Man of Two Worlds Read online

  “Dorien, please—”

  It was evident that the girl had an easy familiarity with their work which was not shared by Richard Simons. He was intensely serious, as Ketan knew he well might be, over the importance of what they were doing. But Ketan was glad that Dorien was able to laugh. It made them all feel better.

  They wound through passages and down moving stairways, until Ketan made no attempt to keep track of where they were going. He ceased all wonder about the relative size of the interior and exterior of the pinnacle.

  They came at last upon a balcony that overlooked an enormous chamber below. There must have been two thousand men at least, working over laboratory tables and masses of equipment built up on the floor. Some few were in groups, but most of them seemed to be working alone and in silence except for the click of glassware as equipment was set up or dismantled.

  “What are they doing?” Ketan exclaimed. “I thought there was no one here, but yourselves.”

  Richard Simons remained silent for a moment. “These men arc like us—Dorien and I. But they arc no more dead than wc, for their work has influenced a million million lives—and will influence yours and billions more. These are the scientists of Earth, the greatest of them, who discovered most of the knowledge that man had mastered up to fhe time of the building of the repository here in the pin-naclc. Come down and meet some of them.”

  There was a strange appcarance about the group of workers in the room. They were dressed in a variety of garbs that lent them all a weird incongruity.

  Richard Simons led the way towards a corner where a white-haired old man, clad in a simple white robe, sat before a rough table scrawling on a rough, brownish substance.

  “His name is Archimedes,” said Richard Simons. “He is trying to improve an ontager for the battle of Syracuse.”

  The old man looked up at the’ sound of their voices. There was a dreamy look in his eyes, mingled with the worry and fear there.

  “If I could only stand a hundred thousand men in one place, what power I would have,” he murmured.

  “Why men?” Ketan burst out. “You could use—”

  Richard Simons touched Retail’s arm gently. “He wouldn’t understand. He is Archimedes as lie was. Nothing but the power of men and animals and heat and falling objects was known in his day. Come over to a later era. This man’s name is Michael Faraday. He discovered the principle of electric current generation.”

  A thin-faced man of medium build looked up as they approached. He was in shirt sleeves and knee-length pants. I lis neatly waved mat of white hair looked somehow artificial to Ketan.

  “Hello, Richard,” he said. “Hello, Michael. You look a bit annoyed this morning.”

  “Annoyed! I gave a lecture last night and some fool woman came up after the demonstration and asked what this was good for.” He pointed towards a disk fitted with a crank that would spin it between the tips of a horn-shaped piece of metal.

  Michael Faraday chuckled. “Can you guess what I told her? I said, ‘Madam, can you tell me what a new born baby is good for?’ She left me without another word.”

  They chuckled with him and turned away.

  “I want you to know them,” said Richard Simons. “Come here often. Talk to all of them. They can understand you because their language has been adjusted to yours, though originally they spoke a hundred different ones.

  “I want you to find out what they are doing, and why. Here are the men who tried to raise a world up to the stars, and failed because of the ignorance and stupidity that blocked their way. I want you to learn from them, because you must go the same path and succeed where they failed.

  “They will always be here, working over and over upon the things that the world remembered them for, and for which they still live. There’s Edison over there, trying to hear his phonograph with a slightly deaf ear. Sometimes he turns it on so loud that it annoys Einstein across the table. Get to know them all. They’re my friends, and the friends of every man.”

  Up on the balcony again, Ketan looked down upon the assemblage of figures that represented the great Seekers of a world. He knew that the scientists who had built this replica and created these figures had not done so for idle show. Here was something of paramount importance for the Seekers of Kronweld who were yet to come.

  They would meet and know the Seekers of Earth as if they had worked with them, and they would learn their dreams and ambitions and gain strength to carry them out.

  “Now the library,” said Richard

  Simons.

  They passed through other corridors and came to a long, narrow room with a table that would seat over a hundred men. Upon the table, before each seat was a small view plate and a keyboard of colored and numbered buttons.

  “Behind these walls,” said Richard Simons, “are the photographic records of a hundred million books. This was our greatest task. We spent the majority of our time, secretly roaming the world, salvaging the books that men had written. Because there were so many copies of each, they could not all be destroyed even by the tremendous bombing and burning of the wars. We preserved them on film, and then built this library.

  “A manual index indicates to you what is available on any given subject. Then, with the indicated index number, you order that film automatically fitted into your viewing machine. Thus, you may sit in one of these positions here and read any of the one hundred million volumes with only a few seconds required to change from one to another.

  “We planned that this room should some day be filled with scientists from Crown World day and night, learning the heritage of their homeland.”

  Ketan sat down at a position and experimentally pushed a series of buttons. In a moment the screen lighted with the image of a page. He found it difficult to read.

  That vastness of the accumulated writings awed him. More than one man’s lifetime would be required to investigate even a fraction of what was stored there.

  He was about to speak, but Richard Simons went on, “There is one other chamber that you must see this morning, our museum.”

  It was adjacent to the library. Like the library it was so vast in extent that it would not allow a vision of details. There were samples of hoarded machines and artifacts representing every art of ancient man. Machines of transportation, communication, manufacture —the scientists had gathered them out of the ruins of a world for a testimony of the once great heights to which man had risen.

  “It is too much!” exclaimed Ketan. “I have seen more than enough. There is no purpose in my viewing more of the remains of my home world. Let me go back to Kronweld. and bring Kronweld here to these things.”

  “Then follow the way that Igon has prepared,” said Richard Simons. “Do not fail!”

  Before he left, Ketan went back to the first library and made a selection of volumes to take to Kronweld as evidence of the story he would have to tell.

  Like emerging from paradise into hell, they went out into the desert again, where the sky was smoky with sand and the sun blurred by it. They found their horses hobbled and tethered. They were protected by heavy blanketing of some unknown texture, and they had been watered and fed. Ketan and the Illegitimates did not stop to ponder the miracle. It was the final manifestation of the pinnacle.

  They replaced the tiny golden image in the recess and balanced it as before. The huge stone plug that had fallen away slowly swung down and blocked the opening once more. They shoveled the sand back over the projecting pyramid.

  The sky was hot and burning through the shield of sand clouds. They covered their faces with moistened rags and turned back towards the gap between the mesas. Unerringly, Ketan’s direction sense in relation to the pinnacle led them back along the way they had come. Because they had started very late, it was near morning when they reached the canyon gap that led out of the drifting sands into the mildness of that other desert.

  “We may as well stop and rest for the day,” John Edwards suggested. “If we travel at night, it will be cooler
. It looks like it’s a furnace out there now.”

  William Douglas and Ketan agreed. They felt the need of rest, and Ketan, in spite of the urgency of his mission, wanted time to think.

  It was William Douglas who was the most impatient. “What do you intend to do next, Ketan? What did those writings say?”

  They were sitting by the campfire eating their evening meal. “Those instructions were written by Igon who disappeared from Kronweld over ninety years ago. Whatever validity they had then is surely gone, now. Igon is undoubtedly dead. If there is an organization of those who have come from Kronweld to the pinnacle, I am supposed to contact them, but I ,wonder if they haven’t been discovered by the Statists and defeated long ago. Surely there would have been some evidence of their action by now. Igon would have carried a plan into effect during his lifetime if it were physically possible.”

  “But the instructions wouldn’t have remained in the pinnacle if they were no longer effective.”

  “There is no reason why they should have been removed. After all, everything there is only mechanical in operation. Apparently Igon went through there and managed to make some progress towards a plan. Then he went back to the pinnacle and left these instructions, altering the controls on the images of Richard Simons and his daughter so that they would bring the instructions to the attention of any who came after him. He died and his plan failed, and the instructions merely remained.”

  William Douglas shook his head.

  “I hardly think it is as simple as that. Those images were set up too well. If they could respond to the unexpected questions and statements of our conversation as they did, surely they would have better control over circumstances surrounding the instructions. What did they tell you to do?”

  “I am to go to the city of Danfer where the central Selector is located. There I am to meet Igon— which is obviously impossible. If he were alive, I would receive further instruction there.”

  “Perhaps he is alive in the same sense that Richard Simons is.” “I’ve thought of that, but if he is nothing but a walking image of light and sound, he can’t be an effective force in overthrowing the Statists.”

  “Maybe that’s your job.”

  “I don’t know. If so, what happened to the others who came through ?”

  “At any event, you are going?” “I am going back to Kronweld,” said Ketan. “That is the first concern I have now. I am going to find Elta if she is alive. If she is not, I’ll spend my life avenging her death if I have to destroy Kronweld and Earth to do it.”

  “I will go with you to Danfer then. That is the only way back to Kronweld. Perhaps you will find something more of this Igon, there. It is fortunate that you received a brand as you went through the Selector. They won’t question you on that count, anyway.”

  Ketan glanced down at the purple mark upon his arm, about which he had so often wondered, and nodded.

  During that night, while they rode slowly across the desert, and the next night when they went back into the hills, Ketan was assailed by a sense of futility as if all he could do now were in a lost cause.

  He traced the feeling to the episode in the pinnacle, to the discovery that the great and legendary Igon had passed that way at least eighty tar a before—and obviously failed to carry out the mission assigned to him. If Igon had failed, how could Ketan hope to succeed in that task ?

  One slight posibility that offered hope was that Igon had seen the impossibility of accomplishing the task and had not tried, but waited for another to be assigned to it at a more opportune time. That seemed unreasonable, however, in view of the instructions he had left. Possibly they had tried and failed. Possibly a great number had come through the pinnacle and had produced a mighty effort to overthrow the Statists and reclaim Earth— and failed.

  These were only more unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions to be added to the ones already piled upon him. He searched in his mind and in his heart for a course of action to follow.

  When he placed the question directly to himself, devoid of all emotional response, it became clear that his way was as plainly marked before him now as it had been from Kronweld to the pinnacle. He wondered if some influence still were upon him, guiding him.

  He would go first to the forest villages of the Illegitimates to rest aud prepare for the journey to Danfer and to enlist the aid of the Illegitimates. He had to have them as allies. He had to have their faith and independence and devotion to freedom to mix with the passivity and Seeking of Kronweld.

  He would go’ then to Danfer, fmd a way to go through to Kronweld. He would find Elta, but regardless of her fate, he would carry out his original intention of exposing and destroying the Temple of Birth, lie would show it for what it was: Merely a gateway back to the world from which they had come.

  Kronweld would be convinced then. They could not cry down the evidence he had to show them. He was sure of that. With the aid of the Unregistered he would be sure of convincing Kronweld.

  That was the course, then. He would lead his people back to Earth. At the pinnacle and in the villages of the Illegitimates, they would learn of their heritage. They would plan together, not just he alone, how they could overthrow the Statists.

  It did not seem so difficult. Once he had outlined the course in his mind, it seemed certain of fulfillment and a new, uplifting elation filled him.

  But it did not last for long. If the problem were that easy, why had Igon failed?

  XX

  They traveled part of that day so that they came into the village about midnight.

  Ordinarily the village would have been dark, with only the immobile shapes of sentries indistinguishable from the black shadows of the forest, but unaccountably there were hundreds of pin points of lights and an all encompassing blob of light that marked the location of the village now.

  An exclamation burst from the throat of William Douglas. “The Statists—raiding again!”

  He spurred his horse. The tired animal leaped into a long stride that carried its body closer to the Earth in a hurtling shadow through the trees. Almost before Ketan realized it, William Douglas was out of sight around a bend, then he dug his heels inexpertly into the sides of his own horse.

  He clung to the animal’s back as it picked up speed and rocked him crazily with its flight along the trail. Behind him he heard John Edwards shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear the words in the wind and the sound of horses’ hoofs.

  It was only when the second Illegitimate forced him over to one side and sped past that he knew John Edwards wanted him to get out of the way.

  Despite his slower pace he could now see William Douglas’ silhouette on the trail far ahead and spurred his animal faster.

  He was still faraway when he saw that whatever the burning was, the village itself was not on fire. Distinctly, the outlines of the crude houses stood out against the firelight.

  And now, as he came closer, he heard a sound upon the air. It was a sound produced by human throats, but that was all. It was not a sound that could be produced by human beings. It was a wild, animal sound that chilled him like the smell of dead or the sight of evil. It was a sound made under the direction of torn, demented minds that had lost all claim to humanity.

  The villagers were making that sound. Fighting down his revulsion at the screaming fury that poured over him, he drove the horse onward.

  He came through the outer edge of the village and rode down a crooked street. Then, before him, he beheld the mob of howling Illegitimates. They were gathered in the central square of the village about a flaming pile, whose light was surging up swiftly.

  “What—?” he began. Then he saw William Douglas beside him.

  “Come away,” the Illegitimate leader said softly. “You shouldn’t see this.”

  “Shouldn’t see what? What are they doing ?”

  But before he could answer, Ketan saw the object of fury that was beginning to be bathed in the rising flames. There was a stake iti the ccnter of them and
a human being was bound to it.

  A choked cry burst from Ketan’s throat. “William Douglas! Stop them! Do you see what they, are doing?”

  “It’s a Statist they captured today. A spy someone says. You couldn’t stop them. They’d tear you to pieces and burn you, too. I couldn’t stop them, they’d kill me, first.”

  Sickened, Ketan turned once again to look at the pyre. Then he saw the head of the bound figure raise and a cry came from its throat. He stared, petrified, and the world stopped.

  It was Elta.

  Ketan did not reason his next actions. There was no room for reasoning or thought within his mind. Instinct directed him to seize the coil of rope that hung on William Douglas’ saddle beside him. With a wild, animal cry he reined the horse up and slashed at its flanks with the coil of rope.

  The rearmost of the mob turned —just in time for the hoofs of the horse to crash into their faces. The horse leaped into the throng, with Ketan lashing savagely at its sides.

  The mob parted in terror before his onslaught for an instant. But only for an instant. The inhuman cries he had heard before were turned upon him now and hands reached up to drag him down. He kicked out and felt bone crush beneath his feet. From side to side he slashed with the coiled rope that was now bloody where it had laid faces bare to the bone.

  There was nothing remaining there of Ketan, the Seeker from Kronweld. There was only a savage, fear demented animal upon the horse’s back. Kctan’s crics matchcd aud exceeded the Illegitimate’s in animalness and his voice was heard above theirs.

  Slowly, they began to fall back in sheer awe at the fury riding in their midst.

  From his own pack, Ketan reached down to withdraw a short knife. He was nearly to the fire, now. A few more steps and he could cut the bonds from Elta.

  As he leaned over to reach in the pouch, the horse sagged under the sudden weight of one of the mob that leaped on his back. With a stone in hand, the man clubbed at Ketan’s head, it struck a glancing blow and opened a long channel of blood down the side of his face.

  Reason mingled with emotion and Ketan leaned over farther, exposing his head and neck to the blows. Then as the assailant drew back for a final blow, Ketan drew out the knife in a single long arc that ended in the enemy’s side. He wrenched the knife viciously out of the wound as the man fell.