Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (22 page)

With an abyss opening in his stomach, Shouter turned to the forward ports again to examine an object he had previously ignored. Apart from the distant phantoms of other galaxies, it was the only object to relieve the inane ubiquity of vacuum — and it was showing a disc. He checked with his instruments. Undoubtedly, it was a small sun.

It puzzled Shouter. His astronomical knowledge was negligible, but he knew that according to the laws there was nothing between galaxies; that long funnel of night shut off galaxy from galaxy as surely as the living were cut off from the dead. He could only suppose this sun ahead to be a tramp star; such things were known, but they naturally roved inside the giant lens of the home Galaxy, in conformity with its gravitational pull. Shouter threw the problem aside unsolved. All that vitally concerned him was whether the sun — wherever it came from — had one or more oxygen planets in attendance.

It had. The sun was a white dwarf with one planet almost as big as itself. A quick stratospheric test as Shouter glided into breaking orbit showed a breathable nitrogen-oxygen balance. Blessing his luck, the spool-seller sped down and landed. A valley fringed by hills and woods embraced him.

He walked out of the airlock in good fettle, leaving the compressor-analyzer systems working to insure full tanks of purified oxygen drawn from the planet’s air.

It was hot outside. Shouter had an immediate impression of newness everywhere. Everything seemed fresh, gleaming. His eyes ached at the vividness.

The shores of a lake lay a few yards away. He began to walk toward it, conscious at the same time of a vague discomfort in his breathing. With deliberate effort, he inhaled more slowly, thinking the air might be too rich for him.

Something rose to the surface of the lake a distance away. It looked like a man’s head, but Shouter could not be sure; a mist rising from the surface of the lake, as if the waters were hot, obscured detail.

The hurt in his lungs became more definite. He was conscious, too, of a smart spreading across his limbs, almost as if the air were too harsh for them. In his eyes, all things acquired a fluttering spectrum. He had had the assurance of his instruments that all was well, but suddenly that assurance meant nothing: he was in pain.

All in a panic, Shouter turned to get back to his ship. He coughed and fell, dizziness overcoming him. Now he saw it was indeed a man in the misty lake. He shouted for help once only.

You looked across at him, and at once started to swim in his direction.

But Shouter was dying. His cry brought blood up into his throat, splashing out over one hand. He choked, attempting to rise again. You climbed naked out of the lake toward him. He saw you, turning his head heavily, and flung one arm out gesturing toward the ship with its imagined safety. As you got to him, he died.

For a while you knelt by him, considering. Then you turned away and regarded the small starship for the first time. You went over to it, your eyes full of wonder.

The sun rose and set twenty-five times before you mastered all that Shouter’s ship contained. You touched everything gently, almost reverently. Those microspools meant little individually to you at first, but you were able to refer back to them and piece the jigsaw of their secrets together, until the picture they gave you formed a whole picture. Shouter’s projector was almost worn out before you finished. Then you investigated the ship itself, sucking out its meaning like a thirsty man.

Your thoughts must have moved strangely in those twenty-five days, like sluice gates opening for the first time, as you became yourself.

All you learned then was already knowledge; the way in which you pieced it together was genius, but nevertheless it was knowledge already held by many men; the results of research and experience. Only afterward, when you integrated that knowledge, did you make a deduction on your own behalf. The deduction, involving as it did all the myriad lives in the Galaxy, was so awing, so overwhelming, that you tried to evade it.

You could not; it was inescapable. One clinching fact was the death of Shouter; you knew why he had died. So you had to act, obeying your first moral imperative.

Just for a moment, you looked at your bright world. You would return to it when duty had been done. You climbed up into Shouter’s ship, punched out a course on the computer, and headed toward the Galaxy.

2

You came unarmed into the warring city. Your ship lay abandoned on a hill some miles away. You walked as if among the properties of a dream, carrying your own supplies, and demanded to see the leader of the rebel army. They put innumerable difficulties in your way, but eventually you stood before him because none could gainsay you.

The rebel leader was a hard man with an eye missing, and he was busy when you entered. He stared at you with deep mistrust through that single eye; the guards behind him stroked their fusers.

“I’ll give you three minutes,” One Eye said.

“I don’t want your time,” you said easily. “I have plenty of my own. I also have a plan bigger than any plan of yours. Do you wish me to show you how to subjugate the Region of Yinnisfar?”

Now One Eye looked at you again. He saw — how should it be said? — he saw you were not as other men, that you were vivider than they. But the Region of Yinnisfar lay long light years away, impregnable, in the heart of the Galaxy; for twice ten million years its reign had been undisputed among twice ten million planets.

“You’re mad!” One Eye said. “Get out! Our objective is to conquer this city — not a galaxy.”

You did not move. Why did the guards not act then? Why did not One Eye shoot you down before you had begun your task?

“This civil war you wage here is fruitless,” you said. “What are you fighting for? A city. The next street! A powerhouse! These are spoils fit only for scavengers. I offer you the wealth of Yinnisfar!”

One Eye stood up, showing his teeth. The unkempt hair on his neck rose like prickles. His leather cheeks turned mauve. He jerked up his fuser and thrust it toward your face. You did nothing; there was nothing you needed to do. Confounded, One Eye sat down again. He had not met such relentless indifference to threats before, and was impressed. “Owlenj is only a poor planet with a long history of oppression,” he muttered. “But it is my world. I have to fight for it and the people on it, to protect their rights and liberties. I admit that a man of my tactical ability deserves a better command; possibly when we’ve brought this city to its knees...”

Because time was on your side, you had patience. Because you had patience, you listened to One Eye. His talk was at once grandiose and petty; he spoke largely of the triumph of human rights and narrowly of the shortage of trained soldiers. He wanted heaven on earth, but he was a platoon short.

He was a man who won respect from his fellows — or fear, if not respect. Yet his principles had been old-fashioned a million millennia ago, before the beginnings of space travel. They had worn wafer thin, used over and over again by countless petty generals: the need for force, the abolition of injustice, the belief that right would win through. You listened with a chill pity, aware that the age-old and majestic intricacies of the Self-perpetuating War had shrunk to this pocket of trouble on Owlenj.

When he stopped orating, you told One Eye your plan for conquering Yinnisfar. You told him that living on Owlenj, on the cold rim of the Galaxy, he could have no idea of the richness of those central worlds; that all the fables the children of Owlenj learned in their meagre beds did not convey one-tenth of the wealth of the Suzerain of Yinnisfar; that every man there had his destiny and happiness guarded imperishably.

“Well, we were always underprivileged out here,” growled One Eye. “What can anyone here do against the power of the Region?’

So you told him, unsmilingly, that there was one aspect in which Yinnisfar was inferior; it could not, in all its systems, command a general who displayed the sagacity and fearlessness that One Eye was renowned for; its peoples had lost their old lusty arrogance and had declined into mere reverie-begetters.

“All that is so,” One Eye admitted reluctantly, “though I have never cared to say so myself. They are a decadent lot!”

“Decadent!” you exclaimed. “They are decadent beyond all belief. They hang like a giant overripe fruit, waiting to drop and splash.”

“You really think so?”

“Listen. How long has there been peace throughout the Galaxy — except, of course, for your little difference of opinion here? For millions of years, is that not so? Is it not so peaceful that even interstellar trade has dwindled almost to nothing? I tell you, my friend, the mighty nations of the stars have nodded off to sleep! Their warriors, their technicians, have been untested for generations. Their science rusts beneath a pool of complacency!”

Now you had One Eye on his feet again. This time he was yours, the first of your list of conquests. He let out a roar of excitement.

“By Thraldemener, it is as you say!” he shouted. “They wouldn’t know how to fight. They are degenerate! Come, there is no time to be lost. We will begin the liberation of the peoples of Yinnisfar tomorrow, my friend. Why couldn’t I have thought of the idea myself?”

“Wait!” you said. You touched his tattered sleeve as he came around the desk; he felt something of your vitality course through him, and waited obediently. “If Owlenj is to conquer, it must be united. Your forces are not sufficient in themselves to match the dying might of the Region. The civil war must end.”

At this One Eye frowned, looked uncertain. Above all else he had wanted to reduce this little city to ashes.

“You can’t stop a civil war just like that,” he protested.

“You and I go and see the enemy commander,” you said.

And although he protested and swore, that was what you and One Eye did.

Treading carefully over the debris, you left by what had been the West Gate and came to the improvised shields of lead and sand which marked One Eye’s present forward position. Here One Eye began to argue again; you silenced him. With one man to accompany you and bear the white flag of truce, you put on a radiation suit as One Eye had done and climbed out into the street.

This had once been a fine avenue. Now the tall exoquag trees were splintered like bone, and the fronts of many buildings demolished. Several robotanks lay locked together on the scarred pavements. Nothing moved. But as you walked, you must have been aware of the unseen eyes of the enemy watching you behind their levelled sights.

At the top of the avenue, a mechanical voice halted you and asked you what you wanted. When its attendant echoes had gone chattering away among the ruins, One Eye bellowed out his name and demanded to see the enemy general.

Within two minutes, a transparent disc using beamed power dropped out of the sky. A door slid open and the mechanical voice shouted, “Please get in.”

Entering with your two companions, you were at once lifted to a height just above the rooftops. The disc flicked two blocks to the north before sinking again. The door opened and you climbed out.

3

You were in a slaughter yard. No animals were here now, although a wall with a line of fuser marks heart-high showed that the place had not entirely abandoned its ancient purposes.

Two captains met you under a white flag. They saluted One Eye and led you out of the yard, down a deep ramp. You descended to a part of the old-fashioned pneumatic running under the city, where you removed your radiation suit. Here a maze of new corridors had been constructed; down one of them you were led until a white-painted door was reached. The grim captains indicated you were to go in.

You entered.

“Well, you traitor, what makes you think you will leave here alive?” the enemy general asked One Eye. His uniform was trim, if worn, his eyes had a quelling fire to them; he walked as true soldiers have walked since time immemorial — as if the discs of his backbone had all been welded together. And Welded had a little moustache, which now bristled with triumph at the sight of his foe.

Temporarily forgetting all but his old feud, One Eye advanced as if he would tear that moustache from the others upper lip.

“Shake hands, you two,” you said impatiently. “Come to terms immediately. The sooner arrangements are made, the better.”

Welded looked at you for the first time; he seemed instantly to comprehend that it was you rather than One Eye with whom he had to deal. Welded was an intelligent man. Instantly, he was ice cold; his voice ground straight off a glacier.

“I have no idea who you are, fellow,” he said, “but if I have any suspicion of impertinence from you, I’ll have you beamed. With your friend here I must be more careful — his head is destined for the city gate. You are entirely expendable.”

“On that I reserve my own opinion,” you said. “We do not come here to bandy threats but to make you an offer. If you are prepared to listen, listen now.”

In the scale of emotions, there is a stage beyond fury where fury cools, and a stage beyond anger where it merges into fear. As Welded reached this point, he stiffened as if he would snap. He could say nothing. You began to talk of Yinnisfar.

Welded was a harder man to deal with than his enemy, more seasoned, more sure of himself. Though a faint, concupiscent smile curled his lip when you spoke of the richness of the Region, he never unbent. When you had finished, he spoke.