Secret of the Stars (14 page)

13

Lennox lost his detachment. His face screwed into a mask of hate.

“If you know everything, then you also know why.”

“Yes, I know why. Because twenty years ago a man who was bringing with him an offer of the greatest gift our species could have, appealed to you for help in the name of friendship, and you betrayed him to his death.”

“Oh, no,” Lennox shook his head, “you can’t fasten what
you
claim to be a crime on me, Councilor. I did what I had to do, what my loyalty, not only to the service, but all our kind, demanded of me. Nor will I deny that I agreed with every word of the orders I obeyed when I turned Marson in. He wasn’t even human anymore! What I did, I did for the good of every human being, in or out of space.

“That traitor,” his mouth twisted, “was a monster. What he came to offer was vile. You should thank whatever gods you believe in, on your knees, that he did not carry out his mission.”

“One way of looking at it,” Kronfeld’s judicial evenness of speech was the more impressive in contrast to the other’s hot vehemence. “That fanaticism has had official approval for quite a while. Only there’s another side to the same story. Marson had, in the pursuit of his scout duty, made contact with the Others who we have long-known shared our galactic space. The period of Marson’s contact began involuntarily on his part because he answered a strange distress signal and became involved in a rescue. He could not be as inhuman as his orders demanded he be; therefore, he discovered that this other species was entirely different from the official descriptions circulated by his superiors. He then joined them, lived among them, and only because he learned something which would benefit both races equally, did he volunteer to return to human-held territory, knowing that such an act might well mean his death. He hoped that some man of good will would listen and examine his proof.

“He came as an ambassador. But before he had a chance to reach those who might have understood, he was caught and killed, the whole affair covered up. This ended the matter—for all time your service believed. Then, fifteen or so years ago, there came a second attempt at communication. Because the situation on the other side was growing critical, though our short Terran life span does not limit those Others. This time the volunteer ambassadors numbered two, with a third individual brought to prove their point.”

Lennox’s fingers plucked at the empty blaster’s holster on his belt.

“A scout named Ksanga had followed Marson’s earlier orbit and been attracted into the same pattern of cooperation. He came back as pilot of a ship which landed on the planet Kris, two passengers on board, a woman and her child. He dared to return even though he knew that he was outlawed as no other wolf-head since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, he was recognized on Kris, picked up by your police. He contrived to die before he was forced to betray those he had brought with him. How they escaped we shall never know. But eventually they reached Terra.

“The woman, although fully armed against the dangers her people could anticipate, was not immune to terrestrial disease. She died in N’Yok, in JetTown, where she had found a temporary hideout. The child remained.”

Joktar put down his empty cup. Now he was as fascinated as the commander by Kronfeld’s story.

“By Terran standards, that child appeared to be about six years old, he was closer to twelve. And he had been provided with a mental block for his own protection. In JetTown, he found a place for himself, eventually fitted into the pattern of the streets. Neither he, nor those about him, knew how important he was.”

Kronfeld picked up a paper, but he recited rather than read. “What was the driving motive behind Marson’s return, Ksanga’s sacrifice, and the woman’s? Oh, I’ve heard all the wild tales the services have fostered through the years since our first contact with the aliens—”

“Wild tales?” Lennox spat between his teeth. “Just because you don’t believe the truth?”

“What is the truth? That the aliens are immortal? That fact could be difficult for us to accept. But it isn’t
true. Not only can they die by accident, but also, though their life span is immeasurably longer than ours, they are mortal in the ordinary fashion. That they are our
superiors mentally and physically? Yes, that gives us a feeling of inferiority which many little men find impossible to face. But they have also one overwhelming disadvantage on their side of the scales.”

Now Lennox actually did spit. The droplet of moisture beaded on the dark surface.

“They want us!” his face flushed darkly. “They have to have us to breed.”

Kronfeld regarded him somberly. “Fifty years ago,” he said in a remote tone, “a hysterical and perverted man put his own interpretation on a secret report. Perhaps he made an understandable human error, under the influence of his warped background; perhaps he had another reason for what he did. He slammed a door for his whole species. But it is an axiom that truth cannot be hidden forever. Other men have been searching for those hidden files, for the true meaning of that report ever since. Three years ago, the real story came to those who dared to believe. All the garbled nonsense which Morre fed his followers was sifted. Then the facts underneath and the monstrous crimes he fathered on the aliens were discovered to be something quite different. Yes, these galactic neighbors must have another species allied with them for breeding, but that act does not follow the unspeakable pattern Morre pictured out of the vileness of his own evil imagination.

“The aliens are humanoid, but not human. They have voyaged the star lanes for a length of time we cannot measure. They were comrades-in-arms and good friends to other races who preceded us into space, those who built the ruins we now find on dead worlds, for we are new to come into an old, old region. But long ago, their species suffered a mutation which has almost doomed them to extinction. If they mate among themselves, the resulting children are female only. If they mate with a kindred humanoid race, the children are the Ffallian, and all male.

“In turn, the Ffallian may mate fruitfully with either human or alien and produce children of both sexes. And the children of that second generation, as the Ffallian themselves, will have an increased life span, certain distinct physical and mental advantages over our kind. A long time has ensued since the aliens have found a race with whom they could have common offspring, and the Ffallian grow fewer every year. So they were overjoyed when they discovered that we were a species they could—”

“Use to produce their half-breed monsters!” Lennox exploded.

“Half-breeds, yes; monsters, no! Very far from monsters. Luckily all minds have not been corrupted by Morre’s poison. A woman of the aliens chose to mate with Marson. Their son is true Ffallian. She brought him to Terra after her husband’s death to prove that point, beg help for her people. Now, years too late, we may succeed in making her mission worthwhile. We do not have the gifts of the aliens, but our sons and daughters will. As human time is reckoned it may take many years, but the Ffallian will increase in number, linking us with the aliens in a pattern of sharing which will give us both something close to immortality.”

“You’re mad!” There was horrified conviction in Lennox’s answer. “Try urging people to mate with monsters and see how quickly you’ll have a war on your hands!”

“I said it would have to come slowly. We’ve already made a start. I head a colonization project in which we are educating a picked group. And we have pulled the whole subject out of hiding. The right kind of publicity is as good as the wrong kind, and we shall use the right.”

“You can’t do it! They’ve fed you a pretty story and you’ve swallowed it. The real story is anything but pretty. Morre knew, he saw the results. You talk of supermen, he saw the devils that really issue from such cross-breeding.”

“Devils? You have seen one of these ‘devils,’ too. In what way is he a monster? Does he resemble the ogres Morre dreamed up to support his edited records?”

Lennox’s head turned, his hot eyes fastened on Joktar. And then, when none of them expected such a move, he launched himself straight at the younger man, his hands reaching for the Terran’s throat. Reflexes trained on the streets moved in Joktar’s defense. But he was borne back across the ledge until his head cracked against the unbreakable substance of the window. In a matter of seconds, the Terran knew that he was battling for his life against a man in a frenzy, a man who scratched, tore, snapped teeth in a hideous attempt to maim and kill. A little dazed by the madness of the other’s fury, Joktar fought back.

Then Lennox’s dusky color deepened, he snarled and whined, as his head was forced back by an arm clamped under his chin, levering him away from Joktar. He clawed at the air, fought against that merciless bar of flesh and bone closing off his breath. Joktar raised a hand to dripping scratches on his cheek and watched Hogan choke the commander into submission.

There was a scuffle as Cullan summoned patrolmen, had the half-conscious Lennox removed. But Joktar had turned his back on the room. He was trying to blot out what he had just heard. That old chill thrust of loneliness struck into him . . . spreading . . . walling him off from the men in the room behind him, and in a measure from the room itself.

Monster . . . half-breed!
Lennox had fastened those tags on him. And there would be hundreds . . . millions of other all around the galaxy to raise the same cry. He had been well-tutored on the streets. Since the beginning of the human species, there had been in them that dark and evil urge to turn upon and rend the one who was different, to hunt him down with a mob. And to be the hunted awoke in Joktar a wave of sheer terror which washed through his brain.

Loki’s sun was up now. A blaze above the golden brown of the sea . . . warmer than the sun which touched snow drifts on Fenris. The life of the streets had existed at night, there were few times when he had really looked at the sun.

A golden planet, a world where the sun was warm and kind . . .

Joktar heard movements in the room, closed his ears to them. They were all men there and he was something else. In those few moments of speech, Lennox had raised a barrier between him and every living being he had ever known.

Sun on the waves . . . a golden world . . . well, he would have to face those others, and his future some time. Joktar turned his back to the sun, his face to the room.

Only Hogan stood there. He was studying the younger man with the same searching measurement he had once used on Fenris. He spoke softly.

“But it isn’t that way at all, you know. Don’t let that poison Lennox spouted mean anything. You aren’t alone.”

“Half-breed,” Joktar said the ugly word.

“Ffallian,” Hogan corrected. “It is very different. I know believe me, I know.”

“How?” challenged Joktar.

“Do you think that your father and Ksanga were the only humans to join the aliens? Four years ago . . . I came back.”

“But you were on Fenris . . . a trader!”

“Hiding out . . . just as much of a wolf-head as if I were Ffallian. I was waiting for Kronfeld to move. He had to find you. That you existed, we knew.
Where
—that we had to discover. Yes, Lennox was wrong, pitifully horribly wrong. Do you believe me?”