The Star Virus

VI

On and on staggered the demented monk. His band had grown on the journey until now it was a jostling mass which in some way was still controlled by his lashing whip. Cripples, deformed and mutilated people made up a good part of the horde. They streamed ahead of the monk, dressed in tatters, quarreling among themselves and exchanging spiteful blows.

The end of their journey was in sight. It was a walled city. The tall, gleaming ramparts were leveled off with mathematical precision, and beyond them, alabaster towers and elevated streets formed a perfect, symmetrical design. The whole city exuded orderliness and method. The banners that depended from the walls and square-cut buildings also proclaimed mathematical order. There were pythagorean triangles, ellipses, parabolas and golden sections.

The monk’s rabble camped before this splendid city, jeering and screaming obscenities. The intention was all too plain: to tear down the walls, to destroy and kill until nothing remained but smoking ruins.

His body tense, the monk sent his whip snaking out over the throng. At his bidding they rushed the walls, piling against it and trying to scramble over each other’s bodies. But the walls were too high, too smooth and too strong. They fell back, cursing and spitting, denied the spoils that had been promised them.

Throughout, one companion had stood close by his brown-garbed leader. He had relayed orders, supported the monk when he stumbled and brought food to him when they stopped for rest. Now, in his exasperation, the monk took a long wavy-bladed knife from beneath his cloak and stabbed to death his only friend. Contemptuously he pushed the body aside with his foot. The rabble howled, shaking fists at the gleaming city, spreading out before it and threatening siege.

The monk sat down on a rock, brooding.

Eventually Rodrone forced himself to avert his eyes from the compelling scene. Unaccountably, he was sweating. It was like waking from a nightmare.

He had no idea why the story of the faceless monk affected him so, any more than he knew why, in contrast to all the other picture-dramas, it continued indefinitely. Or why it alone had human beings for participants. Could it be, he wondered, that the lens was trying to tell him something?

Moodily he sighed. He felt tired, and lonely, now that Clave and Redace no longer came to the house.

That development had saddened him, but he had permitted it will-lessly, with the kind of lassitude that sometimes overcame him when faced with conflicting interests. Clave rarely visited them anyhow; their activities bored him and he found the atmosphere depressing and uninviting. For a time Redace had stayed to participate in the investigation program drawn up by Sinnt; but the two men did not get on well together. Redace was unimpressed by Sinnt’s uncompromising fanaticism, and he failed to hide his repugnance for his treatment of his son, or his distaste for the rambling, dark house. In return, Sinnt resented his criticisms. More and more he absented himself and took to roaming Kell, amusing himself in the scientific clubs that titillated his sense of the absurd. “My dear chap,” he told Rodrone, “some of them are absolutely, delightfully whacky.”

Then had come the day when, on his return to the house, Sinnt had refused to admit him. Unperturbed, Redace had eventually gone away, neither asking for nor receiving support from Rodrone.

Though Rodrone knew he could have thrown his weight in Redace’s favor, he was by now steeped in the atmosphere of Sinnt’s outlook. His desertion of a friend had been touched with the sense of wild abandonment that came from total immersion in an unfamiliar situation. There was something inhuman about Sinnt that both attracted and repelled him.

At the same time he felt disturbed by Redace’s own attitude. It was unnerving that Redace, with his enviable brilliance of mind, should abandon his interest in the lens so easily where it conflicted with personal values, while he himself, with his fumbling intellect, should be the one to pursue his ambition at any cost. These tormenting doubts had filled his stay in the comfortless house with tension.

Nevertheless Sinnt’s program had produced results. They now knew more about the lens than the freebooters could ever have hoped to learn by themselves. Sinnt had arrived at a position where he could form definite theories regarding its nature.

There was a sound behind Rodrone. Foyle, Sinnt’s son, stood there.

“Sir,” the boy said respectfully, “my father is in his study. He would like to talk to you, if you are ready.”

Rodrone nodded and rose, trying not to notice that Foyle’s eyes were steadfastly closed. He often walked around like that. Apparently the camera gave sharper vision, and in addition the images from his organic eyes interfered with its full effectiveness. Rodrone wondered if his father would go so far as to remove the real eyes altogether.

In the study, Sinnt greeted him heartily. He was seated at his huge table, which was scattered with piles of books, manuscripts and other papers. As elsewhere in the house there was visible lighting for Rodrone’s benefit: dim but adequate.

“Well, old fellow,” Sinnt began with his usual directness, “I think the time has come to recapitulate our finds and, er, talk about the future.”

He tilted back his head and his camera lenses died as he withdrew into himself to gather his thoughts. “Item: we know that the seeding of light-emitting atoms towards the center of the lens corresponds to the formation of Thiswhirl, our galaxy, at a date some trillion years in the past. However, the dating may not be significant: we have detected movement of the atoms, of such a speed and nature that this ‘galactic orrery,’ if we may call it that, will have caught up with us and be up to date in something like a hundred years from now. From that we may infer that the lens is not a representation static in time, but that it is meant to cover a whole span of galactic history. Perhaps, given enough centuries, it repeats the birth and death cycle of the galaxy endlessly.

“Item: it has been known for centuries that the scale of electromagnetic radiation—radio waves, X-rays, light waves, gamma rays and so—is only the heaviest and coarsest type of radiation emitted on the atomic level. Below that is a subtler radiation, the so-called Fermann range. These radiations are concerned with ‘keying in’ each individual atom into the matrix of four-dimensional space, a matter for which electromagnetic radiation is too coarse and without which the atom would vanish from existence. I can say with some pride that I am the first human being to see directly by the light of Fermann radiation.” He tapped his shoulder camera meaningfully. “However, our investigation has yielded an unprecedented result: there is present in the lens a third, subsidiary range of an even more subtle order. This radiation is responsible for the projection of the picture dramas in the outer parts of the lens.

“Item: the rim of the lens is lined with an extremely powerful force-field of unknown nature, which in some way acts as a screen for the picture dramas. These dramas are derived from the ‘dope’ atoms themselves, again in a manner we have not been able to deduce.”

“That force-field is a funny coincidence,” Rodrone interrupted, “in view of what happened to the Andromeda expeditions.” He was referring to the failure of any spaceship to travel for more than one galactic diameter outside the galaxy. Although technically, with the space drives available, intergalactic travel should have been feasible, every mission and probe ever dispatched had come up against some kind of space-time barrier preventing further progress. The other galaxies, it appeared, were forever beyond reach.

“Probably not a coincidence,” Sinnt said. “But to continue. The line of research that automatically presents itself to us is to investigate further the third order of radiations, with special reference to how they generate the picture sequences.”

“And what’s your opinion of the pictures themselves?”

“I believe they represent real events taking place in various parts of the galaxy, either in the present or both in the present and in the past.”

“And in the future, father?” put in Foyle, who sat across from his father on the other side of the table.

Briefly Sinnt’s lenses glowed, as if taking a quick glance. “That,” he said, “is the operative question. Somehow or other these very subtle, almost indetectable radiations accomplish the feat of communicating with all parts of the galaxy and of drawing visible observations from them. How they stand in relation to the time dimension is… at present a matter for speculation.”

“Good grief,” Rodrone muttered. “We might have a method here of observing through time—perhaps of traveling through time!”

“Perhaps, though I doubt it. The Streall do not appear to possess that ability. I incline more to the view that the lens’s communication is with the present moment—with reference to the time dilation effect that exists over vast distances, of course—but that it can also store sequences from the past and display those too. I imagine the lens is of great antiquity. It might even predate the human species.”

Another question was bothering Rodrone. “And what of the meaning, the selection of the picture-stories?” he asked hesitantly. “Surely there must be something there?”

“Probably the selection is entirely random.”

But this did not satisfy Rodrone. “There must be something to it,” he insisted, “some meaning or significance. Otherwise what is the lens for?”

“Your attitude is unscientific,” Sinnt told him shortly. “The point is, the significance of the lens lies precisely in the use that is made of it. It must be possible to control the selection. If we find those controls, we have in our hands an observing instrument of unparalleled excellence. No corner of the galaxy will be denied to us!”

“And do you think we can find those controls?”

“The determined intellect overcomes all,” Sinnt stated dogmatically. “However, I confess that for the moment I am at the end of my resources. That is why I have decided upon another strategy…”

He shifted position, and the glowing camera swung around to focus on Rodrone. Because of his facial blindness, it was always hard to guess what Sinnt was thinking from his expression.

“If there is anyone who could finally answer our questions, it is the Streall.”

Rodrone snorted. “Ridiculous! Do you propose we should go to them and politely ask? As a matter of fact, I’ve already been through that scene, at my base on Brüde. Believe me, the Streall are not helpful.”

Sinnt did not answer for a moment. Rodrone became aware that he was nerving himself to something, or trying to weigh up something.

“There is a Streall on this planet,” he said at last. “In this very city, in fact.”

The news astounded and alarmed Rodrone. “Here? For God’s sake, man, it’s the lens they’re after and they must know it’s here!”

“No, no, you don’t understand at all.” Sinnt shook his head vigorously. “Please let me explain. Some years ago a Streall individual came secretly to Kell. He came here because he had somehow heard that for a long time—over a generation, in fact—there had existed here a secret society devoted to the study of Streall philosophy. Seffatt, to give him his name, rightly guessed that the society would give him refuge, and they have sheltered him ever since.”

Had the story not been so amazing, Rodrone would have laughed out loud. It was typical that Kell should harbor, among its assorted zaniness, a clique with a bent towards the enemy of mankind.

“The society calls itself the Society of the Orderly Plan, a name whose meaning may become clearer to you later on. Normally what I have told you is a closely guarded secret, but because I believe our interests are identical, and because of the present situation, I feel it is only right that you should be brought into the know. I have already contacted the society and suggested that they collaborate with us.”

Furiously Rodrone stormed to his feet. “Do you realize what you’ve done? By now the Streall navy will be on its way to annihilate us!”

“Please, you still do not understand. There is no danger. No word will pass outside the society. I know you find this hard to believe, because in the normal way every individual Streall has a common accord with the interests of the race as a whole. But what we have here is not normal. Seffatt is quite isolated because he is a fugitive, a criminal.”

“I certainly never heard of that before,” Rodrone muttered. “What did he do?”

“He is branded as a thief.”

“Thief?” He was puzzled.

“Yes, I know. Streall civilization is totally communist. There is no property and no crime as we understand it. Exactly what Seffatt did I don’t know, but it was serious enough for him to be a hunted outcast. It may have been more in the nature of an error, or a serious dereliction of duty.”

“Could it have been a doctrinal error?” Rodrone wondered, remembering his reading of the intellectual tyrannies existing in early times in human communist and religious societies.

“No, it was a definite act on his part. But it must have been a long time ago. The Streall have a long life span, you know. Seffatt is several thousand years old. But he’s senile now.”

Rodrone had a sudden insight. “You’re a member of this society, aren’t you?”

“Not now, but I was once. I left because the thinking of the other members does not meet my vigorous standards.”

“But you are asking them for help now.”

“Seffatt’s help.”

Rodrone felt his dislike of the Streall bubbling up. “Tell me,” he said nastily, “what did it feel like to be part of something inimical to all humanity?”

“Persons and feelings are not relevant to knowledge. Truth is relevant.”

They must certainly have got to you, Rodrone thought. He knew now what was so odd about Sinnt. His inhuman streak came from his being tainted with Streall thought.

Sinnt coughed, glanced at a clock on the wall. A high-pitched whistle sounded from a tiny speaker, and he manipulated levers.

“That’s the society now. Right on time.”

Into the room came five men, dressed identically in sober charcoal-colored garments that followed the contours of the body elegantly but unobtrusively. They all wore matching hats with stiff curly brims.

“Hello, Sinnt,” said the leader in lisping, prissy tones. “You’re not as much of a renegade as you thought, then.”

Sinnt introduced them to Rodrone, then led the way to the laboratory and showed them the lens. “Well,” he said gruffly, “there it is.”

“Very pretty, too. Seffatt says we are to take it to the temple.”

“Is that necessary?” Sinnt said uneasily. “I was hoping he would inspect it remotely and… make suggestions.”

“Hopes do not make intentions, Sinnt,” the other said, in a voice which led Rodrone to believe he was quoting a litany.

“I’m sorry,” the scientist said more firmly, “but I do not intend that the lens should leave this building.”

“Please be advised not to obstruct the plan,” replied the society man in the same fussy tone. “You know we always realize our plan. All right, chaps, let’s get moving.”

The other four cleared away equipment that was clustered around the lens and with surprising strength lifted it. Foyle glanced questioningly at his father. For once Sinnt’s marble face was furrowed in a torment of doubt.

“All right—all right!” he said harshly. “Agreed, Rodrone?”

Rodrone was torn between an unwillingness to risk losing control over his possession and a desire to know what the Streall would have to say about it. He nodded. “Provided we go too.”

Outside, the society men had a large vehicle. Twenty minutes’ ride brought them to a deserted street lined on one side with a palisade made of Kelever’s black wood. A section swung open to let the vehicle into an endless vacant lot tangled with weeds, stunted trees and all manner of junk.

Whining, the car crunched along a gravel track until they reached what looked like a fantastically extended and ramified shack, built of tawdry plastic and the ubiquitous black wood. From the look of it, it had reached its present size piece by piece over the years.

Rodrone was wondering just how far the society’s study of Streall beliefs went as they carried the lens into a bare anteroom and paused there. Another door opened. Into the room stepped another black-garbed man, wearing a hat similar to the others but taller. Probably hats were a badge of rank. At any rate he looked over the group commandingly.

“Glad to see you back in the fold, Sinnt.” Rodrone was fascinated to hear him speak in the same prissy voice as the others. “But there are one or two matters to be settled.”

“Yes, leader,” Sinnt muttered timidly.

“Firstly, your indiscretion in disclosing the presence of Seffatt to an outsider. You know what penalty that carries.”

“Yes, leader.”

“We will not go into your failure to tell us about the artifact at an earlier date. Being renegade, you probably did not feel yourself bound to do so. But there remains the question of future relations. The artifact is now ours, and though your services would be useful, we cannot permit permanent participation except under the conditions prescribed.”

“The lens is my property,” Rodrone exploded. “Get that straight!” The leader waved his hand unconcernedly.

Sinnt spoke in a choked voice. “I will renew my vow, leader.”

“What good is your vow? It has been broken once.” Sinnt hung his head. For some reason the leader seemed satisfied.

“Very well, you may reenter our ranks, under suspended sentence of death, in view of your infractions. And your son?”

“The boy is not old enough.”

“Nonsense, he is at a perfect age to begin training.”

“Very well, him too.”

“And what of him?” Insolently the leader flung out a finger at Rodrone.

“I think he would be unsympathetic, leader.”

“Then disarm him.”

Men closed in. Before Rodrone could move to defend himself, he was helpless. His golden gun was taken and expertly he was frisked for other weapons.

“We will not make any definite decision over him yet,” the leader pronounced. “It is surprising what happens in the minds of men when they have been shown the truth. If he remains unchanged, we will dispose of him tomorrow.

“And now, we will take the artifact before Seffatt. He is anxious to see it. You”—pointing to Rodrone—“will accompany us in case he has questions.”

Silently, with an air of ceremony, they were ushered through an assortment of chambers and then down some steps and into a large room smelling of strange perfumes. Rodrone could not avoid the impression of being in a place of worship. The walls were hung with intricate designs whose meaning totally escaped him. At one end was a plush curtain before which low tables were laid out with various unrecognizable objects like an altar.

Deferentially the lens was laid on one of the tables. The leader stood to attention, facing the curtain.

“This is the artifact, Master.”

There was a long, suspenseful silence. Then, from behind the curtain, there came a whispering cough, growing until it took on the proportions of the Streall’s gobbling man-talk. The voice was shot through with the resonant organ-tones which, in a Streall, betokened advanced age.

“Is it here, then? After so long, is my agony at an end?”

“Master?”

“It is too much, too much, to see it after so long. The oracle of the galactic plan!”

Even through Seffatt’s imperfect intonation, it was possible to realize his distress and excitement. Sinnt opened his mouth to speak, but the alien voice burst forth again.

“Leave me, leave me! It is too much for an old being.”

The leader turned sharply, exultation on his face. He gestured vigorously, and the visitors were bundled quickly from the room.

“This is a great day indeed!” he breathed when he joined them seconds later. “Did you hear the Master? The artifact is an oracle—an oracle which will teach us the galactic plan!”

Rodrone was not so sure that this meaning could be put so hastily on Seffatt’s words. Neither had he ever heard of any “galactic plan.”

“Isn’t it true Seffatt is senile?” he said spitefully. “I’d say his mind’s wandering.”

The leader looked at him haughtily. “It is not possible for a diseased one to know the state of mind of a Master.”

“Who are you calling diseased?”

“We are all diseased, friend, diseased with our humanity.” He turned to Sinnt, “Are you ready to take your vow?” Sinnt nodded.

“All is ready. Your friend may watch too, to show him what it means to acknowledge the truth.”

In an adjoining room, two men waited. One held a rod in an electric heater, while the other directed Sinnt to kneel and bared his back for him. The smell of hot iron filled the room.

The leader took his place in front of Sinnt. “What do you swear?”

“I swear to seek the truth,” Sinnt intoned. “I swear to uphold the Universal Vision. I swear to do all in my power to assist in the unfolding of the Orderly Plan by which alone existence is justified. I swear to work, where necessary, towards the elimination of undesirable life-forms.”

The leader stepped around the kneeling man and was given the heated rod, on the end of which was a glowing brand. “With this iron I seal your vow.”

On Sinnt’s back there was already the mark of an earlier brand, the mark of a curved cross. The leader applied the iron just below it and held it there. The iron hissed; Sinnt shuddered, but managed to make no sound.

For once, Foyle’s blue eyes were wide open, and the lenses on his shoulder camera were dead. Rodrone drew him to one side.

“Do you propose to practice this barbarity on the child, too?” he asked angrily when Sinnt had risen.

“Not yet,” the scientist said weakly. “He must be instructed first. The vows must be taken willfully.”

A healing ointment was being rubbed on his burned back. The look of pain began to leave his face.

“You must all rest now,” the leader said. “Later, we will talk again.”

He withdrew. Rodrone contemplated attempting an escape, but realized that the building was probably filled with people and the society seemed to have a fetish about efficiency. He decided to bide his time.

They were taken to a room containing three couches and locked in. Rodrone stared at Sinnt sullenly.

“What was that part about ‘eliminating undesirable life-forms’?”

“That refers mainly to Homo sapiens,” Sinnt told him without any trace of embarrassment. “You see, Streall thinking differs radically from the human outlook, or even from human science. The idea of random events, entropy, or of spontaneous processes developing by themselves and uncontrolled simply does not occur in their world-picture. There’s no place for chance and probability in the Streall view of the universe; they see it as an immense machine developing in orderly fashion towards a predestined end. Hence the name of the society. But the Streall do admit that chance developments might occur, in certain conditions. This would constitute a disease of existence, a cancer of space and matter, if you like, that endangers the harmony of the whole. Homo sapiens is held to be such a disease, because it has broken the normal pattern and is spreading across the galaxy far too rapidly. According to the Streall, we should still be on Earth.”

“And therefore we should be eliminated? Well, that’s no surprise. We’ve always known the Streall harbored a sneaking desire to wipe us out. The only reason they haven’t tried is because they’re scared of us wiping them out instead. The astonishing thing is to find a group of human beings with the same beliefs.”

“But doesn’t truth rise above personal interests?” Sinnt asked. “What if the Streall are right? What if we are a danger to Thiswhirl? Doesn’t the search for truth demand that we acknowledge the fact?”

“Do you believe it?” Rodrone asked sharply.

Sinnt sighed. “Well, you know, when the society began it was merely a group of men who decided to examine Streall philosophy as a kind of academic project. They had very little to go on: the Streall have never laid themselves open for study. They gathered together whatever scraps they could. Gradually the doctrine began to take hold of them—of us, I should say—until we became convinced of its superiority to all human thinking.”

He paused, and seemed to be thinking nostalgically of those days. “We probably know more than anybody about Streall science. It really does have extraordinary depth, you know. The human race and all its works came to seem pale and shabby to us, to seem, well, evil. But still we had only scraps. Then Seffatt arrived. He taught us more, and we advanced further.”

“Yet you left the society.”

“Pah! There seemed no point in remaining. I became convinced that the society understood only a distortion of the true doctrine: their minds were not keen enough. As for Seffatt, he taught us as much as he thought fit and then stopped. Besides, he is rarely very coherent now… he is prematurely aged. Kelever’s atmosphere is very bad for him, you see. These days the society fills his private quarters with purer air, but by the time we realized it, the damage was done.”

Rodrone turned over in his mind what Sinnt had told him. He had already known that human terms scarcely applied where the Streall were concerned. Their science was like a philosophy, their philosophy was like a science: and it was this remorseless philosophical oasis of theirs which sometimes made Rodrone sweat. They had no thought for themselves, but they had an irrevocable committment to what they thought to be right. It was a logical clarity verging on madness.

Rodrone knew how powerful a philosophy could be, even when it was wrong. It was the scientific, hard-fact nature of Streall thinking that scared him. They could only be right.

Unlike a Streall, a human being would carry on in his own way irrespective of whether he was right or not. Rodrone felt himself to be very human. “I don’t give a damn whether what the Streall say is true or not,” he half snarled. “I’m a man, and I’ll carry on being a man even if I reduce the whole universe to tatters. Furthermore I’m getting out of here and I’m taking the lens with me. It’s mine!”

Leaning over, Sinnt gripped his arm hard. “But think! The lens undoubtedly contains the ultimate knowledge of atomics! With Seffatt’s help that knowledge can be ours!” His lenses glowed with fervor.

Rodrone shook him off. “Damn your knowledge!” he shouted. “They’re going to shoot me tomorrow!”

“Not if you… embrace the faith, as it were.”

“Hmph. And how do I get away with it? You know as well as I do that they had a cephalogrator trained on you the whole time to make sure you meant what you said.”

“I can arrange that.” The scientist tapped his camera. “This apparatus isn’t only a receptor. It can emit. Leave it to me, I’ll beam the cephalogrator with the right brain waves while you’re taking the oath.”

“You’re certainly full of surprises!” Rodrone could not help but laugh. “But no thanks, it’s not my kind of scene. I’ll tell you something else, too. For a generation these people have indoctrinated themselves with Streall values and debased human values. Don’t you see what that means? The strain is too much for anyone. The human mind can’t accommodate its own rejection of itself. No wonder they’re all kinky.”

He stared steadily at Sinnt. “You’re the lucky one: you got away. As for the others, by now they’re all mad. They’ve got to be.”

Suddenly he became aware of Foyle, sitting quietly in the corner. The boy was always quiet and attentive, and in a way he had grown quite fond of him. It was sad to think of the future that lay ahead for him.

“Quite mad,” he muttered, and turned away.

There seemed to be a lot of activity in the temple that afternoon. Hurrying feet paced up and down the passage outside the door. Using his X-ray vision to maximum effect, Sinnt announced that work was going on connected with the lens.

“They don’t understand it properly,” he said glumly. “They think it’s some kind of oracle, or totem. I think they’re getting ready for ceremonial worship.”

“Isn’t an oracle what Seffatt called it? Maybe it can foretell the future after all.”

“Maybe. Seffatt doesn’t choose his words carefully. ‘Oracle’ coming from him could mean almost anything.”

In the evening the door to their room opened. The leader stood there, accompanied by three others.

“You are privileged to join us this evening. The Master has revealed much. Tonight we will taste the delights of galactic experience!”

Doubtfully Rodrone allowed himself to be led back to the Streall shrine. The room was filled with about thirty people, both men and women, seated cross-legged on cushions. The women wore the same costume as the men: carefully tailored jacket and trousers, and curly-brimmed hat. They all seemed excited, expectant.

The lens occupied pride of place before the plush red curtain. Everything else had been cleared away and replaced by a spread-out machine arranged on either side of the lens and sporting two big curved horns whose open ends yawned towards the audience. Lying between them, the lens’s endless picturama flickered colorfully.

Ceremonially the leader faced the assembly. “It is an operator-controlled universe,” he proclaimed. “We in the Society of the Orderly Plan are pledged to the vision of galactic harmony.” On the wall to his left, a ten-foot screen sprang to life, displaying a fluid succession of diagrams which meant nothing to Rodrone. “Inexorably the cosmic process proceeds towards destiny, the fulfillment of the Grand Design.”

The lisping voice stopped and they all gazed attentively as the screen rendered up its finale, a beautifully colored set of pictures which faded slowly one into the other. These were the major arcana of the society’s symbolic doctrine, each image bearing its appropriate title: The Galactic Arch; The Traveling Wave; The Circling Walls, The Dazzling Hyper-Cube…

And so on. There was certainly a fascination in them, and several seconds pause followed the return of blankness to the screen.

The leader coughed. “Tonight is a special night in the life of the society. You all know of the Streall artifact that has fallen into our hands. It is an artifact of special importance, no less than an embodied revelation of the galactic plan! It surely can be no diseased event”—Rodrone noted with interest the use of this term—“that had brought it to us, but a true note in the unfolding of the galactic symphony. Perhaps this glad occasion is a sign to us that the discoloration that lately has been spreading over the glorious cosmic radiance, and of which we are a part, will shortly be at an end, and we and all human beings can at last cast off our misery, purging our criminal being in the eternity of non-being.

“But for the moment, let us pass on the unique experience that currently awaits us. With the help of the scientific techniques long ago taught to us by the Master, we are able to project what the artifact is revealing directly into our consciousnesses. Thus we shall be in direct contact with the basic order of existence!” He raised his hand to subdue the rising murmurs of anticipation. “First, a few words from the Master.”

Turning, he picked up a jeweled striker, then hesitated and added in a low tone, “The Master is, er, a little indisposed today.”

He struck a small golden gong, sending a musical tone singing through the room. “Master, we are ready, if it pleases you to speak.”

From behind the curtain, hoarse breathing. Then an inhuman, prolonged coughing, through which the gobbling voice eventually struggled in an exhausted, agonizing whisper.

“Friends, the secret of life… must be kept…”

First the coughing, then the hoarse breathing, faded. They waited in silence, but no further sound came.

“The Master… has retired to his quarters,” the leader said quietly. Stepping up to the machine, he depressed a number of levers and retreated immediately to take his place on a vacant cushion.

It seemed to Rodrone, squatting tensely on his own cushion, that the scene was pregnant with delusion. From this distance the lens’s pictures were only a swirling rainbow flicker; but the excitement was infectious and he waited eagerly for the outcome.

The beginning of it was a faint, intermittent noise that passed to and fro between the two horns, coming and fading, exactly like the sound of a speeding airboat that flashed from the horizon, passed close by and just as quickly sped away again. Louder the sound swelled, and then Rodrone no longer knew whether he heard it, for a numbing shock seemed to hit his consciousness. It was as if something hard and hot was pressing against the membrane of his mind, striving to enter his brain.

Just as suddenly, the moment of tumult was over. They all sat quietly staring at the flickering lens, and the only difference was the strained, shocked look on all their faces. The twin horns purred quietly, the sound swinging rhythmically to and fro…

But something else had changed. After a pause of a few seconds a spot on the lens seemed to swell up until it occluded everything. With a rush like a sudden gust of wind, the room, the people, everything was swept away and replaced by something utterly alien.

In the instant before the ability to think was stripped from him, Rodrone realized that the society was wrong about what the machine did with the lens. It revealed no “cosmic order,” it merely projected selected picture-dramas from its outer ring, giving its beneficiaries the added thrill—or horror—of participation. But he was unable to develop the thought further. All will, all ability to help himself, was absent.

He seemed to be standing on a wide, windy ledge. Over the edge of it could be seen a flat yellow landscape laced with rivers, which were at least two miles below. Dimly he was aware that the ledge was part of a building, a palace, and that some sort of regal struggle was nearing its end.

Roughly he was pushed forward. His arms were bound tight to his sides. Around him stood a number of figures, bipedal but not human, with jeering skull-like faces.

The wind rose, keening a dirge. Vainly he struggled as he realized he was being propelled inexorably towards the edge. Hoots of weird laughter rained about him. Then, with a final lunge, he was over, the air rushing past him, falling, falling…

The sense of terror did not leave him but the scene abruptly altered. He was in some underground place. A dim chamber whose boundaries were indefinite, hidden by the grotesque instruments that filled it. Screams and groans echoed weirdly through the chamber, which flickered from occasional fires and glowing metal.

Rodrone became frighteningly aware that this was a torture chamber, and that something was being prepared for him. Bound this time at both arms and legs, he was carried to a tangle of a machine and fitted into it. White-hot blades closed in on him, to cut and burn in a hundred cunning ways.

Mercifully the unbearable agony lasted only a few seconds, for the selector moved on to another part of the lens, a part with which Rodrone was already familiar. For once his limbs were free. He was a member of a motley rabble army gathered before the walls of the gleaming city. The siege, though frustrated, was still in full progress. Catapults and ballistae had been constructed, attempting to hurl spiteful masses of rock and filth over the towering walls, which were also being attacked by primitive flame-belching cannon plastering them with gobs of burning substance which clung momentarily and then slithered groundwards, leaving behind a blistered black trail.

Clearly the city was withstanding all this crude fury. Rodrone looked around him and spied the demented monk, railing his slaves for their failure to breach and destroy the walls. He tried to perceive his face, but beneath the cowl there was only shadow.

The monk’s features were obscured even when he suddenly looked Rodrone’s way. For some reason he became enraged and the lean frame that poked through his rough-spun habit exploded into action. His whip came whistling through the air to catch Rodrone with a stinging blow. He staggered back before the monk’s onslaught, unaware that he was being driven towards one of the ballista machines.

With a hard laugh, the monk sent him stumbling across the shaft of the ballista just as it was being released. Up sprang the solid beam, and bone and flesh were crushed horribly between it and the upright restraining bar…

And at that moment, the scene again switched. The selector seemed to have a trick of rescuing its victims just ahead of the moment where they would have lost consciousness and died. When he had recovered from the shock sufficiently to take in his new surroundings, Rodrone became aware that he was under water, breathing like a fish. There was only a little light, green and fluorescent. He got an impression of great pressure and constriction, as if he was miles down in the deeps.

He and a group of others were being herded towards the entrance of a cave. His companions, he saw, were vaguely fish-shaped and seemed reluctant to enter. But there was no real possibility of refusal. Those who drove them hither were armed with goads that delivered an unbearable sting.

Before he knew it he was inside the cave. Here, the real horror began. The cave was populated with strange growths that extended from the walls in a watery jungle: mouths, jaws, waving polyps and spiked traps, evil staring eyes and huge flaccid suckers.

Worse than the repulsive appearance of the deadly jungle was the sense of fear it exuded into the water, the paroxysms of terror with which it liked to imbue its victims before seizing them. Rodrone turned tail and tried to swim away, seeing that already some of the hapless herd had been caught and were being ingorged caressingly into the writhing mass. But it was too late. A slimy tentacle seized him arid drew him slowly inwards. A sensual frenzy seemed to have come over the population of the cave; it moved in an obscene rhythm, squeezing, crushing and tearing to pieces its prey until the water was cloudy and dark.

Stingers pierced Rodrone’s skin. And then, with a mind-numbing abruptness, the dark nightmarish experience stopped and he was plunged into bright uproar.

All around him was screaming and jostling. In an orgy of terror, the members of the society were scrambling for the door, frantic to escape from the effects of their imagined ordeals. Rodrone might have fled, too, but the spatt of weapon fire brought him to his senses and he struggled to control his shaking nerves.

An energy beam had smashed into the equipment surrounding the lens, thus bringing them suddenly back into the present world. The horns still purred, but with the plaintiveness of a broken machine. Pushing their way through the crowd at the door were Clave and Redace and two more of Rodrone’s crewmen.

Pulling apart from the mob, they stood gun in hand and surveyed the room. The pallor of Clave’s face was normal; but on Redace it showed that he was shaken.

Of sterner stuff than the others, the leader had not joined the general rush. On the other side of the room, he drew a gun of his own.

“Invaders of the blessed sanctuary!” he spat. A thin, fiery beam spurted apparently at random from his weapon. The intruders scattered, returning the fire. The leader toppled, but not before one crewman was dead and Clave had received a bad burn in his gun arm, sending his weapon clattering to the floor.

The second crewman died from an unexpected source. Both Sinnt and Foyle had stood their ground; probably the projections from the lens had not terrified them as much as they had the others due to the extra sensibilities they gained from their camera vision. Now a pencil-thin scarlet beam shot across the room from Sinnt’s camera, hitting Rodrone’s man right between the eyes. Soundlessly, he slumped to the floor.

“Don’t move,” Sinnt said calmly. “I hope you realize the effectiveness of my weapon. Whoever I or Foyle look at we can instantly kill.”

“Don’t be a fool, Sinnt,” Rodrone urged. “This is our chance to get away from this pack of bunglers and take the lens with us.”

Now the room was empty except for the five of them. In the distance could still be heard the sounds of the society fleeing in panic.

“You forget that I am a society man and that I have taken the oath.”

Rodrone snorted. “You’re as insane as the rest of them.”

At that, Sinnt’s camera wavered, then turned to train on Rodrone. Whether he meant to kill Rodrone or merely to look directly at him they would never know; for Redace, presuming the former, and being alone armed among his companions, brought up his own weapon. With reflexlike swiftness the camera swung back and the scarlet pencil-beam hit him, too, between the eyes.

In the same moment Clave acted. Springing across the few feet to where Foyle stood, he seized the cord connecting his camera to his skull and yanked with all his strength, tearing it loose. The boy screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his head where the cord had been fixed.

“Father! Father!”

The expression on Sinnt’s face became agonized and his camera swung towards him, seeking out Clave. Nimbly Clave danced back, forcing Sinnt to turn, then skipped back again, always keeping himself to the scientist’s left, and gesturing urgently to Rodrone.

Taking his cue, Rodrone stepped to where the loosely-constructed contraption lay around the lens. Finding a heavy metal tube that was part of the machine, he wrenched it loose, lunged forward and brought it crashing down on Sinnt’s shoulder-camera.

The blow almost brought Sinnt to his knees. The camera buckled, fragments from the lenses tinkled to the floor. A faint whiff of smoke rose from inside the casing.

Sinnt recovered his balance and stretched out his hands before him. Truly blind, now, he stepped forward uncertainly, then turned, attracted by the sound of his sobbing son.

Stumbling, he made his way towards him. “My boy, my poor boy. Can you stand? Come, we will make our way home somehow. The damage is reparable. Ignore the pain. Come, come.”

No one moved to help them as, clinging to one another, they fumbled their way to the door, Foyle acting as his father’s eyes. Rodrone had to admit to himself that Sinnt’s exit did not lack dignity.

He did not speak until they had gone. “How’s your arm?” he asked Clave.

Clave’s tight grin masked his pain. “It’s okay, thanks. A mediseal will hold it until we get to the ship.”

“Well, thanks anyway. You handled Sinnt pretty well.”

“It was pretty obvious, really,” Clave said. “Sinnt’s camera is mounted on his right shoulder. That means he has a permanently blind sector on his left. All you have to do is stay in it and he can’t see you. I felt bad about hurting the kid, though.”

“Don’t. He would have beamed you down with his evil eye. But how did you get here, anyway?”

Clave managed a laugh. “You don’t think you got clean away with giving us the brush-off, do you? Redace didn’t like what was going on in that house. He thought you were getting into something, so we didn’t spend all our time sampling the delights of Kell. We kept a watch on the house. When you left we followed you here, and it didn’t seem to us that you were under your own power, so to speak. So we gave you a few hours and then came in. I must say I never bargained for… this! What the hell was going on?”

“Did you see anything?” Rodrone asked curiously.

“Only everybody screaming like crazy.”

“These people study the Streall. They’ve actually got a Streall here. Somehow they managed to project the lens’s pictures into our consciousness. But they didn’t know that their contraption was accidentally tuned to select particularly terrifying events. Let me tell you, it beats nightmares.”

Walking around the table that bore the lens, he tried to pull back the plush red curtain. When it held, he yanked harder and brought it tumbling down. Behind it, on a small platform, lay Seffatt. He was quite dead. At the back of the platform was a narrow tunnel, presumably leading to his private living quarters.

What had he tried to tell them, in those last seconds when death finally claimed him? Rodrone did not think he had really been able to control the society for some years now. The leader had not even realized he was dying. Yet from the look of it, he had hung on to life only by a miracle. The long armadillo-like body was shriveled with age, the natural skirts of hide that normally covered the six legs were discolored and shrunken. Seffatt lay on his side, so that the short, weak legs showed, pitifully curled up. Rodrone could not avoid a feeling of pity.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said brusquely.

After he had applied medication to Clave’s arm they managed to get the lens to the runabout outside. He considered taking the bodies of Redace and the others too, but decided against it. What was the point? There was nothing he could do for Redace in return for what he had done for him.

On the way to the spaceground they passed Mard Sinnt and Foyle, the boy slowly guiding his father along the street. “Redace didn’t like Sinnt,” Clave remarked. “He didn’t like what he was doing to his son. He said he was turning them both into research instruments, not human beings at all.”

“This city is full of kookies,” Rodrone agreed gruffly.

Though the cost had been heavy, on direct balance the visit to Kelever had paid off. He now knew a lot more about the lens. For one thing, his recent experience demonstrated that the information displayed in it was not merely pictorial; if one knew how to extract the data, it could inform every sense—hearing, smell, touch, and the indefinable sense of being there.

He was certain now that the lens was some sort of plan of the galaxy. Not a physical plan, but perhaps a schemata of all the events taking place in it, building up to some pattern understood only by the Streall. But he did not mention these things to Clave. In the coming weeks he did not mention them to anybody. The only man aboard the Stond with whom he had once been able to converse usefully about the matter, Redace Trudo, would not converse with anybody any more.