A Scatter of Stardust (5 page)

“If he did then I didn’t get it.” The demon shook his head. “From his buildup I figured that it was something special. He seemed to think so, anyway. So I gave him twenty years of subjective high living, worked myself to a shadow doing it, too, and all for nothing.” The demon brooded for a while. “Tell you what,” he suggested. “You give me the spell formula and I’ll made the trade. Is it a deal?”

“What do you want the ritual for?” Chris was cautious. “Haven’t you one of your own?”

“That’s beside the point,” snapped the demon. “I’m sick of being whipped into this world at the whim of every character who wants something for nothing. You give me the papers and I’ll give you the secret of how to grow hair.” He folded his arms. “And that’s my last word. Make the deal or I’ll clam up until you send me home.”

*

Chris pondered for a while then shrugged. It wouldn’t hurt to give the demon what he wanted. He’d had photostats made of the parchment so it was no loss. And the hair restorer could be a gold mine.

“It’s a deal,” he said. “I’ll get the parchment while you write down the stuff I need to grow hair.” He tossed pencil and paper into the pentagram and went to find his share of the bargain. On the way back from his desk he switched on he radio, turning up the volume as far as it would go. He wasn’t sure but he had the idea that there would be noise when the demon returned to his own world. Air displacement would cause it if nothing else, and he didn’t want any snoopy neighbor coming in and seeing the mess. “Finished?” He held out his hand for the formula.

“Just about.” The demon was fascinated by the radio. “How ever did you find musicians small enough to fit into that box?”

“Made them,” said Chris flippantly.

“Made them?” The demon blinked. “You mean that you took ordinary people and made them small enough to get inside that box?” He shook his head in baffled admiration.

“That’s right,” said Chris. He felt a contemptuous amusement. “Don’t you have radio back home?”

“No.” The demon looked envious. “I suppose — ?”

“We’ve made our bargain,” said Chris quickly. He didn’t want his joke to backfire. “Have you finished writing out the formula yet?”

“Just finished.” The demon tossed out the paper and pencil. “I’ve done the best I can with the terms I know. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting the ingredients, the old-timers never seemed to complain.” He snapped his talons. “The parchment, please.”

“Just a minute.” Chris scanned the paper. The list of essentials was ridiculously short; he supposed that much depended on using the right proportions. In any event it would be a simple matter for any proficient chemist to refine, strain and even synthesize the formula. He glanced up from his reading. “Are you certain that this stiff will grow hair?”

“On an egg,” assured the demon. He sounded impatient. “Look, buster,” he said. “Just for your information I don’t lie. In fact I don’t know what lying is; that’s how that Faust character managed to swindle me so easily.” He brooded about it for a moment. “Oh, well, I guess that honesty is the best policy after all.” He snapped his talons again. “Just toss in that parchment and let’s get going. I’ve a heavy date and she won’t wait.”

“Help yourself,” said Chris, and threw the envelope containing the parchment into the pentagram. “It’s been nice meeting you,” he said politely. “Drop in again sometime.”

“Thanks,” said the demon. He grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll be seeing you.” Then he vanished as Chris released the mental block retaining the force field. He had been right about the noise.

*

To a man who has conversed with a demon normal life seems rather tame. During the next three days Chris fretted at everyday routine, waiting impatiently for a friendly chemist to make up the hair-restoring formula and spending his spare time going over the photostats of the parchment he had traded to his guest.

Having once broken the ice, as it were, Chris had no intention of calling a halt. Privately he considered that he’d had the best of the bargain. He’d swapped a moldy old paper for a modem gold mine, and what he’d done once he could do again. He had no doubt as to the value of his side of the trade. The demon seemed to have been forced to operate under an ethical code which made lying impossible. The poor goon had never had a chance.

Chris worried a little when he discovered that the envelope containing the parchment had been one bearing his name and address. The old texts were very firm on the fact that under no account should a demon be given such information. And, come to think about it, the demon had said that he was the only member of his race to be snared by the pentagram force field. It could have had something to do with the fact that he was always summoned by name.

The worry didn’t last long. In the light of modem science demons were pretty poor adversaries. In fact Chris was feeling quite satisfied with himself when, entering his apartment, he suddenly felt himself falling into a cloying darkness. He recovered to find himself stark naked, squatting on a stone floor in a room which seemed to have one belonged to the Inquisition.

“Hello there!” said a hatefully familiar voice. “I told you that I’d be seeing you.”

“No!” Chris shook his head, feeling the stunned bafflement of a man who has just had his world, literally, turn upside down. “No. it can’t be!”

The demon didn’t answer, he didn’t have to. He merely sat lounging in his chair, the torchlight shining from his scales, letting things speak for themselves. He was, Chris noticed, dressed in an elaborate costume of ornamented silks and from time to time he puffed carefully at a shapeless roll of vegetable matter.

“Bit of a shock, isn’t it?” He reached beside him, selected a second roll of leaves, carefully lit it and threw it toward Chris. “Have a cigar.”

“Thanks.” Numbly Chris sucked at the roll and felt his lungs curl inside his chest.

“You’ll get used to it,” soothed the demon. “Well, I suppose that you know why you are here?”

Chris coughed and shook his head.

“No? You surprise me.” The demon blew a tattered smoke ring. “It’s usual to pay a return visit. Or didn’t you know that?”

“No,” said Chris sickly. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course I have to be artful about it,” continued the demon chattily. “I have to get a name, you know, sort of a reference for the ritual. If I can’t get a name then I try to get hold of something personal. I thought I had you when you gave me that cigarette but the damned thing burned away. Usually I get them to sign the agreement in blood. They didn’t used to mind that.” He relaxed deeper in his chair. “All clear now?”

“Why?”

“Why the return visit? Well, it’s all part of the game,” explained the demon. “And it balances out the distortion of our respective universes. Something to do with the fifth law of entropy I believe.”

“Why me?” croaked Chris. He wheezed out a lungful of smoke. “What do you want with me?”

“Not much,” said the demon. “Just the usual trade.”

“Is that all?” Chris felt much better. “I can only give you information, you know, we discussed that before.”

“Nothing wrong with information,” said the demon cheerfully. “Of course, I’ve really got the edge on you things. I live much longer and so can hold the force field intact for quite a while. I’ll feed you and the rest of it, but I won’t let you go until we’ve struck a mutually satisfying bargain.” He stooped and lifted a box from the floor. It looked awfully familiar. It was, Chris realized, a fair copy of the external appearance of his portable radio.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” continued the demon. “I’ve made this as you can see. All you have to do is to tell me how to shrink musicians so as to fit inside.”

The Shrine

The ship came from darkness, drifting down like a snowflake, all cones„ and planes and spires of polished metal, spotted and mottled with patches of golden light. It feathered soundlessly and gently toward the tiny world and settled on a rolling green lawn, seeming to sigh as it settled, as the big engines which defied gravity muted into silence, as the metal of the ship relaxed after the Journey.

The sigh was echoed in the control room.

“Journey’s end.” The captain wasn’t human and he spoke Universal with a liquid sibilance, but he was intelligent and had about him something of the mystic. The navigator respected his mysticism.

“Journey’s end,” he echoed. He wasn’t human either but his form was as different from the captain’s as a man’s is from a frog. He spoke with a harsh bark, and his native polysyllabic name, as translated into Universal, was Aarne. He glanced through one of the ports. “They improved the place,” he commented. “Some new trees, a wider lawn, and wasn’t that a swimming pool we saw on the way down?”

“Possibly.”

“Money’s been spent here,” said Aarne. “A lot of money. All this refashioning of a hunk of dead rock into a miniature world.” He stamped on the floor. “Gravity even, they didn’t have all this in the old days.”

“They didn’t have a lot of things.” The captain sighed again as he stared through the port. He was wondering at the power of faith. It was something, so he had once heard, which could move mountains. It had certainly, in this place, done more than that.

“Well?” said the navigator. He was of a young race and the weight of tradition rested lightly on his shoulders. “What now?”

“We wait.”

“Is that all?” It was the navigator’s first trip to this place; his knowledge was confined to an out-of-date solidograph. It was the captain’s eighth, and the magic of it grew with each visit.

“We wait until the Pilgrims have done what they came to do,” he explained. “Then we take them back to the place from which they came.”

“And find more Pilgrims?”

“If we are fortunate enough, yes.”

“I see.” Aarne was young and had the impatience of youth. He moved restlessly about the control room. “You like this,” he blurted out suddenly. “You like this traveling backward and forward with the Pilgrims, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But why? They pay, that I’ll admit, but you could earn more on any regular commercial run. What’s so special about this route?”

“I like to see miracles,” said the captain simply.

“Miracles?”

“You will see.”

*

Deep in the bowels of the ship the Pilgrims were gathered. Unlike the captain and crew of the ship they were human; in fact it was all they had in common. Caris Weston, old, dried like a withered prune, her eyes brimming with the sense of a wasted life. Jud Murdock, crippled, his hands trembling on his cane. Joe Melish, young but bitter. Cynthia Hildergard, face pale and shoulders drooping; they and fifty more, all gathered in the bowels of this strange vessel, all human, all having that and one other thing in common.

All human and without pride of race.

“They sold me out,” said Murdock fretfully. “Gave all my life to building up that store and then those Rigelians came and sold me out. It takes the heart from a man a thing like that.”

“...knew I didn’t have a chance the minute I saw that Vegan. An Earthman just isn’t wanted when they’ve got others to pick from...”

“...said he loved me and then, when he found out just what I was, he didn’t want to know any longer...

“...guess it’s bad enough not having a home world without them wanting to sit on a body...”

The complaints sighed like a wind in the motionless air, a dirge of misery and lack of confidence; the sound of the persecuted who are persecuted only in their imagination; the fretful cry of those without hope and without pride.

Don Carlin had heard it all before, so often before. These people were without faith and without purpose. He had found them, one by one, had talked to them and had persuaded them, one by one, to join him on this long trip out to the edge of the galaxy, far away from the warm, comfortable worlds.

So many worlds. So many races each with its own home, and one race, scattered now, with no home of its own. It was a peculiar feeling this, to be of a race without a home. Earthmen were wanderers, merging into little groups, keeping, despite themselves, their own heritage. They were a race without a planet, resident on any world with the tolerance to accept them, humble with the need of accepting charity.

And yet not all were humble. Some there were who could walk upright and lift their eyes to the stars and glow with the inner conviction that they shared something wonderful and noble, something no other member of any other race could share. And those who could do that were respected and were the happier because of it.

A bell sounded and a voice requested his presence in the captain’s cabin. He sighed. Kleenahn, as usual, was curious. It must be almost time for the Pilgrims to visit the shrine.

*

The captain was curious but his politeness overrode his curiosity. He gestured Don to a chair and the liquid sibilants of their common language rustled the air like the sportive leapings of many fish.

“You have been here many times, Earthman Carlin.”

“As you well know, captain.”

“As indeed I do.” Kleenahn paused, searching for the right thing to say. “A strange place, this world. You call it a shrine?”

^Yes.”

“A shrine, if my understanding is correct, is the repository of something sacred.”

“That is so.”

“Something sacred to Earthmen?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. The sounds of sportive fish died as they were touched by the wand of silence. Through the cabin port Carlin could see the figures of men, dwarfed by the distance, advancing over the low horizon toward the ship.

“I know the history of this place,” said the captain abruptly. “Five thousand years ago it was discovered by men of your race. Their ship had wandered far from the regular space lanes, indeed, had wandered far from any inhabited sphere. There was no reason or logic for them to have come here. What brought them?”

“An accident. Their ship was not as this ship is. It was old, unreliable. They landed here for repairs. Some of them stayed.”

“And Earthmen have remained here ever since.” Kleenahn mused. His eyes were thoughtful “Accident, Earthman Carlin?”

“It could be so termed, Captain Kleenahn. Providence would be a better word.”

“Why is it that no person other than of Earth is permitted to visit the shrine?”

Carlin remained silent.

“Why is it that no Earthman who has visited the shrine will tell of what he saw?”

Again Carlin gave no answer.

“Earthmen!” Kleenahn gave a gesture which, in a man, would have been a shrug. “Will we ever be able to fully understand you? A homeless race, their own planet destroyed by war, wandering over a thousand worlds. You should have no pride, no ambition, and yet there is something within you which we can never know. The same thing, perhaps, which gave you the stars and yet destroyed your own world. This furious lust for progress, the driving pursuit of knowledge which should have waned by now but which has not.”

“We are an old race,” said Carlin.

“You are children,” corrected the captain. “When you first ventured beyond your system we were there to greet you.”

“You had space travel,” admitted Carlin. “But we improved your ships. You had a stagnant culture. We exploded it into a thriving spate of commerce. You took ten thousand years to lift yourselves from steam to atomic power; we took a few decades. It does not become you or those like you to despise the people of Earth.”

“The fault, I think, lies within yourselves,” said Kleenahn mildly. “You despise yourselves and imagine that you are persecuted. Too many of your race lack pride. Too few remember their accomplishments.”

“That is true.” Carlin glanced again through the port; the figures outside were now very close. “The Custodians approach,” he said. “Have the Pilgrims your permission to leave the ship?”

“Naturally.”

Kleenahn sighed as Carlin went about his business, then rested an appendage on a button to summon the navigator. He felt a strange reluctance to be alone.

*

“They have been gone a long time.” Aarne paced the room. “Are they always as long as this?”

“They have crossed half the galaxy; we should not be impatient.”

“Odd.” Aarne could not contain himself. “Did you see those Custodians?”

“Of course.”

“The way they were dressed?”

“They dress in the way of a fashion five thousand years old.” Kleenahn stared speculatively through the port. “In a sense we have traveled back through time. This place is sacred to Earthmen. They have kept a part of it isolated against change. Their clothes, other things.”

“The shrine?”

“Especially the shrine.”

“Odd,” said Aarne again. “Very odd.” He halted before the port. “Tell me, captain, have you never been tempted to join the Pilgrims?”

“Often, but it would be useless. I am not an Earthman.”

“Some races look much like that of Earth,” hinted the navigator. “It would be interesting to discover just what it is they keep in their shrine.”

“Interesting? Perhaps.” Kleenahn did not look at the other. “And perhaps dangerous as well. Remember, this is the only sacred thing the Earthmen possess.”

“A tiny world, a superstition, a ritual!” Aarne snorted. “The dying remnant of a dying race.”

“You think that?”

“What else? You saw them leave the ship. Did they inspire respect?”

“They cannot inspire what they themselves do not possess,” said Kleenahn. “When they left this ship the Pilgrims respected neither themselves nor their race.”

“And when they return?”

“You will see.”

The captain leaned forward toward the port. Outside the world was deserted. The Custodians and the Pilgrims had passed from sight in a long, straggling line. They had gone — somewhere. They would do — what? They would return — different.

That was all he knew. All he would ever know.

What they would do, where they had gone, how they would be altered, these things were questions an Earthman would die to answer. Kleenahn was not human; in him and his race the fires of curiosity burned low, an intellectual warmth rather than a consuming flame. Aarne, too, despite his apparent impetuosity, was the same. Of all the races in the galaxy none could rival that of dead Earth in the driving need to
know
.

That terrible lust for knowledge had lifted them to the stars, had destroyed their own planet and left them resident guests on tolerant worlds. The same need dragged them half across the galaxy to a place discovered only five thousand years before, in a segment of space which could never have been visited since Creation.

Such a race could never forget. Individuals, perhaps, but the race never. And yet the race was judged by the individual. Why then did so many individuals lack pride? Why then did the race as a whole command such respect?

Kleenahn sighed and waited as he had waited so often before.

And, after a long while, the Pilgrims returned.

*

They came over the low horizon as if they marched to soundless bands beneath the flutter of invisible banners. They came with faces set with purpose and with shoulders stiffened with pride. They had left the ship a defeated rabble. They returned a victorious army.

“Incredible!” Aarne stared at them, then at the captain. “They aren’t the same people.”

“I told you to expect miracles.”

“But this!” The navigator shook his head. “I see it but I simply can’t believe it.”

“They have pride,” said Kleenahn. “They left without pride, they return with it.”

“Is that what their shrine does for them?”

“Perhaps.”

“A thing which gives them pride?” Aarne shook his head, bewildered. “Can such a thing be?”

Kleenahn gestured toward the Pilgrims.

“I see them,” said the navigator. “But how?”

Kleenahn flipped a switch. Mechanical ears on the hull aimed themselves at the marching Pilgrims. Voices trickled from the speakers like the rolling surge of long trapped waves.

“...so
old
! That’s what got me. So
old
!”

“...ten million years at least and there’s no arguing about it, not with that deposit all over him. Can you beat that! Ten million years ago we...”

“...it shows who is the oldest. And did you see his eyes? Blue, just like mine. I wonder if, maybe, he and I could be...”

“...makes a man feel warm inside just thinking about it.”

“...and he thought that I wasn’t good enough for
him
! Why, the Johnny-come-lately, if he only knew...”

“...keep it to ourselves though. You heard what the man said, just keep it to ourselves. No sense in causing a lot of bad feeling. They’ve been good to us in their way and we don’t want them to start feeling inferior, but...”