New Writings in SF 22 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘Not in the least. That is not how it’s done, at all. In the early days we made that kind of mistake, became prominent, and met the fate that so often befalls missionaries. Now we are wiser. We infiltrate. We live as humans. We breed true, father to son ... or not at all. We preserve and pass on the ancient wisdom, and the old powers, but we stay on the fringes, exerting delicate pressure, introducing new ideas, fostering them. Call it back-seat driving, if you like. We have been copied many times by crack-pots and frauds, of course...’

  ‘What kind of powers?’ For an instant there was naked greed in Michael’s face, and Lomax winced. In that moment he wished vehemently that he could ‘look’ into his son’s mind and see what was going on there, but the old ethic was too strong. One didn’t do that except where it was unavoidable and in the course of duty. And, of course, the lad was seventeen years a human. It was understandable that he would be saturated with human values.

  ‘I wish you had asked first about the ancient wisdom.’ Lomax said it quietly. ‘Peace on Earth. Goodwill. The sacredness of life...’

  ‘That’s religion!’

  ‘So it is. The basic tenets of every religion of any substance this world has ever known. Think of this. Amenhotep the Fourth, Amos, Hosea, Zarathustra, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Confucius and Socrates ... all happened within the space of a thousand years. That was one of our major operations.’

  ‘What about the powers?’

  ‘You are going to be disappointed, Michael. You think of power in the human way. I suppose I shouldn’t blame you. Men have leaped as far as the Moon. Soon they will be starting a colony on Mars. They will carry weapons in either hand. Modified weapons will take them there. Ideas of conquest and violence will go with them. They are slow to learn. If they ever gain the ability to leap beyond this system, and reach our planet, for instance...’ Lomax sighed, ‘We would be helpless against them. We have powers, but not of that kind. We are a non-violent people. Our powers make it so. I have never struck you, nor even used harsh words against you. Not because I am an indulgent parent, but simply because I am incapable of violence. Our powers are not of that kind.’

  Michael began to look incredulous again. ‘Talk,’ he said, with the edged wisdom of the young, ‘is cheap enough. What powers?’

  ‘Men fly, with the aid of brute machine force. We levitate. Men talk to each other over distances, again with machines. We speak mind to mind. Man runs in the herd, sharing responsibility and intelligence alike. We are always individuals, each his own master, each with his own responsibility. Such powers are useless against naked aggression.’

  ‘You mean you couldn’t put up any kind of resistance ?’

  ‘You’ll understand better when you’ve been “opened”, Michael.’

  ‘Opened? That sounds ... painful. Is it?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re ready for it. Seventeen is the usual age, but I think it might be better to wait a little while, give you a chance to think for yourself.’ Lomax saw the beginning of open contempt and rejection appear on the young face across from him, and sighed. ‘Very well. Think of this. Take a shot-gun. Point it at a rabbit, up there on the moor. What do you feel ? Weight. Shiny wood stock. Cool metal. A trigger. Perhaps a synthetic thrill of anticipation. Aim. Pull the trigger. The rabbit dies. What did you feel? A shock of recoil. A noise in your ears. That’s all. But now ... put away the gun. Reach with your mind, touch and feel the mind of the rabbit, with its quick darting pulses of hopes and fears. Join with it. See what it sees, Feel what it feels. And then ... kill it... with your mind. You can. But you won’t do it, any more than you could take one hand and crush it with the other. Because it will be exactly as if a part of you had screamed in agony and died. That is why we do not fight, cannot fight, not even to save our lives.’

  He watched his son’s face intently, and was appalled by what he saw there in plain view. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you can do that, with your mind, Dad? Can you?’

  Lomax stood, suddenly out of patience with the whole business. ‘I think that is quite enough, for today. We will talk more about this another time.’

  Alone again, he returned the code-books to the shelf, went to his desk and sat, pondering the interview, wondering where it had gone wrong, trying to remember how it had been at his own initiation. According to the old teachings the young mind always found its own way to a state of curiosity about origins, and the initiation was merely a matter of resolving and explaining the questions that were already there. Then came the ceremonial ‘opening’, and then the mind-to-mind companionship and training into a new kind of life. Lomax pulled open the private drawer of his desk, took out the delicately carved old box, opened it and picked up the precious, well-worn, hand-made device that he had inherited from his father and that had lain unused all these years, waiting for this one time. There was no magic in it, merely a key that undid a padlock on a chain that kept the mind prisoner. But that mind had to know that it was a prisoner, had to want to break free.

  But Michael hadn’t shown that urge. Lomax had a sudden twinge of sympathy for the boy. This was a curiously confused age. On the one hand doom stared Man in the face whichever way he turned and there was no future. On the other Man was at last and with many a fumble and shiver beginning to explore the mysteries and resources of his own mind. It was tantalising and frustrating to have to stand by and watch. One itched to intervene and say, ‘Look, this is the way, this is what you do!’ But the history-books were eloquent witness to the folly of that. Crucifixion, burning at the stake and lifetime confinement in institutions were out of date now, but electro-shock, neuro-surgery and lobotomy were equally horrifying fates.

  Lomax turned the device over in his fingers. It was very simple, after all. Merely an accurately-tuned sonic pulse, aimed at a certain spot in the brain, to effect the rupture of a single group of synapses, the hymeneal membrane that stood between immaturity and adulthood. Cut that and the higher-level personality stepped forth, complete and needing only to develop its full potential. A key like this, but tuned to a fractionally different frequency, would do exactly the same for an Earthling.

  How simple it would be to give them that secret. And how criminally foolish. It would be like placing an open razor in the hands of a baby.

  A week later, to the day, Michael volunteered the suggestion that he wanted to discuss their ‘secret’ further. Again Lomax watched his wife go off to the village, strictly in her little groove. Poor Milly. Dear Milly, all the same. Blonde, placid, well-meaning, perpetually fighting against her dread of growing plump, thoroughly pre-occupied with the minutiae of her small life. A good woman. She would never know that he was to drive a wedge between her and her son. She would put it down to eccentricity. ‘Just like his father’ she would say, and think no more of it. Subtle differences were lost on her. But not on Michael. He had obviously been thinking about them.

  ‘How are we different from humans. Dad?’ he asked, as soon as the door was safely shut after him.

  ‘You’ve been looking. At least you took me that seriously, after all. And you didn’t find anything. That’s rather obvious, isn’t it ? We’d never have been able to survive all these centuries on Earth if the differences were in any way obvious!’

  ‘But what differences?’ Michael was impatient of subtlety.

  ‘We have low tolerance of ultra-violet ... can’t stand very much direct sunlight. We have better than average sight in a dim light. We have fewer sweat glands. We do not go bald, ever. We live longer than the human norm ... which can be a problem. Nothing very spectacular,’ he added as the disappointment showed. ‘But we do have completely unhuman brain patterns. An encephalogram would betray either of us, at once!’

  ‘What good is that?’ Michael demanded scornfully, and Lomax was baffled at the reaction.

  ‘I don’t understand you!’ he admitted. ‘What did you expect, some kind of trade-mark?’

  ‘It’s not that. But how am I ever likely to get near an encephalograph, for
Heaven’s sake ?’

  ‘I see!’ Lomax felt a chill. ‘You don’t believe me. My word isn’t good enough for you. Have I ever lied to you, Michael?’

  ‘It’s not that either.’ Michael was unhappy but resolute. ‘I can’t take something like this just on words. I need some kind of proof. Evidence that I can test for myself. Otherwise it just doesn’t mean anything, not just hearing you say it. That’s not reasonable!’

  For a moment Lomax felt helpless. This was utterly unforeseen. The boy was even more retarded than he had feared. Michael became intense, his brows coming down to a thin black bar across his forehead.

  ‘Those powers you were talking about. Telepathy. And levitation. Can you really do them ? So that I can see?’

  Lomax came as close to anger as it was possible for him to get. Then he made himself relax and be calm. ‘I am shocked and distressed,’ he said quietly, ‘but I will not blame you, Michael. The fault is in this turbulent and confused age in which you’ve grown up. When you are “opened” I hope you will let me help you...’

  ‘Can you do it?’ Michael interrupted rudely.

  ‘As I was about to explain, I can do these things, but I cannot demonstrate telepathy to you. I cannot enter your mind unless you invite me. To do otherwise is completely contrary to our ethic. Even with a human we are forbidden except in the process of delicate reformation towards some crucial effect. We do not merely mouth our ethics, my son, we live by them!’

  ‘In other words it’s all talk!’ Michael was rude, angry ... and visibly disappointed. ‘And you expected me to believe it?’

  ‘I can, however, demonstrate levitation to you.’ Lomax stayed cold and deliberate. ‘Please understand, I do this only because you make it necessary. For us, demonstrating power is something ... not done. It is as if you were asked to stand up in class and pray. Or something equally embarrassing. However...’ and he relaxed, took a slow and deep breath, and ‘reached’ inside in a certain way. This was something he did once a week, in privacy, as a solemn rite. It felt wrong to do it before a witness, but it was familiar nevertheless. That inner door opened. Perspectives changed. Even his son’s anxious, unbelieving stare, seemed unimportant.

  ‘Like this,’ he said, and thrust the room down so that he hung in mid-air, six feet or more clear of any solid support. After resting there a moment he brought his chair back under him. ‘Or this,’ and Michael’s head snapped around to see the index volume of the Britannica slide from the shelf and float until it hung in front of him. He backed from it.

  ‘Grasp it!’ Lomax ordered. ‘Grip it tight. It won’t hurt you.’ The youth ventured a hand, then the other. The book was immobile. ‘Now hold it ... if you can,’ he said, and commanded the book back to its place on the shelf. Michael struggled. His chair went over. His feet dragged and slid. The book went back to its place as if he had not been there. There were small beads of sweat on his face as he put the chair up and sat in it. Not all the sweat was from effort. ‘I could have lifted you into the air just as easily,’ Lomax said, ‘but that would have been an offense. This, you see, is power that must not fall into the wrong hands. Like this, for instance...’ and a pencil lifted from his desk and came to rest over the waste-basket. Lomax thought about it, released the chemical bonds that held the wood together, and a fine yellowish dust drifted down into the basket. Then he did the same for the graphite, and it fell slowly as a dark smoke. Michael stared, hardly breathing.

  ‘You will appreciate, of course, that I dissipated the heat when I neutralised the chemical bonds. Otherwise we’d have had a tidy explosion.’ Lomax eyed his son critically. ‘I could have broken the nuclear patterns just as easily, with enough energy-release to blow most of this district off the map. And that is why we are a non-violent people. With this kind of power there has to go responsibility.’

  Michael found a shaky voice from somewhere in his throat. ‘Will I be able to do ... like that?’

  ‘Not at once, no. The usual rules still apply. Crawl, walk, run and fly, in that order.’ Lomax put aside his uneasiness at his son’s utter disregard of the idea of responsibility. ‘But you’ll begin to learn just as soon as you’ve been opened.’ He got out the key, let the lad handle it, talked to him about its technicalities and function, and in this instance, at least, he found nothing to complain of. Michael was no longer afraid. He was ready.

  ‘Hold it so, against the forehead. That’s it. When you’re ready, take a breath, close your eyes, press that stud. That’s all. You should see a very brief flash of light, a needle of pain that will come and go so quickly you’ll hardly notice. And you may feel a little giddy, or unreal, afterwards. But that is nothing. It will soon pass. The rest comes with practice, and is no more difficult than learning to whistle...’

  Lomax watched, saw his son sit still for a long breath. Then he opened his eyes, put the instrument carefully down on the desk, got to his feet ... and almost ran from the room.

  ‘He knows now,’ Lomax whispered to himself, putting the precious instrument carefully away. ‘Poor lad. It will take him a while to work up the courage to admit himself wrong, but he will come to it. And accept the burden that goes with it. I remember how I felt. Give him time. He will open to me, when he’s ready.’ He smiled as he anticipated that first timid reaching, the first real ‘person-to-person’ awareness with his own son. Compared with that, speech was like trying to talk to a deaf idiot in a thunderstorm.

  Late the following day, Lomax was in a fit of abstraction, his idle eye wandering as he searched for an appropriate reference in his legal memory. And he saw a gap in his bookshelf. It took a moment or two before the thing registered. The code-books were gone! He was on his feet, over to the shelf, and his fingers stupidly in the gap before the enormity of the thing came home to him. Michael had taken them, no doubt of it. In the next moment he opened the door in his mind, swept the house with awareness. Michael was not at home. Chill at heart he followed his senses into the lounge, where Milly sat watching the faces of the congregation singing on television.

  ‘Michael?’ she looked up at him in mild wonder. ‘Why, he went up to town. Yesterday afternoon. Didn’t you know? Some exhibition, I think he said it was. And staying overnight with a schoolfriend. Is something wrong, dear? You look quite pale!’

  ‘Was he carrying a package ?’

  ‘His suitcase, of course. Nothing else that I know of.’

  Lomax managed a smile, muttered an inanity, left her. A more critical sweep with his mind, now, assured him the hooks were not in the house. He returned to his study in a daze. It was an effort to make himself accept that it had actually happened, that Michael had taken the books ... away to London! It was disaster, nothing less. The fact achieved, he had to struggle with the why of it. Standing strickenly by his desk, another dreadful thought welled up from the chaos in his mind. He dragged the drawer open. The ‘key’ was gone too. He sank into his chair, forcing his mind to be calm, building the pattern that was to be used only in dire emergency, to cry out to the others, the small band of brothers scattered all over the world, knowing even as he formulated the call that there was nothing they could ... or would ... do. They would not jeopardise ten thousand years of patient guidance and effort for the sake of one dispensable member. He let the pattern collapse again, looked up as there came a timid tap on his door and Milly’s anxious face.

  ‘Michael’s home, dear, and there are some men with him. They want to see you. I’m afraid he must be in some sort of trouble. They look dreadfully official.’

  Lomax composed his voice, his mind. ‘Show them in, Milly. Let’s get it over with.’ The phrase was dreadfully apt. It was all over. Lomax knew that much even before the tall man with the unsmiling eyes had shown his identity card.

  ‘Gibbons. Home Office,’ he said briskly. ‘Sorry about this, Mr. Lomax. We shall have to ask you to come along with us. I believe this is yours?’ He produced the ‘key’ from his pocket. Lomax glanced at it briefly, then at his son. Michael’s f
ace was a curious mixture of fear, excitement... and hatred, all at the same time.

  ‘It’s mine.’ Lomax admitted quietly, i won’t give you any trouble, I promise. I’ll come with you. But may I ask

  ‘Watch it!’ Michael broke in shrilly. ‘He might fly away, or strike you dead ... or something!’

  ‘You fool! You utter, stupid fool!’ Lomax spoke not in anger but in disgust at his son’s incompetence. ‘You didn’t understand, did you ?’

  The colour flooded to Michael’s face. His mother clutched his arm as he made a half-step forward angrily, ‘It’s all a swindle. Lies! That thing ... that somic projector ... it didn’t work!’

  ‘You mean ... nothing happened to you?’ Lomax was shattered.

  ‘Of course it didn’t. You lied to me. That’s why ... I had to have proof of some kind!’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ Lomax turned to the Home Office men. Gibbons cleared his throat raspingly.

  ‘Seems he went straight to a hospital, sir. That’s where we found him. Talked his way in, somehow. He was having brain-readings taken. The staff-man was humouring him, but he called us just the same. Called the police, anyway, and they got us in on it. He gave us the whole story, and the books. And this thing he calls a key.’