The 35th Golden Age of Science Fiction: Keith Laumer

by Keith Laumer

  There my own memories took up the tale: the awakening of Foster, unsuspecting, and his recording of the mind of the dying Ammaerln; the flight from the Hunters; the memory trace of the king that lay for three millennia among neolithic bones until I, a primitive, plucked it from its place; and the pocket of a coarse fibre garment where the cylinder lay now—on the hip of the body I inhabited but as inaccessible to me as if it had been a million miles away.

  But there was a second memory trace—Ammaerln’s. I had crossed a galaxy to come to Foster, and with me, locked in an unmarked pewter cylinder, I had brought Foster’s ancient nemesis.

  I had given it life, and a body.

  Foster, once Rthr, had survived against all logic and had come back, back from the dead: the last hope of a golden age.…

  To meet his fate at my hands.

  * * * *

  “Three thousand years,” I heard my voice saying. “Three thousand years have the men of Vallon lived mindless, with the glory that was Vallon locked away in a vault without a key.”

  “I, alone,” said Ommodurad, “have borne the curse of knowledge. Long ago, in the days of the Rthr, I took my mind-trace from the vaults in anticipation of the day of days when he should fall. Little joy has it brought me.”

  “And now,” my voice said, “you think to force this mind—that is no mind—to unseal the vault?”

  “I know it for a hopeless task,” Ommodurad said. “At first I thought—since he speaks the tongue of old Vallon—that he dissembled. But he knows nothing. This is but the dry husk of the Rthr…and I sicken of the sight. I would fain kill him now and let the long farce end.”

  “Not so!” my voice cut in. “Once I decreed exile to the mindless one. So be it!”

  The face of Ommodurad twisted in its rage. “Your witless chatterings too! I tire of them.”

  “Wait!” my voice snarled. “Would you put aside the key?”

  There was a silence as Ommodurad stared at my face. I saw my hand rise into view. Gripped in it was Foster’s memory trace.

  “The Two Worlds lie in my hand,” my voice spoke. “Observe well the black and golden bands of the royal memory trace. Who holds this key is all-powerful. As for the mindless body yonder, let it be destroyed.”

  Ommodurad locked eyes with mine. Then, “Let the deed be done,” he said.

  The redhead drew a long stiletto from under his cloak, smiling. I could wait no longer.…

  Along the link I had kept through the intruder’s barrier I poured the last of the stored energy of my mind. I felt the enemy recoil, then strike back with crushing force. But I was past the shield.

  As the invader reached out to encircle me I shattered my unified forward impulse into myriad nervous streamlets that flowed on, under, over and around the opposing force; I spread myself through and through the inner all-mass, drawing new power from the trunk sources.

  I caught a vicious blast of pure wrath that rocked me and then I grappled, shield to shield, with the alien. And he was stronger.

  Like a corrosive fluid the massive personality-gestalt shredded my extended self-field. I drew back, slowly, reluctantly. I caught a shadowy impression of the body, standing rigid, eyes blank, and sensed a rumbling voice that spoke: “Quick! The intruder!”

  Now! I struck for the right optic center, clamped down with a death grip.

  The enemy mind went mad as the darkness closed in. I heard my voice scream and I saw in vivid pantomime the vision that threatened the invader: the redhead darting to me, the stiletto flashing—

  And then the invading mind broke, swirled into chaos, and was gone.…

  I reeled, shocked and alone inside my skull. The brain loomed, dark and untenanted now. I began to move, crept along the major nerve paths, reoccupied the cortex—

  Agony! I twisted, felt again with a massive return of sensation my arms, my legs, opened both eyes to see blurred figures moving. And in my chest a hideous pain.…

  I was sprawled on the floor, gasping. Sudden understanding came: the redhead had struck…and the other mind, in full rapport with the pain centers, had broken under the shock, left the stricken brain to me alone.

  As through a red veil I saw the giant figure of Ommodurad loom, stoop over me, rise with the royal cylinder in his hand. And beyond, Foster, strained backward, the chain between his wrists garroting the redhead. Ommodurad turned, took a step, flicked the man from Foster’s grasp and hurled him aside. He drew his dagger. Quick as a hunting cat Foster leaped, struck with the manacles…and the knife clattered across the floor. Ommodurad backed away with a curse, while the redhead seized the stiletto he had let fall and moved in. Foster turned to meet him, staggering, and raised heavy arms.

  I fought to move, got my hand as far as my side, fumbled with the leather strap. The alien mind had stolen from my brain the knowledge of the cylinder but I had kept from it the fact of the pistol. I had my hand on its butt now. Painfully I drew it, dragged my arm up, struggled to raise the weapon, centered it on the back of the mop of red hair, free now of the cowl…and fired.

  Ommodurad had found his dagger. He turned back from the corner where Foster had sent it spinning. Spattered with the blood of the redhead, Foster retreated until his back was at the wall: a haggard figure against the gaudy golden sunburst. The flames of beaten metal shimmered and flared before my dimming vision. The great gold circles of the Two Worlds seemed to revolve, while waves of darkness rolled over me.

  But there was a thought: something I had found among the patterns in the intruder’s mind. At the center of the sunburst rose a boss, in black and gold, erupting a foot from the wall, like a sword-hilt.…

  The thought came from far away. The sword of the Rthr, used once, in the dawn of a world, by a warrior king—but laid away now, locked in its sheath of stone, keyed to the mind-pattern of the Rthr, that none other might ever draw it to some ignoble end.

  A sword, keyed to the basic mind-pattern of the king.…

  I drew a last breath, blinked back the darkness. Ommodurad stepped past me, knife in hand, toward the unarmed man.

  “Foster,” I croaked. “The sword.…”

  Foster’s head came up. I had spoken in English; the syllables rang strangely in that outworld setting. Ommodurad ignored the unknown words.

  “Draw…the sword…from the stone!… You’re…Qulqlan…Rthr…of Vallon.”

  I saw him reach out, grasp the ornate hilt. Ommodurad, with a cry, leaped toward him—

  The sword slid out smoothly, four feet of glittering steel. Ommodurad stopped, stared at the manacled hands gripping the hilt of the fabled blade. Slowly he sank to his knees, bent his neck.

  “I yield, Qulqlan,” he said. “I crave the mercy of the Rthr.”

  Behind me I heard thundering feet. Dimly I was aware of Torbu raising my head, of Foster leaning over me. They were saying something but I couldn’t hear. My feet were cold, and the coldness crept higher.

  I felt hands touch me and the cool smoothness of metal against my temples. I wanted to say something, tell Foster that I had found the answer, the one that had always eluded me before. I wanted to tell him that all lives are the same length when viewed from the foreshortened perspective of death, and that life, like music, requires no meaning but only a certain symmetry.

  But it was too hard. I tried to cling to the thought, to carry it with me into the cold void toward which I moved, but it slipped away and there was only my self-awareness, alone in emptiness, and the winds that swept through eternity blew away the last shred of ego and I was one with darkness.…

  EPILOGUE

  I awoke to a light like that of a morning when the world was young. Gossamer curtains fluttered at tall windows, through which I saw a squadron of trim white clouds riding in a high blue sky.

  I turned my head, and Foster stood beside me, dressed in a short white tunic.

  “That�
��s a crazy set of threads, Foster,” I said, “but on your build it looks good. But you’ve aged; you look twenty-five if you look a day.”

  Foster smiled. “Welcome to Vallon, my friend,” he said in English. I noticed that he faltered a bit over the words, as if he hadn’t used them for a long time.

  “Vallon,” I said. “Then it wasn’t all a dream?”

  “Regard it as a dream, Legion. Your life begins today.”

  “There was something,” I said, “something I had to do. But it doesn’t seem to matter. I feel relaxed inside.…”

  Someone came forward from behind Foster.

  “Gope,” I said. Then I hesitated. “You are Gope, aren’t you?” I said in Vallonian.

  He laughed. “I was known by that name once,” he said, “but my true name is Gwanne.”

  My eyes fell on my legs. I saw that I was wearing a tunic like Foster’s except that mine was pale blue.

  “Who put the dress on me?” I asked. “And where’s my pants?”

  “This garment suits you better,” said Gope. “Come. Look in the glass.”

  I got to my feet, stepped to a long mirror, glanced at the reflection. “It’s not the real me, boys,” I started. Then I stared, open-mouthed. A Hercules, black-haired and clean-limbed, stared back. I shut my mouth…and his mouth shut. I moved an arm and he did likewise. I whirled on Foster.

  “What…how…who…?”

  “The mortal body that was Legion died of its wounds,” he said, “but the mind that was the man was recorded. We have waited many years to give that mind life again.”

  I turned back to the mirror, gaped. The young giant gaped back. “I remember,” I said. “I remember…a knife in my guts…and a redheaded man…and the Great Owner, and.…”

  “For his crimes,” told Gope, “he went to a place of exile until the Change should come on him. Long have we waited.”

  I looked again and now I saw two faces in the mirror and both of them were young. One was low down, just above my ankles, and it belonged to a cat I had known as Itzenca. The other, higher up, was that of a man I had known as Ommodurad. But this was a clear-eyed Ommodurad, just under twenty-one.

  “Onto the blank slate we traced your mind,” said Gope.

  “He owed you a life, Legion,” Foster said. “His own was forfeit.”

  “I guess I ought to kick and scream and demand my original ugly puss back,” I said slowly, studying my reflection, “but the fact is, I like looking like Mr. Universe.”

  “Your earthly body was infected with the germs of old age,” said Foster. “Now you can look forward to a great span of life.”

  “But come,” said Gope “All Vallon waits to honor you.” He led the way to the tall window.

  “Your place is by my side at the great ring-board,” said Foster. “And afterwards: all of the Two Worlds lie before you.”

  I looked past the open window and saw a carpet of velvet green that curved over foothills to the rim of a forest. Down the long sward I saw a procession of bright knights and ladies come riding on animals, some black, some golden palomino, that looked for all the world like unicorns.

  My eyes traveled upward to where the light of a great white sun flashed on blue towers. And somewhere trumpets sounded.

  “It looks like a pretty fair offer,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  DOORSTEP

  Originally published in Galaxy Magazine, February 1961.

  Steadying his elbow on the kitchen table serving as desk, Brigadier General Straut leveled his binoculars and stared out through the second-floor window of the farmhouse at the bulky object lying canted at the edge of the wood lot. He watched the figures moving over and around the gray mass, then flipped the lever on the field telephone at his elbow.

  “How are your boys doing, Major?”

  “General, since that box this morning—”

  “I know all about the box, Bill. So does Washington by now. What have you got that’s new?”

  “Sir, I haven’t got anything to report yet. I have four crews on it, and she still looks impervious as hell.”

  “Still getting the sounds from inside?”

  “Intermittently, General.”

  “I’m giving you one more hour, Major. I want that thing cracked.”

  The general dropped the hone back on its cradle and eeled the cellophane from a cigar absently. He had moved fast, he reflected, after the State Police notified him at nine forty-one last night. He had his men on the spot, the area evacuated of civilians, and a preliminary report on its way to Washington by midnight. At two thirty-six, they had discovered the four-inch cube lying on the ground fifteen feet from the huge object—missile, capsule, bomb—whatever it was. But now—several hours later—nothing new.

  The field phone jangled. Straut grabbed it up.

  “General, we’ve discovered a thin spot up on the top side. All we can tell so far is that the wall thickness falls off there.…”

  “All right. Keep after it, Bill.”

  This was more like it. If Brigadier General Straut could have this thing wrapped up by the time Washington awoke to the fact that it was something big—well, he’d been waiting a long time for that second star. This was his chance, and he would damn well make the most of it.

  * * * *

  He looked across the field at the thing. It was half in and half out of the woods, flat-sided, round-ended, featureless. Maybe he should go over and give it a closer look personally. He might spot something the others were missing. It might blow them all to kingdom come any second; but what the hell, he had earned his star on sheer guts in Normandy. He still had ’em.

  He keyed the phone. “I’m coming down, Bill,” he told the Major. On impulse, he strapped a istol belt on. Not much use against a house-sized bomb, but the heft of it felt good.

  The thing looked bigger than ever as the jeep approached it, bumping across the muck of the freshly plowed field. From here he could see a faint line running around, just below the juncture of side and top. Major Greer hadn’t mentioned that. The line was quite obvious; in fact, it was more of a crack.

  With a sound like a baseball smacking the catcher’s glove, the crack opened, the upper half tilted, men sliding—then impossibly it stood open, vibrating, like the roof of a house suddenly lifted. The driver gunned the jeep. There were cries, and a ragged shrilling that set Straut’s teeth on edge. The men were running back now, two of them dragging a third.

  Major Greer emerged from behind the object, looked about, ran toward General Straut shouting. “…a man dead. It snapped; we weren’t expecting it.…”

  Straut jumped out beside the men, who had stopped now and were looking back. The underside of the gaping lid was an iridescent black. The shrill noise sounded thinly across the field. Greer arrived, panting.

  “What happened?” Straut snapped.

  “I was… checking over that thin spot, General. The first thing I knew it was… coming up under me. I fell; Tate was at the other side. He held on and it snapped him loose, against a tree. His skull—”

  “What the devil’s that racket?”

  “That’s the sound we were getting from inside before, General. There’s something in there, alive—”

  “All right, pull yourself together, Major. We’re not unprepared. Bring your half-tracks into osition. The tanks will be here soon.”

  Straut glanced at the men standing about. He would show them what leadership meant.

  “You men keep back,” he said. He puffed his cigar calmly as he walked toward the looming object. The noise stopped suddenly; that was a relief. There was a faint and curious odor in the air, something like chlorine… or seaweed… or iodine.

  There were no marks in the ground surrounding the thing. It had apparently dropped straight in to its present position. It was heavy, too—the soft soil was displaced in a mo
und a foot high all along the side.

  Behind him, Straut heard a yell. He whirled. The men were ointing; the jeep started up, churned toward him, wheels spinning. He looked up. Over the edge of the gray wall, six feet above his head, a great reddish limb, like the claw of a crab, moved, groping.

  Straut yanked the .45 from its holster, jacked the action and fired. Soft matter spattered, and the claw jerked back. The screeching started up again angrily, then was drowned in the engine roar as the jeep slid to a stop.

  Straut stooped, grabbed up a leaf to which a quivering lump adhered, jumped into the vehicle as it leaped forward; then a shock and they were going into a spin and.…

  * * * *

  “Lucky it was soft ground,” somebody said. And somebody else asked, “What about the driver?”

  Silence. Straut opened his eyes. “What …about.…”

  A stranger was looking down at him, an ordinary-looking fellow of about thirty-five.

  “Easy, now, General Straut. You’ve had a bad spill. Everything is all right. I’m Professor Lieberman, from the University.”

  “The driver,” Straut said with an effort.

  “He was killed when the jeep went over.”

  “Went… over?”

  “The creature lashed out with a member resembling a scorpion’s stinger. It struck the jeep and flipped it. You were thrown clear. The driver jumped and the jeep rolled on him.”

  Straut pushed himself up.

  “Where’s Greer?”

  “I’m right here, sir.” Major Greer stepped up, stood attentively.

  “Those tanks here yet?”

  “No, sir. I had a call from General Margrave; there’s some sort of holdup. Something about not destroying scientific material. I did get the mortars over from the base.”

  Straut got to his feet. The stranger took his arm. “You ought to lie down, General—”

  “Who the hell is going to make me? Greer, get those mortars in lace, spaced between your tracks.”