The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Worshippers, by Damon Francis Knight
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Title: The Worshippers
Author: Damon Francis Knight
Illustrator: Emsh
Release Date: September 10, 2007 [EBook #22560]
Language: English
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THE
WORSHIPPERS
BY DAMON KNIGHT
ILLUSTRATED BY EMSH
Destiny reached out a hand to Algernon Weaver--but he
was a timid man, at first. But on the strange world of
Terranova, there was much to be learned--of destiny,
and other things....
It was a very different thing, Algernon Weaver decided, actually to
travel in space. When you read about it, or thought about it in terms of
what you read, it was more a business of going from one name to another.
Algol to Sirius. Aldebaran to Epsilon Ceti. You read the names, and the
descriptions that went with them, and the whole thing--although
breathtaking in concept, of course, when you really stopped to
_meditate_ on it--became rather ordinary and prosaic and somehow more
understandable.
Not that he had ever approved. No. He had that, at least, to look back
upon; he had seen the whole enterprise as pure presumption, and had said
so. Often. The heavens were the heavens, and Earth was Earth. It would
have been better--_much_ better for all concerned--if it had been left
that way.
He had held that opinion, he reminded himself gratefully, from the very
beginning, when it was easy to think otherwise. Afterward, of
course--when the first star ships came back with the news that space
was aswarm with creatures who did not even resemble Man, and had never
heard of him, and did not think much of him when they saw him.... Well,
who but an idiot could hold any other opinion?
If only the Creator had not seen fit to make so many human beings in His
image but without His common sense....
Well, if He hadn't then for one thing, Weaver would not have been where
he was now, staring out an octagonal porthole at an endless sea of
diamond-pierced blackness, with the empty ship humming to itself all
around him.
* * * * *
It was an entirely different thing, he told himself; there were no
names, and no descriptions, and no feeling of going from one known place
to another known place. It was more like--
It was like standing outdoors, on a still summer night, and looking up
at the dizzying depths of the stars. And then looking down, to discover
that there was no planet under your feet--and that you were all alone in
that alien gulf....
It was enough to make a grown man cry; and Weaver had cried, often, in
the empty red twilight of the ship, feeling himself hopelessly and
forever cut off, cast out and forgotten. But as the weeks passed, a kind
of numbness had overtaken him, till now, when he looked out the porthole
at the incredible depth of sky, he felt no emotion but a thin,
disapproving regret.
Sometimes he would describe himself to himself, just to refute the
feeling that he was not really here, not really alive. But his mind was
too orderly, and the description would come out so cold and
terse--"Algernon James Weaver (1942- ) historian, civic leader, poet,
teacher, philosopher. Author of _Development of the School System in
Schenectady and Scoharie Counties, New York_ (pamphlet, 1975); _An
Address to the Women's Clubs of Schenectady, New York_ (pamphlet, 1979);
_Rhymes of a Philosopher_ (1981); _Parables of a Philosopher_ (1983),
_Reflections of a Philosopher_ (1986). Born in Detroit, Michigan, son of
a Methodist minister; educated in Michigan and New York public schools;
B.A., New York State University, 1959; M.A., N.Y.S.U. Extension, 1964.
Unmarried. Surviving relatives--"
That was the trouble, it began to sound like an obituary. And then the
great humming metal shell would begin to feel like a coffin....
[Illustration]
Presumption. Pure presumption. None of these creatures should have been
allowed to get loose among the stars, Man least of all. It cluttered
up the Universe. It undermined Faith. And it had got Algernon Weaver
into the devil of a fix.
* * * * *
It was his sister's fault, actually. She would go, in spite of his
advice, up to the Moon, to the UN sanatorium in Aristarchus. Weaver's
sister, a big-framed, definite woman, had a weak heart and seventy-five
superfluous pounds of fat. Doctors had told her that she would live
twenty years longer on the Moon; therefore she went, and survived the
trip, and thrived in the germ-free atmosphere, weighing just one-sixth
of her former two hundred and ten pounds.
Once, she was there, Weaver could hardly escape visiting her. Harriet
was a widow, with large resources, and Weaver was her only near
relative. It was necessary, it was prudent, for him to keep on her good
side. Moreover, he had his family feeling.
He did not like it, not a minute of it. Not the incredible trip, rising
till the Earth lay below like a botched model of itself; not the silent
mausoleum of the Moon. But he duly admired Harriet's spacious room in
the sanatorium, the recreation rooms, the auditorium; space-suited, he
walked with her in the cold Earthlight; he attended her on the excursion
trip to Ley Field, the interstellar rocket base on the far side of the
Moon.
The alien ship was there, all angles and planes--it came from Zeta
Aurigae, they told him, and was the second foreign ship to visit Sol.
Most of the crew had been ferried down to Earth, where they were
inspecting the people (without approval, Weaver was sure). Meanwhile,
the remaining crewman would be pleased to have the sanatorium party
inspect _him_.
* * * * *
They went aboard, Harriet and two other women, and six men counting the
guide and Weaver. The ship was a red-lit cavern. The "crewman" turned
out to be a hairy horror, a three-foot headless lump shaped like an
eggplant, supported by four splayed legs and with an indefinite number
of tentacles wriggling below the stalked eyes.
"They're more like us than you'd think," said the guide. "They're
mammals, they have a nervous organization very like ours, they're
susceptible to some of our diseases--which is very rare--and they even
share some of our minor vices." He opened his kit and offered the thing
a plug of chewing tobacco, which was refused with much tentacle-waving,
and a cigar, which was accepted. The creature stuck the cigar into the
pointed tip of its body, just above the six beady black eyes, lit it
with some sort of flameless lighter, and puffed clouds of smoke like a
volcano.
"--And of course, as you see, they're oxygen breathers," the guide
finished. "The atmosphere in the ship here is almost identical to our
own--we could breathe it without any discomfort whatever."
_Then why don't we?_ Weaver thought irritably. He had been forced to
wear either a breathing mask or a pressure suit all the time he had been
on the Moon, except when he had been in his own sealed room at the
sanatorium. And his post-nasal drip was unmistakably maturing into a
cold; he had been stifling sneezes for the last half hour.
He was roused by a commotion up ahead; someone was on the floor, and the
others were crowding around. "Help me carry her," said the guide's voice
sharply in his earphones. "We can't treat her here. What is she, a heart
case?... Good Lord. Clear the way there, will you?"
Weaver hurried up, struck by a sharp suspicion. Indeed, it was Harriet
who was being carried out--and a good thing, he thought, that they
didn't have to support her full weight. He wondered vaguely if she would
die before they got her to a doctor. He could not give the thought his
full attention, or feel as much fraternal anxiety as he ought, because--
He had ... he _had_ to sneeze.
* * * * *
The others had crowded out into the red-lit space of the control room,
where the airlock was. Weaver stopped and frantically tugged his arm
free of the rubberoid sleeve. The repressed spasm was an acute agony in
his nose and throat. He fumbled the handkerchief out of his pocket,
thrust his hand up under the helmet--and blissfully let go.
His eyes were watering. He wiped them hurriedly, put the handkerchief
away, worked his arm back into the sleeve, and looked around to see what
had become of the others.
The airlock door was closed, and there was no one in the room but the
hairy eggplant shape of the Aurigean, still puffing its cigar.
"Hey!" said Weaver, forgetting his manners. The Aurigean did not
turn--but then, which was its front, or back? The beady black eyes
regarded him without expression.
Weaver started forward. He got nearly to the airlock before a cluster of
hairy tentacles barred his way. He said indignantly, "Let me out, you
monster. Let me out, do you hear?"
The creature stood stock-still in an infuriating attitude until a little
light on the wall changed from orange to red-violet. Then it crossed to
the control board, did something there, and the inner door of the lock
swung open.
"Well, I should think so!" said Weaver. He stepped forward again--But
his eyes were beginning to water. There was an intolerable tickling far
back in his nostrils. He was going to--he was--
Eyes squeezed shut, his whole body contorted with effort, he raised his
arm to begin the desperate race once more. His hand brushed against
something--his kit, slung just above his waist. There were handkerchiefs
in the kit, he recalled suddenly. And he remembered what the guide had
said about Aurigean air.
He tugged the kit open, fumbled and found a handkerchief. He zipped open
the closure of his helmet and tilted the helmet back. He brought up the
handkerchief, and gave himself over to the spasm.
* * * * *
He was startled by a hoarse boom, as if someone had scraped the strings
of an amplified bull fiddle. He looked around, blinking, and discovered
that the sound was coming from the Aurigean. The monster, with its
tentacles tightly curled around the tip of its body, was scuttling into
the corridor. As Weaver watched in confusion, it vanished, and a sheet
of metal slid across the doorway.
More boomings came shortly from a source Weaver finally identified as a
grille over the control panels. He took a step that way, then changed
his mind and turned back toward the airlock.
Just as he reached the nearer airlock door, the farther one swung open
and an instant torrent of wind thrust him outward.
Strangling, Weaver grabbed desperately at the door-frame as it went by.
He swung with a sickening thud into the inner wall, but he hung on and
pulled himself back inside.
The force of the wind was dropping rapidly; so was the air pressure.
Ragged black blotches swam before Weaver's eyes. He fumbled with his
helmet, trying to swing it back over his head; but it stubbornly
remained where it was. The blow when he struck the airlock wall, he
thought dimly--it must have bent the helmet so that it would not fit
into its grooves.
He forced himself across the room, toward the faint gleam of the
Aurigean control board--shaped like a double horseshoe it was, around
the two lattice-topped stools, and bristling with levers, knobs and
sliding panels. One of these, he knew, controlled the airlock. He
slapped blindly at them, pulling, pushing, turning as many as he could
reach. Then the floor reeled under him, and, as he fell toward it,
changed into a soft gray endless mist....
* * * * *
When he awoke, the airlock door was closed. His lungs were gratefully
full of air. The Aurigean was nowhere to be seen; the door behind which
he had disappeared was still closed.
Weaver got up, stripped off his spacesuit, and, by hammering with the
sole of one of the boots, managed to straighten out the dent in the back
of the helmet. He put the suit back on, then looked doubtfully at the
control board. It wouldn't do to go on pulling things at random; he
might cause some damage. Tentatively, he pushed a slide he remembered
touching before. When nothing happened, he pushed it back. He tried a
knob, then a lever.
The inner door of the airlock swung open.
Weaver marched into it, took one look through the viewport set in the
outer door, and scrambled back out. He closed the airlock again, and
thought a minute.
In the center of each horseshoe curve of the control board was a gray
translucent disk, with six buttons under it. They might, Weaver thought,
be television screens. He pressed the first button under one of them,
and the screen lighted up. He pressed the second button, then all the
others in turn.
They all showed him the same thing--the view he had seen from the
viewport in the airlock: stars, and nothing but stars.
The Moon, incredibly, had disappeared. He was in space.
* * * * *
His first thought, when he was able to think connectedly again, was to
find the Aurigean and make him put things right. He tried all the
remaining knobs and levers and buttons on the control board, reckless of
consequences, until the door slid open again. Then he went down the
corridor and found the Aurigean.
The creature was lying on the floor, with a turnip-shaped thing over its
head, tubes trailing from it to an opened cabinet in the wall. It was
dead--dead and decaying.
He searched the ship. He found storerooms, with cylinders and bales of
stuff that looked as if it might possibly be food; he found the engine
room, with great piles of outlandishly sculptured metal and winking
lights and swinging meter needles. But he was the only living thing on
board.
The view from all six directions--in the control room telescreens, and
in the ship's direct-view ports alike--was exactly the same. The stars,
like dandruff on Weaver's blue serge suit. No one of them, apparently,
any nearer than the others. No way to tell which, if any of them, was
his own.
The smell of the dead creature was all through the ship. Weaver closed
his helmet against it; then, remembering that the air in his suit tank
would not last forever, he lugged the corpse out to the airlock, closed
the inner door on it, and opened the outer one.
It was hard for him to accept the obvious explanation of the Aurigean's
death, but he finally came to it. He recalled something the guide had
said about the Aurigeans' susceptibility to Earthly infections. That
must have been it. That had been why the creature had bellowed and run
to seal itself off from him. It was all his fault.
If he had not sneezed with his helmet open, the Aurigean would not be
dead. He would not be marooned in space. And the other Aurigeans, down
on Earth, would not be marooned there. Though they, he decided
wistfully, would probably get home sooner or later. They knew where home
was.
* * * * *
As far as he could, he made himself master of the ship and its contents.
He discovered, by arduous trial and error, which of the supposed foods
in the storerooms he could eat safely, which would make him sick, and
which were not foods at all. He found out which of the control board's
knobs and levers controlled the engines, and he shut them off. He
studied the universe around him, hoping to see some change.
After nearly a month, it happened. One star grew from a brilliant
pinpoint to a tiny disk, and each time he awoke it was larger.
Weaver took counsel with himself, and pasted a small piece of
transparent red tape over the place on the telescreen where the star
appeared. He scratched a mark to show where the star was on each of
three succeeding "days." The trail crawled diagonally down toward the
bottom of the screen.
He knew nothing about astrogation; but he knew that if he were heading
directly toward the star, it ought to stay in the same place on his
screen. He turned on the engines and swung the steering arm downward.
The star crawled toward the center of the screen, then went past. Weaver
painstakingly brought it back; and so, in parsec-long zigzags, he held
his course.
The star was now increasing alarmingly in brightness. It occurred to
Weaver that he must be traveling with enormous speed, although he had no
sensation of movement at all. There was a position on the scale around
the steering arm that he thought would put the engines into reverse. He
tried it, and now he scratched the apparent size of the star into the
red tape. First it grew by leaps and bounds, then more slowly, then
hardly at all. Weaver shut off the engines again, and waited.
The star had planets. He noted their passage in the telescreen, marked
their apparent courses, and blithely set himself to land on the one that
seemed to be nearest. He was totally ignorant of orbits; he simply
centered his planet on the screen as he had done with the star, found
that it was receding from him, and began to run it down.
He came in too fast the first time--tore through the atmosphere like a
lost soul and frantically out again, sweating in the control room's
sudden heat. He turned, out in space, and carefully adjusted his speed
so that ship and planet drifted softly together. Gently, as if he had
been doing this all his life. Weaver took the ship down upon a continent
of rolling greens and browns, landed it without a jar--saw the landscape
begin to tilt as he stepped into the airlock, and barely got outside
before the ship rolled ten thousand feet down a gorge he had not noticed
and smashed itself into a powdering of fragments.
Two days later, he began turning into a god.
II
They had put him into a kind of enclosed seat at the end of a long
rotating arm, counter-weighted at the opposite side of the aircar
proper, and the whole affair swung gently in an eccentric path, around
and around, and up and down as the aircar moved very slowly forward
through the village.
All the houses were faced with broad wooden balconies stained blood-red
and turquoise, umber and yellow, gold and pale green; and all of these
were crowded to bursting with the blue and white horny chests and the
big-eyed faces of the bug things. Weaver swung in his revolving seat
past first one level and another, and the twittering voices burst around
him like the stars of a Fourth-of-July rocket.
This was the fifth village they had visited since the bug things had
found him wandering in the mountains. At the first one, he had been
probed, examined and twittered over interminably; then the aircar had
arrived, they had strapped him into this ridiculous seat and begun what
looked very much like a triumphal tour. Other aircars, without the
revolving arm, preceded and followed him. The slowly floating cars and
their riders were gay with varicolored streamers. Every now and then one
of the bug things in the cars would raise a pistol-like object to fire a
pinkish streak that spread out, high in the air, and became a gently
descending, diffusing cloud of rosy dust. And always the twittering rose
and fell, rose and fell as Weaver revolved at the end of the swinging
arm.
One had to remember, he reminded himself, that Earthly parallels did not
necessarily apply. It was undignified, certainly, to be revolving like a
child on a merry-go-round, while these crowds glared with bright alien
eyes; but the important thing was that they had not once offered him any
violence. They had not even put him into the absurd revolving seat by
force; they had led him to it gently, with a great deal of gesturing and
twittered explanation. And if their faces were almost nauseatingly
unpleasant--with the constantly-moving complexity of parts that he had
seen in live lobsters--well, that proved nothing except that they were
not human. Later, perhaps, he could persuade them to wear masks....
* * * * *
It was a holiday; a great occasion--everything testified to that. The
colored streamers, the clouds of rosy dust like sky-rockets, the crowds
of people lined up to await him. And why not? Clearly, they had never
before seen a man. He was unique, a personage to be honored: a visitor
descended from the heavens, clothed in fire and glory. Like the
Spaniards among the Aztecs, he thought.
Weaver began to feel gratified, his ego expanding. Experimentally, he
waved to the massed ranks of bug things as he passed them. A new
explosion of twittering broke out, and a forest of twiglike arms waved
back at him. They seemed to regard him with happy awe.
"Thank you," said Weaver graciously. "Thank you...."
In the morning, there were crowds massed outside the building where he
had slept; but they did not put him into the aircar with the revolving
arm again. Instead, four new ones came into his room after he had eaten
the strange red and orange fruits that were all of the bug diet he could
stomach, and began to twitter very seriously at him, while pointing to
various objects, parts of their bodies, the walls around them, and
Weaver himself.
* * * * *
After awhile, Weaver grasped the idea that he was being instructed. He
was willing to co-operate, but he did not suppose for a moment that he
could master the bird-like sounds they made. Instead, he took an old
envelope and a stub of pencil from his pocket and wrote the English word
for each thing they pointed out. "ORANGE," he wrote--it was not an
orange, but the color was the same, at any rate--"THORAX. WALL. MAN.
MANDIBLES."
In the afternoon, they brought a machine with staring lenses and bright
lights. Weaver guessed that he was being televised; he put a hand on the
nearest bug thing's shoulder, and smiled for his audience.
Later, after he had eaten again, they went on with the language lesson.
Now it was Weaver who taught, and they who learned. This, Weaver felt,
was as it should be. These creatures were not men, he told himself; he
would give himself no illusions on that score; but they might still be
capable of learning many things that he had to teach. He could do a
great deal of good, even if it turned out that he could never return to
Earth.
He rather suspected that they had no spaceships. There was something
about their life--the small villages, the slowly drifting aircars, the
absence of noise and smell and dirt, that somehow did not fit with the
idea of space travel. As soon as he was able, he asked them about it. No
they had never traveled beyond their own planet. It was a great marvel;
perhaps he could teach them how, sometime.
As their command of written English improved, he catechized them about
themselves and their planet. The world, as he knew already, was much
like Earth as to atmosphere, gravity and mean temperature. It occurred
to him briefly that he had been lucky to hit upon such a world, but the
thought did not stick; he had no way of knowing just how improbable his
luck had been.
They themselves were, as he had thought, simple beings. They had a
written history of some twelve thousand of their years, which he
estimated to be about nine thousand of his. Their technical
accomplishments, he had to grant, equalled Earth's and in some cases
surpassed them. Their social organization was either so complex that it
escaped him altogether, or unbelievably simple. They did not, so far as
he could discover, have any political divisions. They did not make war.
They were egg-layers, and they controlled their population simply by
means of hatching only as many eggs as were needed to replace their
natural losses.
* * * * *
Just when it first struck Weaver that he was their appointed ruler it
would be hard to say. It began, perhaps, that afternoon in the aircar;
or a few days later when he made his first timid request--for a house of
his own. The request was eagerly granted, and he was asked how he would
like the house constructed. Half timidly, he drew sketches of his own
suburban home in Schenectady; and they built it, swarms of them working
together, down to the hardwood floors and the pneumatic furniture and
the picture mouldings and the lampshades.
Or perhaps the idea crystallized when he asked to see some of their
native dances, and within an hour the dancers assembled on his
lawn--five hundred of them--and performed until sundown.
At, any rate, nothing could have been more clearly correct once he had
grasped the idea. He was a Man, alone in a world of outlandish
creatures. It was natural that he should lead; indeed, it was his duty.
They were poor things, but they were malleable in his hands. It was a
great adventure. Who knew how far he might not bring them?
Weaver embarked on a tour of the planet, taking with him two of the bug
things as guides and a third as pilot and personal servant. Their names
in their own tongue he had not bothered to ask; he had christened them
Mark, Luke and John. All three now wrote and read English with fair
proficiency; thus Weaver was well served.
The trip was entirely enjoyable. He was met everywhere by the same
throngs, the same delight and enthusiasm as before; and between
villages--there seemed to be nothing on the planet that could be called
a city--the rolling green countryside, dotted with bosquets of yellow-
and orange-flowered trees, was most soothing to the eye. Weaver noted
the varieties of strangely shaped and colored plants, and the swarms of
bright flying things, and began an abortive collection. He had to give
it up, for the present: there were too many things to study. He looked
forward to a few books to be compiled later, when he had time, for the
guidance of Earthmen at some future date: _The Flora of Terranova_, _The
Fauna of Terranova_....
All that was for the distant future. Now he was chiefly concerned with
the Terranovans themselves--how they lived, what they thought, what sort
of primitive religion they had, and so on. He asked endless questions of
his guides, and through them, of the villagers they met; and the more he
learned, the more agitated he became.
* * * * *
"But this is monstrous," he wrote indignantly to Mark and Luke. They had
just visited a house inhabited by seventeen males and twelve
females--Weaver was now beginning to be able to distinguish the
sexes--and he had inquired what their relations were. Mark had informed
him calmly that they were husbands and wives; and when Weaver pointed
out that the balance was uneven, had written, "No, not one to one. All
to all. All husband and wife of each other."
Mark held Weaver's indignant message up to his eyes with one
many-jointed claw, while his other three forelimbs gestured uncertainly.
Finally he seized the note-pad and wrote, "Do not understand monstrous,
please forgive. They do for more change, so not to make each other have
tiredness."
Weaver frowned and wrote, "Does not your religion forbid this?"
Mark consulted in his own piping tongue with the other two. Finally he
surrendered the note-pad to Luke, who wrote: "Do not understand religion
to forbid, please excuse. With us many religion, some say spirits in
flower, some say in wind and sun, some say in ground. Not say to do
this, not to do that. With us all people the same, no one tell other
what to do."
Weaver added another mental note to his already lengthy list: "Build
churches."
He wrote: "Tell them this must stop."
Mark turned without hesitation to the silently attentive group, and
translated. He turned back to Weaver and wrote, "They ask please, what
to do now instead of the way they do?"
Weaver told him, "They must mate only one to one, and for life."
To his surprise, the translation of this was greeted by unmistakable
twitterings of gladness. The members of the adulterous group turned to
each other with excited gestures, and Weaver saw a pairing-off process
begin, with much discussion.
He asked Mark about it later, as they were leaving the village. "How is
it that they did this thing before--for more variety, as you say--and
yet seem so glad to stop?"
Mark's answer was: "They very glad to do whatever thing you say. You
bring them new thing, they very happy."
Weaver mused on this, contentedly on the whole, but with a small
undigested kernel of uneasiness, until they reached the next village.
Here he found a crowd of Terranovans of both sexes and all ages at a
feast of something with a fearful stench. He asked what it was; Mark's
answer had better not be revealed. Feeling genuinely sick with
revulsion, Weaver demanded, "Why do they do such an awful thing? This is
ten times worse than the other."
This time Mark answered without hesitation. "They do this like the
other, for more change. Is not easy to learn to like, but they do, so
not to make themselves have tiredness."
* * * * *
There were three more such incidents before they reached the village
where they were to sleep that night; and Weaver lay awake in his downy
bed, staring at the faint shimmer of reflected starlight on the carved
roof-beams, and meditating soberly on the unexpected, the appalling
magnitude of the task he had set himself.
From this, he came to consider that small dark kernel of doubt. It was
of course dreadful to find that his people were so wholly corrupt, but
that at least was understandable. What he did not understand was the
reason they could be so easily weaned from their wickedness. It left him
feeling a little off-balance, like a man who has hurled himself at his
enemy and found him suddenly not there. This reminded him of ju-jitsu,
and this in turn of the ancient Japanese--to whom, indeed, his
Terranovans seemed to have many resemblances. Weaver's uneasiness
increased. Savage peoples were notoriously devious--they smiled and then
thrust knives between your ribs.
He felt a sudden prickling coldness at the thought. It was improbable,
it was fantastic that they would go to such lengths to gratify his
every wish if they meant to kill him, he told himself; and then he
remembered the Dionysian rites, and a host of other, too-similar
parallels. The king for a day or a year, who ruled as an absolute
monarch, and then was sacrificed--
And, Weaver remembered with a stab of panic, usually eaten.
He had been on Terranova for a little over a month by the local
calendar. What was his term of office to be--two months? Six? A year,
ten years?
* * * * *
He slept little that night, woke late in the morning with dry, irritated
eyes and a furred mouth, and spent a silent day, inspecting each new
batch of natives without comment, and shivering inwardly at each motion
of the clawed arms of Mark, Luke or John. Toward evening he came out of
his funk at last, when it occurred to him to ask about weapons.
He put the query slyly, wording it as if it were a matter of general
interest only, and of no great importance. Were they familiar with
machines that killed, and if so, what varieties did they have?
At first Mark did not understand the question. He replied that their
machines did not kill, that very long ago they had done so but that the
machines were much better now, very safe and not harmful to anyone.
"Then," wrote Weaver carefully, "you have no machines which are made for
the purpose of killing?"
Mark, Luke and John discussed this with every evidence of excitement. At
last Mark wrote, "This very new idea to us."
"But do you have in this world no large, dangerous animals which must be
killed? How do you kill those things which you eat?"
"No dangerous animals. We kill food things, but not use machines. Give
some things food which make them die. Give some no food, so they die.
Kill some with heat. Some eat alive."
Weaver winced with distaste when he read this last, and was about to
write, "This must stop." But he thought of oysters, and decided to
reserve judgment.
After all, it had been foolish of him to be frightened last night. He
had been carried away by a chance comparison which, calmly considered,
was superficial and absurd. These people were utterly peaceful--in fact,
spineless.
He wrote, "Take the aircar up farther, so that I can see this village
from above."
He signaled John to stop when they had reached a height of a few
hundred feet. From this elevation, he could see the village spread out
beneath him like an architect's model--the neat cross-hatching of narrow
streets separating the hollow curves of rooftops, dotted with the myriad
captive balloons launched in honor of his appearance.
The village lay in the gentle hollow of a wide valley, surrounded by the
equally gentle slopes of hills. To his right, it followed the bank of a
fair-sized river; in the other three directions the checkered pattern
ended in a careless, irregular outline and was replaced by the larger
pattern of cultivated fields.
It was a good site--the river for power, sanitation and transportation,
the hills for a sheltered climate. He saw suddenly, in complete, sharp
detail, how it would be.
"The trip is over," he wrote with sudden decision. "We will stay here,
and build a city."
III
The most difficult part was the number of things that he had to learn.
There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others; he simply
commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about
the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by
its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the
contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New
Washington--later New Jerusalem--he was still bothered a little by
doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the
Terranovans, so that finally he would understand them completely and the
doubt would be gone.
Eventually he confessed to himself that the task was impossible. He was
forty-seven years old; he had perhaps thirty years ahead of him, and it
was not as if he were able to devote them solely to study. There was the
written history of the Terranovans, which covered minutely a period of
nine thousand years--though not completely; there were periods and
places which seemed to have left no adequate records of themselves. The
natives had no reasonable explanation of this phenomenon; they simply
said that the keeping of histories sometimes went out of fashion.
Then there was the biology of the Terranovans and the countless other
organisms of the planet--simply to catalogue them and give them English
names, as he had set out to do, would have occupied him the rest of his
lifetime.
There was the complex and puzzling field of social relations--here again
everything seemed to be in unaccountable flux, even though the over-all
pattern remained the same and seemed as rigid as any primitive people's.
There was physics, which presented exasperating difficulties of
translation; there was engineering, there was medicine, there was
economics....
* * * * *
When he finally gave it up, it was not so much because of the simple
arithmetical impossibility of the job as because he realized that it
didn't matter. For a time he had been tempted away from the logical
attitude toward these savages of his--a foolish weakness of the sort
that had given him that ridiculous hour or two, when, he now dimly
recalled, he had been afraid of the Terranovans--afraid, of all things,
that they were fattening him for the sacrifice!
Whereas it was clear enough, certainly, that the _former_ state of the
Terranovans, their incomprehensible society and language and customs,
simply had no practical importance. He was changing all that. When he
was through, they would be what he had made them, no more and no less.
It was strange, looking back, to realize how little he had seen of his
destiny, there at the beginning. Timid little man, he thought half in
amusement, half contemptuously: nervous and fearful, seeing things
_small_. Build me a house, like the one I had in Schenectady!
They had built him a palace--no, a _temple_--and a city; and they were
building him a world. A planet that would be his to the last atom when
it was done; a corner of the universe that was Algernon James Weaver.
He recalled that in the beginning he had felt almost like these
creatures' servant--"public servant," he had thought, with
self-righteous lukewarm, pleasure. He had seen himself as one who built
for others--the more virtuous because those others were not even men.
But it was not he who built. _They_ built, and for him.
It was strange, he thought again, that he should not have seen it from
the first. For it was perfectly clear and all of a pattern.
The marriage laws. _Thou shalt not live in adultery._
The dietary laws. _Thou shalt not eat that which is unclean._
And the logical concomitant, the law of worship. _Thou shalt have no
gods before Me._
* * * * *
The apostles ... Mark, Luke and John. Later, Matthew, Philip, Peter,
Simon, Andrew, James, Bartholomew and Thomas.
He had a feeling that something was wrong with the list besides the
omission of Judas--unluckily, he had no Bible--but it was really an
academic question. They were _his_ apostles, not that Other's.
The pattern repeated itself, he thought, but with variations.
He understood now why he had shelved the project of Christianizing the
natives, although one of his first acts had been to abolish their pagan
sects. He had told himself at first that it was best to wait until he
had put down from memory the salient parts of the Holy Bible--Genesis,
say, the better-known Psalms, and a condensed version of the Gospels;
leaving out all the begats, and the Jewish tribal history, and awkward
things like the Songs of Solomon. (_Thy mandibles are like pomegranates_
... no, it wouldn't do).
And, of course, he had never found time to wrack his brains for the
passages that eluded him. But all that had been merely a subterfuge to
soothe his conscience, while he slowly felt his way into his new role.
Now, it was almost absurdly simple. He was writing his own holy book--or
rather, Luke, Thomas, and a corps of assistants were putting it together
from his previous utterances, to be edited by him later.
The uneasy rustling of chitinous arms against white robes recalled him
from his meditation. The swarm of priests, altar boys, and the rest of
his retinue was still gathered around him, waiting until he should deign
to notice them again. Really, God thought with annoyance, this
woolgathering--at such a moment!
* * * * *
The worshippers were massed in the Temple. A low, excited twittering
rose from them as He appeared and walked into the beam of the spotlight.
The dark lenses of television cameras were focused on Him from every
part of the balcony at the rear of the hall. The microphones were ready.
Weaver walked forward as the congregation knelt, and waited an
impressive moment before He spread His hands in the gesture that meant,
"Rise, my children." Simon, previously coached, translated. The
congregation rose again, rustling, and then was still.
At a signal from Simon, the choir began a skirling and screeching which
the disciples warranted to be music--religious music, composed to fit
the requirements He had laid down. Weaver endured it, thinking that
some changes must come slowly.
The hymn wailed to an end, and Weaver gripped the lectern, leaning
carefully forward toward the microphones. "My children," He began, and
waited for Solomon's twittering translation. "You have sinned greatly--"
Twitter. "--and in many ways." Twitter. "But I have come among you--"
Twitter. "--to redeem your sins--" Twitter. "--and make them as though
they had never been." Twitter.
He went on to the end, speaking carefully and sonorously. It was not a
long sermon, but He flattered Himself that it was meaty. At the end of
it He stepped back a pace, and folded His arms, in their long white-silk
sleeves, across His chest.
Simon took over now, and so far as Weaver could judge, he did well. He
recited a litany which Weaver had taught him, indicating by gestures
that the congregation was to repeat after him every second speech. The
low chirping welled from the hall; a comforting, warming sound, almost
like the responses of a human congregation. Weaver felt tears welling to
His eyes, and He restrained Himself from weeping openly only by a
gigantic effort. After all, He was a god of wrath; but the love which
swept toward Him at this moment was a powerful thing to gainsay.
* * * * *
When it was all over, He went back to His sanctum, dismissed all His
retinue except His regular assistants, and removed the ceremonial robes.
"The people responded well," He said. "I am pleased."
Simon said, "They will work hard to please You, Master. You bring great
happiness to them."
"That is well," said Weaver. He sat down behind His great desk, while
the others stood attentively below Him, in the sunken fore-section of
the sanctum. "What business have you for Me today?"
"There is the matter of the novel, Master," said Mark. He stepped
forward, mounted the single step to Weaver's dais, and laid a sheaf of
papers on the desk. "This is a preliminary attempt which one called
Peter Smith has made with my unworthy help."
"I will read it later," Weaver told him. It was poor stuff, no
doubt--what else could one expect?--but it was a start. He would tell
them what was wrong with it, and they would try again.
Literary criticism, armaments, tariffs, manners--there was no end to it.
"What else?"
Luke stepped forward. "The plans for the large weapons You commanded
Your servants to design, Master." He put three large sheets of parchment
on the desk.
Weaver looked at the neat tracery on the first, and frowned. "You may
come near Me," He said. "Show Me how these are meant to operate."
Luke pointed to the first drawing. "This is the barrel of the weapon,
Master," he said. "As You commanded, it is rifled so that the missile
will spin. Here the missile is inserted at the breech, according to Your
direction. Here is the mechanism which turns and aims the weapon, as You
commanded. It is shown in greater detail on this second sheet.... And
here, on the third, is the missile itself. It is hollow and filled with
explosive powder, as You ordered, and there is in the tip a device which
will attract it to the target."
Weaver gravely nodded. "Has it been tested?"
"In models only, Master. If You direct, the construction will begin at
once."
"Good. Proceed. How many of these can you make for Me within a month?"
Luke hesitated. "Few, Master. At first all must be done by hand methods.
Later it will be possible to make many at a time--fifty, or even a
hundred in one month--but for the first two or three months, Master, two
weapons in a month is all that Your unworthy servants can do."
"Very well," said Weaver. "See to it."
* * * * *
He turned and examined the large globe of the planet which stood on His
desk. Here was another product of His genius; the Terranovans had
scarcely had maps worthy of the name before His Coming.
The three major continents trailed downward like fleshy leaves from the
north pole; He had called them America, Europe and Asia, and they were
so lettered on the globe. In the southern hemisphere, besides the tips
of Europe and Asia and fully a third of America, there was a fourth
continent, shaped rather like a hat, which He had called Australia.
There was no Africa on Terranova, but that was small loss: Weaver had
never thought highly of Africa.
The planet itself, according to the experts who had been assigned the
problem, was a little more than ten thousand miles in diameter. The land
area, Weaver thought, probably amounted to more than fifty million
square miles. It was a great deal to defend; but it must be done.
"Here is your next assignment," He told Luke. "Put a team to work on
selecting and preparing sites for these guns, when they are built. There
must be one in every thousand square miles...."
Luke bowed and took the plans away.
... For otherwise, Weaver thought somberly, another ship might land,
some day. And how could I trust these children not to _welcome_ it?
* * * * *
Sunlight gleamed brilliantly from the broad, white-marble plaza beyond
the tall portico. Looking through the windows, He could see the enormous
block of stone in the center of the plaza, and the tiny robot aircar
hovering near it, and the tiny ant-shapes of the crowd on the opposite
side. Beyond, the sky was a clear, faultless blue.
"Are you ready now, Master?" asked Luke.
Weaver tested His limbs. They were rigid and almost without sensation;
He could not move them so much as the fraction of an inch. Even His lips
were as stiff as that marble outside. Only the fingers of His right
hand, clutching a pen, felt as if they belonged to Him.
A metal frame supported a note-pad where His hand could reach it. Then
he wrote, "Yes. Proceed with the statue."
Luke was holding a tiny torpedo-shaped object that moved freely at the
end of a long, jointed metal arm. He moved it tentatively toward
Weaver's left shoulder. Outside, the hovering aircar duplicated the
motion: the grinder at its tip bit with a screech into the side of the
huge stone.
Weaver watched, feeling no discomfort; the drug Luke had injected was
working perfectly. Luke moved the pantograph pointer, again and again,
until it touched Weaver's robed body. With every motion, the aircar
bored a tunnel into the stone to the exact depth required, and backed
out again. Slowly a form was beginning to emerge.
The distant screech of the grinder was muffled and not unpleasant.
Weaver felt a trifle sleepy.
The top of one extended arm was done. The aircar moved over and began
the other, leaving the head still buried in stone.
After this, Weaver thought, He could rest. His cities were built, His
church founded, His guns built and tested, His people trained. The
Terranovans were as civilized as He could make them in one generation.
They had literary societies, newsstands, stock markets, leisure and
working classes, baseball leagues, armies.... They had had to give up
their barbaric comfort, of course; so much the better. Life was real,
life was earnest--Weaver had taught them that.
The mechanism of His government ran smoothly; it would continue to run,
with only an occasional guiding touch. This was His last major task. The
monument.
Something to remember Me by, He thought drowsily. Myself in stone, long
after I am gone. That will keep them to My ways, even if they should be
tempted. To them I will still be here, standing over them, gigantic,
imperishable.
They will still have something to worship.
* * * * *
Stone dust was obscuring the figure now, glittering in the sunlight.
Luke undercut a huge block of the stone and it fell, turning lazily, and
crashed on the pavement. Robot tractors darted out to haul the pieces
away.
Weaver was glad it was Luke whose hand was guiding the pantograph, not
one of the bright, efficient younger generation. They had been together
a long time, Luke and He. Almost ten years. He knew Luke as if he were a
human being; _understood_ him as if he were a person. And Luke knew Him
better than any of the rest; knew His smiles and His frowns, all His
moods.
It had been a good life. He had done all the things He set out to do,
and He had done them in His own time and His own way. At this distance,
it was almost impossible to believe that He had once been a little man
among billions of others, conforming to their patterns, doing what was
expected of Him.
His free hand was growing tired from holding the pen. When all the rest
was done, Luke would freeze that hand also, and then it would be only a
minute or so until he could inject the antidote. He scribbled idly, "Do
you remember the old days, before I came, Luke?"
"Very well, Master," said the apostle. "But it seems a long time ago."
Yes, Weaver told Himself contentedly; just what I was thinking. We
understand each other, Luke and I. He wrote, "Things are very different
now, eh?"
"Very different, Master. You made many changes. The people are very
grateful to You."
He could see the broad outlines of the colossal figure now: the arms, in
their heavy ecclesiastical sleeves, outstretched in benediction, the
legs firmly planted. But the bowed head was still a rough, featureless
mass of stone, not yet shaped.
"Do you know," Weaver wrote, on impulse, "that when I first came, I
thought for a time that you were savages who might want to eat Me?"
That would startle Luke, He thought. But Luke said, "We all wanted to,
very much. But that would have been foolish, Master. Then we would not
have had all the other things. And besides, there would not have been
enough of You for all."
The aircar screeched, driving a tunnel along the edge of the parted
vestments.
* * * * *
God felt a cold wind down the corridor of time. He had been that close,
after all. It was only because the natives had been cold-bloodedly
foresighted that He was still alive. The idea infuriated Him, and
somehow He was still afraid.
He wrote, "You never told me this. You will all do a penance for it."
Luke was dabbing the pointer carefully at the bald top of Weaver's head.
His horny, complicated face was unpleasantly close, the mandibles
unpleasantly big even behind his mouth veil.
Luke said, "We will, very gladly ... except that perhaps the new ones
will not like it."
Weaver felt bewildered. In one corner of His mind He felt a tiny
darkness unfolding: the kernel of doubt, forgotten so long, but there
all the time. Growing larger now, expanding to a ragged, terrifying
shape.
He wrote, "What do you mean? Who are 'the new ones'?"
Luke said, "We did not tell You. We knew You would not like it. A
spaceship landed in Asia two months ago. There are three people in it.
One is sick, but we believe the other two will live. They are very funny
people, Master."
The pantograph pointer moved down the side of God's nose and another
wedge of stone fell in the plaza.
"They have three long legs, and a very little body, and a head with one
eye in front and one behind. Also they have very funny ideas. They are
horrified at the way we live, and they are going to change it all
around."
Weaver's fingers jerked uncontrollably, and the words wavered across the
page. "I don't understand. I don't understand."
"I hope You are not angry. Master," said Luke. "We are very grateful to
You. When You came, we were desperately bored. There had been no new
thing for more than seven thousand years, since the last ship came from
space. You know that we have not much imagination. We tried to invent
new things for ourselves, but we could never think of anything so
amusing as the ones You gave us. We will always remember You with
gratitude."
The pantograph was tracing Weaver's eyelids, and then the unfeeling eyes
themselves.
* * * * *
"But all things must end," said Luke. "Now we have these others, who do
not like what you have done, so we cannot worship you any more. And
anyway, some of the people are growing tired. It has been ten years. A
long time."
One thought pierced through the swirling fear in Weaver's mind. The
guns, built with so much labor, the enormous guns that could throw a
shell two hundred miles. The crews, manning them night and day to
destroy the first ship that came in from space. And they had never meant
to use them!
Anger fought with caution. He felt peculiarly helpless now, locked up in
his own body like a prison. "What are you going to do?" he scrawled.
"Nothing that will hurt, Master," said Luke. "You remember, I told you
long ago, we had no machines for killing before you came. We used other
things, like this drug which paralyzes. You will feel no pain."
Algernon Weaver's hand, gripping the pen as a drowning man holds to a
stave, was moving without his volition. It was scrawling in huge
letters, over and over, "NO NO NO"....
"It is too bad we cannot wait," said Luke, "but it has to be done before
the new ones get here. They would not like it, probably."
He let the pointer go, and it hung where he had left it. With two
jointed claws he seized Weaver's hand and straightened it out to match
the other, removing the pen. With a third claw he thrust a slender
needle under the skin. Instantly the hand was as rigid as the rest of
Weaver's body. Weaver felt as if the last door had been slammed, the
telephone wires cut, the sod thrown on the coffin.
"This is the way we have decided," said Luke. "It is a shame, because
perhaps these new ones will not be as funny as you, after all. But it is
the way we have decided."
He took up the pantograph pointer again.
* * * * *
In the plaza, the aircar ground at the huge stone head, outlining the
stern mouth, the resolute, bearded jaw. Helplessly, Weaver returned the
stare of that remorseless, brooding face: the face of a conqueror.
Transcriber's Note
This etext was produced from _Space Science Fiction_ March 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors
have been corrected without note.
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