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.
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.
For summer 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 snowfields 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 that 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 the 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 becomes 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 this 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 midwinter. 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 double 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 to equal them someday. 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 Anvharians 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 other 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, with sure positiveness, 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
interrupted. "I'm not infectious, nor 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?"
Before he answered, Brion carefully took a double dose of the mild
stimulant he was allowed. "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
couldn'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 laughed, 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 at the same time, 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."
"Societies 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 any
more, though. As with 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."
"How can that be done?" Brion asked. "How was it done here?"
"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,
and 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 runner-ups. 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 non-governmental 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 as if 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 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 these 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."
"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."
"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 yet for this kind of thing. 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, landmarks 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 DIS hot burning scorching
backward miserable wasteland of sands
dirty beneath and sands and sands and
consideration sands that burned had
planet burned will burn forever
the people of this planet so
crude dirty miserable barbaric
sub-human 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
H Y D R O G E N B O M B S
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-Brandd-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 in 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."