Imagine the recklessness of a man or woman totally lacking fear! The lack of fear is the lack of judgment. Fear is the rein that will not permit our enthusiasms to run away with us, it is the governor of our desires and our emotions.
There cannot be a person entirely devoid of fear. What taught you moderation in eating? Fear of a tummy ache! What taught you to look both ways before crossing a street? Fear of being run down! What taught you to show proper decorum in public? Fear of ridicule!
The guises of fear are many, and you cannot do without any. Fear is your stimulant and your retardant. Fear makes you leap ahead because of what lies behind. Fear makes you pull up sharply because of what lies in front. You cannot escape it. You cannot even escape into it! You can only accept it and live with it, train it or cajole it into working for you instead of against you.
If we confess to have a taste for weird literature out of nameless fear, then we must also confess to avoiding it out of that same fear, if we do avoid it. The one cultivates the fear; the other avoids it. The one takes zestful pleasure in safely arousing the emotion of fear; the other resents being reminded of a psychic muscle he is ashamed to own up to.
If fear must have its rein, better natural fear, stimulated by the unknowable and the unguessable, than a sickly fear that feeds on life’s banal problems to the destruction of individuality.
OFFICIAL REPORT
Originally published in Slant, Autumn 1950.
Classification: TOP SECRET
From: The Commanding Officer, Project Saucer
To: The Commanding General, XVth Corps Area.
Via: CO, Rocket Experimental Base.
Subject: Landing of aerial object hitherto referred to as ‘Flying Saucer’, investigation and report.
Reference: Ltr of Instr 319C. CGO.Gen Reg XVIII, 2/C/Y 32.
1. Object first sighted over Experimental Rocket Range, Project Headquarters, eight hours, morning. Weather clear, sunny. Visibility excellent. Our radar screens picked up object at altitude 50,000 feet, azimuth 30 miles. Teleikonoscope tracking instruments were brought to bear. Velocity determined at 300 miles per hour, negative acceleration, angle of dive 15 degrees. The object halted at altitude 2000 feet, directly above the headquarters building, and hovered there fifteen minutes. A light east wind was blowing; ground speed ten miles per hour.
2. Diameter of the object was determined at this stage to be approximately 100 feet. The object showed a bivalvular form, like two saucers faced together. Axial thickness, 25 feet. Observation with optical instruments determined the existence of much detail hitherto only guessed at or assumed. Both drive and steering jets were observed in considerable number around the periphery of the so-called ‘saucer’, while many circular openings in the metal hull, evidently port-holes, were observed. Preliminary observations were confirmed in detail later, for which see report 192B of Engineering Section, hereto attached.
3. After fifteen minutes of hovering, showing no obvious evidence of hostility, the unknown craft settled to the ground before the Administration Building. Six men disembarked therefrom through a door that opened in the lower part of the hull. Medical examination, which the subjects willingly underwent, has proved satisfactorily that the occupants of the ‘saucer’ are of the human species, much like ourselves in physical constitution, except that they average about half the height of a normal human being. They have indicated that this condition is normal on their own world, their fauna and flora being scaled correspondingly. (Full medical particulars are detailed in Medical Report 148c hereto attached.)
4. Proper accommodations were prepared for the other-world denizens, who appeared to be pleased with their welcome, evidenced friendliness and anxiety to establish communications with us. A fortnight spent at this has progressed us rapidly in the establishment of a common ground of understanding.
5. The Psychological Section is now preparing a full and lengthy report of all information gleaned from the diminutive strangers. This report will follow the present report within two or three days.
6. Specific information has so far been obtained to the effect that the flying saucers are actually space craft, vessels designed to navigate the distances between the stars, and that their port of origin is located on a planet in a solar system about 8 light-years removed from us. We have determined the identity of this sun according to our stellar charts, as G-XVII-324c, a small, yellowish sun, enumerated as here given in accordance with the Brodan catalogue of stellar bodies. This sun is of a spectral type similar to our own, possesses nine planets, one of which was originally inhabited, the other two having been colonized in the last 500 years.
7. Further information has revealed that our solar system has been under observation by the saucers from space for a period of 210 years, while the strangers waited for our technology to arrive at such a point that scientific and commercial intercourse between our two systems would be practicable. It is the opinion of the writer that these extra-system human beings are now convinced that our civilization has reached that desired stage.
8. The Bureau of Semantics, in a preliminary report on the sonal system of inter-personal communication of the strangers, which they call speech, states that the native name of the spacemen is Terrestrial, the native name of their home planet is Earth, and their sun-system is called Sol. Our 14th of Zonor, Year of Skronos the date of the first extra-system space ship to land formally on our planet, is their 22nd February, Numerical Year 2510. The date of the landing was chosen by them in commemoration and honour of an ancient lawgiver named George Washington, whose birth date it is.
Hagar Skrin
Colonel Air and Ground Military Forces of Skvald
THE SCARLET SAINT
CHAPTER I
After nineteen years, this was the day of days for Kor Danay. As he had expected, the day dawned clear and bright. Almost every day on Rth was clear; almost every day was bright…as bright as a turgid, blood-red Sun could make it, shining in a dry, cloudless sky that mellowed from almost black at the zenith to a deep indigo at the horizon. In their season, minus-magnitude stars like Sirius and Antares appeared as blazing spicules of light at high noon.
Rth’s bare bones, scoured and whitened by desert winds, grisly relics that had long ago worked through the withered flesh of the planet, sucked at the Sun’s waning heat, stored it for radiation in the bitter night, when even frost would have softened the cold.
In places, of course, soil, humus, desiccated vegetation, and precious moisture still clung obstinately to the brittle chassis of an ancient world. People still toiled for their daily bread, and other people, enjoyed the cake distributed to them by the Trisz, the benevolent Trisz…
Kor always awoke easily, but the subconscious prompting was even more effective this morning. He lay blinking on the stone-slab floor of his quarters in the Institute of Manhood.
He thought of his first morning at the Institute—when he was six—and he had awakened in this same room, cold, stiff, and tearful. Nineteen years of rigorously practiced sleeping routine had conditioned childish frailties out of his body. The stone on which he lay was hollowed by the restless movements of generations of learners at the Institute. To sleep on harsh stone was pure luxury, after the grueling periods of drill and training to which the initiate Men were subjected.
It was morning in late spring, with no sign of an impending sand storm. A fine day, Kor thought, for the Examination which marked his last day at the Institute.
There was no such thing as failure of the Examination … those who lived through it were the ones who did not fail.
From where Kor lay against the wall, wrapped in his warm blue cloak, he could look out through the glassless window-opening into the deep indigo sky. The color was like a backdrop against which, in harsh contrast, a small bit of a poplar was to be seen, as it lifted its fluttering crown in a green-gold greeting t
o the day’s first sun.
Hail the Sun! Lord of creation! The ritual phrases drifted through Kor’s mind. Protector… Defender… Shield Arm…
Even though Kor didn’t believe in the ritual or in the symbol of the Sun, it did not seem right to him that he should concern himself with the Sacred Litany of the People while lying abed. The ritual had been drilled into him these nineteen years past. It was a part of his every action and reactions, cloak and a shield at once, a cover for the work he was trained to perform…after today had proved his fitness for it.
Kor bounded to his feet, shedding his cloak like a chrysalis, and finished the ritual at the window, in company with the Sacred Exercises that flexed and toned every muscle in his lean, powerful young body. A golden giant, Kor stood there, methodically exercising as laid down in Mechanics of Ritual, Section 2A, Subsection D.
His skin was golden…it gleamed like reddish brass in the sunlight. His hair was the sheenless, rich color of hammered gold. He had gray eyes, lean cheeks, a large nose with flaring nostrils, a full underlip, and a chin slightly rounded. He had strength and character fully representative of the Men.
He raced through the ritual, easily, fitting the words and cadences to the smooth, muscular movements of the Exercises. The ritual was meaningless…a recorded whirly-whirl of sounds and nothing more. But here and there were words of meaning, and where the tongue tripped over senseless syllables, the mind dwelt upon the semantic interpolations … the hidden keys to the power of Manhood.
Desire is our scourge, and Need is our blessing… He chanted the simple-minded concepts with the relish of a connoisseur of their inner meaning, and peered with bright-eyed eagerness upon the sun-drenched newness of his world—no reminder of yesterday, but a glowing promise of tomorrow. A line of poplars tossed in the early breeze. Beyond their screen, the ruffled surface of a small lake-lanced sparkles of divine flame to counterpoint the tranquil indigo of the sky-bowl.
Precious water! Water was the life-blood of Rth … the fluid that failed now in its subterranean veins and arteries, flowed slowly from the bowels of the earth, to vanish and return no more. Rth’s seas now were stinking ponds, shrunken in girth and depth. They soon would be gone. When the Trisz removed the last precious drop… Kor straightened his back.
“Resolve is our armor; Will is our Weapon… Belief in our Lord Faith in our Selves…”
He raised his arms aloft, hands clasped, and shook them in more than usual vehemence in the ritual Sign of the Conqueror.
From a neighboring chamber suddenly came sounds of young men laughing. Water splashed from huge amphoras, cleansing their bodies, and ran down carefully chiseled channels and drains in the floor, dripped into the purification tanks in the basement and returned thence to the supply tanks in the loft. So rare a commodity was water that it needed to be carefully conserved…no more permitted to evaporate than was absolutely unavoidable.
There was plenty of water to be had at the Institute, of course. It was in the nature of the inhabitants of the Institute that there should be plenty of water. It was a pity that this plenty could not be made available to the People as well…but this secret was only one of many which the Institute of Manhood kept so carefully concealed from the Trisz, the benevolent Trisz…
“Kor!” bawled a male voice from the door. “Still sleeping? …Ho! I see you…come on, Man! Clean up for the Examination! Would you take all morning to ritualize at the window?”
Kor ducked his head sheepishly, stooped and hurled his sleeping cloak at his comrade. While Jon Moran sputtered and pawed at the enveloping folds Kor thrust laughingly by.
“We’ll see who is first to wash, Jon!”
He dashed into the Lavatory where sparkling streams of cold water cascaded and splashed upon healthy youth.
In a moment his own skin red with sparkling streams and droplets as he scrubbed under the downpour of a tilted amphora.
They were six, these young Initiates, the largest class ever to be assembled at the Institute for graduation…and the best, they confidently congratulated themselves. Besides Kor and Jon Moran, there were Rik Meni, Star Rova, Lod Hareth, and Pron Sark … the only survivors of the hundred novitiates who had entered the Institute together as children, nineteen years before.
Novitiates entering the Institute at the age of six spent six years in physical training and in learning the rudiments of secular and religious education. For the following six years, they were termed Students, and received the harshest of physical and mental discipline in their training and studies. Those who proved deficient in physical stamina or mental acumen were at this time transferred to regularization classes for further training, leading to initiation into the Order of the Blue Brothers. The Blue Brothers were an order of the highest religious significance, acknowledging the Sun as Lord of Creation and the Protector of the People. The Blue Brothers were the graduate priests of Rth’s Sun-religion.
Few were the Students accepted into the Order of Initiates, where seven years of specialized training fitted them for initiation into the Scarlet Order of the Men. This was the prime purpose of the Institute … to select and train candidates for the Men…who were the highest type of Manhood on Rth. Their deepest mysteries were held secret against all…were known only to those who personally were wearers of the scarlet cloak.
Thus, the Institute was crowded to capacity with learners, but each year only the meagerest number who survived the lethal training of the Initiates attained to the coveted wearing of scarlet.
To be a Man is Greatness…it is Nobility … thought Kor, proud that he was about to become a Man.
These Initiates, save for the formality of today’s Examination, actually were Men…clean-cut, bursting with health and energy, and their minds were such hardened, tempered, keenly edged tools as the world had never before seen. True Men, these, who bore the secret of their purpose with pride and determination.
Rth was incredibly ancient. Millions of generations of the People had come and gone upon its withering surface…and millennia of the Trisz. There was no actual historical record of when the Trisz had first come to Rth.
That was what the People called them—Trisz. They had no name of their own that had ever been sounded by the People or by anybody else. The world of sound was closed to the Trisz. They ruled the People and never heard them speak.
Kor Danay had never seen a Trisz, not even a picture of one. No picture could have portrayed the Trisz…no photograph…no effort from an artist’s hand. One word described the Trisz better than ten thousand pictures could have shown … they looked as their name sounds—Trisz … the name a muted sibilance, their appearance an illusory refraction of light, a flutter upon the retina, as the morning wind was a ruffle upon the Institute lake.
Kor could afford to be leisurely with his dressing. There would be no breakfast for the examinees this morning. Nor was fast to be broken until the Sun had set upon the day of Examination.
Keeping the fast was ritual, as the Examination was ritual. It was physical and mental discipline, attuned to the asceticism to which the Men were trained. No Man could fail this Examination, except that he destroyed himself fulfilling the requirements. It was well that, if he could not pass, a Man be destroyed, for there was no room among the Men for a failure, and no place for him among the People. Moreover, his destruction might provide valuable information, that would serve in the teaching of future Men.
For the last time, Kor drew on the blue regalia of the Institute…silken blue hose of gossamer woven plastic, blue leather buskins that wrapped up his calves, jerkin of blue leather, sleeveless and laced at the front. Finally, Kor threw over his shoulders the rippling cloak of the Wearers of the Blue, the same garment worn by the Blue Brotherhood, but embroidered with the deeper toned insignia of the Institute—uplifted hands clasped in the Sign of the Conqueror. It was almost with reverence that Kor clothed hi
mself in these nearly sacred garments … the next time he dressed, his color would be scarlet.
Only the Outlanders of Rth bore arms thin, rapier-like weapons or daggers. Anything dangerous was forbid by the Trisz, except for the troops of the regional Lords, who handled sword, spear and bow with equal facility. The terrible blasters of the Trisz were prohibited…reserved exclusively for the elite city guards of Triszmen. Weaponless, therefore, Kor swished into the hall, already clamorous with the others of his class. They paired into ranks and marched solemnly down the hall, out of the building, across a rippling sward of blue grass and into the arena where the Masters of Examination already awaited them.
This was exciting, Kor thought. How grand and noble to be a Man! Things had been different in antiquity, he knew. He could not be sure how different, or in what way. History passed back across two Ages of Ice, and before that it was very, very dim. It was said in their texts—though taken with a grain of salt in these enlightened times—that once all of the People had called themselves Men. It was certain that none of them had been Men. To be a Man was a special privilege and a product of arduous training of mind and body. It was not taken for granted, nor even generally believed, that any before the latter-day Men possessed the kind of minds the Men had, nor even their god-like physical attributes.
All of the Men were tall, handsome unbelievably strong and capable. These Men were unique in Time; for being a Man was a way of life, a matter of training and natural aptitude combined, of science and belief welded into the beautiful weapon that was a Man.
It was a religion, actually, to be a Man, and the Men were suffered by the Trisz to exist as an ancient institution that brought religion to the People. Nominally, the Men were the spiritual leaders of the People, including the Triszmen, though the latter naturally owed their allegiance to the Trisz, and not to the secular authority of a regional lord, or to a mythical deity such as the Lord Sun.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 26
