The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister

by Banister, Manly

  The thurb child stiffened in the vibratory grip of the Trisz, on its face an expression of frozen horror.

  A glare of light burst in Kor’s mind. He reacted automatically, with powers he did not know he possessed. He whipped the glade into time-stasis. The lashing field enveloped the Trisz. For an instant Kor’s mind was dazzled with a flood of perception from the Trisz. His mind went through space, penetrated time. The Trisz shrilled its mental agony and ceased to exist. The flow of thought ceased abruptly; sank beneath the fogs that clouded Kor’s mind. The thurb child ran screaming back the way it had come.

  * * * *

  Kor sat and pondered what had happened. He was deeply shaken, but he did not know why. He did not know what he had done to the alien thing. He only knew that he had felt the urge to destroy, and this something that was on his mind, on the other side of the veil, had burst forth and retreated…and the Trisz was destroyed.

  He listened. Shrill cries drifted faintly upward from the caves below. They bore a sound of alarm, fear and anger. Kor stood up as Eldra burst heavily from the head of the path and stumbled toward him.

  “Lord, lord, save us! The gods from the sky are come!”

  Kor seized her, shook her. Her head was loose on her neck. She was hysterical with fright. A score of tribespeople burst shouting from the head of the path. They threw themselves in a groveling heap around Kor.

  He said, “What happens?”

  A brawny hunter lifted himself on his hands.

  “Gods from the sky steal the people of Go!”

  Kor turned impatiently toward the path, but it erupted a hurrying horde of cave men.

  He said, “Tell me about it quickly!”

  “They are like yourself, lord, and like the thurb as well. They walk in gleaming garments and a strange light accompanies them in the air as they go. They have torn caves out of the sky and brought them into the valley. They are putting the people of Go into their caves!”

  Kor swung away, across the glade and into the wood. From the hogback, he would be able to see into the valley, where the canyon came out upon the broader, low-lying stretch among the foothills. He went swiftly, tearing through the underbrush. Like a pack of baying hounds, the thurb streamed after him, calling upon him for succor.

  Kor stood on the lip of the precipice that overlooked the valley. The cliff towered above it a thousand feet or more. Three silvery, oval shapes hugged the green carpet of the valley floor. The ships of the Trisz shone in the sun, awakening feeble memories in Kor’s darkened mind. He willed, and his super-senses lashed out in a widening circle, sensed the surroundings. A struggle took place in the caves. The cave people were fighting for their lives, but the invaders paralyzed them where they stood, carried them out through the gaping cave mouths.

  Kor touched their minds. Creatures of the Trisz, these, taking the people of Go for food for the Trisz. Kor sensed the shrill whine of the aliens. He felt dull, glowing anger.

  The people of Go swarmed on the brink around him, burrowed in the brush, peered at the unknown wonder of the Trisz space vessels. Behind them rose the forested slope of the mountains, to the dazzling line of eternal snow, and the hovering cloud that gleamed dull red in the glow of subterranean fires.

  Kor said to Eldra, “Kor’s enemies, Eldra’s enemies. Kor is angry with them for coming here.”

  Eldra wailed, cried out her lord’s saying to the people.

  “Slay the enemy, lord!” cried the people of Go. “Protect us!”

  Kor said, “Kor is God. He protects his people.”

  * * * *

  He brooded solemnly over the scene below. Hatred screamed inside of him. The blue sky pressed close. The sun was a blazing shield in the sky. Kor flung aside his deerskin robe, stood naked and tall in the glare of the sun. He poised his body as if to leap into the abyss and abruptly vanished from the sight of the cave people. A moan of terror went up from the thurb.

  On the surface of the distant sun, a mighty storm swirled. A suction of energy funneled into the passage clawed through subspace by Kor’s mind. Where he had stood, blazing luminescence shot tongues of fire. And suddenly, a stream lashed out. Scintillant flame poured roaring into the valley, and Kor stood again, rigid upon the lip of the precipice.

  Already the thurb had begun to run in crazed fear. As the frightful surge of pure energy blasted into the valley, the ground shook under their feet. Thunder rolled deafeningly from mountain to mountain, set up crescendoing vibrations that made the pines whip, set the boulders to grinding under foot. The land heaved and buckled.

  A mist sprang up from the valley, a mist of deadly, radiating particles that hung in an opalescent pall over the crimson glow of destruction. The mountain heaved and shook again. The valley boiled with flame. A titanic roar as of all the thunderclaps that ever were slammed down from above. The day flared with a frightful heat. The mountain groaned and shook to its core. A voice screamed, raw-edged with frenzy.

  “The mountain! The god of the mountain throws fire!”

  The volcano trembled, lurched. Flames shot from its simmering peak, coiled lashing into the stratosphere. Dark, formless objects shot upward with a thunderous sound. Black, greasy smoke boiled from the shuddering cone, rolled down the snow-covered flank in which long, black gashes had begun to show. Lightning flashed and quivered in a sky abruptly gone dark.

  “Lord, Lord!” whimpered Eldra.

  Kor seized her arm, hurried her ahead of him. His deerskin cloak lay forgotten where he had thrown it. His mind was in turmoil. He did not know what had happened. He had hated—then this. The world had dissolved around them. The air was thick with smoke and hot, falling ash as they lurched down the path. Sometimes the ground shook so that it seemed they must be hurled into space and annihilated on the rocks far below. Screams pierced the dark. Eldra clung to Kor, sobbing.

  “The god of the mountain is angry with us!” she cried. “He punishes his people for worshipping Kor!”

  “Shut up!” said Kor.

  He spoke too late. Already he heard other voices taking up the cry voiced by Eldra.

  Kor fought his way grimly downward, booting the struggling tribespeople ahead of him. At the bottom, they would have run for the caves, but the cliff-face was slowly disintegrating and falling in chunks. Cave men were running in all directions, among them figures dressed in the silvery space uniform of the Trisz. All were one in this inferno. The boiling smog of the volcano poured into the canyon, obliterating sight.

  Kor began to shout at those who ran past. His mind reached out, sensed them, and he cried out to them to run up the canyon. Licking flames crept in from the valley, a blistering hell-spot whose fires would rage unchecked for a millennium. Soon the magma from the erupting peak would be pouring into the canyon.

  The cave men stormed up the canyon, over the hogback and into the ravine beyond. When it grew impossible to see more than a foot or two in any direction, Kor left off shouting. He could sense a few tribesmen still wandering dazed in the midnight of the canyon, but his voice could no longer be heard above the crash and roar of the bursting volcano. The ground shook and swayed, throwing Eldra flat with every other step. She was screaming now.

  “My baby…my baby…”

  Kor gathered her in his arms and set off swiftly up the canyon. He could move faster than the cave men. He did not need eyes to see where he was going. As he passed stumbling stragglers, he roared to them to make haste. The universe spun around him. He sensed a tremendous crack that suddenly opened in the solid ground ahead. Screams cut through the rancid smoke as a few cave men blundered over the edge and plunged into the abyss.

  Kor ran around the end of the crack, where the solid rock was split almost to the wall of the canyon. He ran as a deer-creature runs, balancing himself precisely in spite of the darkness that blinded his sight. He carried his burd
en gently, easing the jar of his running with the spring-like muscles of his arms. Eldra moaned softly in his grasp.

  The larger part of the tribesmen were already pouring over the hogback. As Kor topped the rise, he found the air thinning slightly into a grayish, opaque mistiness. He followed the cave men over, under the swaying, conifers, shouting as he went, urging them to scale the next ridge and the one beyond that, and to keep on going until the menace of the erupting volcano was left far behind.

  All afternoon and all night long, the fleeing cave men blundered through the brush, scrambled down steep slopes, laboriously climbed the following ridges. Sobbing, panting, stumbling over stones, sliding on the slippery surface of last year’s fallen needles, numb with the rigor of terror, they fought through the smoke and rain of ash. When the ash no longer rained, when the fire bombs ceased to thud among them, they had reached the edge of the foothills and it was dawn. The sun rose on a weary, spent group that flung itself on the bank of a creek and drank greedily.

  Far behind, Kor struggled over a ridge with his burden. Eldra’s arms were tight around his neck, and she screamed with every step he took. Her face was dewed with the cold sweat of agony. Kor knew what it meant. He laid Eldra on the ground, where she rolled and cried out with the pain of childbirth.

  Kor knelt beside her, tried to collect his confused sensibilities. He had healed the sick in the caves, he had banished the pain of the wounded. How had he done it? His eyes started from his head. His body ran with the sweat of his exertions. His flesh was exhausted, his brain was tired beyond endurance. He laid his hands on the tossing woman, and she screamed at the contact.

  Kor tried to collect his thoughts, to order them. He sought frantically for the sparkling, darting electrons but none came. His power was gone. He was no longer a god. Shocked horror held him rigid, stricken with grief. Eldra screamed and screamed…and the baby was born dead. Kor looked at it and shuddered, turned his glance aside. No such monster could have lived. It was hideous…a freak…an abortive cross between differing species of the human family. And with the going out of her monstrous child, the life went out of Eldra, too, and Kor dropped his head in his hands and wept.

  * * * *

  It was hours later that he picked his way through the forest. A cairn of broken lava covered the tragedy he left behind. Kor was aware of pain and weakness. And he was aware of another sensation—one he could not remember having felt before—hunger. His mouth was dry with thirst as he stumbled along. His mind was a prisoner in his skull. He had only his eyes to see with, his cars for hearing, his sense of touch.

  His hunger mounted and thirst became an agony of torment. Weariness dragged at his limbs, but he plunged on after the cave men who had gone before. The sky was overcast, threatening. Far behind, the atmosphere rumbled with distant explosions. An icy wind soughed through the bending conifers.

  Kor came at last upon the plain. A thin line of trees marked the course of a stream. He plunged his naked body into a pool, drank thirstily, bathed the blood, dirt and sweat from his skin. His belly griped with hunger.

  The sky was lurid over the mountains. The volcano exploded with a muffled, drum-like beat. Kor followed the course of the creek, and soon came upon the huddled tribesmen, too spent to travel further. He seated himself on a rock and gazed somberly at them. Others were still arriving, coming down from the wooded flanks of the foothills.

  A cave man looked up, saw Kor sitting there.

  “Kor!” he cried out.

  Others of the cave people looked up. Some that had seemed to sleep in their wretched misery rolled over and looked at him. Their looks were looks of hate. Kor sunk in his sorrow; he did not hear the jabber that went up from the people of Go.

  “This is Kor, who has destroyed us!”

  “He aroused the anger of the mountain god!”

  “He has destroyed our caves!”

  “He has killed our people!”

  “He is a false god whose worship leads to ruin!”

  It was only when the crumbling uproar became vociferous shouting that Kor looked up. Every thurb regarded him with malignant anger. Many hunters lay dead in the ruins of the canyon. Many women and children had fallen to the flames and the thundering gouts of lava that had jetted from the sky. The mob of cave men closed in on Kor, led by a mightily thewed giant of a thurb. He was Tharg. Kor waited for Tharg to speak.

  Tharg said, “You are the cause of all this, false god!”

  “I tried to save you,” Kor replied dully. “Did I not destroy the caves from the sky and the gods who brought them hither?”

  “You destroyed the caves of Go and the people who dwelt in them! You have killed our brothers, our sons, our fathers, and our women!”

  Kor let his head hang heavily. He said, “Where is my friend An-Ga?”

  “An-Ga is dead. The mountain ate him.”

  One more grief piled onto many.

  Kor groaned. “The Trisz would have eaten you all. I could not help what happened.”

  Tharg lifted his head and bellowed in triumph.

  “He admits he is not a god! He has posed falsely among us!”

  “Did I not heal your sick, banish your pains, and mend your broken bones?”

  Tharg darted back into the crowd, returned thrusting one ahead of him whose arm hung limp and bloody.

  “Here is a broken arm. Heal it, god!”

  The well of bitterness within Kor overflowed. He knew he could not heal the arm. He looked away. The cave man retreated into the group, nursing his broken arm. A look of what had been hope was now turned to hatred and despair.

  “Stone him! Stone him!” screamed the mob.

  “Why do you blame me…?” Kor asked gently, but further words were dashed brutally from his mouth by Tharg’s heavy hand. A dozen leaped on Kor at once, held him spread-eagled on the ground. Others rushed and milled, shouting insanely. Kor heard the chopping of a stone axe. The sound of chopping endured while those who held him twisted his limbs, tormented his flesh. Sweat stood out on him, but he bit his lip against an outcry.

  Shortly a group returned from the wood, bearing a pole, the trunk of a young conifer.

  It was about twenty feet long, rough-barked, as thick through as a big man’s thigh. It smelled of pitch and fresh flowing sap.

  Rough hands whirled Kor over, lashed his wrists over his head to the pole, secured his ankles. Others had busied themselves digging a pit in the ground. The end of the pole was slid into it. It was hoisted erect and wedged into place with stones. Kor hung from his lashed wrists, agony tearing at his arms and shoulders.

  He hung far off the ground, over the heads of the cave men. His pain was excruciating. He heard the taunts of those below.

  “You are a god? Save yourself!”

  A great rock whizzed through the air, struck the pole below Kor’s feet, jarred him with painful vibration.

  Kor groaned and cried out.

  “Am I a thurb that you stone me so? What crime have I done you?”

  For answer, they jeered and mocked him. Stones whistled dangerously close. A fist-sized rock smashed against his thigh.

  “Save yourself!” screamed the Go.

  Kor knew that he could not.

  The pain that wracked him sent waves of blackness over his mind. A stone thudded against his ribs; another smashed upon his rigid arms and he heard the bones crack.

  The world was a screaming, yelling cacophony of horror. A vision of Soma hovered in Kor’s dimming mind—of Eldra torn with agony—of a monstrous infant—

  Darkness swooped upon the plain. The angry yells of the Go changed to shrill cries of wonder, screams of fear. Gentle hands reached out of the air, touched Kor’s body. His bonds fell away. He floated free, without weight…

  CHAPTER XIX

  “We got t
he whole story, of course,” said Devon, Technical Director of the Psycho-Neural Institute on the planet Gramm.

  He sat behind an enormous desk—a desk sized to its master, for Devon was an enormous man himself. He sat loosely, sprawled back in his chair, chewing the stub of a cigar. He took the stub out of his mouth, and waved it over the array of charts, graphs, and typewritten commentaries that littered his desk.

  “You have taken a great load off my mind, Doctor,” Tor Shan said, relieved. “I suppose I do not need to tell you that you have in your care the most important mind in the Universe?”

  Devon shook his cigar at a distant ash-try. Ashes showered the litter on his desk.

  “You need have no worry, Sir. Kor is doing unusually well, considering the severity of his condition. We understand it better now, of course, than we did two months ago when you first brought him in—the fundamental aspect of his case, that is. We’ve not only been able to get the whole story of what happened from him, but we’ve saved his memory of it as well … that was touch and go for a while. But Doctor Naz tried some new techniques we’ve been developing here at the Institute. The results, I might say, have quite exceeded our expectations. His mind is quite normal now. Here—take a look at this material.”

  Devon handed over a sheaf of papers. Tor Shan read rapidly through. Finally he lifted his eyes, stared through the open window at the greenish tinged sky of Gramm, among the Far Stars, an isolated planet where the Men had established an ecological experiment station.

  Principally, the work at the Institute was concerned with problems of climate of mind incident to the settling of new worlds. Colonizing among the stars was certain to present psychological problems, and these the Men endeavored to anticipate and forestall in the galactic experiment stations. The problems were routine only in the sense that they were expected and that they would finally yield to persistent study. When colonization began in earnest, the Men would be ready with proper techniques and indoctrinations to settle the People easily into their new environments.