More Than Superhuman Page 6

  From the corner of one eye he saw Dav frantically pushing through the retreating crowd toward him. The human broke through abruptly.

  'Quick!' he yelled. 'If they're whirled any higher, they may be hurt or killed when they fall.'

  Rocquel said blankly, 'What do you mean — quick? Quick what?'

  Dav's eyes, so bright for a moment, misted. A puzzled look came to his face.

  He muttered, 'What's the matter with me? I don't know why I said that'

  But the real message of his reaction had penetrated. Rocquel was thinking, He's programmed, also...

  He felt the truth grow in him. It bothered him. Bothered him a lot. But the truth was that he was unquestionably watching the Symbol over which he had been given control.

  What was reassuring was the fact that in this decisive hour the ultimate decision had been left to the hereditary general of Jana — himself.

  As he hastily evoked within his mind the mental pattern that would bring the Tizane energy to bear on the Symbol, Rocquel thought, It really doesn't take very much direct interference with individuals to control a planet with Symbols. Only a few key persons....

  In the entire sequence of events, the most unique facet was that both of the mentors — Dav and Miliss — had also not been allowed free will.

  After the whirlpool of noble males of Jana began to drop to the ground — where some lay for a long time — Rocquel suggested to Jaer that the executions continue.

  The big male stared at him blankly.

  'Your Majesty,' he said finally in amazement. 'I doubt we could find a single person at this moment willing to act the role of executioner.'

  Rocquel was convinced of it. He worded his reply blandly. The decision to suspend executions must be made by the government and not by the constitutional monarch.

  He added, watching Jaer closely: 'I have a feeling that the government should also grant a pardon to Dav.'

  Those words got him, first, a dark, darting look. Slowly a crooked smile stretched across that normally grim face.

  'Your Majesty,' said Jaer Dorrish, 'let me refer to an earlier remark of yours.- I have realized today that you do mean well and that it is hard to give up power. Apparently it is almost as hard for a person like myself to accept an accretion of power gracefully — but I should like to assure you that it is my intention to try. I see the role of prime minister as one that will involve a great deal of integrity. So — ' He made a gesture with one hand, said in a formal tone, 'To prove to you that I have the intent of living up to that level of integrity, I hereby request my capacity as leader of the government until the first election under the new law that you grant a reprieve and full pardon to Dav, the human.'

  'I grant it,' said Rocquel.

  It was a great victory — yet he experienced a sudden drop in spirits on the way home. He rode nearly a hundred yards with his motorcycle guard before he realized that he was having a more severe recurrence of an earlier feeling.

  I'm programmed, and that degrades me....

  Back in the palace, he told Nerda his feeling. All the rest of that afternoon and part of the evening, she argued with him.

  Programming, she pointed out, was like a drop of chemical which might give to a flowing stream a slightly bluish tinge. Nothing but a dam could stop or divert the stream — yet after the injection of the chemical it was colored in a specific way.

  Her analogy triggered a thought in Rocquel. His programming had taken the form of accelerated civilizing of a paranoid male — himself. He was still hereditary general, still married to Nerda, with no intention of giving up either the position or the wife. Yet he had tolerated a change in the form by which he exercised his power, and he had accepted less total control over his wife.

  And in neither instance did he feel a real loss,

  Nerda suggested to him that the long-term programming of Miliss and Dav had been designed to make it possible for them to accept the unendurable existence of a lovely human couple marooned on an alien planet. And because the stream of life flowed immortally through them, they were separately programmed as a man and a woman to survive periodic crises. So the great civilization out there controlled even its own emissaries.

  In this generation, Nerda continued, perhaps only she and Rocquel would know the truth and, to a lesser extent, Jaer. The hereditary general and his wife; and the hereditary leader of the principal subordinate group, the Dorrish. But their own personalities remained overwhelmingly private. The stream of Jana identity flowed on in them — but it was now a more civilized being that felt the flow.

  She must have realized from the accepting expression of his face and body that she could finally change the subject.

  'Do you still have control of the Symbol?' she asked.

  It was night, and they were standing at a huge window looking toward the slickrock mountains.

  Rocquel imaged the first three stages of the Tizane pattern, Something grazed his leg. He knew a hackles-raising sensation — a sense of an energy field of enormous power,

  Hastily he turned his thoughts aside.

  'Yes,' he said. 'It's still there.'

  'In your presence,' said Nerda, 'no one can be killed — as long as you control that Symbol. Did they say when they would take it away from you?'

  Rocquel was about to make the same reply he had given to Miliss — when he realized that there was quite a different awareness in him. A barrier had lifted from his memory. He recalled exactly what he had been told.

  'No,' he said simply, 'they just gave it to me. It's a lifetime gift'

  He began to feel better.

  In my presence, no one can be killed...

  Suddenly he divined that his was a very advanced Symbol indeed. He stood at a nearly unthinkable height of understanding and power.

  Deep inside him something that was almost infinitely savage was mollified. Possessing what was surely one of the ultimate human Symbols — he accepted his lesser than human status.

  * *

  For Dav it felt strange to be free. He walked slowly to a nearby restaurant and sat down at a table. He was eating almost mindlessly when he heard the radio announce that he had been pardoned. The news struck him with an odd impact. The life force within him quickened.

  He grew aware that the Janae in the restaurant were staring at him curiously. No one showed hostility.

  He had no place that he wanted to go — so later he walked the streets. Finally he began to wonder.

  Am I trying to solve a problem — and if so, what?

  He could not decide. Everything seemed very far away.

  He had a feeling that there was something he should be doing. But he did not know what.

  Night came.

  He waved a surface car to a halt. It drew up, its lights glittering, its bells clanging. No one said anything to him as he swung aboard.

  Some younger Janae climbed on at the next stop. They sat giggling at him. But they rushed off into a brilliantly lighted park where hundreds of youthful Janae were dancing to the rhythm of a low, fast-tempo, sobbing music.

  He continued his public exposure until almost midnight, without any untoward incidents. He returned to the white house by the river. As he entered the west wing, he presumed Miliss was in her part of the residence. But he made no effort to contact her.

  He slept the special deep sleep which triggered long-ago programming deep in his brain. Still asleep, he went to a room that was deceptively equipped with what seemed to be ordinary Jana-level electronic equipment. But by pressing certain buttons and turning certain dials in a specific sequence, Dav activated a communications system hidden in a remote part of the Jana planet.

  Subspace radio waves thereupon transmitted a massage to a receiver many light-years away.

  The message was: 'The crisis of the last stage of kings has passed — '

  The message completed automatically, then repeated and repeated. Finally a relay was closed on the receiving planet by an accepting mind.

  A voic
e — or a thought — said, 'Message received, recorded.' A light flashed on in an instrument in front of Dav and, still asleep, he returned to bed.

  * *

  Miliss had watched him first through scanners and then — as she realized his catatonic unawareness of his surroundings — by following him closely.

  So that, as he turned away from the equipment, she stepped up to it and spoke to the distant listener. It was almost as if her communication were expected.

  The voice answered, 'We have come to a time when the woman — you — must know something of the truth.'

  'What is the truth?' Miliss asked. She did not wait for the reply, but rushed on: Was there a universal death, or was the idea the result of early programming?

  'At the next crisis,' was the reply, 'you will be allowed to visit — and see for yourself. Meanwhile, the man — Dav — must not be told. In fact, you will discover if you try that you cannot tell him.'

  'Why not tell him?'

  It seemed that the reasons for that were deeply bound up in the godlike cravings of masculinity in the male and related idealistic .motivations.

  'And that's all we are allowed to say,' concluded the far away voice.

  When the connection had been broken, Miliss — feeling suddenly much better, even lighthearted, as if she were again somebody and not a living artifact of a dead culture; feeling strangely tender toward that poor, programmed superbeing, her husband — began the long task of moving back into the West wing.

  By morning she had most of her beautiful things in their proper locations. And so, when Dav awakened and turned over, he saw a blonde woman with a smile on her face — and a faint look of innocence, as if everything she had done, including this return, had been totally rational.

  This vision said to him, 'I hope you'll he glad to know that you have a wife again.'

  On a planet where there is only one woman, and that woman beautiful, what could the only man say to that?

  Dav said he was glad.

  'Come over here,' he said

  [ -: CONTENTS :-]

  * * *

  The Reflected Men

  A. E. VAN VOGT

  I

  Time, 5:10 P.M. The crystal was less than fifteen minutes from reactivation.

  To Edith Price, the well-dressed young man, who came into her library was typical of the summer visitors to Harkdale. They lived apart from the townspeople, of whom she was now one. She wrote down his name — Seth Mitchell. And, assuming he wanted a temporary library card, she pushed the application form across the counter toward him.

  It was only when he thrust it back, Impatiently, that she actually for the first time listened to what he was saying.

  Then she said, 'Oh, what you want is a piece of crystal!'

  'Exactly,' he said. 'I want returned to me a small stone which I presented to the museum part of the library some years ago.'

  Edith shook her head. 'I'm sorry. The museum room is being reorganized. It's closed to the public. I'm sure no action will be taken about anything in it until the job is done, and even then Miss Davis, the librarian, will have to authorize it. And it's her day off today, so you can't even talk to her.'

  'How long will it take — to reorganize?'

  'Oh, several weeks,' said Edith casually.

  The effect of her words on the man — so clean-cut, so typical of the well dressed, successful men she had known in New York — startled her. He became very pale, mumbled something indistinguishable, and when he turned away, it was as if some of the life had gone out of him.

  Staring at the retreating figures of library patrons was not something Edith was normally motivated to do. But his reaction was so extreme that she watched him as he walked unsteadily off toward the main entrance of the library. At the door a squat, thick-built man joined him. The two men conversed briefly, then went out together. Moments later Edith caught a glimpse of them through a window, getting into a brand-new Cadillac. Seth Mitchell slid in behind the wheel.

  The costly automobile, and the fact that another man was involved, gave importance to an otherwise minor incident. Edith slipped off her stool, making suitable gestures to Miss Tilsit. Very openly she secured the key to the women's rest room as she covertly palmed the key to the museum room — and went off.

  A few moments later she was examining the display of stones.

  * *

  There were about thirty altogether. According to the sign beside them, they had long ago been the result of a drive among local boys to find valuable minerals and gems. Edith had no difficulty in locating the one the young man had wanted. It was the one under which a faded card announced: 'Donated by Seth Mitchell and Billy Bingham'.

  She slid back the side of the case, reached in carefully, and took it out. It was obvious to her that very little discrimination had been used in the selection. The forces that had fashioned this stone seemed to have been too impatient. The craftsmanship was uneven. The result was a stone about two and a half inches long by one and a half inches wide at its thickest; a brownish, rocklike stuff which, though faceted, did not reflect light well. It was by far the dullest-looking of the stones in the display.

  Gazing down at the drab, worthless stone, Edith thought: Why don't I just take it to his hotel after work tonight, and bypass all the red tape?

  Meaning Miss Davis, her enemy.

  Decisively, she removed the names of the two donors from the case. After all these years, the label was stuck on poorly, and the yellowed paper tore to shreds. She was about to slip the stone into her pocket, when she sadly realized she was wearing that dress — the one without pocket.

  Oh, damn! she thought cheerfully.

  Since the stone was too big to conceal in her hand, she carried it through the back stack corridors, and was about to toss it into the special wastebasket which was used for heavy debris, when she noticed that a broken flowerpot half full of dirt was also in the basket. Beside the dirt was a paper bag.

  It required only seconds to slip the crystal into the bag, empty the dirt on top of it, and shove the bag down into the basket She usually had the job of locking up the building, so it would be no problem to pick up the bag at that time and take it with her.

  Edith returned to her desk...

  And the stone began at once to utilize the sand in the dirt on top of it, thus resuming a pattern that had been suspended for twenty-five years. During the rest of the evening, and in fact all through that night, all the possible Seth Mitchells on earth remembered their childhood. The majority merely smiled, or shrugged, or stirred in their sleep. Most of those who lived outside the Western Hemisphere in distant time zones presently resumed their normal activities.

  But a few, everywhere, recalling the crystal, could not quite let the memory go.

  * *

  At the first slack period after filching the stone, Edith leaned over and asked Miss Tilsit, 'Who is Seth Mitchell?'

  Tilsit was a tall, too-thin blond with horn-rimmed glasses behind which gleamed unusually small but very alert gray eyes. Edith had discovered that Tilsit had a vast, even though superficial, knowledge of everything that had ever happened in Harkdale.

  'There were two of them,' said Tilsit. 'Two boys, Billy Bingham and Seth Mitchell.'

  Thereupon, with visible relish, Tilsit told the story of the disappearance of Billy twenty-five years before, when he and his chum, Seth Mitchell, were only twelve years old.

  Tilsit finished, 'Seth claimed they had been fighting over a piece of bright stone that they had found. And he swore that they were at least fifty feet from the cliff that overlooks the lake at that point, and so he always insisted Billy didn't drown — which is what everyone else believed. What confused the situation was that Billy's body was never recovered.'

  As she listened to the account, Edith tried to put together the past and the present. She couldn't imagine why an adult Seth Mitchell would want a reminder of such an unhappy experience. Still, men were funny. That she knew, after waiting five years for a wo
rthwhile male to come along and find her. So far she seemed to be as well hidden and unsearched for in Harkdale as she had been in New York.

  Tilsit was speaking again. 'Kind of odd, what happens to people. Seth Mitchell was so crushed by his friend's death that he just became a sort of shadow human being. He's got a farm out toward Abbotsville.'

  Edith said sharply, 'You mean Seth 'Mitchell became a farmer?'

  'That's the story.'

  Edith said nothing more, but made a mental note that perhaps Tilsit was not as good a source of local information as she had formerly believed. Whatever Mitchell was, he hadn't looked like a farmer!

  She had to go and check out some books at that point, and so the thought and the conversation ended.

  II

  A few minutes after nine-thirty, Edith parked her car across the street from the entrance to the motel in which — after some cruising around — she had spotted Seth Mitchell's distinctive gold Cadillac.

  It was quite dark under the tree where she waited, and that was greatly relieving. But even in the secure darkness, she could feel her heart thumping and the hot flush in her cheeks. She asked herself, 'What am I doing this for?'

  She had the self-critical belief that she was hoping would end up in a summer romance. Which was pretty ridiculous for a woman twenty-seven years old, who — if she shifted her tactic from waiting the pursuing — ought to concentrate on genuine husband material.

  Her thought ended abruptly. From where she sat, she could see the door of the cabin beside which the Cadillac was parked. The door had opened. Silhouetted in the light from the interior was the short, squat man she had seen with Mitchell that afternoon. As Edith involuntarily held her breath, the man came out and closed the door behind him.

  He emerged from the main motel entrance, stood for a moment, and then walked rapidly off toward the business section of Harkdale, only minutes away.

  And only minutes back, she thought glumly.

  Watching him, her motivation dimmed. Somehow, she had not considered the short, heavy-set man as being really associated with Seth Mitchell.