“Good dom,” he said anxiously, remembering his manners, “I have never been a man of fire. And the only words I know that are beautiful are the words I have read in books… I hope I did nothing wrong?”
“Dion,” said Juno, “there was something they could not destroy. Something terrible, something glorious. They could not destroy the secret of your seed.”
“My seed?”
“Your seed. The seed that is passed from generation to generation… You are a freak, Dion, a genetic miracle. There was more to your dreams than we thought… Don’t even try to understand what I mean. I am not even sure that I understand too clearly, myself. But you have double Y-chromosomes, and the pattern is somehow dominant. It is enough for you to know that you can only breed sons.”
“Sons?” He gazed at her uncomprehendingly.
“Yes, sons. You gave me your seed, and the seed has produced nothing but sons.”
“Sons?” he said again. Echoes were reverberating down the long corridors of memory. There was a curious aching in his chest—a sensation that he had not experienced for far longer than he could remember.
“You have eight sons, Dion, tall and strong.” Juno spread out her hands apologetically. “There might have been more, but they were all I could afford. Each son has a different mother, but each has the same father. They have been told about their father and –” she smiled, “since there was much that was wonderful in a meistersinger that I once knew, they are not ashamed.”
“Eight sons,” he repeated mechanically. There seemed to be a drum roll inside his ancient ribs, and the drum roll swelled into thunder.
“Eight sons,” echoed Juno. “And three of them have the dominant double Y-chromosomes. They, too, can breed only sons… So it seems that you have won the war, Dion, in a way that no one ever dreamed you could have won. Your sons will breed more sons. And in the end, if we do not make any more mistakes, we can create a balanced world of men and women.”
“Eight sons,” said Dion. He was an old man, and he understood nothing of double Y-chromosomes; but, whatever else it could do, grade one analysis could not destroy the ancient music of the blood.
“I gave them names you might once have liked,” went on Juno. “I called them Blake, Byron and Shelley; Marlowe, Tennyson, Eliot and Thomas…” She gave a faint smile. “The first of all was Jubal.”
“Where are they?” demanded Dion. “Where are my sons?”
“Waiting only for me to call them. You see, I—I wanted to talk to you first… I wanted to know if…” Her voice faltered.
Briefly, the mists cleared a little in Dion’s mind. Briefly, he sensed that this stranger was no stranger, not a ghost even, but someone with whom he had shared a brighter world—before a name was tattooed on his wrist.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “Forgive me. There is something I know and can’t remember… Forgive me… Will you call my sons ?”
Juno spoke into the tiny transceiver clipped to her sky suit.
Presently, eight dark shapes swooped in formation from the south. They circled low over Wits’ End, then touched down together in front of Juno and Dion.
The old man gazed at their proud, young faces. He saw the brightness in their eyes and sensed the energy in their limbs. Truly, they were men.
And then he thought briefly and vaguely of the dark fog of forgetfulness and loneliness in which he had lived for so many years. And the words that had obscurely comforted him for so long came tumbling into his mind.
For though they be punished in the sight of men,
yet is their hope full of immortality.
And having been a little chastised,
they shall be greatly rewarded…
Dion Quern, having endured much, and remembering little, realized dimly at last that the journey had been worthwhile.
He held out his hands. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome, all my sons.”
It was late autumn, and there was a touch of frost in the air.
But there was also the strange, autumnal scent of fulfilment.
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Also By Edmund Cooper
Collections
Jupiter Laughs
Voices in the Dark
A World of Difference
Novels
All Fool's Day (1966)
The Cloud Walker (1973)
A Far Sunset (1967)
Five to Twelve (1968)
Kronk (1970) (aka Son of Kronk)
The Last Continent (1970)
Merry Christmas Ms Minerva (1978)
The Overman Culture (1971)
Prisoner of Fire (1974)
Seahorse in the Sky (1969)
Seed of Light (1959)
The Slaves of Heaven (1975)
The Tenth Planet (1973)
Transit (1964)
Uncertain Midnight (1958) (aka Deadly Image)
Who Needs Men? (1972)
Ferry Rocket (1954) (Writing as George Kinley)
The Expendables (Writing as Richard Avery)
1. The Expendables: The Deathworms of Kratos (1975)
2. The Expendables: The Rings of Tantalus (1975)
3. The Expendables: The Wargames of Zelos (1975)
4. The Expendables: The Venom of Argus (1976)
Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)
Edmund Cooper was born in Cheshire in 1926. He served in the Merchant navy towards the end of the Second World War and trained as a teacher after its end. He began to publish SF stories in 1951 and produced a considerable amount of short fiction throughout the ‘50s, moving on, by the end of that decade, to the novels for which he is chiefly remembered. His works displayed perhaps a bleaker view of the future than many of his contemporaries’, frequently utilising post-apocalyptic settings. In addition to writing novels, Edmund Cooper reviewed science fiction for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1982.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © The Edmund Cooper Literary Trust. Contact e-mail [email protected] 1968
All rights reserved.
The right of Edmund Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11646 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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