The Temple of Embassy gleamed in ethereal beauty under the beams of
Neeoorna's five moons. Its ivory pillars lifted slender fingers to the
black basalt dome. About its periphery an arched court circled to the
entrance where its massive metal gates were embossed with crouching
griffins.
Jonathan and Adatha Za passed along the magnificently marbled corridors
and entered a deep council room tiered with seats. He paused in the
doorway and stared.
On saltwhite benches the representatives of a thousand worlds turned
and looked at him. There were reptiles from Neeoorna, lavendar-tinted
Zarathzans, blobous creatures from distant Sarboola, thought things of
far galaxies, ethereal Tartulians, and queer black beasts that had the
intelligence of genius. Against one wall glass enclosures held beings
from planets so cold they needed artificial refrigeration to live here.
Near the opposite side of the chamber, steamy glass vases held other
life forms whose structure needed tremendous heat to exist.
There was a tall round rostrum of some glimmering metal raised like a
throne in the center of the room. There stood Shar Bytu, towering over
the assembled hundreds. There was a flash of his greenish forearm, and
Jonathan stepped forward.
"Approach us, Jonathan Morgan," Shar Bytu called. "We of Neeoorna and
the worlds of our universes have waited for you. You are the only Earth
creature we could contact, though we tried many. Come, join us."
As he went down the aisle, Jonathan cast sidewise glances at the
utterly alien beings that stood and looked at him. Here and there,
though, he saw others like himself and the Zarathzans. Humans. Men with
two arms and two legs. Women with lissome figures and soft red mouths.
He felt a little warmer, and held his head higher, after seeing them.
He came up the steps and stood beside Shar Bytu. The reptile nodded,
smiling somewhat.
"We had set great hopes on you. Earthling. Before your eyes you see
creatures of bafflement and wonder tinged with a near-despair. The
shadowy flames are a mystery and a menace to us. We had hoped--we had
hoped strongly, that you might bring the solution to their strange
deadliness. I know now they are as queer to you as to us."
"There's more than those flames that's queer to me," replied Jonathan
grimly. "First on the list is how I ever managed to get here at all.
Where I got all those tricky powers from--"
"That," deprecated Shar Bytu by a gesture of his six-clawed hand. "That
is but a simple explanation. You will understand it when I point it
out. You are merely the ultimate goal of evolution."
"Oh," nodded Jonathan, and wondered if he looked blank.
"What is the ultimate goal of evolution but perfection?" resumed the
reptile. "On Earth Nature has experimented with the dinosaur, the bird,
the fish. One by one she discarded them because they were not fit to
survive their environment. But all the while Nature was learning. It
was making strides. It tested and discarded. The reptile and the early
forms of bird and fish and insect life were tossed into the discard.
Nature knew there was something lacking.
"She made man. She gave man the inherent ability to fit himself to any
environment. She gave man a brain, a brain that gave off energy in the
form of thought. Measured energy. Electrical energy. Energy that can
be measured and graphed. But Nature, prodigal in her gifts, was also
prodigal with man's mind. She gave man nine million brain cells--far
more than he ever used. Only a great genius used one percent of those
cells!
"Then why was Nature so lavish? In man she had reached her absolute
ultimate. There only remained for man to perfect the tremendous,
unguessed power of his brain. By thought! By sending out beams of sheer
solid thought, by dipping into those millions of brain cells for the
ultimate power, the power that would make man--perfect!"
Jonathan closed his eyes, shuddering. He opened his eyes and looked at
Shar Bytu.
"How do you know all this?" he whispered.
* * * * *
He thought in the frightened core of him of changes in the space-time
continuum, that unguessable eons may have rolled past since last he
left the Earth. That Earth was old beyond thought--
Shar Bytu chuckled, "No, I do not have the gift of prophecy, nor am
I repeating history. Except by analogy. For as Nature has treated
us of a hundred and sixteen suns, so Nature will treat man. Nature
and evolution are inexorable, being linked with time. And so she
will produce the perfect man--the man absolutely adapted to his own
environment.
"We of Neeoorna did this to you, by certain--ah--methods. We operated
on you by means known to our scientists for ages. When we have an
atavar in our clinics, we open his mind fully to enable him to throw
off all connection with past ages. So it was with you. It was not
difficult.
"As a result, you are a man immune to harm. You have absolute control
over your body, over inanimate objects that exist about you. Once you
are aware of what danger threatens, you may avert it by so arranging
the electronic groupings within your body either to merge and blend
with the danger, or harden into a shield of antidote or corrective.
"Of course, as your brain evolved, it needed the body to feed it, to
give it energy. Thus the body became an essential part of it. But the
body changed, too, the body will respond to any environment, as a
necessary corollary of the brain.
"In short, you are the ultimate evolution. It became the perfect tool
of the mind. It did _anything_ the mind ordered it to. So of the third
planet of the Sun Duryu. Or Sol."
* * * * *
Jonathan drew a deep breath. He knew with deepest conviction that he
had heard truth, bizarre as it was. He was not a man any more. He knew
that, within himself. He was as far beyond man, or would be now, with
study, as men were above the Neanderthals. He was ultimate man. Man in
his final stage. Man multiplied by all the powers that be. Man to the
_n_th degree.
Man n_th_!
"Now that I'm here, I've failed you," he grunted hoarsely.
"Not yet. Oh, no. Many of us have failed. They are no longer--here. We
still hope that you may, out of your experiences on Earth, construct us
an edifice upon which our scientists may find some clue, some hint. All
we ask is some idea as to what it is we face. Just a thought. One tiny
clue.
"But now you must see how we fight ourselves."
A gigantic, bulbous being, a fishbelly-white due to the heavy cloud
formation that sheathed its native planet five light years from
Neeoorna, rose to his feet. He turned his many-faceted eyes to the
rostrum.
"Shar Bytu," he intoned sonorously, "I ask the right of test for us of
the planet Moratoyo. We would seek to cast a shower of atoms at the
flames. We have made recent improvements over our former weapon--"
Shar Bytu nodded, and his clawed hand brought an ebony mallet upon the
rosewood pulpit where he stood.
"So granted. Session adjourned. The guests of Neeoorna will meet at the
proving grounds."
In silence the scientists filed from their seats. Jonathan caught sight
of Adatha Za among the Zarathzan delegates, and ran to her. Her hand
nestled warmly in his. She flashed her dark eyes at him and smiled.
"I'm more out of place here than an Atheist in church," he said. "Stick
to me. I still have to get my bearings."