American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 (74 page)

“Betrayed again,” Ruiz-Sanchez said bitterly.

“Then is there
nothing
you can do, Ramon?” Liu asked.

“I’ll interpret for Egtverchi and Chtexa, if anything comes of that project.”

“Yes, but. . . .”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Yes, there is something decisive that I can do. And possibly it would work. In fact, it is something that I
must
do.”

He stared blindly at them. The buzzing of the bees, so reminiscent of the singing of the jungles of Lithia, probed insistently at him.

“But,” he said, “I don’t think that I’m going to do it.”

Michelis moved mountains. He was formidable enough under normal conditions, but when he was desperate and saw a possible way out, no bulldozer could have been more implacable in crushing through an opening.

Lucien le Comte des Bois-d’Averoigne, late Procurator of Canarsie, and always fellow in the brotherhood of science, received them all cordially in his Canadian retreat. Not even the sardonically silent figure of Egtverchi made him blink; he shook hands with the displaced Lithian as though they were old friends meeting again after a lapse of a few weeks. The count himself was a large, rotund man in his early sixties, with a protuberant belly, and he was brown all over: his remaining hair was brown, his suit was brown, he was deeply tanned, and he was smoking a long brown cigar.

The room in which he received them—Ruiz-Sanchez, Michelis, Liu, and Egtverchi—was a curious mixture of lodge and laboratory. It had an open fireplace, rough furniture, mounted guns, an elk’s head, and an amazing mess of wires and apparatus.

“I am by no means sure that this is going to work,” he told them promptly. “Everything I have is still in the breadboard stage, as you can see. It’s been years since I last handled a soldering iron and a voltmeter, too, so we may well have a simple electronic failure somewhere in this mass of wiring—but it wasn’t a task I could leave to a technician.”

He waved them to seats while he made final adjustments. Egtverchi remained standing in the rear of the room in the shadows, motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of his great chest as he breathed, and an occasional sudden movement of his eyes.

“There will be no image, of course,” the count said abstractedly. “This giant J-J coupling you describe obviously doesn’t broadcast in that band. But if we are very lucky, we may get some sound. . . . Ah.”

A loudspeaker almost hidden in the maze crackled and then began to emit distant, patterned bursts of hissing. Except for the pattern, it seemed to Ruiz-Sanchez to be nothing but noise, but the count said at once:

“I’m getting something in that region. I didn’t expect to pick it up so soon. I don’t make much sense of it, however.”

Neither did Ruiz, and for a few moments he had all he could do to get over his amazement. “Those are—signals the Message Tree is broadcasting now?” he said, with a touch of incredulity.

“I hope so,” the count said drily. “I have been busy all day installing chokes against any other possible signal.”

The Jesuit’s respect for the mathematician came close to awe. To think that this disorderly tangle of wiring, little black acorns, small red and brown objects like firecrackers, the shining interlocking blades of variable condensers, massively heavy coils, and flickering meters was even now reaching directly through the subether, around fifty light-years of space-time, to eavesdrop on the pulses of the crystalline cliff buried beneath Xoredeshch Sfath. . .

“Can you tune it?” he said at last. “I think those must be the stutter pattern—what the Lithians use as a navigational grid for their ships and planes. There ought to be an audio band—”

Except, he recalled suddenly, that that band couldn’t possibly be an “audio” band. Nobody ever spoke directly to the Message Tree—only to the single Lithian who stood in the center of the Tree’s chamber. How
he
got the substance of the message transformed into radio waves had never been explained to any of the Earthmen.

And yet suddenly there was a voice.

“—a powerful tap on the Tree,” the voice said in clear, even, cold Lithian. “Who is receiving? Do you hear me? I do not understand the direction your carrier is coming from. It seems inside the Tree, which is impossible. Does anyone understand me?”

Silently, the count thrust a microphone into Ruiz’ hand. He discovered that he was trembling.

“We understand you,” he said in Lithian in a shaky voice. “We are on Earth. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” the voice said at once. “We understood that what you say is impossible. But what you say is not always accurate, we have found. What do you want?”

“I would like to speak to Chtexa, the metallist,” Ruiz said. “This is Ruiz-Sanchez, who was in Xoredeshch Sfath last year.”

“He can be summoned,” said the cold, distant voice. There was a brief hashing sound from the speaker; then it went away again. “If he wishes to speak to you.”

“Tell him,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, “that his son Egtverchi also wishes to speak to him.”

“Ah,” said the voice after a pause. “Then no doubt he will come. But you cannot speak long on this channel. The direction from which your signal comes is damaging my sanity. Can you receive a sound-modulated signal if we can arrange to send one?”

Michelis murmured to the count, who nodded energetically and pointed to the loudspeaker.

“That is how we are receiving you now,” Ruiz said. “How are you transmitting?”

“That I cannot explain to you,” said the cold voice. “I cannot speak to you any longer or I will be damaged. Chtexa has been called.”

The voice stopped and there was a long silence. Ruiz-Sanchez wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Telepathy?” Michelis muttered behind him. “No, it fits into the electro-magnetic spectrum somewhere. But where? Boy, there sure is a lot we don’t know about that Tree.”

The count nodded ruefully. He was watching his meters like a hawk but, judging from his expression, they were not telling him anything he did not already know.

“Ruiz-Sanchez,” the loudspeaker said. Ruiz started. It was Chtexa’s voice, clear and strong.

Ruiz beckoned at the shadows, and Egtverchi came forward. He was in no hurry. There was something almost insolent in his very walk.

“This is Ruiz-Sanchez, Chtexa,” Ruiz said. “I’m talking to you from Earth—a new experimental communications system one of our scientists has evolved. I need your help.”

“I will be glad to do whatever I can,” Chtexa said. “I was sorry that you did not return with the other Earthman. He was less welcome. He and his friends have razed one of our finest forests near Gleshchtehk Sfath, and built ugly buildings here in the city.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Ruiz-Sanchez said. The words seemed inadequate, but it would be impossible to explain to Chtexa exactly what the situation was—impossible, and illegal. “I still hope to come some day. But I am calling about your son.”

There was a brief pause, during which the speaker emitted a series of muted, anomalous sounds, almost yet not quite recognizable. Evidently the Lithians’ audio hookup was catching some background noise from inside the Tree, or even outside it. The clarity of the reception was astonishing; it was impossible to believe that the Tree was fifty light-years away.

“Egtverchi is an adult now,” Chtexa’s voice said. “He has seen many wonders on your world. Is he with you?”

“Yes,” Ruiz-Sanchez said, beginning to sweat again. “But he does not know your language, Chtexa. I will interpret as best I can.”

“That is strange,” Chtexa said. “But I will hear his voice. Ask him when he is coming home; he has much to tell us.”

Ruiz put the question.

“I have no home,” Egtverchi said indifferently.

“I can’t just tell him that, Egtverchi. Say something intelligible, in heaven’s name. You owe your existence to Chtexa, you know that.”

“I may visit Lithia some day,” Egtverchi said, his eyes filming. “But I am in no hurry. There is still a great deal to be done on Earth.”

“I hear him,” Chtexa said. “His voice is high; he is not as tall as his inheritance provided, unless he is ill. What does he answer?”

There simply was not time to provide an interpretive translation; Ruiz-Sanchez told him the answer literally, word by word from English into Lithian.

“Ah,” Chtexa said. “Then he has matters of import to his hand. That is good, and is generous of the Earth. He is right not to hurry. Ask him what he is doing.”

“Breeding dissension,” Egtverchi said, with a slight widening of his grin. Ruiz-Sanchez could not translate that literally; the concept was not in the Lithian language. It took him the better part of three long sentences to transmit even a dubious shadow of the idea to Chtexa.

“Then he
is
ill,” Chtexa said. “You should have told me, RuizSanchez. You had best send him to us. You cannot treat him adequately there.”

“He is not ill, and he will not go,” Ruiz-Sanchez said carefully. “He is a citizen of Earth and cannot be compelled. This is why I called you. He is a trouble to us, Chtexa. He is doing us hurts. I had hoped you might reason with him; we can do nothing.”

The anomalous sound, a sort of burring metallic whine, rose in the background and fell away again.

“That is not normal or natural,” Chtexa said. “You do not recognize his illness. No more do I, but I am not a physician. You must send him here. I see I was in error in giving him to you. Tell him he is commanded home by the Law of the Whole.”

“I never heard of the Law of the Whole,” Egtverchi said when this was translated for him. “I doubt that there is any such thing. I make up my own laws as I go along. Tell him he is making Lithia sound like a bore, and that if he keeps it up I’ll make a point of never going there at all.”

“Blast it, Egtverchi—” Michelis burst in.

“Hush, Mike, one pilot is enough. Egtverchi, you were willing to co-operate with us up to now; at least, you came here with us. Did you do it just for the pleasure of defying and insulting your father? Chtexa is far wiser than you are; why don’t you stop acting like a child and listen to him?”

“Because I don’t choose to,” Egtverchi said. “And you make me no more willing by wheedling, dear foster father. I didn’t choose to be born a Lithian, and I didn’t choose to be brought to Earth—but now that I’m a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that’s what pleases me.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“There’s no reason why I should explain that, but I will. I came to hear my father’s voice. Now I’ve heard it. I don’t understand what he says, and he makes no better sense in your translation, and that’s all there is to it as far as I am concerned. Bid him farewell for me—I shan’t speak to him again.”

“What does he say?” Chtexa’s voice said.

“That he does not acknowledge the Law of the Whole, and will not come home,” Ruiz-Sanchez told the microphone. The little instrument was slippery with sweat in his palm. “And he says to bid you farewell.”

“Farewell, then,” Chtexa said. “And farewell to you, too, Ruiz-Sanchez. I am at fault, and this fills me with sorrow; but it is too late. I may not talk to you again, even by means of your marvelous instrument.”

Behind the voice, the strange, half-familiar whine rose to a savage, snarling scream which lasted almost a minute. RuizSanchez waited until he thought he could be heard over it again.

“Why not, Chtexa?” he said huskily. “The fault is ours as much as it is yours. I am still your friend, and wish you well.”

“And I am your friend, and wish you well,” Chtexa’s voice said. “But we may not talk again. Can you not hear the power saws?”

So that was what that sound was!

“Yes. Yes, I hear them.”

“That is the reason,” Chtexa said. “Your friend Xlevher is cutting down the Message Tree.”

The gloom was thick in the Michelis apartment. As the time drew closer for Egtverchi’s next broadcast, it became increasingly apparent that their analysis of the UN’s essential helplessness had been correct. Egtverchi was not openly triumphant, though he was exposed to that temptation in several newspaper interviews; but he floated some disquieting hints of vast plans which might well be started in motion when he was next on the air.

Ruiz-Sanchez had not the least desire to listen to the broadcast, but he had to face the fact that he would be unable to stay away from it. He could not afford to be without any new data that the program might yield. Nothing he had learned had done him any good thus far, but there was always the slim chance that something would turn up.

In the meantime, there was the problem of Cleaver, and his associates. However you looked at it, they were human souls. If Ruiz-Sanchez were to be driven, somehow, to the step that Hadrian VIII had commanded, and it did not fail, more than a set of attractive hallucinations would be lost. It would plunge several hundred human souls into instant death and more than probable damnation; Ruiz-Sanchez did not believe that the hand of God would reach forth to pluck to salvation men who were involved in such a project as Cleaver’s, but he was equally convinced that his should not be the hand to condemn any man to death, let alone to an unshriven death. Ruiz was condemned already—but not yet of murder.

It had been Tannhäuser who had been told that his salvation was as unlikely as the blossoming of the pilgrim’s staff in his hand. And Ruiz-Sanchez’ was as unlikely as sanctified murder.

Yet the Holy Father had commanded it; had said it was the only road back for Ruiz-Sanchez, and for the world. The Pope’s clear implication had been that he shared with Ruiz-Sanchez the view that the world stood on the brink of Armageddon— and he had said flatly that only Ruiz-Sanchez could avert it. Their only difference was doctrinal, and in these matters the Pope could not err. . .

But if it was possible that the dogma of the infertility of Satan was wrong, then it was possible that the dogma of Papal infallibility was wrong. After all, it was a recent invention; quite a few Popes in history had got along without it.

Heresies, Ruiz-Sanchez thought—not for the first time— come in snarls. It is impossible to pull free one thread; tug at one, and the whole mass begins to roll down upon you.