Walt and Leigh Richmond

by The Lost Millennium (html)

  The music ended and they made their way back to the table.

  "The waiter finally got here. I ordered a drink for you," David Lyon told Zad, rising as she was seated. "And wine for you," he said to Dade. "On Rahn's say-so," he added. "I was afraid we wouldn't get a second chance soon."

  "You did well," said Dade, seating himself at Zad's right and sampling his drink. "Hmm," he added, "rather good for a club."

  "Should be, at the prices." Pacia was on his right—a full-bosomed, full-hipped woman. Her statuesque figure had an appeal just the opposite to that of the slender, lithe one of his date. Her rather small mouth and rounded, quite broad shoulders held a promise of vigor, a vitality of emotion that, he decided, could be exciting—if she weren't the captain's wife.

  "Should the Vahsaba's ordinance officer be seen drinking in a place like this?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be keeping your head clear in case there are dangerous characters about?"

  "I don't think I shall have much worry about seeing to the safety of your supplies," she told him severely. "Unless it's to protect them from beautiful young mentors. I understand you've demanded one of the canni to protect you."

  "Have you seen the beasts? They'd serve you as well."

  She laughed. "He offered me one. But he did it after he'd noted that perhaps the carmus did fit your personality more adequately, being a less subtle beast than the babustin. So I refused. I think," she said sotto voce, "that mostly I refuse to be insulted by ninnies."

  Dade turned his eyes to the biologist sitting beyond Zad, his assistant on his far side. The man's strikingly aquiline features caught his eye as they had that afternoon. He was clean-shaven, but the deep color of his beard showed beneath the skin, contrasting the large, full, overly-red lips. He was drawing a diagram of some sort on the tablecloth at the moment, intent, his fingers long and precise, his gestures exact.

  "No," said Dade slowly. "Not a ninny. But, I think, a little too—perhaps too intelligent for his own common sense."

  At his left, Zad was intent on the biologist's drawing. "You're quite serious, aren't you, David, about living on the sea?"

  "Quite serious," he told her without looking up. "The work I am doing is leading in unexpected directions. I think if we were where the experiments could be carried out in a closed ecology and without interference, it will be much better."

  "And what in molecular biology needs to be guarded—unless, of course, you were indulging in quite inhumane experiments? But no," she added as he looked up in amazement. "It's not in your character."

  "No," he told her formally, "that is not—it is very much not—in my character."

  "Then," she went on, almost to herself, "let me see. Shall you mind if I guess?"

  "I don't guarantee to admit it if you guess correctly."

  "You won't have to," she said. And then abruptly, "It must be quite dangerous, your work, for you to take these precautions."

  He nodded. "Quite dangerous," he said. "At least, quite dangerous if it is improperly released. Not otherwise," he added, with a quirk of a smile.

  "Then I think I shall try very hard to guess. You have," she continued, as though ticking off her points on her fingers, "built a submersible ship that is as self-contained as a starship—an improved version of the undersea exploration ship, the Juhada. That gives you the closed ecology, and the name of your ship—the Juheda.

  It is financed only in part by the Foundation that supports your work, so it is for something you have not told even them of. The ship is to be for the sea, of course, not space, and it contains very little room for its propelling engines, so it's not going to be the voyaging you're especially interested in. I understand that it's 300 cubits long, a fair length; and 50 cubits broad; and 30 cubits high. So it probably has room for at least three levels of living and working quarters. That's good for a fairly large complement of personnel—but you're not taking many. Twenty is the figure I've heard. And animals, I assume. But that many animals?"

  She watched him, and his fingers were slowing in the drawing of the sketch of the Juheda he'd been making. The music started; Rahn leaned forward to ask her to dance, but she shook her head, barely taking her eyes from the biologist.

  At her right she felt Dade rise, and from the corner of her eye, saw Pacia join him. Across the table the Gavarels rose to dance. On David's far side, his assistant was listening unobtrusively to her words—a strikingly handsome young man; olive skinned with dark eyes and a quick, flashing smile, and a manner that personalized his slightest remark.

  "As far as I've followed your work," she went on slowly, "you've been attempting to strip the DNA in living cells of the interfering chemicals—or to control DNA molecules and—well, the way it was put to me, to bend them to your will. And you did quite a bit of work with the nucleotides. You were working towards cures of the addictive drugs and alcoholism."

  The biologist did not look up, and she gazed at him curiously. What could excite this man sufficiently—a self-contained ship; he could, he almost necessarily was, planning to stay out on the sea for years, away from the research facilities at the University. He was possibly planning to get lost until his work was complete; and he did not expect that completion for years. He was in his early forties, perhaps.

  She shook her head. "This will take some thinking," she said. "I shan't try to hurry it."

  David's head snapped up with what could have been a gesture of relief.

  "Much too serious a topic for an evening at Club Five," he said with no attempt at lightness. "Dance?"

  She nodded and they left the table.

  Rahn Minos leaned back in his chair watching the couples on the dance floor. Lyon and his assistant were still listening intently to Zad, and for the moment he was isolated from the need of being sociable.

  Damned good mentor, that Zad. He wished he had her on his ship. But he'd get the benefit of her work, according to the carefully detailed plans. The Vaheva was going just half the distance of the Vahsaba, and, since ship time would be the same for both—although the planet time would be measured in twice the number of hundreds of years for him as for the Vaheva—she should be making her second trip back to Atalama with the Vaheva at the time his ship returned from its first voyage … if they returned, he added, in the deep distrust that he admitted only to himself.

  He trusted the drive; he trusted the formulas. It was only that they—all seven of the interstellar ships and their personnel—were to be the guinea pigs. I wouldn't change places with the planet-bound if I knew the factors were backwards, he admitted to himself honestly.

  But what did it feel like, to travel just under the speed of light; to become so much mass that time nearly stopped? According to the theories—and who knew them better than he?—the men to whom it happened had no sense of the happening. But he'd reach the new system in what would be a little over six months to him, while on Atalama, 2200 years would have passed.

  He watched his wife, dancing with Dade. The two were matched, he thought, in size, in—arrogance was a word that sprang to his mind, and though he nearly refused it his honesty forced him to accept it. In size, in arrogance, in animal vitality. That bit about the cannus had been typical of Dade. It could, he thought wryly, have been just as typical of Pacia.

  His own size compared with theirs, the statuesque proportions. But theirs was backed with a quickness, a trigger-sharp motion and habit of decision that he lacked.

  I'm slower, he thought. I'm much slower. But the things that they miss in their quickness are bred in my bone. I'm awkward where they are graceful for all their size. But they tread on people, while I use them. They never see the problems they brush through. They never see the people they injure in their passing. Nor would they care if they saw.

  He turned back to the three left at his table in time to see David and Zad rise and make their way to the dance floor. The two couples, he thought, were as opposite as day and night. Dade and Pacia—vital, shining, forceful, irresistible and—uncomprehending.
David saw too much. David's intellectual drive would wreck him in the long run. Hawk-faced to the point of ugliness; lean to the point of emaciation; urgent to the point of driving his body beyond its limits.

  And Zad? Rahn watched her critically. That was another question. Another question entirely.

  The music stopped, and the light atop the model of Station Five flared briefly bright, and then dimmed. A roll of drums echoed through the cavernous night club and ceased into abrupt silence.

  The couples on the floor made their way back to the crowded tables almost hurriedly and a hush came over the crowd. Even Pacia and Dade, seating themselves with a start of chatter, quieted suddenly. And into the silence, as though it were being heard only now but had been there all the time, came the slow, deep, almost whispering sound of a drum.

  Slow. So slow, so whispered, that he found himself reaching for the sound. And beneath it, on the same note, a single voice, chanting. It was a full minute before Rahn could recognize the identity of the word—the sound—of the chant as it swelled infinitesimally into a full voice. It was the voice of the Siva.

  "Shee-op. Shee-op. Shee-op."

  The drum quickened and its volume grew until it was a beating through the room, and the chant quickened and grew with it.

  "Shee-op. Shee-op. Shee-op. Shee-op."

  Above the drum in quick fingers of sound a tom-tom, and another voice taking the tom-tom note. "Siva. She-beast. Siva. She-beast."

  Then a third voice, high above the first two and quicker yet. "The power the power the power the power the power. Take the stars. Rape the stars. The power the power the power the power…"

  The three voices alternated and interwove in an intricacy of rhythm that laced their way through the scales, and a wailing chorus in harmonics that were unharmonic; in clashing dissonances, taking up the cry until the room reverberated, while underneath the big drum kept the beat, quickening, slowing, quickening, slowing, but always with a rhythm that echoed through his body as though it were part of his body.

  Now the words of the interweaving voices were changing. "Siva the regenerator Siva the destroyer Siva the regenerator the destroyer the regenerator…"

  And the high voices. "You love her and you hate her. She takes your job and you love her and you hate her. She gives you power and you love her and you hate her—love her—hate her—love her—hate her…"

  While underneath, still, "Take the stars, rape the stars, the power the power the power the power. …"

  When the dancers came on in the half-light they were nearly naked, which was no surprise. But their dance was—primitive. Violent. Based on the rhythm of the tomtoms and as exciting.

  Rahn felt sweat breaking out on his forehead. He saw Zad leaning across the table towards him, her hand reaching out to pluck his sleeve. With an effort he pulled himself from the near-hypnotic reach with which he had been listening—not to the chorus but to the deep drum underneath that slowed and quickened and slowed and quickened mfinitesimally.

  "That drum." Zad spoke with a tense excitement. That drum underneath. It's taking the rhythm of the heart, and when it slows you tend to slow your heartbeat; and when it quickens, you tend to quicken. You were right," she added. "What's here could be dangerous."

  Rahn nodded, grateful.

  But why? he thought. Of course, the money being poured into the great Vahs represented a return to the people who stayed behind only in a future so distant that their children's children's children would have been forgotten by then. And, too, the words the chorus had used and then abandoned came back to him—"She takes your job and you love her and you hate her …" It was true, of course; extensively true. The Vahs were creating jobs, but automation was taking them even faster. Was that it?

  Now the voices were listing the starships, mouthing their numbered names as though spitting them out. "Vahada, Vaheda, Vahterra, Vahsata, Vahela, Vaheva, Vahsaba…"

  Then all the intricacies faded into one deep, pulsing, gulping. "Shee-op. Shee-op. Shee-op. Shee-op," that went on and on…

  He'd heard that the religious fanatics were making much of the occasional avalanches; of the wickedness that they claimed had grown through Ura and that they credited completely to Siva. To "She."

  He hadn't personified the generators as Siva before. They were just generators. They were solar taps. They made possible the stars.

  But these—these drums and the chorus—they were making Siva a being, a force, a person, a god.

  Or a devil.

  It was dying away now. How long had it lasted? He glanced at his watch and estimated the time since it had started. Half an hour? An hour? Incredible!

  And the room was quiet with the absence of the basing drum. It was a quiet as complete as the noise had been before, and it lasted for minutes until the crowd noises began again.

  Rahn wiped his forehead with his napkin. "Whew!" he said. "That one was for real!"

  "Chelt! What an experience!" Luce's handsome head was thrown back, eyes closed, lips parted.

  "I almost expect to get lynched," said Dade disgustedly. "I'd expect people to lynch the Vahnire after an orgy like that." He drew a deep breath. "I think," he said, "it's time to go home. That was an emotional wallow, and I need some fresh air."

  Zad leaned towards David Lyon. "You," she said almost into his ear, "would be in more danger than the Vahnire if they knew what you had, wouldn't you?" And at his startled guilt, she added, "It's regeneration."

  Abruptly he stood up. "I wonder if you would come to my laboratory tomorrow afternoon for a conference?" he asked her formally.

  She stood up beside him, tiny and graceful. "Yes," she said, turned directly towards him so that her voice would reach only to him. "And I'll keep my mouth shut in the meantime."

  III

  "Maybe you know," the archaeologist said, cocking an eye at the engineer who was filling his pipe with a preoccupied air. "Maybe you know, being an engineer, about the recent work we've done in this civilization in RNA and DNA research?"

  There was a pause before the engineer spoke. "Excuse me," he said, "I was still in that night club. Funny, you know. People are reacting that way to automation today, and it wouldn't take much…" The engineer shook himself and looked up. "Yes, I've read about the DNA research. It's been pretty widely publicized."

  "Then you know," the archaeologist continued, "that the DNA in every cell of your body carries the full pattern for re-creating your body?" The engineer nodded. "And you know that it's been proven theoretically that it is possible to re-create a man from one cell from his fingertip—or even from his rib."

  The engineer nodded again.

  "You may not know, though," the archaeologist continued, "that the work hasn't stopped there; it's gone much further than the parts that have been released."

  The engineer grinned. "Now we get to Adam and Eve," he said, and leaned back contentedly, his pipe going well. The sun was just dipping behind Mount Cholla, and the desert had taken on a golden glow that seemed to bring alive each feature of the arid landscape…

  "No," the archaeologist interrupted his thoughts, "not for nearly six hundred years yet. At the time of my story, though, the work in DNA and RNA had reached just about the point that the unpublicized portion has today. The lord of molecular biology at Crêta was one of the foremost in that work…"

  Zad arrived at David's lab shortly before lunch time, hardly expecting him to be in yet since this was Hela-day. Four days of the week the labs were normally busy from early until late; but the fifth day, the final day of the week, most of the scientists stayed away from the campus, at least until late afternoon.

  She hadn't slept a great deal the night before. She'd been almost rude to Dade, preoccupied, wishing only to get to her own quarters as quickly as possible where she might do a bit of thinking.

  She was intensely excited. Her own academically-disapproved and strictly-on-the-side work with the memory tap towards extending the human life-period and amplifying the ability-potential had
seemed to be making tremendous strides. She hadn't thought of the possibility that the same goal could be reached chemically.

  She could recognize David's need for secrecy. Chemical alteration of the life-functions was something done to a subject, and whether it were with or without consent, the public outcry would be great against the do-er if anything went awry.

  Work in the memory tap hadn't necessitated such secrecy. Any life-extension or improvement achieved by the memory tap was the result of hard work that the subject did himself; hard and fairly fearful work for the subject. Dangerous in its way, but done of by and for himself, and hardly conducive to catapulting an entire populace into any condition of longevity worth worrying about—far too onerous and frightening to the subject himself to be actually dangerous to humanity. And, if he were less than competent in his handling of the memory tap, the subject was apt to annul—whether temporarily or permanently hadn't yet been proven—even his own normal human effectiveness, so certainly that he posed no personal threat to humanity.

  But chemically-achieved release of the regenerative factors of the human body? That was cancer when un-controlled, of course. And if David had only partial control, he'd be subject to lynching expeditions if the work became broadly known.

  As she approached the biology building, she saw David's carapet in the parking lot, and quickened her step. The still clarity of the bright day, the campus empty of students—quiet, civilized, manicured—brought a surge of content through her senses; content to be identified in the sometimes ambiguous but always urgent striving towards higher and higher goals; the refusal of man to be thwarted by his own limitations, whether those limitations were imposed by factors of the life around him, or were self-contained—the beast within.

  She tapped gently on the laboratory door before entering, and David's voice bid her a gruff, "Come in."

  He had evidently been working on some papers, but he dropped them with a rather grim smile. "I couldn't sleep, so I came down early. I didn't really expect you before afternoon. Coffee?" he asked.