The Silkie Page 5

  Di-isarinn said, 'If it's a bluff, I couldn't possibly yield to it because I have nowhere else to go.'

  In his fish state. Cemp could hear and understand human words, but he could not speak them.

  Di-isarinn persisted. 'It's interesting that the one Silkie whom I now cannot read has taken the enormous risk of coming aboard. Your computer helped you to adjust to me, but perhaps you were more affected by the desire I attempted to arouse in your home than appeared at the time. Perhaps you long for the ecstasy and the anguish that I offered.'

  Cemp was thinking tensely, It's working. He doesn't notice how he got on to that subject.

  The logic of levels was beginning to take effect. It was a strange world, the world of logic. For nearly all his long history, man had been moved by unsuspected mechanisms in his brain and his nervous system. A sleep center put him to sleep, a waking center woke him up, a rage mechanism mobilised him for attack, a fear complex propelled him in flight. There were a hundred or more other mechanisms, each with its special task, each in itself a marvel of perfect functioning but degraded by man's uncomprehending obedience to a chance triggering of one or another.

  During this period, all civilisation consisted of codes of honor and conduct and of attempts noble and ignoble to rationalise the simplicities underneath. Finally came a developing comprehension and control of the neural mechanisms — one, then another, then many.

  The real Age of Reason began. On the basis of that reason Cemp asked himself, was the Kibmadine level lower or higher than, for example, that of the shark? It was lower, he decided. The comparison would be, if man had brought cannibalism into civilization with him. A lower level of logic applied to that.

  The shark was relatively pure within his frame. He lived by the feedback system and managed a well-balanced existence. He did not age, as humans did. He grew older — and longer. It was a savagely simple system. Keep in motion; that was the law of it. What poetry that motion was, in the wide, deep sea that had spawned him! But the motion was — feel need of oxygen, get excited, swim faster; enough oxygen, slow. cruise, even stop. But not for long. Continual movement — that was the life of the shark.

  Eating, of itself, was lower, more basic, went farther back into the antiquity of the cell. And so the mighty Kibmadine had brought into their innumerable forms one pattern that was vulnerable, one they wouldn't give up, no matter how much they controlled the other basic mechanisms of their bodies....

  Di-isarinn felt himself calm and in control. It was unfortunate that the Silkie had analysed the Kibmadine structure so accurately. But it didn't matter. Under other circumstances, Earth might have been a planet to be destroyed. But there was no chance at all of enough Silkies being produced in time to save the system from being conquered.

  And so another race would, one at a time, experience the ecstasy of being eaten as the culmination of the act of love.

  What a joy it was to receive from tens of millions of cells, first resistance, terror, shrinking, and then the inversion, every part of the being craving to be eaten, longing, begging, demanding...

  Di-isarinn's calmness yielded to excitement as the pictures and the feelings re-formed in his mind from ten thousand remembered feasts of love objects.

  I really loved them all, he thought sadly. It was too bad they had not been brought up to appreciate in advance the ultimate delight of the all-consuming end of the sex orgy.

  It had always bothered Di-isarinn that the preliminaries had to be secret, particularly with beings who had the ability to transmit thoughts to others of their kind and thus warn them. The greatest pleasure always came when the ending was known, when part of the love play consisted in reassuring the troubled, trembling being and quieting the pounding heart.

  'Someday,' he had told thousands of love partners, 'I shall meet someone who will eat me. And when that happens ...

  Always he had tried to persuade them that he would rejoice as he was being devoured.

  The inversion involved was a phenomenon of the life condition; the urge to succumb could be as powerful as the urge to survive.

  Standing there in front of the tank, looking down at Cemp, Di-isarinn felt a quickening of emotion as the conjuration of being eaten flitted like a fantasy through his brain. He had had such pictures before, but never had they been so strong.

  He did not notice that he had passed the point of no return. Without thinking, he turned away from the tank. Cemp forgotten, he transformed quickly into a remembered form, long-necked, with smooth, dappled skin and powerful teeth. He remembered the form well and lovingly. The members of the race had been love objects for the Kibmadine not long before. Their bodies had a particularly excruciating pleasure-nerve system.

  Di-isarinn could scarcely wait.

  Even as he became the form, his long neck twisted. A moment later, the teeth, impelled by the merciless Kibmadine biting drive, cut off an entire thigh.

  The pain was so hideous that he screamed. But in his enchanted brain the scream was only an echo of the countless screams that his bite had evoked in the past. Now, as then, the sound excited him almost beyond endurance.

  He bit deeper, champed harder, ate faster.

  He devoured nearly one half of his own body before the imminence of death brought a baby fear from his own true past. Whimpering, blindly longing for home, he opened a line to his contact on the planet of the far sun where his kind now dwelt.

  At that instant an outside force surged past him and over whelmed his personal communications. As one, a dozen Silkies loaded an electric charge on that line, all they believed that it could carry.

  The charge that struck the distant Kibmadine totaled more than 140,000 amperes of electricity at more than 80,000 volts. It was so powerful that it smashed all the reflex defenses of Di-isarinn's fellow beings and burned him in a single puff of flame and smoke.

  As quickly as it had opened, the line ceased to exist. The Sol system was now only a remote, anonymous star....

  The tank with Cemp in it was carried to the ocean. He crawled out into the sea and breasted the incoming tide, and the fresh, bubbling liquid poured through his gills. As he reached the deep water, he submerged. Soon the thunder of the surf was behind him. Ahead were a blue sea and the great underwater shelf where a colony of class-B Silkies lived their fishlike existence.

  He would dwell in their domed cities with them ... for a time.

  * * *

  IX

  CEMP'S PERIOD of life as less than a class-C Silkie passed Uneventfully.

  Almost a year later, Nat Cemp, walking along the street, passed the man — and stopped.

  Something about the other triggered a signal in that portion of his nervous system which, even in his human state, retained a portion of his Silkie ability. He couldn't remember, hard as he tried, ever having felt that particular signal before.

  Cemp turned in the street and looked back. The stranger had paused at the near corner. Then, as the light became green, he walked briskly toward the far sidewalk. He was about Cemp's height of slightly over six feet and seemed about the same build — about a hundred and ninety pounds.

  His hair was dark brown, like Cemp's, and he wore a dark gray suit, as did Cemp. Now that they were several hundred feet apart, the initial impression he had had of somebody familiar was not so clear.

  Yet after only a slight hesitation, Cemp rapidly walked after the man, presently came up to him, and said courteously, 'May I speak to you?'

  The man stopped. At close range, the resemblance between them was truly remarkable, suggesting consanguinity. Blue-gray eyes, straight nose, firm mouth, strong neck, shape of ears, and the very way they held themselves were similar.

  Cemp said, 'I wonder if you are aware that you and I are practically twins.'

  The man's face twisted slightly. His lips curled into a faint sneer, and his eyes gazed scornfully at Cemp. He said in an exact replica of Cemp's baritone voice, 'It was my intent that you notice. If you hadn't this first time, then I woul
d have approached you again. My name is U-Brem.'

  Cemp was silent, startled. He was surprised at the hostility in the stranger's tone and manner. Contempt, he analysed wonderingly.

  Had the man been merely a human being who had somehow recognised a Silkie in human form, Cemp would have considered it one of those occasional incidents. Known Silkies were sometimes sought out by humans and insulted. Usually the human who committed such a foolish act could be evaded or good-naturedly parried or won over. But once in a while a Silkie had to fight. However, the man's resemblance to Cemp indicated that this encounter was different.

  As he had these thoughts, the stranger's cynical gray-blue eyes were gazing into Cemp's. The man's lips parted in a derisive smile, showing even white teeth. 'At approximately this moment,' he said, 'every Silkie in the solar system is receiving a communication from his alter ego.'

  He paused; again the insolent smile. 'I can see that has alerted you, and you're bracing yourself...'

  It was true. Cemp had abruptly decided that whether the other's statement was true or not, he could not let him get away.

  The man continued, '... bracing yourself to try to seize me. It can't be done, for I match you in every way.'

  'You're a Silkie?' Cemp asked.

  'I'm a Silkie.'

  By all the logic of Silkie history, that had to be a false claim. And yet there was the unmistakable, sensational resemblance to himself.

  But Cemp did not change his mind. Even if this was a Silkie, Cemp had a superiority over all other Silkies. In his struggle with the Kibmadine the year before, he had learned things about body control that were known to no other Silkie, since it had been decided by the Silkie Authority that he must not communicate to other Silkies the newly gained abilities. And he hadn't.

  That extra knowledge would now be to his advantage — if the other was indeed a Silkie.

  'Ready for the message?' asked the man insolently.

  Cemp, who was ready for the battle of his life, nodded curtly.

  'It's an ultimatum.'

  'I'm waiting,' said Cemp.

  'You are to cease and desist from your association with human beings. You are commanded to return to the nation of Silkies. You have a week to make up your mind. After that date you will be considered a traitor and will be treated as traitors have always been treated, without mercy.'

  Since there was no 'nation' of Silkies and never had been, Cemp, after considering the unexpected 'ultimatum' for a moment, made his attack.

  He still didn't quite believe that his 'Twin' was a Silkie. So he launched a minimum electric charge on one of the magnetic bands that he could use as a human — enough to render Unconsciousness but not damage.

  To his dismay, a Silkie magnetic screen as powerful as any thing he could muster warded off the energy blow. So the man was a Silkie.

  The stranger stared at him, teeth showing, eyes glinting with sudden rage. 'I'll remember this !' he snarled. 'You'd have hurt me if I hadn't had a defense.'

  Cemp hesitated, questioning his own purpose. It didn't have to be capture. 'Look,' he urged, 'why don't you come with me to the Silkie Authority? If there is a Silkie nation, normal communication is the best way of proving it.'

  The strange Silkie began to back away. 'I've done my duty,' he muttered. 'I'm not accustomed to fighting. You tried to kill me.'

  He seemed to be in a state of shock. His eyes had changed again. and they looked dazed now. All the man's initial cocksureness was gone as he continued backing away.

  Cemp followed, uncertain. He was himself a highly trained fighter; it was hard to grasp that here might be a Silkie who was actually not versed in battle.

  He soothed, 'We don't have to fight. But you can't expect to deliver an ultimatum and then go off into nowhere, as if you've done your part. You say your name is U-Brem. Where do you come from?'

  He was aware, as he spoke, that people had stopped in the street and were watching the strange drama of two men, one retreating, the other pursuing, a slow step at a time.

  'First, if there's a Silkie nation, where has it — where have you — been hiding all these years?' Cemp persisted.

  'Damn you, stop badgering me. You've got your ultimatum. You've got a week to think about it. Now leave me alone!'

  The alter ego had clearly not considered what he would do after delivering his message. His unpreparedness made the whole incident even more fantastic. But he was showing anger again, recovering his nerve.

  An electric discharge, in the jagged form of lightning, rode a magnetic beam of U-Brem's creation and struck at Cemp, crackling against the magnetic screen he kept ready to be triggered into instant existence.

  The lightning bolt bounced away from Cemp, caromed off a building, flashed across the sidewalk past several startled people, and grounded itself on the metal grill of a street drain.

  'Two can play that game,' said U-Brem in a savage tone.

  Cemp made no reply. The other's electric beam had been maximum for a Silkie in human form — death-level potency. Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed. The street was clearing. People were running away, seeking shelter.

  The time had come to end this madness, or someone might be killed. Cemp acted on his evaluation that for some reason that was not clear, this Silkie was not properly trained and was therefore vulnerable to a nonlethal attack by a technique involving a simple version of levels of logic.

  He wouldn't even have to use the secret ability he had learned from the Kibmadine the year before.

  The moment he made up his mind, he did a subtle energy thing. He modified a specific set of low-energy force lines passing through his brain and going in the direction of U-Brem.

  Instantly, there was manifested a strange logic implicit in the very structure and makeup of life. The logic of levels! The science that had been derived by human scientific methods from the great Silkie ability for changing form.

  Each life cell had its own rigidity. Each gestalt of cells did a specific action, could do no other. Once stimulated, the 'thought' in that particular nerve bundle went through its exact cycle, and if there was an accompanying motion or emotion, that also manifested itself precisely and exactly and without qualification.

  Even more meaningful, more important — a number of cell colonies could be joined together to form a new gestalt, and groups of such clusters had their special action. One such colony gestalt was the sleep center in human beings.

  The method Cemp used wouldn't work on a Silkie in his class-C form. Even a B Silkie could fight off sleep. But this Silkie in human form began to stagger. His eyes were suddenly heavy lidded, and the uncontrolled appearance of his body showed that he was asleep on his feet.

  As the man fell, Cemp stepped forward and caught his body, preventing an injurious crash to the concrete sidewalk. Simultaneously, he did a second, subtle thing. On another force line, he put a message that manipulated the unconsciousness gestalt in the other's brain. It was an attempt at complete control. Sleep cut off U-Brem's perception of his environment. Cemp's manipulation of his unconsciousness mechanism eliminated those messages from the brain's stored memory which would normally stimulate to wakefulness someone who was not really sleepy.

  Cemp was congratulating himself on his surprisingly easy capture — when the body he held stiffened. Cemp, sensing an outside force, drew back. To his complete astonishment, the unconscious man rose straight up into the sky.

  In his human form, Cemp was not able to determine the nature of the energy that could accomplish such an improbable feat. He should, he realised, transform to Silkie. He found himself hesitating. There was a rule against changing in full view of human beings. Abruptly, he recognised that this situation was unique, a never-before-encountered emergency. He transformed to Silkie and cut off gravity.

  The ten-foot body, shaped a little like a projectile, rose from the ground at missile speed. Most of his clothes, completely torn away, fell to the ground. A few tattered remnants remained but were swept away by the gal
e winds created by his passage.

  Unfortunately, all of five seconds had gone by while he made the transformation, and since several seconds had already passed before he acted, he found himself pursuing a speck that was continuing to go straight up.

  What amazed him anew was that even with his Silkie perception, he could detect no energy from it, below it, or around it. Yet its speed was as great as anything he could manage. Accordingly, after only moments, he realised that his pursuit was not swift enough to overtake the man and that the body of U-Brem would reach an atmosphere height too rarefied for human survival unless he acted promptly. He therefore mercifully removed the pressure from the sleep and unconsciousness center of the other's body.

  Moments later, he was disappointed, but not surprised, he sensed from the other a shift to Silkie form; proof that he had awakened and could now be responsible for himself.

  U-Brem continued straight up, as a full-grown Silkie now, and it was presently obvious that he intended to risk going through the Van Allen belt. Cemp had no such foolhardy purpose.

  As the two of them approached the outer limits of the atmosphere, Cemp put a thought on a beam to a manned Telstar unit in orbit around Earth. The thought contained simply the data about what had happened.

  The message sent, he turned back. Greatly disturbed by his experience — and being without clothes for human wear — he flew straight to the Silkie Authority.

  * * *

  X

  CEMP, descending from the sky down to the vast building complex that comprised the central administration for dealing with Silkies, saw that other Silkies were also coming in. He presumed, grimly, that they were there for the same reason as he was.

  As the realisation came, he scanned the heavens behind him with his Silkie senses and perceived that scores more of black spots were out there, hurtling closer. Divining imminent confusion, he slowed and stopped. Then, from his position in the sky, he telepathed Charley Baxter, proposing a special plan to handle the emergency.