by Lin Carter
And now they���lived!
I did not understand it then nor do I understand it now.
But the golden, diamond-moted mists boiled���writhed ���coiled���and parted!
And we could see them plainly now, the tall, the slim, the inhumanly slender, bright-scaled bodies, naked and sexless looking for all the world like those attenuated sculptures Giacometti had wrought a century ago
Whatever the trancelike condition, whatever the stasis or state of suspended animation, that had held them frozen and preserved amidst the smoky, clouded mass of amber crystal, the spell was broken now, and the Timeless Ones were���awake!
Their alien faces were alive with expression, vivid with emotions. Faces so very alien and strange to us, but faces filled with warmth and compassion���yes, and with humor too.
Ageless wisdom shone in those enormous, depthless eyes of lambent emerald; stern, kingly justice too, and a sympathy and understanding that seemed almost godlike in their breadth.
Their narrow chests rose and fell as they breathed. The green lamps of their eyes moved over us, reading the naked pain and terror of Bolgov’s eyes, where he groveled under Kuruk’s heavy hand, nursing his scalded hand to his breast.
And they���spoke! Not with voices, not with words, but through the medium of pure thought. Minds vast and cool and ageless reached out to us, projecting a message into our own minds with startling force and clarity.
Who are you nine who stand before us in our secret place and disturb our slumbers with your passions and discords and violence?
O, strange���strange!���to hear an alien thought echo through your own mind!
The tone of the mental message was a clear, sweet, singing as of icy winds gusting through sharp, needlelike pinnacles of frozen crystal on some wintry world. Inhumanly cold and sweet and singing was the voice that spoke in our brains���the voice of the Timeless Ones!
But brilliant eyes of green flame softened���softened��� and compassion warmed the cold, wild music of their thoughts.
You are all brothers! Why, then, do you threaten, why do you injure one another? Have our teachings fallen upon deaf ears? Can it be the children of this age have forgotten us, have turned aside from our teachings? Is the law we taught you, when first we came amongst you in olden times, followed no longer by the children of this age?
I opened my mouth to speak, to say something but��� how do you explain a hundred million years of human history to godlike, passionless beings?
How do you describe hatred, cruelty, injustice, greed, bigotry and���evil���to bright, immortal, unfallen spirits who have tasted none of the darker passions of men?
But I did not even have to try.
Their eyes moved from one of us to another, noting the differences, seeing that Earthman and Martian stood before their age-old tomb in the Den of Miracles.
There is a strangeness here … We have slept long, too long, it may be .. . What has happened to the world while we but withdrew from it to slumber for a time and thus renew ourselves?
Cold fingers touched the periphery of my mind; tendrils of eerie and alien thought insinuated themselves into the pattern of my memories. I saw Ilsa start and touch her brow with wondering fingers as she felt the gentle invasion too.
What things are these have happened while we slept? Conquest, slavery, rebellion, war … Do you not know you both be brothers, children of Earth and children of Mars, alike?
Their sharp features grew stern as they fingered through our thoughts, reading of Earth’s subjugation of Mars, of her exploitation of her sister world. Warmth died in those great green eyes as they read the story of my ordeal and struggle to free Mars from her oppressors.
We have slept long, it seems … Millions of years of time have passed, as you children reckon time … It sorrows us that you have warred against each other … When all this world was young and rich with life, we came hither from our own world, lost to us and ruined forever …And we chose a little animal with wide, wondering eyes and guided him upward on the path toward thought, so that his companionship might assuage our own loneliness … and those of our own race, who fled inward, nearer to the sun, to the green world with the great blue seas…
Dr. Keresny gasped, his face alive with incredulous amazement.
“Aster!” he exclaimed, eagerly. “The lost, fifth planet
that some believe once existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and whose wreckage forms the Asteroid Zone ���is that the lost, ruined home world of which you speak? I cannot project my thoughts as you, but perhaps���”
It is not needed; speak aloud and we can sense your meaning … Yes, we read the data in your memory lattice … The fifth planet was our lost and golden home … There were those among us who unwisely sought to tamper with cosmic forces beyond our control, the strange balance and flux of forces that sustain the worlds in their paths about the parent sun … These forces escaped from the grasp of those who would manipulate them, and the resultant convulsion tore our golden world asunder and scattered its ruin afar … We three survived and two of our brethren, who voyaged sunward to your green Earth …
“Then you Three guided human evolution here on Mars,” I broke in, “while on Earth, also, the two Timeless Ones guided the rise of intelligence there!”
It is so … Our brothers too, we see, chose a warmblooded little animal … And since you are brothers, Earthmen and Martians, it troubles us that you would war upon and ravage one another, when peace and brotherhood should live between you …
“We of Mars would hve in peace with Earth, but she holds us captive,” I said.
Then we must undo this thing and sever your chains, for there is from of old, from the very beginning, a friendship between us and the folk of this world …
It was then that Bolgov made his play!
He had crouched there, nursing his hurt hand, his face white and taut with desperation, eyes filled with terror as he saw the solemn golden figurps move and breathe and live. He too felt the mental message they projected; and he knew that time was running out.
Suddenly he tore himself loose from the grip of Kuruk and sprang away to one side, clawing at the black case under his clothing. He got it out somehow, and a thrill of horror went through me, as I thought of those police boats hovering out there above the Lost City.
Triumph gleamed in his eyes as he fumbled with the beacon. Ilsa stifled a cry, and Kuruk lunged for the case.
But Bolgov winced, features contorting with pain. His seared fingers could not hold the ultrawave projector, and it fell���and Kuruk was upon him again, bludgeoning him senseless with one smashing blow of those heavy fists. We breathed easily, tension draining from us.
Then we saw who it was had snatched the fallen signal from Bolgov’s hand.
Dhu!
Malignant fires gleamed in the beady eyes of the hunched little priest. I think he was stark mad then, the reality behind his myths had perhaps proved too much for his sanity to bear. It is often so, with zealots, with fanatics: they walk a narrow bridge, teetering on the brink of madness, and it takes little to dislodge them from their precarious balance.
His hatred of me had burned deep, and it had festered badly. I think it was the fact that I was one of the F’yagha, the Hated Ones, that made him hate me so. The thought that an accursed Outworlder could still be the true Jamad Tengru was a sacrilege he could not resolve; it had driven a wedge into his mind, splitting it deeper and deeper asunder.
And now, perhaps, the discovery that Earthman and Martian were not really two separate races at all but were brothers, both children of the Timeless Ones, had driven him beyond the edge of reason into the red howling hell of madness.
For there is no other way to explain the thing he did then.
Glaring with icy, gloating triumph directly into my eyes, the little priest activated the signal.
The faint, sweet chiming of crystalline m
usic rang wildly through the cavern���but too late.
The crystal crux ansata, the sistrum that had disrupted Bolgov’s laser gun, sang again���and the ultrawave beacon shattered in Dhu’s hand, littering the stony pave with shards of smoking plastic.
But too late!
There could be no doubt about it���we had all seen Dhu press the signal button in the side of the beeper.
It was Ilsa who turned to the Timeless Ones for aid.
“Oh, please, help us! That alarm summons our enemies, who are armed with frightful weapons of destruction. They will massacre our friends on the surface, who are encamped before the temple and who are armed only with swords.”
The Three smiled down at the girl gently.
Comfort yourself, child, and dry your tears! Those who would wreak violence upon others shall perish by it .. . We, who love peace, are yet just … And betimes, justice must be harsh and swift… Behold!
The long hand that held the crystal sistrum in supple, golden fingers lifted, pointing the crux ansata toward one of the huge mechanisms that thronged the Den of Miracles. The mechanism was that huge lens of milky crystal jade, clasped in a great chromelike metal hoop.
The sistrum chimed���once!
This time we were watching as the breath of eerie music was sounded. So this time we saw the swift rings of pallid light that spread, flashing, from the sistrum, like ripples in the surface of a brook. It was like the wild, sweet, tuneless music of the shaken sistrum made visible.
Light awoke in the lens of cloudy jade! The milky substance blurred���cleared���and became a brilliant mirror. Glassed within that lens we saw, somehow reflected from afar by some miracle of alien science we could not even begin to understand, a vision of the surface. It was a perfect image, exact in every detail: night had fallen on the surface of Mars far above this deep cavern where we stood. Stars burned sharp and wintry in the black dome of heaven.
We saw, by their dim luminance, the age-worn ruins of holy Ilionis���the half-collapsed temple���the Moon Dragon warriors camped on its outer stair���and from above we saw descending two sleek ovids of glistening metal, riding down on their landing jets. Inverted fountains of intolerable fire lit the night like twin lightnings���the warriors sprang up in terror, clutching sword and spear and dart tube, futile frail things to set against the ravening fury of laser batteries.
Behold now, children, the justice of the Timeless Ones!
Again the sistrum was shaken!
Again a weird strain of crystalline music, the chiming of pure, faint bells, rang about us!
Again the racing ripples of ever-widening light blazed up from the crux ansata���fell, one by one, into the jade mirror���faded there and were gone!
And we looked into the magic mirror; and we looked upon a marvel!
Once, long ago, I saw a film in which an engine had come apart, piece by piece. It was some technical trickery, some feat of clever animation, I know. But that same marvel I saw again in the mirror of the Timeless Ones.
The two police boats came apart in midair.
They came apart all at once.
The fabric disintegrated into a cloud of flying sections. Solid metal suddenly began a spreading cloud of fragments, and those fragments became whorls of glittering metallic dust, and that dust became mere vapor, which spread and spread���dispersed���and was gone!
Fire fountains winked out. Blackness closed down upon the scene. Our eyes adjusted to the lack of those twin brilliances, and we saw the astounded warriors, gesticulating at the empty sky, waving their arms, yelling.
Two police boats had vanished into thin air in a twinkling. Two fast, heavily-armored cruisers, armed with sufficient nuclear might to lay in glowing puddles of half-vaporized metal every city on this planet, had melted away, before nothing more frightful than a single burst of chiming, crystalline music from a shaken sistrum!
A vast relief welled up in me, and something else, something I had almost forgotten existed, something called��� hope.
Night had fallen, up there on the surface of Mars. But it was a night of gods, when old, long-slumbering powers had waked at last and moved to judgment. Before dawn lit
the sky again, much would be changed. An age would end, and a new age would begin, and when dawn blazed forth again, it would shine over a new world.
15. Night of Gods
The disintegration of the two police boats affected each of us in different ways.
Bolgov huddled groggily, face blank, eyes dulled, despair written in his features.
Dhu squatted moaning, froglike face hidden behind shaking hands. He keened softly, and the Timeless Ones regarded him with compassion and tenderness.
That one has a madness . .. Too much hatred can eat at the foundations of sanity like a canker … He will rest here a time and sleep … And when he wakes again, his mind will be whole.
Keresny was fascinated by this glimpse at an alien technology.
“The vibratory wave set up by the sistrum,” he said excitedly, “must somehow cancel the nuclear binding force that holds matter together in a rigid structure. Those two spacecraft literally vaporized, but without heat, explosion, or radioactive contamination. What an astounding display of force! How do you suppose they channel and focus the direction of the wave?”
The serene thought projections of the Three sounded again in the depths of our minds.
Now we shall set our decision ‘into action. We are determined that no longer may we permit the children of Earth to subjugate and enslave the children of Mars! All sentient life is one: every intelligent race is the brother of every other … We, too, are your brothers, though Elder Brothers, it may be .. . Before this night has ended, the rule of the Outworlders shall close, and all Earthmen shall depart from this world forever, and never will they be permitted to return …
1 blinked back stinging tears, for this victory was more complete than that of which I had dreamed, and now it would be bloodless, as well. We watched as the Timeless Ones activated another of the mystery machines that stood gleaming amid the shadows. It was a tall, tapering cylinder of clear crystal, like an immense glassy tube, taller than a man. The cold, faint song of the shaken sistrum pealed once more, and lambent rings of blue light began floating up through the length of the crystal tube, vanishing at its top.
The image machine blurred���the scene shifted���and we looked down at the streets of the nearest of the Colonies, Laestrygonum, as if from some lofty vantage point high in the heavens above the dim hemispherical haze of the MPB field.
Night lay deep and dark upon the Colony; the streets were thick with shadow. But through those streets a blank-faced horde trudged mechanically. Our viewpoint swooped down upon a sea of white faces, as empty of volition as a herd of mindless zombies. From uniform insignia we recognized that the shuffling mob was made up of Colonial Administration police, clerks, administrative workers, and bureaucrats.
They drifted through the dark streets from every direction, and their goal was the terminus of the tractor trains which led to the debarkation camp. Again the scene shifted with magical suddenness, and we saw the squat profile of the satellite shuttle on the landing flat, filling up as long files of Earthmen poured into the hold. As one shuttle filled to capacity, it lifted off on flaring jets and drifted up to Deimos, where spacecraft were moored for the crossover to Lima and Earth.
Already the Earthmen were leaving Mars! It was an astonishing sight.
The jade disc of the image machine blurred and then cleared, showing in swift succession similar scenes talcing place at Syrtis, Sun Lake City, Charontis, Christoffsen Port, Propontis, and the rest of the Twelve Colonics.
Blank-faced, dead-eyed Earthmen���in the thousands! ���were flowing back into space, leaving Mars behind, returning to the distant world that had sent them here to loot and plunder, to exploit and to enslave! It was a fantastic sight, and my heart thrilled to see
it.
But it was the boy Chaka, of us all, who realized the full implications of the exodus. His bright young mind had extrapolated beyond the obvious, while the rest of us clustered about the huge glimmering lens of the image machine, enthralled by the succession of amazing pictures it revealed to us.
“Lords���Great Ones!” he shrilled. “What of the Jamad? If it is your decree that all of the accursed F’yagha are to go home and leave the People to rule their own world���must he too leave us?”
The implications of his words stunned me; frankly it had not even occurred to me that the stern fiat of the Timeless Ones would extend to me as well. Suddenly I saw that it could���that it must!
The Three were sorrowful but adamant.
All of the children of Earth must quit this world, if any go at all … For to make an exception in a law is to destroy both its validity and its justice. First, the Jamad must pass the Crown into the hands of another and pronounce the Ritual that is the transferal of sovereignity … Then he too must hither to his home …
My friends stared at me, flustered and at a loss for words. Kraa was troubled, Huw bewildered. But Kuruk was grimly defiant, and as for the boy, he was on the brink of tears.
Suddenly something welled up within me. I strode forward and raised my arms to the Three where they floated amidst the diamond-moted mists of coiling amber.
“Hear me, Timeless Ones!” I cried. “You are making a mistake���you, who speak of brotherhood are blinded with a kind of bigotry! Let me speak!”
Speak then; we will listen and���judge!. .
I strove for calmness, strove to order my thoughts.
“If all sentient races are brothers, despite the superficial differences of tongue or color or creed, then I ask you���is not the planet of their birth also only a superficial difference? Is not a man still a man, whether he be Mars born or Earth born?”
