City at World's End

Chapter 17 JUDGMENT OF THE STARS

Kenniston clenched his hands under the table of gleaming plastic and clung hard to his sanity.

This is true, he told himself fiercely. It is happening, and I am not mad.

I am John Kenniston. Only a few weeks ago I was in Middletown. Now I am in a place called Vega Center. I am still John Kenniston. Only the world has changed.

But he knew that it was not so. He knew that Vega Center and the marble amphitheatre in which he sat were only shadows in a shifting nightmare from which he could not wake.

Unsteadily he looked upward. They sat silently, row upon row of them, tier upon tier, full circle around the vast echoing space, reaching up into the shadowy vault, watching him with the crushing thousands of their eyes, human and unhuman, curious, intent.

The hosts of the Federation of Stars. The Board of Governors, in full session.

These countless hundreds who came from the far-flung worlds of a galaxy—to them, he must seem equally unreal. It would seem impossible to them that they looked down upon a man of the forgotten past.

Varn Allan’s quiet, earnest voice broke in upon his reeling thoughts.

She was finishing her report on Middletown.

“This is a complex situation. In finding a solution for it, I would ask you to remember that these people are a special case, for which there is no precedent. In my belief, they are entitled to special consideration.

“Therefore, my recommendation is as follows: that the proposed evacuation be delayed until these people can be psychologically conditioned to the idea of world-change. Such conditioning, in my belief, would enable this evacuation to be carried out without difficulty.”

She glanced at Norden Lund, who sat next her at the table. “Perhaps Sub-Administrator Lund has something to add to that report.”

Lund smiled. “No. I will reserve my right to speak until later.” His eyes held a gleam of anticipation.

There was a moment of silence. And Kenniston could hear the soft gigantic rustling, the breathing and small stirring of the ranked thousands of the Governors.

The Spokesman, a small alert man who was the voice of the Board, the questioner, and who sat with them at the table, said, “The Board of Governors recognizes Kenniston, of Sol Three.”

The rulers of the galaxy were waiting for him to speak.

Others were waiting, too. They were waiting in the dusk and cold of Sol Three, the little world whose ancient name of Earth had been all but forgotten in these halls of government. The millhands, the housewives, the rich men and the poor, the folk of Middletown.

Varn Allan looked at him and smiled.

He took a deep breath. He forced himself to speak. He forced the words to come out of the tight dark corridors of fear.

“We did not ask to come into your time. Having come, we are under Federation law, and we do not defy your authority as such. We do not wish to make trouble. Our problem is a psychological one…”

He tried to explain to these men of the Federation something of what life had been like before that fateful morning in June. He tried to make them understand how his people were bound to their world and why they must cling to it so desperately.

“I understand the technological problems of supporting life on a world such as ours. But we have known privation and suffering before. We are not afraid of them. And we believe that, given time, we can solve those problems.

“We don’t even ask you for help, though we would be grateful if you cared to give it. All we ask of you is to be let alone, to work out our own salvation!”

He stopped. The silence, the thousands of watching eyes, bore down upon him with a crushing weight.

Kenniston struggled for a final word. There was so much he had not said—so much that could never be put into words.

How do you phrase the history of the race of men, the pride and sorrow of their beginning?

He said, “Earth is the mother that bore you. You should not let her die!”

It was done. For good or ill, it was done and over.

Jon Arnol leaned from where he sat beside him at the table.

“Magnificent,” he whispered. And again, “Magnificent!”

The Spokesman asked, “Is it through the application of Jon Arnol’s theories that you hope to bring back life to Sol Three?”

Before Kenniston could answer, Arnol himself cried out, “On that point, I ask leave to speak!”

The Spokesman nodded.

Arnol rose. The fierce energy that drove him could not be contained for long in any chair. He seemed to face the entire Board of Governors at once, turning his dark, challenging gaze upon them.

“You have denied me another chance to test my process—in spite of the fact that no reputable scientist can challenge my equations. You have denied me that chance, because of political considerations which are known to everyone here. The same considerations which deliberately made my first test fail, by choosing for it a world too small for the energy-blast released in its core!

“But Earth is not such a world. The experiment will succeed, there. I demand that you let it be done! Remember, this process will solve not only the immediate problem before you but also the whole future problem of dying worlds. You think that evacuation, transfer of populations, is a better solution. But you can’t go on moving populations forever!”

He paused. Then his voice rang out sternly. “Neither can you, for a preconceived political philosophy, forever hold back scientific progress. I say that you have no right to deny to the peoples of the Federation the incalculable good that this process can do them. And therefore, I ask permission to prove my process, using the planet Sol Three as the subject!”

He sat down. There was much whispering in the ranks of the Governors, a nodding together of heads. Kenniston stared hungrily at their faces. Impossible to tell…

“I think,” Jon Arnol whispered, “we may have done it!” The Spokesman lifted his gavel, about to signal the beginning of the vote.

Norden Lund said, “I now claim my right to speak.” It was granted.

And Kenniston felt his heart stop beating. Lund’s voice rang through the amphitheatre. “There is one fact concerning these so-called Middletowners that has not been mentioned—one that my superior did not even discover! A fact which was learned from records in their own old town, deciphered by the linguistic and historical expert of our party.”

Kenniston grew tense. So it was coming now, whatever it was that Lund had found out through Piers Eglin.

“You have been told that these Middletowners are a kindly, harmless folk. You are asked to be sorry for them, to give them special indulgences, to overlook their little violences. And why? Because they are pathetic creatures, innocent victims of a freak of chance that threw them forward along their world-line.”

Lund’s face hardened. His voice thundered wrathfully.

“It was no freak of chance that brought them into our time. It was an act of war!”

He paused, to let them understand that. Kenniston saw Varn Allan’s face. She was looking at Lund in amazement.

Lund went on. “Let Kenniston deny this if he can! It was the explosion of a hostile atomic bomb that ruptured the continuum and hurled his city through. These people are the children of war, born and bred in an age of wars.

“Consider the mob violence, the threats made against Federation officials, the refusal to accept peaceful authority! Consider that at this moment those kindly folk of Middletown are prepared for war, their trenches dug, their guns in place, ready to fire on the first Federation ship that lands!”

Lund’s voice dropped to a lower, tenser pitch.

“I warn you that these people are rotten with the plague of war. For centuries, we of the Federation struggled to find release from war, and we found it. The galaxy has been clean of that hideous disease. Now it has appeared again among us.

“And we—the upholders of Federation law—are wavering before a show of force!”

Kenniston was on his feet. Jon Arnol clung to him, holding him back.

Varn Allan leaned over the table, telling him in a desperate undertone,

“Don’t Kenniston! Keep your temper!”

The Spokesman asked of Lund, “What is your recommendation to the Board of Governors?”

Lund cried, “Show these people that they cannot flout peaceful authority with a threat of war! Remove them, as quickly as possible, to some isolated world on the frontiers of the galaxy—a world so remote that they cannot infect the main thought currents of the Federation with their brute psychology!”

Kenniston broke away from Arnol’s grasp. He strode up to Lund and took him by the front of his jacket and bent over him a face so white with anger that Lund quailed before it.

“Who are you,” snarled Kenniston, “to sit in judgment upon us?”

The words choked in his throat. He thrust Lund from him, flung him away so that he went sprawling to his knees, and turned to face the Governors.

“Yes, we fought our wars! We fought because we had to, so that thought and progress and freedom could live in our world. You owe us for that! You owe us for the men that died so that there could one day be a Federation of Stars. You owe us for atomic power, too. We may have misused it—but it’s the force that built your civilization, and we gave it to you!

“Think of those things, you men of the future! From Earth you came, and your whole civilization is rooted in our blood. You live in peace, because we died in war. Remember that, when you sit in judgment upon the past!”

He stood silent then, trembling, and Varn Allan came to bring him back to his chair.

Lund had got to his feet. He said, “I will let Kenniston’s own actions stand as my final argument.” He sat down. The Spokesman brought his gavel down. Kenniston was hardly aware of the taking of the vote. He wrestled with a dark turmoil of doubt and anger and fear, dreading to hear the words of judgment that he knew were coming. “It is the final decision of the Board of Governors that the population of Sol Three shall be evacuated in accordance with the official order already outstanding.

“No experiments with the Arnol process on a planetary scale can be considered safe at this time.

“It is the wish of the Governors that the people of Sol Three be peace-ably assimilated into the Federation. It is hoped that their attitude in the future will be such as to make this possible. If it is not, then they must be shown the futility of armed resistance.

“The hearing is concluded.”

Kenniston realized that Arnol was telling him to get up. He rose and went out of the amphitheatre with the others. He heard Varn Allan’s voice speaking in bitter anger to Norden Lund.

Nothing was very clear to him after that until he was back in his own quarters and Gorr Holl was putting a glass in his hand. Magro and Lal’lor had waited there for the verdict. Varn Allan was still with him, and Arnol.

“I’m sorry, Kenniston,” said Varn, and he knew she meant it. He shook his head.

“It was my fault. If I hadn’t lost my temper…”

“Don’t blame yourself, Kenniston. Forgive me, but Lund had just enough truth on his side to carry the day. Why didn’t you or your people tell us that you had been engaged in war, back in your own time?”

He shook his head. “Because we weren’t in any war. Don’t you see, the bomb that hurled us out of our own time came in peacetime! Whatever followed we never knew about, because we weren’t there!”

She paced the room, frowning, and then said, “I’m going to try to get this evacuation order lengthened out as long as possible. It may soften the blow a little for your people. I used to have some influence with the Coordinators—Now I don’t know. Lund has undermined me pretty badly.”

It dawned on Kenniston then that this day had been a defeat for her, too, and an unjust one. He had been too wrapped up in his own despair to think about it.

It was his turn to say, “I’m sorry.”

She smiled a little and turned to go, pausing to lay her hand briefly on Kenniston’s shoulder. “Don’t take this too hard,” she said. “Nobody could have done a better job than you did.”

She went out. They looked at each other with faces sick, angry, sullen—the two men and the three humanoids.

“Well,” said Gorr Holl, “It was a damned good try. I vote we have a drink.”

Magro said, “It’ll be bitter news for our people, Gorr. They were beginning to hope.”

The Capellan rumbled, “I know that. Shut up.”

He took a glass to Jon Arnol, who was sitting staring at the wall.

“Cheer up,” he said. “Your process is bound to win out some day.”

Arnol said, “Maybe. But that’s not doing your people any good—all the humanoid peoples who backed and financed my work and put their hopes in it. I’ve let you down.”

“The hell you have,” said Gorr.

Kenniston was thinking sickly of the people back there on Earth, waiting anxiously for his return. He was thinking of Carol, and he said slowly, “I can’t go back. I can’t face them, and tell them I’ve failed.”

“They’ll get over it,” said Gorr Holl, in a heavy attempt to be reassuring. “After all, going to a strange world isn’t half as much of a shock as being hurled forward in time. They stood that.”

“It happened before they knew it,” said Kenniston, “That makes a difference. And they were still in a place they knew. No. They won’t get used to it. They’ll fight it to the bitter end.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of futile anger. “That’s what I can’t make anybody, even you, understand! They belong on Earth. It’s like an extension of themselves. They will risk any danger, dare and threat, to hold onto it!”

His gaze fell then on Jon Arnol’s bitter face, abstracted and brooding on his own disappointment. Kenniston’s pulse gave a sudden leap.

He said softly, “Any danger, any threat… Yes. by heaven!” He was suddenly shaken by a terrible, desperate hope. He got up and went across the room to Jon Arnol.

“You said that you had a small star-cruiser and technical crew of your own?” Kenniston said.

Arnol nodded. “Yes. Over at my workshop in the mountains.” He added bitterly, “I sent them word last night to get the cruiser ready to go to Earth. I was so sure that our chance had come.”

Kenniston asked him softly, “Tell me, Arnol. Do you really believe in your own process?”

Arnol got to his feet. His eyes were suddenly hot, and he looked as if he would hit the Earthman.

Kenniston demanded, “Do you believe in it enough, to defy an order of the Board?”

Arnol stiffened. After a moment he said, “Explain that, Kenniston.”

Kenniston explained. Fairly shaking with the intensity of his idea, he talked. And gradually Arnol’s eyes took on a febrile glitter.

He muttered. “It could be done quickly, there on Earth. The ancient heat shafts would eliminate the necessity of deep boring—”

But then he shook his head, in a kind of dread, “No! It would mean dismissal from the College of Scientists, exile for the rest of my life. I can’t do it, Kenniston.”

“You’ve worked and hoped for many years,” Kenniston reminded him cruelly. “Some day you’ll give up hoping, and your process will be forgotten and lost.”

He stood back. “I won’t say any more—except that here is your chance, if you wish to take it. Your chance to try your planet rejuvenation process, on Earth!”

He waited, then, silent. Gorr Holl and the others watched. The Capellan’s eyes were very bright.

Arnol put his head in his hands and groaned. “I can’t, I can’t! And yet—they’ll never grant permission, that I know. A whole life’s work wasted…”

Kenniston watched him suffer, caught between desire and fear. And at last Arnol struggled to a decision. He said, hesitantly, “We would have to leave it to your people to decide, Kenniston. They must agree to accept the risk.”

“I know them, and I know they’ll agree!” Kenniston exclaimed. “And if they do?”

Beads of sweat stood on Arnol’s forehead. “If they’re willing, I’ll do it,” he said huskily.

A great excitement coursed through Kenniston. One chance—one last chance, after all!

He looked at Gorr Holl and Magro and Lal’lor. He asked, “Are you with us in this?”

Gorr Holl uttered a great, booming laugh. “Are we with you?” He strode to Kenniston, and he said, “We humanoids have been fighting this battle for a long time. Do you think we’d drop out now?”

Magro’s cat eyes were glittering, but he merely nodded agreement Jon Arnol said excitedly, “My flier is docked at South Port, near here. It won’t take long to get to my mountain workshop.”

Lal’lor began, “I, too—”

Gorr Holl told him, “You, grey one, shall stay here and cover for us. Tell anyone who asks that we have all gone out to show Kenniston the sights.”

The Miran sighed. “All right, Gorr. But—try to be careful. All of you.”

They left the apartment Half an hour later, their flier was splitting the night on the way to the other side of Vega Four.