“There are still a few completely sane, highly intelligent Telens. But they are so few in number that they can exercise no control over the thirty or forty million Telens who have turned the ice-encased, still living body of John Bramwell into a symbol of strength and power. John Bramwell has become a cult idol or cult hero. The man who conquered death, who achieved the kind of immortality the Telens felt that they themselves might have possessed if their minds had not succumbed to the virus of semi-madness.”
“There are moments, you see, when a mind unbalanced, a mind that has regressed to a more primitive level of consciousness, becomes aware of what has been lost. That awareness can be pure torment, an agony surpassing anything the sane mind can envision. It is commonly believed that distortions of thinking and feeling can enable a mind over burdened with strain, a mind that can no longer cope with the complexities of civilization, to escape from reality. And that is true—up to a point. But the escape is seldom total, and there are moments when every mind so afflicted knows how great and terrible a price has been paid for a security that is wholly illusionary.”
The ghoul shape paused for an instant, as if to assure himself of Joyce’s understanding. When he saw that she was responding, he went on quickly: “A mind so afflicted has momentary glimpses of a vanished glory, a glory that it feels it must recapture or the sanctuary it has created for itself will be exposed for what it is—an iron-walled prison.
“What I am saying would not apply, of course, to the Telens who have regressed so far that they have become raving lunatics. But, as with the remaining sane Telens, they are few in number. The great majority of Telens are borderline cases. I have compared them to savage children, and even to buffoons, and that, in a sense, is precisely what they have become. But they are savage children with tattered remnants of a high intelligence, and a vanished glory flapping about them. They are not incapable of intelligent planning. The shrewd, if erratic, application of technological knowledge to problems of great and immediate urgency has enabled them to travel back through time with a definite purpose in mind and to carry that purpose out with a fair measure of success.”
“They are helped, of course, by the sane Telens who can no longer control them, but have no desire to relinquish their share of the tremendous power which the Telens have possessed for thousands of years and have not, as yet, been forced to relinquish.”
“I can understand why they should regard Bramwell with superstitious awe and worship him as a cult hero,” Joyce heard herself saying. “He must loom through the mists of time as a symbol of the splendor which once enabled them to feel that they, too, might be capable of achieving as much as he had, that the gift of immortality was almost within their grasp and that if they had not regressed, as you say, death itself might have been conquered forever. But why should they travel back to the middle years of the twentieth century and take me captive? The others, too—some of them children. What could they hope to gain by it? I had never even heard of Bramwell.”
“Ah, yes,” the ghoul shape said. “Few of the others knew who Bramwell was, and there have been many captives. That would have seemed strange to them if they had not been under a half-insane compulsion. They want to believe that Bramwell was known to every man, woman and child in the years immediately preceding his entombment and have shut their eyes to the historical record. They have discovered a great deal about the twentieth century. But when one of the captives denies having so much as heard of Bramwell they think he is being secretive and stubborn—or has some kind of mind block.”
Joyce hesitated, for the question she wanted most to ask had become of vital importance to her and she was afraid that the ghoul shape could not answer it. But there was nothing to be gained by putting it off and she suddenly found herself asking: “Who was Bramwell? Do you know?”
The ghoul shape nodded. “He was one of the first of the frozen-sleep experimenters, and left detailed instructions for the preservation and revival of his still living body. The instructions are encased in a metal cylinder inside the vault where he was placed before his heart stopped beating.”
“Yes…that explains it!” Joyce exclaimed. “In our age there were several such frozen-sleep experiments. But few people could have named the scientists who were engaged in a project that did not attract anything like the interest it should have aroused. Or perhaps…it aroused too much interest. It both chilled and fascinated people, and they were a little afraid to face all of its implications. To go to sleep and wake up thousands of years in the future! The conquest of death on so bold and fearful a level made even the most imaginative viewers shrink a little when it was presented to them for the first time on television.
“Human nature is like that. It prefers to approach the possible conquest of death obliquely, in slow stages. It seems to dread a little—to draw back at first—from the scientific miracles it is secretly eager to believe in and embrace. Heart transplants were viewed in much the same way. But the surgeons who performed them were better known, perhaps because the success of the experiments could be determined without waiting for ten or fifty or a hundred thousand years to pass.”
“The Telens know that there must have been quite a few frozen-sleep experiments,” the ghoul shape said. “But they have succeeded in blotting the implications of that from their minds. Don’t you see? Only Bramwell has achieved a near-approach to immortality by surviving into our age. To become a cult idol, Bramwell had to remain, in their eyes, unique and almost godlike in his attributes. They never tire of comparing him to the Sun.”
“To the Sun! Of course. During the first few moments of that clairvoyant vision, they kept insisting that his splendor shone on every man, woman and child in our age.”
“Well, that answers your first question,” the ghoul shape said. “They took you captive, held you in bondage, accused you of disappointing them, even heaped harsh abuse upon you because they envied you.”
“Envied me? I don’t see—”
“It is really quite easy to explain. They are convinced that the men and women and even the children of your age must possess some special knowledge, some gift of healing that would dispel all of the dark shadows that have closed in about their minds and make them whole again. They are convinced that you share enough of Bramwell’s shining wisdom to enable them to regain what they have lost in their regression to a more primitive level of consciousness.
“To them, you hold in your hands a key which could open the portals wide on a lost wisdom, a vanished splendor. It is a wisdom and splendor which they have lost and desperately want to regain.”
“You cannot really help them, of course, but they do not know that. They want to become as you are—or as they think you are. But they envy you as well, and that, you see, is the other side of the coin. Envy and a desire to imitate the unattainable always lead to anger and resentment. They feel that you are deliberately withholding your shining gifts of wisdom and strength from them. And they are determined to break down your resistance, to shatter the pride which they feel is keeping you from helping them.”
The ghoul shape shifted his position on the boulder, as if his limbs had become cramped from remaining too long in one position. “What they hope to accomplish by taking more and more of the men and women of your age captive and keeping them under constant observation, would make very little sense to a sane mind. But, as I have said, their thinking is emotionally distorted, and far from sane.
“They are trying to find out as much as they possibly can about you, to determine—to use an idiomatic expression peculiar to your age—precisely what makes you tick. They are under the illusion that they are conducting a rigorously scientific experiment to find out if you can be persuaded to share your wisdom with them. They have made the mistake of thinking that just the right kind of psychological pressure will break down all of your resistance. Your age had a term for that, too, a highly descriptive one—‘Brainwashing.’
&n
bsp; “Brainwashing would, of course, defeat everything they are hoping to accomplish, for if you were forced to think exactly as they do you could not possibly help them. But an unbalanced mind is seldom capable of reasoning consistently enough to avoid the most glaring of contradictions.
“Bramwell’s apparent achievement of immortality has become a superstitious obsession with them. In that respect, they are wholly primitive, have regressed to the tribal god stage of culture. To them Bramwell’s still living body is surrounded by a kind of halo. Now do you understand?”
“I think I do, yes,” Joyce answered. “But why did you rescue me. You said that you had rescued me, didn’t you?”
“You were in great danger, that’s why,” the Krull said. “Your mind had been under their control for a dangerously long time. They don’t really care if the men and women they keep under constant observation are irreparably harmed. I did not like what I saw and heard.”
“You mean…you knew? You were there?”
“Just by accident. Sometimes we take an interest in what they do. I was there in the same way that you were—in a clairvoyant vision. My physical body was right here in the forest but I overheard everything they said to you, and that you said to them.”
“You mean—you can actually spy on them in that way?”
“If you want to call it that. There are many things that I haven’t time to explain to you now. You see, we can control them to a certain extent, with our minds alone. I am keeping them from suspecting that you are no longer in the vault in a non-physical way. It is an effort—a great strain, in fact—but I can do it for a short while. It should enable me to attempt something the Krulls should have done long ago. If I am successful it will be possible for you to leave this age and return to the twentieth century.”
Joyce almost stopped breathing. “But why do you want to help us? I must know. Unless I know it would be difficult for me to believe you.”
“You mean…it would be difficult for you to trust me. I think you know that you can. As for my reasons—we are so different from you in some respects that I could never hope to make you understand why it has become necessary for us to take such a risk. We cannot hope to succeed, however, unless you are prepared to trust me completely and do exactly as I say.”
“What must I do?” Joyce heard herself asking, stunned by what the ghoul shape had said, not quite daring to believe him, but feeling that if she let her doubts overwhelm her there would be no hope left at all.
“Bramwell must be awakened from his long, frozen sleep,” the ghoul-shape said. “Only the children can do it.”
“Only…the children?”
“Yes, does that seem strange to you? It is strange, but it is also true. The Telens cannot get inside the minds of the children and influence their thinking as they would like to do. They have never stopped trying, and that is why they have taken so many children captive. But children have minds of their own, weaker in some respects than the minds of adults, but stronger in other respects.
“Children have many hidden thoughts—dark, mysterious, secretive. They know how to keep many of their thoughts hidden from adults. They will fight to protect their secrets, with all the strength of their minds. There are secrets that can never be pried from a child. Their thoughts are simple in a complicated way, and the Telens cannot fathom what children may be thinking when they are fleeing down the wind—yes, I think that describes what I have in mind—in their private, well-guarded inner worlds.
“I told you that I could control the minds of the Telens but only up to a point, and only for a brief time. And if an adult went into the vault and set the mechanism in motion which would awaken Bramwell the Telens would know. The instant the hand of an adult touched that mechanism they would know, because such an intrusion, such a desecration, would be so terrible a shock to them that I would lose all of my ability to influence their minds. I would be powerless to prevent a temporary mind block from being completely shattered. They would know and you would all be destroyed.”
“You still haven’t told me what I must do.”
“Your companions are only a short distance away, in a round stone building on the far shore of a small lake. You can see the glimmer of the water from here, if you look past that large, lightning-blasted tree. You will have no difficulty in joining them. It is unguarded now—I have made sure of that—and they could all escape, if they knew how somnolent the Telens have become. But it is fortunate that they do not know, for the children will need adult assistance when they are brought to the vault.
“But remember—no adult must touch the mechanism itself. The children will set it in motion. I will be there to see that the children are told exactly what they must do before they enter the vault. All of your companions must accompany you when you return with them to the vault. I will guide you back. It is only a short distance from here.”
“But I was never actually there. You mean that this time—”
“You will be physically present, of course. And so will the children and all of the adults. I must leave you now, for there are a few precautions that I must take immediately. But when you start out for the vault, you will discover that you know exactly how to get there. I will be guiding you every step of the way.”
“I hope I will be believed when I tell my companions what you’ve just told me,” Joyce said. “If I should have difficulty in convincing them…”
“I’m sure you won’t. I’ll help with that, too. You must not allow any doubts to enter your mind.”
The Krull turned then, and Joyce stood motionless for a moment, watching his small, hunched form disappearing between the trees.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was Bobby who had climbed the highest. He’d ascended, hand over hand, the ladder-like indentations on the walls of the vault and was balancing himself right underneath the complex dial that controlled the freezing mechanism.
Suddenly Bobby’s hand went out and began to turn the massive dial. Slowly at first, because he possessed only an average child’s strength and then more rapidly as the revolving mechanism itself seemed to gain momentum.
He looked down at the Four Children, who had made no attempt to ascend in his wake and called out to them.
“You said you’d let me try first,” he said. “All right—it’s turning. Something is going to happen in a minute. That’s what my Dad said. You’d better not stand right under it. Why don’t you climb up here with me and then we can all get up on that shelf and watch.”
He reached down as he spoke and helped Susan up until she was crouching beside him at the base of the dial and then the Four Children started up.
The dial kept right on turning, faster and faster. It made six complete revolutions before the Four Children joined Bobby and Susan. Bobby was no longer turning it. The dial was moving by itself now, around and around and making a faint, droning sound.
The six children all climbed up on the projecting ledge of metal that jutted out from the wall of the vault on the right hand side of the spinning dial.
As they crouched there, they could clearly see the crystal-encased face of the frozen man who had slept for so long a time. Bobby was no longer able to remain silent while they waited for the dial to stop turning.
“My Dad says he’s been like that for thousands and thousands of years,” he said as if aware that there were emotions he was duty-bound to share. “How do you think he’ll feel when he wakes up?”
When no reply was forthcoming he added: “I know how I’d feel. Scared.”
The dial was revolving so rapidly now that it had turned into a gray blur. Suddenly the markings on it became distinct again and it slowed and stopped.
Instantly the frozen, crystal-encased face began to move. The mouth moved first, the lips pushing in and out and then there was a flickering of the sleeper’s eyelids.
“Look, Bobby!” Susan cried. “He
’s waking up.”
It was true, of course. The eyes of the frozen sleeper suddenly opened wide and he was looking straight at Bobby and Susan and the Four Children.
Betty Anne was sitting right beside Susan, and the two tiny tots suddenly grabbed hold of each other, as if they were afraid the older children would become too frightened to stay on the ledge and would leave them without support. One of the twins stood up straight and gave a little cry. But none of the others made a sound until a section of the wall directly beneath them began to move. A wide panel that had been so smoothly grooved into the wall that there had been no line of demarcation separating it from the shining expanse of metal surrounding it, glided open, and a white human arm, glistening with moisture, shot out of the aperture. The arm groped waveringly about in the overhead light, as if searching about for some solid object to grasp, and then a leg appeared.
Bobby and the staring Thacker boy cried out simultaneously, and the Trilling twins flattened themselves against the metal wall at their backs, as if seeking to get as far away as possible from what was taking place directly below them.
Into the vault there emerged a swaying figure still weighed down with a clinging film of ice. The ice was melting rapidly, permitting the figure to emerge almost naked into the light.
Its movements were slow and cumbersome, but it was its face that held the children’s gaze. It was a wildly staring countenance, the lips slack, the eyes darting to right and left in what appeared to be an extremity of fright.
There was silence for a moment, save for the quickened breathing of the children on the ledge. Then the vault was filled with shouts and hurrying feet.
Wilmont was the first to reach the swaying figure, his face tight with strain. As he seized firm hold of one cold arm, Wentworth grasped the other. Bobby started to climb down from the ledge, but his father waved him back.
“Stay right where you are, Bobby, until we get him out of here. Then you can follow us.”
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel Page 46
