“This is one time we need power to counter force,” Lahks said at last. “The power of the mind, except for telekinesis or teleportation, is useless.”
“I have been thinking the same thing,” Stoat replied. “I know something of engineering, but even if I dared cannibalize every power source we have, it might not be enough. Also, this is a bad planet to be on without weapons.”
“Except for the area of rolling rock, we could walk. Could a flyer be raised in a wind strong enough to shift sand?”
“Where there are no tall obstructions, I think so. The flyers depend on the air to lift and carry them. The power is used to give speed and direction, or if you wish to travel against the wind, for that.” The edge of Stoat’s lower lip slipped under his sharp canine. It was an expression of calculation that Lahks had not seen since they entered the laughing city. “If we could move the flyer past the up-and-down drafts into the band of steady circular wind, we might—I say might—cross the rolling rocks with the power supply we have.”
For a long moment Lahks was silent at the thought of the gargantuan task. Then she sighed resignedly. Without further discussion they reentered the schoolhouse to gather a pair of each size stone. After some thought Lahks took two more extra tiny ones and a few of medium size.
“We will need them to buy our way free, and I would like to give one to Fanny, if we could find some way,” she remarked. “This is no world for a gorl.”
“It will do him no good,” Stoat warned. “I have been thinking about that. You have no desire to keep stones. It has taught you, and you are finished with it. I, too, do not feel any craving—aside from curiosity—to keep or handle them. Perhaps if it cannot teach, it creates dreams or euphoria. That may not be healthy.”
“Probably you are right, but Fanny’s people can afford a nonproductive dreamer or two. Let him be happy.”
Stoat raised an eyebrow but made no further protest, nor did he comment when Lahks slid the stones into her belt pouch. They went then to the flyer, where they considered the problem of getting it down off its landing skis. The rounded belly would make a good surface for dragging, if the abrasion did not rip it away.
Of course they had no jack to support the ship or let it down easily. However, if the main supporting struts of the skis were removed, the thin outer bracing struts would probably bend slowly under the weight of the flyer. Stoat tested them as well as he could to make sure they would bend slowly rather than collapse suddenly. When he was finished, he smiled wryly at Lahks.
“I know about as much now as I did before. I think it will work. Of course, I am not sure we can lift belly-flat, but maybe we can pry it up a bit with the skis if we have to.”
“Give me a long-enough lever, a fulcrum to place it on, and I will lift the world,” Lahks misquoted solemnly.
“It would help,” Stoat replied, eyeing the skis with disfavor, “if the lever were strong enough not to bend.” Then he turned to get tools from the flyer and his eye was caught by the panorama of the town. He smiled and shook his head. “It’s still funny, but somehow it does not hold me now.”
“Because it is not really irrational anymore? Because you know the people who used it?” She laughed, touched his arm. “You are a good immortal. The will to live is strong in you, you can still laugh, but beyond that you are still curious and, even more important, dissatisfied. The ages that have passed over you have not quelled your urge to dig up the Garden of Eden.”
Surprised, Stoat turned to her. “You know the Book?”
“Yes, of course. It is still the best description of Homo sapiens—of his character, his desires, and his dreams—that has ever been compiled. It took about ten thousand Terra years to gather the knowledge, another five thousand to compile and codify it, and perhaps another one thousand to write it down. The information is of infinite value. In fact, it has given rise to a term that distinguishes Homo sapiens from all other animals and from most other intelligent species—The Garden-of-Eden Syndrome.”
For a moment Stoat looked blank. Then understanding dawned and he began to chuckle. “Yes, I see. I see. Homo sapiens, like any living thing, will try to alter an unfavorable situation to suit him. But only Homo sapiens will destroy perfection, because even perfection cannot satisfy him.” H is eyes lit. “You are quite right. I still have an ineradicable impulse to dig up the Garden of Eden.”
Lahks, also chuckling, nodded. “Me, too. It’s the best evidence I have that I am only part Changeling. The Changelings will not even pull up weeds, not to mention disturb perfection. Besides,” she added with a flash of mulish rebellion, “how can you tell what perfection is? If apparent perfection were changed, it might become more perfect.”
“Perfection is a word with only an abstract meaning. It cannot exist in reality. Only Yahweh is perfect—the Nameless God—and, like perfection, His reality is open to question.”
Stoat reached into the flyer and drew out the roll of tools with which he attacked the main struts. Handing wrenches and sometimes working on her own to balance the relaxation of the supports, Lahks considered what Stoat had said. He was, of course, quite right. Most intelligent races toyed at one time or another with the concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-comprehending being that controlled fate. But among all the races of beings in all the eons the subject had been pursued, not one iota of proof had been obtained.
There were other similar concepts—justice, good, right—that had perfectly clear abstract meanings, but when dealt with or applied in reality, they degenerated immediately into their opposites. These, Lahks thought with a wry grin, always had very, very real existence.
That was why the Guardians had given up the whole question of right-wrong, justice-injustice, good-bad. The organization, indifferent alike to genocide and humanitarianism, was concerned only with the study of intelligence and the prevention of stasis. Initially organized to prevent one intelligent form of life from preying upon another—by mistake or intent—the Guardians soon realized that intelligent beings had a worse enemy than each other.
It was true that among the many races of the myriad worlds one or two intelligent life forms had been made extinct by another. (The unintelligent life forms were less fortunate; they were wiped out regularly by their big-brained rivals.) However, this was a totally insignificant problem compared with the thousands of intelligent types that had been destroyed by good—by Utopia.
It was part and parcel of that belief in the possibility of perfection Stoat had mentioned. Most intelligent life forms did not partake of Homo sapiens’ insatiable desire for change. Once these people found a way of life they believed was perfect—a way of life that indeed satisfied everyone, left no one hungry or oppressed or deprived of emotional satisfactions—it became static. The next step was decay, a decay to which, however intelligent, the beings were blinded by the belief that they lived in perfection. Beyond that was death—the extinction of the intelligence of a whole species.
The Guardians guarded against just that—stasis, It mattered nothing to them whether a government was just or unjust, whether a people were happy or unhappy; if, over a certain long period, no change in social structure, scientific and technological level, or political type took place, the Guardians gave the culture a jog. The means they used often were not nice. The results they obtained sometimes made the merely amoral shudder and turn pale. Wars, they encouraged, and they winked at interstellar conquest; the death of millions, they shrugged off as irrelevant. Those who remained would need to redream their notion of perfection, to fight to drive off their conquerors, to strive again to rebuild their Utopia. And in the process they would regrip life. That particular intelligence with its unique qualities, whatever they were, would be preserved in the universe.
Of course, it took a warped mind to be a Guardian. Homo sapiens were much used, but their life-span was short and Guardian projects ran into millennia to finalize. Most people were not fitted by nature to destroy what seemed good in the interest of some long-distant and wholly questionable future. But Stoat—Lahks watched him fasten a leather strap to one main strut and move cautiously to the next—would fit in well. For one thing, he would be able to see the effects of Guardian interference. The life of races rather than individuals, with whom he dared not involve himself, should maintain his own interest in living—and hers. For Lahks now knew she too was nearly eternal—if the desert did not kill her tomorrow. Suddenly she laughed aloud and stepped aside to grasp one strap.
“Are you strong enough?” Stoat asked. “The pull has to be even.”
Lahks laughed again and shrank half a meter. Her clothing was now loose and uncomfortable, but she could feel her muscles knot like steel as their density increased. Stoat grinned, lifted his fingers in the cabalistic sign for luck. They counted off, matching rhythm.
Although the flyer had come off its skis without serious damage and Stoat had contrived harnesses for all three of them from various ropes and strips of cloth and leather, it seemed for a time that they would not leave the Changeling town. Shom, usually so docile, had very nearly turned ugly when they tried to force him away. Even after the waves of empathic disapproval that flowed from Lahks and Stoat had cowed him, his grief had nearly shaken their resolve. Stoat found the solution to this problem. After several anguished moments of studying Shom’s face, he said suddenly, “Give him a stone.”
Lahks took a tiny bead from her belt rather doubtfully, brushed it clean, and held it out. “Look, Shom,” she crooned, “look how pretty. As pretty as the houses, see?”
His glance flickered toward her, then turned back to the lodestone of his joy. Finally, Lahks took his hand and pressed the stone into it, folding his fingers over the gently pulsating warmth. In secs he opened his hand, but not to let the stone drop; he stared at it.
“Speak to him,” Lahks murmured to Stoat. “Tell him we must go and what we must do.”
“Shom,” Stoat said loudly, clearly, and slowly, “we must leave here. There is no food or water. If we stay, we will die. We cannot use the flyer now. We must pull the flyer as far as can—to where the sands are rolling.”
Shom had not taken his eyes from the tiny heartstone, Stoat and Lahks had both noticed the change in its rate of pulsation as he spoke. It was brighter, with sparkles of color playing on its surface. Shom stood placidly as Stoat harnessed him to the point of the flyer. Lahks took the left side, Stoat the right. The two exchanged worried glances. Shom still gave no sign that he would respond.
Stoat said, “Straight ahead, Shom, into the open.” And then he gave the count. “One, two, pull!”
To their intense relief Shom flung himself forward on the word, just as they did. The flyer groaned. “Ease off,” Stoat ordered. Then, “All right, one, two, pull!” This time the structural groan was accompanied by a scritch of metal on sand. Perhaps the machine had moved a millimeter. They backed up, breathed, pulled again, straining until the blood vessels bulged in neck and temple. More movement, and they were establishing a rhythm.
By the end of the day they were out of the town with the flyer in sand that had no firm base. Whether they could achieve their goal was still highly problematical. Now it was a race between the distance they could move and how long their food supply would hold out and the stillsuit refining of their waste body water would remain adequate. The flyer moved better in the soft sand than over the hard base, but it only moved by centimeters.
That night the silence was unbroken except by soft groans as muscles, strained beyond endurance, twitched and knotted. They had hardly eaten, although Stoat and Lahks realized that the food was essential for restoration. It was simply too hard to chew. Even Lahks’ laughter was stilled; it hurt, and the effort was too great.
The morning was worse. Lahks whimpered with pain at every movement. Stoat lay with set lips staring at the roof of the tent. Shom was silent, sitting in his usual cross-legged position, Although he was staring at his tiny heartstone with a beatific smile on his face, Lahks did not like the grayish tinge of his complexion.
She took her own breakfast, noticing with growing depression that Stoat made no move toward the food. An immortal could grow very tired of life. If retaining that life grew unendurably hard, it might be very easy to give up. She searched for something to say that would restimulate him and instead found herself wondering why she was bothering. Where she had strained against the improvised harness, her flesh was swollen and purple. The very thought of donning that harness again made her cringe. That Lahks could shift the damaged tissue elsewhere, that it would heal with enormous rapidity, did little to ease the shock to her mind. Aside from that, what of Stoat and Shom? Could she drive them to further effort?
“Lahks,” Stoat said softly, startling her because it was the first time he had used her name, “could you fly the winds?”
“No.” Her reply was unhesitating. “There are no dwellers of the air on Wumeera. Therefore, nothing with wings can fly the winds.”
He lay still some moments longer, then sat up, the lines on his face setting even harder. “Then there is no possibility of bringing in a ship to get us out.” He shrugged fatalistically. “Tomorrow, when we are a little farther from the defended area, we will have to wait a day while I hunt. The silverfish are edible and the flesh will provide us with some fresh water.”
His voice was completely matter-of-fact, and he reached for a food packet with one hand and for the harnesses with the other. As he chewed and swallowed, his fingers swiftly altered straps so that they would not touch bruised areas. Quite suddenly Lahks’ infectious chuckle filled the tent. Shom looked up from his stone and laughed, too. Stoat’s expressive brows climbed upward questioningly.
“Nothing,” Lahks said, waving a hand negligently. “I was thinking of another legend. Eons ago there were men who built bridges and roads for the making of war—when wars were made upon the ground. Their motto was: ‘The improbable we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.’ You are plainly of their breed.”
Stoat’s lips twisted wryly. “Indeed, I am. They were men of the planet Terra.” Then he sighed. “This task, I tell you, is one of those that will take a little longer.”
Nonetheless, when he finished his meal he rose promptly, reattached the harness to the craft, and, when Shom and Lahks were set, began the count to get the flyer moving. They gained a centimeter, rested, threw themselves forward again, and, like a well-rehearsed comedy team, all three fell flat on their faces as the craft shot forward a full meter. Lahks scrambled to her feet, spitting sand, and shouted for Shom to get up as the flyer edged steadily ahead. Stoat was already up, moving on to keep out of the way but straining sideways in an attempt to see around the bulging side of the craft. His laser was free in one hand, and his other fumbled at the harness straps.
“What is it?” Lahks choked around the grit in her mouth.
Conceivably a crab could have gotten under the flyer and propelled it forward while trying to get at them, but nothing Stoat had said of them indicated they had any great strength. And even if the creature had caused the first forward surge, it would have sunk into the sand again and risen in a new place when it encountered such strong resistance.
“Beldame, your luck holds well,” Stoat called. “There are three droms pushing.”
“Is there enough material to harness them in front?”
“I don’t know,” Stoat replied, “but it doesn’t matter. I am not sure we could direct them. Probably they would follow us, but they might have a set path we would not wish to travel.” He slipped his own harness back on. “It will be safer to stay harnessed and change the direction when we like by pulling to one side or the other.”
“How will we stop?”
Stoat laughed. “I am not sure. I think if we stop, they will. I have heard of droms going where a rider did not wish to go at the time—usually the drom took him directly to his final goal. I have never heard of one continuing on when the man he was accompanying stopped.”
There was little to relieve the tedium of the ten days it took them to reach the area of shifting sands. Twice they were attacked by silverfish and three times by crabs. Lahks was not amused. For three of them armed with laser, there was not enough danger to be exciting, and destroying the creatures seemed mere butchery. There was, however, no trick either Lahks or Stoat could think of to distract the nearly mindless hunters, and the skins and clear carapaces were loaded into the flyer as trade goods. With each addition to their cargo, Stoat grew more doubtful. That night in the tent he voiced his concern.
“Beldame, we will never get this off-planet,” he objected sadly.
“We can try,” Lahks insisted. “It will look more reasonable than leaving empty-handed. What we need is a cup large enough for a spacer to land in but well away from an inhabited area. Do you know of such?”
“Yes, but I do not think I would sacrifice one for our escape. They are all the sweet life left on this dying world. My faith says there is no heaven and no hell. All reward and retribution is in this life. I do not believe much, but this I do believe. And I fear the retribution I would suffer—if not from my Nameless God, then from my own conscience—if I destroyed one single drop of life in this ocean of death. Would you call a spacer to burn the little house or the garden it lives in?”
Lanks caught Stoat’s hands in hers. “Twice-born, Twice-born, it is plain why you have lived when the others died. How came you to keep so soft a heart, so clear an eye for beauty, in spite of the grinding and winnowing of time?”
A spark of emotion so intense passed between them that both gasped in unison. A moment later they chuckled in chorus, too. This was not the time or place. Shom sat almost knee-to-knee with them, and, more important—because both had experienced societies where lovemaking was a public, rather than a private, act—they were dirty, raw with the rubbing of grit against their unwashed bodies, and too intent on their purpose to give their minds and bodies to an act that required utter totality to make it worthwhile.
Their hands dropped apart and Lahks returned to their problem. “You said that men had tried to live in the cups, but that they turned into desert since the plants and animals did not reproduce fast enough. Are there none. . .”
Air hissed between Stoat’s sharp teeth. “Of course,” he interrupted. “I never think of them as cups. They are abominations, deader than the rest of this world because their protection holds well and even the dragons and crabs do not come there. Of course. Now, let me see.”
He leaned sideways over an empty spot of floorspace and beat at his chest and arms. A fine layer of dust sifted from his windsuit to the floor. With a wetted fingertip, Stoat began to sketch a map.
“This is Landlord Tanguli’s cup, and here is Vogil’s; here are the mountains between. It is between seven and ten planet days’ walk. That will give you the scale. South, the mountains curve westward. To the East, however, about here, there is a dead cup. I am sure it is large enough.”
Lahks sat studying the map. Finally she asked slowly, “What is the stuff in the flyer worth off-world?”
“A fair sum. Some thousands of credits, even unfinished.”
“Enough to draw a Trader so far from his accustomed site where there is no chance to sell, as well as to buy?”
“No, but that is less the lack of value than the fact that no Trader would wish to anger the Landlords.”
“Then it will have to be the Guild,” Lahks said lightly.
Stoat grimaced. “It will be a long wait, even if your call reaches them.”
“Not so long, perhaps. I interested them enough to put a Watcher on me and hinted I would have business for them. They know what comes from Wumeera. I have a code frequency.”
“Beldame,” Stoat said with a twisted smile, “will you tell me what you are? It does not matter, but I am curious. I should hate to die tomorrow not knowing why one who is no Trader has such knowledge of their ways, why half a Changeling should have a code frequency for calling the Guild, where you came by that comcov, which is no product of commerce—and the whys and wherefores of a few other matters that should have no connection with the gently reared Freelady you seem to be.”
Lifting her eyes from her continued contemplation of the rough map, Lahks smiled. “I must have forgotten to say that I am a Guardian trainee. It did not seem important after I had told you of my Changeling heritage. That is my secret. My relationship with the Guardians I suppressed only to enhance my freedom of movement.”
A deep chuckle shook Stoat. “There is something forbidden to the Guardians?” he asked with cynical sarcasm.
Lahks chuckled, too. “Well, no, but we are not deeply beloved, and I did not wish to be distracted from seeking Ghrey by irrelevant attacks.”
“Ghrey Mhoss,” Stoat muttered, his brows drawing together. “Ghrey Mhoss. . . Oh! He who inspired the Kssyssyk rebellion?”
Lahks was again studying the map, but she nodded abstractedly.
“Some hundreds of thousands of men were massacred by the white slugs of Kssyssyk in that rebellion,” Stoat said flatly.
“Mmmm,” Lahks agreed, nodding again, her lips pursed in her absorbed contemplation of travel time from the dead cup to Tanguli’s cup.
Stoat’s hand shot out and gripped her arm. “Why? Was it carelessness, miscalculation, incompetence?”
At that question Lahks looked up, puzzled and very faintly indignant. “Don’t be ridiculous. Ghrey is not careless or incompetent, and the Guardians never miscalculate a mission because there is always a long enough time to reconsider and redirect events. Kssyssyk was a great success, planned and worked on for centuries before Ghrey brought the work to fruition.” She studied Stoat’s tight face for a moment, then shook her head gently. “It was necessary that the people of Kssyssyk should know themselves. Twice-born—you who look back on the ages—look forward now. Those people think in a pattern so different that their scientific treatises and children’s textbooks are imported as works of art—sculpture and painting—by many worlds. No method of communication on abstract matters has yet been devised, although in concrete, physical things there is no problem in gaining a common understanding. It is thought that they taste time and smell mass, that they see or hear atomic structure—but no one is sure.”
“But so many lives. . .”
“In your millennia, Twice-born, how many billions have died of age, of sickness, of grief, or of boredom for no purpose at all? The people of Kssyssyk had gone too far into easy, idle life in which thought totally replaced action. For a thousand circles of their sun the Guardians watched the population drop until extinction threatened. We could not understand their books—if books they are—but nothing new touched their technology, social structure, or government. Toward the end, they did not seem able to repair technological artifacts that ceased to function. It was time to rouse them.”