“Sexless,” said Bronze. It was an identification only, there was no scorn.
Garth said, “I’m tired.”
“You sleep. I’ll watch,” said Bronze.
“You can sleep too,” said Garth. “We’re in, Bronze. Really in.”
“Bronze …”
The big man was on his feet, weapons in hand, before Gesell’s voice had ceased. He cast about the room, saw no immediate menace, and crossed to the bed. “You all right?”
Garth stretched luxuriously. “Never better, though I feel as if my shoulder-joints needed oiling … what’s for breakfast?”
Bronze went to the door and flung it open, filling his mighty lungs to shout. He didn’t. The girl was standing there, waiting.
Garth saw her. “Come in—Good Lord, girl, you must be freezing!”
“I haven’t had your permission …” she said gravely.
“Go dress. And tell the other Guardian to put on some clothes. What’s your name?”
“Viki.”
“What’s his name—that other Guardian?”
“Daw, Master.”
“Good. My name’s not Master. It’s Garth, or Gesell, whichever suits you. This is Bronze. Is there anything to eat?”
“Yes, Garth Gesell.”
Garth pursed his lips. Her intonation of his name was infinitely more adoring, even, than her “Master.” He said, “We’ll be out in a minute. I want you to eat with us, do you understand? You and the other, both.”
“A great honor, Garth Gesell.” She smiled, and it did wonders for the fine-drawn austerity of her face.
She waited a moment, and when Garth apparently had nothing more to say, she left. She backed to the door.
Breakfast was an acutely uncomfortable affair. They ate at a small square table in the hall under the portrait of the first Gesell. It might have been a picture of Garth five or ten years older. They had always looked alike.
Viki, now dressed in the conventional short flowing tunic fastened only by a wide belt, sat demure and quiet, speaking only when spoken to, and screening her constant gaze at Garth with her long lashes. Daw stared straight ahead out of round, permanently astonished eyes, and tried hard, apparently, to avoid looking directly at Gesell. Bronze grinned broadly at Garth’s discomfiture and ignored the prim looks of the two Guardians.
Garth waited until the meal was finished, and then put his palms down on the table. “We have work to do.”
They turned to him so raptly and obediently that for a moment he lost his train of thought. Bronze looked as if he was about to laugh. Garth shot him a venomous look and said to the Guardians, “But I want you to talk first. I’ve been away a long time. I want the history of this place as you know it, especially where it concerns the Gateway.”
Viki and Daw looked at one another. Garth said, “Come on, come on—”
Daw composed himself, folded his hands on the edge of the table, and cast his eyes down. “In the year of the Ffanx,” he intoned, “on the meadows of Hack and Sack, there appeared a blue light shaped like a great arched doorway, filled with a flickering mist.”
“We trust in Gesell,” muttered Viki.
“And there came from this archway a creature as long as a hand and as heavy as four times its mass in lead castings. It sniffed at the air, and it took up some soil, and it lifted a box which it held to its head, and it smelled out our women. It called, then; and out of the archway came more of its kind in the hundreds of thousands, wearing strange trappings and bringing machines to work evil. And these were the Ffanx.”
“We trust in Gesell,” murmured the girl.
Garth opened his mouth to speak, and closed it abruptly. He had a quick ear, and he had rapidly caught the cadences of Daw’s voice. No one speaks like that naturally. This wasn’t a report, it was a singsong ritual.
“At first the world wondered, at first the world laughed at the Ffanx. For the Ffanx were so tiny, and their ships were like toys, and they spread over Earth without harming a soul, and submitted to capture and acted like comical dolls. They covered the planet and when they were ready—they struck.”
He put his head down on his folded hands as he spoke the last two words. Viki droned, “We trust in Gesell.”
Daw straightened up and now his voice deepened. His eyes were wide, and fixed on nothing in the room. As he spoke, Garth found himself fascinated by the almost imperceptible motion of Bronze’s shaggy head as it nodded in time to the dactylic beat of Daw’s speech.
“They struck at our women. They found them in homes and in caves and in churches: killed them by millions. Their weapons were hammers of force from the sky, inaudible sounds that drove strong men to kill their own daughters and slaughter themselves. And then the foul Ffanx would sweep in their bodies.
“And sometimes they herded them, flashing about in their sleek little airships, smashing the men and propelling the foot-weary women along to great pens in the open. They walled them about with their fences of force and destroyed all attacks from outside, and then at their leisure they killed all our females, this one today and then that one, and two or two thousand tomorrow. And Earth saw its blackest, its sorriest day …
“Earth was united in madness.”
“We trust in Gesell.”
“Gesell was a giant who lived on a hill, a worker of wonders who turned from his works to the solving of problems for Earth. Of all men on Earth, he alone learned the nature of Ffanx and the land whence they came and the spell he could cast to destroy them. It was he who devised a retreat for the women that not even Ffanx could detect. He set up a Gateway and passed women through it—women with beauty and women with mind, and any and all of the women with child who could come to the Gateway.
“And the Earth had turned savage, and men lost their reason and stormed up the hill of Gesell, and they tried to pass into the gateway and get to the women. With some it was hunger, with some it was cowardice. So Gesell, all unwilling, constructed defenses, appointed the Guardians, gave instructions to kill all who came in attack, be they human or Ffanx.”
“We trust in Gesell.”
“And this is the Word of Gesell:
“ ‘Guard the Gateway with your lives. Make no attempt to open it, or the Ffanx will find it and take the treasure it hides. When the time is right, the women will open the Gateway themselves—or I or another Gesell will open it from this side. But guard it well.’
“That is the Word of Gesell, and the end of his word; and he alone knows if there was to be more; for that was the end of Gesell. The Ffanx came and killed him, but dying, he cast a great spell and they died. They died on two worlds and the menace is done with. And Earth is in darkness and waits for Gesell to return, and the Gateway to open. And meanwhile the Word of Gesell is the hope of the world:
“Guard the Gateway.”
Daw’s voice died away. Bronze sat as if mesmerized. Viki’s lips moved silently in the response.
Garth slapped his hand down suddenly, shockingly. “This is going to hurt,” he gritted. “Daw, where did that—that recitation come from? Where did it start?”
“It’s the Word of Gesell,” said Daw, wonderingly. “Everybody—”
“We repeat it morning and night,” Viki interposed, “to strengthen us in our duty.”
“But whose phrases are they? Who made it up?”
“Garth Gesell, you must know … or perhaps you are testing us.”
“Will you answer the question?”
“I learned it from Daw,” said Viki.
“I learned it from Soames, who had it from Elbert and Vesta, who were taught by Gesell himelf.”
Garth closed his eyes. “Elbert … Holy smoke! He was the …” He stopped himself in time. He remembered Elbert—a dreamy scholar with whom his father used to have long and delightful philosophical discussions, and who, at other times, pushed a broom around the laboratories. Garth began to see the growth of this myth, born in the poetic mind of a misfit.
He looked into their ra
pt faces. “I’m going to tell you the same story that you told me,” he said flatly, “but without the mumbo-jumbo.”
“Gesell was my father. He was a great man and a good one. He was not nine feet tall, Bronze. And—” he turned to the Guardians—“he was not a ‘worker’ of spells.
“Now to your legend. ‘The meadows of Hack and Sack’ are swampland just south of what used to be, before the Ffanx came, the greatest city on Earth. The real name is Hackensack. The blue arch wasn’t magic, it was science—it was the same thing as the Gateway itself, though of a slightly different kind.
“The Ffanx were small and heavy because they came from an area where molecular structure is far more compressed than it is here. And they struck at our women for a good reason. It wasn’t viciousness and it wasn’t for sport. It was, to them, a vital necessity. And that necessity made it useless to think of driving them off, defeating them. They had to be destroyed, not defeated. I won’t go into the deeper details of inter-dimensional chemistry. But I want you to know exactly what the Ffanx were after—you’ll understand them a lot better.
“There is no great difference, physically, between men and women. I mean, bone structure, metabolism, heart and lung and muscular function are different in quality but not in kind. But there is one thing that women produce that men do not. It’s a complex protein substance called extradiol. One of its parts is called extradiol beta-prime, and is the only way in which human extradiol differs from that of other female animals. With it, they’re women. Without it, they’re nothing … cold, sexless … ruined.
“So it was this substance that the Ffanx were after. You’ve heard the tales of what they wanted. Women. But they didn’t want them as women. They were after extradiol for the best reason on Earth or off it:
“It made them immortal!”
Bronze’s jaw dropped. Viki continued to gaze raptly at Garth. Daw’s heavy brows were drawn together in an expression that looked more like fear and worry than perplexity.
“Think about that for a minute. Think of what would happen if we of Earth found a species of animal which carried a substance which would do that for us … we’d hunt it ruthlessly and mercilessly.”
“Wait a minute,” Bronze said. “You mean that these Ffanx couldn’t die from a spear-wound?”
“Lord, no—they weren’t immortal in that sense. Just from old age which, in any species, is a progressive condition caused by dysfunction of various parts—particularly connective tissue. A complicated extract of human extradiol beta would restore the connective tissues of the Ffanx and keep them healthy for thirty of our years or more. Then another shot would keep ’em that way, and so on.”
“Just where is the Ffanx world?” asked Daw, and then colored violently as if embarrassed by the sound of his own voice.
“That’s a little difficult to explain,” said Garth carefully. “Look, suppose that door—” he pointed to an interior doorway—“opened into more than one room. You can almost imagine it; say you’d have to go through the door from an acute angle to get into the first room, go straight through to get into a second. You might call the second world Parallel X.
“The Gateway and the blue arch at Hackensack were doorways between worlds—between universes. These universes exist at the same time in the same space—but at different vibratory rates … I don’t expect you to understand it, no one really does. The theory’s an old one. No one gave it much consideration until the Ffanx got here.”
Bronze asked, “If it’s a doorway, like you say, why didn’t the Ffanx find the way in to the world where the women went?”
Garth smiled. “Remember the doorway there? Suppose you were quite familiar with the way that door opened to one of two rooms. Then supposing I came along and pointed out that instead of going straight in or turning left, you could go up and find yourself in still a third room. It’s like that. The Ffanx just never thought of going into their inter-dimensional arch in the particular direction that would wind them up in the Gateway world.
“There was always the possibility that the Ffanx might think of it, though, and you can bet that the women were warned and were ready to fight. But to get back to the story—I have to tell it all to you so you can understand what we’re going to do next; and I will have you understand it, because I don’t want help from people who just take orders, I want help from people who think.
“All right, let’s go on. I’m trying to give you an idea of what my father was—a man who worked and worried and made mistakes and was happy and frightened and brave and all the other things you are.
“He was a scientist, a specialist in molecular structure. In the early days of the invasion he got hold of a couple of Ffanx. You’ll remember that they weren’t attacking then. My Dad was the only man who was ever able to communicate with them, and he did it without their realizing what he was doing. A specialist in condensed matter can produce a lot of weird effects. One of the things he found out was that thought itself is a vibration very similar to the brainwaves of a Ffanx-type mind; that is, the currents that produced thought in their brains could be changed directly into waves his instruments could detect and translate. He got no details, but he did get some broad concepts. One of them was that the blue arch was the only exit that they had ever made from their world; they had never traveled to other planets in their universe. Another was the nature of their quest on Earth. When he found that out, he killed his specimens, but by then it was too late.
“He took those little bodies apart literally atom by atom. And he found out how to destroy them. It was simple in itself, but hard to get to, an isotope of nitrogen which, if released in their world, would set up a chain reaction in their atmosphere. Due to the differences between the molecules of the two universes—they have a table of elements just like ours, but denser—their atmospheric hydrogen could be commuted to free hydrogen and arsenic tri-hydride, with a by-product of nitrogen ions that would kick off the reaction again and again … I see I’m talking gobbledegook. Sorry.
“Suffice it to say that my father knew what would destroy the Ffanx, but he had to make it himself. By that time the Ffanx had destroyed communications and the world was in chaos. It took time, as he knew it would. So he built the Gateway.
“He got the idea from the Ffanx’ own blue arch, which he had seen from a distance. He took careful readings on that strange blue light and guessed what it was. And in trying to build another like it—I think he planned to invade them where they didn’t expect it—he stumbled on the Gateway.
“It gave a weird red-orange light instead of a blue one, and the atmosphere on the other side was breathable, which the Ffanx world’s was not—they had to wear helmets and carry an air-supply while they were on Earth. He went through and looked the place over. There was timber and water and, as far as he could find out, no civilization or dangerous animals—just insects and some little rabbit-like creatures so tame they could be caught by hand. And he got the idea of using it as a sanctuary for the world’s women while he worked on the weapon that would destroy the Ffanx.
“You know the rest of that story—how the women came, all he could send word to—and then how he had to build defenses against the panic-struck, woman-hungry mobs that stormed this place.
“I was just a boy of eight when Dad finished the weapon. It was an innocent-looking eight-inch capsule filled with compressed gas. He planned to go up to Hackensack, traveling at night and hiding in the daytime, and set up a projector to peg it into the blue arch.
“The day after he showed it to me the Ffanx came … I’m convinced they didn’t know how near they were to the thing that would wipe them out. I’ll never know why they came just then … maybe there was a party of women on the way up the canyon. Anyway, a flight of their little ships appeared, and they let go one of their force-beams on the lab-building—I guess because it was the nearest to the canyon-trail—and stove the roof in. Dad was crushed and the building burned.”
Garth took a deep breath. His eyes burned.
“I spoke to him while he died. Then I left, with the capsule.”
“So it was you who put the poison through the blue arch,” said Bronze. “I’d always heard it was Gesell.”
“It was Gesell,” said Viki devoutly.
“I did, yes. Anyway, when that capsule burst in their world, they had a fine arseniated atmosphere. The hydrogen they breathed was arsenic tri-hydride within minutes after it got to their bloodstreams. I don’t know how long it took to kill off every last one of them on their planet, but it couldn’t have been long. And it got all the Ffanx here, too. They all had to go back to renew their air supplies. I don’t think we’ll ever hear of a living Ffanx again.”
“And where have you been all these years?”
“Growing up. Studying. Dad’s orders. He was the most fore-sighted man who ever lived. He couldn’t be sure of just what would happen in the near future, but he knew what the possibilities were, and acted on all of them. One of the things he did was to prepare a hypnopede—it’s a gadget that teaches you while you sleep—no bigger than your two fists. It was designed for me, in case anything happened, and it covered the basic principles of the Gateway, and a long list of reference books. I lived with that thing, month after month, and when I was old enough to move around safely under my own power I began to travel. I went to city after city and pawed through the ruins of their libraries and boned up on all of it—atomic theory, strength of materials, higher math, electronics—until I could begin to get experimental results.”
He looked around the table. “Are you people ready to give me a hand with the Gateway?”
“We took a vow—” said Viki. Garth interrupted her. “Let’s have none of that!”
Viki continued with perfect composure. “We took a vow to serve Gesell through life and past death, and I see no reason to change it. Do you, Daw?”
“I agree.” Daw’s face was strained. Garth thought for a second that Daw was going to argue the point. But perhaps he was wrong …
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