“Yes, it is clear enough,” Merva admitted slowly: “the only thing troubling me is the fact that you do not seem to have considered the danger attached to the initial experiments. I am quite prepared to admit that a generator stored with cosmic energy, when complete, would be the mightiest weapon ever contrived, but in the early stages of construction you would have to experiment with cosmic energy almost constantly and since you are flesh and blood the energy might eventually have a very serious effect upon you.”
“Pioneers always take the risks,” Exodus replied, shrugging. “I have not the least fear but what I shall conduct the experiments in perfect safety and in the fullest insulation—and there is the virtue that I have unnumbered years in which to make my experiments. My point is this, mother,” he continued, striding forward until he was facing her directly, “when the day finally comes to strike I wish to have in my possession a weapon so shattering, so completely reliable, that the chance of defeat is entirely ruled out. Effective though the instruments are which you have designed I still do not feel inclined to pin all my faith on them. I want something that at one blow can destroy half the world completely. A weapon that can reduce whole civilisations and whole human beings into complete dust with one fell swoop. Your weapons are ideal for individual picking off as one might call it, or for concentrating on small points that will not come into the main area, but for the initial blast I say let us have cosmic radiation. Under the withering impact of that human beings will shrivel and vanish like ants on a red hot grill!”
“Exodus, I am proud of you,” Merva commented, rising to her feet and moving towards him. “You have your father’s immense breadth of outlook and my complete lack of sentiment. The combination of the two has produced an ideal avenger. Naturally it goes without saying that I will help you all I can with a plan like this and then we....”
“I don’t think I shall need any help,” Exodus said thinking. “I am one that must work alone and entirely to my own ideas. I do not mean by that that I am shutting you out from my activities but I do insist on doing this whole construction alone. The machine is to be mine and the power that goes with it is also to be mine. Like you I find it difficult to share power with anybody.”
The eyes of mother and son met for a moment and in neither was there the faintest trace of yielding. Possibly the most discomfited was Merva in that she had come to realise at last that her son was possessed of greater scientific intelligence than either herself or her late husband.
“And when do you intend to start the construction of this machine?” she asked presently, moving away.
“I’m in no hurry. I have the drawings to get out first but I thought it would be as well to let you know what I am doing in case you find me busy on the job without a previous explanation. What I have in mind is to turn the main storage room at the far end of the vessel into the site for the generator. The stuff that is already in there can easily be moved into some of the other holds of the ship and that would leave me ample room for construction. If the generator were to be constructed there, filling one quarter of the ship, the feeder lines from it could afterwards be carried to the nose of the vessel and there we have the whole thing beautifully under control. You will be able to estimate for yourself how much cosmic power there will be in a generator occupying a quarter of a ship this size.”
“There can never be too much power,” Merva replied. “That is the secret of success, be it human power or elemental power.”
“Well then, since you have given your blessing….” Exodus crossed over to the life energy machine and stood contemplating it thoughtfully. Merva watched him, her eyes narrowed over a thought.
“Would it do any harm,” Exodus asked, “if you switched this machine on for me so that I can once again refresh my mind as to its principles?”
“It is quite impossible to switch it on without there being a dissipation of life energy,” Merva answered him. “There is so little of it that I can’t afford to lose any either for your sake or mine, so I’m afraid nothing can be done in that direction.”
“That,” Exodus said, turning and looking at her, “doesn’t make sense. It is as simple to switch this machine on in order to see its operation without it dissipating any energy as it is to switch on the power plant of the space ship without having it to actually drive the vessel. Besides I must have it switched on in order to have a better idea of the basic principles which I have in mind.”
Merva shook her head. “I cannot help you there, Exodus.”
A grim look came into his face; he crossed over to where his mother was standing.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he declared flatly. “On the one hand you are willing to help me all you can with this invention then the moment I ask you to make the first move in regard to that help, you refuse to do anything. There can’t be any reason why you don’t want this machine switched on, can there?”
“Are you quite sure,” Merva asked, deliberately, “that this cosmic ray theory of yours is absolutely genuine?”
“Genuine?” Exodus stared at her in amazement. “But of course it’s genuine! Why should you so suddenly decide to doubt it?”
“I doubt it, Exodus, because it is so closely linked in basis of operation with this life energy machine of mine. I have known for long enough that you would like to know a great deal more about this life energy machine and I’m going to venture to suggest that this cosmic ray theory of yours, entirely nebulous, has been devised so as to make it necessary for you to thoroughly examine this life energy machine as a supposed basis for your own machine. Now that I do not intend to allow.”
“And why not?” Exodus asked, completely blank.
“A little while ago, Exodus, you said that you found it difficult to share power with anybody. I too am of the same mind and there is nothing that could give you greater power than to know more about that life energy machine. You could, if you chose, use just enough energy to give yourself just one more injection and then you could dissipate the remainder, leaving me without anything. I dislike saying such a thing about my own son but I believe in an emergency you would do just that.”
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Exodus declared flatly. “I admit that I don’t like sharing power either with you or anybody else but I’m also remembering that you are also my mother, my own flesh and blood. I want to study this life energy machine for no other purpose than to further my own invention. I beg of you to believe that.”
“You’ll have to find some other way,” Merva said, deliberately. “I have no intention of allowing you to examine that machine.”
“There is nothing to stop me doing it in your absence.”
“Yes, there is. I intend to place an electrical circuit around it, and it will be so arranged that if you touch any part of that machine you will receive a shock sufficient to kill you. Just as you respect me as your own flesh and blood I respect you for the same reason, but in the final analysis one’s own life comes first and I do not propose to take any chances with that. Forget all about that machine, Exodus, and work out your own invention entirely from a theoretical basis. I will willingly check it for you and in detail, correcting it where it fails to match up with this life energy machine as its basis.”
Exodus was silent for a long moment, obviously quite unable to understand the situation. Even if he had for a moment suspected that Vilnia had said anything to his mother—which indeed he did not—he would never have expected her to take the course of guarding the life energy machine: rather he would have expected that she would have protected herself. So the puzzle for him was complete.
“Since that is your attitude, mother,” he said, briefly, “you leave me no other course than to make the necessary drawings and then submit them to you, and I must say I am not particularly happy over your complete lack of cooperation.”
With that he swung from the laboratory and was gone.
Merva remained grimly silent for several moments after the laboratory door had closed, then she
crossed over to the life energy machine and set to work to devise the electrical circuit to give it protection in case of emergency. This was a task that was destined to occupy her for some hours and in the meantime Exodus had gone in search of Vilnia. He found her in her accustomed place in the conning tower. He looked and felt rather irritated as he studied her innocent young face as she stared outwards towards the stars.
“Why do you have to spend so much time in here?” he demanded roughly. “Don’t you realise that you are a scientist just like the rest of us and for that reason you should be constantly at my side helping me in the tasks which I have to perform. Instead of that I find you here looking out on to infinity. What do you expect to gain by doing that?”
Vilnia turned and looked at him wistfully.
“Have you never liked to be alone with your thoughts, Exodus?”
“What I like and what I get are two very different things, Vilnia. Usually I have so many things to work out I just haven’t time to be alone with my thoughts. You seem to forget that I am one of the prime movers in this great scheme of vengeance against the Earth. I have no time to spend gazing out on to infinity.”
“From which I assume you wish me to help you with something or other?”
“I had thought of that possibility,” Exodus admitted, and then he hesitated. Finally he shook his head. “Upon reflection I’m afraid you would be more of a hindrance than help. I suppose it is a wife’s purpose to help her husband but only within the limits which she understands and you couldn’t possibly understand a cosmic energy generator.”
Vilnia looked at him quickly. “And what in heaven’s name do you want a thing like that for? Or is it all part of that plot you mentioned to be rid of your mother?”
“Plot I mentioned?” Exodus frowned a little, then he gave a sudden start. “Just a minute!”
Reaching forward he caught Vilnia’s shoulders fiercely and forced her to look at him. “Tell me something, Vilnia. Did you by any chance tell mother that I had mentioned casually that I didn’t forever intend to be under her domination?”
Vilnia was silent, looking away, until Exodus’ rough hand forced her to once again look at him.
“Well?” he demanded, “I’m asking you a question. Don’t sit there like a mute!”
“As a matter of fact I did,” Vilnia replied, sighing. “Now that you do know the worst thing you can do is kill me and I don’t suppose you will do that. At least, not until a child has been born!”
Exodus lowered his hands and pondered. “This,” he said slowly, “explains a great deal. Mother was particularly cautious when I asked her if I could study the life energy machine. I just couldn’t understand why then, but I do now. She must believe from what you have told her that I intend to do something to stop her receiving the energy, which she must have. As a matter of actual fact nothing could be further from my thoughts. The trouble is that I’m now going to be greatly delayed in the construction of my cosmic generator, thanks to your infernal interference. Why did you have to betray my confidence like that?” he demanded savagely.
“I have a respect for my conscience, Exodus, even if you have not. I just could not hear of a plot like that directed against my mother-in-law without warning her of what was coming.”
“How very touching,” Exodus sneered, “and also how very unconvincing. I can hardly imagine any person in whose fate you are less concerned than my mother’s—unless it be mine.”
Vilnia got to her feet and shrugged her shoulders.
“If you don’t mind. Exodus, I’m finding this conversation extremely odious. I would prefer to talk to you when you are in a calmer mood.”
“Don’t you dare adopt that tone to me!” he barked, catching her arm and swinging her back to him. “You seem to have forgotten one fact—you’re my wife now, and as such entirely under my dictation. That is the law of the ship and there is certainly going to be no exception in your case. I’ll tell you why you betrayed me to my mother,” he went on, tightening his hold so fiercely on Vilnia’s arm that she gave a little gasp, “because you thought by doing that to curry favour with her. You thought she would grant you favours, my dear, didn’t you?”
“I certainly thought it might make her hate me less,” Vilnia retorted fiercely, “and let go of my arm, you’re hurting me.” She snatched it away savagely.
“Ah, so Vilnia has a little fire after all,” Exodus sneered, dropping his hand. “I thought you had more intelligence than the others and therefore a little more spirit. It pleases me to see it, but it does not please me to know that you have started off our married life by repeating a merely casual remark in the way you have. Suppose we get one thing straight, Vilnia, here and now—do you to the end of your days prefer to be dominated by my mother or by me?”
“I may not be dominated by either,” she answered, ambiguously.
Exodus grinned broadly. “Can it be that the little Vilnia is conceiving some way of disposing of me as well as my mother? You haven’t the brains or the courage, my dear, so don’t waste your time. You’re just like the rest of your generation, spineless and lazy good-for-nothings. Haven’t you noticed how they all react, why it is that I am the strongest of the generation? Why it is that you are all weak physically and the rest of your colleagues of the same generation as well? The reason is not far to seek.
“That extraction of energy from you and the others when you were children has had the inevitable reaction of producing feeble adult life. Not enough to incapacitate but enough to reduce that immense virility of purpose which one has come to expect of adult scientists in this day and age.”
Vilnia smiled faintly to herself and Exodus gave an angry look.
“I was not aware that I had said anything funny!”
“No, Exodus, you didn’t say anything funny. I was just thinking how odd it would be if our lack of virility makes it that no children are born. That would be a great tragedy for you and your mother, wouldn’t it?”
Exodus started. “That must not happen at any price! It would ruin everything!”
“As far as I am concerned I could very easily ruin everything by leaping out of the airlock into the void. What would you do then, Exodus?”
He stared at her, unbelieving. It seemed impossible that so frail a girl with so gentle a voice could even conceive of flinging herself into the sub-zero of interstellar space.
“Don’t worry,” she said, gently, “I shan’t do that. Not because I am afraid to do so but because—believe it or not—it would give me pleasure to have a child of my own in whom I could take an interest despite the fact that he or she will become nothing more or less than a tool of your mother and you. Nevertheless it would perhaps help to fill the aching void, the awful longing that is within me.... It will give me something to cherish and to love.
“To go through life as I am now, not caring for or being cared for by anybody is absolute hell. You can’t see it from my point of view because you have power and this fantastic plan of vengeance. But the rest of the girls aboard this vessel feel like I do, and indeed some of the young men too. They’re not all at one with this idea of vengeance, believe me: it seems to have become centred only between you and your mother now. There still remains with us the memory of that experiment in our childhood when quite unable to help ourselves we were sacrificed to the Moloch of your mother’s thirst for revenge. And,” Vilnia added simply, with an upward lift of her wide eyes, “the scheme will never work out, Exodus, you know.”
“Never work out! Don’t be ridiculous! The planning through the endless years, the absolute meticulous regard to detail, the vast scientific machines, the enormous expenditure of mental energy, the checking by electronic brains of every figure we shall ever make, and you say it I can never work out! Of all the fool things you’ve said, Vilnia, that is decidedly the most foolish.”
Vilnia sat down again looking at the stars. “In any case it doesn’t matter to me,” she shrugged. “I shall not be alive when that time comes. But when t
he time does come you’ll remember what I have said. It cannot work out….”
“Then suppose you tell me why not?”
“I don’t know why not. If I did I’d tell you. I just happen to know, that’s all. It’s a sort of instinct.”
“I never did believe in woman’s intuition,” Exodus retorted, bitterly. With that he swung away and left the conning tower hurrying out to the adjoining section of the laboratory which was devoted entirely to draughtsmanship and the drawing board stage of the various weapons of destruction intended for the ultimate vengeance.
Vilnia watched him go and smiled sadly to herself.
And the ship fled on....
* * * * * * *
Weeks—months—years— In one respect Vilnia had proved incorrect. Children had been born, her own included, and as far as could be told by the medical machine aboard the vessel each one of them was entirely robust and physically perfect in every detail. Whatever the lack of vitality in the parents, occasioned by their losing so much vital energy in their youth, it had apparently not been handed on to the offspring.
Five years had gone since that speaking-of-minds in the conning tower and now Exodus and Vilnia had reached full maturity and twenty-three years of age. As far as Vilnia was concerned the difference was hardly apparent except that she had perhaps more development and was indeed about an inch taller than she had been.
It was in Exodus that the change was so obvious. Big as a youth he was immense as a man and almost an exact duplicate of the mighty Rigilus who had once ruled the world and the solar system. He was majestic, dominant and entirely cruel, a perfect combination of his mother and father. Where Rigilus had had the tolerance, Exodus had none and where Rigilus had carried most people along with him and benefited them thereby, Exodus had become a figure of terror, a prowler aboard the mighty space machine; his steely eyes always alert for the smallest fault and his authority absolutely unchallenged since he always had his mother to back him.
1,000-Year Voyage Page 9
