"Even when they begin to conquer the taboos," I cried, through clenched
teeth, "you still try to prevent it!"
"No, Captain; you've got it wrong. I just wanted--you--you had no right
to give her the Hayden." Baiel spoke in a hoarse, nervous whisper,
backing away from me slowly.
"Dayhan's my wife."
"She's still a primitive animal."
I lunged at him. He turned and ran. I would have followed, but Dayhan
began to call after me frantically. I returned to help her. The ground
beneath her was stained red; a jagged blade of ice had ripped a deep
gash in her leg.
With my knife I cut a strip from my fur jacket and wound it as a
tourniquet above the pulsing wound. My fingers were numb with cold. I
worked slowly and awkwardly, but at last the bleeding ceased. Dayhan
tried to stand, but she could not.
"Leave me here, my Lord," she whispered. "Brother glacier is angry; he
wants my blood."
"It was simply an accident, Dayhan. The glacier had nothing to do with
it."
"I trod on tabooed ground. I defied him."
"Man makes the taboos and the punishments and the sacrifices!"
"So you have said, my Lord, and yet--"
"I have taught you truth. You walked alone and without harm on tabooed
ground. You must tell that to your people. The harm came to you after
you found us, Dayhan--from Baiel. Only man is cruel to man, not the
gods."
I pulled her arm around my shoulder and we began the slow, painful walk
back to the village. We had to stop frequently to rest. Twice I loosed
the tourniquet to permit the blood to circulate in her lower leg.
It was four hours before we reached the edge of the forest. There two
of my men met us. They had begun to search the forest for me when Baiel
returned to the village alone. We improvised a stretcher for Dayhan and
carried her between us. The bleeding of her wound had stopped. With a
pinpoint Hayden beam, I turned a drift of snow into steam and used the
boiled water residue to cleanse the caked blood away from the cut. I
seared a strip of skin and used it as a bandage. On the gently swaying
stretcher Dayhan closed her eyes and slept.
* * * * *
When we were still a quarter of a mile from the village, the chief and
a small band of his hunters met us on the forest trail.
"The sun god speaks to us in a giant voice," the chief said. "It
thunders in every corner of our village!"
"What does the god say?"
"He orders to take up our goods and go. He gives us the hunting ground
of the dead, beyond the fire mountains."
"And your people fear to obey?"
"No. Your sun god is all-powerful. It is your own people who prevent
us. They hold the priest, Baiel, with his followers, imprisoned in the
cave by means of your weapons, the brothers-of-the-sun. They tell us it
is not the sun god who speaks, but Baiel himself."
"They tell you truly."
"But no man can have so great a voice as that we hear!"
So that was why Baiel had gone back to the _Olympus_! He had returned
to the village with a portable amplifier concealed under his fur cloak.
"Baiel is no priest," I told the Chief. "He speaks for no god. The
great voice you hear is made by a machine, such a thing as this weapon
that we use to slay meat for the tribe."
"You speak knowingly, Seus-man, because you, too, are a priest of the
sun. You showed us that much last night. Some of my tribe say you and
all your people are not simple priests, but brother gods."
"We are men."
"I have married my daughter to the brother-god of the sun!"
"We are men; men!"
"But have you not advised us to move, as the sun god does now? In our
blindness we have heard and not obeyed. And now the sun god gives
orders that we must be gone before he rides directly overhead; yet your
people will not allow it."
"So Baiel's putting a time limit on the migration," I mused aloud.
"Why? Tell me, Chief, how it was, from the beginning."
"As soon as you left, Seus-man, our old priest walked in the village,
declaring we would have a great sign from the sun today. Later the
priest, Baiel, returned and went into the cave, with some of your
people. We began to hear the voice of the sun. The others of your
people--the ones who carry the weapons--gathered outside, shooting
streaks of fire at the cave, but above it so that no man was harmed.
They cried to Baiel to come forth and give himself to them. He refused,
and so things stand. I came seeking you. Only you can intercede with
your priests so they allow us to obey the god. Come quickly, for our
time is short."
We gave Dayhan's stretcher to four of the hunters. I turned to follow
the chief back to the village. Only then did he seem to notice his
daughter. With deference he glanced at her pale face. Trembling, he
asked:
"She is dead?"
"No; but she has been hurt."
"Her Lord has punished her?"
"She was harmed by a piece of ice."
"Brother glacier still means to be revenged on us! If we do not hasten
to obey the voice of the sun, who will protect us?"
"Protect yourselves, as men. No god has any power to equal yours."
"You speak as a priest of the sun. You hold the weapon of the sun in
your hand. You are not like us."
"I am no different. I am a man, the husband of your daughter. Here,
take my weapon." I thrust the Hayden into his hand. "Does it make you
different? Are you transformed into a god?"
He caressed the cold metal, slowly raising the nozzle and pointing
it at a drift of snow. The red flame sputtered and steam swirled up,
coating the pines overhead with a film of ice.
"The power of the sun," he whispered. "Come, Lord, we must go quickly
to our people."
In the village I found the men of my faction arranged in a semi-circle
in front of the cave mouth. Huddled behind them was perhaps
three-fourths of the tribe, the women my men had taken as mates and
their families. The rest of the tribe was packed densely at the mouth
of the cave, swaying and shouting their worship as the voice of Baiel
thundered at intervals out of the darkness of the cavern.
One of my men saluted raggedly, explaining how the situation had
developed. He added: "We have been aiming above their heads, trying to
frighten them away from the cave. No luck, so far."
"Of course Baiel's people aren't armed?"
"No, but too many of the tribe would be killed if we tried to rush the
cave."
"I think we can starve them out."
To hesitate was the natural result of our psycho-processing. Violence,
we had always been taught, was the resort of the disoriented, not a
solution to any problem. Even now we could not bring ourselves to give
up the pattern of our Earthly civilization.
Since it was the prescribed rational procedure, I tried to talk to the
tribe. From the beginning my argument was weak, for I was opposing the
migration which I had myself advocated. It meant nothing to them when
I tried to point out the difference in motivation; but it symbolized
everything to me. The migration to a better land had to come as a
result of their conquest of tribal taboos, not as an exchange of
allegiances from brother glacier to the sun god.
* * * * *
As soon as Baiel heard my voice, he began to jeer at me over the
amplifier. When I made no reply, his tone gradually changed. Over and
over he repeated the orders of the sun god, that the migration must
begin by high noon. But his mockery was slowly tainted with fear, as
the sun mounted the heavens and my armed men still held the tribe in
the village.
The stretcher bearers arrived with Dayhan. She was awake. She sat up
against my shoulder, holding tight to my hand. Softly she spoke to the
tribe as I had:
"It is not the gods that rule us. There are no taboos; the glacier is
but a thing of ice, without life. I have seen for myself. I have walked
unharmed on the tabooed ground. In truth, we must migrate to the south,
but my Lord has taught us that we must go of our own will and not
because of fear of the sun god."
She was one of the tribe. They knew her as they knew their own
children. She spoke in their words, in terms of their concepts. It
should have convinced them, but it did not. Instead they retreated from
her, cringingly respectful, muttering among themselves that Dayhan's
mating had changed her into a brother-god.
Suddenly there was a stirring at the cave mouth. The massed tribesmen
shifted aside reluctantly. Eight of the women who had been in Baiel's
faction slid down toward us, weeping with fear. At once Baiel's voice
boomed out:
"The time is up. You have not obeyed. I was sent by the sun god to lead
you to safety, and you have not heeded me. The god will strike, now,
at the glacier and tear this ground from beneath your feet. I give you
one chance more. Offer up Captain Theusaman in sacrifice and I, Baiel,
will lead you to a new world. But you must make the sacrifice at once.
The god grows impatient."
My men closed around Dayhan and me protectively, but at first there was
no need. The concept bewildered the tribe. They had accepted me, too,
as priest of the sun; the god could not demand my blood. According to
the theory of their superstitions, it made no sense.
One of the women who had fled from the cave was brought to me.
White-faced, she twisted her hands together in anguish while she talked.
"We didn't know he'd done it, Captain Theusaman--I swear it!"
"Who?"
"Baiel--this morning at the _Olympus_. He just told us."
"But what? Speak up! Tell me!"
"He put on the automatic power in the control room, timed to energize
the dorsal tubes at noon."
"No harm in that. The tubes are blown. The blast will simply send open
flame soaring into the sky."
"There's forty hours' residue in the tank. Baiel thought the sight of
the flame would terrify the tribe into obeying him. But he says the
ship was overturned this morning, after he had set the dials; so the
broken tubes are pointing down toward the base of the glacier."
I understood the woman's terror, then, and my own body tensed with
cold fear. Instead of making a harmless display, the sun-hot energy,
blasting through the naked dorsal tubes for the next forty hours, would
be fed into the glacier and the ground beneath it. In half that time
the liquefying flame could pierce the planetary crust and reach its
molten core.
As I sprang to my feet the first shock stabbed into the frozen ground.
The shattering explosion of the crumbling glacier rocked the air. In
the distance a cloud of steam arose, blood red from the flames raging
beneath it. In seconds the sun was blotted over with thick clouds. Hot
rain began to fall.
The earth quivered so violently it was almost impossible to stand. Yet
still Baiel's voice boomed through the village.
"Give me the blood of Theusaman and I spare the tribe!"
From priest, he had become the sun god himself.
The rain fell in a deluge. The snow dissolved into slush, and the
village ran with mud.
Dayhan screamed. I turned and saw one of the tribal hunters atop the
stone pedestal, drawing careful aim on me with his bow and arrow. I
caught the shaft in the air with a wide angle beam from my Hayden.
"Give me the blood of Theusaman!" Baiel cried.
The quaking increased steadily. Small landslides of stone began
to slither from the face of the cliff. The roof of the cave shook
and sagged. The tribe backed away, swirling around me in fury and
brandishing their spears in the bleary air.
The distant rending of the glacier reached a new climax of thunder, and
the deluge swelled into a torrent. The draining water became a stream,
racing muddily through the village and eating at the crumbling cliffs.
The skies darkened as if it were dusk. It was difficult to recognize
faces in the frenzy of squirming bodies.
Driven by the madness of Baiel's chanting voice, many of the young
hunters threw themselves upon us. We used Haydens only as a last
resort, and the sluggish, hand-to-hand fighting in the rising mud went
on indecisively. No one was badly hurt. It was too easy to escape
clutching arms; it was too hard to know the face of friend from foe
in the gloom. Shouting voices were drowned by the rising wind, the
ceaseless din of crumbling glacial ice.
Abruptly the battle was over. A terrified whisper swept the throng:
the god was gone! Someone had looked into the cave and found it empty.
Baiel and ten of his faction had fled; thirty of the tribe had departed
with them.
* * * * *
The shock was paralyzing to those who stayed behind. The tribe began to
wail its lamentation. The god had deserted them! I moved from group to
group, repeating my familiar theme:
"The gods can neither harm nor save you. That you must do for
yourselves."
It had no effect. They stared at me with vacant eyes. They repeated
dumbly in reply: "The sun god is gone. He leaves us to the mercy of
brother glacier."
The stream coursing through the village had risen slowly until it
became a raging river. Still the tribe made no effort to escape. They
had violated their code of the supernatural, and they believed they
must resign themselves to their punishment. I watched as a woman was
carried away by the flood, drowned screaming beneath a part of the
cliff which washed down upon her.
During a momentary lull in the din, the old chief mounted the swaying
stone pedestal, brandishing the Hayden I had given him.
"The sun god has not gone," he cried. "See, I share his power, and I
know he is still among us." He pointed the Hayden at the mouth of the
cave, and the stone crumbled in the caress of red flame. "Seus-man is
the sun god; Baiel was false, sent of evil things."
"Seus-man," the crowd whispered. After a moment, they began to shout
with new hope. "Seus-man! Seus-man! Seus! Seus!"
On their shoulders they lifted me up and carried me to the pedestal. As
I began to speak, I saw a wall of water moving down upon us, crested by
a foaming wave. It was the first flood tide from the melting glacier.
If it reached the village unbroken, the tribe would be wiped out.
I snatched the Hayden from the Chief, aiming the point of flame at the
base of the cliff. Dirt and granite toppled into the path of the flood.
The tribe dropped on its knees in the thick mud, shouting praise of my
name.
My crude dam might hold for an hour, certainly no longer. I had no time
to convince them by persuasion. It would be opposing the full violence
of reality with the thin web of philosophy. The important thing at the
moment was to lead the tribe to safety.