Revelers and Far Labry—and was it not right that he should have a
sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and an eagerness in his heart?
Lazy-eyed Harol felt none of the eagerness; to red-topped Fil, all was a game.
"Poor Mikall" Harol scoffed.
"The Journey isn't important. What comes after is what matters, so why
don't you relax?"
"To be an Enginer one must understand
all the Four Circles of the World, not just Astrosphere. It is written."
"It is written you
should bring back worth-while trophies," said Fil, eying both of them
scornfully. "If I can do that I will be on my way to taking my father's
place as Chief Enginer when he grows old."
"My trophies shall be here," said
Mikal seriously, tapping the side of his head.
"Mikal is a wizard of Far Labry!"
intoned Harol with mock solemnity. "He carries his trophies in his
skull."
"Not yet," Mikal
told him earnestly, "but I will." Harol yawned, then
grinned with all of his round face. "It is almost time to eat."
Mikal followed them to the
dining hall with a growing sense of elation. This would be his last meal in
Astrosphere until after he returned from the Journey, wiser and a man, he
hoped. They stood at the end of the line, picked up their gleaming trays,
spooned food on them from the conveyors sliding into view through a slit in the
wall. No one ever seemed to care where the food came from, thought Mikal. It
appeared out of the wall at the prescribed times and everyone ate. Now there
was a first-rate mystery along with so much else in Astrosphere, yet no one
seemed to notice it. Was it natural for food to slide into view, savory and
ready to eat, from some unknown place? Perhaps, just perhaps, Mikal thought with
tingling relish, he would find out after he embarked upon the Journey.
"It is written,"
said Saml, Mikal's father, "that I tell you nothing of the Journey aside
from a few basic facts." A large, gaunt man still not past his prime,
Mikal s father was almost as tall as the Chief Enginer himself, and broader
across the shoulders. Laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes on an otherwise
grim, rawboned face, and his hair at the temples had turned the color of
polished steel. "You will visit the Jungle—"
"And learn what there is to learn about
plants and strange things that grow and —"
"And bring back a trophy as proof,"
Saml said dryly, but failed to hide the twinkle in his eye. "Then you will
visit the Place of Revelers—"
"And see things that are not real but
images only, things some call ghosts."
"Ghost is an ancient
word, yet what you find in the Place of Revelers will not be ghosts. You will
carry back a trophy as evidence of your visit there. After that, you will go to
Far Labry and—*
"And learn of magic, of strange,
marvelous tricks, of the place where impossible things are done and people walk
on air and—"
"Where do you learn all these things, Mikal?"
"Oh, it is common talk around Astrosphere, I guess."
"Well, when I was your age I heard none
of it. When we embarked upon the Journey we found a totally unknown world
awaiting us."
After a silence, Saml suddenly grinned and
chucked Mikal's chin playfully with his big fist. "My son is almost a
man," he mused, as much to himself as to Mikal. "A
man."
"Father?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"What else is there?"
"Eh? What?"
"I mean, besides
Astrosphere, the Jungle, the Place of Revelers and Labry?"
"Why—that is a strange
question. What else could there be? Those are the Four Circles of the World.
You have named them."
"I know, Father, but
sometimes I wonder. If as you say those are the Four Circles of the World and
there is no more, then does that mean everything else is nothing—nothing, going
on forever and ever in all directions? Or is there something? Something else, I
mean, that we know nothing about. If there is nothing forever, it is too
strange to consider. But if there is something else, that seems still stranger.
, . ."
Saml chuckled softly.
"You have a dreamer s head on your shoulders, young Enginer."
"I merely wonder sometimes. Anyway, I am not yet an
Enginer."
"You will be,"
said Saml proudly. "You will be. The greatest Enginer of
them all, maybe. And son, listen to me. The Journey of the Four Circles
is what you make of it. Drink in everything with your eyes and your ears and
all your senses or you won't be content with Astrosphere the rest of your life.
Make of the Joumey a glorious adventure, and if you return with trophies more
in your heart and your head than in your hands I will understand."
"Thank you!" Mikal cried. "Thank you—"
"Whatever the thanks
are for," said MikaTs mother, entering the room, "you won't feel like
thanking anyone unless you get a good night's sleep before you start out
tomorrow."
Saml shrugged more eloquently than words but
winked at Mikal as he went off to bed.
Taller even than Fil was
his father, the Chief Enginer. He stood lean and straight in the glistening
hallway, his image reflected back from walls, ceiling and floor. To each of the
three boys he gave a small ring of keys, saying: "The gold key opens the
way to the Jungle, the key of silver to the Place of Revelers. The black key is
for Far Labry. Go then all of you, and good luck."
"A question,
Enginer," said Fil, using his father's title. "Is it necessary that
we travel together?"
"Together or separately, as you
wish."
"Good, because to find worth-while trophies one must travel fast
and alone—and without a weight around one's neck." The thinly veiled
scorn, Mikal realized, was for himself as much as plump Harol.
"Don't we take food with us?" Harol
wanted to know.
Fil laughed, but the Chief Enginer merely
shrugged. "Why burden yourselves? Food you will find along the way."
"Do we have a time limit?" Mikal
asked. "How long can we stay?"
"As long or short as
you like, provided you return with a trophy from each of the three other
circles."
"See what I mean?" demanded Fil.
"One wants to eat, the other to dawdle."
At any time but this Mikal would have brisded
with rage. But now, what did the petty words mean?
What, indeed, in the face of the impending Journey? Could words dim the luster
of new worlds, of strange adventure awaiting them in distant places, of the
lure of the unknown? Mikal should have felt angry, but he felt like singing.
"If there are no further questions ..said
the Chief Enginer.
"No," said Fil.
Harol looked doubtful, swallowed uncertainly,
was silent.
Mikal shook his head. He
was glad the Chief Enginer had not felt inclined for speechmaking this day, for
he would have chafed miserably at even the slightest delay.
Make of the Journey a glorious adventure, Saml had said.
As if it could be anything but that. Mikal realized that all his young
life he had been waiting for this day with a strained, growing eagerness.
Questions buzzed after each other inside his head in wild confusion, questions
which he knew could not find answers in Astrosphere. Was that the real purpose,
the lost purpose of the Journey? It wasn't written, yet . . .
The Chief Enginer turned and walked away down
the corridor.
"Well," said Harol, glancing nervously
about, not looking at the locked door ahead of them.
"Here goes," Fil told them, and
inserted his gold key into the lock. Heart pounding, Mikal heard the tumblers
fall. The door swung away from them.
"I don't know," said Harol.
Briefly, Mikal felt sorry for him, then
watched Fil plunge recklessly through the doorway. Shoulders squared, head
erect, Mikal followed after him.
"I was the first," Fil reminded
them over his shoulder. "If anyone asks us when we return, remember. I
was the first."
"Well," said Harol, still pausing on the threshold.
"I was the first," said Fil, his
voice growing fainter as he forged ahead through the corridor.
Mikal laughed silently. Fil was the first and
would go right on that way, clamoring for attention and importance, and missing
all there was to be seen and learned and understood around him.
Harol finally made it through the doorway,
grinning to hide his fear. He slouched within the new corridor and stood
there, shifting his weight first from one foot to the other, then forward and
backward.
In his excitement Fil had
forgotten one of their
instructions, probably the most
important of all. Every door they opened must be locked at once. Mikal turned,
retreated to the door. He was followed hopefully by Harol, who sighed when
Mikal shut the door, inserted his key and turned it in the lock.
Fil already had disappeared around a turn in
the corridor when Mikal turned to start out after him. Fil did not matter,
though. Nothing mattered except the Journey and the adventures which awaited
him. Mikal turned his back on the door to Astrosphere and jauntily made his way
along the unknown corridor.
Chapter 2 The jungh
arely fflGH enough for tall Fil to walk
upright, the corridor turned and twisted ahead of them. Walking at a steady, rapid
pace, Mikal soon overtook Fil, who seemed to move in fits and starts. Mikal
was aware of Harol's boots clomping on the floor behind him with a heavy,
somehow forlorn stride.
"I thought you two had scurried back to
remain boys another year," Fil told Mikal, laughing. "You could if
you wanted to."
"Who wants to?"
"Harol," said
Fil. "Some people—" "Were all different. Why don't you leave him
alone?"
"Don't you tell me—"
"Never mind. Forget I said
anything." Clearly, overtures of friendship would be next to impossible
with the Chief Enginer's red-haired son. "Hey!" cried Mikal suddenly.
"Hey, look."
The corridor made one final turn ahead of
them, then ended. A wall barred their way, not drab
gray like the corridor, but gold, the color of the first key. Set in it not
half as tall as a man was a door.
"I guess we try the gold key
again," said Mikal, his heart pounding with excitement once more.
Fil darted forward, inserted his key in the
lock, turned it and pushed on the door. It did not budge.
"Stuck," said Mikal, as Fil jarred
it with his shoulder without success, muttering to himself.
Harol joined them, puffing
slightly. "Maybe we'd better return to Astrosphere and wait until they repair
it," he suggested hopefully. "If you want I could go back while you stay
here."
"You do that," said Fil.
But the plump boy stood by uncertainly while
Mikal helped with the door. "It's used so rarely," Mikal said,
"no wonder it's stuck. Hold it, Fil. You get more leverage if you push as
far from the hinges as possible."
"Stop telling me what to do." Fil
slammed his shoulder against the center of the door futilely. He did this
several times, leaving no room for Mikal to crowd next to him until he finally
wearied of the effort and paced back and forth in growing irritation.
Grasping the handle firmly, Mikal crouched
and forced his weight against the door just below the lock. He thought he felt
it give a little, but when he tried the handle again the door still stood firm.
"I'll open it in a minute," Fil promised.
Mikal ignored him, pushed once more. The door
swung outward so abruptly that he tumbled after it, rolling over and barely
ducking his head against his chest in time as he flipped head over heels.
Dusting his hands off he stood up, disappointed to see another corridor much
like the first, except that the ceiling was at least twice as high. Mikal
waited until he heard Fil and Harol crawling through the low doorway behind
him, then set out along the new passageway. Hardly had he gone a dozen paces
when the corridor turned sharply at right angles, revealing beyond the bend a
slim-runged ladder which climbed to the ceiling.
The Jungle
11
"Anybody afraid of
heights?" Mikal laughed, looking up.
"Do I appear frightened?" Fil
demanded, placing his foot on the first rung gingerly, then
starting to climb.
"No, but it is written
that one must avoid heights, for—"
"Never mind what is written. One day I
will do all the writing and the making of laws, and people will say it is so
because Fil, son of Charls son of Thorn says it is so."
"Perhaps," said Mikal, and started
to climb the ladder.
"Wait, please." It was Harol
calling him. "You asked who was afraid. I—I'm afraid."
Mikal came down. "You've got to climb
it. You can't stay here, just as you can t go back;
for to go back is to admit you are yet a boy, a child. You will be
disgraced."
"I cannot climb the ladder."
"Why?"
"I cannot climb it."
Fil had reached the top,
was poking his hand against the ceiling. "There's a trap of some kind
here," he called down to them. "Better hope this isn't jammed
too."
"You climb ahead of me, Harol,"
commanded Mikal, "I'll stay right behind you and everything will be all
right."
"N-no."
"You've got to."
Mikal took his arm and led him toward the ladder. "Come on."
"Well-"
"Go ahead." Mikal prodded him forward.
As Harol began his uncertain ascent, Mikal
could see the plump boy trembling. But he must have glanced up and saw Fil
leering down at him, for he stiffened arms and legs and redoubled his effort to
control his fear, a round, grim, determined figure waddling up the ladder.
It was then that Fil forced the trap door up
and out.
Pale-amber light flooded down upon them—and
with it, assailing Mikal's nostrils with a refreshing strangeness, was a sweet,
delicious aroma. Of smells he knew many: the aroma of fresh food on the conveyor
belt; the scent of the perfume women sometimes used; the antiseptic smell of
the dispensary, strong but pleasant, where his tonsils had been removed; the
crisp, sharp odor which one associated with the spinning, whirling machines an
Enginer learns to understand—but what floated down to him now, seemingly borne
by the beautiful amber light, left him breathless.
A touch of perfume was in it and a touch of
the hospital and the whirling machines and . .. and everything
imaginable, but blended in such a way that he wanted to breathe in deeply,
savoring the cloying sweetness almost as if it were a rare and tempting
delicacy. This was his first contact with a world other than Astrosphere, and
he would remember it always.
"Get a load of that stench!" Fil
cried from above them. "We've reached the Jungle sure enough."
Fil had pushed the circular trap up and back,
had hoisted himself up through a round opening in the
The Jungle
13
ceiling. When Harol reached that
point there was a brief conference, and, after much tugging on Fil's part and
pushing by Mikal, he struggled and squirmed through the hole and finally fought
clear of it.
Mikal followed on his heels breathlessly,
grasping the lip of the opening and thrusting himself clear of it easily.
He stood up and gawked, aware all at once
that his glorious adventure truly had begun.
Chapter
3 The
Horned Beast
I |
he three boys stood at the crest of a
long, sloping hill, lost in an immensity they had never known before. Always in
Astrosphere the gleaming metal ceiling stood just beyond the reach of a tall
man. But now—it almost took Mikal's breath away—now the ceiling was lost in
amber haze high above their heads, and the hillside sloped down away from it
into a thick green tumble of vegetation.
"The Jungle," Mikal said, and then
repeated it, for he could not believe his own voice, nor
the sight his eyes took in: "The Jungle."
Harol seemed abnormally pale. "It—it's
all so-spread out," he managed to say, wiping his forehead vigorously with
a sleeve of his tunic.
"Keep right on staring," Fil
taunted, bounding down the hill, "By the time you decide what to do I'll
have my trophies and be on my way to the Place of Revelers."
Mikal watched him, a long-legged figure becoming
smaller and smaller until at last he melted into the thick green vegetation of
the Jungle and was gone. Mikal turned to Harol. "Well?"
"You better go ahead,
Mikal. I—I can't."
"You'll like it once it isn't so strange
any more. Come on."
But the plump boy stood his ground. "No,
please. Go away."
This wasn't like the ladder, Mikal realized.
Harol had seen ladders before, and there a little
prodding
was sufficient to start him
climbing. Now Harol was truly frightened. It did happen like that once in a
while. A boy went back the way he'd come, to try again the next year. It was
written, Mikal knew, that a boy be given three chances on three successive
years. After that he could be a laborer or a technican, but never an Enginer.
Mikal could well understand Harol's fear. Nothing in their experience remotely
resembled the Jungle. Nothing was so big, so wild, so
different. No conveyor belts would furnish food, no soft bed would await you
after a hard day's work, no recreation hall, no swimming pool . . . Instead,
Mikal realized with a growing sense of impatience, the Jungle offered in place
of all these—mystery.
"Harol?"
"No."
"What will your father say when you
return to Astrosphere trophyless?"
"I don't care. There's next year."
"Are you sure?" Already the heady
fragrance of the Jungle beckoned Mikal so strongly he hardly could stand still.
He felt sorry for Harol, but a wave of excitement engulfed him and he wanted
to plunge recklessly, blindly into the waiting Jungle and swim in its green
beauty.
"I am sure," said Harol, already
turning and easing back through the trap door. "You can't make me
go."
"No, I don't want to make you. All
right, Harol. Good luck to you."
Harol sniffled as he lowered himself through
the trap.
"Lock it after you," Mikal told
him, remembering the regulations, and then ran down the hill.
The Jungle came up to meet
him, and all at once he was in it, feeling it, breathing it, brushing the
branches and brambles aside and shouting wordless sounds of joy. Tiny flying
things flitted from tree to tree over his head, chattering and whistling
endlessly. He thought to whistle back and found they could imitate the sounds
he made. Mikal ran on and on until he became breathless, and then he sat down
on a great stone, removed his boots and dangled his
feet in a swift-gushing stream. The cool waters rushed by with a murmuring
sound, and once a great-legged insect almost the size of Mikal's hand did a
crazy dance upon the water's surface, then dipped its
head, spread gauzy wings and whisked away.
Mikal put his boots back on and began
following the course of the stream. Overhead, tree branches crisscrossed so
thickly Mikal could not see through them. For hours he followed the stream,
again removing and carrying his boots. Presently he came upon another pair,
identical, and realized that Fil had come this way, had also decided to wade
barefoot but had found carrying his boots an unnecessary task. Whistling
cheerfully, Mikal plunged ahead. Something with thin, gay-colored wings flapped
delicately by and Mikal reached out playfully to grab it, but it fluttered
beyond his reach and was gone.
Berries and fruits were
plentiful and, growing hungry, Mikal ate of them, slaking his thirst in the
cool, fast-flowing water of the stream. As it became more difficult to see, he
assumed the tree branches were thicker overhead, but soon real darkness
descended, and Mikal stood vaguely afraid on dry land. He had never known
darkness in all his life. When the white day-lights went off at the prescribed
hour in Astro-sphere, the purple, eye-resting night-lights replaced them. Here
in the Jungle the amber radiance faded and was gone, with nothing but a shroud
of inky black replacing it.
Mikal groped about in
confusion, called softly, then louder. Jungle sounds stirred at the sound of
his voice, and something furry scurried by, brushing against his bare leg.
Suddenly trembling, Mikal kneeled and rezipped his boots. A strange chill had
come with the blackness, and Mikal felt more completely alone than ever before
in his eighteen years.
Even his hands, held inches
from his face, were swallowed up by the inky night. Mikal could see absolutely
nothing. His first fear gave way to reason. This darkness must be a normal
thing in the Jungle, for the animals and birds all about him had set up no
fearful noise in protest. His father had once told him vaguely about these
animals and birds. The darkness took the place of purple night-lights in the
Jungle, Mikal thought. That was all, and once you got used to it, there was a
certain restful quality about the darkness.
Crouching, Mikal explored
around with his hand, found a length of ground upon which he could stretch out.
He eased himself down upon it, half-expecting something completely unknown and
hideous to engulf him. Nothing happened. The ground was firm, but not uncomfortable.
Mikal shut his eyes tightly and for one brief moment pictured himself back in
the snug warmth of his bedroom in Astrosphere. But there he was a boy, and soon
he would return a man, if he completed the Journey of the Four Circles. He
opened his eyes, tossed uneasily, changed his position on the damp ground and
tried to sleep.
All night he squirmed
restlessly, dozing two or three times and then waking abruptly when some new,
unfamiliar Jungle sound disturbed him. The night will last forever, he
thought, after he grew hungry again but realized it was too dark to find any of
the berries or fruits. The lights had vanished and would not return, ever. . .
.
When he almost began to wish he had taken
Harol's way out, a vague, half-real, half-imagined light came to the Jungle. It
was many minutes before Mikal could convince himself that it wasn't all imagination,
many minutes longer before the light was sufficient for him to see clearly.
Presently, however, the amber radiance returned, and it was exactly as if the
night had never been. Mikal laughed at his own foolish fear, stood up,
stretched and found stiffness in all his joints and muscles. He found some
berries and ate them, then set out again along the bank of the stream.
By midday the Jungle had
thinned out all about him. Occasional trees dotted the flat, rock-strewn meadow
on which Mikal found himself. The stream still gushed
merrily along, and Mikal wondered if it would lead him entirely out of the
wooded area.
Suddenly it did. With trees
behind and flat grassland ahead, Mikal kept walking. He squinted in the
bright-amber light, saw a vague patch of movement far ahead of him, almost at
the furthest range of his vision. Mottled brown and gray it was, surging and
seething and changing shape even as Mikal watched.
He advanced quickly, covering the ground in
long, loping strides.
Soon what had been a shapeless, mobile stain
on the green meadow resolved itself into a seething swarm of huge animals.
Great, ungainly, lumbering things, they milled about by the hundreds, munching
on the grass. Mikal had slowed his pace to a walk. He approached warily, saw
that the beasts, each probably weighing far more than a big man, had two wicked
horns on their heads, four legs and long, swishing tails.
Monsters, thought Mikal,
not knowing whether to advance or flee. Something prompted him to turn around
and his eyes swept the meadow behind him. Far away the Jungle loomed and . . .
but something rushed into his vision from the left.
Mikal stared foolishly, then
began to run. One of the monsters apparently was not with its fellows. Not two
hundred feet away, head down and horns pointing straight ahead, it plunged with
a ground-consuming four-footed gallop straight at Mikal.
Pity the Poor Enginer
|
heal ran, but knew running was useless. The creature
could move with incredible speed for all its massive bulk. Once Mikal turned
around and saw it had stopped, and for a moment he thought it had grown tired
of the chase. But it pawed the ground, snuffled, then began to bellow. When it gathered momentum this time,
thundering forward at ever-increasing speed, Mikal was sure flight would be
utterly futile. He stood his ground, preparing to dodge out of the way. Briefly
it crossed his mind that the trees of the Jungle would offer some protection,
but he realized he never could reach them.
On galloped the monster,
and Mikal tensed himself, ready to leap aside. At the last moment, when he
fancied he could feel the thing's hot breath upon him, a great flashing swirl
of color swept into view.
Mikal couldn't believe his eyes. It was a
girl. Young, perhaps his own age, she carried a long bright cloak of many
colors. She darted in front of Mikal, and he shouted for her to run while she
could. She ignored him, as she waved the cloak at the monster which approached
them, then side-stepped gracefully, bringing the swirling cloak around behind
her body. The animal plunged on past them, its direction changed by the lure of
bright, shining colors. Momentum swept it forward until, by the time it could
check its wild rush, it stood just on the fringe of the swarm of similar
animals. For a time it pawed the ground, as if unable to make up its mind. Then
it joined the
others and was soon lost among them. Mikal let out a sigh of relief, realizing that only the girl's
cloak had saved him.
She stood watching him,
hands on hips. Mikal smiled, but she surveyed him coolly and from a distance.
She wore her hair short-bobbed, like the girls of Astrosphere, but Mikal had
never seen anything like her coarse blouse of some rough brown material or the
short trousers which came almost to her knees. Freckles spotted her face and
her hair was brown, highlighted with red. She had big, solemn eyes and she just
stood there, looking at Mikal.
He cleared his throat.
"I want to thank you," he said.
She kept staring at him,
ignoring his words. Not understanding them? he
wondered.
"That certainly was a
close call," Mikal said. "If you hadn't come along—"
She came toward him slowly,
the cape folded over one of her arms.
Mikal grinned. "My name is Mikal."
She watched him carefully, he thought. That was it, she couldn't understand!
"Me Mikal," he said, tapping his chest.
The girl stood not three
paces off, apparently not listening.
"Me—Mikal." He thumped his chest
vigorously.
"You needn't be so proud about it,"
the girl exclaimed, and suddenly leaped forward. Mikal could not even guess
her intentions, so swiftly had she sprung into action. The great cape swept up
and then down, descending in billowing folds over Mikal's head.
He struggled with the
darkness it brought, but only succeeded in entangling himself more thoroughly
in its folds. The cloak covered him completely as far down as his knees, and
because he could see only in that direction, he looked down at the ground while
he fought to free himself. The girl's legs flashed into view, one of them going
behind Mikal and pushing back in against his ankle. Something—the girl's hands,
he realized—pushed against his chest. He stumbled back,
tripped over her leg, fell heavily.
Mikal thrashed about, still engulfed in the
cloak. He rolled over on his stomach, but felt his arms drawn up tightly behind
him. Swift, sure hands wrapped a thong round and round his wrists, binding
them tightly together.
Quite suddenly the girl yanked at the cloak,
removing it completely. Hands bound behind him, Mikal struggled into a sitting
position.
"All right, Reveler!" she told him
curtly. "On your feet."
Mikal stood up awkwardly, unable to use his
bound arms. His face reddened, and not from mere exertion. With the help of her
cloak, this girl had rendered him helpless in a few seconds!
"This is a strange day," she told
him. "You're the second Reveler we've captured out here."
Reveler? But he was from
Astrosphere. "There must be some mistake—" he began.
"You know there was," the girl
taunted him. "You never should have come here, Reveler. Move!"
She walked around behind him, prodded him forward.
"You don't understand," Mikal tried
to explain. "I'm not a Reveler. I come from Astrosphere."
"Where? Astro—"
"Astrosphere."
"I never heard of it. There is the Place
of Revelers and the Jungle where we Noahs live. How can you come from anyplace
else?"
"There is also Far Labry, as well as
Astrosphere."
"You Revelers are known for trickery and
fast talking," the girl said. "Move!"
Mikal walked, found
that the way led perilously close to the swarming animals.
"Don't be afraid," the girl said.
"They won't bother you now. There are times when I think we ought to
unleash this whole herd of cattle in the Place of Revelers. If they weren't
necessary . . ."
"I am from Astrosphere," Mikal
almost pleaded.
"Then that is a town in the Place of
Revelers. It is the same thing. Since you are not one of us Noahs, you are a
Reveler. Now, be quiet and keep walking."
Mikal realized further argument was useless.
Once this girl made up her mind, he suspected nothing would change it. Perhaps
she was leading him to someone in authority, in which case he would be able to
explain who he was and why he had come here. Meanwhile, he only could walk as
she directed. He wished she would talk some more, though, for he had never
heard anyone speak quite the way she did. It was, he decided, as if, once,
long, long ago, her people and his people spoke the same language but had not
been in contact for so long that gradual changes occurred.
As the girl had predicted,
the animals did not molest them. She called them a herd of cattle. After they
had walked around behind the herd, Mikal saw a strange man-made structure in
the middle of the meadow. Roughly square, but with a top that sloped upward at
some forty-five degrees, it had four evenly spaced rectangular holes in its
side and a fifth down at ground level which was larger.
"I live here," said the girl.
"My father holds the other Reveler, and he has sent for help. The way you
people think you can come into our land and tell us what to do.
. . f
They had reached the structure and entered it
through the ground-level opening. Mikal found himself in a well-fumished room.
Quite pleasant, he noted, as nice as any living quarters in Astrosphere.
Abruptly he knew that the structure was the Jungle way of keeping the outdoors out.
"I don't want to tell you how to do
anything," Mikal protested.
"Be quiet! My father will know how to
deal with you."
They passed through the well-furnished room
into a hallway. The girl opened a door and told Mikal to precede her down a
flight of stairs. Silently Mikal obeyed. It was dark at the bottom of the
stairs, except where a small flame, perched strangely atop a conical white
tiling twice the size of a man's index finger, cast a flickering light. There
on the floor, not far from the flame, sat Fil, trussed as was Mikal and
muttering to himself!
The girl pushed Mikal forward. "Sit
down," she said.
He sat. "Hello,
Fil," he said ruefully. "There," the girl told him triumphantly.
"You know him. Then you are a Reveler."
She leaned close and blew
at the flame which flared brightly and then went out, leaving them in intense
darkness. Mikal heard her footsteps retreating, could see her dimly as she
climbed the flight of stairs. When she shut the door behind her, the darkness
was complete.
"Did she capture you too?" Mikal
demanded. "No." Fil's voice was sullen. "How did you get here?"
"It was three of them. Three men. I struggled, but one of them got me from behind
and—"
"I see," said Mikal, not knowing
whether to believe Fil or not, but hardly caring. "How long have you been
here?"
"Hours. Days.
I don't know. It's so dark."
"It couldn't have been days, because the
girl told me you were taken today."
"It's the darkness. You can't tell how long."
Mikal lapsed into silence.
"Talk, go ahead. It's good to hear
something so you know there's more than this darkness."
After his first night in the Jungle, Mikal
knew the dark held no special fears for him. It was inconvenient, yes, for you
could not see well enough to perform even the simplest functions. By now,
though, the strange fears which had kept him on the brink of sleep but refused
to let him slumber the previous night were gone. "You talk to
yourself," Mikal said. "I'm tired. "
He lay down on his side, as comfortably as he
could with his hands bound behind him, and presently drifted off to sleep.
I # * « *
When he awoke, his arms
were numb from lack of circulation. Light flooded the room from three of the
flame-topped white cylinders. The girl stood there, watching him. With her was
a man, older, big and strong-muscled, with hair graying at the temples, a
craggy brow and wide-spaced gray eyes. He wore the same rough garments in which
the girl was dressed. She was probably his daughter, Mikal realized.
"This one," the girl said, pointing
to Fil, who was still sleeping, "came first, early in the afternoon. You
ve already seen him. The other Reveler," she pointed at Mikal, "arrived
later."
Her father smiled in disbelief. "You
took them? You, alone?"
"I am a Noah," the girl said
proudly. "They are but Revelers. I work in the fields and herd
the cattle and walk miles every day, while they sit in the Place of Revelers
and play their foolish games."
"It's true," said the man.
"Besides, I always wished I had a son. I have raised
you like a boy, rightly or wrongly, I do not know."
"I am your daughter," said the
girl. "That too is why I could do what I did."
Fil stirred at Mikal's side,
opened his eyes. "My arms are stiff," he moaned. "Can't you
untie me?"
"Your thongs would stop their circulation,
Marlyn," the man said. "If we unbound them and placed them on their
honor not to attempt escape . . ."
"No!" The girl's eyes flashed.
"You couldn't trust a Reveler, Father."
"That's just it,"
Fil wailed. "We're not Revelers. We never even heard of Revelers," he
lied.
Mikal saw no reason not to
tell the truth. "We have come from Astrosphere," he said, "on
the Journey to learn what there is to know about other sections of the
Universe—about the Jungle, the Place of Revelers and Far Labry. We mean no
harm."
"Of this Labry and Astrosphere I never
have heard," Marlyn's father told them, scowling in confusion. "Yet
you ask us to believe your story when the places you mention have no
existence." He looked at Marlyn, shrugging. "What do you think?"
"I think they are Revelers trying to
confuse our minds with crazy stories."
"We will not decide this here and now.
If they have a tale to tell, let them submit it in the proper place. What I
plan is this: we will take them to the Town Council, where they may present
their story. Then let the Council decide what is to be done."
"But it is a day's journey to the
Town," Marlyn protested.
Again her father shrugged.
"What would you propose? We cannot condemn them without fair hearing.
Besides, we have no jurisdiction. What would we do with them? No, the Council
must decide." The man crouched near Mikal, loosening his bonds. "I
won't remove them entirely, young man; but there's no reason why we can't make
you more comfortable."
Mikal felt his numb arms tingle with a
million fiery darts. He soon found he could move his hands back and forth
although he could not draw them in front of him. He worked them together
slowly, massaging one numb wrist with the other, restoring circulation
gradually. While he did so, the man was working on Fil's bonds, but Fil
complained:
"If you take us on a
long journey, how can we remain fettered like this?"
"Be glad it isn't worse," said Marlyn
contemptuously.
Her father frowned in thought. "They
would be uncomfortable. Listen, Marlyn. If we can have them pledge themselves
not to escape . . ." ~ "No, Father!"
The man laughed loud and long. "By far
Urth, you're a headstrong girl. I say yes."
*'I give you my word," said Mikal. He
had been listening to the conversation only in snatches, for they had spoken of
a town one day's journey distant, and the thought sent his mind reeling. Who
ever heard of a place so far away? It was true you could walk for hours in
Astrosphere, but you moved through passageways and tunnels, from one machine
room to the next, and it hardly seemed a journey. The extent of the Jungle,
Mikal knew, lay beyond his ken.
"I promise," Fil
said, but cast a quick crafty glance at Mikal. Mikal turned away. If he gave
his word, then he gave it. Anyway, he had come upon the Journey of the Four
Circles not so much to pick up three meaningless trophies, as to learn all he
could about the other three levels of the Universe. This town intrigued him.
The idea of a place so far and yet so important he found fascinating.
"Then you're going to untie them?"
Marlyn asked doubtfully.
Her father nodded.
"They shall be unbound. But you will do it, Marlyn. It may help to curb
that temper of yours." His eyes twinkled.
"No, you wouldn't make me . . ."
"Marlyn!" her father commanded sternly.
The girl tossed her short-cropped head
defiantly, but when she looked again at her father, she knelt near Mikal and
worked expertly on the thong which bound his wrists together. In a moment he
was free. "Thank you," he said, massaging the needles out of his
wrists.
"Don't thank me," Marlyn declared.
"This was not my idea."
Mikal stood up while Fil was released.
"Then I would like to thank you for your trust," he said to the
girl's father.
The man's eyes still twinkled. "Show
that you earn it, in that case, or I will never hear
the end of it." He led the way to the flight of stairs, pinching the flame
tops of the white cylinders with thumb and forefinger as he went. "Well,
now," he said, "we seem ready. Marlyn, I want you to fix a hot meal
for our guests. After that, we'll prepare some dried meat for the journey, get
a good night's sleep and be on our way with the first traces of dawn."
Marlyn ate in angry silence, spooning the
savory stew into her mouth mechanically. The silence
satisfied Fil, who had selected a seat far removed at one end of the coarse
table and seemed surprised when Mikal failed to join him. Drawing a tight shell
around yourself, thought Mikal, was no way to learn
things. He attacked his food with ravenous appetite, all the while seething
with unanswered questions. Why didn't the people of the Jungle know anything
about Far Labry and Astrosphere? What trouble existed between the Jungle and
the Place of Revelers? What made Marlyn so suspicious of their every move?
That with the final
mouthful of stew. Why did these people of
the Jungle, who called themselves Noahs, keep the great herd of horned animals?
That with his first taste of dessert, a delicious fruit pie.
Down went the dessert. And the man had mentioned
Urth in an offhand way. Mikal did not know what or who Urth was, except that it
was old, incredibly old, and existed before Astrosphere and the other parts of
the Universe. It was written that Urth could swallow up Astrosphere and leave
room for a hundred more. A thousand maybe. What did
Marlyn's father know about Urth? This between gulps of milk.
After the meal Marlyn led them to a room with
two simple beds and told them as she departed, "My father would trust you
too far. He may sleep tonight, but I will be on guard. Try something foolish
and you will be fettered again, hands and feet. Good night."
She closed the door behind
her.
"She's a savage,"
said Fil, padding softly to the door and listening. "We'll wait some
little time, Mikal. Then we'll be on our way." No.
"We should be able
to—what do you mean, no?" "We gave our word."
"I didn't like my hands tied any more
than you did. I'd have promised all of Astrosphere for that. We have no part in
this trouble between the Jungle and the Place of Revelers."
Mikal shrugged. "Do as you wish. I'm
remaining with Marlyn and her father. I'll go to this town with them
tomorrow."
"You're crazy. But then, you're not the
son of the Chief Enginer. You won't change your mind?"
"No. I think you should change yours."
"Two could escape more readily than one.
Two pairs of eyes could look in all directions ..."
"No. It is your business if you want to
escape. I'm going to sleep."
Minutes fled, became hours. Mikal drifted off
into troubled sleep, dreaming that he and Fil had escaped, had tiptoed outside
and crept cautiously away-straight into the path of the hundreds of horned
beasts, their hoofs pounding the ground into dust. Mikal sat up abruptly, cold
sweat on his face.
"Fil?" he called sofdy. He groped
about in the darkness, crossed to Fil's bed. "Fil?"
The bed hadn't been slept in.
"Fil?"
Footsteps, hurrying, sounded outside. The door, which had neither lock nor bolt on either side,
was thrust in suddenly, its hinges protesting. Mikal saw one of the
flame-topped cylinders floating eerily. When his eyes grew accustomed to the
light, he was aware of Marlyn carrying it.
"Where is the other one?" she cried.
"I don't know."
"I thought I heard something. I told
Father we couldn't trust you Revelers."
Mikal spread his hands out
wide and took a step toward her. "I am truly sorry," he said,
"Stop! Don't move. One of you
went, and then the other was to follow. Was that the plan? You should be
ashamed, giving your word like that."
"I never tried to escape."
"The evidence is as
clear as ... never mind. Father! Father!" Marlyn called in a shrill voice.
Her father came pounding down the hallway, protecting one of the flame
cylinders with a cupped hand. "What is it?"
"One of them escaped. The other one was
on the point of leaving when I caught him. That's what you get for trusting
them." She let her eyes rake Mikal scornfully. He was about to speak, but
changed his mind. "Give me the word, Father, and I'll tie him so tighdy we
could roll him all the way to the Town Council."
"You go to sleep, child."
"I could look for the other one."
"In this darkness? No, you sleep. I will
remain with our prisoner here until the morning."
Mikal said, "It's a mistake. I didn't try—"
"Quiet," Marlyn told him.
"You've caused enough trouble for one day. I'll remain awake with you,
Father."
"You will go to sleep."
"Oh . . ." But
Marlyn departed with her flame cylinder.
Two or three times Mikal
addressed her father, but each time he responded only with stony silence. Fil
had escaped all right, but at Mikal's expense. Everything he said or did when
they reached the Town Council would be colored by Fil's rash act. Mikal had
been a guest before; he was a prisoner now. A captive of the
Noahs, who thought him a Reveler, and one who had tried to escape, at that.
Still, he did not find it in his heart to be angry with Fil. If Fil wanted to
escape, well, that was clearly his own business. But Mikal had to suffer the
consequences.
The dim light of early dawn
filtered in through the
room's one window. Marlyn's
father stirred. He had in fact dozed, but M ileal saw no reason to awaken him.
"Wu-ump . .. must have
fallen asleep. Well, you must have also. Get yourself cleaned up, young man.
We're on our way to the Town Council."
Mikal obeyed him mechanically. On his way to
the Council, with a story they would never believe, he was a captive whose
fellow prisoner had broken his bond and escaped. Four Circle Journeys had never
started more strangely, Mikal thought. He wondered how it would all end.
Chapter 5 Town
Council
M |
ikal had never done so much
walking in all his life. Rock-strewn meadow gave way to forest again and forest
to rolling hills. Here Mikal saw other herds of animals, smaller, gray, fleecy. "Sheep," said Marlyn's father in answer to
his question, but he would explain no further. Marlyn, for her part, walked in
complete silence, but she could cover the rocky grazing land and the rolling
hills as easily as her father, matching his long strides with shorter, quicker
ones. Mikal found the going rough at times, stumbling from rock to rock while
Marlyn urged him on scornfully, gliding over the uneven terrain as surefooted
as the fleecy animals.
Every now and then Marlyn and her father
would call greetings to the men who, equipped with stout staffs instead of
Marlyn's multicolored cloak, herded the gray beasts. With them were swifter,
smaller animals, which would dart in at any members of the herd which strayed,
yelping, baying and snapping at them until they resumed their places.
"The material for your clothing comes
from the sheep," Marlyn's father explained. "Unless this Astro-sphere
you claim residence in is different from the rest of the world. Our shepherds
give their wool to the people of the Town who fashion it into clothing and
place it on conveyor belts which disappear into the very edge of the
world."
"Astrosphere," Marlyn scoffed.
"Clearly, there is no such place."
But her father's first
anger at Fil's escape had abated somewhat. "Do not condemn the lad unfairly,"
he said. "He will receive a hearing at the Council."
On they walked, and on. Presendy they came to
a place where the rolling hills soared upward, rising almost to meet the amber
roof of the Jungle. Mikal found himself hard-pressed
to maintain the pace Marlyn and her father set, and he felt indignation more
than anything else. Living their sheltered life in the glass and metal world of
Astrosphere, his people did not have the strength, stamina or endurance of the
Noahs. He suddenly wished he too had grown in an outdoor world, with the
sweet-scented Jungle all around and the herds of grazing animals and the
ability to travel fast and sure-footed across meadow and rolling hill and steep
escarpment.
Marlyn urged him on and, infuriated by her
taunts, he redoubled his efforts as they ascended the steep slope. They stopped
to rest within a few score feet of the summit, where a swift stream raced
downslope. They drank of its delightfully cool waters, then
Marlyn passed around the dried meat she had packed. Mikal found his appetite
had been in hiding behind his ragged breath and aching legs, for he ate with unexpected
gusto.
"We have covered much ground," said
Marlyn's father.
"And could have
covered it much faster, but for him," Marlyn said, looking at Mikal.
"For one unaccustomed to hiking, he does
well. I figured on two or three hours more."
"Well," Marlyn admitted grudgingly,
"so did I." Her admission made Mikal
feel very fine indeed.
Tm ready to continue,"
he said, ignoring the aches in his leg muscles.
They reached the summit, and Mikal blinked
his eyes in disbelief. Here below him the hill fell away steeply, and spread
out in a valley cupped by it and other hills was the town. "It's—it's
beautiful!" Mikal cried eagerly.
The town consisted of scores of structures
clustered in neat, rectangular patterns. Marlyn called them houses and
buildings and seemed amazed he had never heard of them. Paths—streets, said
Marlyn— separated one section from the next, and so far away that they looked
hardly bigger than dots, Mikal saw people on these streets.
"We must be at the roof of the
world," Mikal said breathlessly.
"From what the
Revelers said when they first came here, we do have a high ceiling on the
Jungle," Marlyn told him. Her anger showed signs of thawing too, Mikal
noticed hopefully. If Marlyn and her father would sponsor him, or at least
remain neutral, the Council might believe his story. He found this amusing: in
deadly earnest he hoped they would believe him, and all the while he would be
telling them only the truth. He wondered if strangers always approached each
other with such grave doubt.
Mikal had at first thought they would descend
the hill on foot, but his disappointment when he learned they would not gave
way to excitement when Marlyn's father pointed and said:
"You see those cars?"
Mikal followed the pointing finger. Far down
the hillside, but moving up it sluggishly with much creaking and protesting,
were three square cars. Following their path with his eyes, Mikal saw a single
metal rail running all the way up the hill almost to his feet. A cable balanced
atop the rail pulled the cars, winding itself around a great wooden pole and
disappearing down another slope of the hill.
"I will admit it's
crude," Marlyn's father declared, "but no one could deny its
effectiveness."
"A weight greater than
the full cars hangs from the cable's other end. When the cars reach the
summit, a lighter weight replaces it and the cars descend at controlled speed.
Ingenious, eh?"
"But surely with electricity . . ."
Mikal demanded, clearly perplexed.
"Elec—electro—" Marlyn stumbled on
the unfamiliar word.
"With electricty you could do the same
thing with half the trouble and twice the speed."
"I never heard of this elec—whatever you
said," Marlyn told him.
"Nor I," said her father.
"Oh," said Mikal. "Oh!"
There was so much the Noahs could teach him, and
certain things he could show them as well. He wondered with some surprise why
no one had ever thought of this before. Perhaps they both could learn something
from the Revelers, and all of them, in turn from Far Labry. The thought was a
wild one, but in the light of what had happened, he could hardly deny the
possibility.
At the very brink of the
hill, the cars creaked to a stop, disgorging a dozen passengers. Mikal found
himself smiling at them, for Marlyn and her father seemed to know everyone
present, always finding time for a pleasant smile or a word or two of greeting.
In Astrosphere it was different. You knew your immediate neighbors, of course.
You knew the people you worked with and their families, but strange faces
peered at you from every passageway and tunnel. A radar Enginer might never
know the name of the electronic Enginer who worked in the next compartment.
"Who's the stranger?" one of the
newcomers asked Marlyn's father. "Will you visit the Town Council
tonight?" "Of course. I never miss
them." "Very well. You will find out at that
time perhaps." "A mystery, eh, Landor?"
Landor, Marlyn's father, nodded. "We
hope to solve it."
"Strange things are happening lately,
Landor. Well, I'll keep you in mind next time my wife bakes some of those
special cakes."
"You do that," said Landor with a
smile. "I suppose we could spare a side of beef for the Kurtin family,
right, Marlyn?" Speaking thus, Landor led the way to the waiting cars.
Since no additional passengers arrived, the small train started back down the
hill after a brief lapse of time. Mikal had watched the train's ascent from
above. The cars had crawled slowly, laboring every inch of the way, it appeared, up the slope. Now, however, they gained
speed with gravity as an ally. Soon they fairly flew down the steep ridge, the
single cable and rail beneath them setting up a terrible clatter. Electricity
had its advantages all right, but this, Mikal conceded, was fun.
The town rushed up to meet
them with frightening
speed. Streets widened; houses
moved apart, revealing well-cultivated gardens, tree-arched lanes and stately
carriages drawn by still another variety of animal Marlyn called horses. After
they climbed from the car, which had braked to a stop in a rocking, grinding
last hundred yards, Mikal wanted nothing more than to walk around the streets
of the town and explore. Landor and Marlyn, though, quickly spirited him off
to a building where Landor's cousin lived and kept him there, while not under
lock and key, under constant guard.
"It's for your own good," Marlyn
said, more of her reserve melting with each passing minute, possibly because as
far as she could see Mikal had been on good behavior since Fil's escape.
"Our people do not like the Revelers. But if you are a Reveler you know
all that."
"I am not."
"Anyway, if it were learned you're
suspected, our people, calm and civil though they are, might not be
responsible. If you really don't come from the Place of Revelers, you'll learn
about all this later. Though where else you can possibly come
from . . ." And Marlyn was lost in thought.
Landor was gone much of what remained of the
afternoon, making arrangements for his presentation of Mikal at the Town
Council. When he returned, he said:
"Lad, I will be honest with you. Bad
feelings exist between the Noahs and the Revelers. I don't know why, but I'm
somehow half-inclined to believe your story, despite what your friend did. I am
for you, then, as much as I can be, but there is an ugliness
in the air I do not like. When you are presented to the Council tonight, you
alone can convince them you are no Reveler. I will merely yield the
facts."
"If you told me something about this
trouble, maybe I'd have a better understanding—"
Landor shook his head firmly. "That
would never do. Suppose I am wrong. Suppose you are a Reveler. Your people
maintain their own notion of the difficulty; we have ours. You might learn
something from what I have to say. You'll get no information from me until we
are certain Astrosphere exists outside of your head."
Mikal nodded. "You know best. But tell
me this: what happens if they still think me a Reveler?"
Landor said nothing, glancing at Marlyn who
shook her head. "Better convince them," she told Mikal, "if your
story is true."
Landor's cousin, a scrawny, middle-aged,
infirm man, gave them supper of what he said was mutton, and Marlyn informed
Mikal it came from the fleecy animals called sheep. After that, Landor led
Mikal and Marlyn out into the street crowded with people, all moving toward the
center of town. Night had come, but every hundred feet or so flame burned
brightly atop a tall pole, shedding a flickering illumination which cast eerie
shadows. Apparently rumors spread rapidly, for Mikal heard snatches of
conversation which made his heart pound furiously.
".. . has
quite a find. Brevor wagers he's a Reveler."
"Landor the Rancher, that's right. A strange
boy."
"1 don't know where he's
from."
"Some claim he was sent by the Revelers
on a secret . . ."
Voices ebbed and flowed in the crowd. ".
. . Revelers . . ."
". . . bolder all the
time. Why can't they leave us alone?"
". . . our way of life, they have theirs. To force it upon us . .
."
"It isn't rumor, my friend. Their raids
hit our outlying areas almost every day. They want converts, it is rumored.
Next thing you know they'll swoop down on the Town itself."
". . . to go into the Place of Revelers and strike back."
"If we could take some
prisoners and free our own..."
"It is said the Revelers can change your
mind and make you think the way they want you to."
"The atmosphere is ugly tonight. I would
not like to be the strange boy if indeed he is a Reveler."
". . . violence
for violence . . ."
Landor must have realized Mikal could not help
overhearing some of the talk. "You would not believe this, but mine are a
peaceful people. Still, if you push them too far, if you tell them what they
have been doing for as far back as there is history is the wrong thing and they
must now do things your way. . . . Not you, young
man. I speak in general. The Revelers have started something that may not stop
until my people, in their righteous wrath, have thrown open all the doors to
the Place of Revelers, and made some changes there."
"That's interesting, Father, but it
fails to help Mikal."
"Mikal, I'm afraid, must help himself in
this. If
the Council thinks to ask it, I will tell them Mikal has
been on his best behavior with us, but if they ask about any other strangers I
must tell them about the one who escaped."
Their avenue now opened out upon the main
thoroughfare of the Town, and they were swept along, as in a tide, with the
growing crowd. Directly in the Town's center stood the largest structure,
fashioned from the hard material which did not have metal's luster nor smoothness. Marlyn called it wood.
"The Council Hall," Landor
explained. "It has no roof, and benches line its sloping sides. There is
room here for all the Noahs."
"You mean everyone will be here?"
"Hardly," explained Landor.
"Some always decide it is too much trouble to attend to our Council. Some
contend one vote more or less won't matter. Some think because they have the
right to vote they need not exercise it."
They entered the Hall, and Mikal found
himself blinking up at the row on row of torches which rivaled daylight with
their brightness. Once his pupils contracted, his eyes took in a sea of faces
on all sides. More people than Mikal had ever seen at one time stared down from
the galleries. By this time he could imagine them nothing but unfriendly faces,
angry and uncompromising, convinced of his guilt in some still nameless crime.
Their voices ebbed and flowed, a veritable flood of sound, impatient and
clamoring. Mikal wiped one wet palm on his britches, took a deep breath, then another
one, and followed Landor and Marlyn to the speaker's rostrum.
Chapter
ó A
Place Called Urth
urprisingly, Landor did not stop at
the row of chairs adjacent to the rostrum. Marlyn drew Mikai down into a seat
next to her own, but Landor went right on until he had reached the rostrum. He
mounted it, and Mikal watched as a young man swung a great club around behind
his back and brought it forward with tremendous force, straining every muscle
in his body. The club struck a huge shield of burnished metal, unleashing a
sonorous clanging which hushed the hundreds of whispering voices as by magic,
leaving complete silence in its wake.
The young man's voice carried clearly.
"Noahs, your Council Chief, Landor the Rancher!"
The introduction hit Mikal almost with
physical force. Landor—the Chief? Landor had never
indicated it; Marlyn hadn't, either. Yet Landor ruled all the people of the
Jungle. Mikal suddenly found himself liking their way of government. Landor
ruled them, yet when a decision of importance was to be reached, Landor did not
make it himself. Instead, he journeyed far to the Council of his people and
presented his case there. Mikal liked the Noahs' way of doing things, even if
it did mean he would have to address more people than he had ever seen before,
on a subject they would never believe.
Landor cleared his throat.
Marlyn whispered to Mikal,
"Whatever you do, keep calm. Don't lose your
head. And, good luck, MikaT
Landor addressed the crowd.
"My friends, rumor spreads fast among
the Noahs. Already you know that we have something more important to discuss
than the routine business of ranching, farming and manufacturing. The Revelers
grow bolder eveiy day. Within the past thirty days, they have made twenty-five
attacks on outlying areas, capturing forty prisoners."
An angry murmur stirred the crowd, but Landor
stilled it with a gesture of his hand. "That is almost one attack every
day," he pointed out, "and more than one prisoner taken every day.
Why they want prisoners we can only guess, but it is generally believed
—especially since all their prisoners have been young men and young women—that
the Revelers will attempt to instill their way of thinking in our youth, then
return them.
"We Noahs are proud of our way of life.
We live simply, at peace with one another. Our wants are few; we take care of
our own needs. Until recently, the reason we placed food and clothing on the
conveyor belts which disappeared into the walls of the world was lost in
antiquity. Now we know, however, that we do that for the Revelers, who cannot
even provide their own food! It seems mildly fantastic that they would want to
spread their way of life without first learning a better one!"
Laughter followed these words, and Landor
again waved for silence. "Strange, is it not, that we never knew the
Revelers existed until they began to raid our Jungle? And stranger still that
we Noahs could continue our work, the work our fathers did, and their fathers
before them, without knowing the purpose. But such is custom and tradition.
If, then, there is the Place of Revelers as well as the Jungle, would it strike
you as too impossible to suppose that other places might exist as well in this
world of ours? Yesterday, I believe my daughter and I were visited by one from
just such a place. You see . . ." Landor went on to explain how Mikal had
appeared out of nowhere, how Maryln suspected he was a Reveler.
"Of course!" someone hooted. "A Reveler! What else could he be?"
And another: "Well, it's about time we
got a prisoner, after all those they have taken."
But Landor, who Mikal now
learned had a powerful set of lungs and knew how to use them, bellowed the
crowd to silence. "I still speak!"
he cried. "I have yielded the rostrum to no one. Our visitor claims he
comes not from the Place of Revelers, but from another distant place we know
nothing about. I say to you if only recently we learned of the Revelers, then
perhaps he speaks truth."
"We want none of the Reveler's fancy talking."
"Ask him to return our young men and
women, then we'll listen to him."
"Tell him to return whence he came
before we forget we Noahs are civilized!"
"Peace!" Landor roared.
"Peace, all of you. I give you Mikal, who claims his home is
Astrosphere."
The crowd exploded in sound as Mikal stood up
and took the few short strides to the rostrum. Even Landor's mighty voice fell
before it, and when he climbed atop the rostrum Mikal knew he could just as
well have remained in his place, for no one would hear him.
Landor, though, had other ideas. He signaled
for the youth with the great club, who came on the run from the rear of the
Hall and struck three times the sonorous gong. On the third stroke, an uneasy
quiet had fallen over the assembly, and to Mikal it seemed no less terrifying
than the howling.
"My name is Mikal," he said,
shouting the words slowly and distinctly, for his accent might trouble the
Noahs. What in Astrosphere can I say that will make them believe? he thought. In all his life he had never had the opportunity
to learn whether or not stage fright might afflict him. It came now, the hard
way, constricting his throat and making it hard for him to breathe, let alone
talk. Still, he had to convince them, for otherwise he suspected he would
never continue his Journey and so become an Enginer.
He clenched and unclenched his fists,
welcoming the stirrings of sound his first words had evoked in the assembly. By
the time they faded, he had regained enough of his composure to continue.
"You of the Jungle are but one-fourth of the people in the world!"
Mikal cried. Why tell them of Astrosphere alone? Why not the whole truth,
giving them the picture of a world much greater than the walls of the Jungle
encompassed?
"One-fourth! The lad invents worlds as
he goes along."
"Revelers there are, much to our
misfortune. And Noahs. Anything more I will not
believe. We demand proof."
"Proof . . ."
"I live in
Astrosphere," said Mikal, "the outermost region of the world. The
Enginers there keep the world functioning, and—"
"He lies! Who supplies the food?"
"The clothing."
"Try to function without those."
"I meant the machinery of the world. The
elec—" Mikal stopped in midsentence, suddenly understanding that what
Enginers did would make entirely no sense to the Noahs. As a matter of fact,
and Mikal's whole world began all at once to tumble in about his ears, even the
Enginers practiced their art with great skill only from memory and tradition.
Did any Engi-ner really know what he was doing, or for what purpose?
Indeed, Mikal could name and describe the machines
of a dozen different Enginer compartments, but would be at a loss to explain
their function. Bewildered by his own train of thought, yet not losing sight
of his main goal to appease Landor's people at least long enough to hear him
out, Mikal decided understatement might bring the best results.
"We of Astrosphere," he went on,
returning awkwardly to the beginning of his speech and altering it, "live
in the outermost section of the world, where we are fed and clothed by the
Noahs of the Jungle."
"That's better!"
"Of course the Noahs provide for all the
world."
"For us and the Revelers, you mean."
"Aye, perhaps, but is it not true that
we also run food and clothing into the walls of the world in a direction
opposite that of the Place of Revelers?"
"Umm . . . yes . . . ."
"Precisely!" cried
Mikal. "Astrosphere is the outermost section of the world. Next is the
Jungle, then comes the Place of Revelers. Finally
there is Far Labry, all fed and clothed by the Noahs."
"Once the food
supervisor tried to figure why we produced so much," someone declared from
the edge of the crowd, "and could not. It was completely beyond
him, he said. Now I suggest that if the lad speaks truth, if there are the
Jungle and three additional places to feed, it begins to make sense."
"Never! Reveler tricks, that's
all.
"Hear him out. Listen to the youth."
"There isn't much to tell," Mikal
said. "I am from Astrosphere, making the Journey of the Four Circles to
all the other parts of the world, returning with my new knowledge to become an
Enginer. I have come to your land with that purpose only, although before I
leave I must take back with me a trophy as proof of my visit. I think I can
speak for the people of Astro-sphere when I say we want no part of your trouble
with the Revelers. As for myself, I have to this day never seen a Reveler,
although I will before my Journey ends."
"Is this Journey a common thing?" someone called.
"Yes," Mikal told him. "AH
young men who would be Enginers must make the Journey."
"If that is so, lying Reveler, why have
we not been visited by your people before this?"
"You're joking," Mikal said,
perplexed. "You must have been visited."
"Now, by my honor, we have not!"
Order had come to the assembly. A man high up
in the galleries to Mikal's left raised his hand and,
when Mikal nodded, said:
"I am Torque the Cook. I say we have been visited."
That brief statement created a considerable
stir. Landor mounted the platform and addressed Torque the Cook. "What do
you mean by that?"
"I mean exactly what I said,"
Torque declared. "Hear me, all of you. Before the coming of the Revelers,
what would you had thought if you encountered a stranger?"
When a woman raised her hand, Landor pointed
at her. "Basat, wife of Cormo," she said. "I would have thought
it impossible. Since none but Noahs exist, I would have thought, then this is a
Noah I do not know."
"Exactly," said Torque the Cook.
"Even strange clothing might have gone unnoticed, although, from time to
time we used to hear tales of visitors, of strangers who appeared briefly
somewhere in the Jungle and then vanished. Does it strike anyone as a
coincidence that these strangers always were young men? Mikal of Astrosphere
has told us the young men of his people make this Journey. I know not about the
rest of you, but I for one am inclined to believe Mikal of Astrosphere."
Landor nodded vigorously while Mikal mopped
his brow. "Well spoken, Torque the Cook," said Landor. "We've
all heard these stories Torque has mentioned. Obviously we never could think of
outsiders before we knew the Revelers, or anyone else, for that matter,
existed. I, Landor, take my stand with Torque. Mikal of Astrosphere may come
and go in peace until he is satisfied with what he has learned from the
Noahs."
"Yes! Yes!" Marlyn shouted from her seat.
A general clamoring developed, and once more
Landor had the youth strike the great gong lustily. "A show of
hands," called Landor, "to determine— wait. Does someone else wish to
speak?"
"Peldot the Farmer," said a gaunt
man close to the rostrum. "As yet, I have decided neither
one way or the other. If Mikal of Astrosphere claims knowledge of four
worlds and not one, perhaps he can tell us of the place called Urth."
"Urth." His final word was chorused
a dozen times in the hall. "Tell us of Urth."
Mikal shook his head at Landor. "They would
grant me a knowledge I don't possess," he whispered. "We have our
legends of Urth, but no one knows for sure what it is or where, or if it has
any existence aside from legend."
Landor scowled. "That
is unfortunate. A lot might depend on what you can tell my people of the place
called Urth. Our legends tell of a great world far, far bigger than all of the
Jungle, a world called Urth. I know this sounds fantastic, but somehow you
lived on the outside instead of the inside. No
one can explain why, but you did not fall off."
"We have such a legend," cried
Mikal, hardly aware that he spoke aloud and everyone was listening again.
"The oldest legend of my people tells of this place called Urth and the
wonders to be found there. As Landor said, people lived on the outside and sometimes
used great winged machines to go from place to place swifter than the wind.
Wind," Mikal paused over the strange word which was part of the legend,
"is something very swift, I don't know what."
"We have wind in the
Jungle," said Landor proudly. "It is a blowing of air."
"Well, we do not have
it in Astrosphere. Anyway, long ago, it is written, the fathers of our
ancestors' fathers set forth from this Urth, embarking, as nearly as we can
understand, in a great expanse of emptiness. Here the legend is confused. It is
written in the newer books that our ancestors finally came here to
Astro-sphere, the Jungle and the other places of the world and live to this
day. But it is written in the older books that we are still journeying, that Astrosphere
and the other sections are even now moving to some unknown destination.
"Today, few people in
Astrosphere will take the legend as history. Most feel inclined to believe some
hidden secrets lie buried in the writing, if we could but find them. As for
myself," concluded Mikal, mildly embarrassed to find himself telling them
his most secret thoughts, "I like the legend. I believe the legend is
true. I believe this world of ours is a great —a great vessel of some kind,
taking us from the Urth our ancestors once knew to some other place. To another Urth, perhaps. I believe we will reach that new
Urth someday, or our children after us."
They shouted and stamped their feet and
whistled. They said:
"He tells it far better than our storytellers!"
"Spoken thus, I could believe the old legend."
"He is no Reveler. The Revelers, I hear,
laugh at the old legends and say nothing exists but what you can see, bounded
by the walls of the world."
"No Reveler!"
"Mikal of Astrosphere, we welcome you among us."
Landor smiled wearily.
"It appears as if you have convinced them, lad."
"I never
dreamed," Mikal laughed in relief, "that they would be so interested
in the old legend. I could keep on talking about that all day."
"Then better you don't let them hear you
say that, for they will have you talking all day. My people love those old
legends."
"So do I," Mikal admitted.
"Then tell me this: do you really
believe what you said?"
"Why, yes. Yes, I do.
Not many in Astrosphere consider the legend anything more than a pretty story,
but sometimes someone thinks to ask himself what lies outside beyond the walls
and—"
"Outside?"
"Yes, on the other side of the walls."
"Other side?" It was a concept difficult
to grasp.
"Through the walls. In back
of them. If you say nothing, nothing lies out there, that is one answer.
If you say the walls go on forever, that is another. I never even told my
father this, but I believe the real answer lies someplace in the middle. There
is something; there is nothing. And there is this place called Urth."
"For one of your years you harbor deep thoughts."
"Maybe it is because I'm young,"
said Mikal. "All that we learn from our fathers, who learned from their
fathers, need not be true. Yet we hear it so often we get to believe it
eventually. Maybe if we start thinking for ourselves when we're young we will
one day arrive at the truth."
"But to claim the
older generation knows nothing—"
"I don't," Mikal
said avidly. "They know more than I do, of course. But what I mean is
this: everything they know may not be correct. One wrong idea leads to another,
and—"
"And," Landor finished for him,
"the whole fabric of our science and history could be wrong as a result.
Why, until the Revelers began to invade with their schemes and games and ideas,
we never dreamed anything or anyone existed outside this Jungle of ours. Now
the Revelers, and you, Mikal, after tonight, have opened a whole new world for
us. Would it be too impossible to assume that is still not the half of it? Can
the old legends hold more truth in them than all the science we possess
today?"
"I don't know," Mikal admitted.
"I want to find out. On this Journey I am supposed to find a trophy in
each world and bring it back to Astrosphere with me. But the trophies can wait;
I want to find facts. I want to learn a little here and a little there and try
to put everything together, and if it ever makes any sense at all, then I think
it will make sense like the legends we read and then consider only as quaint
stories. Landor, did you ever—ever want to believe in
things?"
"One must believe in something, lad."
"I mean big things. Important
things. Sometimes if you want hard enough to believe in things you do believe. I hope you don't
think I'm talking like a child. But I want to believe. I believe. I believe in
this place called Urth, Landor. Urth exists—somewhere. I believe that here in
this world of ours is the answer; perhaps in the Place of Revelers or in Far
Labry. I want to find that answer, Landor."
Marlyn had joined them moments before and now she stood listening, eyes rapt
upon Mikal. "Father," she said, blushing, "tell me how we ever
could have been so wrong about a person. Mikal, a Reveler.
Even the thought of it is ridiculous, once you hear him talk."
Landor smiled. "That, too, strikes me as
part of what Mikal has said all along: don't take things for granted. Don't
accept facts which have no solid foundation. Even Mikal is at fault. He failed
to tell us before what he has told us now, so how were we to know?"
"You make me sound like a Scholar,"
Mikal laughed, "and honestly, I'm not. I merely have an idea I want to
believe, and until I find all the facts I'm willing to stretch a point or two.
I have to."
"That is precisely what Marlyn
did," declared Landor. "She trussed you up as a result, and marched you
off a prisoner." Landor shook his head. "You young people can't
remain consistent for a moment."
"We don't have
to," said Marlyn, winking at Mikal. "It's more fun this way."
"Seriously," Mikal told Landor,
"until I find all the facts I will stretch a point when I have to. To
learn about a place called Urth, it's worth anything."
"A place called Urth," Landor
mused. "If only we knew. Urth."
Chapter 7mn*P*&
I |
andor turned to face his waiting people.
He raised both hands for silence, then said, "Do
we agree upon Mikal of Astrosphere?" The waves of sound beating upon the
rostrum were almost all in the affirmative. When Mikal looked again upon the
vast sea of faces, the hostility, whether he had imagined it or otherwise, had
vanished. Smiles stared down at him, friendly eyes appraised him, voices blended with other voices asked a multitude of eager
questions.
Gesturing toward the crowd all around them,
Marlyn said, "It seems you lose either way, Mikal. Now it looks as if your
Journey must end because you will remain here in the Jungle all your life
answering questions."
"Try and find me," Mikal said, and
smiled. "I've got work to do."
"He has a place called Urth to
find," Landor told his daughter, "and—"
"Listen to them," Marlyn said.
"They want you to tell them more, Mikal."
It was because Maryln told him to listen that
Mikal's eyes swept the crowd again. The row on row of people awaited his words
expectantly, but . . .
Something was wrong!
Mikal hardly had time to realize it. Several
dozen figures had detached themselves from the now-orderly assembly, had
climbed the rows of benches and assigned themselves one per man the many
torches
which brought almost the light
of day
into the Hall. One of the
standing men raised his hand
aloft; they all raised their hands
and held
them there. When the first man
brought his hand down, Mikal
cried a warning, suspecting at the
last moment what was afoot. His warning fell on
sudden chaos.
All the other hands swept
downward too.
Each of the men stationed
one at
every flaming torch might have been
carved from the identical mold. Hands flashed down, reached
under cloaks and came up with
large, tapering cones. Simultaneously, the cones soared upward,
then dipped down
over the torches.
All light was snuffed out
in an
instant.
Mikal groped about helplessly, realized that the hundreds on hundreds of Noahs
had been
rendered equally helpless. He
stumbled against Marlyn in the
dark, knew it was
the girl
only because she called out in alarm.
Someone in the crowd yelled
hoarsely. Someone else caught it up.
Scores of voices shouted in
the complete darkness. Mikal could picture
blindly groping figures jostling
one another,
pushing, tripping, falling. He
called to Marlyn:
"Marlyn, can you hear me?
Stay here on the rostrum. It's safest."
"But what could all this
mean?" Landor demanded.
Mikal frowned his confusion at the
darkness. "Why, I thought you might know."
"Hardly," said Landor. Mikal heard
him moving
about, an uncertain treading
of feet
against the background of general
pandemonium.
"Did you hear what I said, Marlyn?"
Mikal asked. No answer.
"Strange," said Landor, alarm in
his voice. "Marlyn? Marlyn!"
Mikal suddenly tensed
himself in the complete blackness. There was the sound
Landor's feet made, and the scuffling of other feet as well. It all seemed so
unreal there in the complete blackness, with the angry, frightened sounds of
the assembly far away, as in a dream.
Those other footfalls—Marlyn?
No.
Too many of them, too
heavy. This was only Mikal's third encounter with
darkness, and the fears of his first night in the Jungle returned. The night
had covered a multitude of strange new things in the Jungle, animal sounds and
bird sounds and the rustling noise of something slipping through the undergrowth.
What sounds did night cover here and now? Night which had been brought on
abruptly and without warning, in a calculated maneuver?
"Who's there?" Mikal called softly,
afraid of the sound his own voice made.
"Yes," said
Landor, "I hear—"
"Who is it?" Mikal demanded again,
pirouetting about the rostrum in widening circles. He collided with something,
heard Landor grumble his name. He struck something else, felt it stiffen and
freeze. Tentatively he reached out again, then leaped
forward.
He could feel his arms wrap
around a man's body, could feel the man give ground. But all at once something
slammed against his face with brutal force and he felt himself stumbling back,
crashing into Landor, sprawling heavily on the floor. When Mikal rose to his
feet he knew without searching that the rostrum would be empty of anyone save
Landor and himself. Mikal rubbed the side of his jaw ruefully. Whoever it had
been certainly knew how to punch.
"Strike a light!"
Landor roared. "Someone strike a light."
Mikal leaped off the rostrum and plunged
wildly into the crowd. "Marlyn!" he cried. And again:
"Marlyn." It was useless. Other people, confused, frightened people,
called other names. Mikal was borne forward in the surging crowd, whirled and
eddied about. "Someone strike a light!" he heard Landor call again
from far away.
"Tliko, is that
you?"
"Stay where you are,
Pawl; I'm coming."
"Hordon! Hordon, where are
you?"
"It is the
Revelers!" someone thought to say, and said it, Mikal knew despairingly,
without realizing the consequences. The thought had been in the back of his
mind ever since Landor had claimed no knowledge of what had happened, but to
say it . . .
"The Revelers!"
"Here, you—take your
hands off me." "The Revelers have come!"
It seemed hours later when a man finally
struck flame to one of the torches and with it, the others. It took another
hour for order to be restored, what with people running back and forth looking
for other people, shouting, laughing hysterically when they met and embraced.
The darkness did not bring such fear, thought Mikal, not to people accustomed
to such darkness every night of their lives. Then was it the Revelers? Bolder
with every day grew the Reveler raids. Landor had said so and Landor knew what
he was talking about. Perhaps almost every man, woman and child in the crowd
had kept the same thoughts buried deep in his mind, unwilling to voice them.
Then one man had shouted the dread word and it had started. If fear and
uncertainty were Reveler weapons, then they wielded them most effectively.
Gradually the crowd centered about the
speaker's rostrum. Men with many sheets of paper stepped forward, mounted the
rostrum, called long rolls of names. Dawn brought pale fingers of amber to the
sky by the time the name calling was finished. Landor was very pale through it
all, waiting, Mikal suspected, with futile hope for the list of ranchers to be
called. Finally a voice cried out:
"Marlyn, daughter of Landor the Rancher."
Silence.
"Musner the Foreman." "Here."
Landor shook his head.
"Marlyn," he whispered. "Marlyn. . . ."
The roll calling came to an
end and Landor spoke to a hushed audience. He held his head high and spoke in a
deep, solemn voice, and if it quavered once or twice, who could blame him? He
spoke briefly and to the point, reciting only facts. Mikal listened, mentally tabulating
as he did so:
Item—The
Revelers have made their boldest raid to date, striking the Town itself, and
during a meeting of the Town Council.
Item—It
made sense. Realizing no one would notice them in the huge throngs,
the Revelers must have infiltrated, waited their chance, then simply covered
everything with a cloak of darkness and escaped.
Item—Fourteen Noahs, all young men and women,
had been kidnaped.
Landor concluded: "I don't know what to
do. At the moment I am only a poor father who has lost his daughter and who
wishes he knew a way to retrieve her. I ask advice of the Council."
The Council meant everyone. All types of
advice were forthcoming.
"We could go after them."
"Not with that head start—"
"Then why did we wait?"
"Foolish, we had to make sure, to take
stock of our losses, to—"
"I still say go after them!"
"Yes!"
"Track them down!"
Landor gestured for silence. "Not while they have
our loved ones," he said
grimly. "If the purpose of
pursuit is to retrieve those we
have lost, and if we
can't predict the Revelers' reaction to pursuit, I
say >»
no.
"Landor's right." "Listen to
Landor." "But what then?"
"If only we had some idea, some—"
"Wait a moment. This is Sacher the
Cobbler talking." Sacher the Cobbler was a short, stooped man with rounded
shoulders and sparse graying hair. "My son Birto was lost to the Revelers
this night, so I speak from the heart. I say there is perhaps one here who
knows more about all this than any of the rest of us. Doesn't it strike anyone
as a preposterous coincidence that the man calling himself Mikal of
Astro-sphere should have arrived on the eve of the Revelers' boldest attack?
Why was Mikal in the Council Hall tonight? Why but to wrap a spell about us
with his fancy legends and theories and keep us so occupied that we would not
know what was happening until it was too late! There's the man we want!"
He pointed dramatically at Mikal, pacing back and forth on the rostrum. "I
say Mikal of Astrosphere or Mikal of the Place of Revelers or whoever he is can
tell us something about this raid!"
Voices suddenly grown ugly welled up from the
crowd massed around the rostrum. Sacher the Cobbler pushed his way through and
shook his fist at Mikal. "What do you have to say, Mikal the
Reveler?"
Mikal looked helplessly at
Landor, but the older man averted his eyes and cleared his throat uncomfortably. It was logical enough,
what Sacher had said. Entirely too logical from Mikal's point
of view. As the Council began, they all were at least partially
convinced a Reveler had come amongst them. As much by luck as by any stratagem,
Mikal had convinced them otherwise. But with the black deeds of a Reveler raid
paralleling his well-received words, little wonder crowd sentiment had shifted
so abruptly. If even Landor looked away and would not bare
his thoughts . . .
Mikal shouted, "I told you the truth before."
"Did you now?"
"You and your tales of
Urth. A schoolboy's pipe
dreams."
"Keeping our attention like that. We ought to . . ."
"Rotten Reveler, stealing our
youngsters."
"Wait!" cried Mikal. "Let me—"
It was no use. The crowd surged to the very
edge of the rostrum and wavered there. It would not waver long, Mikal knew
grimly. One man could lead them; one more outburst from Sacher the Cobbler or
someone like him and they would swarm over the rostrum like the insects Mikal
had seen his first day in the Jungle.
Landor himself struck the
sonorous gong, not once, but half a dozen times. "My people!" he
roared ere the last echo had faded away. "Hear me. Hear Landor, your
Chief. I grieve with those who grieve the most. My daughter Marlyn is among the
missing. But I say to you we cannot condemn this lad in the heat of our
excitement, not after we were ready to accept him as a friend in calmer
moments."
"He deceived us."
"Reveler!"
"No!" Landor
roared. "I cannot say for sure Mikal is not a Reveler. I do not know. But
I say this: Mikal must be given every chance to prove his innocence."
"While we wait and let the Revelers have
their way in everything."
"We have no choice," said Landor
grimly. "What I propose is this: let Mikal go; give him his freedom. Let
him go as our emissary to the Revelers."
"Preposterous!"
"No!"
"Landor is a fool!"
"Wait—you are the
fool. Landor always has been a sage and good leader. Hear him out."
"You see," Landor went on, "if
we send Mikal, there are two alternatives. First, let us assume he is a
Reveler. He would simply be going home."
"And good riddance."
"Precisely," said Landor. "But
if he is indeed Mikal of Astrosphere, he will be going among the Revelers
alone, one man and unarmed. Perhaps he can discover what's behind their
actions and some way to stop them."
"Why not one of us? Why not
you, Landor?"
"Because Mikal was able to convince us
he comes from Astrosphere. Perhaps he can convince the Revelers similiarly,
and so seem an objective party to our strife. That is, if he's willing."
The crowd seethed and jostled all around the
rostrum. "Better be willing," Landor whispered fiercely in Mikal's
ear. "They might tear you apart if you're not. By Urth and all the things
you claim to believe, Mikal of Astrosphere, your story had better be true. If
it is not, I will track you down to the ends of the Place of Revelers and what
lies beyond."
"I will go," Mikal said. "For
you and for Marlyn, Landor; not for these people who change their minds and
ideas faster than a man can think."
At once, he was sorry. Any group of people,
under similar circumstances, would have reacted in like fashion. Things had
happened so swiftly that not just the Noahs, but Mikal as well was completely
bewildered. If someone said Landor were a Reveler and put up a halfway
convincing argument, Mikal suspected his head could have been turned.
". . . so Mikal of Astrosphere will visit the Place of Revelers as
our official emissary," Landor was saying.
Sullen silence caught and cushioned his
words, and for a time Mikal though they had fallen on deaf or contrary ears.
But no debate arose.
"As our emissary, Mikal will deliver
this message to the Revelers: We of the Jungle are slow to wrath, but our
wrath, once kindled, is not easily extinguished. We demand the safe return of
all our people. We demand to be left in peace, before the Revelers find they
have started something they never will be able to finish."
Still the sullen silence.
"So be it," said Landor in a tired
voice. "There will be no business as usual this meeting. The Town Council
is adjourned." He turned to Mikal. "Come."
He led Mikal down off the rostrum and through
the crowd. At first the Noahs did not part; rather, they jostled and pushed
closer, menacingly. They called ugly taunts, shook their fists, leered, closed in.
"I have spoken!" Landor cried in a
terrible voice. "I am your leader. If you see fit to depose me, do so.
Until that day, when I make a decision—I don't very often, not without your
council—you will obey. Stand aside."
The crowd milled about, undecided. One path
led to delay, to a possible solution. The other led to chaos. They hovered,
leaning first one way, then the other.
"Make way!" shouted someone. It was
Torque the Cook. "Make way for Landor the Rancher and Mikal of
Astrosphere."
The crowd parted. A lane
formed, and Landor hurried down it with Mikal. Behind them the crowd dispersed
into little groups. There was talk, angry talk, and it would go on through the
day. Few heads would touch pillows until the following evening, Mikal guessed.
They reached the broad
thoroughfare, set out upon it. They turned off on the avenue that led to
Landor's cousin's house, reached the house and went inside.
"Lock it," Landor told his cousin,
pointing to the door. Landor's cousin was an infirm man who did not venture out
much, hence he had not been to the Town Council.
"I have a lock, cousin. Here in town we
have locks on our doors, but we hardly ever use them."
"You will use it this
day, cousin. Shutter the windows."
"But-"
"Please. I am tired and must sleep if I
am to think straight. Marlyn is gone, kidnaped by the Revelers. An angry crowd
may be here at any time, demanding this boy. I don't know if we can trust him
or not, but we've got to try. Lock the door."
"Yes, cousin. Y-yes."
Landor stretched out his big body wearily on
a sofa. "Mikal, if you are lying ...
I hope for your sake you are not."
Outside in the streets, new angry crowds were
forming.
Mikal watched Landor's pale
cousin lean far out over the window sills, straining with the effort as he
pulled large wooden shutters in with him, slammed them shut and bolted them.
"Somewhere there is a device which makes rain," said Landor's cousin.
"What's that?"
Mikal asked him, interested. "What is rain?"
"Rain is—why, rain. Water spilling from the ceiling. Anyway, somewhere there is
this machine and it is said we once knew how to control it. Now, however, the
old art is lost. I at least have never heard of anyone who can make rain when
he wants. So it rains every now and then, unexpectedly. Sometimes a terrible
storm comes, and that is why we have these stout shutters."
Stout they were, and almost
as soundproof as the spongy plastics which coated walls and ceilings
in Astrosphere classrooms to keep the great throbbing sounds of
machinery out. Sitting in the cousin's house, Mikal could not hear the noise of
the people out on the streets.
Landor had sprawled limply on the sofa, and Mikal could hear him breathing deeply and
regularly. Mikal felt weary himself, but sleep was out of the question. He
feared for his safety only in a vague fashion. Other things, more important
things, chased one another through his mind. Somehow he knew that the world
always hadn't been this way, neatly compartmented into four sections, each
doubtful of the others' existence. Somehow he suspected a sort of co-operative
effort on the part of the people of the four sections. Perhaps, in that dim day
before history and from which legend alone remained, the sections did work together and so were
able to understand mysteries like what the world actually was and the nature of
the place called Urth. Mikal found himself daydreaming of that time, when he
knew he should be thinking of a hundred other things. If that time could come
again, if people could be made to understand each other and trust each other,
what wonders might they not achieve?
Milcal felt giddy with desire. All his life he had groped about, more with his imagination than
with anything else, for the answers to a score of burning questions. Now
he knew the answers did in truth exist—but to find them he would have to piece
together something from Astrosphere with something from the Jungle and add to
them, probably, still undreamed of things he could learn in the Place of
Revelers and Far Labry.
If he ever reached them.
It was a full circle. He must go about the more concrete
business of remaining alive and in one piece if he ever wanted to find out
anything. From Landor's well-meaning but infirm cousin he could expect no help.
And Landor? Landor hardly trusted him,
had merely placated the crowd out of expediency. Landor had said as much: the
Noahs had no place to turn, unless Mikal could help them. In setting Mikal free
they had nothing to lose, for one Reveler more or less would not alter the
Reveler policy—whatever that was. As a matter of fact, Mikal hardly knew what
it was, except that the Noahs seemed opposed to it violently because it
encroached upon their . . . their what? Freedom? Way
of life? Beliefs? Mikal did not know. This, then,
joined a long line of other mysteries which needed solving.
Step one, reach the Place of Revelers. Step
two, to be determined if and when.
"Landor, get up."
Mikal shook the older man's shoulder. Landor squirmed, rubbed his eyes.
"Eh? Oh, Mikal. Have I been asleep long?"
"No. I think we'd better get started."
"We? My people need me,
Mikal."
"You don't understand. I merely need a guide as far
as the way to the Place of Revelers. I'll go alone."
"You mean you do not know the way?"
"I'm new here."
"Still, if you young
men of Astrosphere made this Journey, do you have no maps, no charts?"
"No maps," said Mikal. "No
charts. As far as I know, such things do not exist. Here in the Jungle I am
supposed to find the way to the Place of Revelers. That would be some means of
ascending to the ceiling of your section of the world, Landor. For it is there
I must go."
"I know. I know. Although without the
coming of the Revelers, I never would have suspected."
"Then you know such a place?"
"Yes. Far from here, as far as my ranch
but in the opposite direction there is a hill. We call it Needle Mountain, for
from a distance that is what it looks like, a great needle. Yet up close one
can see the handholds, the clefts and ridges which make ascent possible. Needle
Mountain can be scaled, if the need arises, though before the coming of the
Revelers few people ever would have thought to try it.
"The Revelers come down that way, and
some of my people have climbed Needle Mountain. A door is there, in the roof of
the world; can you believe it? But it is locked and we cannot open it."
"I can," said
Mikal, removing the slim silver key from his pouch of three. "This key
unbars the way to the Place of Revelers. But tell me, if you know the Revelers
come down Needle Mountain, why don't your people post a guard around it?"
Landor shook his head. "We tried that.
They simply stopped using Needle Mountain and came through some unknown path.
It is as if the Revelers have the power to walk through walls. Indeed, some
people claim they have. I tell you, Mikal, these Revelers . . . but perhaps I
am wasting my breath. Perhaps you know more about them than I could ever hope
to know, because you have lived among them all your life."
"I won't argue with
you," Mikal told him. "We went over all that ground before."
"But the coincidence—"
"I heard Sacher the Cobbler too."
"And Marlyn taken ... as if you led them to her."
"Marlyn and almost a
score of others, Landor. I can't make you believe
me, but I can try. I'll do everything in my power to bring Marlyn back for
you. I guess I feel responsible, but not the way you think. If I had never come
here, if Marlyn hadn't captured me, if you hadn't brought me to the Town
Council..."
"We'd have come anyway. I preside, you forget."
"Still, maybe Marlyn would have sat
somewhere else, wouldn't have mounted the rostrum when she did. I'D bring her
back to you, Landor."
Landor stood up,
grasped Mikal's shoulders in his two big hands. "I believe you will.
Either you're the best liar whoever said a word to me, or—by Urth, I trust you,
Mikal!" Landor turned and shouted into another room. "Cousin!
Oh, cousin. Pack food for our friend Mikal, much food. And hurry." To
Mikal he said, "There's no telling what those Revelers may have to
eat."
"But your people prepare all the food."
"So we do," said Landor, shaking
his head as if still surprised the food his cooks and bakers placed upon the
disappearing conveyor belts actually reached some destination. "Head in a direction opposite my ranch, Mikal. If along
the way you have any trouble or need help, tell anyone you meet Landor the
Rancher sent you. If they recognize you as Mikal of Astrosphere, have that glib
young tongue of yours ready, lad, for yours is not the most popular name in all
the Jungle. Have a care with those Revelers. It is said they are sharp and
shrewd tradesmen, dealing not in livestock and produce but in human minds and
emotions."
Landor's cousin came with the food, as well
as a pile of Noah garments draped across his arm. "I couldn't help overhearing,
cousin," he said. "Perhaps your young friend will be less conspicuous
in these."
"Why, yes!" Landor snorted. "Should have thought of it myself."
"Very well," said Mikal. "I'll
wear them, but I had better take my own along—that is, if you want the Revelers
to believe I can be both your emissary and a neutral observer at the same
time."
"To be sure," said Landor, clucking
his tongue. "Well, Mikal-"
"Yes, I'm ready."
"Good luck, lad. All the Noahs wish you
that, without knowing it."
Mikal thanked him, peered through a chink in one
of the shutters. People still
milled in the streets, but if they watched Landor's cousin's house more closely
than the others, he did not notice it. He would need good luck, all right.
There was no telling what he might need between here and Far Labry and back to
Astrosphere, if the trouble between Noahs and Revelers served as an
indication.
When Mikal poked his head cautiously out into
the street, someone shouted: "There's the Reveler!"
Mikal ducked down a side alley and fled.
Needle Mountain
W |
hen Marlyn, daughter of Landor the
Rancher, saw the Council Hall plunged into darkness, she immediately thought
some of the Noahs had done it, possibly to discredit Mikal in some way. Her
ideas on the subject were vague: how such action would discredit Mikal she did
not know, but she decided to relight the torches herself before the situation
got out of hand.
Already she could hear
mutterings of surprise among her people. Feeling her way along slowly, she
found the edge of the rostrum, climbed down and groped her way along in the
crowd. People jostled her on all sides and before long she heard someone shout:
"The Revelers!"
It was a possibility she
had not considered, for although many claimed the Revelers would grow bold
enough to attack the Town itself, the idea seemed unreal to her.
She stumbled against
someone in the darkness, said she was sorry.
"That's all right. Uh, how old are
you?" What a ridiculous question! "Eighteen," Marlyn found herself answering mechanically, "but why—" Rough
hands grabbed her, a pair from either side. She cried out, but felt something
thrown over her head, heard a voice say, "I've got one, Rolf. Let's
go!"
Struggling futilely, she was borne aloft,
imagined she must be held on someone's shoulder. She writhed and kicked, then
subsided when she realized it was
useless. Whoever carried her knew
exactly where he was going, for in a very short time they had left the noise of
the crowded Hall behind them. Once on the street the sack was removed from
Marlyn's head and she started yelling again, soon gave it up as hopeless. No
one was about. No one would hear her.
Marlyn took stock of her situation. Her hands
had been bound and she smiled when she remembered she had taken Mikal in almost
the same fashion. Someone carried her on his shoulder like a sack of grain.
"Will you walk?" he demanded.
"Where are we going?"
"Will you walk without trying to escape?"
Well, it would be far more
comfortable, and she remembered, again with a smile, that she and Landor had
extracted the same promise from Mikal regarding his fettered hands.
Marlyn nodded. "Put me down," she
said, feeling herself eased to the ground almost at once. One end of the rope
securing her wrists trailed behind, and this the man held firmly.
"Good," he said.
Marlyn looked about in the dim light. Her
captor she could not see, for he walked behind her, but off some little
distance to the left walked another two men. The one to the rear was tall and
long-limbed, but Marlyn could not see his face. The one in front, a rope
trailing from his bound arms, turned every few steps to squint nervously and
nearsightedly at his captor. That face she recognized. Gaunt, long-nosed, a
small, pouting mouth, round spectacles perched askew on bridge of nose.
"Why—why it's Birto, son of Sacher the Cobbler."
"Marlyn?" Birto whined in a high
treble. "Marlyn, where are they taking us?" "I don't know. I can
guess." "You mean—"
"I can't be
sure," Marlyn admitted. "If they're Revelers, I'd say they are going
home." "Marlyn, I'm afraid."
"It won't do you any good, Birto. Calm down."
Birto's myopic squint squeezed itself into a
frown. "I always wondered why they took our people. I never dreamed it
would happen to me. It was one thing to wonder where they took people you knew;
it's something else to be taken yourself."
Marlyn grinned. "At least now you'll find out."
"Faster, you
two." It was the man who held Birto's rope.
Birto stumbled and fell. Marlyn guessed it
was deliberate.
"Get up, young man! We have to hurry."
"My leg," said
Birto. "I am hurt. Now you will have to take someone else." Marlyn
saw him play-act at hobbling.
"I'll carry you if I must. Move along."
Birto took a step and
sprawled out upon the ground, but much too carefully, Marlyn thought, probing
cautiously, then alighting almost gently.
"Really," said the man holding Birto's rope. "Get
"I can't," Birto lied hopefully.
"As you wish," the man said
wearily. He lifted Birto as if he were weightless and carried him along, head
tilted precariously toward the ground. "Do you find this better?"
"No!" Birto pleaded.
"If I set you down will you walk and
quit complaining?"
"M-most assuredly," said Birto, his
face almost upside down.
He was set upon his feet
with a jarring thump, and Marlyn could not help laughing, although she knew Birto
must have found the situation anything but funny. The man holding Birto's rope
laughed with her, which made her scowl. If this—this Reveler found it amusing,
she would not. "Do you always laugh when other people are hurt and
frightened?" she demanded.
The man still laughed.
"It depends upon the circumstances, young woman, entirely on the circumstances."
"I think you would
find some pity—" "I merely carry out my assigned job." "As a kidnaper?"
"As a teacher,"
said the man. "You're lucky. You'll get to see a real world where we are
going." "I suppose you don't like the Jungle." "True
enough."
"Well, I do. That's something you
probably wouldn't understand, that people could like something you
don't."
"Have you ever been to the Place of Revelers?"
"You know I have not."
"Then how do you know you won't like
it?"
"I never said I wouldn't. But if you are
any indication of the people there, I can give you my answer now."
The man holding her rope
pulled on it, saying,
"Less talk. Walk faster." Then to
his companion: "Engage them in all the conversation you like later, Rolf.
Now we've got to hurry." "Of course."
And they plodded on in silence.
Presently they left the Town entirely, and
the man named Rolf lit a strange torch. Marlyn had never seen anything like it,
a small club of some hard, shiny wood .... No, it wasn't wood, either ... of some hard, shiny substance which glowed at one end and lit
the way for them better than any torch Marlyn had ever seen.
Marlyn heard voices ahead
of them, outside the range of their light. "Rolf? Stiv?
Is that you?"
"Yes," Rolf called softly.
"Splendid. You're the last."
Marlyn was ushered into what she at first
thought was a small building of some sort, but in the
light of half a dozen of the torches she saw it stood on four wheels. They all
climbed inside. There she heard voices—angry, confused, bewildered.
She recognized some of them, suspected all the faces would be familiar if she
could see them clearly. The Revelers had made quite a haul this night.
"I want to go home," said Birto bleakly.
"I'll drive," Rolf told someone.
Marlyn found herself directed to a chair against one wall. She sat down next
to Birto, looked around and saw that the interior of the building—vehicle?—had
an aisle running down its center and another row of double chairs on the other
side. Up front, Rolf sat down at a single chair facing a great window. He
deftly manipulated some strange levers and wheels, and Marlyn felt the seat jar
under her. Something at the rear of the building —in a moment she would
consider it a vehicle perma-nendy—purred softly, then louder.
All at once they were moving, gliding
smoothly out over the meadow, traveling faster than Marlyn ever dreamed
possible, far faster than the tramcars which took you down from the steep hills
overlooking the Town.
"Help!" Birto shrilled.
"We'll fly apart."
Other voices shouted, screamed. But after her
first wild fear, Marlyn relaxed. The man named Rolf knew what he was doing,
apparently, and this certainly was superior to any conveyance or mode of travel
in all the Jungle. Wherever they were going, they would get there in a hurry.
More curious than alarmed, Marlyn sat back and watched the terrain speed by as
fingers of dawn probed the ceiling through the window to her right.
Mikal had never done so
much running in all his life. In Astrosphere there was
hardly anyplace to run to, certainly nothing to run from. But since the moment
he had peered through the doorway of Landor's cousin's house and heard someone
shout "Reveler!" he had been running almost constantly.
They knew the Town far better than he did.
Running in circles, he had become lost, had to both keep himself hidden and
find his way at the same time. If he looked out beyond the edge of the Town,
though, he could see the great hill with its tramcars, and he knew Needle
Mountain lay far off in the other direction. He found back streets, alleys,
small apertures between crowded buildings, although for the most part a wide
lawn separated each structure from the one flanking it on either side. "The Reveler! There!"
He ducked down one of the apertures, found to
his dismay it led to a stone wall. He heard voices faintly at the opening.
Trapped!
A window creaked up,
a head peered out at him. The window seemed ridiculous, there in the chink
between buildings. Apparently one of the structures had stood alone, had later
found one of its walls blocked off.
"Mikal of Astrosphere, quick!"
The voice was familiar, and the face. Mikal
gaped. It was Torque the Cook, who had opened the path for him and Landor when
the crowd had threatened to crush them. "Quickly,
Mikal."
Mikal took two swift strides, reached the
window. He jumped, caught the sill, chinned himself
up. Torque's capable hands caught his shoulders and helped draw him inside.
"Sit on the floor," said Torque the Cook. "Be still."
Moments later, someone was knocking at the
window. Mikal watched as Torque got it up and demanded, "Well, what it
is? After last night, I would like some sleep. Must you carry on all night and
all day as well?"
"We seek Mikal the Reveler."
"Then find him and let me sleep."
"We thought he came in this alley."
"Indeed?" Torque had missed his
profession, unless they had no actors or plays in the Jungle, thought Mikal.
As a matter of fact, Astrosphere itself only dabbled occasionally in the
theatrical art. General enthusiasm had never been kindled. "Why he should
choose this narrow alley," Torque was saying, "I'll never know. Well,
then drag him out and let me go back to bed." "He's not here."
"I thought you said he came down this
alley." "That's what we thought."
Torque growled, stuck his head out the
window, turning in one direction, then the other. "I don't see Mikal the
Reveler," he said.
"Apparently we were mistaken,
Torque."
"Then by all the delicacies my stove
knows every day, will you let me sleep? You'll get scrapings from Torque's
oven, otherwise."
"We're sorry, Torque. We thought—"
"That what's-his-name the Reveler came
this way. Well, he did not. But do me a favor, please. Find him fast and spirit
him away even faster, for I want no disturbances."
"Yes, Torque. Sorry, Torque."
And they departed.
"There," said Torque the Cook,
closing the window behind him and turning to face Mikal, "it isn't too
difficult when you know what you are about. Did we not befuddle them completely?"
"You did," Mikal said. "For
which I thank you, 1 orque.
"Well, don't thank me. If we Noahs
decided to do something, time was we'd do it. Since the coming of the Revelers,
though, there is nothing you can depend upon any longer. If
Landor, our Chief, says one thing and issues it as one of his rare orders, and
if the Council does not see fit to depose him on the spot, they should obey his
edict. That is why I, Torque the Cook, have helped you. Also, Mikal,
Torque must have a soft spot in his head somewhere, because last night I found
myself believing your story. Perhaps because it is as you have said, I wanted
to believe."
I'm grateful," said Mikal sincerely.
"It appears I entered the Jungle at the wrong time."
"You can say that again, lad. Unless you
can help us, as Landor thinks . . ."
"Well—" and Mikal stood up. "I
guess it's safe to go now. Again, Torque, many thanks."
"You wait. Just you
wait." Torque disappeared into another room, returned in a moment with a
bowl of something which steamed and smelled delicious. "Better eat
something good while you can. You don't think Torque the Cook places his best
dishes on the conveyor belt, do you? Here, eat this."
Mikal certainly was hungry, and he sat down
to the meal gratefully. It was meat, but he knew not what kind. It had a thick
sauce that Torque the Cook alone could make. "Ummm," Mikal mumbled between
savory mouthfuls. "Ummm, delicious."
"Don't talk while you chew, not one of
Torque's dishes. They are meant to be explored and eaten like some rare new pleasure.
Do you now wonder why Torque is considered the best cook of all the
Noahs?"
"Not in the slight—"
"Quiet! Eat your food. You see, cooking,
like many arts, is underrated in many circles, and—"
Eating and trying hard to cover his smile,
Mikal heard a lecture on the wonders of the gastronomical world. Torque, at
least, was a man well satisfied with his occupation.
Mikal finished, set the
empty dish down. "Refill?" Torque demanded
eagerly.
"No, thank you. I must be on my way."
"But surely one more dish of—"
"Landor wanted me to hurry," Mikal
reminded Torque. "I want to reach Needle Mountain today, if
possible."
"It's a long trek."
"I know. Good-by, Torque."
Torque led the way to his front door, opened
it slowly and looked outside. "The way is clear," he said. "Luck
to you, Mikal of Astrosphere."
Mikal thanked him again and departed.
Apparently the furor had abated considerably, for the streets seemed almost
deserted. Mikal made it to the edge of town without being seen, then set out
across the broad meadowland, which spread out on all sides of him until, in the
far distances, it seemed almost to climb toward the ceiling before it
disappeared in haze.
All at once Mikal paused. What were those
strange marks in the dusty roadside? Two of them running
parallel, each a complex pattern of crisscrossed lines and ridges.
Something had made that track there, but Mikal did not know what. Something which rolled. Round objects, at least two of them,
perhaps more in double series. And heavy. To leave
such an imprint the objects would have to be extremely heavy. It was so strange
that Mikal almost wanted to forget temporarily about Needle Mountain and
follow the mysterious track. After all, the Journey of the Four Circles was
precisely for this sort of thing: find something strange, follow it, learn
about it, increase your knowledge. But he had given
Landor his word. Besides, he wanted no harm to befall Marlyn or any of the
others, and although he had decided to reserve judgment on the Revelers until
he encountered them face to face, they plainly seemed the aggressors in this
strife.
Perhaps he'd learn about the tracks at some
other time. If not, there were other mysteries. Needle Mountain probably held
some of its own.
Before Mikal got two-thirds of the way to
Needle Mountain, the ceiling opened up and spilled out a torrent of water. It
drenched Mikal almost immediately. What was it someone had mentioned? Something
called rain? A spilling of water from the ceiling
unpredictably?
In no time the dusty roadside was transformed
Into a quagmire. Distantly, Mikal heard some unseen
cattle, sheep or other animals complaining against the rain. Mikal trudged on,
his feet slipslopping through the mud. Here was another mystery, all right, and
it might turn out a very fortunate one if it chased most of the farmers and
ranchers indoors. Mikal must remember the feeling of this rain. He must
remember everything about it: the clean way it smelled, the cool feel of it on
his skin, the thrumming sound as it struck the roadside, the sighing as it
spilled down on the grasses of the meadow.
For this was newness, this was
strangeness—this was what he had come to the Jungle for, and he must remember
it always and be able to tell people about it or consider his Journey a total
loss. Still how could they hope to understand if they had not seen for themselves?
"The ceiling opened up," he could imagine himself saying, "and
water spilled forth." They would ask: "How? In
buckets? Like from a tap?" No, not like that at all. How could he
describe the steady downpour of millions and millions of droplets, the constant
thrumming and sighing, the way the tall grasses bent before the onslaught of
the water drops? Why they did not even know what grass was! Clearly, thought
Mikal, one must experience things himself to appreciate them. More than ever he
felt it wrong for there to be tradition and passageways and locked doors which
kept people from one section of the world permanently separated from the other
section. If he had to, he would spend all his life trying to convince his
people.
Abruptly, the rain ceased. Tiny streamlets
gushed down the roadside with Mikal, rushing on aimlessly until they became
absorbed by the ground. And then, and then he tried to remember what the rain
was like, exactly what it was like, and discovered he could not. People would
have to see things for themselves, and not once but many times.
"Hallo!" called a shepherd tending
his flocks. He waved his staff in friendly greeting, not much more than a dot
far away across the meadow.
"Hallol" Mikal called back, waving
his hand. He smiled, for he knew the shepherd would never guess he had called
to Mikal, either of Astrosphere or the Place of Revelers, according to his
point of view.
Mikal reached Needle Mountain before
darkness. He saw it from a long way off, a great jagged spire thrusting its
pinnacle up at the ceiling of the Jungle. A huge, naked rock it was, bare of vegetation or even the rich brown loam of the
Jungle, Gray, black, craggy—foreboding. Mikal hurried on, his breath coming fast
but not from exertion alone.
Needle Mountain, and the
way to the Revelers. He'd hardly seen the
Jungle at all, still had much to see and learn. Now the Place of Revelers
beckoned with its strange portal, and the Jungle could wait. Marlyn?
Was Marlyn even now somewhere on the other side, up and beyond Needle Mountain?
It seemed logical enough, but it was hard to visualize. The world consisted of
four circles, the ceiling of one leading to the floor of the next, with
Astrosphere as the outermost, the rim, then the Jungle, the Place of Revelers,
and at the very center, strangely and impossibly with no ceiling at all, Far
Labry. Mikal wondered if the people of Far Labry ever suspected what went on
far below their feet. He knew with certainty he must try to find the answer one
day.
"Hello there. Who are you?"
Mikal stopped in his tracks. He had reached
the base of Needle Mountain, which reared steep and menacingly far overhead. A
man stood there, stout club in hand. Landor had told him Needle Mountain was guarded.
"I—" He was about to announce
himself as Mikal of Astrosphere, but thought better of it. In all probability
this man had not been to the Town Council, for Mikal had traveled swiftly. On
the other hand, a messenger might have been sent to Needle Mountain, and
despite Landor's edict on the subject, Mikal hardly could consider himself a
popular figure among the Noahs.
"I merely came to see Needle Mountain,
about which I have heard so much."
"Strange. I don't know you." Mikal
shrugged. "Do you know everyone?" "Certainly.
Oh, not by name. But by sight. Just who are you?"
"Mikal, son of Saml," Mikal said truthfully enough. "From where?"
"Far on the other side
of the Jungle."
"Near the ranch of
Landor?"
Mikal nodded vigorously. "Yes, Landor's
place is as close to mine as any in the Jungle. I have come to try my skill at
climbing Needle Mountain."
"You cannot." The
guard was a large man, big of bone and big of sinew. If he said no and was
willing to back up words with his brawn and his club, Mikal would find a
greater obstacle in his path than the mere climbing of Needle Mountain.
"I only want to see if I can do
it."
"I don't make the laws around here, son.
No one is permitted to climb Needle Mountain, and for good reason. Would you
like to fall into the hands of the Revelers."
"Well—" began Mikal.
"Let me tell you something. If you're
from as far away as you claim, you may not know it. The Revelers perch atop
Needle Mountain. Some claim they can almost see them there. If you go up they
will grab you."
"Ill take my chances," said Mikal.
"Not while I guard this place, you
won't. Move along, son."
Mikal stood his ground. Close behind where
the guard stood he saw a place where he might secure hand and footholds and
begin his perilous climb. The guard was large, almost stout. Once on his way up
Mikal doubted the man could overtake him.
"Look," he said in mock alarm. "Look there!"
"What? What is it?"
"Revelers!" Mikal fairly screamed and
scampered up the base of Needle Mountain when the guard turned, shaded his eyes
from the bright daylight and peered in the direction Mikal had indicated.
"I don't see any—hey! Come down from there."
Mikal did not look back. He continued
climbing, scraping skin from his hands with every new grip. Climbing Needle
Mountain, he soon found out, was almost like scaling a vertical wall rather
than a steep hillside. Too steep for walking, it forced you to crouch and use
hands as well as legs, not merely placing one arm forward, leaning your weight
on it and advancing, but groping out, finding a jagged handhold, grasping it
and chinning yourself up.
Mikal heard a scraping, sliding sound behind
him, heard the guard's deep voice shout an oath. The man must have slipped from
his first precarious foothold on the face of the precipice. Now he called angrily:
"Well, I tried to stop you. Don't blame me if you wind up a prisoner of
the Revelers."
Sweat dripped from Mikal's face, drenched his
clothing, burned his eyes. His arms began to ache; his
legs felt numb. Each time he dragged one leg forward he was sure he would not
be able to repeat the process. Rut if he paused, if he lost his footing, the
jagged, crags below would receive his body.
He felt his hands losing their hold, tried to
grasp more tightly the outthrust rock from which his raw fingers were slipping.
For all its roughness, the rock seemed slippery as glass. Doggedly, hands
slipping, slow fraction of an inch at a time, Mikal hauled himself up. It did
not matter, he thought gloomily. Even if he drew his body abreast of this final
handhold, he'd never have strength for the next one. He couldn't simply hang
there, couldn't turn around and retrace his steps down the sheer cliff. . . .
Then his eyes came on a level with his hands,
and what he had grasped was a narrow ledge barely wide enough to support his
reclining body. He chinned himself upon it with agonizing slowness, stretched
his tired, numb body out along the ledge, trembling in every muscle. He sucked
in great lungfuls of air, shut his eyes and sighed with exhaustion. He wanted
to remain there forever, resting, regaining his strength. But he sat up quite
suddenly and took stock of his situation. Darkness would come in less than an
hour. He could never hope to advance as much as the length of his body in
darkness, not safely. On the other hand, he could not remain on the ledge, for
he was tired and he might fall asleep, and the slightest tossing or turning
would suffice to hurl him down the side of the cliff.
He must climb the remaining distance before
darkness came. Looking up, Mikal figured a third of the climb remained, for
now he could see the very top of Needle Mountain quite plainly. Above it,
almost touching it, was the ceiling of the Jungle,
streaked with gold and amber dazzlingly and giving the Jungle its daylight.
There, there directly above the upthrust point of Needle Mountain, did Mikal
see a door in the ceiling? He could not be sure, but thought he did. Through it, the Place of Revelers . . .
Mikal stood up, for one
brief moment stared down the side of Needle Mountain at the ground far below,
then quickly turned his back and began climbing again.
The rest had helped, for Mikal moved swiftly,
more surely now than before. Once or twice he almost lost his handholds, but
that was to be expected, as was the returning numbness in his legs. All he
could do was hug the face of Needle Mountain, regain his grip, chin himself up,
find a place for his legs, and repeat the process.
Sweat had blinded him again by the time he
reached the top. He did not know he had succeeded until his clawing hands found
nothing to grab above him. He blinked, smiled, wrapped arms and legs around the
topmost spire of the mountain and rested. When he opened his eyes again, he saw
the trap door above his head clearly. He reached out with one hand, touched it.
Feeling suddenly dizzy, he withdrew his hand and shut his eyes tightly.
Everything was whirling inside his head, whirling. . . .
He fumbled with his pouch of keys, opened his
eyes and found the silver one. Silver for the Place of
Revelers.
The dizziness was not gone, in fact, had
increased. He searched the trap door for a place to insert his key.
He tottered there on the top of Needle Mountain.
He found the keyhole overhead, but his raw
hand trembled so much he at first could not insert the silver key. He used both
hands to do it finally, his legs gripping the Needle Mountain spire and holding
him
there. He felt himself swaying,
managed to turn the key in the lock.
Tumblers fell smoothly. The door swung down
at Mikal.
He ducked his head instinctively, lost his
balance, felt his legs torn away from the spire. He clawed frantically with
both hands, got a weak hold on the spire and felt himself slipping, both legs
and one arm dangling in space.
He shouted hoarsely, knew that in a matter of
seconds he would lose his grip entirely and tumble
down to the base of Needle Mountain.
Above his head, the open portal to the Place
of Revelers mocked him, its trap door still swinging back and forth slowly on
its hinges.
Chapter 9 The Revelers
I |
hat he could have been so completely
wrong all his life had never for a moment entered the mind of Fil, son of the
Chief Engineer. Here he was in the Place of Revelers, and discovering every
moment he liked it far better than Astrosphere. Perhaps the Jungle had soured
him on all other parts of the world, but in truth he knew he had made up his
mind in advance.
Astrosphere had everything.
The other three circles, nothing—except for
the trophies he would procure. Now, however, the neat little world he had
patterned out for himself was fast fading from memory. The Place of Revelers
made Astrosphere look as bad as the Jungle.
Well, Fil would have his
cake and eat it.
In Astrosphere he stood a fine chance of one
day becoming the Chief Enginer. He would like that. It was only natural the son
of the Chief Enginer be given preference, provided he qualified for the job.
Fil knew he would qualify. But still, he could not leave the wonders of the
Place of Revelers forever. Perhaps he could introduce the Revelers to
Astro-sphere. He had only recently, this very day, in fact, convinced them of
Astrosphere's existence. If he could make the introduction and if the people of
Astrosphere liked the Revelers as much as he did, he would probably be the
most popular figure in all Astrosphere, not even excluding his father.
Foolish Harol who had fled!
Naive Mikal who had kept his bond and even now was probably seeking after some
dull, unnecessary information in the Jungle! Fil could have led them to all
this; but no, they did not want it. As if he would have shared anything with
them.
It took all kinds of people . . .
Idly, Fil twirled the knobs within easy reach
of his hand. The screen before him flashed green and white, then
cleared. In it he saw pictures. Three-dimensional pictures, which moved and
talked and . . .
They could do anything.
"From the guild of actors," one of
the cheerful little figures declared, "we bring you Kardy the Tragic in a
role suited to his name. Kardy will play the part of ..."
The voice droned on, but Fil wanted nothing
tragic. He twirled the dials again.
Soft music filled the room. A man with little
things on his shoes which made loud noises when they struck the floor entered
the room in the three-dimensional screen. The music increased in speed and the
man began to dance. Tap . . . tap-tap-tap . . .
"How very
clever!" Fil found himself saying out loud, and
quickly turned the dial again, for fear he might miss something.
"Float in the Central Reveler
Pool," a voice told him, and he watched little people bobbing in the pool
on his screen. "Don't come, we'll fetch you."
We'll fetch you. . . .
Fil sighed indolently. They would, all right.
They fetched you everywhere, when you weren't busy at home with all the
entertainment provided. You did not waste energy traveling from place to place.
You got fetched. Well, Fil would fetch information on all this back to
Astrosphere and lead his people to the most wonderful everyday vacationland
ever thought up.
Someone entered his room on a mobile chair.
The chair braked to a smooth stop, its passenger eased back comfortably against
the soft cushions.
"Aren't you watching Kardy the
Tragic?" demanded the man, not much older than Fil himself.
"No, Skot. No, I
wanted something cheerful."
Skot, who had been delegated the job of
showing Fil around and making him happy, pouted. He had a soft round face with
close-set eyes and a self-indulgent mouth. "Kardy the Tragic," he
said, "is wonderful. Really, Fil, you must watch him."
"Very well." Skot hadn't disappointed
him yet.
Kardy appeared on the screen after brief manipulation.
He was on his knees and facing the audience, the unseen audience in all the
soft, comfortable rooms like Fil's, large tears rolling down his cheeks. He was
saying something, but Fil had missed the beginning, so found the speech
meaningless, without continuity.
Skot looked, scowled,
pouted, began to whimper. Kardy, small on the screen in three dimensions, was
crying.
Skot cried along with him.
Fil shrugged, watching. Skot was more
interesting just now than the three-dimensional screen. All Skot's people were
like that, crying and laughing along with the actors who entertained them.
Crying and laughing effortlessly and endlessly. Fil could laugh, all right.
But Kardy's little figure ushered neither sadness, pity,
fear or anything else from him. It did not matter. Perhaps one day he
would learn. Perhaps one day they would eliminate the tiresome Kardys from
their shows.
Fil sighed again,
pressed a button for one of the fizzy sweet drinks with bubbles in it.
"Soda" Skot called it. He drank contentedly after the glass had
appeared from a slot in the wall.
"Good," he said, but Skot hardly
heard him. Skot matched little Kardy tear for tear.
"It is called empathy," Skot had
explained the day before. "Our entertainment is so constituted to give us
the maximum in empathy."
Fil had said, "I don't know what that means."
"Well, empathy is the ability to put yourself in some other person s place and experience what he
experiences. This dimension vision is nothing, nothing at all, Fil. When you
are properly oriented we will show you something which really grants empathy.
After all, most forms of spectator entertainment, our records indicate, are
based upon empathy. The more empathy, the more successful the
entertainment. We Revelers have carried that to its ultimate, as you
shall see. Once every ten days we have our time of . . . But you'll see."
"Can't you tell me anything about it
now?" Fil had asked.
"No, not allowed. Well, perhaps a
little. Think of how much more complete empathy would be if you didn't have to
be a spectator!"
Fil had not understood clearly, but had
nodded anyway.
Now Skot stood up and
smiled. Kardy had finished his performance and Skot had regained his composure
almost at once. "Empathy," he said to Fil. "Most
wonderful thing in the world."
Fil suddenly felt very strange. He'd not
listened to Kardy's speech closely at all, but now that it was over he did feel
a certain sadness, a desire to cry. What strange sort
of thing was this empathy Skot spoke
about? How far might it be carried?
"I told you!" Skot cried. "I told you."
Fil realized, bewildered, that he had been on
the verge of tears. Something had caused it, but not merely Kardy's indifferent
performance. Then what?
Fil probed Skot with
questions, received evasions rather than answers. Well, the time would come,
and meanwhile Fil had enough to keep him occupied. He lunched on food
surprisingly similar to the fare in Astrosphere, except that you ate it right
in your room, receiving it merely by pressing a button and waiting until it
arrived. But after the main dish he munched on a delicious confection which
Skot called "candy." They had none of this in Astrosphere.
"Come," said Skot, "the day is
young and you have more to experience." Leaning back, Skot activated his
mobile chair. Fil had learned the trick as well: you only had to pull a little
lever for forward motion, push it for reverse, notch
it to right or left if you wanted to turn.
On their chairs they left Fil's room, emerged
into a broad, pleasant hallway. Pictures, gay and in breathtaking color, lined
the walls. They were vast, life-sized murals of clean-limbed people, most of
them young, playing games. They played with balls, danced with streamers around
poles, raced and performed graceful acrobatics.
Did the pictures actually move? Fil found
himself staring hard. It almost seemed they did, but it was an illusion.
"Do you play any of those games?" he wanted to know.
"Never," said Skot, surprised.
"Why should we? We have our empathy instead. Oh, long ago it is said
people played those games and it is pleasant to look at the pictures, but why
should we play them now?"
Other mobile chairs rolled
by in the hallway, but the people seated on them ignored Fil and Skot completely.
In his brief sojourn in the Jungle—he had watched people from afar and came
into no contact with them, until, miraculously, the Revelers had found him—he had noticed one thing: the
Noahs all seemed to know one another. That wasn't quite true in Astro-sphere,
but you did get to know many people. Here in the Place of Revelers, however,
one man seemed to remain aloof from the next, probably knowing the names of the
dimension-vision actors far better than those of their neighbors.
They rolled on into a large theater where two
or three hundred mobile chairs had been drawn up, all facing a big, convex
dimension-vision screen.
"They're showing a game today,"
said Skot. "We could watch it in our rooms, naturally, but size helps to
add to the illusion in a game, and every now and then it is worth giving up
your privacy. Watch."
They had come barely in time. Familiar green
and white light lanced the screen, then faded. A dozen
men and women cavorted on the screen, life-sized and completely lifelike,
playing a game with a large, lively ball and two baskets high over their heads.
The team in blue won after the game had been in doubt for a sufficient length
of time to bring over two hundred Revelers to the edge of their mobile chairs.
"Thrilling, isn't it?" said Skot.
Fil did enjoy the spectacle, but he thought
to ask Skot why no one played these games any more. He'd asked it once, though,
and Skot had almost seemed insulted. Perhaps playing games, participating
instead of watching, was beneath the dignity of the Revelers. Fil must keep
constant vigil over his questions, lest he unwarily offend someone and find it
that much harder to carry out his still nebulous plans.
Lights went on. The screen faded green,
white, then blank.
"Come," said Skot. "A large
group of Noahs is arriving today. I don't want to rush you or make you do too
many things at once—it isn't dignified, you know, hardly fit for a Reveler or
probably for a man from Astrosphere, either, although the Noahs don't seem to
mind—but if we hurry we will be in time for their preliminary indoctrination.
Such meetings are an unfortunate necessity, for you can't suddenly present a
Noah with dimension vision and expect him to react with anything but
fright."
"They are primitive," Fil
agreed.
"I know. Well, they are indoctrinated
personally, and since there are a few facts you might learn during that
indoctrination, would you care to attend?"
Fil couldn't be sure, but wasn't Skot getting
around things that way? Wasn't he saying, subtly, that Fil, while a higher
order of man than a Noah, was still lower than a Reveler? Fil tried to ignore
it, for he wanted to cultivate Skot's friendship, at least for the time being.
Was Skot secretly laughing at him? Then let them see who had the last laugh
when Fil, one day the Chief of all the Enginers in Astrosphere, returned. "Why not?" he said pleasantly. "Lead the way,
Skot."
And their mobile chairs
rolled on down the hallway.
Blinds were secured over
all the windows of the strange conveyance Marlyn, Birto and the other Noahs
were spirited away in. Their double chairs were swiveled about by Rolf and the
other Revelers, facing the rear of the bus. The bus came to a stop, and the man
who had taken over driving for Rolf said, "You better take her. This part
is tricky."
After a moment the bus started again. Bus,
Marlyn had heard one of the Revelers call it.
"Why did they turn us around?"
someone demanded.
"Why?" The chorus spread.
Marlyn said, "Needle Mountain is one way
to reach the Place of Revelers. We know that way and it is guarded. The
Revelers are taking us another way, don't want us to
learn it."
"Then, then," Birto gasped at her
side, "you mean we're leaving the Jungle?"
"What did you expect?"
"I—I hardly thought
about it. I told myself this was all a
bad dream and would end. People are taken by the Revelers, I know; but other
people, not me. It could never happen to me, not to Birto, son of Sacher the
Cobbler."
"It did," Marlyn
told him dryly. "This is awful," said Birto. "Why did they have
to pick me?"
Marlyn ignored him. Her body swung easily to
the left, quickly and jarringly to the right. Since their chairs were turned
around, her back leaned heavily toward the front of the bus, then
she slumped forward in her chair to its rear. Swing to the
left again, then the right. If she could translate what her body felt
into words she might remember something valuable about the hidden way to the
Place of Revelers. But it was all so confusing, traveling backward, seeing
nothing and having to depend on the swaying motions imparted by turning, the
weight or lack of weight by climbing or going down hills.
"I am afraid,"
said Birto.
"Not again." Marlyn could hardly
feel sympathy for him, not when he was filled with so much self-pity.
Their conveyance came to a stop, their chairs
were swung around again and Rolf rolled his side window down and was shouting:
"Ho! Hello in there!
Let's get going."
A voice, faintly. "All
right, all right. Because my name is on the roster I have to do some
work every now and then, but there's no need to get excited. I was about to watch Kardy
perform, anyway, and you wouldn't expect me to miss that."
"I wouldn't expect you to miss
anything," said Rolf, "least of all Kardy. Just open the gate and
we'll be on our way."
"You work volunteers
who actually have no empathy for hours on end every day,
I don't know how you do it. All right, all right. I'm opening it."
Marlyn heard a great sliding sound, then the
bus rolled smoothly on. One of the Revelers came around rolling up the window
blinds, but by then the bus had stopped again. Their hands had long since been
unfastened, soon after the bus had first started its journey, in fact.
"All out!" Rolf called, climbing from
his seat and pushing a door open. One by one the Noahs filed through, most of
them timidly. But Marlyn, despite their predicament, felt curiosity welling
within her. She had been kidnaped. Well, and so had others. Worse things could
happen. She had known from the outset that their destination would be the Place
of Revelers, and now that she was there she certainly saw no advantage in
timidity. She wanted to see the place, to learn about it, to . . . Why, that
was strange. She was thinking just like the boy from Astrosphere, Mikal, spoke.
She thought of him for the first time since the lights had gone out in the
Council Hall. Perhaps all this had been part of a larger plan whose parts she
could now begin to put together. If Mikal were sent by the Revelers to distract
them, he certainly had succeeded. It could have been coincidence, of course,
but if she found Mikal here in the Place of Revelers, a Reveler himself and not
a citizen of Astrosphere, as he claimed, she knew there would be no holding her
back.
Alighting from the bus, they walked down a
broad hallway. Several people—not walking, but ridiculously sitting on moving
chairs!—passed them by, smiling.
"Noahs," one said.
"Quaint."
"Quaint? Barbarian. They seem so confused. It is said they walk every
place they go." "Walk, eh? My-"
Marlyn bristled. "See here!" she
cried. "What's wrong with walking?"
"Listen. She sounds normal enough."
"Normal?" Marlyn fairly shrieked.
"What did you expect?" When she blushed with embarrassment or anger,
it hid all the freckles on her face.
"After all," one
of the chair-borne Revelers said, wheeling his chair about by some unknown mechanism
and following their procession down the hall, "we have our own Activist
Group even among the Revelers. They hardly ever use the moving chairs, you
know. Nothing mobile for them, oh no. They even
work—steadily. Yes, I said steadily. Who do you think brings the prisoners
in?"
"That's enough,"
Rolf called from the head of the line. "We didn't bring them here for
ridicule. Move along."
"Is that so? Activist!"
"Move along, I said." Rolf advanced
on the chair threateningly. The chair rolled away.
Marlyn noticed that pictures, all in color
and all well-executed, lined the walls. Then they left the hallway and entered
a large room with simple, stationary chairs in it. "Find seats," said
Rolf. "Sit down." Here, in the light, Marlyn saw him clearly for the
first time. A broad-shouldered young man with blond hair and a cheerful face,
he was taller than Landor, her father, and perhaps five or six years older than
she was.
They all sat, and Rolf
alone of the Revelers remained in the room. "Now then," he said.
"You are going to receive your first orientation on our circle of the
world and why you were brought here. In a few moments the speaker should
arrive. Meanwhile—"
He paused. A door at the other end of the
room opened and at first Marlyn guessed it was the speaker. But two mobile
chairs rolled in. Sitting on one of them was a vapid-faced youth with sandy
hair and dull eyes. On the other—Marlyn stared and her mouth fell open—was
Mikal's companion, the one she had captured first and who later had escaped.
Marlyn sprang to her feet, ran for the mobile
chair, grabbed Fil's tunic and yanked him to his feet. "You!" she
cried. "You sneak!"
"Now, wait—"
Fil tried to back away warily, but her hand
switched from tunic to his shock of red hair, grasping it firmly. All the
tension which had built up in her since the abduction suddenly exploded
violently and found Fil as its outlet. With her free hand she slapped his face
and continued slapping it soundly until Rolf had reached her and dragged her
away.
"Stop it," said Rolf. "What's the matter with you?"
"You wouldn't understand. Tell me, is he one of you Revelers?" As she spoke, Marlyn
struggled in vain to get back at Fil, but Rolf held her effortlessly with one
big hand. "Let go of me!" For if Fil were a Reveler, she knew, then
so was Mikal.
The other youth who had entered on his mobile
chair said, "He is not. He is a stranger here, from a place called
Astrosphere, he says, although of Astro-sphere we have never heard."
"Well," said
Marlyn. "Well." She relaxed, told Rolf: "You don't have to hold
me any longer. I'm sorry, but he had it coming."
"I am Skot, Corridor Five," the
other youth told Rolf. "I was instructed to bring this boy to the
orientation."
"As you wish," said Rolf. He looked
at Marlyn, the freckles slowly appearing again on her face. "But better
roll your chairs to the other side of the room."
"She's a savage," Fil wailed,
nursing his stinging face with the white imprint of Marlyn's hand on it.
"Like everyone else in the Jungle."
"Now, wait a minute—" Marlyn began.
But said Rolf: "You told me I wouldn't
have to hold you. Calm down. As for you, young man," he turned to Fil,
"don't invite trouble. Just sit still and listen to the orientation. Skot, you can take him back to Corridor Five immediately afterward;
I want to speak with this girl, anyway."
"Fine," said Skot.
"Savage," muttered Fil.
At that moment the door opened again. A large
mobile chair rolled in, bigger than the rest, and Marlyn stared in disbelief.
On the chair, and needing every inch of it, sat a mountain of a man. She could
not tell how tall he was, but in girth he almost rivaled the cows on her
father's ranch. He had many chins, flabby, rolling chins which joggled with
even the slightest movement. His eyes were deep-pocketed between enormous brow and puffed, flabby cheeks. His jowls swayed and wagged
with every breath he took.
A vast, shapeless tunic
covered his body from bulging neck to ankles, and Marlyn thought two or three
bed sheets might have been fashioned from it. She doubted seriously if he could
rise from the mobile chair without assistance.
Even Rolf stared at him
distastefully. Marlyn suddenly knew there was a difference between this Rolf
and the rest of the Revelers she had seen so far. She could not fully
understand the difference yet, but it existed. To say that Fil came from
Astrosphere and hence all people of Astrosphere were not to be trusted might
make sense until you met Mikal, she thought, and then you would have to revise
your opinion. In the same way, Rolf and the fat man, or Rolf and the young man
called Skot or Rolf and any of the others she had seen in the hall seemed
worlds apart.
Rolf was saying, ". .
. indoctrination will, we hope, bring understanding. Will the girl in row
three, seat five (it was herself, Marlyn knew) remain after the lecture? I now
present to you Senior Reveler Jebstakion of Corridor One."
Jebstakion rolled his chair forward,
addressed the Noahs in a deep, booming voice. "You have been brought here
at great expense and trouble to be enlightened. None of you will leave here
until you are enlightened. Any questions?"
At this stage there were none.
"Enlightenment will consist of showing
you the better things in life, the things you have been missing because you
happened to be born in the Jungle. Your progress shall be slow; you shall be
guided and coached every step of the way. Each of you shall be given into the
hands of one of our young men during
your preliminary phase
development To skip to the very end of my story before considering its
middle," Jebstakion pushed a button on his chair. A door in the wall slid
open, revealing a dark aperture. Jebstakion's hand moved with surprising speed,
flicking up from under his tunic, entering the aperture and retrieving a great
gob of some sticky food which he proceeded to chomp in his small mouth.
"You should consider your own middle," Marlyn
whispered, and Rolf, who had drawn his chair up near her and had heard,
chuckled softly.
"The end of our story—ummm, good—is
this," Jebstakion boomed half-incoherently between large mouthfuls of the
food. "All of you will one day be returned to the Noahs to bring them the
fruits of what you have learned here. Fruits, yes."
Jebstakion punched the button again, retrieved this time a large red apple,
biting into it noisily.
"Why, we grow those in the Jungle!" cried Marlyn.
"Of course," Rolf told her.
"Most of our food, from what I can learn, comes originally from the
Jungle."
"Well," boomed Jebstakion, smacking
his lips, "we will leave the middle of the story for your individual
guides. Rolf of Corridor Three will give you each a numbered slip which will
lead to your guide. Happy Reveling, all of you."
Skot and Fil followed Jebstakion from the
room on their mobile chairs while Rolf passed out the slips of paper.
"Down the hall," Rolf explained, "you will find another room. In
it are your guides. Simply find the one whose number matches yours."
In ones and twos the Noahs left the room. Birto
remained behind, finally said miserably, "Aren't you coming, Marlyn?"
"No. Our instructor here wanted to see me."
"Oh. But your guide?"
"Can wait," said Marlyn.
"No, he can't," Rolf smiled. "I am your guide."
"Well," said Birto doubtfully,
squinting until he found the door. "I suppose I should find my
guide." He stumbled uncertainly from the room.
"What did you want?" Marlyn demanded coolly.
Rolf smiled strangely. "Just what do you
think of the Revelers?"
"Why-I-"
"I know it's on short notice, but let's
have your opinion."
"Really," said Marlyn.
"They're your neighbors and friends. You're one of them. Why should I tell
you—"
"Answer the question, please," Rolf demanded.
"Very well, but don't say you weren't
warned. From the little I've seen I'd say the Revelers were slow, lazy people,
self-indulgent, arrogant, useless, conceited . . ."
"I am a Reveler," Rolf said
quietly, "but I happen to agree with you. I think the Revelers are everything
you claim, and more. And I'm one of them. I think that unless something is done
about it, the consequences could be serious. Tell me, what do you know of
Urth?"
Strange how he had
presented a totally different question. Where was the connection?
Marlyn wondered. "Not much. Urth exists in our old legends, and—"
"I know more than
legend," said Rolf. "I know fact. Fact that would make your hair stand on end, I have discovered a great deal about this
place called Urth. All the information is here among the Revelers, and there
seems to be no way of getting it out."
"What information? What is so important
about a legend?" In spite of her attempt at cool reserve, Marlyn felt
herself becoming interested. Rolf seemed so—so completely, urgently
enthusiastic.
"The legend doesn't matter, not at all.
Earth—it is spelled with an 'ea' and not a 'u,' incidentally, although our
legends spell it the other way—Earth is something called a planet. It revolves
in something else called the 'sky' around another, larger thing called either a
'sun' or a 'star.' This world of ours, this place is nothing but a—well, a sort
of bus. It's taking us from Planet Earth to another planet, another sun,
another world to live." Rolf was breathless, talking to himself as much as
to Marlyn. "Can you believe it, they live on the
outside, not the inside of planets. And we're approaching another planet a
million times bigger than this world of ours, so much bigger that we can't
imagine it."
"I'm not sure I understand," Marlyn
told him doubtfully.
"Listen. This you can understand. Unless
everyone realizes what's happening, why we are here and how we got here and
what can be done about it, we're going to reach that other, bigger world and
crash. We will hit it so hard you won't even find the pieces. Do you understand
that? Do you?"
"Well, I'm not sure I—"
"I went too fast," Rolf groaned. "It was too vague.
Marlyn, listen to me: unless we act and act
fast, unless you can warn your people, and I can shake my people from their
lethargy, unless we can stir all the people that live inside this bus or world
or whatever it is, unless . . ." "Go on."
"Marlyn, in a very
short time everyone will be killed! Everyone! Unless we can
do something about it. Did you ever hear of a place called Far
Labry?"
More questions. "No, I don't . . . wait
a minute. Someone mentioned it once. The fourth, innermost
circle of the world."
"Our records talk of it, but we haven't
been able to find it. Can you picture the irony? With everyone about to perish,
with the whole world going to crash and explode, no one understands; and we
can't find the one place that might be able to save us."
Rolf had spoken so rapidly, so emotionally,
that Marlyn hardly knew what to think. A stranger, a man from another world,
could hardly make her believe everyone was going to perish in a very short
time, not when everything seemed perfectly normal. He used such strange new
words, like star and sun and sky. He'd have gotten along fine with Mikal, she
thought. Mikal. Didn't Mikal say he had a key which
could open the way to Far Labry? Where was Mikal now?
"The end of the
world," said Rolf. "And the Revelers don't even play games. They do
worse. They watch old pictures of people playing games,
they sit in their overstuffed chairs and experience empathy." He pounded
right fist into left palm. "The world is doomed. Doomed!"
Chapter
JO Dream
World
I |
he trap door swung above Mikal's head,
out of reach. Mikal was swinging too, holding to the spire of Needle Mountain
with one hand, his legs dangling helplessly in air. At first his fingers hurt
terribly, and then, not gradually but all at once, they became numb. They
simply lost all sense of feeling and that was better, for the straining in his
arm he could stand. He knew he still held on only because the sheer face of
Needle Mountain swung gently back and forth relative to his own motion. He also
knew he could not hold on much longer.
Something tugged at his right shoulder.
Something else tugged at the left.
From somewhere so distant that he hardly
could hear it a voice was saying:
"What, by the name of all the Corridors
is he doing way up here?"
Then another voice, softer, it was either a
boy or a woman: "Lucky for him the names of two Activists came up on the
duty roster for this post today. Can you imagine it otherwise? They'd probably
sit watching Kardy or someone else and let this boy drop. . . . Here, careful
now."
Mikal felt himself hauled
upward. There was a roaring in his ears. His eyes clouded over. "There.
He's safe now. Well, I believe he's fainted." "I'll get some
water."
The voice receded, faded away, and Mikal felt
for one brief moment he still clung helplessly to the spire.
His fingers were slipping,
slipping, and he had started to fall. . . . The blackness which enveloped him
was warm and snug and he slept deeply. Later: "Here, drink this."
Someone propped up his
head, held a water glass to his lips. He drank gratefully. "You're a very
lucky young man." "What-"
"Don't try to talk. Rest."
Then they were talking among themselves
again, and Mikal leaned back and listened, resting comfortably, it seemed, for
the first time in years.
"Why should a lone Noah want to climb
Needle Mountain?"
"I don't know. Looking for a friend who
was taken?"
"Possibly. I'll get some salve for
his hands."
Something cool and wet touched the skin of
Mikal's hands, burned for a moment and then soothed.
"Should we notify Jebstakion?"
"Why? What for? And have him subjected
to that indoctrination and orientation? To make another useless
Reveler out of him? I have a better idea."
"What's that?"
"Why don't we notify Rolf? Rolf always
said if he could find one Noah and keep him out of Jebstakion's hands it might
help tremendously, although we still haven't found a Noah who even heard of Far
Labry, let alone knows where it is."
Mikal tried to sit up, found he was too weak.
He said, "I have heard of Far Labry. I have a key which can open the way.
. . ."
"Delirious?"
"No, by the Corridors,
I don't think so! Send a message to Rolf, quickly. Just
'Needle Mountain' and 'urgent.' He'll know."
Mikal heard footsteps recede. He fell asleep.
There was a third voice when he awoke, a
deep, clear voice. He opened his eyes and could see clearly for the first time
since before they took him off Needle Mountain. Took him—down? No, not from
what he had heard. Took him up—up through the trap door to the
Place of Revelers.
The deep voice belonged to a tall man with
blond hair. "So this is the boy, eh?" he said.
"That's right, Rolf." A man and
woman Rolfs age were at his side.
"I hope it's important. I have a girl
back in the Corridors who has heard of Far Labry and
who seems more intelligent than any of the other Noahs. Well, at least she has
a lot of spunk."
"She'll keep."
"That's true, since I'm her guide.
Well—ah, he's getting up."
Mikal smiled, sitting up. The woman propped a
pillow under his head, and he noticed both his hands were swathed in bandages.
"I'm all right now," he said to the woman. "Don't worry about
me. Just a bit weak, that's all."
The shorter man said urgently, "You
mentioned something before about Far Labry. What do you know about that
place?"
"Not much. Only that it's the center of
the world and somehow holds the secret of magic both black and white."
"Magic, eh?" Rolf seemed
interested. "Yes, magic."
"How does one get to this Far
Labry?"
Mikal shook his head. "That I don't
know. I came here to find out, eventually. I have a key which can open the
door—if we find the door."
"But we don't know where it
is," Rolf admitted glumly.
Mikal shrugged. "That hardly seems
possible. Young men of Astrosphere come through here every year, seeking the
way to Far Labry."
"I never heard—" began the woman.
"That doesn't matter," Rolf
reminded her. "If Jebstakion and the people of the Corridor One knew of such visitors, do you think they would tell us?
The less the Activists know, as far as they're concerned, the better they like
it. It was our idea bringing the Noahs here and—"
"But," the woman protested,
"it certainly got out of hand. We never intended kidnaping them in the
beginning. We thought they would come voluntarily if we told them of another
world."
"Jebstakion thought differently,"
the shorter man said. "Jebstakion takes them against their will, subjects
them to his indoctrination which," he grinned, "has still to prove itself successful."
"Anyway," Rolf went on,
"perhaps Jebstakion couldn't help us knowing about the Noahs. The fact
that we wanted to bring them here made Jebstakion bring them here, but on his
terms, of course. Since the people of this lad's world—"
"Astrosphere," Mikal supplied.
"Since the people of
Astrosphere only come once a year, I think Jebstakion could keep knowledge of
them from the Activists. He had to do something about the Noahs to keep his
peace with us, but if we don't learn about the people of Astrosphere, maybe
he'd prefer it that way. If they come, and if they do
pass through to Far Labry—"
"They certainly do," Mikal assured him.
"Then," Rolf concluded
triumphantly, "Far Labry does exist. There is a way to Far Labry, right
here from the Place of Revelers. Best of all, this boy has the key. How are you
feeling—uh—"
"Mikal," said Mikal.
"Do you feel better, Mikal?"
"Yes."
"Splendid. Here, we'll get you something
to eat, and then we'll be on our way. Incidentally, I ran across someone else
who claimed he was from Astro-sphere today."
"Really?" Fil, Mikal thought. "Red-haired, tall?"
"That's the one. Had a little tussle
with a girl of the Noahs, and he wasn't getting the better of it."
Mikal grinned happily. "Let me
guess," he said. "She had freckles all over her face, but they have a
way of disappearing when she gets mad."
"Why, yesl Her name is Marlyn."
"I came here looking for her," said
Mikal. "Her father, who rules all the Noahs, sent me."
"But I thought you come from
Astrosphere. Don't tell me the people of Astrosphere and the Noahs cooperate?
Work together?"
"Hardly." Mikal laughed. "It's
a long story. Look, I'll be glad to help you. If you find the door my key can
open, I'll be happy to take you through. First I have to return Marlyn to
Landor, her father, and—"
"First, nothing!" cried Rolf.
"We have a world to save, if there's still time."
The woman came with some food and Mikal ate
hungrily. He did not know what this big man named Rolf was talking about, but
instinctively he liked and trusted him. "I think I'm going to like you
Revelers."
"Is that so? You like us?" Rolf was smiling.
"Yes, I do."
"Good, because we're
Activists. That means you'll hate the Revelers as much
as we do. You have a lot to learn, Mikal, so let's go."
They stepped outside into a long, empty
corridor. A vehicle of some sort, electric, Mikal guessed, was waiting. They
stepped inside and were whisked away at tremendous speed.
"I left her right here in this room," Rolf said grimly.
Mikal looked around, saw a score of empty
chairs, walls of gleaming metal much like those in
Astrosphere. "Perhaps she grew curious and looked around some," said
Mikal. "Maybe she's lost."
"I told her to wait for me. Jebstakion
and I don't get along. He might decide Marlyn would do better with a
non-Activist guide."
"Wait a minute!" cried Mikal. He
found a crumpled slip of paper on one of the chairs. "Look at this. Maybe
you can make sense out of it, I can't."
Rolf took it, read. "Skot, Corridor
Five!" It had been scrawled in frantic haste, for the writing stick had
torn into the paper twice, the paper had been wadded,
then thrown upon the chair. "Skot," mused
Rolf. "Skot. . . .
Say, I remember. The other boy from Astrosphere was in Skot's care. Your
friend—"
"Fil is no friend of mine," said
Mikal, wishing he knew whether or not that was Marlyn's handwriting.
"Come on," Rolf called over his
shoulder, heading for the door. "Let's see what we can find in Corridor
Five."
Mikal ran out of the room after him, with
hardly time to study the pictures on the walls outside or the people rolling by
in comfortable moving chairs. All the people turned to stare, however, as he
and Rolf sped by. "It's been a long time since they've seen anyone
running," Rolf chuckled.
They ran up the hallway, passing one
branching corridor after another. Apparently Rolf knew the way, for he never
paused, never glanced either to right or left, but continued straight ahead.
Finally he did dart down one of the corridors, Mikal following on his heels.
They passed two doors, a third. At the fourth
one, Rolf came to such a sudden stop that Mikal had all he could do to keep
from crashing into him. "Skot should be inside," said Rolf, and slid
the door back on its runners.
Mikal saw one of the mobile chairs, with a
mild-faced, dull-eyed young man sitting on it. The Reveler turned indolently to
the door as it opened, annoyed that his eyes had been distracted from the
glimmering convex screen in front of him.
"What do you want, Rolf? Can't you see
I'm occupied? If you will send a message we could meet and discuss whatever
you want some time in the future."
"I want the girl, Marlyn. Where is she?"
"Oh, about the girl—" Skot's voice
trailed off. "Never mind."
Rolf lifted him from the chair like a baby,
with one strong hand under each of his armpits. "I said where is she?"
"Rolf! Have you gone mad? What are you doing?"
Rolf shook him and Mikal could actually hear
his teeth rattle. "Talk, Skot. If you know where she is, tell us."
"I never expected this
kind of . . . Rolf, put me down! I think you Activists are insane." "Talk!"
"All ... all right, if it means that much to
you." Rolf released him.
"She—" Skot blubbered.
"She—well, you see, this Fil of Astrosphere has been an ideal student, and
when he asked a favor I couldn't very well refuse it, especially since it
seemed so harmless."
"What favor?" demanded Rolf grimly.
"Today is the One in Ten, didn't you
know?" Skot asked him brightly. "Everyone goes into complete empathy
today. Everyone finds his own dream world and lives in it for a day."
"What's he talking about?" Mikal wanted to know.
"One day out of every ten," Rolf
began, then thought better of it. "Later,
Mikal. We've got to reach Marlyn before it's too late. Go ahead,
Skot."
"There isn't much to tell. Fil said
something about being curious how the One in Ten—I had explained it to him, you
see—"
"Get to the point," Rolf growled.
"Fil was curious about how the One in
Ten would affect this Noah, this Marlyn. If she reacted as I told
him everyone reacts, he said something about all the
world being united under the One in Ten. As far as I can gather, Fil went up to
your place with one of the chairs, surprised Marlyn, overpowered her, took her to the One in Ten."
Rolf shoved him back in his chair savagely.
"She's not ready for full empathy yet," he said bitterly. "You
knew that, Skot, but you let him do it. I'll be back." He said to M ileal,
"We're on our way again, and hurry."
As they ran, Rolf tossed snatches of the
story of the One in Ten over his shoulder: "One day out of every ten those
people who want it are granted full empathy. I know some of the science behind
it, tell you later. We Activists never take the One in Ten, because it's
habit-forming, if you can call laziness a habit. People experience so much in
the One in Ten, they don't care about experiencing real emotions in real life.
But its effect could be far worse on someone who's experienced hardly any of
our empathy devices. You select a dream and dream it, only it's perfectly real.
The old records say something about sounds too low-pitched for the human ear to
hear, sounds which can make you think certain things, feel certain things .... Faster, Mikall . . . That's why Kardy and the others are so
successful: subsonic stimulation accompanies them, predicating the emotions.
At full intensity it's the One in Ten and it's far stronger. They never let
children get near it, and because she's never experienced any of our empathy
devices, Marlyn is like a child.
"To her the dream will
be perfectly real. It will be accompanied by the low-pitched sounds, each one
controlling a different emotion, each one making her live the dream. We've got to
reach her in time, Mikal."
Up a flight of stairs they leaped, around a
corner, down another corridor.
"But you say it's only a dream—"
"Instigated and directed by sound
vibrations. In the old records you read of mass hypnotism by subsonic
vibrations. A drumbeat could stir people to frenzy. Other sounds, unheard
sounds, could lull or madden, anger, calm—any and all, Mikal. It's a dream
world, all right, but one which might affect Marlyn the rest of her life."
They ran headlong through one corridor and
another. Mikal knew he could never trace his way back without Rolf. Although he
hardly understood all the man said, still, the urgency in Rolf's voice drove
him on at a pace which to his surprise he was able to maintain.
Across a broad quadrangle they scampered
pell-mell, weaving in and out among the mobile chairs. On the other side of the
quadrangle they darted into another corridor.
"Hurry!" cried Rolf.
The corridor opened out upon a vast court
flanked by metal towers and minarets. "Corridor One," Rolf hissed
breathlessly. "Jebstakion and the other Senior Revelers won't move unless
they have to. That's why the One in Ten takes place in this court."
The court swarmed with mobile chairs, not
moving now. Hundreds of them, as many as there had been people in the Noah Town
Council. On each chair was one of the Revelers. How could they hope to find
Marlyn in that immense
crowd? One speck of confetti in a sea of confetti,
Mikal thought, remembering the tiny flakes of paper they sometimes used to celebrate
holidays.
"You go that way, I'll go this,"
Rolf said. "And find her." He disappeared into the confetti of
chairs. Grimly Mikal did the same, making his way in another direction.
Then, while he began searching the vapid
faces and threading his way among the chairs, a great fat man not far off to
his left spoke into a slender tube he carried. It amplified his voice and
boomed it out all over the court. "All right, everybody. This is
Jebstakion. The signal to begin the One in Ten shall soon be given. Remember,
you have only to sit back and relax, letting the sleep music lull you"
Mikal was aware of the Revelers on their
chairs all around him placing small metal disks over one ear. Did the sound you
could not hear emerge from those? Mikal thought so.
"Dream well," Jebstakion was saying. "Dream—"
He couldn't find Marlyn in time, not without
some way of knowing where she was. He was too late. Without realizing what he
was doing, he ran to the fat man, to Jebstakion, grabbed the slender tube from
his puffy fingers, put it close to his hps, cried:
"Marlyn the Noah. Marlyn!"
His voice bounced back loud and clear from the towers and minarets. Startled
heads shot up, disks were removed from ears. There was a rustling.
"See who I am?" the fat man roared.
"Jebstakion, that's who. Give that back to
me."
"Marlyn!" Mikal cried again.
"Marlyn, you've got to listen. This is Mikal, Mikal of Astrosphere. It's a
trick. Don't use the disk. Let me know where you
! |
»
"Give that back to me.
I, Jebstakion, command you."
"Marlyn, you've got to listen."
Mikal ignored the fat man completely.
Faintly, so far off to his right that Rolf
might have been the closer, he heard, "Mikal, this way. This
way."
He dropped the slender rod and ran.
"Who is that boy?" Jebstakion
boomed when he had laboriously retrieved his amplifier. "I want to know
who he is. I want him taken."
Mikal ran, was only dimly aware of hands
reaching up halfheartedly from mobile chairs to stop him. An occasional Reveler
got to his feet, but Mikal ran him down with momentum behind him. Only the Revelers
could fail to stop him, he thought, suddenly understanding why Rolf and the
Activists hated then-own people.
Ahead, he saw Marlyn, bound to one of the
mobile chairs by stout leather thongs. And coming toward them on the run, Rolf 1
Rolf reached Marlyn,
snapped the leather thongs —incredibly—with his hands. He looked long and
terribly at Fil who sat in the adjacent chair, and by that time Mikal had
reached them.
Rolf set Marlyn on her feet. "Can you run?"
"Y-yes, Rolf."
"Let's go!"
Fil, ridiculously, stood in their way. Before
Rolf could brush him aside, Mikal took two quick strides,
bringing his balled right fist up
from behind him as he came. With all his weight behind it, the blow caught Fil
flush at the base of the jaw and almost lifted him off his feet. He stumbled back, fell into the mobile chair, an inert mass. One of his
limp arms must have struck the controls, for the chair began to roll forward,
adding to the general confusion.
His blow had struck the bandages from MikaTs
right hand. Fil had it coming, he thought, if ever anyone did.
He followed Rolf and Marlyn through the
crowd. Chairs rolled into motion now, as Revelers began to take after them, to
hem them in, to cut them off from the corridor.
"If we can get clear," said Rolf as
Mikal caught up to them, "it all happened so fast they may not know who we
are."
"Fil will see to it they know," Mikal said glumly.
"Then with Jebstakion as an enemy, I'm
afraid we're in for it."
They kicked and hacked and pushed their way
through the chairs, whose now-enthusiastic drivers got in one another's way.
"Take them!"
boomed Jebstakion. "Take them!"
Chapter lim**, in Hiding
ack through the corridors they ran.
Rolf led the way down little-used hallways, for few Revelers in their mobile
chairs were abroad. Mikal knew that most of them had already rolled to Corridor
One for the One in Ten. The Place of Revelers was a labyrinth of twisting,
turning, convoluted corridors. Up a flight of stairs and
down, around a corner, into an area where several corridors converged.
Mikal thought to ask Rolf several times if they were lost, but the tall
Activist plunged ahead, apparently with some goal in mind. Rolf set a grueling
pace, slim Marlyn matched it with graceful strides, Mikal brought up the rear
with lungs of fire and leaden legs.
"Here," hissed
Rolf. "Quick."
He opened a door, ran through. Mikal paused
long enough to close it behind them, thundered down another corridor. They
reached a second door, went through. Rolf stopped running, walked for a time to
keep his leg muscles from knotting painfully.
"They won't find us here," he
panted. "We're safe because they don't know this place exists. We can hide
as long as we want but we won't have food or water, and hiding won't get us
anywhere."
Mikal had never seen anything like the great
room they had entered. Shelves lined every wall of the place,
thousands of books lined all the shelves. In Astrosphere, books were at a
premium; he had never seen one-hundredth as many in all his life.
"A library," Rolf
explained. "The Revelers never come here, not with all the empathy devices
which they prefer. We Activists know of this library, though: it is here we come
for our knowledge. But all the knowledge in the world won't do us any good with
Jebstakion after us."
"But he can't find us here, you
said," Mikal reminded him.
"True enough."
"Then," said Marlyn, "we can
stay right here and plan what to do next."
"If this place is a library," Mikal
told them, "Marlyn and I can also learn what—well, what the world is all
about."
Rolf nodded earnestly. "It is said that
if one read all the books in this place he would know all knowledge. My
father's father was the first of the Activists. He found this library."
"What I don't understand," said
Marlyn, sitting on the floor and propping her back against one of the shelves
of books, "is why this Jebstakion wants to convert my Noahs to his way of
thinking."
"He doesn't," Rolf told her.
"Not really. It was an Activist idea to begin with, only we weren't
interested in converting anyone. We just wanted to let the Noahs see this place
because we figured they might be more energetic than our own people and might,
through knowledge, provide strong new leaders for both circles. For all four sections of the world, as it turns out."
"But—" Marlyn began.
"But Jebstakion and the Revelers of
Corridor One learned what we were attempting. They
realized we couldn't be stopped outright; it would have caused trouble. They
decided to play along with us, but they completely warped the idea. Now, with
the majority of Revelers on their side, they bring Noahs here supposedly to
convert them. Actually, the Noah minds are ruined by too much empathy too fast,
but Jebstakion still claims he is trying."
"I don't think I like your Jebstakion," said Marlyn.
"He's the kind of man this way of life
leads to," Rolf said, squatting on his heels.
"But all the Revelers couldn't be lazy. How about your actors and entertainers?" Mikal wanted
to know.
"How about them? Why, I thought you knew.
They don't exist. They used to, but all we have is a record of them, on film.
There is a film projector and some film here in this library, but film of a
very different sort. I'll show it to you later. As for the work which must be
done, we have a duty roster, and people grudgingly comply. The Activists
volunteer for work, however, and no one objects since that way names appear
less frequently on the duty roster." Rolf frowned. "But this talk
isn't getting us anywhere. Right now, we're safe, but we can't do a
thing."
Mikal shrugged. "If we don't know the
way to Far Labry we can't do anything whether we remain in this library or not.
What's so important about Labry, anyway?"
Rolf stood up, paced
impatiently. "The scientists. The
scientific devices. If we can get help anywhere, it's in Far Labry. I
have told you, this world of ours is not a world, but a kind of bus. Well, if
the destination is reached, and according to the books I have read the time is
near, we are going to hit it, hard.
We will crash unless we learn how to control
this bus of ours."
"How do you know it's journey's end?"
"Simple. The books say
when the sixth generation is in its prime, we shall arrive. I am sixth generation,
according to the records of my family."
"From what I gather," said Mikal, "you mean this place we are approaching is
far bigger than all the Four Circles of the World and we will smash ourselves
against it unless we can learn how to stop in time."
"Right."
"Don't the books here say anything about
that?" Marlyn asked.
"No." Rolf shook his head. "They do not."
"There is a place in Astrosphere,"
Mikal said, "that no one visits. A great room with walls
of glass and a terrible blackness beyond them with thousands of tiny points of
light on the blackness. In this place there are machines, devices,
controls which no one seems to understand. I have seen the place because young
boys make a habit of visiting it, maybe because they like to be frightened that
way. I am the son of an Enginer, but I do not understand the place. Nor does my
father, although he says it is written that one room with its walls of glass
and light-studded blackness outside is the most important place in all of
Astrosphere, if we could but discover its secrets."
"That could be it!" Rolf cried.
"Perhaps. It doesn't matter, though,
for we can't understand it. We would still have to go to Far Labry for
information. But Rolf, you mentioned Earth. You mentioned learning about Earth
in this library."
"There are books and books—"
"Show us!" Marlyn jumped up in excitement.
"It would take months. There is this
film projector, though, and old films which can do the job far more quickly.
Follow me." Rolf walked down among the shelf on shelf of books, found one
shelf which turned out on hinges, a door. They passed through the opening and
entered a room smaller than the first. When Rolf lit one of the electric hand
torches he found hanging on a hook near the door it revealed a room bare of any
furniture except a small table, on which perched a squat machine with hooded,
nozzle-like lens and a small cabinet. One wall of the room was starkly white,
and when Rolf did something to the machine on the table, the nozzle-like lens
glowed and a large square of yellow appeared on the white wall.
Rummaging in the cabinet,
Rolf found a flat circular can of metal, showed it to Mikal. There, in plain
black letters on the side of the can, was written: THE PLANET EARTH.
"Open it," Mikal
pleaded. "Hurry." For as long as he could
remember, the legends of the planet Earth— his people called it Urth—had held a
fascination for him. As a little child he would sit up long past his bedtime,
listening to the legends his father or some of the older boys could recount.
Later, he would retire breathlessly to his bedroom and think what it would be
like to have lived in the far prehistory on this place called Urth. On it, and
not in it, for those legends which
spoke of Earth as a place always spoke, strangely, of the outside and not the inside. Some of the storytellers did not know what it was,
merely that it was beautiful.
Rolf pried the lid off the
can, withdrew a reel upon which Mikal saw wound a thin strip, layer after layer
of it, of some translucent material. Rolf expertly fastened reel to squat
machine, pulled off the edge of the translucent thing, ran it through a series
of prongs and then attached it to another empty reel. He snuffed out his hand
torch, flicked a small lever on the side of the machine.
Mikal beat his hands together excitedly. From
some unknown source wonderful music flooded the room.
"It's music of Earth," said Rolf, and
they all listened.
All at once a picture flashed on the square
of yellow which the machine projected on the wall, and a voice, deep and warm,
said:
"It is recommended that these movies be
shown only sparingly to members of the first generation, since there is
unfortunately nothing the planners could do to prevent homesickness. Primarily,
these pictures are intended for later generations who have been born in space
aboard the ship and have lived all their lives there. These films will remind
them in some small way of their heritage as men and women, of the planet which
they left behind to seek the stars and spread humanity's seed among them, and
of the things they or their children will one day build on another planet of
another star."
It was, Mikal knew, a voice from the far dead
past. It made him feel oddly afraid but terribly important, because he, Mikal
of Astrosphere, was listening. And he thought, if only Saml, his father, could
see these films.
While the voice spoke, he saw things he could
not understand, but things beautiful nevertheless. High crags and cliffs soared
up to a blue ceiling which seemed far above them, yet the crags and cliffs, he
could tell, were far taller even than Needle Mountain. Later, a great ball of
crimson fire hung low against the now blue and fleecy white ceiling, diffusing
it with red and purple light. Still later, he was looking down on a great
stream, so wide that conveyances rode upon it, a stream crossed over by gleaming,
high-arched streets of metal. There were golden fields of tall grasses, swayed
and rippled by some unseen, invisible hand. There was an impossible expanse of
sullen gray water which seemed to meet the land in a sundering violence of
crashing sound and white spray and then roll sofdy back in upon itself. And
there was an obscuring rain of white which somehow gave Mikal the impression of
intense cold and which covered everything with a growing white mantle.
Mikal saw cities. "This is New York
City," said the voice, and Mikal watched a dazzling, sun-dappled array of
towers and gleaming metal and glass structures swing into view and sweep
closer, as if he were above it and floating down. "And this is Paris,
London, Chicago, Vienna. . .
Mikal watched enthralled.
Tears had welled up in his eyes and he did not care, for after all the longing
and waiting he saw Earth, saw what Earth was really like, and now all the
legends and stories told and whispered were as nothing.
"We hope you think our
Earth is beautiful," said the voice. "We are making this motion
picture in the year 2055. There has not been a war on Earth for almost a
hundred years. All science, all energy is channeled toward progress, and since
you aboard your ship which will sail the uncharted seas of space for two
hundred years have records of all the great strides we have made, it is hoped
you can bring this proud new record of mankind to the stars with you.
"For the sixth generation aboard ship
it's the Alpha Centauri planets in the year 2255. We don't know what Earth will
be like then; we can only guess. But what you are doing will push mankind ahead
a thousand years, for in one way or another ever since we have developed
science and technology we have been seeking the stars. You shall find them.
"We on Earth know the distance to Alpha
Centauri, the nearest star, is tremendous, but you on the starship shall
really understand that distance, your generations living their lives and passing
on in the depths of space. In light years, the distance you must cover is
represented by the figure four-point-three."
The numerals 4.3 appeared on the screen.
"That is, light
traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second must travel four-point-three
years before it goes from the Sun to Alpha Centauri. You are making the
journey, as you know, in a completely balanced world. Air is replenished by the
cycle between green plants and animals. Food is plentiful in the second of
your four concentric spheres. Centrifugal force holds the four spheres in
place, one inside the other, although that is merely a precaution, since
nothing will jar them out of place during free flight.
"If only we of Earth could see your
world and know what it is like to five on the insides of a series of globes and
not on the outside of a much larger one! You will have no horizon, but a gentle
sloping upward on all sides of you. You will have no sky, but a ceiling on
three of your spheres, and nothing in the fourth and central one.
"All this, of course, you know. But to
picture it, to be able to see it, to live it. . . ."
Mikal wondered if people were always like
that. Did those on Earth really want to live in Astrosphere, the Jungle, the
Place of Revelers and Far Labry? It seemed impossible. There was so much he had
seen and heard which he never could hope to understand. This was history, he
told himself, and not legend, and he felt a great swelling pride that he should
hear and see. . . .
". . . never could build such a
starship," the voice was saying. "Your books will give you all the details,
naturally." Something appeared on the screen, and under it were printed
the words STARSHIP— A SCHEMATIC DRAWING. To Mikal it was completely confusing.
"We did not have to build it, for we had one almost ready made. We
selected an asteroid with a diameter of twenty miles, one of the tiny minor
planets circling the Sun, most of them in orbits between Mars and Jupiter. From
this we built your starship, fashioning the four concentric spheres to increase
your area almost fourfold. We—"
Rolf snapped the machine off,
lit his torch and led the way back to the other room. "I never could
understand that part of it, but at one time it must have made sense."
"So that is Earth," Mikal mused.
"Beautiful," said Marlyn. "It
was like the Jungle all over again, only larger."
"And like the Place of Revelers," laughed Rolf.
"And probably
Astrosphere and Far Labry as well. Come to think of it,
though, I can't be so sure about the Place of Revelers. They never expected
anything like this. What a situation, thanks to Jebstakion and his people! We
told them unless something was done, unless we got to work and relearned things
we had lost, the world would end. You know what he did? He laughed. Laughed,
and sat there munching candy."
"I don't understand that," Marlyn
said. "We don't make this candy in the Jungle, yet I thought all
food—"
"You do provide the
basic ingredients. There is milk, sugar, molasses. The Revelers refashion it:
at that they don't mind working!" Rolf was pacing again, once they had
reached the main room of the library. "So, the Activists are desperate. We
know a great truth that could be a tragic truth because we can't do anything
about it, and no one will believe us."
"Not only that," Marlyn pointed
out, "but as soon as we step back into the corridors, we'll be
captured."
"Stop talking like that, both of
you!" Mikal cried. "What's the matter with you, anyway.
If you convince yourselves you're beaten, then you won't have a chance. You'll
just sit here until you get so hungry you stagger outside. Then you'll be
captured and that will be the end of it."
"I am getting hungry," said
Marlyn.
"I've been hungry a long time,"
Mikal told her. "To learn things."
Rolf grinned. "I guess we Activists have
been hungry to do things. I think I see Mikal's point, though. If we sit here
admitting we're licked, obviously we won't have a chance."
"Fine," said Mikal. "What's the first step?"
"Well," Rolf considered, "I'd say—"
"—that we have to find
the way to Far Labry," Marlyn finished for him.
"Sounds right to me," Rolf nodded.
"What do we know about Labry's
location?" Mikal asked them.
"Nothing." This was Rolf.
"Absolutely nothing, except that you have the key. A lot of good the key
will do if we can't find the lock it will open."
"You mean we haven't been able to find
it so far, which doesn't mean we can t find it at all. Why don't we think about
it awhile?"
"The Activists have been thinking," Rolf
snorted, "and turning the Place of Revelers upside down looking for the
way."
"But you Activists never saw one of our
sojourners from Astrosphere?"
"No."
"Yet they came through every year, and
since they didn't know the way to Far Labry any more than I do, someone here
did know it, and told them."
"But who?" Rolf groaned.
"Not you Activists, not anyone who would
tell you. Who would want to keep it from you, especially after you started
bringing the Noahs in?"
"Why, I don't—yes, of course! The Corridor One Revelers, Jebstakion and his people."
"That is exactly what I was thinking," Mikal agreed.
And Marlyn said, "It sounds logical enough."
"That still leaves us exactly
nowhere," Rolf grumbled. "Even if we're right, we can't do a thing. Because that would place the way to Far Labry someplace close to
or possibly in Corridor One itself. We couldn't hide from Jebstakion to
get there. We'd have to explore right under his nose to find what we
want."
Mikal shrugged. "You know this world
better than I do. Can we do it?"
"Well, if it can be done anywhere, this
is the place. The Revelers won't exert themselves unless they absolutely have
to. Time would be on our side if we hurried, and speed. Say, wait a minute.
Looking for us, they'd search for three people on foot. What if we could get
ourselves three of the mobile chairs and use them? Activists never do: neither
you nor Marlyn would, out of choice."
"Sounds fine."
"All right. We get three chairs, roll
straight into Corridor One on them and—and, then what?"
"We couldn't just search the
place," Marlyn admitted.
"We wouldn't have much time," said Mikal.
"See?" Rolf shook
his head. "We're still right back where we started from."
"No," grinned
Mikal. "In theory, at least, we've reached the
logical place to look, which seems to be Corridor One."
"Look. . . ." mused Rolf. "Why
look at all, if we're in a hurry? If we can reach Corridor One without anyone
suspecting who we are, that might do it. We could then rush into Jebstakion's
room, confront him, make him tell us the way. If anyone knows, Jebstakion's the
man."
"I like that," Mikal said. "It
sounds good. Fast, simple and, well—"
"And bold enough to work!" Marlyn cried. "There
is something about unexpected
boldness which always surprises people, my father Landor always said."
"There's your plan, then," Mikal told Rolf.
Rolf slapped his hands together gleefully.
"The time to start is now!" He pounded Mikal's back soundly, led the
way to the corridors.
They opened the door,
peered outside. The way was clear. They stepped into the hallway and . . .
A mobile chair rolled into view around a corner.
The man in it almost jumped from his seat.
"It is Rolf the Activist!" he
shouted. "And the Noahs! Rolf and the Noahs
Jebstakion wants. Help!"
Chapter
ˇ2 The
Center of the Universe
i i ikal's first impulse was to run. They could move
M more swiftly than the
mobile chair. They could IVI lose it in the corridors, but part of their
cherished I I secrecy would be gone, for
it would at least be known they were afoot and not hiding somewhere.
"Quick," Marlyn hissed, starting to run.
Mikal grabbed her arm, stopped her. "We
want mobile chairs, don t we?"
"Help! The
Activist Rolf!"
Rolf lifted the Reveler from his chair, deposited him ungently on the floor. He sat there,
looking foolish. He made no attempt to rise.
"Can't he walk?" Marlyn asked.
"Of course he can, but it might have
been months since the last time. He'll get around to it when he realizes no one
is going to come here and pick him up, but by that time well be well on our
way."
"Pick me up," said the voice, now
feeble. After his first quick excitement, the Reveler had calmed down, holding
his emotions in reserve for the empathy devices. "Lift me from the floor,
Activist."
Marlyn climbed into the chair, sat down,
began to roll along the corridor. "Well," she said, "the other
day in dimension vision I saw the most—"
"What are you talking about?" Mikal demanded.
"Hold a conversation," Marlyn told
him. "Anything, just make it natural. We're going to meet people soon and
go right on by."
"Unless we meet them alone,"
Rolf said. "We still lack two chairs."
"We'll get them," Mikal promised.
They did, leaving two more
Revelers in the hallway, propped
against the wall and calling
for help.
One of them got up, essaying
a few
tottering steps before he disappeared from view as they
rounded a comer, rolling serenely along.
Chairs moved by in the
corridor.
"Kardy was truly magnificent," said Rolf, taking the lead and speaking loudly.
"If I've seen him once
I've seen him a hundred times, but each time
he has
the same effect. Makes
you cry
and—"
"And," sniffed Marlyn, "I saw
him too."
Chairs rolled by. Revelers ignored
them completely, and after a time
Mikal began studying the pictures
on the wall. Once the Revelers
must have been an energetic people, for the pictures
showed them strong and nimble, playing
games, running, leaping, performing on gymnastic equipment.
Rolf must have understood the look in his
eyes, for he said, "Long ago, not any more.
Now they
revel' in name only.
Unless you want
to consider
passive spectators Revelers." Someone rolled
toward them. "Yes, it was the
strangest sensation, floating in the Central
Pool after all this inactivity.
Such strenuous exercise is
good for you, they say,
as long
as you do it in moderation."
"You won't find me floating
in any
pool," Marlyn said. "Not as long
as I
have my dimension vision."
"I agree with you," declared the strange Reveler,
without looking, and rolled
by.
Rolling along and holding
meaningless conversations when necessary, they reached Corridor One.
Apparently they had been in the library long enough for the One in Ten to end,
or perhaps the whole thing had been called off because of the disturbance. At
any rate, the huge, tower-flanked court of Corridor One was nearly deserted.
"Do you know where Jebstakion
lives?" Mikal demanded.
"Everyone does, for to be invited to
Jebstakions place for a session in joint empathy is the highest honor a Reveler
can receive, the first step toward making Senior Reveler. When mothers pass
this place with their children they point it out and say 'ycm must strive
someday to reach that place/ Follow me."
They did, rolling their chairs forward in
single file, until they had left the courtyard and entered a silver-walled
corridor. Someone behind them said breathlessly:
"Look! Those three have been invited to
Jebsta-kion's."
"To Jebstakion's! Lucky. .
. .**
"I do everything I am supposed
to, and I never—"
"Some are lucky, that's all. You cannot
question Jebstakion's judgment any more than you can question Surampa's
ability to make you laugh or Kardy's to make you cry."
"Hey, youl You three!"
Startled, Mikal whirled his
chair around, but the seated figure was smiling at him. "My name is
Ternew. Put in a good word for me with Jebstakion, please."
"Certainly," Mikal said, and wheeled about again.
"This silver-walled corridor is private," Rolf explained.
"It leads to Jebstakion's quarters alone. You can't get in without being
invited." "Then how can we—?"
"Wait and see," Rolf said
mysteriously. "Don't forget, the guard is a Reveler too, his name drawn
from the duty roster. Here we are."
Their mobile chairs rolled to a stop before a
door in the silver wall, where a sign said:
Senior occupant, corridor one: jebstakion. By appointment only.
Rolf pushed the door in and they rolled through.
Sitting in a small room on his mobile chair,
a middle-aged Reveler looked up sadly from his dimension-vision screen.
"I recall no appointments," he said.
"Then your recollection is poor," Rolf advised him.
"Jebstakion clearly said—"
"You heard wrong."
"That he was not to be disturbed today. Go away."
"We have an appointment," Rolf
persisted. "We have been invited for a session of joint empathy."
"All three of you? I would have remembered.
Go away."
"I have the confirmation right
here," said Rolf, fumbling in his pocket.
"Fine. Then bring it to me,
please." The Reveler had turned to his screen again.
"You come and get it," Rolf said
blandly. "Your name is on the duty roster, not mine. You work, not
me."
The Reveler took his eyes from the screen
again. "Show it to me."
Rolf waved a sheet of paper
in his hand. "Here."
"I can't read it from this
distance."
"Then get up and come where you can see it."
"Please bring it to me."
"You want to look at it. Come here."
"Really, now—well, I suppose if you say you have
been invited."
"I most assuredly have said
that."
"And if Jebstakion knows you're coming—"
"Didn't I just tell you that?"
"Y-yes. Well, please hurry by. I've missed half of the
performance already."
They wheeled on by him. He was lost in his
screen completely.
"They are positively the laziest . .
." Marlyn whispered incredulously.
"Jebstakion's quarters are soundproofed
to keep disturbances to a minimum," Rolf explained. "Once we get
inside, if we can get the amplifier away from him, he won't be able to call for
help. Here we are."
Their chairs rolled up to a door which opened
as they came abreast of it. They rolled through and Mikal turned to see the
door closing behind them.
Jebstakion sat in his specially constructed
chair, which, Mikal observed, could be angled at any desired position. Jebstakion lay supine now, staring dreamily up at the ceiling,
popping candies into his mouth. A dimension-vision screen glowed over
his head, directly in his line of vision.
"Well, what do you want?" he demanded.
Rolf sprang from his chair, reached the
reclining figure, grabbed the amplifying rod and snapped it in two across his
knee. "Some information," he said, pressing the button which shut off
the screen.
"What is the meaning—'
Jebstakion began, then, regretfully it seemed, triggered his chair into a
semi-upright position. "Rolf the Activist!"
he cried.
Mikal and Marlyn hopped from their chairs,
gathered around the fat man with Rolf. "And the two Noahs," said
Jebstakion in complete disbelief. "I had issued strict orders not to be
disturbed. And you, of all people. If you are
petitioning for a session of joint empathy, it is denied. Furthermore, you are
outlaws, facing expulsion from the Place of Revelers."
"I said we wanted information."
Rolf leaned forward eagerly.
"Please go outside and place yourselves
in the hands of the guard."
"Information," Rolf repeated.
"You are ruining my afternoon!"
"How do we get to Far Labry?" Mikal demanded.
"Be gone! I never heard of such a
place." Jebstakion reached for the button controlling his dimension-vision
screen, but Rolf pushed his hand away.
"Not until you tell us."
"I never heard of such a place."
"You want to expel us from here,"
Marlyn said. "Very well: expel us to Far Labry."
"I never heard—"
"You said that," Mikal reminded him
coldly. "We'll go right on ruining your afternoon until you tell us. We
happen to think you're lying, for I am from Astro-sphere and not the Jungle,
and the people of Astro-sphere have come through here looking for Labry just as
we have. You must know the way."
Snap! Rolf twisted one of the
dials on Jebstakion's mobile chair, broke it off.
"You know how difficult it is to repair this equipment," he said.
"We want that information."
Snap! went another dial.
"Please, please—"
Mikal found a heavy object, hefted it
experimentally, looked up at the dimension-vision
screen. "We don't have much time," he said. "Into how many
pieces do you suppose that screen would shatter?"
"You Activists have always sought Far
Labryl" Jebstakion wailed. "You want to go there and learn strange,
ridiculous things and come back and reshape this place."
"For your own good—"
"Let us decide that! You go around
yelling foolish things about the world coming to an end and having to prevent
it, and I think it is a trick to make us work again. We are Revelers. Revelers."
"You'll be dead Revelers unless we find
the way to Far Labry. They might be able to save us. I'm serious, Jebstakion.
This isn't a trick, it never was. How do we get to Far Labry?"
Mikal held his heavy object, an ornamental
statue, aloft.
"Then you'll go and not bother me again?"
"I can't promise that," Rolf
admitted. "If trying to save the world means bothering you in the process,
you can bet you'll be bothered."
"Well?" Mikal lowered his arm,
prepared to hurl the statue.
"Outside," Jebstakion bleated in
defeat. "Keep going down the silver corridor. You'll find a door. But I
cannot open it. I had a key once, when I was younger. I deliberately threw it
away because the records said that door led to another world, and I knew if
ever I was tempted I would have no
rest once I opened that door."
"I have the key," Mikal said
triumphantly, and they flashed outside, leaving their mobile chairs in
Jebstakion's quarters. The guard still sat there watching his screen.
"Will I be happy to
leave this place," Marlyn said.
Then, looking at Rolf: "I—I'm sorry. It's your home."
"I'm not proud of it. I'll be just as
glad, especially if we can find what we're looking for."
"And find a lot of
answers to a lot of questions, I hope," Mikal said. "If Labry cannot
answer everything we want to know, and if Rolf is
right—"
They found the door, even as Jebstakion told
them. Mikal fumbled in his pouch, withdrew the key of black.
Black for Far Labry, the place of magic.
With trembling fingers he released the lock,
pushed the door in. It revealed a passage, not with smooth-hewn walls but with
walls of coarse black stone. "We'll need your hand torch," Mikal told
Rolf, who flicked on the light and led them down the tunnel.
They reached a narrow,
winding flight of stone steps, so steep they almost were a ladder. The steps
spiraled up—and up. Rolf probed with his beam, saw only the circular staircase,
carved of the rock, retreating into gray haze.
"Can't see the top," he muttered.
"We can find it,"
said Mikal, and started up the stairs. Rolf handed the small torch up to him
since it was difficult to pass on the narrow, twisting stairway. Marlyn
brought up the rear.
They climbed.
Mikal never dreamed so many steps existed in all the world, let alone in one place. He wondered if
Jebstakion could have tricked them, but knew it was not likely. His feet pumped
mechanically, one after the other. He stayed close to the wall, avoiding the
side of the stairway which dropped out over the edge of blackest nothing. The
hand torch cast a puny circle of light; for the rest, blackness.
"Keep in contact with the wall,"
Rolf warned them. "These stairs are narrow."
And endless, Mikal thought.
There came a time when Marlyn, gasping,
called a halt. Mikal was grateful for the respite, sitting carefully on one of
the steep stone stairs, one leg pushing against the wall.
"How much further could it be?"
Marlyn demanded, still breathless.
"Apparently they aren't particularly
interested in guests," Rolf suggested. "I have seen more inviting
entrances."
Mikal probed ahead with the hand torch while
they sat, casting its circle of light up the stairs ahead of him. Quite
suddenly, he began to laugh.
"Whatever is it?" Marlyn climbed to
her feet, followed Rolf up to where Mikal sat.
"Look."
They stared over his shoulder, and Marlyn
counted, "One, two, three, four, five. Five more
steps to the top. Not knowing that, I would decide to rest when it
isn't necessary."
"No harm done," said Rolf, and they
climbed the remaining steps.
Mikal, who walked ahead
with the light, called back: "If you expect anything other than another
corridor, you're going to be disappointed."
Walls roughhewn, another passageway of black
stone confronted them. Sufficiently wide for them to walk three abreast, it had
a low ceiling which forced tall Rolf to stoop slightly at the shoulders.
"Are they all midgets in Labry?"
Rolf demanded, smiling.
"You!" said
Marlyn. "You're taller than a man has a right to be, that's all."
All at once Mikal felt awkward walking in the
middle with his light. On his left was Marlyn, on his right, Rolf. He edged
self-consciously toward Marlyn, then took a step
behind her. He still did not know quite why he did it. When Marlyn had assumed
his place in the middle, Mikal handed her the torch. By its light he was able
to see she had linked her arm with Rolf's. They walked along that way, hands
swinging together easily. Far from having the desired effect on him, Mikal
found it made him feel more awkward than ever.
"I'm joking," Marlyn finally said.
"It is very nice for a man to be so tall and straight."
Mikal thought to tell her he was still
growing, that one day he might be as tall as Rolf. Then her sudden liking for
tallness struck him strange, for Fil was tall, taller even than Rolf but much
thinner, and she certainly did not like Fil. Well, there was no figuring out
the mind of a girl—or a woman.
The passage ended abruptly,
blocked off by a great metal door. Mikal tried his key, swung the round door
out, then closed it behind them. Surprised, he
discovered some unknown source lit the place, and he told Marlyn to turn off
the hand torch.
The ledge dropped away sharply into what
would have been a pit, except that it was filled by a metallic cylinder perhaps
five times the length of a man stretched out. The cylinder had a lid which
opened easily. Mikal opened it.
"There's no place to walk," Rolf said doubtfully.
"No." Mikal nodded.
"This reminds me of the tramcars we use
to climb steep hills in the Jungle," Marlyn decided. "Maybe if we get
down inside, it will take us somewhere."
Rolf scratched his head. "We would have
to stretch out flat."
"We can't simply stand here," said Marlyn.
And that, Mikal realized, was true. Their
ledge and the cylinder-filled pit were surrounded on all sides by black rock.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Smiling but not feeling particularly
cheerful, Mikal eased himself down into the first section of the cylinder. The
inside was dark, but not as uncomfortable as he had expected. Padding of some
sort lined the sides and the bottom.
"Everybody in?" Mikal called, his voice
unnaturally flat inside the cylinder.
"All packed," laughed Marlyn.
"I'll seal us in," Rolf said, and,
following a clanking sound, they were immediately plunged into complete
darkness.
"How do you suppose you get this thing
started?" Mikal heard Marlyn say, and then he was groping about with his
hands. He wondered if other young men from Astrosphere, reaching the final leg
of their
Four-Circle Journey,
had pondered the mysteries of this very cylinder even as he was doing now. His
right hand encountered nothing but the spongy padding of the cylinder's
interior, but his left hit against something which did not yield. It felt like
a board, hard and solid, and in its very center was a small knob.
"I think I have something.''
"Well, try it," Marlyn suggested.
"This is getting uncomfortable."
Mikal sucked in his breath, waited. Perhaps
they were wrong. They only guessed this cylinder was a conveyance, and anything
might happen if he pushed on the knob.
"I feel like getting up and
stretching," pleaded Marlyn. "Come on."
Mikal discovered he did not have sufficient
space to shrug. He grasped the knob firmly and pushed it.
Nothing happened.
He hated the idea of going back down the
tremendous winding staircase, then realized it would
be next to impossible anyway because Jebstakion would be waiting for them with
more than a polite reception committee. Frantic now, he twisted the knob.
Something roared in his ears. A great
invisible hand slammed him down against the soft padding and seemed intent on
pushing his head down through his collar bone. Dimly, he heard Marlyn whimper,
but then a whining, shrieking sound filled all the space within the cylinder,
filled his ears, filled the entire Universe, it seemed. This could not be a
mode of travel, this . . . And why not? After all, it was the way to Far Labry,
and in Astrosphere it was written that anything was possible in Labry, the
Center of the Universe.
Rolf's Activists must have agreed, for they
said if help was to be found anywhere, Labry was the place. It suddenly
occurred to Mikal that help had better be in the offing, since Jebstakion would
await them in the Place of Revelers and angry mobs would wait for him further
back toward Astrosphere, in the Jungle. If things did not work out, he had made
a fine mess of his Journey. Still to pick up his first trophy, he had left two
of the circles behind him. Yet his father Saml had agreed: some things,
intangibles, were more important than mere trophies. Did he have those
intangibles? Would he find the answer to everything in Far Labry? Smiling
grimly, he understood clearly for the first time that he did not even know
what answer he sought. Maybe he was a boy on a man's mission, with the future
of his world at stake. Maybe. . . .
With shocking suddenness the whining sound
vanished. Mikal was thrust forward, his head striking the thin padding at the
front of the cylinder. If their conveyance indeed was a conveyance, its journey
was over and they had arrived—somewhere.
Rolf unhinged the hatch,
opened it. Marlyn clambered up and out quickly, stretching happily in the
bright light. Stretching—
Mikal gaped.
She floated up, tumbled head over heels and
went right on floating, without stopping until a net of gossamer-thin strands,
which stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, caught her,
recoiled with her and flung her back to the floor.
"Rolf," she sobbed. "Rolf."
Rolf smiled reassuringly, reached out to
comfort her. As he did, his hand led him, lifted him, threw him against Marlyn,
and the two of them went tumbling off into space.
Unable to believe his eyes,
Mikal grabbed the edge of the cylinder to pull himself upright. He went up, and
kept on going up. He drifted, aware of no sensation of weight. If he moved his
arm in slow circles, he could turn over or head in another direction. Whatever
it was which made people walk on floors and not float in air apparently did not
exist in Far Labry.
Anything was possible in Labry, all
right—like floating people who did not know how to come down, thought Mikal in
mounting despair. Ahead of him, Marlyn and Rolf twisted and spun slowly. Mikal
thrashed his arms and legs and tried to follow them. He might have been
floundering helplessly in water.
But it was air.
7o Wreck a World
am the son of an Enginer and must not be
afraid, Mikal told himself. This all can be explained.
We
j will find a way to put it
to our advantage although now it makes us helpless. That is the way of an
Enginer.
Floating to a stop near the gossamer net,
Mikal remained perfectly still and discovered he could stay in one place if he
did not move a muscle. So much as a twitch, however, would serve to send him
tumbling off again.
Ahead of him, he heard
Marlyn saying: "Try it, Rolf. Go ahead. It seems to work."
"Well, all right. I have done some swimming in the Reveler pools, but not
much, for the floaters complained all the thrashing and the spray disturbed
them."
"We have lakes and
brooks in the Jungle. We swim from the time we are babies. Watch."
Mikal watched too. Marlyn lacked out with her
feet, reached forward first with her right arm, then her left, bringing them
back slowly toward her body before she repeated the process. Her freckled face
all asmile, she made progress in a straight line.
After some false starts Rolf was able to imitate the motion, and together they
swam through air toward Mikal, Rolf having a few bad moments when he reached
out too suddenly and started to flounder helplessly.
"This is more fun than swimming in
water," Marlyn exclaimed delightedly. "It doesn't take any
effort."
She kicked over on her back and reached Mikal
by making small flipping motions with her hands.
"Go ahead," she urged him. "Try it."
Dubiously, Mikal followed her instructions.
Rhythm was important, he learned. As soon as he lost the slow, steady pattern
of it, he started floundering about. Otherwise, he discovered, you could go
more or less where you wanted.
"Hello!"
The voice startled Mikal. He turned, floated,
struck the net and bounced back off it. Using a fast flipperlike motion, hands
close to his sides, someone propelled himself toward them.
"Hold hands," he said.
They did so, and he led
them, a human chain, down toward the floor. "Catch the guide ropes,"
he directed them.
Evenly spaced poles on the floor had strung
between them a series of thick cables. Mikal grasped one, pulled himself down, sat. As long as he held the cable he would not
wander off into the air.
"I am Raabin the Scientist," said
the man. "An alarm went off when you used the jetcar. You are from
Astrosphere, no doubt, taking the Journey of the Four Circles."
"You know of the Journey?" Mikal demanded.
Raabin, a small, thin man with twinkling
eyes, a long nose and a bristly shock of gray hair, smiled. "We know all
about it."
Rolf said, "One of us is from
Astrosphere. One a Noah from the Jungle. And one from the Place of Revelers."
Raabin squinted at him. "Very unusual."
"You know our circles too?" Marlyn asked.
"Certainly. But the three of you
together, that is most unusual."
"Who's in charge here?" It was Rolf
who asked the question.
"In charge? What is that?"
"Your leader."
"Leader? I do not understand. We
have no need for a leader. Everyone does his own work."
"We are looking for someone in
authority," Rolf persisted.
"Then try me,"
smiled Raabin. "I have neither more nor less authority than anyone. What
is it you want? Trophies. I will gladly provide you
with trophies."
"Not trophies,"
said Mikal, "although that was the original purpose of my Journey. We need
help." "What kind of help?"
"It is thought in the other
circles," Marlyn explained, "that the people of Labry know
everything there is to know."
"Well, now. You do knowledge a grave
injustice. Although I wager we have no peers in theoretical science, even back
on Earth."
"You have heard of Earth?" Mikal gasped.
"Most assuredly, young
man. This starship left Earth just a few days
short of two hundred years ago. Which reminds me, your people
in Astrosphere should even now be slowing the starship, preparing to put it in
an orbit around one of the Centaurian planets. How is the work
progressing?"
"It's not." Mikal explained that no
one in Astro-sphere knew anything about controlling the world,
no one knew the world was moving, no one knew it had reached its destination.
"That's why we have
come," said Rolf.
"This must be some
joke."
"No." Rolf was
very definite.
"You mean—your people
have forgotten?"
"Everything."
"In this Laboratory we
are busy. We never thought to examine the other levels of the ship, assuming
everything was in order. Although the visitors from Astrosphere did seem naive,
and it occurred to me as peculiar that no one ever came from the Jungle or the
home of the entertainment specialists—what is it, Revelers?"
"Revelers,"
supplied Rolf.
"But see here, young man," Raabin
turned earnestly to Mikal, "if the men of Astrosphere fail to make the
proper preparations, we . . . Why, yes!" Apparently the idea surprised
him. "We will all be destroyed."
"That's why we're
here," said Rolf. "We need help." "You have come to the
wrong place. Tell them in Astrosphere. Tell them to get to work."
'They won't understand," Mikal said
wearily. "Anything," Rolf added. "Please." This was Marlyn.
"What a strange story.
My fellow scientists certainly would like to hear of this. I must tell them at
once. Our sociologists, for example, would want to study the situation and . .
."
Rolf interrupted him.
"Do all the studying you want later. Right now we need some solution to
all this."
"But—but our job is
theoretical science. We have developed some truly amazing things in theory. I
suppose it should have occurred to me something was wrong if no one came for
our work from the other levels. You are positive this is no joke?"
"Positive," they all said.
"Imagine. Two hundred years in space,
two hundred years living in a—a sectioned terrarium has stripped man of his
knowledge. But then, I always suspected too-rigid specialization might lead to
this sort of thing. There's an old adage about men knowing more and more about
less and less and eventually knowing everything about almost nothing at all. Do
I make myself clear?"
"No," said Rolf.
Mikal wished Raabin would not rant on
dreamily about anything and everything, and tackle the problem confronting
them instead.
"I spent two years on
the quantum theory," said Raabin. "Two years trying to discover
something about the quanta of light. Two years and I'm still not entirely
convinced light consists of quanta at all. In the same way, each section of the
ship had its own specialty. The Jungle provided food, clothing, replenished
the air. The entertainment specialists were supposed to keep us all amused,
ranging from books to compact museums to games to—"
"They certainly lost sight of their
purpose," Rolf declared. "They amuse only themselves now, and feebly,
at that."
"Astrosphere," Raabin went on,
"kept the machinery of the world going and was to operate this star-ship
and our ferry—"
"Ferry?" Mikal repeated the
unfamiliar word.
"Ferry, of course. This starship, twenty
miles in diameter, is too big to land on a planet. We have a smaller spaceship,
a ferry. Or rather you have it in Astrosphere. I know the exact location,
however."
"There are regions we never enter," Mikal admitted.
"In groups of four, the whole world
interested itself (individually and collectively in more and more about less
and less," Raabin muttered. "What a situationl Our
sociologists—"
"Never mind your socy—never mind
them," Marlyn cried. "Do something!"
"My dear young lady, don't you
understand? There is nothing I can do. We can't teach practical application of
theoretical science in a few short days. We can't—"
"Doesn't anyone here know how to—to stop
the world from falling?" Mikal asked.
"Why, I suppose so. I suppose I could do
it myself, since the theory is perfectly clear. Yes, I could stop the starship
at the proper planet, find the ferry and start depositing all your people on
their new world."
"Wonderful!" Marlyn hugged him in
her enthusiasm.
"It wouldn't work," said Rolf.
"No, it wouldn't." Mikal frowned.
"The Revelers want to be left alone. They want no contact with the other
circles."
"We Activists forced them into contact
with the Noahs, and they've botched that up."
"And after the experience my people have
had with yours, Rolf," chimed in Marlyn, "you couldn't expect the
Noahs to listen to anyone outside their own circle.
Even if we could stop the
world somehow and find the home those films you showed us mentioned, no Noah
would leave the Jungle for it."
"The Enginers of Astrosphere are as lazy
as anyone else," Mikal pointed out glumly. "There are no special
problems, but they're perfectly content with what they have and it would take
an explosion to stir them."
"Two hundred years to travel,"
mused Raabin. "Twenty-six trillion miles of uncharted space to cross, and no one wants to do a thing about it."
"But we saw pictures of Earth!"
Marlyn fairly shouted. "It was beautiful and you lived on the outside and
everything was so big and—if we only could make them understand a new Earth
awaited them."
"From what you told me," Raabin
pointed out, "few of them must even know the old Earth exists. This starship
is their Universe. Less than that. Only then-own
circles have any real existence for them."
"They're got to be made to
understand," Marlyn cried, waving her hand in desperation. She forgot the
guide rope, floated up into air, twisting and turning. Swimming seemed
unpredictable, for although she did manage to come down, she did not handle the
situation with Raabin's ease. Raabin had been doing it all his life, and it was an art not easily mastered.
"I'm sorry," Marlyn apologized.
"You'd better relax," Rolf told
her. "If you go swimming off like that I'll have to swim after you, I
guess, and I'm not a very good swimmer."
"Sorry? You're sorry?" Mikal was
laughing. "Don't be. Marlyn, what did you just do?"
"Why, I forgot about
the guide rope and went floating off into space."
"Naturally," said Raabin.
"Centrifugal force created by the rotation of all the four globes imparts
artificial gravity to all areas of the starship except this one. This
Laboratory is at the very center, where centrifugal force has no effect upon
it. Obviously you floated."
"Can you control it?" Mikal asked
eagerly. An idea was forming in his mind. Vague at first, it had grown
crystal-clear.
"Certainly. We can stop the rotation.
Why?"
"That may be our way out," Mikal said.
"Well, don't be so mysterious,"
Marlyn told him. "What's your idea?"
"Don't you know? You just now gave it to
me. Marlyn, how do you think the Noahs would feel if they all went floating off
like that, suddenly, without warning?"
"They wouldn't like it. What a strange
question. They couldn't tend their flocks or—why, even the cattle and sheep
would float away, I guess. The Noahs wouldn't like it at all."
"Rolf?"
"You mean if the same
thing happened to the Revelers? If all of them weighed nothing and floated
around?" Rolf began to chuckle. "I can just picture Jebstakion. Jebstakion—floating. Seriously, Mikal, they would be
frantic. It would take them away from their screens, their other empathy
devices, their couches. Jebstakion, floating. I can
just picture it."
"Would they agree to anything to stop it?"
"I—I suppose so."
"The Noahs would, I
know," Marlyn said. "They love their land. They love farming, cattle
ranching; they love to run and walk, to ride horses, but they would not like to
float."
Rolf smiled. "I think
I see what you have in mind, Mikal. It might work."
"It would work."
"I wish someone would inform me,"
said Raabin. "This sounds interesting."
"We'll shake them from then*
laziness," Mikal predicted. "We'll make it so bad they'll do
whatever we tell them. You're sure you can turn this force on and off when you
want to, Raabin?"
"Simple. Merely stop
the rotation. Centrifugal force stops with it."
Mikal wondered briefly if too much enthusiasm
came with too few years. Here he was, all of eighteen, trying to change the
destiny not of one world but three—and four, if you counted Far Labry. Still,
there were three of them—Marlyn, Rolf, himself. Three of
them, with but days to act. No time for counseling, no time to consult
the wisdom of their elders. Perhaps enough time to see the thing through and
then hope it was the solution. For they would have one chance, Mikal knew, and
one only. "All right," he said, trying to sound confident,
"listen. We shut off this thing, this device of Raabin's. Do you agree,
Raabin?"
"You know your people
better than I. If you are in accord, I can merely nod my head along with
yours."
"Then," said
Mikal, "we wait. We wait long enough for
everyone to grow worried. No matter how wild they guess, they'll never be able
to figure out what's happening."
"What a shambles it
will bring," Rolf said. "I suspect it affects not merely people, but
things as well."
"Of course," said Raabin.
"Here in the Laboratory everything is fastened down. Were that not the
case in your circle—"
"It's not."
"Everything would float up and away at
the slightest provocation. Liquids would slosh from containers, form a million
tiny droplets and splatter walls and ceiling. Food would leap from mouths,
tools from hands. Open a drawer, the bureau will depart for the furthest wall
or the ceiling, depending on the direction of the force you apply. Oh, it
would be chaos." Raabin rubbed his hands together. "Our sociologists
would be fascinated. Of course, sociology is not my field, but I can imagine
their interest. I am beginning to feel glad you came here."
In his scientific curiosity, Raabin had lost
sight of more important considerations, Mikal realized with a smile.
Fortunately, all they needed from Raabin was his device, for he would not be of
much help in any other respect.
"Well, Raabin," Rolf asked, almost
cheerfully, "when can we shut off this machine of yours?"
"Shut it off? Oh! Oh, yes." Raabin
shook his head. "I suppose I forgot to tell you, we can't shut it
off."
"Can't?" Rolf snorted. "Now you're joking."
"I never joke," said Raabin coldly.
"We cannot shut it off because I haven't the authority."
"You said no one needed authority
here," Mikal reminded him desperately.
"True. So I did. That
is because we each have our own fields of specialization and endeavor. What you
propose is tampering with something which is not supposed to be tampered
with," Raabin said firmly. "That would require a full meeting of all
the scientists in Labry. In my lifetime there has never been such a
meeting."
Marlyn suggested, "Can't you—uh, can't
you do this thing when no one is looking?"
"My dear young woman! Why do you think we need
no authority here?"
"Then call your meeting!" Rolf
cried. 'The world is at stake."
Raabin shook his head patiently. "I
would if I could. It would take days. You see, all our scientists are at work
in different places. The physicists here, biologists, biochemists and chemists
there," he was pointing meaninglessly in various directions, "the
sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists. . . ."
"We understand," Rolf spoke for all
of them. "Is there some alarm you can ring, some sort of warning signal
used in case of emergency, some—"
"Yes, to be sure."
"Splendid," said Rolf.
"But we can't use it. Quite ironical,
don't you think? The only alarm we have is a general alarm which is triggered
if something happens to the engine that rotates the starship and so gives it
centrifugal force and artificial gravity. I can't ring that alarm because it
would mean shutting off the machine, and I can't shut off the machine because I
have to call a meeting first and I won't be able to call the meeting in time
because I can't stop the machine to set off the alarm."
Marlyn smiled brightly. "Well, if you
can't, you can't. But, Raabin, I'm immensely interested in this machine of
yours. I'd like to see it."
That did not sound like Marlyn, thought Mikal.
"Your ancestors must have been extremely
intelligent to build it," Marlyn persisted.
"They did not build it, although we all
service it. I suppose it can be arranged."
"Oh, I'm glad," said Marlyn, winking at Rolf.
Raabin told them to join
hands again and led them along through air. "Incidentally," said
Raabin as they started, "don't worry about falling up. You can't fall very
far because we've strung a net above the floor all the way around Labry."
It was a sensation to which Mikal would never
grow accustomed: the floor, the walls on either side floated serenely by. They
weighed nothing, and nothing impeded their progress. Presently they reached
another one of the long conveyances which Raabin had called a jetcar.
"For every
action," Raabin said to no one in particular, "there is an equal and
opposite reaction. That is a law of physics,
and it is upon this law the jetcar operates. The car moves through a tunnel
barely wide enough to admit it. Come."
As before, they entered the car. The lid
clamped shut, and Mikal heard the same intense whining in his ears. As before, pressure crushed him against the padding, forced his
head back against his body.
"Here we are,"
Raabin finally said, pushing the lid back. They got out, floated in a huge
hall. The walls glowed with light, something thrummed faintly, just above the
threshold of sound.
Bolted to the floor in the very center of the
place, a flattened metallic dome awaited them.
"It must be very wonderful," said
Marlyn contritely. "How does it work, Raabin?"
He shrugged. "You would not understand.
An atomic pile is employed, its energy imparting rotation to the four circles
of the starship."
"No, I mean what turns it on and off."
Rolf looked at Marlyn, grinned, turned away.
Mikal whispered, "He told us it could
not be done unless we got permission."
Marlyn merely smiled. "Wait," she
said. Then to Raabin: "Tell me how you work it, please."
When Raabin hesitated, she asked another question:
"If it were turned off just for a moment, say, if something went wrong
with it and immediately was fixed, would it still set off the alarm?"
"Most assuredly," said Raabin.
"Were this little lever pulled down," Raabin pointed,
"centrifugal force would be halted and the alarm would go off."
"You mean this lever?" Innocently.
"Yes, young lady. That one."
Marlyn pulled the lever. Sirens wailed
dolefully far overhead, and Mikal could imagine them wailing distantly all over
Far Labry.
Raabin was shocked. His arms fluttered, he
lost the guide rope and soared upward. "Why did you do that?" His
voice wailed along with the sirens.
He flipped in air, plummeted toward the
floor. He pulled the lever back. The sirens faded away.
"Young lady, I clearly told you—"
"It was only for a moment," Marlyn
said. "Just long enough to set off the alarm and bring your people
together. See, it is back in place."
"I know. I know." Raabin seemed
confused. "But what can I tell them? What can I say that will explain why
they are being taken from their work? They are happiest working. They—"
"Why don't you tell them the truth?" Rolf suggested.
Mikal nodded eagerly. "You've got to
tell them the truth. If they know the situation and if they're willing, we can
shut your machine off and go ahead with our plan."
"The sociologists—" began Raabin,
but when he saw the three of them scowling hopelessly, he amended: "Forget
the sociologists. I'll do what you say.
Marlyn jumped for joy. It
was many minutes before she came down, dizzy but still happy.
It was later. The
scientists had come from all the far corners of Labry, had come buzzing with a
million questions, outraged at first, but Raabin quieted them. They floated in
from all directions, single scientists and scientists in long, human chains.
Young and old, men and women, even children scientists, students, they all
came.
Raabin spoke to them, talking simply,
presenting the facts. They listened without a sound. They still made no sound
when he had finished, and Mikal searched the scores of faces for some sign.
Glumly, he began to think they had lost, for the silence which followed
Raabin's speech was deafening.
Finally, a lean,
white-tunicked scientists with gray hair and big round eyes said, "It
should be fascinating."
The voices all around him
commenced babbling. "It could be done."
"Yes. Unfamihar with weightlessness,
they would be helpless, would agree to anything."
"If the situation is as bad as physicist
Raabin said—"
"It is worse,"
Raabin declared. "I am no speech-maker."
"We will wreck a
small, artificial world to colonize a larger, natural one. Yes, there is
justice in that."
"Thank you, Raabin. Thank you." Smiles and laughter. "You did wisely by setting off the
alarm."
"Well now, I—"
"Hush! No modesty at a time like this, Raabin."
They all clustered around Raabin, pounding
his back, smiling at him. Raabin was helpless in the crowd's enthusiastic
embrace.
"You see?" Marlyn said, laughing. "You see?"
Rolf nodded. "It would take a girl to do
that. A man would not, could not. I don't know why, a difference in our
make-ups, I suppose. Someday on that new world, Marlyn, they ought to build a
statue in your honor."
"My honor? Mikal's you mean."
Hearing this, Mikal squared his shoulders proudly. "It was Mikal who
brought us all together, Mikal who followed me from the Jungle,
came to the Place of Revelers. Mikal who had the key to Far
Labry."
"Forget it," Mikal told her.
"Let's not congratulate anybody until this thing is done. The biggest part
of the job still lies ahead of us. It's one thing for Raabin's people to agree
with us. That still leaves our own people. Rolf, can you imagine what it would
be like, convincing the Revelers to leave their home? Marlyn, would the Noahs
turn their backs on the Jungle they love just because we tell them to?"
"I see what you mean," Rolf admitted.
"Well, my Noahs will have no choice, not
once they all weigh nothing. I'll show them the way out. I'll-"
Raabin said, "Here in the place you call
Labry we have all the material needed to start our colony on the new planet.
But, as the young man pointed out, we will need colonists."
"This is what I have in mind,"
Mikal said. "Suppose we each of us return to his own
home. Suppose I go to Astrosphere and ask them for a group of representatives,
or leader, or whatever they want, to follow me. We could have Raabin's ferry
all set, we could gather all the leaders of all the circles of the world m it.
"Certainly," Raabin took it up for
him. "I could ferry them to the Centaurian planet, show them their new
world. They would like it. They would have to like it. Men are made to live on
planets, on big planets. To live on the outside of the world,
and not on the inside like moles. To see a bright sun in the sky and
feel rain and the change of seasons and the brisk wind whistling in off the
oceans. Men are meant to see stars at night, thousands winking down at them
from the sky. Men want a horizon, where earth and sky meet, a
horizon which beckons with the mystery of what lies beyond."
His words hardly made sense
to Mikal, but seemed nevertheless very beautiful. It reminded him somehow of
the words which went with the old, old films Rolf had shown them in the Place
of Revelers. He longed to see the things the film had revealed and Raabin had
talked of, the things he could not understand because his people had not known
them for so long.
Raabin searched his face long,
seemed satisfied with the rapt expression there. And Marlyn was murmuring:
"The Noahs! The Noahs will have to
like this new world. They love space, space for their crops and their herds, space
to run and walk and play."
"Even the Revelers," Rolf was
saying thoughtfully, "even the Revelers might find some pleasant
surprises. Perhaps in the things Raabin describes they will find a new kind of
empathy. Tell me, Raabin, will they?"
And Raabin: "If your Revelers do not
love the sunset, the soft rains, the wind in the trees—we have our pictures
too—the surf pounding itself out on lonely beaches, if they do not love all
these, then they are not men."
So speaking, Raabin walked to the machine,
pulled the lever down. "It is done," he said. "And now—"
"Now we head back to our homes,"
Marlyn blurted, "and bring our leaders, and—"
"No, we don't," Mikal told her,
shouting to be heard over the wailing sirens. "We wait here. We wait long
enough for them to worry and to think everything is hopeless. We don't return
until then."
Raabin's head bobbed up and down. "It is good."
Mikal was not smiling any longer. In their
first rush of wild enthusiasm, they had forgotten one thing which could easily
spell the difference between success and failure. "If any one of us shows
his face in the Place of Revelers," he said, "Jebstakion will see
that he is captured. Weightlessness and floating won't prevent that."
"And I," Marlyn
nodded, "I must pass through the Place of Revelers to return to my
Jungle."
"If I enter the Jungle," Mikal went
on, "assuming I somehow could pass through the Place of Revelers, the same thing would await me. Your people don't love me,
Marlyn."
"Well," said Raabin, and that was all he said.
To have success within their grasp and then
to watch helplessly as it slipped away was a terrible thing, Mikal knew. Far better to have no chance for success. Yet.
. . . Surely there must be something they could do.
"Suppose you were to enter the circles
at different places," Raabin suggested.
"I don't understand." Marlyn was shaking her head.
"There are many avenues from circle to
circle, since it was originally intended that there be a steady flow of people
back and forth. If they are watching for you on one avenue,
and you come upon another . . ."
"Why not?" Marlyn cried. "We
have Needle Mountain, but the Revelers know of another way to our
Jungle."
"I would still have to
pass through both the Place of Revelers and the Jungle," Mikal thought
aloud. "But if I could do it undetected—"
"It can be arranged," said Raabin,
and some of the other scientists nodded vigorously. Raabin continued:
"You will all be given
sufficient time. Then you must bring your delegations not here, but to
Astrosphere, for it is there the ferry waits. I will tell you where."
"Better tell me too," Mikal advised
him. "For although my home is in Astrosphere, I know of
no such place."
"It shall be done. You all shall find me
waiting for you in the ferry."
One of the scientists had a map, and they all
studied it.
When they entered the Place
of Revelers through a secret way, Mikal found that his black key fit the door,
even as Raabin had predicted. They passed through, and in the dim light on the
other side, something struck Mikal's head. Instinctively he pushed away from
it, then smiled.
Bobbing gently on currents of air, one of the
vision screens floated before his face. Weightlessness had come to the Place of
Revelers.
"Good luck," Rolf said, pushing off
from the wall of the corridor and floating away. "I will meet you both in
Astrosphere as soon as I can." He grasped Mikal's forearm, held it firmly;
touched hands briefly with Marlyn. "Be careful." And he was gone.
Marlyn and Mikal followed the path Raabin had
drawn for them, encountering a fantastic assortment of flotsam. Mobile chairs
floated in the corridors. And cups, plates, items of apparel, more vision
screens. Revelers floated too, calling faintly for help.
"I am missing Kardy. Get me down."
"Today I was called for a session of
joint empathy with Senior Reveler Jebstakion. Please. . . ."
"My chair! Who took my chair?"
In the universal chaos no one bothered them,
but Mikal saw something which gladdened his heart. Two small boys came floating
toward them smiling. One said, "This is fun."
"Yes. Oh, yes. You can have your crummy
old screen. I want to float through air like this. Wheeet"
"Hey! Look at me. You can turn over and
everything. Race you to that wall." Tumbling, spinning and laughing, they
floated on.
"The Revelers aren't hopeless," Mikal
said. "If their children like the strangeness of floating they might be
taught in time to like other things, normal things. Someday the Revelers will
forget all about the vision screens and live like human beings again."
Hours later they entered the Jungle. At the
very gateway two Revelers tried to stop them. Marlyn said she thought it must
be the secret way the Revelers had used with their bus. But Mikal, more
accustomed to weightlessness than they, darted around them, jostling, shoving, pushing. When he had finished, they were twisted together
limb and limb, floating off helplessly.
Mikal found his silver key, used it.
"Marlyn—" he said.
She smiled, her nose crinkling, the freckles
across the bridge of it bunching together. "Rolf and I shall find you in
Astrosphere." Flipping her arms, she swam away across the gently
undulating farmland.
Mikal felt a sudden, poignant sense of loss.
His friends were gone—Rolf and Marlyn, with whom he had shared so much, gone
their separate ways. But if everything worked out, reunion would come. New
adventures, greater adventures for all three of them would be in the offing. It
was strange, he mused, how fate had thrown them together, fate or something
else which he could not quite explain even to himself and certainly could not
name—a girl from the Noahs, a man of the Place of Revelers, a boy of
Astrosphere. One from each of three circles of the world (the star-ship, he corrected himself with
new-found knowledge ) and Raabin from the fourth to
face perils which a few short days before they did not know existed.
Rolf and Marlyn, gone to fetch their leaders.
And he, Mikal, was going home to Astrosphere!
Many hours later he found
his father in conference with the Chief Enginer and other leaders. It seemed a
remarkable conference, for its members floated about the Chief Enginer's room,
some upright, some supine through no fault of their own. Mikal had hardly
recognized Astrosphere anyway. People he knew had called to him nervously,
grimly, hysterically, perched in air. Instruments, tools, furniture floated
about. Someone told him he could find Saml, his father, in the Chief Enginer's
quarters, and it was there that Mikal went.
The Chief Enginer, taller even than his son
Fil and with hair as red, was saying, ". . .no
explanation. We can get no work done, absolutely none."
"Will this continue?" someone asked gloomily.
"How am I to know? Suddenly, without
warning, we are unable to stand. Nothing stays in place. Things float. People
float. It is as if the world is coming to an end."
Saml shook his head
gravely. "No. That is the wrong attitude. If indeed this swimming in air
is a permanent thing, then we must do two things."
"What can we do?" the Chief Enginer demanded.
"Shh! Listen to Saml."
"Let Saml talk."
"First, we must try to discover the
cause," said Saml. "I do not believe, frankly, that we can. We can
certainly try, however."
"Where would you suggest we start?"
Saml shrugged, laughing when it made him
float easily toward the ceiling, where he bumped his head and came down gently.
"I do not know. The second thing is more important. I tell you this: we
must conduct ourselves as if this were a permanent thing. We must place rods
and stakes at convenient places in all Astrosphere, making it possible for us
to move about and resume working. We must fasten tools and implements in place,
secure furniture, rearrange our whole way of life to meet this crisis. We can
meet it, and we must."
"That makes good sense," admitted
the Chief Enginer. "I say we should heed Saml's words."
"But," someone wailed, "if
only we knew the cause. If only we knew what could be done about it."
Mikal floated in through the open doorway.
"I know the cause," he said quietly. "I know what can be done
about it."
"Mikall" Saml cried, rushing
ceilingward again in his eagerness to embrace his son. "Mikal, you have
completed your Journey."
Then the voices all around them: "It is
Mikal, Saml's son."
Long-established tradition made them forget momentarily their grave
predicament. The Chief Enginer smiled, saying, "Have you your
trophies?"
Mikal shook his head.
"I come with no trophies."
"Empty-handed! What? But you were gone
almost six days."
"He has returned,
afraid, even as the boy Harol." "But six days."
"Impossible," said Saml. "Tell
us, Mikal. Tell us you are joking. Where are the trophies, Mikal?"
Grinning, Mikal said: "If you insist I
bring trophies, then you will find them all around you. You float. That is a
trophy. That is all the trophies I have brought."
"What does he
mean?"
"He is crazy.
Something has deranged his mind."
"Please explain yourself, Mikal,"
Saml pleaded. Mikal knew it was a terrible blow to a man's pride if his
youngster returned empty-handed from the Journey.
"You ask what has caused this
weightlessness, this floating. I tell you I know. I know the cause and I know
how to stop it."
They hovered about him like the Jungle bees
hovering over blossoms for nectar. They showered him with questions, wanting
to believe but not seeing how they could.
For his own part, Mikal hardly knew how to
begin telling them. He could not merely say, with no preamble and no
elaboration, that he had been responsible. They would either not believe him
or believing, mob him. Yet, the truth has a way of making strangeness seem not
so strange, he thought.
"It was done," he
cried in a wild, breathless rush of words, "to convince you that our way
of life is wrong, to convince you there is more to the Universe than our
four-circled world, to convince you to try what I am going to suggest or,
refusing, to perish," "What is he talking about?"
"Representatives are at this moment on
the other circles of the world, bringing the same message—"
"What message? What are you talking about?"
"Perish? Who is going to perish?"
"More to the world than the four
circles?"
"Clearly, he is deranged, for the four
circles are the sum total of everything."
"In a sense," shouted Mikal
desperately, "it is a message from the place called Earth that I bring
you."
"Earth?"
"What did you discover of Earth on the
other three circles?"
"A lie, obviously."
"There is nothing known elsewhere that
we Engi-ners do not already know."
"Unless," mused Saml, "unless it be
in Far Labry."
"Yes," Mikal said, at least in part
sticking to the truth. "I learned what I learned in Far Labry. You've got
to believe me before it's too late."
The Chief Enginer frowned. "How
can we believe you if we do not understand you?"
It had been a mistake, Mikal realized. He had
come upon the truth with dramatic swiftness, a fugitive in the Place of
Revelers, hiding in the library where Rolf showed him all those wonderful
things. With a whole lifetime of insufficient knowledge, that was one way to
discover the truth and believe it. The other way was gradually. He understood
that now. If he merely told the Enginers what he knew and offered no proof, he
could go on babbling for days on end and they would not believe. Gradually
meant telling them almost nothing, telling them only what was
enough to bring them to Raabin and the ferry. Then let them see for
themselves.
"Forget all that," Mikal finally
said. "Forget what I told you if it doesn't make sense. But answer this:
if there was a way to stop this floating, would you take it?"
"Any way," the
Chief Enginer admitted. "We would try anything."
"I know of such a way, but you will have
to listen to me—"
"If this is some boyish prank, young man . . ."
"I don't ask much of you," said
Mikal, "and my gamble shall be as great as yours. If you find I don't know
what I'm talking about, you may keep me from becoming an Enginer forever."
"Mikal!" Saml cried. "Are you sure?"
"Father, I am sure. We will need a
delegation to accompany me."
"To where?" the Chief Enginer
demanded. "We of Astrosphere leave our home but once, to make the Journey
of the Four Circles."
"We won't leave Astrosphere," Mikal
told him, again adhering to the truth at least in part. "Where I will take
you is right here in Astrosphere." Raabin had indicated to him where the
ferry was. "In one of the unknown places," Mikal added. "Follow
me and we can put an end to this weightlessness, and I will show you wonders you have never dreamed of."
"The first will be
sufficient," said the Chief Enginer coolly. "You have set the
condition yourself, Mileal, son of Saml: if you fail, you will never be an
Enginer. If you succeed, we will waive the three trophies for your
service."
Saml told the Chief Enginer, "I would
like to go along."
"Very well. Then it shall be the two
of us. When, Mikal?"
Mikal considered. Had Raabin enough time to
follow, to find the ferry and wait there for them?
"I hope you know what you re doing,
son," Saml muttered.
"You asked me when? Now is as good as any time."
The Chief Enginer grumbling, Saml muttering
to himself, they followed Mikal from the room. They went down the passageway
which branched off on either side to the living quarters of the Enginers and
their families, the cold metal and glass living quarters which Mikal now knew
were not meant for men to live in all their lives once the starship had
completed its long journey. Soon they had embarked, floating and swimming awkardly
in air, on the final leg of their journey, beyond the passageway of machine
shops and repair cubicles and into a tunnel which was unknown even to the Chief
Enginer.
The tunnel opened on a wide space, its walls
glass. Through them, glowing with unfamiliar beauty, were the stars of space!
"Raabin!" Mikal called softly.
"Raabin, where are you?" His heart began to pound. "Raabin!
Raaaabiiin!"
With all its mysterious beauty, with the
stars shining against velvety blackness, the place was empty.
"Well?" the Chief Enginer demanded.
Chapter 14 Planetfall
I ook," Saml insisted. "Look at the
strangeness all I around you. Is it not enough to
wait?"
"Mikal said we would find someone
waiting *- here. We have found no one."
Mikal groaned. Raabin alone could open the
final door to the ferry. Meanwhile he must wait, keeping Saml and the Chief
Enginer with him. Floating almost in the very center of the huge glass-walled
vault, he spread his arms wide to take in the great sweep of stars on all
sides.
"Look!" he cried. "Have you
ever seen anything like it? Tell me, have you?"
Stars in patterns, sprinklings of stars,
unblinking solitary orbs, great streaks and smears of what looked like cold
fire against the blackness of space met their eyes.
"You have said the
Four Circles of the World are the sum total of the Universe," Mikal
reminded the Chief Enginer. "What do you say now?"
"Well, yes. This is something of which I
was unaware. But it is within Astrosphere."
"It is outside!" Mikal shouted. "Outside, through the glass."
The Chief Enginer kicked
himself over to one of the smooth-sloping walls of glass. "It is bare of
paint," he admitted. "Still those pictures could be painted on the
other side."
"They are not," Mikal told him.
"Even if they
were," said Saml eagerly, "then at least you admit another side
exists. Since Astrosphere is the outermost of the four circles, you admit there
is something beyond Astrosphere. I think Mikal knows of what he is
talking."
"Mikal is your son. Of course you would say that."
"I say it because Mikal claims he can help us."
"Well-"
Then there was a great scraping sound. One
small section of wall which was not glass but metal opened toward them,
revealing blackness beyond it. It was far away, vague in the starlight. A small
dot appeared in the opening, blossomed toward them.
"Someone is coming," said Saml happily. "See?"
"Raabin!" Mikal cried. "Raabin."
"I was inside, exploring the ferry.
Although theory and practical application of theory are two different things, I
believe I can operate it. Have the others arrived?"
"No," said Mikal.
"Then these two, I assume, are Enginers.
The gulf between an engineer—that is the old word, young man —and a theoretical
scientist was never greater than it is here today, with your Enginers living
inside the outermost shell of the starship and the theoretical scientists
dwelling at its center, yet some of our epis-temologists—"
"Who?" said Mikal.
"Epistemologists. They study how men know
what they know, the meaning of knowledge and other kindred fields. Anyway,
some of them have pointed out that knowledge would take great strides forward
if this artificial gap between engineers and scientists were closed. It is a
point I have to suggest to the Enginers when we reach the Centauri planet/*
"Who is this man," demanded the
Chief Enginer, "mouthing all this gibberish?"
"I am from Labry," said Raabin,
using their word for his home.
"Then why don't you talk sense?"
Bewildered by everything, the Chief Enginer had finally found an anchor for his
confusion. Respect was something you earned, Mikal thought, not something
merited by age or position. The thought surprised him; it had not been in his
head six days ago, and he had looked upon the Chief Enginer with awe. But there
was something of the boy Fil in him, and Mikal suspected it was a good thing
that once they reached the Centauri planet—if they reached it—deeds and
not tradition would count. With the four circles working together for the
first time, new leaders, strong leaders, might emerge, leaders who would be willing
to throw off the yoke of tradition and strike out on their own with all the new
discoveries around them. Mikal liked the thought.
"You see?" Raabin was saying.
"You see? It is a difficult gap to bridge."
"Can you stop this foolish
floating?" the Chief Enginer asked Raabin.
"I can and I will, when this boy and his
friends tell me to."
"What do you—"
but the Chief Enginer's voice trailed off into silence.
Behind them, two figures floated into the
vault of stars. One tall and lean, but broad of shoulder; the
other a huge round man of almost impossible girth.
"Rolf!" Mikal
shouted, waving his hand and soaring out toward one of the glass walls. Coming
toward them, the one smiling broadly and the other wheezing and puffing from
the almost negligible effort of swimming through air, were Rolf and Senior
Reveler Jebstakion.
"This is far enough," Jebstakion
protested. "All right, Rolf. I said I would come with you, and
you can imagine the idea did not particularly please me. You were going to
repair the damage so we could all sit back comfortably once more and experience
empathy. It may be perfectly all right for you Activists to go gallivanting
around, but not a true Reveler. I said I would forgive you for what you did, so
I will, provided you can do what you claim."
Rolf ignored him,
pounded Mikal's shoulder and sent them both tumbling off. "It's wonderful
to see you," he said. "Wonderful. You can picture the job I had
bringing him here." Rolf laughed, then abrupdy sobered. "Where is Marlyn?"
"She hasn't arrived yet."
"But she was closer,
she should have come before me."
"Not yet," said Mikal, trying to
keep the worry from his voice. "She should come soon."
"We could proceed without her,"
suggested Raabin, "and inform her people later."
Rolf shook his head stubbornly. "If she
doesn't arrive soon, I'll go after her."
"So these two are Revelers," Saml
mused. "It has been a long time. I saw Revelers once, Mikal, when I made
the Journey."
"You must be from Astrosphere," said Rolf.
SamI nodded. "An Enginer."
"He is my father," Mikal told his
friend. "I have brought the Chief Enginer and my father to witness what we
are about to do," he added unnecessarily, trying to take Rolfs mind off
Marlyn.
"We became lost," said a girl's voice.
They whirled. Rolf smiled, said, "Marlyn."
And again, "Marlyn."
"Maybe you could understand Raabin's
map, Rolf, but I am used to broad open fields and forest, and landmarks you can
see. We turned down more tunnels, passageways, climbed more stairs, went down ramps. I thought Raabin had us going in circles.
Sacher the Cobbler wanted to turn back, especially when he actually tried to
climb the stairs instead of floating over them!"
With Marlyn were her father, Landor, and
Sacher the Cobbler who, Mikal recalled with a sinking heart, had been his most
outspoken critic that night at the Town Council. Sacher evidently came along
representing the opposition. Now he was saying, "Let's get this nonsense
over with."
Raabin led them through the vault of stars,
but Sacher failed to see their beauty. "What a quaint source of
lighting," he commented indifferently. "You should think they would
have developed something more effective if they couldn't have the natural light
of the Jungle."
"The Jungle's light," said Raabin,
"is no more natural than anything else here. As closely as possible, it
simulates sunlight; but then, you wouldn't know what sunlight is."
Leading his strange
charges, Raabin floated off.
Mikal found something amusing about the odd
assortment of people who followed the physicist, despite the fact that the
future of all their peoples might hinge upon their actions. It was just that if
someone actually had been in a position to select representatives from each of
the circles for what lay ahead of them, his choice
would have been totally different. From Astrosphere came three. First, a boy
who understood more than the others and who earnestly wanted to believe what
he did not yet understand. But what would a boy's
words be worth, thought Mikal, in the face of the Chief Enginer's opposition?
Saml could help, and Saml would try, but the Chief Enginer would balk him at
every step, figuring the whole thing was a sham to cover MikaFs lack of
trophies. At any rate, when decisions had to be reached, the second and third
representatives of Astrosphere would carry far more weight than Mikal.
From the Jungle—well, there at least things
looked promising. Marlyn maintained Mikal's position; Lan-dor had an open mind
and might be able to overrule Sacher's narrow-mindedness. Rolf of the Revelers
had sufficient years behind him to be considered a man, but the other Revelers
hardly considered Rolf one of them. He led the Activists, led them in an open
if passive revolt against their fellows, and they would as soon believe the
opposite of what he said as anything at all. As for Jebstakion, Mikal had to
grin. By no stretch of the imagination could Jebstakion be considered the
explorer type.
Raabin was as good a representative of Far
Labry as you could find, and once the scientists had agreed to help they posed no
problem. To save a world, then, were a boy and a girl; a rebel whose people
disliked him; a pompous, self-important Chief Enginer; a father prejudiced in
his son's behalf, well-meaning but potentially powerless; an open-minded Noah
and a narrow-minded one; and a mountain of a man who wanted nothing better than
to sit on his specially constructed mobile chair and gaze upon vision screens
or have beautiful dreams.
"We are moving through an air lock
now," Raabin told his followers. "When the first door shuts, the
second one opens, admitting us. It will then close, sealing off this inner
chamber from which all the air will be drawn when the wall slides away."
"When the wall does what?" demanded
the Chief Enginer. "Haven't you caused enough damage already?"
"But my dear Enginer," protested
Raabin mildly. "How do you suppose we can go out into space if the wall is
not removed?"
"Into space? What is space?"
"Space is—well—ummm. I can see we are
going to have quite a job on our hands."
The chamber beyond what Raabin had called an
air lock was almost as large as the vault of stars. In its very center, angled
toward one of the glass walls at forty-five degrees, was a long, tapering,
cone-shaped object, far larger than any building Mikal had seen among the Noahs
except for the Council Hall.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Raabin
asked. "There is your ferry."
The tapered end pointed at the wall of glass,
pointed beyond it at the stars, but mainly at one star, direcdy in line with
it, far brighter than the rest.
"Alpha Centauri,"
said Raabin, his gaze following an invisible line from the prow of the
spaceship to the bright, unblinking star. It was somehow waiting patiently and
eternally there in the cold blackness, as if it knew they would come.
"Get in," said Raabin, leading the
way to the spaceship and opening its port, also an air lock.
"Well—" the Chief Enginer paused, undecided.
"You carry out your half of the bargain
if my son is to carry out his," Saml said.
They entered.
"Such foolishness," Sacher the
Cobler declared, following them with Landor.
"I can hardly fit," said
Jebstakion, and meant it. Rolf helped him, then
entered after him with Marlyn. Mikal and Raabin brought up the rear.
Raabin turned, began to pull the circular hatch shut.
"Wait! Wait!"
Raabin peered outside. "Someone is coming."
Mikal looked outside. Hurtling toward them
through the air, arms and legs thrashing and kicking to impart a rapid if
wobbly motion, was the Chief Enginer's lanky, red-haired son.
"Must he come along?" Marlyn asked
wearily when Fil reached the hatch.
"I insist that he does," said the
Chief Enginer, and not wanting to antagonize him further, Mikal cautioned
Marlyn to silence.
"I have returned from the Journey,"
Fil said breathlessly.
"Your trophies?" demanded the Chief Enginer.
"Stored for
safekeeping. I arrived right after you
left for this place."
"You followed us," said Mikal.
"Yes, I did. I waited outside
until—"
"Until you could see who else was
coming," Marlyn finished for him, ignoring Mikal's warning. "You must
figure it's pretty important with someone here from each of the circles."
"I merely want to come along."
"And he will," repeated the Chief Enginer.
"Listen," Fil said, floating in
through the hatch, "whatever it is they told you is
a trick of some kind. These three have been together doing strange things ever
since we got to the Place of Revelers."
"We were doing strange
things?" Marlyn almost screamed. "How about you?
You and that Skot person, taking me to the One in Ten like that, and—"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You—liar!"
Mikal grew alarmed, for the freckles were
disappearing from Marlyn's face. If she lost her temper now, the Chief Enginer
might call everything off and leave the spaceship in a huff. Somehow Marlyn and
Fil could never be together for a few minutes without coming to blows. And
worse, Marlyn could handle herself all right with Fil, but Rolf might not see
it that way. If Rolf took after Fil . . .
"Please, Marlyn," Mikal pleaded.
"I don't know what they're trying to
do," Fil went blandly on, "but I would keep my eye on them, Father. I
would—"
"You!" Marlyn stormed. "As if you're in a position to advise anyone."
"I wasn't talking to you. You're in
Astrosphere now, not the Jungle. Behave yourself."
"Oh!" Marlyn
leaped at Fil, soaring through space after him and slapping him soundly. Fil
floated away, bumped into a wall, came floating back, fists clenched. Marlyn
stuck her tongue out.
"Just a minute
now!" Rolf roared, and got between them.
"You'd better not try to—to hit a girl."
"Well, she started it!" Fil shrieked.
"She certainly did," said the Chief
Enginer. "Either that girl goes, or we do."
Rolf had Fil firmly in tow, pinning his arms
to his sides. Fil kicked and squirmed while Marlyn taunted him.
"Release my son," said the Chief
Enginer. "We're leaving."
"Please," said
Mikal. "All of you calm down. This can all be straightened out."
"You straighten it," said the Chief
Enginer. "We are going."
But Rolf still held Fil while Landor tried to
calm his daughter. "Don't you see, Marlyn? Don't you see? You'll spoil
everything."
Fil subsided; Rolf let him go. Marlyn stood
quietly, the freckles returning to her face.
"Come," said the Chief Enginer. He
and Fil headed for the hatch.
Slam! The hatch made a loud, clanking noise as Raabin pulled it shut and bolted it.
"There is one way to settle all this," he said cheerfully.
"We're going into space. No, don't go near that door. Look."
He pointed to a round window to which they
all floated—and stared. Outside, a section of the glass wall had doubled back
on another section. A gaping hole, roughly square, had taken its place. The
glass on all sides, crisscrossed by metal struts for support, framed the
opening neatly.
"You can't go outside," said
Raabin. "No air. No heat. It would kill you instantly."
The Chief Engineer paused uncertainly.
Fil said, "Another trick."
Raabin smiled, pulled a large lever down
toward the floor. Everyone was slammed against the rear wall of the spaceship
cabin. Going from weightlessness to twice their real weight during the instant
of acceleration, they were helpless, propped up like rag dolls against the wall
however they had fallen.
Raabin raised a trembling finger toward the
port. "We are in space," he said. "For the first time in two
hundred years, men have left the starship."
A brief look sufficed to tell Mikal Raabin
was correct.
Even as he stared, weightlessness returned.
He floated to the port for a better view, heard Raabin explaining:
"We grow heavy only at the moment of
acceleration, and later when we come to a stop. Otherwise we are in free fall,
just like the starship. In free fall, there is no weight."
All around them were the stars of space. So
far had they come in almost no time at all that Mikal could not even see the starship. He tried the ports on each side of their vessel,
tried the one in front and the one to the rear. The starship, which had been
world and universe to his people, had vanished in a twinkling. For the first
time Mikal began to understand that it was the merest of specks, a grain of
dust in a vast universe of billions of much larger, much more important grains.
The stars stared back at him from all sides.
The stars and the spaces between them in their immensity had swallowed up the
starship. Suddenly and breathlessly, the starship, the world Mikal had known,
did not matter. Ahead of them now he saw one star brighter than all the others.
So bright that it dazzled him, hurt his eyes if he stared at it too long. Did
he imagine it grew brighter, more dazzling? No, not his imagination, for Raabin
had called that star Alpha Centauri, and Alpha Centauri was their goal and the
goal of their people for two hundred years and across more empty space than his
mind could fathom.
Mikal suddenly felt sorry for the Chief
Enginer, for Jebstakion, even for Fil. They were embarking on a glorious
adventure but would not let themselves know it.
Mikal stood for a long time watching Alpha
Centauri, stood unmoving at the port while the bright star became a blazing
globe, a beacon.
"We are circling Alpha Centauri at a
distance of two billion miles," said Raabin later, after he had set their
spaceship in an orbit around the star.
Mikal did not know what miles were, but
figured two billion of them would cover a lot of distance. Why were they
waiting?
"I forgot one thing," said Raabin
in embarrassment. "I don't know which planet we want."
"Which one?" Rolf asked. "You mean
there are more than one?"
"Two," Raabin informed him. "Our own solar systern, the
solar system of the Planet Earth, had nine of them. Nine
planets. Here there are only two, but that is one too many."
"Can't you find out?" Mikal
demanded. "Won't someone in Labry know?"
Raabin shook his head, frowning. "We
never had that knowledge, for we never had any astronomers. Buried in the
center of the starship, how could we? The science of astronomy belonged to
Astrosphere." He looked hopefully at Saml and the Chief Enginer.
"I have never heard of it," said Fil's father.
And Saml: "We know of no such thing."
"Perhaps there is some difference
between the planets which could tell us what we want to know," Rolf
suggested.
Raabin shrugged. "One lies closer to
Alpha Cen-tauri than the other. But distances are a relative thing because
Alpha Centauri is somewhat larger and hotter than the Sun of Earth. And we have
no instruments for measuring the planetary heat."
"Isn't there anything else?" Marlyn
asked. "Some other thing, something about Earth, maybe, that can tell
us?"
Raabin paused to consider,
then shook his head. "I do not know."
Mikal was thinking furiously. There had to be
something, some clue which they had overlooked, some way of knowing which
planet would suit them. Of course, they could land on both and find out that
way, but if they selected the wrong one first, Jeb-stakion, Sacher and the
Chief Enginer might refuse to go any further. Raabin could force them to visit
the other one because he controlled the ship, but that first wrong impression
might do untold damage since the Chief Enginer and the others would have to
report back to their people favorably. Still, Mikal could not quite decide what
could make one planet so different from another. Weren't they all the same? Weren't they . . . certainly not! At least something of the
truth struck him when he realized that within the comparatively small
dimensions of the starship such totally different worlds as Astrosphere, the
Jungle, the Place of Revelers and Far Labry could exist one within the other.
On a planetary scale differences might be unthinkable.
He finally said, "Doesn't Earth have any
distinguishing feature? Something which sets it aside as
different from everything else?"
Marlyn smiled brightly. "Yes! You told
me so yourself. Earth is so big, so very much larger than the Jungle or your
Astrosphere or anything else."
Size, thought Mikal. Why not? It was something
to grasp at, something worth considering. Earth was large, unbelievably large.
Shouldn't their new home among the stars be the same?
"That isn't very scientific," Raabin told them.
"Can you think of anything else?" Rolf asked him.
"No. Nothing else.
Size it is, then. Although I do believe with more time and some serious
thought—"
Mikal shrugged, gestured toward Jebstakion,
muttering to himself off in a corner; toward Sacher, pacing back and forth
irritably; toward Fil, whispering something in the Chief Enginer's ear.
"Do we have time?"
"No," admitted
Raabin. "As far as I can see, the second planet is larger than the first.
Here," and he beckoned Mikal toward a small eyepiece in front of him. The
eyepiece protruded from a long tube, the tube disappeared into the wall. Mikal looked, saw first a small blue globe, then a slightly larger
whitish one.
"I am no astronomer," said Raabin,
"but with our distance and the magnifying power of this telescope, I should guess the diameter
of the first planet, the blue one, as between four and eight thousand miles. The white planet, between ten and fifteen. Then it's the
white one?"
Rolf nodded. Mikal said, "Yes, the white
one. But you mean those two small globes you showed me are—planets?" Why,
they had been hardly more than dots, hardly very large or impressive-looking.
"We have a way to travel," Raabin
said. "Watch the white planet grow."
Mikal lacked the opportunity, for trouble was
brewing in the tight confines of the spaceship again. This time it was Sacher
the Cobbler, who told Landor bitterly, "I have been thinking, Landor, and
I do not like my thoughts."
"Then don't think them," Marlyn suggested.
"I am addressing your father. Landor, do
you know what these thoughts say?"
Landor shook his head.
"They say something is wrong when
twoscore of our youngsters are kidnaped by the Revelers, but—"
Jebstakion interrupted: "Even if you
must use that term, kidnaped, you should at least realize it is for your
youngsters' own good. We take them from the Jungle and show them civilization. Reveler civilization."
"You keep out of this!" Sacher cried.
"That's all over and done with," Rolf pointed out.
"You keep out of it too," said
Sacher. "You're a Reveler, just like the other one. What I was saying, Landor:
something is wrong if after all these kidnap-ings only one of our children is
returned, and she happens to be the daughter of our leader. What do you know
about this, Landor? What are you hiding? Don't forget, my son Birto was taken
as well. You have your Marlyn back; I don't have Birto."
"I saw Birto not two days ago,
Sacher," said Marlyn. "He was quite well, although a little
frightened."
"Is there any wonder? How did you escape? How?"
"I could tell you, but you wouldn't
believe me. Why don't you ask Jebstakion?"
The fat man said, "Ask me nothing. I
don't want to talk to anyone."
"I am a Reveler too," Rolf said to
Sacher. "I released her. Does that satisfy you?"
While Sacher pondered, Jebstakion was
muttering half-aloud, "I would need a mountain of food to satisfy me.
When will you stop this foolish game and let us all go home? Weightlessness is
bad enough, but now you—"
"Exactly what I was thinking," said
the Chief En-giner. "The Reveler makes sense."
"You agreed to see
this thing through," Saml reminded him.
"But not to remain shut away from
everything in this small room indefinitely."
Mikal had difiiculty believing his ears. To
the Chief Enginer the spaceship was a small room, a prison rather than a way of
escaping from the confines of their circumscribed world. He saw the stars
outside;
the stars were nothing to him.
He had so much to learn, and so little time. . . .
They argued on and on, first about one thing,
then another. They represented four different ways of life which had been
thrust abruptly together, and the tension among them was growing all the time.
Mikal could sense it in the air, almost palpable. Fists might start flying at
the slightest provocation. It had begun, logically enough, with spiteful Fil
and high-strung Marlyn, but it had spread among all the conflicting factions.
"You will so talk," Sacher was
telling Jebstakion. "If you know anything about the whereabouts of my son
Birto . . ."
Jebstakion responded with stony silence.
"Tell me!" little Sacher cried
indignantly, not so much because he did not have the knowledge, but because
Jebstakion refused to recognize the fact that he so much as existed. Sacher
floated toward him, looked ridiculously small hovering
near Jebstakion's tremendous girth. "Well?"
Jebstakion brushed Sacher away, reaching out
with his hand and cuffing the small man lightly. Sacher, weighing zero, flew to
the farthest wall and hit it resoundingly.
"You can't do that to a Noah,"
Landor bristled. Even Landor, thought Mikal. Hurry, Raabin, hurry!
"I have done it," said
Jebstakion, and lapsed into silence again.
"Please, Father," Marlyn pleaded,
"one bad temper in the family can get us into enough trouble."
Now Marlyn was trying to placate Landor while
Landor tried to placate Sacher. Rolf shrugged elo-
quently enough at Mikal, who wondered how long the
strange crew could remain together without something exploding.
Fortunately it was Raabin who supplied the
answer. "Brace yourselves, all of you," he
said. "We are about to planetfall."
"Were going to land!" Marlyn cried in delight.
Weight returned crushingly, threw them
forward in the direction of the spaceship's flight.
The spaceship shook.
A piercing, shrieking sound rushed in at them.
"Atmosphere friction," called
Raabin. "I think I started the braking action too late. I think . . . you
had better brace yourselves."
Brace themselves?
Mikal found he could not move. An intolerable weight seemed to crush down on
his chest and all at once it had grown uncomfortably warm, then hot, then
almost broiling within the spaceship.
"Friction causes heat," Raabin
mumbled. "Ship streaking through atmosphere . . .
friction . . . heat. The outside of this spaceship must be almost hot
enough to melt."
Mikal craned his neck, tried to look through
the round ports. But they were opaque, blackened, ugly, having been fused by
the intense heat.
"We're still falling too fast,"
Raabin called. "It is one thing to know the theory and another to put it
into practice."
The crushing weight increased as the whining
sound grew fainter.
"We're slowing," Raabin said. Then:
"Fifty thousand feet!"
Mikal wished he knew what
feet were. Some measure of height.
"Forty thousand!" called Raabin,
peering at his instrument board.
"Let's — go back to — Astrosphere,"
cried Fil in mounting alarm.
"Ten thousand feet....
Five
At that moment Mikal felt himself lifted,
flung up into the air, deposited again. The spaceship trembled, the cabin spun
wildly. Someone shouted hoarsely; someone else, it sounded like Fil, screamed.
Mikal was dimly aware of a shambles inside
the spaceship, of twisted, convoluted walls, broken instruments, buckling floor and dented ceiling. Raabin staggered away
from the control board amidst a tinkling of glass.
"I would do much better next time,"
he said. "We have landed." He plunged forward on his face.
Chapter
15 The New Earth
I |
hey all gathered around Raabin in the broken
cabin. Soon Raabin blinked, opened his eyes and smiled up weakly at them.
"One thing about a theoretical scientist," he said, "if he ever gets around to putting the theory in practice,
it's still only theory to him. I was wondering how soon I had to apply braking
power. By the time I decided, it was almost too late."
"This thing you call a spaceship is
wrecked," said Saml.
Landor nodded. "A complete shambles."
"That's fine," the Chief Enginer
said bitterly. "If this is a—uh, vehicle of sorts, as you say, and if we
have come some distance from Astrosphere, now that you've wrecked it how are we
going to return?"
Mikal thought with mounting fright that the
Chief Enginer's question was a good one.
But Baabin grunted, "I think you are
wrong. We will have to ascertain the extent of the damage later. Buckling walls
do not mean much unless there are holes in them. As for my wrecked instrument
panel, frankly, I did not understand most of it anyway."
"Forget all that for the present,"
Rolf said, trying to sound cheerful. "After two hundred years we have
arrived on a new planet. Doesn't someone want to claim it in the name of the
Place of Revelers, Far Labry, Astrosphere and the Jungle?"
Marlyn walked to one of the round ports, then stood there scowling. But she had walked, and Mikal sud-
denly realized that something
like normal weight had returned. As a matter for fact, he felt slightly heavier
than usual, although that could have been because of the change from
weightlessness. The walking worked wonders. Everyone began pacing around the
cabin, trying his legs again, smiling. Even Jebstakion climbed ponderously to
his feet, took a few slow steps, then, grunting his satisfaction, sat down
again, for once not muttering.
Marlyn still scowled. "Come here," she said.
Mikal, Raabin and Rolf clustered about the
port with her. Raabin shrugged. "So what? We will
never know what this planet is like until we venture outside. I prefer the empirical method
in certain things, anyway."
The port had been fused black and solid by
the heat of their passage through the planet's atmosphere. "It must be hot
out there," Rolf guessed.
"Not at all," Raabin told him.
"It might be hot, might be cold, might be normal.
The heat has to do with friction, with a rubbing together of molecules from the
air and the spaceship's hull."
"Then what are we waiting for?"
Marlyn demanded. "I'm going outside."
Landor looked up sharply. "Now,
daughter—" he began.
The Chief Enginer cut him
short. "Hold on there! If there is a new world to claim, I want to claim
it for Astrosphere. I'm going."
Sacher the Cobbler grunted,
crossed to the air lock. "Is that so? I still think this is a lot of
nonsense, but if it happens not to be, since the Jungle has always provided
food for everyone else, I think the Noahs ought to claim this world. Landor and
I will go outside/'
"You don't realize how big this place
is," Mikal pleaded. "More space than you ever saw in your lives. More than enough for everybody."
"Still," said
Sacher, "the Noahs should have the honor."
Mikal threw his hands up
impatiently. "We have enough problems as it is. Now you're inventing
some."
"The thing is not without a solution.
Three or four people can squeeze into the spaceship's air lock at once. Three
or four people can touch the land of this new planet simultaneously,"
Raabin pointed out with logic.
"But who?" Rolf asked.
"Some from each world, of course,"
Raabin went on. "You can leave me out. I am not a glory seeker."
"I," said Jebstakion, "have had more than enough activity for one day."
"My father and I want to be the first," Fil said.
"There are two," Raabin counted
them oif on his fingers. "We have room for two more."
"Landor and I," declared Sacher.
"I want to show him what nonsense all this is."
"Any objections?" demanded Rolf.
No one spoke.
They were still quiet and pensive when Raabin
opened the inner door of the air lock. Sacher, Landor, Fil and the Chief
Enginer crowded into the little chamber beyond it, and Raabin told them,
"The second door cannot be opened until the first one is clamped shut. Are
you ready?"
"Might as well get
finished with it," muttered
Sacher, and when the Chief Enginer nodded,
Raabin closed the inner door with a loud bang.
"What a strange quartet to first set
foot on a new world," Raabin was thinking aloud. "Except for the man
Landor, they all are convinced this whole thing is some kind of a trick."
"Only they lacked sufficient
intelligence to remain behind," Jebstakion said.
As the seconds fled, Mikal's thoughts raced
furiously. What strange wonders were they discovering outside on the new
world? He moved about impatiently. Like Marlyn, he would have liked going
outside himself, but if a few seconds alone on the new planet would satisfy
their more cynical passengers, it certainly was worth it. Would they see warm
sunlight and rain and tides and all the things Raabin and the films had
mentioned? Mikal could picture what would transpire later, when the much larger
rear cabin of the spaceship carted the people of Astrosphere, the Jungle, the
Place of Revelers and Far Labry, until no one was left on the starship. Then a
new world would begin for all of them here.
Came a faint tapping at the air lock.
Marlyn jumped to her feet. "Do you hear
something?"
Again the tapping, faint but insistent.
"Apparently they have satisfied
themselves," Raabin said happily, opening the inner door.
Mikal stared. Marlyn screamed.
Gasping, clutching their throats, staggering,
the four tumbled back within the spaceship!
For a time they could not
talk, but fought instead to catch their breaths. Slowly color returned to
their pale cheeks. Marlyn kneeled, touched a hand to her father's face.
"He—he's so cold."
Landor looked at her mutely, then managed to
whisper, "Sacher was right. It's all a trick. All along we have trusted
Mikal for nothing," His eyes raked Mikal's face with hatred.
"But Landor, I—"
"You be still!" Marlyn cried sharply.
"Marlyn, whatever it is, Mikal couldn't
know. None of us did," Rolf said, kneeling by her side and placing his big
hand on her shoulder.
"I—I'm sorry."
Mikal wasn't listening. He
ran for the air lock, entered through the still-open first door, paused in the
chamber. "Close it, Raabin," he ordered.
"Mikal, please wait." This was
Saml, alarm in his voice. "Wait until they can speak and tell you what was
the matter."
"Close it, Raabin."
"Perhaps your father is right,"
"Close it. I've got to know." Tears
of rage welled in Mikal's eyes.
Saml finally nodded. "Let him go, Raabin."
Mikal watched as Raabin shut the door on him,
making it possible for him to open the second door himself and so step out upon
the surface of the new planet. Something was wrong. Somehow, the world was not
what they had expected. If he did not show his own willingness to go outside,
how could they ever trust him for whatever was to follow?
He opened the second door and plunged blindly
outside.
Howling winds buffeted him, flung tiny needle
specks of ice at him. He breathed
deeply, choked, felt terrible pain in his chest. His eyes clouded, but he still
could see the bleak crags, the tumbled, grotesque rocks, the
bare, utter desolation. Was this the world his ancestors dreamed of, with its
terrible cold, fierce wind, atmosphere that poisoned? Arms and legs numb, chest
burning, Mikal turned to re-enter the air lock. His first wild rush had carried
him only scant feet outside, but he pitched forward when he tried to walk,
collasping on the planet's rocky surface. The rock was brittle and jagged,
breaking and chipping under his weight. Only dimly now, the wind howled in his
ears. The air lock, so close and yet infinitely far away, swam before his eyes.
He clawed out with his hands, dragged himself
painfully over the flaking rock, got one numb, frozen
hand over the round sill of the outer door. He pulled himself forward, one
agonizing inch at a time. Inside the lock, he pounded gratefully on the inner
door, then realized with a shock that it could not
function until he had secured the outer one. Frozen numb, he had to turn
around, grasp the outer door with hands that felt nothing, pull it.
Pull it. . . .
He heard a click, felt sudden warmth engulf
him. Hands dragged him within the light, warm cabin.
"Obviously," Raabin was saying,
"this was the wrong planet. We had one choice out of two, and made the wrong
one."
The Chief Enginer snorted. "I could have
told you all this was some foolish sham, although I still cannot figure out
its purpose."
Half an hour had passed.
Mikal felt weak, but otherwise had no ill effects from his moments on the
frozen planet. Still, he could imagine how the others took it, half-doubting
what they had been told all along.
Sacher nodded his head, his myopic gaze
unblinking on Raabin. "Take us home," he said.
Raabin muttered, "That's out of the
question. It is fantastic. We have only to visit the other planet, the right
one. Then you will see."
"I want to see nothing but my good green
Jungle," said Sacher.
"Interesting, is it not?" Raabin
asked. "You assumed size of such significance only because the starship,
in relation to the old Earth, was so small."
"I wish you had thought of that
before," Rolf told him glumly.
"Well, I wanted time to think, but—"
"Take us home," Sacher said again.
"If you've come this far," Marlyn
pleaded with him, "why don't you agree to one more attempt? The other
planet—"
"Stop it, Marlyn." She looked up in
surprise, for it was Landor, her father, talking. "We have had quite
enough. I wanted to believe Mikal and the others. I tried to believe them. I
went outside with Sacher and I really hoped that some things they said were
true. I truly hoped . . . but you see the outcome. We could have died in that
terrible place."
"But you didn't," Mikal said,
"and neither did I. We live to try again."
"And perhaps be less lucky the second
time? No, lad. We're going home."
Saml stood up, paced back and forth. "I wish I
knew. I wish I had enough
wisdom to understand all these things. I don't think anyone does. Not one man
here, not even you, Raabin, has sufficient wisdom. All
we can do is vote. We either go home to our separate worlds—"
"You forget the weightlessness,"
Marlyn reminded him.
"Raabin said he could
fix that. We vote. It's either home, or on to your second planet. If we decide
in favor of the planet, we try only once. But one chance
more."
"If the ship still works,"
Raabin said.
"Closed ballot?" Landor demanded,
apparently satisfied with Saml's suggestion.
"What for?" Mikal wanted to know.
"There's no need for that."
Raabin strode forward.
"My vote," he said, "is to continue on to the second
planet."
One, thought Mikal.
"Father?" he demanded.
Saml frowned in thought.
"I don't think you are lying, but you could be wrong. Still, if even half
of what you say is true, it is worth a try. I vote with Raabin."
"Marlyn?"
"Of course we
go."
"Sacher?"
"We've had enough of this
nonsense." "Jebstakion?"
"Maybe our food floats
through the corridors of the Place of Revelers, but still it is food. Home." "Fil?"
"What do you think? I told you all along
that—" "How do you vote?" Marlyn demanded coldly.
"Back to Astrosphere," Fil told her.
The Chief Enginer nodded. "I also say that."
Rolf disagreed and so did Mikal. "That
makes it five for the planet, four to go home," Mikal said triumphantly.
"Therefore—"
"One moment," Landor said. "My
vote."
There was a silence. They all looked at
Landor, but he remained quiet.
"If we return to the Jungle," said
Marlyn, "Raabin has explained how the starship, the world, will crash,
destroying us all. We have to go on to the other planet and find a home for our
people, Father. Can't you understand that?"
"No. I do not understand a lot of
things. I only know that I trusted Mikal and let him speak before the Town
Council, and that night you were kidnaped. Coincidence?
I don't know." He shrugged. "For all I know Mikal could still be a Reveler."
"Senior Reveler Jebstakion votes against
Mikal, votes to go home!"
"True, but the other Reveler, Rolf, votes to go on."
"I am no Reveler, I told you."
"I am sorry," Landor said.
"Really sorry, Marlyn, but if I am to cast my vote it must be the way I
see it. Mikal and the Revelers have brought nothing but trouble. In all the
years of my life and the life of my father before me, and his father, the world
was never threatened with destruction. Because you tell me it now, does not
mean it is truth. I vote to return home."
Rolf shook his head sadly. "Five
and five. Then do we sit here until the end of time?" He stalked impatiently
about the cabin. "It might be all right with Jebstakion, but I want to do
something."
Stalemate, thought Mikal, and Rolf must have read his mind, for he said:
"We're right back where we started. Stalemate.
You might as well forget we ever voted."
"I don't think
so," declared Fil, smiling. Mikal looked at him suspiciously. What could
he mean?
"I am only a child," Fil
said.
"Really," the Chief Enginer
contradicted him. "A child in years, but with the good
brain of a man. Now, these others—" He pointed to Mikal and Marlyn.
"Exactly," Fil continued. "We
children have no place voting with adults. Therefore I say my vote should not
count."
"Of course!" shouted the Chief
Enginer. "Of course. The vote of Mikal should
also be discounted, as well as this girl's."
"Which leaves four in favor of returning
home and only three in favor of going on," Fil said.
"I told you he had the brain of a
man!" cried the Chief Enginer proudly. "Then it means we're all going
home."
All the wonders of a new world were awaiting
them, thought Mikal. Back at Astrosphere and the other circles, they would
stand helpless, only a few short days from destruction. He looked at Fil in disgust,
exclaiming:
"How would you like to know you may have
been instrumental in killing everyone? Everyone. Not
just the ten of us here in this spaceship; we don't matter. But
killing everyone in Astrosphere and the other circles."
"You're crazy," said Fil.
"Maybe. I don't think so. I was
willing to vote," Mikal told all of them, "because I thought it was
the fairest way. But when the voting is fixed to meet the requirements of one
side—"
"And," Rolf finished for him,
"when you decide to discount the votes of two people who know more about
all this than almost anyone else, then voting has no place. Raabin, have you
decided whether this spaceship still functions?"
"When we lift up off this planet we will
know, not before."
"All right. That suits me. Since you're
the only one who can pilot it, I say you should be the only one who can vote.
That's certainly no worse than Fil's suggestion."
"My suggestion meets
with the approval of the majority," Fil said spitefully. "If we took
a vote to see if Mikal, Marlyn and myself should be
permitted to participate, it would come out four to three that we should
not."
"Right!" cried the Chief Enginer proudly.
"Wrong," said Landor. "My vote
stands, but the three you mention know no less about this than any of us. It is
still stalemate."
Mikal shrugged hopelessly, heard Rolf saying,
"Raabin, take this spaceship up. We're going to that other planet."
"We are not," insisted the Chief
Enginer, stalking forward menacingly.
"I don't know . . ." Raabin muttered doubtfully.
"It's the only way," Rolf said.
"Your way, not ours," Fil's father
told him, still advancing. They faced each other, squaring off, two big men. Raabin began to finger the controls, still
muttering.
Raabin's hand poised over the starting lever.
Bellowing, the Chief Enginer rushed at Rolf,
fist flailing. Rolf went down under the onslaught, striking the floor with a
thud. He climbed to his feet groggily, shook his head to clear it. "If you
want to fight—" he roared, and then closed with the Chief Enginer. They
traded powerful blows while Raabin hovered frightened and uncertain behind
them. Clearly, he was awaiting the outcome.
Tensions had mounted. Suspense had grown ever
since they set out in the spaceship. There was no safety valve, no way to
release their pent-up emotions. An explosion had been inevitable and it came
now.
"Did you see what he did?" Marlyn
cried. "Did you see the way your father attacked Rolf?" She turned on
Fil with tears in her eyes, balling her fist and pummeling his chest with them.
Fil retreated warily off into a comer, covering face with hands when her attack
shifted there. "I'm just a little girl!" she cried, all the freckles
gone. "I can't vote, can't 1?'
Fil ducked his head, but she yanked it up by
the hair and struck him again with her hard little fist.
"You show him, Marlyn!" Sacher
shouted, hardly aware that he had shifted his allegiance from the side he had
voted for to the girl of his Noah home.
"I abhor violence," Jebstakion declared.
"You would,"
Sacher said, still shouting, and began grappling with the bigger man. "I
don't know why I ever voted the way you did."
Landor ran to Marlyn's aid, unaware she
needed none. By the time he got there, Fil was blubbering, but Landor shook him
by the shoulders until his teeth rattled. "You leave my daughter
alone!"
Jebstakion sat on Sacher, rendering him
completely helpless although the smaller man's arm and legs thrashed
tirelessly.
"Leave my son alone!" the Chief
Enginer cried, turning to Landor. But he had his hands full with Rolf, and, as
he turned, Rolf's big fist landed flush on his jaw. The Chief Enginer subsided.
"Well," said Raabin, enjoying it
all. "I have never seen anything like this." He laughed a little
foolishly, taking it all in with obvious enjoyment.
Even Jebstakion seemed interested. He stood
up slowly, leaving Sacher still thrashing on the floor. "Well," he
admitted, chuckling jovially, "there is a certain satisfaction in
activity. I don't know why you're laughing, little man. What
I said still goes." And he set out ponderously after Raabin.
Raabin blanched, turned back to his controls,
pulled the lever. The battered spaceship quivered. Jebstakion sat down hard and
remained sitting. Mikal felt himself crushed down against the floor, saw the
activity all about him abruptly come to an end.
The spaceship had taken off for space again.
Later Raabin said, "I
would feel better if we could see outside."
The fused ports were completely opaque.
"How close are we?" Mikal wanted to know.
"Very close, but the instruments don't
function. I will ease us down slowly. Better hope it works."
"I'm hoping," said Mikal.
The antagonists, floating weightlessly all about the cabin, stared
balefully at one another, but no one thought to start brawling again. Landor
said, "Marlyn, you re a young lady now. You must act like one."
"I'm sorry, Father, but that boy—"
"I don't think a girl
should be without spunk," Rolf sided with her.
"How do you fit into all this, young man?"
"You'll find out, Father," Marlyn
promised happily, "after all this is over and we can settle down."
It crossed Mikal's mind that the girl Marlyn
was becoming a woman. Well, whoever heard of palling around with a girl anyway?
Or a woman?
"The planet is very close," Raabin
mumbled, half to himself. "If I don't bring this ship down without a bump,
it won't be able to take off again."
Weight returned when he applied the forward
rockets for braking.
The spaceship landed with hardly a bump on
the smaller planet, that planet which looked blue with a shade of green through
Raabin's lens.
"We have arrived," said Raabin needlessly.
Mikal's heart began to hammer. This was the
second planet of two. From what they could gather, the other one had been too
far removed from Alpha Centauri. It was bleak and cold. And
this planet, the inner one? If it, too, offered them no possibility of a
home, then everything he had learned in the Reveler library, everything Raabin
had told him, everything he had dreamed of and yearned for would come to
nothing. Perhaps this planet was too close to Alpha Centauri? Perhaps burning
gases filled its atmosphere? Perhaps . . . Mikal was too afraid to move until
Raabin said:
"Well, who's going
outside?" "I'll lead them," Mikal said. "Whoever wants to come."
"Not I," Jebstakion shouted.
"I saw what happened when you tried that the last time."
"I wanted to go back to
Astrosphere," said the Chief Enginer. "I still do."
Fil nodded, his blackened
eyes blinking.
Landor shrugged. "I still do not know
what to think."
Sacher merely squinted and
said nothing, remaining as far from Jebstakion as he could.
"Furthermore," the Chief Enginer
said tartly, "as soon as enough of you go outside, I have a good mind to
force Raabin here to take this spaceship back home."
Rolf shook his head wearily. "Then we
can't even see for ourselves."
Marlyn, though, was heading for the air lock.
"You watch them," she said. "I'm going outside."
"I won't let you go
alone," Rolf told her.
"Nor will I," said Landor.
"I'm her father, young man."
"Can you watch them alone?" Mikal
asked Rolf; and when the Activist nodded: "I'm going with Marlyn."
His heart bobbed up into his throat.
"Alone, nothing," said Saml.
"They'll behave themselves, Mikal. Go ahead."
Together with Marlyn he opened the first
door, walked into the chamber, heard the first door
snap shut.
"Well?" said
Marlyn.
"Yes," said
Mikal, moving in a dream. He opened
the second door, closed his eyes tightly,
half-expecting some unknown horror to beset them. He stepped outside, Marlyn
at his heels.
"Why—why, Mikal, it's beautiful!"
The heady fragrance of the Jungle was not so
clean, not so fresh. The green of the Jungle could not match the sweet rolling
hills which faded off to purple in the distance, not curving up and vanishing
in haze, but marching off flatly, a legion of purple hills, until they met the
clear blue sky far away and vanished with it.
"That's what Raabin means by a
horizon," Marlyn explained, but Mikal wasn't listening.
They had landed near a large tree, its trunk
thick with bark of many years. From its leafy branches, myriads of birds
twittered down at them. Off in the distance, Mikal could hear a sound like the
rushing of one of the Jungle streams, only far louder. Up overhead, clear and
bright in the fine blue of the sky, the Sun, the new Sun of the new Earth,
shone down upon them.
"It is most like the Jungle,"
Marlyn whispered. "My people will love it."
"Yes," said Mikal, "but you
have seen the pictures Rolf showed us. We can build cities, towns, bridges,
airships. We have a whole world to fashion, Marlyn, and one day it shall be not
any more like one circle than another. It shall—"
"Mikal?"
"What?"
"No one followed us outside. Do you
suppose—?" "Trouble? No." Mikal hardly
heard his own words. The sunshine began to warm him and he felt like
leaping and running over the whole
wonderful countryside, shouting that he, Mikal, and the people of the circles
of the starship, had arrived to claim their home. "No trouble," he
repeated dreamily. "They can't decide who is to come out; Rolf is afraid
to leave, and your father—"
"Is right here!" cried Landor, as
the door clanged shut behind him. "Why, nothing is the matter. It's
magnificent. The Jungle, just like our Jungle, only
larger."
Mikal tore his eyes from
what they feasted on, retreated to the air lock. "There's one way to get
them out," he called over his shoulder. He opened the first door, marched
inside the chamber, beat with his fists on the second
door. Turning, he retraced his steps, closing the first door behind him.
"That should surprise them enough so they want to see what's going on!
It took only a few moments. Rolf came
bursting out first. "Marlyn!" he cried. "Marlyn, what is
it?"
She was smiling at him, and
he stood by her side and took everything in with her, and he was smiling too.
One by one they emerged from the spaceship.
Saml: "Mikal, you were right."
It wasn't that simple, Mikal knew, without
caring, for much work would lie ahead of them and all their people in the long
days which followed. But it would be good work and clean, and
they would be fashioning a new, better world for themselves in slow, patient
strides.
And Sacher: "A bigger, better Jungle.
Did I say nonsense? If only Birto could see this."
"He will," Marlyn
said. "There's no reason for the Revelers and the Noahs to hate one
another now." She grinned. "There's no reason for anyone to hate, now
that we've found our home."
And Jebstakion: "Well, I must say. Yes,
I must. There is a new sort of empathy here, all right. Those soft purple
hills, and that ceiling—a sky, you call it? —that ceiling of blue is just the
right shade, just the right . . . and ah, these fragrances. I forgive you
nothing, don't misunderstand, but perhaps the Revelers will find something to
their liking out here." Jebstakion squatted by the tree trunk,
contemplating the blue, blue sky.
Someday, Mikal thought, even the Revelers
will learn to work, for you could blame the way the Revelers lived upon their
circumscribed world and a misunderstanding of their original purpose in it. The
way Mikal felt, there was nothing this new Earth could not remedy.
And Fil: "Dumb luck, that's all. Yes, I
like this place, but you can bet they didn't expect anything like
this." Well, there would always be Fils.
But the Chief Enginer wanted to meet destiny
at least halfway. With one sweep of his proud cold eyes he took in the trees
and the purple hills, the blue sky and the bright sun, and he said:
"My people will like this place. As
befitting a leader, I have seen it first. Now I must lead them here."
"And mine, I suppose," said
Jebstakion, for it would not do well for the Chief Enginer to grab everything
for himself and his people. "Although getting the Revelers to leave their
mobile chairs will be quite a job. I, of course, am up to it."
"We can sow these hills and bring in our
first crop before you know it," said Landor wistfully. "And
all that grazing space for our cattle. Why, the herds will increase
threefold someday."
"The ferry's
going back," Raabin called happily, "to pick up the first group of
colonists."
"Then they'll be from Astrosphere!"
roared the Chief Enginer.
"No," Landor said patiently.
"The Noahs must come first to sow the land."
"We Revelers," insisted Jebstakion,
"need the most time to grow accustomed to this new place. Therefore we
should be first."
"All of you," said Raabin. "Some from each place. Four or five trips should get
the migration well underway. Twenty should complete it. We have the
time."
With a new spring in his step, wide
Jebstakion followed Raabin into the spaceship. On his heels came Landor and the
Chief Enginer, walking side by side. "We'll be back soon with
colonists," called Raabin. The port slammed shut. The spaceship trembled,
soared skyward, was gone.
"We have so much to see," Saml
said. "So much to do."
Sacher said, "There would be water power
for looms and other machinery down by that stream, and—"
He babbled on cheerily. Off in the distance
Mikal saw Rolf and Marlyn exploring the nearer hills, arm in arm, their faces up to the sun.
They were adults, Mikal
knew, and he was a boy. They had their happiness, but in a way he considered
himself more fortunate. He still had all the years of his youth ahead of him,
years to watch the growth of their new world, to help it grow, to grow with it.
The Journey of the Four Circles, begun hardly seven days ago, had ended. It had
brought glorious adventure and more unexpected things than the rest of his
life together. Now the Journey was over and a new one had taken its place. It
would be far bigger, far more important and, he suspected, with far more
adventures.
He whistled cheerfully and sought out the
swift-gushing river, watching the sunlight glistening on its waters and
wondering what was on the other side.