Man of Two Worlds Page 17

  “But, in the meantime, it was impossible for those of us who believed in the restoration of technique to proclaim our views. Hundreds of us were killed for it and the rest driven into hiding.”

  Ketan leaned forward. “Us? Did you take part in those events ?”

  Their strange host nodded. “Do not be surprised at that. I shall explain shortly.’’

  “We fought for years,” he continued, “for the restoration of science. But we knew at last that it was impossible in that generation. There was only one thing to do, and that was put our knowledge and science in storage and prepare for the future. That is what we did.’’

  He leaned back and gazed up at the high ceiling while drawing a final gust from the stub of his cigar.

  “We came here and built all this.” He waved a hand to include the pinnacle and all its contents. That was more than a thousand years ago. A dozen years after we completed our task, all of us were dead.”

  His eyes were watching the three men with amusement. The two Illegitimates leaned forward with a start, but incapable of uttering a sound.

  Ketan did not move. He had been waiting for that. Back in the dining room he had sensed the unreality of the pair, without daring to voice it. But if he gave no outward sign of reaction to the man’s statement, there was a deeper, more poignant sense of loss.

  It swept over him like a great wave of some immeasurably lonely sound. It swelled through the great chamber of the library and echoed and reverberated out through the marble halls and vast chambers he sensed but bad not seen.

  Dead was the one word that went with that lonely melody. Dead, this pinnacle and all that it holds. Dead, this great unknown

  Seeker—and the First Woman.

  Ketan looked into her eyes. There were depths of sadness there that spoke wordlessly to him, but then her lips moved, and he could hardly hear what she said.

  “Yes, dead. I wish I might know you,” she said. “I wonder what you are like as you sit here beside us—a thousand years from now, when we are only lights aud shadows and recorded sounds. Are you primitive savages who have come to rend all that we have tried to save and plunge the world forever into night? Perhaps not, because we prepared protection against such.

  “Or are you sensitive creatures of intellect to whom we have given survival and of whom we could be proud if we could see you. We shall never know, but we died hoping.”

  There was moistness in her eyes as she looked away.

  All the poignancy and hope in her heart communicated itself to Ketan. It was like a vision of the dead sitting beside her, watching her movements, and listening to her voice. Every day of his life lie had passed the thousand tara old image of her before the Temple of Birth. Now to see her alive—even if only in illusion—was like waking in the midst of a dream and finding it real.

  He imagined the fearful task she undertook when she went alone to Kronweld with the first of those selected by her father’s machine to begin life in that world. IIow lonely the years must have been while she watched the little ones grow. When they were old they must have built the image from a duplicate of the key to the pinnacle which she had taken with her.

  But the one question not yet answered was the sterility of Kronweld. Why had life never reproduced itself there?

  Richard Simons began speaking again. “It is obvious what was necessary,” he said. “Those of us who were left—about five hundred —gathered a sample of every scrap of technical and scientific knowledge we could find. I started with the job long before she was born.” He nodded towards the girl. “But she grew up to help finish the job. We located this pinnacle in what looked like the safest spot on Earth. The perpetual winds, which our geologists assured us would not materially affect the rock in five thousand years, and which our meteorologists said would be continuous until the peculiar formation that makes them possible disappeared, form a natural barrier. But it is one that can be easily penetrated if there is a good enough reason for doing so.

  “A good many of us lived here until our numbers were gradually depleted by death. We would have gone into Kronweld to escape as we planned for you to escape, but there was too much undone work, so we remained. Only Dorien went through to end her life in Crown World, among the first of those we sent through.

  “This half of our problem was only a half. The remainder is for you to solve, and if you have not solved it, or know that you cannot do so, then you must go back to Crown World and never return. In another thousand years another will follow in your steps, but that is my charge to you: Solve the second problem or go back I” the man’s eyes took on a strange, steely glint that somehow carried a nameless threat, a conviction that he could yet reach out across the millennium and enforce any demands he might make.

  “And that problem is—?”

  “The problem is the oldest problem of society. How can man be governed ?

  “Here is what we did for you: We appealed to the war revulsion of the people and constructed a series of great machines which we told them would forever eliminate such great criminals as had led the world to destruction in times past. We pointed out what changes there would have been in the world if such as Alexander, Nero, Attila, Hitler.. Michoven, Drurila and the hosts’ like them could have been examined at birth and their criminal tendencies discovered and destroyed without giving them a chance at life.

  “With their usual facility for turning their faces the other way when a good machine contrary to their teachings appeared, the antimaterialists accepted our Selector, as we called it, and we installed it in numerous locations throughout the world. All the minor instruments were controlled by the large central machine.

  “We did incorporate circuits which identified and destroyed potential criminal leaders, but we included other circuits, too. These latter selected and rejected the scientific brains, the men and women who could have led the world to new heights of achievement in proper circumstances, but who would have lived and died in a world of frustration and futility among the antimaterialists if they had remained on Earth. You were among those.

  “This isolation was made possible by the discovery of one of our group that there exist parallel worlds in which the oscillation rates of the component particles making up their atoms differ. You won’t understand that, neither do I. There’s probably only one mail in the world who ever did understand it, and now he’s dead. His records are here, though, if you want them.

  “What he did discover was that perfectly ‘normal’ matter can be changed with respect to the frequencies of its component oscillations and be coexistent in space with other matter of differing frequencies.

  “It all adds up to the fact that we found a hundred thousand other worlds lying side by side, so to speak, with our own. Some of them were terrible, ghastly worlds, with forms of life that would haunt a man all his days. Only a dozen or so were fit for human life, and the best of these, which was none too good, we called Crown World and sent our selected, chosen intellects there. How well it worked you know better than I.

  “It had always been a theory of mine that if a hundred of the best scientific minds of the world could be isolated on an island away from all influence of the ignorant and the politicians that they would cover a thousand years of scientific progress in a tenth of the normal, historical time.

  “I believe that now, a thousand years or so later, such a society of scientists has evolved and progressed farther than the wildest dreams of my own day. I gave you nothing to start with. I sent none, even, of the basic sciences of Earth for you to build upon. I wanted you to build both your own foundation and superstructure. All that you have done is yours and yours alone.

  “Now, the second problem is for you to come back and govern the world which is your rightful home —if you can. If you are prepared, and if it is ready, as I believe it should be, take it over, rule it, make it the paradise that it might have been long ago except for the greed of the ignorant and the warriors and the politicians. Rule as you see fit, but if you a
rc nat fully prepared to rule wisely, go back and wait another thousand years. That is your commission.

  “And that is all for tonight. Dorien will lead you to your rooms and you may rest. Think over what I have said. Tomorrow, we will talk again.”

  A thousand questions flooded Ketan’s mind, but the girl, Dorien, had already arisen and was leading the way out. The figure of the man was silent and motionless as if life had been suddenly turned off within it.

  They came out of the library into another hallway, thick-rugged and dimly lighted by a luminescent ceiling. Dorien led them to three doors adjacent to one another and bade them good night.

  “I think you will find everything you need,” she said. “You will find a message left there for you by the first who came back. Read it carefully.”

  The two Illegitimates had not understood more than a third of the words that were spoken. They understood only vaguely the import of the story of Richard Simons. As soon as the girl was gone, they came into Retail’s room.

  “What’s it all about?” said William Douglas. “We didn’t get very much of it. Could you understand it all?”

  Ketan briefly filled in the gaps they had missed. As he went along, the eyes of the Illegitimates glowed. They were silent a moment, then William Douglas spoke.

  “This is the thing we have waited a lifetime for. You will come back —all of you from Kronweld and take over from the Statists?” Ketan nodded. “Apparently it is our destiny. Most certainly we shall come back to Earth, to the home that was originally ours, ft is much more desirable than Earth.

  “But there arc many problems yet to clear up. Many I think that they didn’t plan for. Returning to our rightful place may not be a’ simple as it sounds.”

  “Of course not. The Statists will fight, but a hundred thousand Illegitimates all over the world will fight with you. Just give us leadership, bring us the weapons we’ve tried to build and can’t. You can lead the world back to the Utopia that these ancient scientists visioned. It’s the dream the Illegitimates have dreamed for three generations, but they never actually believed it would be possible.”

  “We’ll come back,” said Ketan with finality, “but first I must learn such a simple thing as how to get back to Kronweld.”

  “We’ll help you,” said William Douglas. “I can show you the way, now.”

  As he lay in darkness, Ketan thought of Dorien’s statement that many had been there before them. That thought confused and worried him.

  If there had been others who had been charged with the same commission, what had become of them ? Then he remembered the message the girl had said was left by the first one who came through. He got out of bed and snapped on the lights. The folder was lying on a table near the bed. He opened it up.

  “You know now the mission of the inhabitants of the world of Kronweld,” it read. “Because you are one of those with the power and imagination sufficient for the task ahead, you were chosen by the great Seekers of old to come through. They planned well for us and their heritage of knowledge will be a great asset, but there were a thousand problems that they did not anticipate.

  “The greatest of these is the rise of such a group as the Statists. They did not plan any way to take the governing power away from such, therefore, we cannot proceed as we would like.

  “You may or may not know who the Statists are by now. They are a group of tyrannical rulers who hold power by reason of the fact that they long ago learned of the existence of Kronweld. Whether by accident or betrayal, I do not know. The Statists themselves apparently do not know. But they were clever enough to infiltrate into the world of Kronweld without revealing themselves as strangers, and, through the medium of the Temple of Birth, they have fed upon our Seeking for well over two hundred years.

  “They are not like us, however. They are utterly ignorant of the basic principles of our science. As you have learned, the inhabitants of Earth have been skimmed, so to speak, of the scientific brains that have been born there during the last thousand years or more. This means that those left upon Earth have existed in an incredibly dark and ignorant era. Those of the Statists who have stolen and used our work are inept and almost stupid in the technique necessary to use our discoveries. Their only salvation has been the fact that none of their own have been submitted to the Selector and, as a result, any technical traits remaining among them—which were few enough after centuries of skimming—are now preserved. A number of good technicians exist among the Statists now.

  “A crisis has long been approaching because they fear Kronweld. Somehow there has come among them a legend of the pinnacle. They have searched long and in vain for it and they believe that if Kronweld should ever learn of it and come through, the Statists would be wiped out, which is, of course, true.

  “The problem is not simple. There are many of us who have come through, now. You will learn who and where we arc in good time. Come to the city, Danfer, and you will meet me there and obtain further instruction and information.

  “I am Igon.”

  Ketan read the last line and put the folder down before the significance of that name thundered into his consciousness.

  Igon!

  The legendary Seeker of Kronweld who had first broken through into I ire I and and Dark Land and had nearly lost his life and been declassed for it! Igon—so fantastic, so mythical that many doubted that lie had ever existed. It was at least eighty tara since he had disappeared from Kronweld.

  It was impossible that he could still be alive. The paper of the message was old. But even if Igon was. dead, what had become of his plans and all the others who had come through to conquer the Statists and reclaim Earth? Where were they?

  XIX.

  He tossed in restlessness through the night. His mind would not relinquish the multitude of interlocking problems.

  He tried to go over what he knew in an orderly manner. Leader Hoult and Teacher Daran obviously had been Statists who had taken Kronweld’s Seeking back to Earth for the Statist group. They had used the superstition surrounding the Temple of Birth as a cloak for their work.

  And that, he thought, was about all he knew for certain. It left him uncertain as to where Matra had stood. Apparently she was opposed to the Statists, but had she been one of them to begin with if the Temple were the channel for returning the stolen knowledge? And what of Anetel ? She must be a Statist or at least aligned with them, he decided.

  That left Elta. It was impossible to come to a decision regarding her. He didn’t want to believe that Matra’s original accusations were true, but there seemed no other explanation. The only favorable factor was Matra’s strange reversal of opinion just before she died. And Elta’s insane attack upon Anetel.

  These thoughts swirled in his mind until dawn broke with a burst of light through the window by his bed. A dawn as dreamy and unreal as all the other surroundings of the pinnacle interior. He rose more weary than when he went to bed, and looked about the room in close inspection for the first time. He saw what appeared to be bathing facilities and approached to find out how they worked.

  He discovered the shower controls after a moment and stepped under the invigorating stream. It was only water, he found, but it was good even if not so refreshing as the chemical sprays he was accustomed to.

  He found an assortment of clothing in a closet, and debated using some of it that approachcd his fit, but he decided to redress in the durable skin garments of the Illegitimates.

  When he was through, the door opened and Richard Simons entered the room.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Hardly. There have been too many surprises the last few days.” “I can understand that. But surprises are not yet at an end. We have many things to show you.”

  It was strange, talking thus, holding conversation with a man dead a thousand tara. Ketan could not shake off the eerincss of it. Rather, it was growing on him.

  “The thing I am most concerned |with is getting back to Elta,�
� he said.

  Again there was that expression of utter blankness and incomprehension on the man’s face. Obviously, Elta was not a name that would actuate any of the multitude of recorded responses. While he stood there, Ketan moved forward and passed his hand dear through the man’s midriff.

  “Yes,” Richard Simons smiled ruefully. “I am nothing but light and shadow and sound—and certain other radiant effects that make it possible to pick up things and exert pressure. But it is best this way, is it not? I think you would rather have me conduct you about in this manner than listen to only the sound of my voice in these empty halls.”

  “Much rather” said Ketan.

  He started out the doorway. “Do not think of me as one dead. Though my body disintegrated a millennium ago, I have guided you here. I have governed your life to the extent of leading you to a great destiny. I cannot be dead if I am capable of that, can I ?”

  “No… no, you can’t.” And Ketan suddenly knew that what the man said was true. This hall, this pinnacle, its precious storage of the science of his home world—none of it was dead. It was the most vitally living creation in all this dim and dying world. It was a spark of life that would infuse itself into Kronweld, and unite the two worlds in a glory of existence that no man had ever dared dream of. No man is ever dead, thought Ketan, who can still guide the lives of others through his works.

  They were joined by the two Illegitimates who looked as if they had rested much better than had Ketan. There was a reason why they should. They saw ahead the end of all their problems and the fulfillment of the hopes of their nation. Ketan saw only the beginning of his.

  In a moment they were joined by Dorien who was dressed this morning in a trim, white garb that set off her ebon, flowing hair with intense contrast.

  “Where are you taking them?” she asked her father.

  “I thought we’d go down to the laboratory this morning. They must see our collection there.”

  “Our wax museum—” Dorien laughed.