The cloak swayed like a great bloodstain behind him, moving in a motion not entirely caused by Stuart’s movements. He tried again to unfasten it, but the clasp at his throat only drew tighter. And the tingling sensation increased along his spine. Could it be an artificial synapse…blocking his nerve-ends so that he could not draw upon the Protectors’ power?
At his left was an alcove in the tunnel wall. It was filled with coagulated light…bright with glaring flames…flame-hot. Within that white curtain stirred swift movement, like the leaping of fires. Above the recess a symbol was embossed in the stone. The sign of Mercury.
“Mercury,” said the voice in Stuart’s mind. “The Servant of the Sun. The Swift Messenger. Mercury, that drinks the Sun’s fires and blazes like a star in the sky’s abyss. First in the Long Orbit—Mercury.”
The crowd of prisoners, dull-eyed, swayed to and fro, a ripple of excitement rustling through them. Abruptly the Martian girl darted forward.
She was engulfed in the milky flames. Stood there, while curdled opalescence veiled her. On her face sheer horror, as…
“The Aesir feed,” the voice wispered. “They drink the cup of her life…to its last dregs.”
The captives were moving again. Silently Stuart followed them along the tunnel. Now another recess showed in the wall.
Blue…blue, this time, as hazy seas of enchantment…misted with fog, with slow shifting movement within it.…
“The sign of Venus,” said the voice. “The Clouded World. Planet of life and womb of creation. Ruler of mists and seas—Venus!”
The Earthman was drawn into the alcove. Stood there, while azure seas washed higher and higher about him. Through that glassy veil his face glared, stiff with alien fear.…
The sacrifices went on.
There was no alcove, no symbol for Earth. The Aesir had forgotten the world that had been their place of birth.
“Mars! Red star of madness! Ruler of man’s passion, lord of the bloody seas! Where scarlet sands run through Time’s hourglass—Mars, third in the Long Orbit!”
The crimson glow of a dusty ruby…the face of a Venusian, strained, twisted in agony…the hunger of the Aesir.…
“The Little Worlds! The Great Belt that girdles the Inner System! The Broken Planet—”
Tiny goblin lights, dancing and flickering, blue and sapphire and dull orange, wine-red and dawn-yellow—
The hunger of the Aesir.
“Jupiter! Titan! Colossus of the Spaceroads! Jupiter, whose mighty hands seize the ships of man and drag them to his boiling heart! The Great One-fifth in the Long Orbit!”
The hunger of the Aesir.…
“Ringed Saturn light-crowned! Guardian of the outer skies! Saturn—”
Uranus…Neptune…Pluto.
The hunger of the Aesir.…
Beyond Pluto, dark worlds Stuart had not known. Until finally he was alone. The last of his companions had been drawn into one of the vampire alcoves of the Long Orbit.
He went on.
There was another recess in the wall at his left. It was filled with night. Jet blackness, cold and horrible, brimmed it.
Something like an invisible current dragged him forward, though he fought with all his strength to resist. Instinctively he sent out a desperate call to the Protectors.
“We cannot aid you. We must leave you…you will die instantly.”
“Wait! Don’t—don’t give up yet! Give me your power—”
“We cannot while you wear the cloak.”
The edge of blackness touched Stuart with a frigid impact. He felt something, avid with horrible hunger, strain forward from of the alcove, reaching for him. The cloak billowed.
Sweat stood out on Stuart’s face. For, suddenly, he had seen the way. It might mean death, it would certainly mean frightful agony—but he could go down fighting. If the cloak could not be removed in any other way—perhaps it could be ripped off!
He gripped the half-living fabric at its bottom, brought his arm behind him—and tore the horror from him!
Stark, abysmal nerve-shock poured like a current of fire up his spine and into his brain. It was like tearing off his own skin. Sick, blind, gasping dry-throated sobs, Stuart stumbled away from the black alcove, tearing at the cloak. It tried to cling to him.
He ripped it away—hurled it from him. And as it fell—it screamed!
But he was free.
For an instant sheer weakness overwhelmed him. Then into him poured a racing, jubilant torrent of strength, of mighty, intoxicating power that seemed to heal his wounds and revivify him instantly.
Into him surged the power of the Protectors!
From the alcove a finger of darkness tendrilled out. He was borne away from it…along the passage. Dimly, through drifting mists, he sensed that he was moving up a ramp…through a wall that seemed to grow intangible as he approached it, up and up…
He was in the hall of the Aesir.
Above him the cyclopean pillers towered, dwarfing the thrones set between them. Before him hung the shifting wall of light.
He was carried toward it—through it. He stood on a black dais. Facing him was the cloaked, cowled figure he had last seen when he donned the cloak.
And beside the Aesir stood Kari!
The creature lifted its arm…and a red flame spouted toward Stuart.
Sudden, mocking laughter spilled from Stuart’s lips. He no longer fought alone. The tremendous power of the Protectors blazed within him, power and energy and force that could smash suns.
In midair the fiery lance failed and died. The Aesir drew back a step, drawing its dark cloak about it as if in surprise. And Kari—Kari shrank back, too, and something strangely like hope flashed for a moment across her dazzling face. Hope? But she was of the Aesir now. And if they failed, she died. Then why—
The Aesir’s cloak flickered, and a second gush of fiery light fountained toward Stuart.
Up surged the tide of power within him again. Blind and dazed with his own tremendous energy, Stuart felt a curve like a dim shield flung up to meet that lance. The Aesir’s fire struck—and flashed into blazing fragments on the Protector’s shield. Each droplet sang intolerable music as it faded and winked out. And behind the Aesir, more dazzling than any immortal fire had been, Stuart saw Kari’s sudden, shining smile.…
She would die if the Aesir failed. She must know she would die. But the brilliance of her smile struck him as the Aesir’s spear of fire could never strike. He knew, then. He understood.…
The Aesir’s cloak whirled like a storm-cloud in dark, deep billows. The Aesir itself grew taller for a moment, as if it drew itself up to a godlike height. And then it did for Derek Stuart what no Aesir had ever done for a mortal man before. No Aesir had ever needed to. It cast off the hampering cloak and stood stripped for battle with this primitive manling whose forebears immemorially long ago had also been the Aesir’s forebears. There was in that stripping something almost of kinship—an acknowledgment that here at last in the hall of the Aesir stood an equal, sprung of equal stock.…
Naked in its terrible power, the Aesir stood up to face the man.
Not human. Not ever human, except in the mysterious basics which these people of a thousand millenniums in the future had chosen to retain. The flesh they had cast off, and the flesh the Aesir stood up in to face his human cousin was pure, blazing, blinding energy. Twice as tall as a man it stood, shining with supernal brilliance, terrible and magnificent.
The great hall rang soundlessly with the power of the Protectors.
And then from above a streak of light came flashing, and another, and another. And were engulfed in the one Aesir who stood shining before its adversary, growing ever brighter and more terrible. The rest of the Aesir, coming to the aid of their fellow, forming a single entity to crush the champion of mankind.
Stuart braced himself for the incredible torrent of energy that would come blasting through him from the Protectors. And in a split second—it came!
Mind and
body reeled beneath the impact of that power as force flared through him and struck out at the tower of lightning which was the Aesir. But the force which was trying his human body to its utmost was not force enough to touch that blinding column. Energy lashed out from it, struck him a reeling blow—
Stuart dropped to his knees, the hall swimming in fire around him.
But what he saw was not the terrible, blazing image of his adversary, but Kari’s face beyond. His falling meant her life—but when she saw him go down, the brilliance dimmed upon her features. The hope he had seen there went out like a candle-flame, and she was once more only a vessel of human flesh which the Aesir had possessed and degraded.
In his despair and his dizziness he cried soundlessly, “Help me, Protectors Give me your power!”
The still double-voice said, “You could not hold it. You would be burned out utterly.”
“I’ll hold it long enough!” he promised desperately. “One second of power—only that! Enough to smash the Aesir. Then death—but not till then!”
There was one instant when time stopped. That cataclysmic horror that had risen a thousand years ago and raged through the worlds like a holocaust stood blazing before Stuart’s eyes. It stooped toward him, poising for the hammer blow that would smash him to nothing—
Then a power like the drive of galaxies through space thundered into Stuart’s mind.
He had not expected this. Nothing in human experience could have taught him to expect it. For the Protectors were not human. No more human than the Aesir themselves. And the unleashed energy that roared soundlessly through Stuart rocked his very soul on its foundations. He could not stir. He could not think. He could only stay upon his knees facing the Aesir-thing as galactic power thundered through him and wielded him like a sword against man’s enemies.
Higher and higher rose the crashing tides of contest. The citadel shook ponderously upon the rocks of the god-made little world. Perhaps that world itself staggered in space as the titans battled together on its rocking surface.
Faster spun the core of radiant light which was the Aesir. Faster raced the tides of power through Stuart’s blasted body, seeming to rip his very flesh apart and blaze in his brain like hammers of cosmic fire.
Terribly, terribly he yearned for surcease, for the end of this unthinkable destruction that was tearing his brain and body apart. And he knew he could end it in a moment, if he chose to let go.…
Grimly he clung to the power that was destroying him. Second by second, counting each moment an eternity, he clung to consciousness. The crashing lances of the Protectors drove on upon the armor of the Aesir, and the cyclopean pillars of the great hall reeled upon their foundations, and the very air blazed into liquid fire around him.
He never knew what final blow of cosmic violence ended that battle. But suddenly, without warning, the vast column of the Aesir pulsed with violent brilliance and the whole hall rang with a cry too shrill and terrible for ears or the very mind to hear, except as a thrilling of despair.
The tower rocked. All the bright tapestries billowed and flowed against the walls.
And the radiant thing that was the Aesir went out like a blown flame. Stuart saw it darken in the quickness of a heartbeat from blinding brightness to an angry, sullen scarlet, and then to the color of embers, and then to darkness.
There was nothing there at all.
And Stuart’s brain dimmed with it. One last glimpse he had of the shining smile on Kari’s face, triumph and delight, in the instant before the cloudiness of oblivion blotted her features out.
* * * *
He was not dead. Somewhere, far away, his body lay prone upon the cold pavement of the Aesir’s hall, a hall terribly empty now of life. But Stuart himself hung in empty space, somewhere between life and death.
The thought of the Protectors touched him gently, almost caressingly.
“You are a mighty man, Derek Stuart. Your name shall not be forgotten while mankind lives.”
With infinite effort he roused his mind.
“Kari—” he said.
There was silence for a moment—a warm silence. But the voices, speaking as one, said gently, “Have you forgotten? When the Aesir died, Kari died too. And you, Derek Stuart—you can never go back to your body now. You remember that?”
Sudden rebellion shook Stuart’s bodiless brain. “Get out of my mind!” he raged at the double voice. “What do you know about human beings? I’ve won for mankind—but what did I win for myself? Nothing—nothing! And Kari— Get out of my mind and let me die! What do you know about love?”
Amazingly, laughter pulsed softly. “Love?” said the double voice. “Love? You have not guessed who we are?”
Stuart’s bewildered mind framed only a voiceless question.
“We know humanity,” the twin voices said. “We were human once, a thousand years ago. Very human, Derek Stuart. And we remember love.”
He half guessed the answer. “You are—”
“There was a man and a woman once,” the voices told him gently. “Mankind still remembers their legend—John Starr and Lorna, who defied the Aesir.”
“John Starr and Lorna!”
“We fought the Aesir in the days when we and they were human. We worked with them on the entropy device that made them what they are now—and made us—ourselves. When we saw what they planned with their power, we fought.… But they were five, and strong because they were ruthless. We had to flee.”
The voices that spoke as one voice were distant, remembering.
“They grew in power on their Asgard world, changing as the millenniums swept over them, as entropy accelerated for them. And we changed, too, in our own place, in our different way. We are not human now. But we are not monsters, as the Aesir were. We have known failure and bitterness and defeat many times, Derek Stuart. But we remember humanity. And as for love—”
Stuart said bitterly:
“You know your love. You have it forever. But Kari…Karl is dead.”
The voices were very gentle. “You have sacrificed more than we. Yon gave up your love and your bodies. We—”
Silence again. Then the woman, serene and gentle-voiced, “There is a way, John. But not an easy one—for us.”
Stuart thought, “But Kari is dead.”
The woman said, “Her body is empty of the Aesir life-force. And yours is burned out by the power we poured through it, so that no human could live in it again unless—unless one more than human upheld you.”
“Lorna—”
“We must part for awhile, John. We have been one for a long while. Now we must be two again, for the sake of these two. Until the change.…”
“What change?” asked Stuart eagerly.
“As we changed, so would you, if our lives upheld yours. Entropy would move for you as it moved for the Aesir and for us. And that, too, I think, is good. Mankind will need a leader. And we can help—John and I—more surely if we taste again of humanity. After awhile—after millenniums—the circle will close and John and I will be free to merge again. And you and Kari, too.”
Stuart thought, “But Kari—will it be Kari?”
“It will be,” the gentle voice said. “Cleansed of the evil of the Aesir, supported by my own strength, as you will be by John’s. You will be yourselves again, with the worlds before you, and afterward—a dwelling among the stars, with us.”
The man’s voice said, “Lorna, Lorna—”
“You know we must, beloved,” the softer voice said. “We have asked too much of them to offer nothing in repayment. And it will not be goodbye.”
There was darkness and silence.
* * * *
Stuart grew dimly aware of cyclopean heights rising above him. Painfully he stirred. He was clothed in his own body again, and the battle-blasted hall of the dead Aesir towered high into the dimness above him.
He turned his head.
Beside him on the dais, a girl lying crumpled in the shower of her hair stirred and sighed.
BRIDGE OF SILENCE, by George Zebrowski
If the decades and the centuries pass with no indication that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the long-term effects on human philosophy will be profound, and may be disastrous. Better to have neighbors we don’t like than to be utterly alone.
—Arthur C. Clarke
1
The alien walked into the room with the fragile nobility of a drunk trailing invisible robes. Gaddis leaned forward as the stick figure sat down in front of him on the floor. It was easy to imagine wisdom in those circular, watery eyes, despite their steel-gray gaze. He searched the other’s face, as if at any moment it would become possible to peer inside the gaunt, black skull.
The white patch on the alien’s chest gave him a certain air of friendliness, suggesting a man in an old-fashioned dinner jacket, about to discourse over coffee; but the torso did not seem to breathe.
Gaddis tensed as white light flashed in the high windows. A year had not acclimated him to the planet’s nervous displays. He stared at the alien’s forehead. What would it be like to see through those eyes? What did the other feel? Was it a he or a she, or something else? How could he expect answers? It was hard enough for people to know one another, or themselves.
Gaddis resented the layered, Troy-like accretion that was the human mind, where archaic impulses raged through a million-year-old maze, fleeing from the lamp of reason. Was it the same for the alien?
The light faded from the high windows. He thought of the jagged peaks beyond the compound and longed for Earth’s soft contours.
A year gone.
It seemed longer since he had come to this small, desolate world circling the nearly invisible red-dwarf star one light-year beyond Pluto. The alien seemed to have been waiting, as if he were a gatekeeper, or a jailer. By what right was he here? Because aliens could do things that humanity could not; everyone knew that.
He had gone out sleeping in a torchship, but the new drive would be ready by the time he got back from his reconnaissance. This wandering star would be perfect for the first short test hops, before the new ships jumped out into the galaxy.
The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack Page 32
