This time there was no way to hold the door. Ihjel didn't try. He
stepped aside and two men stumbled into the room. He walked out behind
their backs without saying a word.
"What happened? What did he do?" the doctor asked, rushing in through
the ruined door. He swept a glance over the continuous recording dials
at the foot of Brion's bed. Respiration, temperature, heart, blood
pressure--all were normal. The patient lay quietly and didn't answer
him.
For the rest of that day, Brion had much to think about. It was
difficult. The fatigue, mixed with the tranquilizers and other drugs had
softened his contact with reality. His thoughts kept echoing back and
forth in his mind, unable to escape. What had Ihjel meant? What was
that nonsense about Anvhar? Anvhar was that way because ... well it
just was. It had come about naturally. Or had it? The planet had a very
simple history.
From the very beginning there had never been anything of real commercial
interest on Anvhar. Well off the interstellar trade routes, there were
no minerals worth digging and transporting the immense distances to the
nearest inhabited worlds. Hunting the winter beasts for their pelts was
a profitable but very minor enterprise, never sufficient for mass
markets. Therefore no organized attempt had ever been made to colonize
the planet. In the end it had been settled completely by chance. A
number of offplanet scientific groups had established observation and
research stations, finding unlimited data to observe and record during
Anvhar's unusual yearly cycle. The long-duration observations encouraged
the scientific workers to bring their families and, slowly but steadily,
small settlements grew up. Many of the fur hunters settled there as
well, adding to the small population. This had been the beginning.
Few records existed of those early days, and the first six centuries of
Anvharian history were more speculation than fact. The Breakdown
occurred about that time and in the galaxy-wide disruption, Anvhar had
to fight its own internal battle. When the Earth Empire collapsed it was
the end of more than an era. Many of the observation stations found
themselves representing institutions that no longer existed. The
professional hunters no longer had markets for their furs, since Anvhar
possessed no interstellar ships of its own. There had been no real
physical hardship involved in the Breakdown, as it affected Anvhar,
since the planet was completely self sufficient. Once they had made the
mental adjustment to the fact that they were now a sovereign world, not
a collection of casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued
unchanged. Not easy--living on Anvhar is never easy--but at least
without difference on the surface.
The thoughts and attitudes of the people were however going through a
great transformation. Many attempts were made to develop some form of
stable society and social relationship. Again little record exists of
these early trials, other than the fact of their culmination in the
Twenties.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
To understand the Twenties, you have to understand the unusual orbit
that Anvhar tracks around its sun, 70 Ophiuchi. There are other planets
in this system, all of them more or less conforming to the plane of the
ecliptic. Anvhar is obviously a rogue, perhaps a captured planet of
another sun. For the greatest part of its 780-day year it arcs far out
from its primary, in a high-angled sweeping cometary orbit. When it
returns there is a brief, hot summer of approximately eighty days before
the long winter sets in once more. This severe difference in seasonal
change has caused profound adaptations in the native life forms. During
the winter most of the animals hibernate, the vegetable life lying
dormant as spores or seeds. Some of the warm-blooded herbivores stay
active in the snow-covered tropics, preyed upon by fur-insulated
carnivores. Though unbelievably cold, the winter is a season of peace in
comparison to the summer.
This is a time of mad growth. Plants burst into life with a strength
that cracks rocks, growing fast enough for the motion to be seen. The
snow fields melt into mud and within days a jungle stretches high into
the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates. Plants climb on top of
plants, fighting for the life-energy of the sun. Everything is eat and
be eaten, grow and thrive in the short season. Because when the first
snow of winter falls again, ninety per cent of the year must pass until
the next coming of warmth.
Mankind has had to adapt to the Anvharian cycle in order to stay alive.
Food must be gathered and stored, enough to last out the long winter.
Generation after generation had adapted until they look on the mad
seasonal imbalance as something quite ordinary. The first thaw of
almost-nonexistent spring triggers a wide reaching metabolic change in
the humans. Layers of subcutaneous fat vanish and half-dormant sweat
glands come to life. Other changes are more subtle than the temperature
adjustment, but equally important. The sleep center of the brain is
depressed. Short naps or a night's rest every third or fourth day become
enough. Life takes on a hectic and hysterical quality that is perfectly
suited to the environment. By the time of the first frost, rapid growing
crops have been raised and harvested, sides of meat either preserved or
frozen in mammoth lockers. With his supreme talent of adaptability
mankind has become part of the ecology and guaranteed his own survival
during the long winter.
Physical survival has been guaranteed. But what about mental survival?
Primitive Earth Eskimos can fall into a long doze of half-conscious
hibernation. Civilized men might be able to do this, but only for the
few cold months of terrestrial mid-winter. It would be impossible to do
during a winter that is longer than an Earth year. With all the physical
needs taken care of, boredom became the enemy of any Anvharian who was
not a hunter. And even the hunters could not stay out on solitary trek
all winter. Drink was one answer and violence another. Alcoholism and
murder were the twin terrors of the cold season, after the Breakdown.
It was the Twenties that ended all that. When they became a part of
normal life the summer was considered just an interlude between games.
The Twenties were more than just a contest--they became a way of life
that satisfied all the physical, competitive and intellectual needs of
this unusual planet. They were a decathlon--rather a doubled
decathlon--raised to its highest power, where contests in chess and
poetry composition held equal place with those in ski-jumping and
archery. Each year there were two planet-wide contests held, one for men
and one for women. This was not an attempt at sexual discrimination, but
a logical facing of facts. Inherent differences prevented fair
contests--for example, it is impossible for a woman to win a large chess
tournament--and this fact was recognized. Anyone could enter for any
number of years, there were no scoring handicaps.
When the best man won he was really the best man. A complicated series
of playoffs and eliminations kept contestants and observers busy for
half the winter. They were only preliminary to the final encounter that
lasted a month, and picked a single winner. That was the title he was
awarded. Winner. The man--and woman--who had bested every other
contestant on the entire planet and who would remain unchallenged until
the following year.
* * * * *
Winner. It was a title to take pride in. Brion stirred weakly on his bed
and managed to turn so he could look out of the window. Winner of
Anvhar. His name was already slated for the history books, one of the
handful of planetary heroes. School children would be studying him now,
just as he had read of the Winners of the past. Weaving daydreams and
imaginary adventures around Brion's victories, hoping and fighting so
some day equal them. To be a Winner was the greatest honor in the
universe.
Outside, the afternoon sun shimmered weakly in a dark sky. The endless
icefields soaked up the dim light, reflecting it back as a colder and
harsher illumination. A single figure on skis cut a line across the
empty plain; nothing else moved. The depression of the ultimate fatigue
fell on Brion and everything changed, as if he looked in a mirror at a
previously hidden side.
He saw suddenly--with terrible clarity--that to be a Winner was to be
absolutely nothing. Like being the best flea, among all the fleas on a
single dog.
What was Anvhar after all? An ice-locked planet, inhabited by a few
million human fleas, unknown and unconsidered by the rest of the galaxy.
There was nothing here worth fighting for, the wars after the Breakdown
had left them untouched. The Anvharian had always taken pride in
this--as if being so unimportant that no one else even wanted to come
near you, could possibly be a source of pride. All the worlds of man
grew, fought, won, lost, changed. Only on Anvhar did life repeat its
sameness endlessly, like a loop of tape in a player....
Brion's eyes were moist, he blinked. _Tears!!_ Realization of this
incredible fact wiped the maudlin pity from his mind and replaced it
with fear. Had his mind snapped in the strain of the last match? These
thoughts weren't his. Self-pity hadn't made him a Winner--why was he
feeling it now? Anvhar was his universe--how could he even imagine it
as a tag-end planet at the outer limb of creation? What had come over
him and induced this inverse thinking.
As he thought the question, the answer appeared at the same instant.
Winner Ihjel. The fat man with the strange pronouncements and probing
questions. Had he cast a spell like some sorcerer--or the devil in
"Faust"? No, that was pure nonsense. But he had done something. Perhaps
planted a suggestion when Brion's resistance was low. Or used subliminal
vocalization like the villain in "Cerebrus Chained." Brion could find no
adequate reason on which to base his suspicions. But he knew that Ihjel
was responsible.
He whistled at the sound-switch next to his pillow and the repaired
communicator came to life. The duty nurse appeared in the small screen.
"The man who was here today," Brion said, "Winner Ihjel, do you know
where he is? I must contact him."
For some reason this flustered her professional calm. The nurse started
to answer, excused herself, and blanked the screen. When it lit again a
man in Guard's uniform had taken her place.
"You made an inquiry," the Guard said, "about Winner Ihjel. We are
holding him here in the hospital following the disgraceful way in which
he broke into your room."
"I have no charges to make. Will you ask him to come and see me at
once?"
The Guard controlled his shock. "I'm sorry, Winner--I don't see how we
can. Dr. Caulry left specific orders that you were not to be--"
"The doctor has no control over my personal life," Brion snapped at him.
"I'm not infectious, or ill with anything more than extreme fatigue. I
want to see that man. At once."
The Guard took a deep breath, and made a quick decision. "He is on the
way up now," he said, and rung off.
* * * * *
"What did you do to me?" Brion asked as soon as Ihjel had entered and
they were alone. "You won't deny that you have put alien thoughts in my
head?"
"No, I won't deny it. Because the whole point of my being here is to get
those 'alien' thoughts across to you."
"Tell me how you did it," Brion insisted. "I must know."
"I'll tell you--but there are many things you should understand first,
before you decide to leave Anvhar. You must not only hear them, you will
have to believe them. The primary thing, the clue to the rest, is the
true nature of your life here. How do you think the Twenties
originated?"
Brion carefully took a double dose of the mild stimulant he was allowed
before he answered. "I don't think," he said, "I know. It's a matter of
historical record. The founder of the games was Giroldi, the first
contest was held in 378 A.B. The Twenties have been held every year
since then. They were strictly local affairs in the beginning, but were
soon well established on a planet-wide scale."
"True enough," Ihjel said, "but you're describing _what_ happened. I
asked you _how_ the Twenties originated. How could any single man take a
barbarian planet, lightly inhabited by half-mad hunters and alcoholic
farmers, and turn it into a smooth-running social machine built around
the artificial structure of the Twenties? It just can't be done."
"But it was done!" Brion insisted. "You can't deny that. And there is
nothing artificial about the Twenties. They are a logical way to live a
life on a planet like this."
Ihjel had to laugh, a short ironic bark. "Very logical," he said, "but
how often does logic have anything to do with the organization of social
groups and governments? You're not thinking. Put yourself in founder
Giroldi's place. Imagine that you have glimpsed the great idea of the
Twenties and you want to convince others. So you walk up to the nearest
louse-ridden, brawling, superstitious, booze-embalmed hunter and explain
clearly. How a program of his favorite sports--things like poetry,
archery and chess--can make his life that much more interesting and
virtuous. You do that. But keep your eyes open and be ready for a fast
draw."
Even Brion had to smile at the absurdity of the suggestion. Of course it
couldn't happen that way. Yet, since it had happened, there must be a
simple explanation.
"We can beat this back and forth all day," Ihjel told him, "and you
won't get the right idea unless--" He broke off suddenly, staring at the
communicator. The operation light had come on, though the screen stayed
dark. Ihjel reached down a meaty hand and pulled loose the recently
connected wires. "That doctor of yours is very curious--and he's going
to stay that way. The truth behind the Twenties is none of his business.
But it's going to be yours. You must come to realize that the life you
lead here is a complete and artificial construction, developed by
Societics experts and put into application by skilled field workers."
"Nonsense!" Brion broke in. "Systems of society can't be dreamed up and
forced on people like that. Not without bloodshed and violence."
"Nonsense, yourself," Ihjel told him. "That may have been true in the
dawn of history, but not any more. You have been reading too many of the
old Earth classics, you imagine that we still live in the Ages of
Superstition. Just because Fascism and Communism were once forced on
reluctant populations, you think this holds true for all time. Go back
to your books. In exactly the same era democracy and self-government
were adapted by former colonial states, like India and the Union of
North Africa, and the only violence was between local religious groups.
Change is the lifeblood of mankind. Everything we today accept as normal
was at one time an innovation. And one of the most recent innovations
is the attempt to guide the societies of mankind into something more
consistent with the personal happiness of individuals."
"The God complex," Brion said, "forcing human lives into a mold whether
they want to be fitted into it or not."
"Societics can be that," Ihjel agreed. "It was in the beginning, and
there were some disastrous results of attempts to force populations into
a political climate where they didn't belong. They weren't all
failures--Anvhar here is a striking example of how good the technique
can be when correctly applied. It's not done this way anymore, though.
Like all of the other sciences, we have found out that the more we know,
the more there is to know. We no longer attempt to guide cultures
towards what we consider a beneficial goal. There are too many goals,
and from our limited vantage point it is hard to tell the good ones from
the bad ones. All we do now is try to protect the growing cultures, give
a little jolt to the stagnating ones--and bury the dead ones. When the
work was first done here on Anvhar the theory hadn't progressed that
far. The understandably complex equations that determine just where in
the scale from a Type I to a Type V a culture is, had not yet been
completed. The technique then was to work out an artificial culture that
would be most beneficial for a planet, then bend it into the mold."
"But how?" Brion asked.
"We've made some progress--you're finally asking 'how'. The technique
here took a good number of agents, and a great deal of money. Personal
honor was emphasized in order to encourage dueling, this led to a
heightened interest in the technique of personal combat. When this was
well intrenched Giroldi was brought in, and he showed how organized
competitions could be more interesting than haphazard encounters. Tying
the intellectual aspects onto the framework of competitive sports was a
little more difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. The details aren't
important, all we are considering now is the end product. Which is you.
You're needed very much."
"Why me?" Brion asked. "Why am I special? Because I won the Twenties? I
can't believe that. Taken objectively there isn't that much difference
between myself and the ten runners-up. Why don't you ask one of
them--they could do your job as well as I."
"No they couldn't. I'll tell you later why you are the only man I can
use. Our time is running out and I must convince you of some other
things first." Ihjel glanced at his watch. "We have less than three
hours to dead-deadline. Before that time I must explain enough of our
work to you to enable you to decide voluntarily to join us."
"A very tall order," Brion said. "You might begin by telling me just who
this mysterious 'we' is that you keep referring to."
"The Cultural Relationships Foundation. A nongovernmental body,
privately endowed, existing to promote peace and ensure the sovereign
welfare of independent planets, so that all will prosper from the good
will and commerce thereby engendered."
"Sounds like you're quoting," Brion told him. "No one could possibly
make up something that sounds like that on the spur of the moment."
"I was quoting from our charter of organization. Which is all very fine
in a general sense, but I'm talking specifically now. About you. You are
the product of a tightly knit and very advanced society. Your
individuality has been encouraged by your growing up in a society so
small in population that only a mild form of government control is
necessary. The normal Anvharian education is an excellent one, and
participation in the Twenties has given you a general and advanced
education second to none in the galaxy. It would be a complete waste of
your entire life if you now took all this training and wasted it on some
rustic farm."
"You give me very little credit. I plan to teach--"
"Forget Anvhar!" Ihjel cut him off with a chop of his hand. "This world
will roll on quite successfully whether you are here or not. You must
forget it, think of its relative unimportance on a galactic scale, and
consider instead the existing, suffering, hordes of mankind. You must
think what you can do to help them."
"But what can I do--as an individual? The day is long past when a
single man, like Caesar or Alexander, could bring about world-shaking
changes."
"True--but not true," Ihjel said. "There are key men in every conflict
of forces, men who act like catalysts applied at the right instant to
start a chemical reaction. You might be one of those men, but I must be
honest and say that I can't prove it yet. So in order to save time and
endless discussion, I think I will have to spark your personal sense of
obligation."
"Obligation to whom?"
"To mankind of course, to the countless billions of dead who kept the
whole machine rolling along that allows you the full, long and happy
life you enjoy today. What they gave to you, you must pass on to others.
This is the keystone of humanistic morals."
"Agreed. And a very good argument in the long run. But not one that is
going to tempt me out of this bed within the next three hours."
* * * * *
"A point of success," Ihjel said. "You agree with the general argument.
Now I apply it specifically to you. Here is the statement I intend to
prove. There exists a planet with a population of seven million people.
Unless I can prevent it, this planet will be completely destroyed. It is
my job to stop that destruction, so that is where I am going now. I
won't be able to do the job alone. In addition to others I need you. Not
anyone like you--but you and you alone."
[Illustration]
"You have precious little time left to convince me of all that," Brion
told him, "so let me make the job easier for you. The work you do, this
planet, the imminent danger of the people there--these are all facts
that you can undoubtedly supply. I'll take a chance that this whole
thing is not a colossal bluff and admit that given time, you could
verify them all. This brings the argument back to me again. How can you
possibly prove that I am the only person in the galaxy who can help
you?"
"I can prove it by your singular ability, the thing I came here to
find."
"What ability? I am different in no way from the other men on my
planet."
"You're wrong," Ihjel said. "You are the embodied proof of evolution.
Rare individuals with specific talents occur constantly in any species,
man included. It has been two generations since an empathetic was last
born on Anvhar and I have been watching carefully most of that time."
"What in blazes is an empathetic--and how do you recognize it when you
have found it?" Brion chuckled, this talk was getting preposterous.
"I can recognize one because I'm one myself--there is no other way. As
to how projective empathy works, you had a demonstration of that a
little earlier, when you felt those strange thoughts about Anvhar. It
will be a long time before you can master that, but receptive empathy is
your natural trait. This is mentally entering into the feeling, or what
could be called the spirit of another person. Empathy is not thought
perception, it might better be described as the sensing of someone
else's emotional makeup, feelings and attitudes. You can't lie to a
trained empathetic because he can sense the real attitude behind the
verbal lies. Even your undeveloped talent has proved immensely useful in
the Twenties. You can outguess your opponent because you know his
movements even as his body tenses to make them. You accept this without
ever questioning it."
"How do you know--?" This was Brion's understood, but never voiced
secret.
Ihjel smiled. "Just guessing. But I won the Twenties too, remember, also
without knowing a thing about empathy at the time. On top of our normal
training, it's a wonderful trait to have. Which brings me to the proof
we mentioned a minute ago. When you said you would be convinced if I
could prove you were the only person who could help me. I _believe_ you
are--and that is one thing I cannot lie about. It's possible to lie
about a belief verbally, to have a falsely based belief, or to change a
belief. But you can't lie about it to yourself."
"Equally important--you can't lie about a belief to an empathetic. Would
you like to see how I feel about this? 'See' is a bad word--there is no
vocabulary for this kind of thing yet. Better, would you join me in my
feelings? Sense my attitudes, memories and emotions just as I do?"
Brion tried to protest, but he was too late. The doors of his senses
were pushed wide and he was overwhelmed.
"Dis ..." Ihjel said aloud. "Seven million people ... hydrogen bombs ...
Brion Brandd." These were just key words, land marks of association.
With each one Brion felt the rushing wave of the other man's emotions.
There could be no lies here, Ihjel was right in that. This was the raw
stuff that feelings are made of, the basic reactions to the things and
symbols of memory.
DIS ... DIS ... DIS ... it was a word it was a planet and the word
thundered like a drum a drum the sound of its thunder surrounded and was
a wasteland a planet
of death a planet where
living was dying and
dying was very
better than
living
crude barbaric
backward miserable
dirty beneath
consideration
planet
#DIS#
hot burning scorching
wasteland of sands
and sands and sands and
sands that burned had burned
will burn forever
the people of this planet so
crude dirty miserable barbaric
subhuman in-human less-than-human
but
they
were
going
to
be
DEAD
and DEAD they would be seven million
blackened corpses that
would blacken your dreams
all dreams dreams
forever because those
HYDROGEN BOMBS
were waiting
to kill
them unless ... unless ... unless ...
you Ihjel stopped it you Ihjel
(DEATH) ... you (DEATH) ...
you (DEATH) alone couldn't do
it you (DEATH)
must have
BRION BRANDD wet-behind-the-ears-raw-untrained-Brion-Brand-to help-you
he was the only one in the galaxy who could finish the job....
As the flow of sensation died away, Brion realized he was sprawled back
weakly on his pillows, soaked with sweat, washed with the memory of the
raw emotion. Across from him Ihjel sat with his face bowed into his
hands. When he lifted his head Brion saw within his eyes a shadow of the
blackness he had just experienced.
"Death," Brion said. "That terrible feeling of death. It wasn't just the
people of Dis who would die. It was something more personal."
"Myself," Ihjel said, and behind this simple word were the repeated
echoes of night that Brion had been made aware of with his newly
recognized ability. "My own death, not too far away. This is the
wonderfully terrible price you must pay for your talent. _Angst_ is an
inescapable part of empathy. It is a part of the whole unknown field of
psi phenomena that seems to be independent of time. Death is so
traumatic and final that it reverberates back along the time line. The
closer I get, the more aware of it I am. There is no exact feeling of
date, just a rough location in time. That is the horror of it. I _know_
I will die soon after I get to Dis--and long before the work there is
finished. I know the job to be done there, and I know the men who have
already failed at it. I also know you are the only person who can
possibly complete the work I have started. Do you agree now? Will you
come with me?"
"Yes, of course," Brion said. "I'll go with you."