Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  They spent their lives in following a strange activity called trade, whereby one transported something of little value from one land to another—and somehow made the transportation provide them with extra goods and wealth. It was very mysterious, but interesting.

  Since there was no need to conquer, the Empire offered alliance which the Sea People gladly accepted, and by synthesis the Sea folk became passable warriors, while the landsmen became adequate sailors, and the water became a highway instead of an impassable barrier. A navy came into being and the Empire leaped across the sea to the shores of other lands.

  With the growth of the Empire, its ruler became invested with ever-increasing dignity and power. To the people he was Arn, or the Sword Arn. The names were used synonymously, and it is doubtful that anyone of that time dissociated the Sword from the one who wore it. The two were one, a synthesis of ruler and symbol that was odd but effective. Burt was the first and last of the emperors who was named differently from the land he ruled. His son who succeeded him was called Arn, and the next ruler bore the same name. In their two reigns that spanned a full century, the name Arn became synonymous with the Sword, and every succeeding wearer of the Sword bore the name of Arn, or changed his name to Arn on gaining the kingship. The tradition was established with such unbreakable rigidity that even in the days of the Barrack Emperors, when ruler supplanted ruler at intervals that ranged from a month to five years, each took the name of Arn along with the Sword.

  The first decades of the Empire under Burt were periods of expansion and conquest, with the Plains and Forest People combining their talents for war to increase the bounds of the empire. Wisely, Burt stopped the surge of conquest before the empire became too unwieldy, and turned his considerable administrative talents toward consolidating what had been gained.

  By the time of his death after a reign of nearly sixty years, the empire was a solid, homogeneous unit based upon a hard core of Plains and Forest People, with scattered colonies along the shores of the Inland Sea. And Burt had attained the stature of a minor god. He established the policy of assimilation that unified the Empire despite the polyglot of peoples it contained. Everyone, great or small, conqueror or conquered, became citizens of the Empire and equal under the Law.

  It was a master stroke of policy that preserved the Empire despite the stresses of splinter groups and castes who wished to advance their causes to the detriment of others. Unfortunately, Burt failed to provide for the granting of citizenship to other than the four races that formed the Empire during his lifetime. But he cannot be blamed for this omission, even though it later resulted in the Gvil Wars and the Barrack Emperors. He simply didn’t realize that there might be others over whom the Empire would rule.

  By any standard, Burt deserved the title of “The Great,” and at his death, his body was honored with a ceremonial burning that was unique in the history of the Empire. His spirit rose to the Sun from a two hundred foot high pyre of oil soaked logs that burned for days, and furnished a beacon for literally hundreds of thousands of mourners who purified their bodies in the smoke, and gained merit from this association with the Great King.

  And the first of the Arns buckled the Sword around his thick waist and took up the duties of kingship which he held for nearly fifty years.

  Under Arn XI the Empire consolidated its conquests beyond the Inland Sea, and the hardy sailors of the imperial navy ventured out into the trackless wastes of the Western Sea.

  Under Arn XIV, the greatest of the Barrack Emperors, the Western Land was discovered—a lush jungle world that was empty of intelligent life. The discoveries were recorded and an abortive attempt at a colony was made, but Arn XIV was murdered before the project was well established, and nothing further was done until Arn XXV quelled the Civil Wars, established order, and secured the Empire. He published a uniform code of justice that forever abolished the legal fiction of superior and inferior races, and extended Empire citizenship to all within the boundaries of the state, and provided for the extension of citizenship to any who wished to enter the state from outlying lands. Even that would not have been enough to hold the sprawling state together, except for the discovery of a workable steam engine by an outlander named Kossoth, and the application of the known phenomenon of electricity to communication by a Forest Dweller named Orden. The twin discoveries of power and communication tied the empire into a united whole and freed it from dependence on wind and animals. And like similar discoveries of a far earlier day, these began a chain reaction of technology that passed through the steam powered Industrial Revolution to the rocket powered Technological Revolution.

  Power, of course, became the foundation stone of the Empire, but the hydrocarbon period was generally skipped for the simple reason that organic chemistry used virtually all of the scanty supply, and controlled every new discovery.

  As a result some fantastically efficient developments of steam power plants furnished the available power for small operations. Technology grew up in a stable society that had no enemies, and in an atmosphere utterly devoid of war and conquest that had marked the early days of the Empire, it grew slowly and in harmony with the society that nurtured it. And with it grew the other arts of civilization such as literature, art, history, and, of course, archaeology—for the people were interested in their origins, and wanted to know more about them.

  By the time of Arn CXVII, the Empire had endured for a recorded period of two thousand years and had finally covered the earth by a process of colonization, absorption, and conquest. And despite its polyglot of peoples, it maintained internal harmony and order. Its citizens were prosperous and content, and the Empire moved down the years decade after decade, slowly developing, constantly changing, yet maintaining its traditional form, and keeping at its head the twin symbols of Emperor and Sword.

  On the whole, the Empire was happy, but there was one thing that bothered many of the People. From the historians and the archaeologists they learned the story of the Sword, and the fact that it was a weapon of Ancient manufacture. They even knew the Ancients, those tall slender bipeds so similar to themselves who had once possessed a technology as great or greater than their own. But the Ancients had died—destroyed themselves, the scholars said.

  That, of course, was nonsense. No race ever destroyed itself, but from the evidence gathered from hundreds of diggings throughout the world, it seemed to be the case. The theory was advanced that since the Ancients were probably the ancestors of the People, they were much more primitive and less able to cope with the emotional pressures of advanced technology—and since they did not appear to possess a common language, there might have been misunderstandings that could have led to many wars. It was all very vague.

  But the vaguest thing of all was the Thunderbird. It apparently was an Ancient totem, existing in many forms, some with two heads, some with snakes in their talons, some with wings folded, others with wings outspread. Their own national symbol was a direct copy of one of these—but try as they would, the People had never been able to break the symbolic phrase on the pennon clenched in their Emblem’s beak. It was frustrating. They knew so much yet so little about the Ancients. And like all bits of unsatisfied curiosity, they wanted to know the answer. In time it became an obsession of a large part of the population, and school children spent entire vacations digging in some likely looking mound or glassy area for some trace of the Ancients that would give them a clue to the mystery of the Bird’s message. Their elders were no better, and in addition to the Emblem cults that rose and fell with each new prophet, there were staid business men whose sole hobby was underwriting scientific explorations into the distant past, and gaunt-faced scholars with ropy muscles made hard by constant digging.

  It was an astronomer, however, that reaped undying fame. Focussing his telescope into the northern hemisphere one night, Orrin, the Astronomer Royal, discovered something that had eluded search for centuries. It was a bright spot, circling slowly about the earth and in the telescope it proved to be
an artifact! There was no doubt about it. Nature simply didn’t make spoked wheels! So under the pressure of the curious, the attention of technology was turned toward space.

  It took twenty years, but toward the end of Arn CXVII’s reign, the first manned spaceship took off to give the waiting world news of this strange thing that had been circling endlessly overhead.

  Arn CXVII, Child of the Sun, Supreme Ruler, Sword of Arn, Emperor of Earth, pushed his thick-lensed spectacles from his myopic eyes, and hitched at the awkward weight of the Sword hanging at his waist. It was a hell of a thing, he reflected, to insist that a modern ruler be forced to wear that clattering monstrosity of a bygone age. It was bad enough that his guard carried them instead of efficient projectile weapons, but to ask a busy man like the Emperor to wear a sword was arrant folly. Sure it was a symbol, but it would be just as good a symbol hanging quietly upon a wall under glass. He drew the blade out and looked at it. The Ancients, he mused, had been wondrous craftsmen. It had only been within the past decade that the People had found the secret of corrosion-resistant steel—and the black material of the handle still defied analysis.

  He swore softly as he paced back and forth across his private office, ignoring the flashes of color and buzzings of the Communicator on his desk. The Sword was responsible for this attitude of mind, he thought wryly. After all, he had lived with the accursed thing since he was a child, and constant exposure to one of the few intact Ancient artifacts wasn’t calculated to help his bump of curiosity which, through some throwback to a primitive ancestor, was larger than needful for the ruler of Arn.

  Today he was going to perform the most distasteful task of a long career filled with distasteful tasks. He was going to push the button that would send the “Explorer” roaring skywards to investigate the tantalizing mystery that had hung over the People’s heads since the dawn of history. He was bitter.

  Someone else would discover the secret of the Bird. By rights, that job was his, but emperors today didn’t lead their forces as they had done in the past. They were too valuable as administrators. Selected from the entire population on a basis of merit, trained in rigid competition with other selectees, only the best ever attained to the position of Arn, and even those had to be lucky enough to be in the prime of life when the preceding Arn died or retired. Admittedly, he was one of the most intelligent persons on earth, yet his very intelligence prohibited him from doing what his spirit yearned to do. He should have retired last year as he had planned—and then they couldn’t have refused to take him—but he had waited too long. His successor was now above the legal age for accession, and he would have to await another—and that would be another year. Like the Sword, he was a symbol of empire and he couldn’t be spared.

  Actually an Arn was no longer necessary, but there would be one as long as the People dominated the Earth. Arn CXVII groaned feelingly as he pulled his spectacles back into place on the bridge of his short nose, jerked the Sword petulantly out of his way and walked slowly out of his office. The Guard picked him up outside the door, and he instinctively straightened. He was the Emperor, and he would have to look the part when he faced the television cameras that carried this historic image and event to the most remote corner of the world. Nearly a billion people would be watching the small gray figure of the Emperor as he pushed the fateful button that would send the greatest scientific achievement of the race hurtling out into the airless nothingness that surrounded the world.

  The space station was a treasure trove of technology. Considering the years that had passed since it was placed in its orbit, it was in remarkable shape. Many of the sections were still intact and airtight. The machinery still operated, and the scientist crew of the rocket pounced joyfully upon the artifacts, and burned megawatts of power sending data and photofacsimiles back to Earth, where their colleagues took down every detail, marveling at the technical genius of the Ancients, a skill that was considerably superior to their own in many respects.

  From the synthesis of the two civilizations, the ancient and the modern, a space technology was developed in a matter of months. The ship had to wait for the tools to build the tools to build the ship, but the plans were complete long before the first machine tool was built. The entire empire pulsed with the news that the secrets of the Ancients were on the verge of being revealed.

  The historians knew better. All that was found in the station were relics of the technology—interesting and informative though they might be. The thoughts of the old people were still obscure, and though they had found a copy of the Bird emblazoned in gold upon one of the books, they still had gotten no farther toward the solution of the message than they were before. It required something more than technology to solve that problem, but the material was lacking. Perhaps on the moon . . .

  The lunar base was expected, and it was found, together with even more wondrous artifacts which gave the Empire’s technology another boost, but which still didn’t answer the problem. For the Moon base too, had been abandoned in an orderly fashion. Much material had been removed and the rest preserved for some future date. It argued unmistakably that the Ancients had left with some destination in mind. Perhaps the planets—.

  The people of Earth were stubborn when it came to satisfying their curiosity. They had taken two jumps toward knowledge, and a third was not too much to ask. The two explorations would have been profitable in any event. Much good had already come from the space station and the huge base on the moon. And more was due. The huge, enigmatic base that had been so mysteriously abandoned aroused the People’s curiosity about the Ancients to a fever pitch. Even the Government wanted to learn more, not particularly because of the Sword and the Emblem, although these did have political significance, but because of the technology that showed itself superior to that of Arn. The state was running true to form. It couldn’t bear the thought of inferiority, even though the superior culture had vanished a hundred millennia ago. So the exploration and development of the lunar base progressed until it supported a thriving colony. . . .

  Arn CXVIII was young and despite his training and intelligence, possessed much of the enthusiasm of youth. He was intrigued with the possibility that somewhere, there might still be living Ancients. From everything he knew or could deduce, they were a remarkably tough and resistant form of life, and it was highly improbable that they had vanished utterly. If they had reached the moon, they undoubtedly had the capability of reaching the planets. So the next step was to go there and find out.

  But Arn was anticipated. Astronomers, using the huge reflecting telescope found in the lunar observatory, radioed Earth that there was undoubted evidence of life on Thuja. Enormous domes similar to those on the moon proved that. Thuja was the fourth planet, and it had long been thought that the air blanket of that world could support life. It was dense enough, and the broad green bands that enclosed the planet were virtually positive proof that vegetation existed. It wasn’t a much greater step from vegetation to animal life and from that to the Ancients. And now this confirmatory evidence proved what had been suspected, although many scientists had doubted that life could exist during the cold Thujan nights.

  So an interplanetary ship was built in sections outside earth’s air ocean and, in due time, received its cargo of men and fuel and blasted off for its far destination.

  It took better than two months for the ship to reach Thuja, and another month before it decelerated sufficiently to land. It stood beside one of the huge domes, the soil steaming from the heat of the jets, while the crew waited impatiently inside for an opportunity to set foot on the alien soil.

  Apparently the Thujans were watching too, for at the precise instant when the instruments told the crew that it was safe to emerge, the huge airlock in the base of the dome opened and four tall thin figures rolled out in a ground car that sped swiftly over the red soil to the ship. One of their number descended from the car and stood beside the entrance port.

  He was tall, taller than the tallest crew man aboard the
Arn spaceship. He walked easily in the light gravity, his short arms swinging at his sides. His head was huge in proportion to the rest of his body, a hairless spherical cranium that from size alone could be judged to contain a first class brain. To the watching crew he was freakish, but the relation to the skeletal forms in the museums on Earth was startlingly precise, except that he was completely hairless on those parts that protruded from the garments that he wore. There was no doubt about this being. He was a living Ancient!

  The word went out to Earth, and ten minutes later the world was biting its collective nails with curiosity. Messages and directives flowed from the Government offices to the officers and crew of the ship, but these were almost as incoherent and contradictory as the crew’s impression of the Ancient.

  The first reaction of the crew was a mild shock, that vanished as Captain Afram spoke.

  “Well, they’re not too different from us,” the captain said as he looked into the vision screen that showed the figure of the Ancient.

  “Yes,” Kandro answered. Kandro was the engineer, and second in authority only to the captain. “They’re primates all right, but we knew that from their remains our archaeologists unearthed. Still I don’t believe that any of us would have expected them to be so thin and hairless—ugh!”

  “Just remember that they are People just as we, and quite probably they’re much more intelligent than we are. I don’t think that they are nearly as soft as this one looks. Ones like them destroyed a whole world once.”