The Silkie

by A. E. van Vogt

  XIX

  CEMP BEGAN to brace himself. Anger spilled through him like a torrent down a rocky decline. 'You incredible monster!' he telepathed.

  No answer.

  Cemp raged on, 'You're the most vicious creature that ever existed. I'm going to see that you get what's coming to you!'

  This time he got a reply, 'I'm leaving the solar system forever,' said the Glis. 'Why don't you get off before it's too late? I'll let you get away.'

  Cemp had no doubt of that. He was its most dangerous enemy, and his escape and unexpected appearance must have come as a hideous shock to the Glis.

  'I'm not leaving,' he retorted, 'until you undo what you've done to Earth.'

  There was silence.

  'Can you and will you?' Cemp demanded.

  'No. It's impossible.' The response came reluctantly.

  'But you could, if you wanted to, bring Earth back to size.

  'No. But I now wish I had not taken your planet,' said the Glis unhappily. 'It has been my policy to leave alone inhabited worlds that are protected by powerful life forms. I simply could not bring myself to believe that any Silkie was really dangerous to me. I was mistaken.'

  It was not the kind of repentance that Cemp respected. 'Why can't you ... unsqueeze it?' he persisted.

  It seemed that the Glis could create a gravity field, but it could not reverse such a field. It said apologetically, 'It would take as much power to undo it as it took to do it. Where is there such power?'

  Where, indeed? But still he could not give up. 'I'll teach you what antigravity is like,' Cemp offered, 'from what I can do in my own energy-control system.'

  But the Glis pointed out that it had had the opportunity to study such Systems in other Silkies. 'Don't think I didn't try. Evidently antigravity is a late manifestation of matter and energy. And I'm an early form — as you, and only you, know.'

  Cemp's hope faded suddenly. Somehow, he had kept believing that there was a possibility. There wasn't.

  The first grief touched him, the first real acceptance of the end of Earth.

  The Gus was communicating again. 'I can see that you and I now have a serious situation between us. So we must arrive at an agreement, I'll make you the leader of the Silkie nation I'll subtly influence everything and everyone to fit your wishes. Women — as many as you desire. Control — as much as you want. Future actions of the planetoid, you and I shall decide.'

  Cemp did not even consider the offer. He said grimly, 'You and I don't think alike. I can just imagine trusting you to leave me alone if I ever took the chance of changing to human form.' He broke off, then said curtly. 'The deal as I see it is a limited truce while I consider what I can do against you and you figure out what you can do to me.'

  'Since that's the way you feel,' was the harsh reply, 'let me make my position clear. If you begin any action against me, I shall first destroy Earth and the Silkie nation and then give you my attention.'

  Cemp replied in his own steely fashion, 'If you ever damage anything I value — and that includes all Silkies and what's left of Earth — I'll attack you with everything I've got.'

  The Gus said scornfully, 'You have nothing that can touch me — except those defense screens that reverse the attack flow. That way, you can use my own force against me. So I won't attack. Therefore permanent stalemate.'

  Cemp said, 'We'll see.'

  The Glis said, 'You yourself stated that your levels of logic wouldn't work on me.'

  'I meant not directly,' said Cemp. 'There are many indirect approaches to the mind.'

  'I don't see how anything like that can work on me,' was the reply.

  At that moment, Cemp didn't either.

  * * *

  XX

  THROUGH MILES of passageways, up as well as down and roundabout, Cemp made his way. The journey took him through long chambers filled with furniture and art objects from other planets.

  En route he saw strange and wonderful scenes in bas-relief and brilliant color on one wall after another. And always there were the planets themselves, glowingly beautiful, but horrifying too, in his awareness that each one represented a hideous crime.

  His destination was the city of the Silkies. He followed the internal pathway to it because he dared not leave the planetoid to take an external route. The Glis had virtually admitted that it had not anticipated that he, its most dangerous enemy, would survive. So if he ever left these caves, he would have no further choice, no chance to decide on what the penalty — if any — or the outcome should be and no part at all in the Silkie future. For he would surely never be allowed to return.

  Not that there was any purpose in him — his grief was too deep and terrible. He had failed to protect, failed to realise, failed in his duty.

  Earth was lost. It was lost quickly, completely, a disaster so great that it could not even be contemplated for more than instants at a time.

  At intervals, he mourned Joanne and Charley Baxter and other friends among the Special People and the human race.

  By the time he was sunk into these miseries, he had taken up an observation position on top of a tree over-looking the main street of the Silkie city. There he waited, with all his signal systems constantly at peak alert.

  While he maintained his tireless vigil, the life of the Silkie community had its being around him. The Silkies continued to live mostly as humans, and this began to seem significant.

  Cemp thought, shocked, They're being kept vulnerable!

  In human form, they could all be killed in a single flash of intolerable flame.

  He telepathed on the Glis band, 'Free them from that compulsion or I'll tell them the truth about what you are.' An immediate, ferocious answer came: 'You say one word, and I shall wipe out the entire nest.'

  Cemp commanded, 'Release them from that compulsion, or we come to our crisis right now.'

  His statement must have given the Glis pause, for there was a brief silence. Then, 'I'll release half of them. No more, I must retain some hold over you.'

  Cemp considered that and realised its truth. 'But it has to be on an alternating basis. Half are free for twelve hours, then the other half.'

  The Glis accepted the compromise without further argument. Clearly, it was prepared to recognise the balance of power.

  'Where are we heading?' asked Cemp.

  'To another star system.'

  The answer did not satisfy Cemp. Surely the Glis didn't expect to go on with its malignant game of collecting inhabited planets.

  He challenged, 'I feel that you have some secret purpose.'

  'Don't be ridiculous, and don't bother me any more.'

  Stalemate.

  As the days and the weeks went by, Cemp tried to keep track of the distance the planetoid was covering and the direction it was going. The speed of the meteorite had reached nearly a light-year per day, Earth time.

  Eighty-two of those days passed. And then there was the feel of slowing down. The deceleration continued all that day and the next. And for Cemp, there was finally no question — he could not permit this strange craft which was now his home to arrive at a destination about which he knew nothing.

  'Stop this ship!' he ordered.

  The Glis replied angrily, 'You can't expect to control such minor things as this!'

  Since it could be a deadly dangerous scheme, Cemp replied, 'Then open yourself to me. Show me everything you know about this system.'

  'I've never been here before.'

  'All right, then that's what I'll see when you open up.'

  'I can't possibly let you look inside me. You may see some thing this time that will make me vulnerable to your techniques.'

  'Then change course.'

  'No. That would mean I can't go anywhere until you die about a thousand years from now I refuse to accept such a limitation.'

  The second reference to Silkie age gave Cemp great pause. On Earth no one had known how long Silkies could live, since none born there had died a natural death. He himself was only
thirty-eight years of age.

  'Look,' he said finally, 'if I have only a thousand years, why don't you just sit me out? That must be only a pinpoint in time compared with your lifespan.'

  'All right we'll do that!' replied the Glis. But the deceleration continued.

  Cemp telepathed, 'If you don't turn aside, I must take action.'

  'What can you do?' was the contemptuous response.

  It was good question. What, indeed?

  'I warn you,' said Cemp.

  'Just don't tell anyone about me. Other than that, do anything you please.'

  Cemp said, 'I gather you've decided I'm not dangerous. And this is the way you act with those you consider harmless.'

  The Glis said that had Cemp been able to do something, he would already have done it. It finished, 'And so I tell you flatly, I'm going to do as I please; and the only restriction on you is, don't violate my need for secrecy. Now, don't bother me again.'

  The meaning of the dismissal was clear. He had been judged helpless, categorised as someone whose desires need not be considered. The eighty days of inaction had stood against him. He hadn't attacked; therefore, he couldn't. That was palpably the other's logic.

  Well... what could he do?

  He could make an energy assault. But that would take time to mount, and he could expect that the Silkie nation would be wiped out in retaliation and Earth destroyed.

  Cemp decided that he was not ready to force such a calamity. He was presently dismayed to realise that the Glis's analysis was correct. He could keep his mind shut and respect its need for secrecy and nothing more.

  He ought, it seemed to him, to point out to the Glis that there were different types of secrecy. Gradations. Secrecy about itself was one type. But secrecy about the star system ahead was quite another. The whole subject of secrecy — Cemp's mind poised. Then he thought, How could l have missed it? Yet, even as he wondered, he realised how it had happened. The Glis's need to withhold knowledge of itself had seemed understandable, and somehow the naturalness of it had made him bypass its implications. But now...

  Secrecy, he thought. Of course! That's it!

  To Silkies, secrecy was an understood phenomenon.

  After a few more seconds of thinking about it, Cemp took his first action. He reversed gravity in relation to the planetoid mass below him. Light as a thistledown, he floated up and away from the treetop that had been his observation post for so long. Soon he was speeding along granite corridors.

  * * *

  XXI

  WITHOUT INCIDENT, Cemp reached the chamber containing Earth.

  As he set his signals so that all his screens would protect that precious round ball, Cemp permitted himself another increment of hope.

  Secrets! he thought again, and his mind soared.

  Life, in its natural impulse, had no secrets.

  Baby gurgled or cried or manifested needs instant by instant as each feeling was experienced. But the child, growing older, was progressively admonished and inhibited, subjected to a thousand restraints. Yet all his life the growing being would want openness and unrestraint, would struggle to free himself from childhood conditioning.

  Conditioning was not of itself logic of levels, but it was related — a step lower. The appearance was of a control center; that is, a rigidity. But it was a created center and could be repeatedly mobilised by the correct stimulus. That part was automatic.

  The decisive fact was that, since the Glis had conditioned itself to secrecy — it was conditionable.

  Having reached this penultimate point in his analysis, Cemp hesitated. As a Silkie, he was conditioned to incapacitate rather than kill, to negotiate rather than incapacitate, and to promote well-being everywhere.

  Even for the Glis, death should be the final consideration, not the first.

  So he telepathed, 'In all your long span, you have feared that someone would one day learn how to destroy you. I have to tell you that I am that feared person. So unless you are prepared to back down from those insolent statements of a little while ago, you must die.'

  The answer came coldly. 'I let you go to your planet Earth because I have the real hostages under my complete control — the Silkie nation!'

  'That is your final statement?' Cemp questioned.

  'Yes. Cease these foolish threats. They are beginning to irritate me.'

  Cemp now said, 'I know where you come from, what you are, and what happened to others like you.'

  Of course, he knew nothing of the kind. But it was the technique. By stating the generalisation, he would evoke from the Glis's perception and memory network, first, the truth. Then, like all living things, the Glis would immediately have the automatic impulse to give forth the information as it actually was.

  Yet before it could do so, it would exercise the restraint of secrecy. And that would be an exact pattern, a reaffirmation of similar precise restraints in its long, long past. His problem was to utilise it before it destimulated, because as long as it held, it was the equivalent of a logic-of-levels gestalt.

  Having, according to the theory, mobilised it, Cemp transmitted the triggering signal.

  A startled thought came from the Glis: 'What have you done?'

  It was Cemp's turn to be sly, covert, scheming. He said, 'I had to call to your attention that you had better deal with me.'

  It was too late for the Glis to help itself, but the pretense — if successful might save many lives.

  'I wish to point out,' said the Glis, 'that I have not yet damaged anything of value.'

  Cemp was profoundly relieved to hear the statement. But he had no regrets. With such a creature as this, he could not hope to repeat what he was doing against it. Once the process was started, it was all or nothing.

  'What was it you said before about bargaining?' the Glis asked urgently.

  Cemp steeled himself against sympathy.

  The Glis continued, 'I'll give you all my secrets in exchange for your telling me what you're doing to me. I'm experiencing severe internal disturbance, and I don't know why.'

  Cemp hesitated. It was a tremendous offer. But he divined that once he made such a promise, he would have to keep it.

  What had happened was this: As he had hoped, his final signal had triggered the equivalent of a colony gestalt, in this instance the process by which life forms slowly over the millennia adjusted to exterior change.

  And the cycle-completing control centers, the growth-change mechanisms in the great being, were stimulated.

  Silkies understood the nature of growth, and of change they knew much from their own bodies. But Silkies were late indeed in the scheme of life. In terms of evolution, their cells were as old as the rocks and the planets. The entire history of life's progression was in every cell of a Silkie.

  That could not be true of the Glis. It was from an ancient eon, and it had stopped time within itself. Or at least, it had not passed on its seed, which was the way of change through time. In itself, it manifested old, primitive forms. Great forms they were, but the memory in each cell would be limited to what had gone before. Therefore, it couldn't know what, in holding back as it had, it was holding back from.

  'I promise not to go on to the Nijjan system,' said the Glis. 'Observe I'm already stopping.'

  Cemp sensed a cessation of the motion of the planetoid, but it seemed a minor act, not meaningful.

  He merely noted, in passing the identity of the star the Glis had named, observing that since it knew the name, it had been there before. This seemed to imply that the Glis had a purpose in going there.

  It didn't matter; they were turning away from it, would never reach it. If there was a threat there for Cemp or for Silkies, it was now diverted and had been useful only in that it had forced him to action regardless of the consequences.

  The Glis's willingness to make amends when it no longer had any choice was merely a sad commentary on its character, but much too late. Many planets too late, Cemp thought.

  How many? he wondered. And be
cause he was in the strange emotional condition of someone whose whole thought and effort are concentrated on a single intensely felt purpose, he asked the question aloud automatically, as it came into his mind.

  'I don't think I should tell you; you might hold it against me,' the Glis replied.

  It must have sensed Cemp's adamant state, for it said quickly, 'Eighteen hundred and twenty-three.'

  So many!

  The total of them did not shock Cemp — it hurt him. For one of that countless number of unnecessary dead on those planets was Joanne. Another was Charley Baxter.

  'Why have you done all this?' Cemp asked. 'Why destroy all those planets?'

  'They were so beautiful.'

  True. Cemp had a sudden mental vision of a great planet hanging in space, its atmosphere ballooning up above the oceans and mountains and plains. He had seen that sight often yet found it always a thing of splendor beyond all the visual delights of the universe.

  The feeling passed, for a planet was beautiful when it was brooded over by its parent sun and not as a shrunken museum piece.

  The Glis with its planets was like a bead hunter of old. Skillfully, he had murdered each victim. Patiently, he had reduced the head to its small size. Lovingly, he had placed it in his collection.

  For the head hunter, each perfect miniature head was a symbol of his manhood. For the Glis, the planets were ... what?

  Cemp couldn't imagine.

  But he had delayed long enough. He sensed incipient violence on the communication band. He said hastily, 'All right, I agree — as soon as you do what I want, I'll tell you exactly how I'm attacking you.'

  'What do you want?'

  Cemp said, 'First, let the other Silkies go outside.'

  'But you'll do as I've asked?'

  'Yes. When you've released them, put me and the Earth outside, safely.'

  'Then you'll tell me?'

  'Yes.'

  The Glis threatened, 'If you don't, I'll smash your little planet. I will not let you or it escape, if you don't tell me.'

  'I'll tell you.'

  * * *

  XXII