The 19th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Charles V. De Vet

  The Liieen, he knew, had assumed the shape and form of the being it read in his mind would be most pleasing to him. It was imperative to them to solicit all the cooperation possible from their captured specimen.

  Their studying of him in order to find the best means of eliminating his kind, he saw, was of secondary importance; they had so many ways of doing this. Primarily, their problem was to find all they could about the life of the dominant species of this world. They intended to take that shape when they assumed control. Logically the ruling species was supreme because it was most fitted to its environment. Later they would make changes as they saw fit.

  “Am I beautiful, Gabriel?” she asked. Even her voice carried the lilt of Celtic melody which he had loved so well in the original Marie.

  “You know that you are everything that is lovely to me.” For a moment he forgot that she was anything but the beautiful girl who sat before him. Then a morbid thought touched at his mind. What if she were not at all a female but only a neuter being in the form of a woman? Worse, perhaps her sex was male.

  She smiled as she read his thoughts. “Our sex is always that of the form we assume, I am now as much a woman of your earth as though I were born one.”

  He noted briefly that she spoke rather than projecting her thoughts in the accepted manner of her people.

  That was probably done to enable her to synchronize her facial and bodily expressions with her speech. This was necessary if she were to depict the personality which he bore in his mind.

  “If one of your companions were to assume the form of a human male, would it be possible for you to conceive a child?”

  “As possible as it would be for us to conceive one in any other form. However, child bearing has become almost a biological oddity among us.”

  “By choice?”

  “No. Somewhere along the way we lost the greater part of our fertility. We hope our new environment and the opportunity to rest from our long quest will enable us to regain it.”

  Gabriel turned to the other person in the room. His mind rejected the form of his friend Becklin, which the being assumed. In fascinated wonder he watched the stranger lose its individual identity of feature. Then slowly it became the replica of Francis Melzarek, famous law giver and Chief Justice of former years.

  Gabriel had not been aware that he had been comparing the quiddity with Melzarek until the transformation.

  “If you don’t mind,” Gabriel spoke to him, “I’ll call you Melzarek so that I may have some means of addressing you.” He had noted before that none of these people bore names. They were referred to by means of thought pictures.

  “Please do,” replied the foreign one.

  “As we are both aware,” said Gabriel, “your purpose is to destroy the people of my race. My intention is to attempt to persuade you not to do so. Am I correct in assuming that if I can convince you, as leader of your people, you can command their obedience to your decision?”

  “I am only their leader insofar as I express the will of my folk. However, if I am convinced logically, and not by any mental trickery which you may possess, there can be no doubt but that the same arguments would be just as logical to them.”

  “That is clear,” said Gabriel. “Let me start by bringing up this question: You are assuming that you have the ability to destroy my species. Are you positive that you can?”

  “Our conclusions, as to the stage of cyclical history of your civilizations, which we have drawn; using your architecture, agriculture, and such, as criteria, leave no doubt in our minds of our ability.”

  “Are you certain that you could so easily destroy men such as myself,” Gabriel asked.

  “At first that puzzled us. We know now, however, that you are what your biologists name a “sport.”

  Gabriel saw the futility of further argument along this line. “Do you not have a God to whom you would have to answer for the wanton destruction of billions of lives?”

  “The fundamental belief of our race in regard to that question is similar to the philosophy expressed,” here Melzarek paused momentarily to swiftly probe Gabriel’s memory, “by one of your scholars as ‘it is just as easy for the strong to be strong as it is for the weak to be weak.’ If the act is bad, as your ethics would call it, then we are still fully justified in committing it because we are too weak to do good. If it is good, we do it because we are strong. Thus we know that we are justified in any act which we feel necessary to perform.”

  “That is a form of fatalism, a theory which few of our men of wisdom accept. Surely it is beneath beings like yourselves.”

  “Not at all. Fatalism is a do-nothing philosophy. Every act of ours has its logical consequences, which we do not accept as fore-ordained. We act only in the manner which we believe will be for the ultimate good of our people, with no inhibiting fear of punishment.”

  “I am not sure that I am prepared to formulate my arguments against your reasoning,” replied Gabriel, “but I am positive that they are wrong, and that given time I can prove it to you. Will you grant me this time?”

  “Certainly. Would you care to meet with me again tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  * * * *

  Somewhere, Gabriel was certain, there was a weakness in the aliens at which he could strike. He knew that the chink in their armor must be found in their lode. They were logical people and could only be dissuaded from their purpose by stronger logic. He pondered all through the night, letting only one part of his intellect slumber at a time. While he was certain that their philosophy was wrong, he did not think that it presented his best avenue of persuasion.

  Suddenly he saw, not a complete solution, but the weak spot at which he could strike. He slept, knowing that he would be ready for the interview on the morrow.

  * * * *

  “I have been trying to ascertain why I have been feeling pity for you,” Gabriel began. “You are a mighty race, and your intellect is magnificent. You are about to massacre my people, yet you are committing a futile crime, the fruits of which you will never reap.”

  “Will you explain what you mean by that?” Melzarek asked. Marie watched, with almost a hopeful look in her blue, blue eyes.

  “You are a dying race,” Gabriel replied, “and I know why you are dying. I may even possess the solution.”

  “Please continue.” He had Melzarek’s complete attention.

  “I will attempt to explain by the method which we call Socratic. Do you mind answering the questions I will ask you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “If you found that one of your people had developed a defect, say through an accident, would you destroy him?”

  “If he were a liability to our cause, of course,” answered Melzarek. “That has been done many times in the past.”

  “What if he were your best friend?”

  “I see what you mean by ‘friend’,” Melzarek smiled. “None of us have ‘friends,’ except that we all help for the common Purpose.”

  “If the defect developed in yourself, would you destroy yourself or permit yourself to be destroyed?”

  “Certainly.” Melzarek was frankly puzzled by the questions.

  “Would you be afraid to die?”

  “Afraid? We have no fear.”

  “I know you can feel pain,” Gabriel said. “If some disease, with which you were unable to cope, struck every member of your race, and you, and your children, and your children’s children, were doomed to suffer great pain all their lives, would you all allow yourselves to be destroyed?”

  “All who willed would die.”

  “If all chose to die, would you not be sad to have your race cease to exist?”

  “No.”

  “Then,” Gabriel drove home the thought suddenly, “why did your people bother to save themselves? Why have they spent the resources and the very existence of generations of lives to save their kind?”

  Melzarek stopped, nonplussed. That great mind looked in on itself
and wondered.

  “That is the Purpose,” he said. “Our work. Our reason for existence.”

  “Is it?” Gabriel pressed on relentlessly. “Are you existing only to exist? Surely you see the absurdity of that?”

  “I am existing that others might live.” Desperately Melzarek fought Gabriel’s thought, as well as the first doubt he had ever known.

  “But you do not care if others of you ever live!” Gabriel said.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Melzarek demanded.

  “That you have lost instincts which are necessary to the survival of any race.”

  “Instincts? Would it promote our welfare if we hated, feared, and envied as do your humans?” Melzarek asked.

  “Those instincts which you mention are merely extrinsic results of an emotional nature,” Gabriel replied. “The basic instincts and impulses are love, instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of living. You no longer retain them.”

  Desperately Melzarek reached for argument to hold his own in this struggle which he was slowly losing. “Your impulses engender acts which do not have a purpose. The results of the desires which we possess are activated by an estimate of the consequences of our acts. Surely they are superior to impulses?”

  “Desire alone has exhausted your vitality and left you, in the end, indifferent to the very purpose which you have been trying to achieve. You, yourself, have admitted it.”

  “And your conclusion?” Melzarek surrendered.

  “In your dim past, your people loved, they were compassionate, and gave their lives that others might have a life to enjoy, and not just for the sterile satisfaction of living. Your race is dying now because their emotions are dead. Your only chance of survival is to revive those emotions which have become atrophied in your long struggle.”

  Swiftly the thoughts coursed through that massive intellect. Gabriel saw that, if Melzarek could know the fear of frustration, he would have known it now. He watched the inevitable acceptance of his logic.

  “You said that you have a possible solution?” Melzarek asked wearily.

  “You need a reintegration of these emotions to make your growth full and vigorous once again,” said Gabriel. “I possess these emotions. Perhaps I can revive them for you, in exchange for the lives of mankind.”

  “I’m afraid that I see the difficulties of that solution much more clearly than you can,” answered Melzarek. “Though I hope you will try. We intend to depopulate your earth one week from today. If you can give me proof of the emanation of one emotion in any member of the Liieens, before that time, we will leave the earth and indenizen another planet.”

  “Good luck, Gabriel.” Marie pressed a warm little hand into his.

  * * * *

  Strong though his purpose, none knew better than Gabriel the difficulty of his task. The reproduction of emotions needed generations of breeding. A hundred years would be too short a time and he had but a week. The undertaking would have been hopeless except that he believed he would be able to find a basic emotion in one of the aliens which was not completely vitiated.

  He had been given free access to all parts of the space vessel. Eagerly he studied the minds of its occupants, seeking an avenue of hope.

  First, he sought out the last alien to bear an unfit child.

  “Your lost child was flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood,” he addressed the Mother-being. “It’s little arms circled your neck, seeking your protection, and you let them destroy it. Do you not feel remorse?”

  “It was incapable of furthering the Purpose,” the Mother-being replied, uncomprehending.

  “Do you not hate those who destroyed your baby?” Gabriel asked.

  “Why should I?” the Mother-being queried. “If they had not, I would have done it myself.”

  Another alien Gabriel asked, “Do you not feel gratitude to the one who saved your life on Liieen-home?”

  “I feel nothing. He did not help me; he helped our race by saving me. I contribute to the Purpose.”

  Gabriel addressed a third: “You are trying to develop a means of transporting yourself without the aid of a vehicle. Would you like me to aid you?”

  “It would further the Purpose,” answered the third-being.

  “Would you be happy if we succeeded?”

  “What is happy?” the third being asked. “I only know that it would give satisfaction to all of us.”

  Thus Gabriel tried and thus he failed until the time of the final conference. His strongest hope he kept to the last.

  As he walked into the conference room, Gabriel knew that this was the supreme crisis in the history of his world. He stopped where Marie sat. She looked up but said nothing as he bent down and pressed his lips to her sweet mouth. This was his final tribute and farewell to sentiment, and to his race, if he failed.

  “Are you prepared to prove that you can revive our lost emotions?” Melzarek asked.

  “I wish to make one last attempt,” Gabriel replied.

  “Please proceed,” Melzarek said.

  Gabriel turned to the alien which he had designated in his own mind as the “weak being.” He had been unable to find any definite evidence of a vestige of emotion in any of the Liieens. Therefore he had deliberately picked the one with the least strength of mind.

  “Research-being,” Gabriel communicated with the weak one, “you contributed many vital items of aid to the Purpose. Never, however, have you ever completed the final step. Others have alwavs finished your work and been named for the work completed. You started as Research-being, and are still only Research-being. Do you not resent never achieving the glory of completion?”

  “All my fellows know of the many contributions which I have made. I am content.”

  “At one time you killed a fellow Liieen,” Gabriel pursued. “Do you never regret that action?” Unobtrusively he drove a thin worm of unrest into the creature’s mind, and there built up an abnormal tension.

  “He was attempting to thwart the Purpose,” Research-being answered.

  “You knew that he had suffered a grievous blow the day before you discovered his attempted thwarting of the Purpose. At the time you were undecided whether or not to report him, and perhaps have his defect remedied. But you killed him! With his defect corrected he would have contributed much more to the Purpose. You have often wondered about the justness of your decision. Furthermore he had the right to live!” Gabriel drove his thoughts with an ever increasing virility. He struck next with a thrust of savage intentness. “You did wrong! You are evil! You are damned!”

  For an instant the alien hesitated, baffled by the thought and the terrific mind drive which Gabriel struck. None of the other Liieens interfered in any way.

  “I have doubt no longer,” he answered. “I may have erred, but it is as easy for the strong to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.”

  “Is it?” Relentlessly Gabriel pounded at the Liieens weakness of will. “That philosophy is the rock to which you cling. If it is disproved, your life will be empty. Nay, you will be a wanton thing, a hideous sight in the eyes of your very people.”

  “Our philosophy is true; it has been proven and accepted by my fellows. I am only following the truth that has been shown to me.”

  “But it was you who made the decision to accept it,” Gabriel pursued. “If you did not hide behind a blind philosophy, which you yourself doubt, you would admit that you killed your compatriot not because you were weak but because that way offered less risk to yourself. You are selfish, unjust. Your sin must be atoned!”

  “Yes, I was unjust,” the creature quavered. “But my very unjustness is a weakness for which I cannot be blamed.”

  Gabriel saw that though the alien wavered, he still held grimly to his philosophical peg. With a sickening feeling of futility, the knowledge crystallized that, though the philosophy was not true, it was valid, and could never be disproven by logic. Desperately he struck with his last weapon.

  “You still cling to your conv
iction,” said Gabriel. “Because you expect to live, perhaps for eternity. But if you were to die? Now! Would you be certain that your life would stand the accounting you must give? Look at me, and see what I am going to do.”

  “Don’t!” The creature had seen in Gabriel’s mind the terrific force necessary to end his life; and the certainty of death.

  “Your philosophy is false. You are going to die!” Gabriel drove home a powerful jolt of devitalizing energy. “You are afraid!”

  He watched as Research-being fought the prostrating force that punished him and the agony within. It grasped at its philosophy, doubted it, and floundered—alone. All inner certainties died. In desperate anticipation it swayed on the black verge of chaos. Another instant and devastating fear would come.

  Now was the moment.

  “You must meet your God, and be punished!” Gabriel screamed the mental cry at that lacerated intellect.

  But the flaming pain paused, subsided, and was gone.

  “You are wrong,” the creature said in a voice-thought of vast relief. “Because I am God.”

  And Gabriel knew that he had lost his battle. Research-being had another rock of conviction to cling to; one from which he could never be shaken.

  Gabriel bowed his head in defeat. He had tried and lost. Earth was doomed.

  “Have you anything more to say?” Melzarek asked softly.

  “Nothing,” Gabriel answered listlessly, weak from reaction.

  “Wait!” It was Marie, and a vast stillness came as she spoke. “Can’t we spare Gabriel’s life? One human left alive can never defeat the Purpose.”

  “Why?” Melzarek.

  “I do not know why,” she answered. “I just want him to live.”

  As the solid silence held, she pondered. Then slowly her face lifted, and she smiled. A smile of dawning wonder and joy. I want him to live because I love him.

  The Liieens stood for a brief moment, in solemn awe. Then, as one, the great intellects joined in common purpose. The giant space vessel rose noiselessly up through the envelope of atmosphere and shot out toward a distant galaxy.

  …and Gabriel went with them.