Helen's story was short and bitter. Human or near-human Boskonians
came to Lyrane II and spread insidious propaganda all over the planet.
Lyranian matriarchy should abandon its policy of isolationism.
Matriarchs were the highest type of life. Matriarchy was the most
perfect of all existing forms of government--why keep on confining
it to one small planet, when it should by right be ruling the entire
Galaxy? The way things were, there was only one Elder Person; all other
Lyranians, even though better qualified than the then incumbent, were
nothing--and so on. Whereas, if things were as they should be, each
individual Lyranian person could be and would be the Elder Person of a
planet at least, and perhaps of an entire solar system--and so on. And
the visitors, who, they insisted, were no more males than the Lyranian
persons were females, would teach them. They would be amazed at how
easily, under Boskonian guidance, this program could be put into effect.
Helen fought the intruders with every jet she had. She despised the
males of her own race; she detested those of all others. Believing that
hers was the only existing matriarchal race, especially since neither
Kinnison nor the Boskonians seemed to know of any other, she was sure
that any prolonged contact with other cultures would result, not in
the triumph of matriarchy, but in its fall. She not only voiced these
beliefs as she held them--violently--but also acted upon them in the
same fashion.
Because of the ingrained matriarchally conservative habit of Lyranian
thought, particularly among the older persons, Helen found it
comparatively easy to stamp out the visible manifestations; and, being
in no sense a sophisticate, she thought that the whole matter was
settled. Instead, she merely drove the movement underground, where it
grew tremendously. The young, of course, rebellious as always against
the hide-bound, mossbacked, and reactionary older generation, joined
the subterranean New Deal in droves. Nor was the older generation
solid. In fact, it was riddled by the defection of many thousands who
could not expect to attain any outstanding place in the world as it was
and who believed that the Boskonians' glittering forecasts would come
true.
Disaffection spread, then, rapidly and unobserved; culminating in the
carefully-planned uprising which made Helen an Ex-Chief Person and put
her into the tower room to await a farcical trial and death.
"I see." Clarrissa caught her lower lip between her teeth. "Very
unfunny. I noticed that you didn't mention or think of any of your
persons as ringleaders ... peculiar that you couldn't catch them, with
your telepathy ... no, natural enough, at that ... but there's one
I want very much to get hold of. Don't know whether she was really
a leader, or not, but she was mixed up in some way with a Boskonian
Lensman. I never did know her name. She was the wom ... the person who
managed your airport here when Kim and I were--"
"Cleonie? Why, I never thought ... but it might have, at that ... yes,
as I look back--"
"Yes, hindsight _is_ a lot more accurate than foresight," the Red
Lensman grinned. "I've noticed that myself, lots of times."
"It _did_! It _was_ a leader!" Helen declared, furiously.
"I shall have its life, too, the jealous cat--the blood-sucking,
back-biting _louse_!"
"She's all of that, in more ways than you know," Clarrissa agreed,
grimly, and spread in the Lyranian's mind the story of Eddie the
derelict. "So you see that Cleonie has got to be our starting-point.
Have you any idea of where we can find her?"
"I haven't seen or heard anything of Cleonie lately." Helen paused in
thought. "If, though, as I am now practically certain, it was one of
the prime movers behind this brainless brat Ladora, it wouldn't dare
leave the planet for very long at a time. As to how to find it, I don't
quite know. Anybody would be apt to shoot me on sight. Would you dare
fly this funny plane of yours down close to a few of our cities?"
"Certainly. I don't know of anything around here that my screens and
fields can't stop. Why?"
"Because I know of several places where Cleonie might be, and if I
can get fairly close to them, I can find it in spite of anything it
can do to hide itself from me. But I don't want to get you into too
much trouble, and I don't want to get killed myself, either, now that
you have rescued me--at least, until after I have killed Cleonie and
Ladora."
"QX. What are we waiting for? Which way, Helen?"
* * * * *
"Back to the city first, for several reasons. Cleonie probably is not
there, but we must make sure. Also, I want my guns--"
"Guns? No. DeLameters are better. I have several spares." In one
fleeting mental contact Clarrissa taught the Lyranian all there was to
know about DeLameters. And that feat impressed Helen even more than did
the nature and power of the weapon.
"What a mind!" she exclaimed. "You didn't have any such equipment as
that, the last time I saw you. Or were you ... no, you weren't hiding
it."
"You're right; I have developed considerably since then. But about
guns--what do you want of one?"
"To kill that nitwit Ladora on sight, and that snake Cleonie, too, as
soon as you get done with it."
"But why guns? Why not the mental force you always used?"
"Except by surprise, I couldn't," Helen admitted, frankly. "All adult
persons are of practically equal mental strength. But speaking of
strength, I marvel that a craft as small as this should be able to ward
off the attack of one of those tremendous Boskonian ships of space."
"But she _can't_! What made you think she could?"
"Your own statement--or were you thinking of purely Lyranian dangers,
not realizing that Ladora, of course, called Cleonie as soon as you
showed your teeth, and that Cleonie as surely called the Lensman or
some other Boskonian? And that they must have ships of war not too far
away?"
"Heavens, no! It never occurred to me!"
Clarrissa thought briefly. It wouldn't do any good to call Kim. Both
the _Dauntless_ and the _Velan_ were coming, as fast as they
could come, but it would be a day or so yet before they arrived.
Besides, he would tell her to lay off, which was exactly what she was
not going to do. She turned her thought back to the matriarch.
"Two of our best ships are coming, and I hope they get here first. In
the meantime, we'll just have to work fast and keep our detectors full
out. Anyway, Cleonie won't know that I'm looking for her--I haven't
even mentioned her to anyone except you."
"No?" pessimistically. "Cleonie knows that _I_ am looking for
it, and since it knows by now that I am with you, it would think that
both of us were hunting it even if we weren't. But we are nearly close
enough now; I must concentrate. Fly around quite low over the city,
please."
"QX. I'll tune in with you, too. 'Two heads,' you know." Clarrissa
learned Cleonie's pattern, tuned to it, and combed the city while Helen
was getting ready.
"She isn't here, unless she's behind one of those thought-screens," the
Red Lensman remarked. "Can you tell?"
"Thought-screens! The Boskonians had a few of them, but none of us ever
did. How can you find them? Where are they?"
"One there--two over there. They stick out like big black spots on a
white screen. Can't you see them? I supposed that your scanners were
the same as mine, but apparently they aren't. Take a quick peek at them
with the spy--you work it like so. If they've got spy-ray blocks up,
too, we'll have to go down there and blast."
"Politicians only," Helen reported, after a moment's manipulation of
the suddenly familiar instrument. "They need killing, of course, on
general principles, but perhaps we shouldn't take time for that now.
The next place to look is a few degrees east of north of here."
* * * * *
Cleonie was not, however, in that city. Nor in the next, nor the next.
But the speedster's detector screens remained blank and the two allies,
so much alike physically, so different mentally, continued their hunt.
There was opposition, of course--all that the planet afforded--but
Clarrissa's second-stage mind took care of the few items of offense
which her speedster's defenses could not handle.
Finally two things happened almost at once. Clarrissa found Cleonie,
and Helen saw a dim and fuzzy white spot upon the lower left-hand
corner of the detector plate.
"Can't be ours," the Red Lensman decided instantly. "Almost exactly the
wrong direction. Boskonians. Ten minutes--twelve at most--before we
have to flit. Time enough--I hope--if we work fast."
She shot downward, going inert and matching intrinsics at a lack of
altitude which would have been suicidal for any ordinary pilot. She
rammed her beryllium-bronze torpedo through the first-floor wall of a
forbidding, almost windowless building--its many stories of massive
construction, she knew, would help no end against the heavy stuff so
sure to come. Then, while every hitherto-hidden offensive arm of the
Boskone-coached Lyranians converged, screaming through the air and
crashing and clanking along the city's streets, Clarrissa probed and
probed and probed. Cleonie had locked herself into a veritable dungeon
cell in the deepest subbasement of the structure. She was wearing a
thought-screen, too, but she had been releasing it, for an instant at a
time, to see what was going on. One of those instants was enough--that
screen would never work again. She had been prepared to kill herself at
need; but her full-charged weapons emptied themselves futilely against
a massive lock and she threw her vial of poison across the corridor and
into an empty cell.
So far, so good; but how to get her out of there? Physical approach was
out of the question. There must be somebody around, somewhere, with
keys, or hacksaws, or sledge-hammers, or something. Ha--oxyacetylene
torches! Very much against their wills, two Lyranian mechanics trundled
a dolly along a corridor, into an elevator. The elevator went down four
levels. The artisans began to burn away a barrier of thick steel bars.
By this time the whole building was rocking to the detonation of high
explosives. Much more of that kind of stuff and she would be trapped
by the sheer mass of the rubble. She was handling six jackass-stubborn
people already and that Boskonian warship was coming fast; she did not
quite know whether she was going to get away with this or not.
But somehow, from the unplumbed and unplumbable depths which made
her what she so uniquely was, the Red Lensman drew more and ever
more power. Kinnison, who had once made heavy going of handling
two-and-a-fraction Lensmen, guessed, but never did learn from her, what
his beloved wife really did that day.
Even Helen, only a few feet away, could not understand what was
happening. Left parsecs behind long since, the Lyranian could not
help in any particular, but could only stand and wonder. She knew
that this queerly powerful Lens-bearing Earth-person--white-faced,
sweating, strung to the very snapping-point as she sat motionless at
her board--was exerting some terrible, some tremendous force. She knew
that the heaviest of the circling bombers sheered away and crashed. She
knew that certain mobile projectors, a few blocks away, did not come
any closer. She knew that Cleonie, against every iota of her mulish
Lyranian will, was coming toward the speedster. She knew that many
persons, who wished intensely to bar Cleonie's progress or to shoot her
down, were physically unable to act. She had no faint idea, however, of
how such work could possibly be done.
* * * * *
Cleonie came aboard and Clarrissa snapped out of her trance. The
speedster nudged and blasted its way out of the wrecked stronghold,
then tore a hole through protesting air into open space. Clarrissa
shook her head, wiped her face, studied a tiny double dot in the
corner of the plate opposite the one now showing clearly the Boskonian
warship, and set her controls.
"We'll make it--I think," she announced. "Even though we're
indetectable, they, of course, know our line, and they're so much
faster that they'll be able to find us, even on their visuals, before
long. On the other hand, they must be detecting our ships now, and my
guess is that they won't dare follow us long enough to do us any harm.
Keep an eye on things, Helen, while I find out what Cleonie really
knows. And while I think of it, what's your real name? It isn't polite
to keep on calling you by a name that you never even heard of until you
met us."
"Helen," the Lyranian made surprising answer. "I liked it, so I
adopted it--officially."
"Oh. That's a compliment, really, to both Kim and me. Thanks."
The Red Lensman then turned her attention to her captive, and as mind
fitted itself precisely to mind her eyes began to gleam in gratified
delight. Cleonie was a real find; this seemingly unimportant Lyranian
knew a lot--an immense lot--about things that no adherent of the
Patrol had ever heard before. And she, Clarrissa Kinnison, would be
the first of all the Gray Lensmen to learn of them! Therefore, taking
her time now, she allowed every detail of the queer but fascinating
picture-story to imprint itself upon her mind.
* * * * *
And Karen and Camilla, together in Tregonsee's ship, glanced at each
other and exchanged flashing thoughts. Should they interfere? They
hadn't had to so far, but it began to look as though they would have
to, now--it would wreck their mother's mind, if she could understand.
She probably could not understand it, any more than Cleonie could--but
even if she could, she had so much more inherent stability, even than
Dad, that she might be able to take it, at that. Nor would she ever
leak, even to Dad--and Dad, bless his tremendous boots, was not the
type to pry. Maybe, though, just to be on the safe side, it would be
better to screen the stuff, and to edit, if necessary, anything about
Eddore. The two girls synchronized their minds all imperceptibly with
their mother's and Helen's, and learned.
* * * * *
The time was in the unthinkably distant past; the location was
unthinkably remote in space. A huge planet circled slowly about a
cooling sun. Its atmosphere was not air; its liquid was not water. Both
were noxious; composed in large part of compounds even yet unknown to
man.
Yet life was there; a race which was even then ancient. Not sexual,
this race. Not androgynous, nor hermaphroditic, but absolutely sexless.
Except for the many who died by physical or by mental violence, its
members lived endlessly. After many hundreds of thousands of years each
being, having reached his capacity to live and to learn, divided into
two individuals; each of which, although possessing _in toto_ the
parents' memories, knowledges, skills, and powers, had also a renewed
and increased capacity.
And, since life was, there had been competition. Competition for power.
Knowledge was desirable only insofar as it contributed to power. Power
for the individual--the group--the city. Wars raged--_what_
wars!--and internecine strifes which lasted while planets came into
being, grew old, and died. And finally, to the few survivors, there
came peace. Since they could not kill each other, they combined their
powers and hurled them outward--together they would dominate and rule
solar systems--regions--the Galaxy itself--the entire macrocosmic
Universe.
Amorphous, amoeboid, each could assume at will any imaginable
form, could call into being members to handle any possible tool.
Nevertheless, as time went on they used their bodies less and less.
More and more they used their minds, to bring across gulfs of space
and to enslave other races, to labor under their direction. By nature
and by choice they were bound to their own planet; few indeed were the
planets upon which their race could possibly live. Also, it was easier
to rejuvenate their own world, or to move it to a younger sun, than
to enforce and to supervise the myriads of man-hours of slave labor
necessary to rebuild any planet to their needs. Thus, then, they lived
and ruled by proxy an ever-increasing number of worlds.
Although they had long since learned that their asexuality was
practically unique, that bisexual life dominated the universe, this
knowledge served only to stiffen their determination to rule, and
finally to change to their own better standards, that universe. They
were still seeking a better proxy race; the more nearly asexual a race,
the better. One race, the denizens of a planet of a variable sun,
approached that idea closely. So did the Kalonians, whose women had
only one function in life--the production of men.
Now these creatures had learned of the matriarchs of Lyrane. That
they were physically females meant nothing; to the Eddorians one sex
was just as good--or as bad--as the other. The Lyranians were strong;
not tainted by the weaknesses which seemed to characterize all races
believing in even near-equality of the sexes. Lyranian science had been
trying for centuries to do away with the necessity for males; in a few
more generations, with some help, that goal could be achieved and the
perfect proxy race would have been developed.
It is not to be supposed that this story was obtained in such
straight-forward fashion as it is presented here. It was dim, murky,
confused. Cleonie never had understood it. Clarrissa understood it
better, but less accurately; for in the version the Red Lensman
received, one minor change was made--in it the Ploorans and the
Eddorians were one and the same race! She understood, however, that
that actually unnamed and to her unknown race was the highest of
Boskone, and the place of the Kalonians in the Boskonian scheme was
plain enough.
"I am giving you this story," the Kalonian Lensman told Cleonie coldly,
"not of my own free will but because I must. I hate you as much as you
hate me. What I would like to do to you, you may imagine. Nevertheless,
so that your race may have its chance, I am to take you on a trip and,
if possible, make a Lensman out of you. Come with me." And, urged by
her jealousy of Helen, her seething ambition, and probably, if the
truth were to be known, by an Eddorian mind, Cleonie went.
There is no need to dwell at length upon the horrors, the atrocities,
of that trip; of which the matter of Eddie the meteor miner was only
a very minor episode. It will suffice to say that Cleonie was very
good Boskonian material; that she learned fast and passed all tests
successfully.
"That's all," the Black Lensman informed her then, "and I'm glad to see
the last of you. You'll get a message when to hop over to Nine and pick
up your Lens. Flit--and I hope that the first Gray Lensman you meet
will ram his Lens down your throat and turn you inside out."
"The same to you, brother, and many of them," Cleonie sneered. "Or,
better, when my race supplants yours as Proxies of Power, I shall give
myself the pleasure of doing just that to you."
* * * * *
"Clarrissa! Clarrissa! Pay attention, please!" The Red Lensman came to
herself with a start--Helen had been thinking at her, with increasing
power, for seconds. The _Velan's_ blunt nose filled half the plate.
In minutes, then Clarrissa and her party were in Kinnison's private
quarters in the _Dauntless_. There had been warm mental greetings;
physical demonstrations would come later. Worsel broke in.
"Excuse it, Kim, but seconds count. Better we split, don't you think?
You find out what the score around here is, from Clarrissa, and take
steps, and I'll chase that Boskonian. He's flitting--fast."
"QX, Slim," and the _Velan_ disappeared.
"You remember Helen, of course, Kim." Kinnison bent his head, flipping
a quick grin at his wife, who had spoken aloud. The Lyranian, trying to
unbend, half-offered her hand, but when he did not take it she withdrew
it as enthusiastically as she had twenty years before. "And this is
Cleonie, the ... the wench I've been telling you about. You knew her
before."
"Yeah. She hasn't changed much--still as unbarbered a mess as ever. If
you've got what you want, Chris, we'd better--"
"Kimball Kinnison, I demand Cleonie's life!" came Helen's vibrant
thought. She had snatched one of Clarrissa's DeLameters and was
swinging it into line when she was caught and held as though in a vise.
"Sorry, Toots," the Gray Lensman's thought was more than a little grim.
"Nice little girls don't play so rough. 'Scuse me, Chris, for dipping
into your dish. Take over."
"Do you really mean that, Kim?"
"Yes. It's your meat--slice it as thick or as thin as you please."
"Even to letting her go?"
"Check. What else could you do? In a lifeboat--I'll even show the jade
how to run it."
"Oh, Kim--"
"Quartermaster! Kinnison. Please check Number Twelve lifeboat and break
it out. I am loaning it to Cleonie of Lyrane II."