by Fritz Leiber
And if he somehow managed to win out a second time, the hunt would begin a third time.
And then—well, he had seen what had happened to Jarles. The renegade priest now seemed to be in high favor with the Hierarchy and to enjoy the confidence of Cousin Death, for he had twice come to visit the Black Man in his cell.
Doggedly, each time with greater difficulty, he blanked his mind for Dickon's questing thoughts. No question here of the familiar reaching him through the ventilators. This was no hospital chamber but a metallic cell under the constant surveillance of two guards. Nothing but telepathy could get through. Moreover, Dickon did not know its location. He would have to cast around for it at random and in great peril.
Once again the Black Man blanked his mind. Once again no answer came. Once again his own fantastic thoughts, distorted by the session with Dhomas, scribbled themselves on the blank.
Through the narrow, circular darkness Dickon quested, guided only by the vivid tactual sense that edged his suctorial paws when his claws were retracted.
Dickon was not worried. Such emotions were much too elaborate for his clear-cut, highly simplified mind. Even his frequent self-pity was matter-of-fact. But he knew that his fresh blood was running low, and waste blood piling up, even under the slight demands of his ribbonlike muscles. He had gorged himself at the Breeding Place, but it wouldn't last forever. Eventually he would have to stop moving.
But before that happened he would be able to explore a few more branches of the huge inside-out tree which was Dickon's mental diagram of the ventilation system of the crypts.
It was very windy in the tunnels. He had to buck a constant gale. If he ever let go all four suctorial paws at once, he would be whisked like a bit of waste for an indeterminate distance before he managed to bring himself to a stop with his claws—if he could. For Dickon, as he often told himself, was a mere diagram of a man. His bones were lighter than a monkey's, his body had not a genuine fat cell in it, and his internal organs were reduced to a single compartmentalized cavity which served both as blood pump and blood-storage chamber. All physiological substances for the production or conditioning of which other organs were necessary, he sucked in along with the blood he drew from his symbiotic partner through his wizened little mouth. He neither digested nor eliminated. He did not breathe, although he could make feeble sounds and even talk sketchily by drawing air into his mouth cavity and expelling it between taut lips. His bones were hollow, since he needed no marrow for producing blood corpuscles. He was without ductless glands and had no sex. His fine, short fur insulated him against loss of body heat.
Just a skeleton, muscles, tendons, skin, fur, heart, simplified circulatory system, nervous system, twitching ears, peering eyes—and a personality as queerly simple as his physiology.
One of the aims of the original makers of his artificial species had been to devise an extremely swift and nimble organism by eliminating as much weight and as many functions as possible. This aim they had achieved, but at the inescapable cost of making the creature absolutely dependent on its symbiotic partner or some other blood supply, and strictly limiting the extent of its activity before return to such blood supply became imperative.
These various limitations and his general fragileness did not bother Dickon in the least. Like all his kind, Dickon took a fatalistic and gently stoical view of things.
So it was without fear that Dickon negotiated the windy tubes. If there had been light, and anyone to see him, he might have been mistaken for a huge, reddish, furry spider, scuttling rapidly—for Dickon's most efficient speed was considerably higher proportionately than that of a man.
"Must find brother. Must find brother." The words repeated themselves in his mind with an unemotional, almost soothing insistence. Not only did he long for the warmth of his brother's side, flatly curled against which he had spent most of his days. He also wished to unburden his mind of certain facts, which he knew would greatly interest his brother, and which now filled his mind to bursting, like a box stuffed very full. That was very much how Dickon thought of his mind—as a little room behind his eyes, lined with boxes of memories, and in the middle of it a very little Dickon, who was his real self and peered out through the eye windows, and listened through the trumpets of his ears. In the room were two blackboards, one of them headed "Rules" and closely filled with writing; the other was blank. It was for his brother's thoughts.
Dickon's brother was the cardinal fact of his life. He was so close to him that at times Dickon felt himself to be nothing more than an extension of his brother's personality. There was good reason for this. Dickon absorbed his brother's emotions with the hormones of his brother's blood—indeed, the familiars spoke to one another of "frightened blood," "angry blood," "loving blood," and the like. Though such emotions were on the whole fleeting and did not greatly disturb the even tenor of Dickon's thoughts.
More important, Dickon was in every part of him a simplified version of his brother. In short, his brother's identical twin, developed from a cell of his brother's body that had undergone a process known as chromosome-stripping, a technique of microbiology discovered in the Golden Age and then supposedly lost. The stripping technique removed from his brother's chromosomes the determinants of sex, alimentation, and many other functions. But in all that remained, Dickon was his brother's identical twin. And this accounted for their telepathic contact.
When brain waves were first discovered by the Dawn Civilization, it was realized that, if telepathy did ever occur, it would most likely be between identical twins, since similarity of brain structure would mean similarity of brain waves—putting the two minds in tune. But this idea had lain dormant until almost the end of the Golden Age, when it had been discovered that telepathy could only occur in such cases where one of the two stations was of a much simpler pattern than the other, thus doing away with otherwise unsurmountable interferences.
Production of simplified, symbiotic identical twins by the stripped-chromosome process had provided the solution. Briefly, the Golden Age had dreamed of extending the personality of every individual by furnishing him with such a symbiotic partner. Then, in swift succession, had come darkened times, cessation of the research, more than world-wide chaos, establishment of the Hierarchy. Until, when the New Witchcraft first began, vastly detailed instructions had come from Asmodeus for the setting up of a breeding place and the creation of symbiotic identical twins, in imitation of the familiars of the ancient witchcraft.
From his birth, from his first conscious moment after being taken from the breeding tank, Dickon's thoughts had been immersed in those of his brother—so that in a sense he had had no babyhood or childhood, but had thought adult thoughts from the start. Direct contact with his brother's mind had enabled him to reach full mental maturity within a few hours, and had also made it possible for him to achieve insights and understandings beyond the unaided capacities of his simplified nervous system. The chief other influence on his development was provided by his fellow familiars, his social equals, with whose minds he had telepathic contact of lesser degree and shorter range.
But his brother was much closer to him than any of them. So, as Dickon scuttled through the black branches of the wind tunnels seeking his brother, he came as close as he could, lacking a glandular system, to experiencing an emotion of his own.
Five more branches at the most, he told himself, before he would have to stop and be still. Then suddenly there appeared the dimmest trace of a picture on the blank blackboard of his mind.
He stopped. It began to fade. He moved forward. It faded all away. Back again then, and wait. After a while another picture started to appear, like a photograph developing—a photograph that moved and changed even as it developed. A feeling that, had Dickon possessed emotion, would have been akin to fear, filled the familiar's mind. He had never seen quite that sort of mental landscape before. And yet he was certain it was his brother's.
Without warning the picture disappeared. Rapidly the tiny Dick
on behind his eyes ran to the blackboard and wrote a message.
"Dickon is here, brother. Dickon writes on your mind."
His message vanished and instantly the blackboard became choked with such a hurly-burly of thoughts that Dickon knew his brother must be very startled and excited. And most of the thoughts had that odd alien tinge. Quickly, they were wiped away, as if his brother had realized they were too confused to be helpful, and a concise question replaced them.
"Can you understand me dearly, Dickon? Is contact sufficient?"
"Yes, but your thoughts are strange. And some of them seem hurt. Has someone injured your thoughts, brother?"
"A little, but I haven't time to explain." Here, Dickon got a fragmentary glimpse of Brother Dhomas and his laboratory in the crypts. "Except for the strangeness, present contact is sufficient?" the Black Man continued.
"Yes. But Dickon would like to come to you. Will you help Dickon find the way?"
"Sorry, Dickon, but it can't be done. They've got your brother locked up tight. Did you deliver my message?"
"No. Dickon could not. He found things very different from what they should be. He has much news for you."
"Tell it."
At that the little Dickon behind his eyes began to yank open the memory boxes.
"After Dickon left you in the room of sickness—do you still have that queer outside heart, brother?"
"No, I'm better now. You've been gone four days. Go on."
"Dickon went by the tunnels. First the little, then by a narrow burrowing into the big, then into the little again. But he did not find Drick or Drick's familiar at the place where Drick should be. So Dickon started for the Coven Chamber. But in the tunnels below the chamber he found many familiars, Drick's among them—Jock, Meg, Mysie, Jill, Seth, and many more. Those familiars told Dickon he must not go to the Chamber for there were priests in it. There had been a meeting, they said, and all their Big People had been betrayed. Deacons had burst into the Chamber and captured their Big People. They were in bad shape, those familiars. They had lost contact with their Big People, and they did not know what to do. Many of them stood in need of blood.
"Dickon remembered that stores of blood for the embryonic familiars are kept at the Breeding Place. So he gathered the lost familiars into a band, bidding the stronger help the weaker, and led them down, down through the tunnel to the Breeding Place. It was a hard trip. Toward the end many had to be carried. And if they had not known they were returning to their birthplace, I do not believe they would have made it.
"When Dickon and the other familiars finally arrived, they found there were no Big People in the Breeding Place either. It was deserted. The other familiars would have drunk the first ampules of blood they found, for they were famished. But Dickon held them back and would let none drink, until he found the case where is kept the blood-that-all-may-drink-in-safety.
"So Dickon left them gorging themselves with blood and sporting in the breeding tanks to warm themselves, and returned by the way he had come, for he knew his brother would want news of all these happenings, and he wished to know what his brother would want him to do now. But when he had retraced his path, he found that his brother was no longer where he had left him. He searched, but could not find his brother or his brother's thoughts. So he returned to the Breeding Place for fresh blood and came back to search again. This happened many times. Until at last he decided he must return no more, but find his brother or else stop moving. So he searched farther than ever before. And here he is."
Then Dickon wiped clean the blackboard in his mind, but no answer came—only a confusion of thoughts which told him that his brother was much disheartened by the news he had brought—a jerky, wordless, mental landscape, tinged more than ever by the mood Dickon found so alien.
Suddenly the tiny Dickon behind his eyes caught sight of a small memory box that had not been opened.
"There is one thing I have not told you, brother.
"Dickon said that the Breeding Place was deserted when we reached it. That is true, so far as Big People are concerned. But there were two newborn familiars there, whom the Breeders must have left behind. They were two strange familiars—not of witches or warlocks."
"What do you mean?"
"You must know the one of them, brother. The familiar of that priest who was to be one of us, and who stayed at Mother Jujy's and who—"
"What does he look like?"
Rapidly, Dickon sketched on his mental blackboard the portrait of a dark-furred familiar.
"And the other one?"
Dickon sketched a mental portrait of a sallow-skinned familiar, whose black fur had a blue-steel tone to it.
For a time then there came no further message, but Dickon sensed that his brother's mind was furiously plotting in the old way he knew so well. When words finally came, they were sharp and clear.
"Listen, Dickon. Those two newborn familiars. Did you touch minds with them?"
"Yes, a little. They are very stupid, since they have never been with their big twins. But some of the other familiars have been communing with them, seeking half in sport to teach them. They are making some progress."
"Do you think, if they were with you now, I could touch minds with them, through yours?"
"I think so, brother."
"Good. Listen carefully now. I want you to return to the Breeding Place and bring back those two newborn familiars. Each of you can carry an ampule of blood, so you will have a reserve supply—"
"Dickon never thought of that. It would have made everything so much easier. Poor, stupid Dickon!"
"No, no. You've done more than I ever hoped. But to continue, you are to bring the two others to the place where you are now, and seek to contact my mind. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Dickon answered gravely.
"Can you do it?" came the anxious message. "Return to the Breeding Place, I mean? Have you enough blood left for that?"
"I do not know," replied Dickon simply. "I came farther this time, hoping to draw blood from my brother when I found him."
"Sathanas!" Dickon sensed his brother's dismay. "Listen, Dickon, it is essential that you carry out my orders. Therefore I release you from the rule that forbids you to take blood from any other person but your brother. Take blood when and where you can get it!"
Dickon caught the afterthought and remarked quietly, "Dickon understands the peril to which his brother is referring. That was why he insisted the other familiars wait until he found the case of blood-that-all-may-drink-in-safety. He knows that if he takes a stranger's blood there is a chance he will die in swift convulsions. But life is a little thing—as little as Dickon—and Dickon does not mind."
He could not wholly comprehend the emotion that rose up then in his brother's mind, but it heartened him.
"You'd better be starting, Dickon," came the final words from his brother. "It's a small hope that you're carrying—as small as you are. But it may be the only one for the whole world of Big People."
"Dickon will do what he can. Good-by, brother."
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Chapter 16
Since the dawn the mighty carillon of the Cathedral had been deluging Megatheopolis at intervals with an excited and joyous pealing of bells, and before the first burst had ended the Great Square had begun to fill. If the darkness had not been so full of the terrors of Sathanas, the commoners would have started coming at midnight.
"Awake! Awake!" the bells seemed to ring out. "Wonders. Wonders untold. Hurry! Hurry!"
Many had come fasting and brought no food. For was not this to be a Grand Revival? It was the Great God's turn to provide.
From every corner of Megatheopolis they came, and from miles out in the surrounding countryside. By an hour after midmorning, the Square was packed up to the double line of deacons, who kept clear a considerable space in front of the Cathedral steps. The surrounding rooftops were thronged, boys had climbed the chimneys. A little earlier a small, overcrowded balcony had co
llapsed, injuring several and creating a minor panic that was quickly hushed by the deacons scattered throughout the crowd. The surrounding streets were crowded with late comers. Everywhere were jostlings, elbowings, disputes as to who had first claim to the best places, shouting for lost children, and a ceaseless hum of conversation which the clangor o f the bells periodically drowned out.
It was not exactly a happy crowd or even a pleasant one. It was the same crowd that yesterday had stormed halfway up the Cathedral steps, screaming insults at the Hierarchy because it could not defend them from Sathanas. The same crowd that had killed two deacons, manhandled a priest of the First Circle, and flatly demanded that the Hierarchy prove itself. But now the commoners were observing a kind of truce. Yesterday the priests had promised them that the Great God would give them a sign of his favor and of his mastery over Sathanas by performing miracles at the Grand Revival. And last night, as if in token of this, there had seemed to be a decrease in hauntings and other satanic eeriness.
Moreover, it was hard to maintain anger in the face of the soothing effect of the parasympathetic emanations which drenched the Square.
The parasympathetics had one other effect. They stimulated the nerves controlling the digestive tract and thereby greatly increased the hunger of a crowd which had for the most part not yet eaten today. A hundred thousand mouths filled with saliva. A hundred thousand throats swallowed, swallowed, swallowed.
Finally, at high noon, the carillon broke off in the middle of the loudest and most clangorous burst it had yet pealed forth. For a moment there was silence, and a sensation of tremendous pressure as a hundred thousand commoners held their breath. Then, from the Sanctuary, came the deep organ notes of a solemn march, somber and rolling, yet full of mystery and majesty and power, like distant thunder become harmonious—such a music as must have sounded when the Great God first imposed his will upon black chaos and created the Earth.
