Man of Two Worlds Page 27

  Little by little he absorbed the details of the plans that Igon had made for the rebirth of Earth. He felt awed and humble before the wisdom and foresight that Igon had shown. But it was wisdom that Igon had gathered through many tara and Ketan did not feel abashed before it as he sensed himself growing and accumulating power as he devoured the results of Igon’s long experience.

  He devoted himself to a study of the methods and accomplishments of the Restorationists. A library in Operations Center gave him the story of three generations in the valley. Igon’s plans had apparently grown as he went along. In the beginning he was only concerned with the gathering of a group who could understand the problem. He had no solution then, but ‘the group spent many years in studying the millions of volumes in the pinnacle.

  As the threat of destruction by the Statists developed, they interpreted that as a solution. Through an extensive spy system they learned in detail the plans of the Statists. They were sure of themselves and their plans were made with confidence.

  Now they were ready, and the city was filled with an eagerness that overflowed and expressed itself upon every face. Ketan could understand their feelings as the prospect of the final accomplishment of their goal after the long decades of waiting. But even though he had always known it was necessary, except for the short moment when he had hoped the Restorationists might find a way to avoid it, he could not feel a great elation at the prospect of the fierce and bloody battle to come.

  His brain was tired from the endless racking desire to find a better way. He knew the Kronweldians, and he knew the Statists—and he knew that Igon was. right. There was no other way.

  The Restorationists themselves were a conglomerate mass that offered no single distinguishing characteristic. There were the determined, freedom loving but unskilled Illegitimates. There were the poets and Seekers of Kronweld. And there were the aristocrats of an old but decadent culture from among the Statists. All of them had only the one point in common, a desire for union and freedom upon their home world.

  Ketan was assigned to the technical planning authority which would execute Igon’s plan of attack and defense when the time came. In such position he was required to learn the intricate details of dozens of complicated programs, to understand the functioning of every machine and weapon they planned to use. He learned to handle the mobile generators and was given a temporary command of a Unit composed of thirty machines.

  Hameth, despite his thousand other duties, took upon himself Ketan’s personal instructions. After days of mastering the intricate controls of the generators, Ketan was given one to take on a difficult maneuver.

  “Take it over in the next valley,” Hameth instructed. “The target is through the mountain. Your coordinates are in this sealed packet. You are to burn the target, but leave no marks farther away than fifty turl.”

  Ketan stared at him. It was an almost impossible problem requiring the utmost co-ordination in synchronizing and phasing the waves rotating in the loops which in turn generated the beam of destruction in the hollow tube.

  But he nodded. “On target’” He waved as Hameth climbed down the companionway and left the generator through the hatch.

  Ketan rolled the titanic machine along the bleak plain below the city where the maneuvers were being held. In the distance he could see two other generators widely separated. Where the others were he didn’t know, but the entire Unit was participating.

  Under the deceptively frail mesh that covered the turret of the generator, he seemed entirely alone in the universe. It was snowing again on the plain and he was forced to use the infrared vision plates to see a length of the generator ahead of him. Above, he watched the flakes of white turn gently aside and slide down the invisible slope of force set up in the mesh. In such solemn isolation it seemed impossible that the loop towering above him could hurl a beam of terror and destruction into the dark unknown before him.

  Shortly, he came to the valley designated by Hameth. Littering the valley floor were mounds of strewn wreckage that marked targets of previous days, abandoned and obsolete machines that had been brought here for trial. It was a graveyard of the predecessors of the monster whose back he now rode.

  His attention turned to the difficult problem before him. He adjusted the speed control to the proper point, then turned it over to automatic operation. He adjusted the sight controls to the co-ordinates of the target and watched as they slowly came into line with the actual axis of projection of the beam. His hand rested on the beam focus control which required adjustment during the fraction of an instant that it was on, in order to assure its concentration on a single spot.

  The snow was increasing in its blinding whiteness, but Ketan glimpsed dimly the squat, massive shapes of two other machines lumbering towards him. He wondered what their mission was.

  But he couldn’t be concerned with that. The completion of his own was at hand. He waited tense in every muscle for that terrible silent flame of destruction to come.

  It never did.

  In the white desolation of the plain Ketan glimpsed a figure that appeared suddenly out of the nothingness of the snow curtain. It was a bronze, half-naked figure running madly at inhuman speed— straight towards him.

  During an instant’s hesitation he thought it must be some wild hallucination. Then he threw the brake control to the limit. But the tremendous momentum of the generator could not be halted that quickly. The figure of Hameth disappeared out of his line of sight. Ketan thought lie detected a faint jar and the machine thundered on.

  When it came at last to a halt, he was already swinging down the companionway towards the hatch. The wind-driven snow felt like a sudden immersion in liquid fire as he thrust his legs out and followed with the rest of his body. Then he stumbled on beneath the belly of the machine, searching between the massive wheels and back along their deep tracks in the snow and mud.

  In the path of those wheels the ice-hardened ground had melted under the pressure applied by the jagged steel treads and as instantly frozen again into a mold of the generator’s path.

  But there was no sign of Hameth.

  Ketan raced frantically up and down the length of the tracks for hundreds of feet. There was nothing. Only mud and crushed bits of steel and glass and parts of long dead machines in the valley graveyard.

  The other two generators had come up now and their operators swung down through the hatches.

  Ketan turned towards them, his eyes staring in shocked disbelief. “Did you see him, too?” he asked hoarsely. “He ran straight towards my wheels. I couldn’t stop—” One of the men nodded. Ketan knew him as a young third-generation Restorationist named Alva. “We saw him. He must have gone crazy. He surely saw you, yet he deliberately ran under your wheels. Where is he?”

  “He isn’t here.”

  It was their turn to stare. Then they searched again the length of those frozen tracks. There was no sign of the crushed and broken body of the leader of the Restorationists.

  It was while the other two men were a dozen generator lengths away from him that Ketan saw it. It was just a length behind his machine, lying in the left track, a shining bit of glass and steel that shone in the blaze of light pouring from the open hatch of the nearby generator.

  He saw a glimpse of bronze in the distorted pattern of a crushed arm. He bent down to touch it, then froze immobile as if the snowy blast had turned to liquid air.

  After an interminable time he rose, and a thousand questions were answered. A sense of loss and an infinite sorrow tore a great sob from him that made the distant operators look up and shake their heads in pity.

  Then he bent down and touched again that fleshless arm—with its bone of shining steel. He slowly traced the almost unrecognizable body outline, the twisted arm and leg shafts, the burst vessel of shimmering glass that was where the head had been.

  I know you now, Varano-Hameth-Igon, he thought. This was the way in which the great Seeker had conquered time. A bit of brain tissue to think and drea
m and control that mighty body of imperishable steel and glass. That was all that had been necessary. Igon the immortal.

  Why had he destroyed himself by running beneath the generator’s

  wheels ? Something^must have gone wrong with the machinery of the body and put it out of control of Igon’s brain.

  The others were coming back. “We didn’t find a thing/’ said Alva. “Did you?”

  Ketan shook his head silently and moved away from the betraying wreckage of the body.

  “It must have been a mirage, some kind of hallucination that hit us all. I’m going to see if I can contact Operations Center and find out where Hameth is.”

  But the other man had already gone into his machine and now he thrust his head out and cried in a voice of terror and triumph. “Operations Center calling all generators in. The Gateway is reopened. The Statists are attacking Kronweld. They have struck at the Temple of Birth!”

  XXVI.

  Elta stood dazed, as if powerless to control the motion of her hand. Transfixed at her own destruction, she watched the slow crumbling and melting away of the mighty terraces before her.

  The beam cut through the metal wall of the Selector in a long white gash that slowly turned to yellow and remained blood-red until the beam swept back again.

  Twice, the beam traversed the long front of the barrier behind which the intricate mechanism lay. Then slowly and ponderously the upper portion began to totter and vibrate with a shuddering motion that increased in its terrible amplitude as one after another of the supporting beams was burned away.

  She saw the altar on which Ketaii crouched amid the blazing aura of the opened Gateway. He would not be harmed. The Gate had opened before she pressed the trigger of the gun.

  Her lips formed a wordless murmur of farewell as she saw him disappear amid the final blazing coruscations of the halo.

  Then it was dark and the altar tipped and plunged into the boiling inferno of crimson, flowing metal. With the terraces gone, the intricate mechanism of the Selector itself was exposed to the beam. Blue flames of electric discharge arced between the close-meshed wiring until whole areas became sheets of rippling fire.

  Hundreds of tubes of glass and metal collapsed under the point of the destroying beam. Some exploded in a rumble of thunder that further shattered the circuits as their gases were released and turned into isotopes.

  Behind Elta, the massed unfortunates who waited with their infants were too bewildered to comprehend fully. But when they saw the altar and its encircling halo collapse and fall into the flames, a thunderous roar came from their throats that drowned out the crackling of the electronic fire and the exploding of circuit components of the Selector.

  All the pent-up hatred and misery of generations who had been forced under the tyranny of the Selector to risk their children’s existence was released at once. It became a torrent of inchoate verbal expression that shook the walls of the building and flowed outward in a wild cry of triumph over the vanquished enemy.

  But Elta did not hear it.

  Through the almost blinding moistness in her eyes she watched for the approach of the Statists who were fighting their way through the animal mob to reach her.

  Methodically piercing the blazing ruin, she tried to pick out the spots that seemed critical and vulnerable. A half dozen times, she saw the figures of men rushing blindly into the spray of her beam and vanish like smoke puffs. She saw through to the great operating chambers where attendants placed the electrode caps over the heads of the infants and recorded the potentialities of their brains and characters.

  A hundred infants must have perished with the Selector.

  They were upon her then, a score of armed Statists who seized her arms in a crippling grip and tore the weapon from her hands.

  For a moment she thought they were going to kill her there, so great was the rage and frustration upon their faces. She would not have cared at that moment. She had accomplished all she had ever hoped to accomplish in life—apart from the one dream that she had always known could never be anything but fantasy.

  The Statists bore her forward through the mob towards a side door. If the hall had been less densely filled, they might never have taken her, but those only a few steps away from her did not know what was happening. They knew only the tremendous, unbounded elation over the fact that the Selector was no more. And they knew that it could never be restored, for even the Statists themselves could never rebuild it.

  As it was, only a few angry insults were hurled at the Statist guards and those bold enough to give vent to their feelings paid for it with their lives as the guards shot mercilessly into the ranks.

  They hurried Elta out the side of the building and re-entered at a nearby portal. She had no concep-tioii of where they were taking her, nor did she care. She watched listlessly as the walls of endlessly winding corridors passed her vision. Then they stopped before a wide door.

  The Statists consulted a moment and the door opened. Elta looked in upon the huge chamber full of electronic equipment and her interest rose in spite of herself.

  She didn’t notice, until the voice spoke, the man-sized tube located centrally opposite the door.

  “Leave us alone,” the low, powerful voice said.

  Elta chilled involuntarily at the sound of it. She knew now where she was—the fabulous sanctum of the Director, and that thing in the tube must be the Director, himself.

  The Statist guards left at once and the door closed. Elta could not see clearly into the tube, but what she did envision sent a wave of revulsion through her.

  She had heard tales all her life of the crippled and ageless Director, of the tube that held the half man, half machine and fed and kept him alive when he should have been dead long ago.

  There was pity and disparagement and revulsion for his helpless state. She fought down an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and flee.

  That would have been vain, she knew. She had destroyed the main instrument of the Director’s power, and she was here to be dealt with. She knew that a quick death would be too much to hope for. She only hoped that her father, Javins, would not have to suffer for what she had done.

  She thrust her head up and let the cowl of the cloak fall to her shoulders and pile behind her neck. She strode forward.

  “That’s better, my dear,” the satisfied voice came again.

  Those sightless eyes were looking upon her, and’ though she heard the voice, those withered lips never moved.

  “I am here,” she said. “Do what you are going to do quickly.”

  “Very quickly,” he said. There was a sudden urgency in the voice. “Come c-loser and listen carefully to what I have to say. Your father, Javins, is outside. He has with him the gauge of the Selector. I wonder if you know what that means.”

  She shook her head in stunned bewilderment. Her father here! What did that mean ?

  “The gauge is the mechanism that controls the positioning of the Selector. It is adjusted to the relationship between the planes of Earth and of Kronweld. We can build another Selector, but if the gauge and its setting had been destroyed we could never again get through to Kronweld.

  “Even as you were destroying the Selector, I ordered your father to remove the gauge to safety.”

  “But no one knows the principles of the Selector! It can never be restored.”

  “But it can,” the Director said softly. “It can so long as the gauge is safe.”

  The infinite calm of accomplishment vanished from Elta’s mind. If what the Director said were true, the whole terrible problem was exactly as before. She had accomplished nothing by her risks. But what was her father doing in this? All his life he had expressed a secret, sullen dislike of the Director and the policies of the Statists. That’s why she had originally planned to come back to him, to get his assistance, but it hadn’t been necessary to ask it. He had never gone as far as Elta, but surely with the destruction of the Selector assured, he would not
move to salvage it.

  The Director read her mind. “Your father and I have worked hand in hand in many things that would surprise you,” he said. “We have followed your activities with pleasure. It was unwise for you to attempt to kill your sister, however. Unwise, and unnecessary.”

  He was playing with her, Elta thought. Enjoying this cat-and-mouse play before he killed her by some slow and torturous method. Both her and her father. Somehow the Director had heard of Javins’ talk and was avenging himself now.

  “I was not quite correct in saying that we can duplicate the Selector,” the Director said. “We do know, however, where the information concerning its construction can be obtained. Your assignment is to go with your father and obtain that information for me, and open a Gateway again into Kronweld.”

  It was senseless and without meaning to her. If he were merely playing, he was leaving himself no place for a delicious climax. It was all so fantastic that she knew it was lies before he attempted a denouement.

  But he was not stopping. “Would you not like to see Ketan again?” he said.

  A sob escaped her lips. “Please kill me and be quick.”

  “You will go into the forest beyond the airfield, javins knows the place. Still there is the ship in which Ketan came to the city this morning. William Douglas is waiting for him. You will tell him what has occurred, and ask him to take you to the pinnacle. There you will find sufficient information to enable you to reopen the Gateway.”

  “The pinnacle! You know where it is?”

  “I was there many times—quite a long time ago. Come here. Step close to the tube. I’ll lower the field.” His voice seemed to take on a strange note of pleading.

  Elta felt the force field that had pressed her away from the tube relax, and she almost fell forward, not realizing she had been leaning against it for support.

  She caught herself and was almost near enough to touch the tube. The obscene horror within it was quivering with spasmodic motion as if an electric current were flowing through a corpse.