They came of peoples which had no history, only legend and tradition.
And they learned--
That there was such a thing as history, recorded in books; Relez showed
them such a book, which they could not read, because neither of them
could understand more than the code markings on mechanical parts.
That the storied ancients, whose powers were marvelous and whose end
was terrible, had really existed and had left their record in writing.
How after the great wars that had almost seared his life from the
Earth's surface, when man's weapons--and his medical science--had
wiped out every creature save the indestructible destroyer himself,
the machine races had risen from the shreds of technical knowledge
hoarded by the scattered groups of survivors and crystallized by their
descendants in the rigid mold of tradition. And how that last war had
never ended, but had passed into the nature of things in the unending
war of the predatory machines against the feeders on sunlight, and of
the races of land and air and sea for mastery of their habitats.
"But no matter who wins, no man is master; the machine is the ruler,
and man is its slave. It is against that we have begun to fight, now,
after all the long dark ages...."
For one place on all the harried Earth had provided the relative
security and permanence needed to keep alive a spark of the ancients'
culture. That was aboard the great ships at sea, that had been built
and armed to resist every hellish technique of destruction known to the
dead age of their building, and were wholly invulnerable to today's
weapons. Those were floating cities in truth, with atomic power plants,
machine shops, dwellings, hospitals, storehouses, recreation space,
libraries--and in the later times, when their first purpose as warships
had been almost forgotten, classrooms and laboratories where the
knowledge of the past was dredged up from the memories of men and from
the books, and even added to in some ways.
"We have built up the nucleus of a new civilization on the sea," said
Relez solemnly. "Now the time has come for it to take root on the dry
land. But first the continents must be pacified. The world must be
taken from the warring machines and given back to man.
"We possess some of the old ones' weapons, and we could try to use
them to enforce our will, as they did. And I think our end would be
like theirs. But we have invented some new devices to serve the cause
of peace. The anti-ionization field is chief among those. I myself had
some share in developing it--my title of 'captain' means leader of a
group of scientists, not master of a ship."
"Is there no defense against the field?" asked Torcred shrewdly.
* * * * *
Relez eyed him thoughtfully. "There are ways of avoiding the effect,"
he admitted, "but they are not likely to occur to these custom-bound
people. And once they are liberated from the tyranny of the machine--"
"Your method of liberation," said Torcred, "is to reduce everyone to an
equal helplessness, and let them fight it out among themselves?"
"You might put it that way. I'm afraid there will be some bloodshed.
The predatory peoples, naturally, will have the hardest time at first.
But--Suppose _you_ tell _me_ what you think will happen, for example,
when the terrapins come in contact, under the new conditions, with
their old enemies and prey, the trailer people."
"Why--at first they will be afraid to venture out of the camp. Then,
when the food supply runs low, they will begin to think of attacking
the stalled trailer herd on foot. A quick raid, by determined men with
knives and clubs, might work once or twice, but not after that, because
the trailer people are much more numerous, and, once recovered from the
first confusion and organized, they could defend themselves...."
"But if you were chief of the terrapins, what would you do?"
Torcred thought hard, intrigued in spite of himself. "I think--I would
try to get some of the sun-machines the trailers use. In order to have
an independent supply of food and power, you understand. That lightning
raid, perhaps--but it would be hard to dismantle the screens and escape
with them. No, I think I would try to bargain with the trailers. They
have no radar scanners; if their suspicions could be allayed, they'd be
willing to trade a few of their sun-screens for some terrapin sighting
devices."
"Not realizing that those have lost their value, now that all aircraft
are grounded," said Relez with a smile. "It might work. And overcoming
the suspicions may prove easier than you think, when men begin to meet
each other under the open sky, and realize that their hates never
belonged to them, but to the machines they served...."
"I don't know about the buzzards," murmured Ladna dubiously.
Relez disregarded that. "What we need now is helpers. The
anti-ionization field is the catalyst of peace, but if it is to work
quickly, the confused peoples must have guidance.
"We've done a little advance missionary work among the more civilized
and approachable tribes, both in the flesh, and by teleprojection, as
Dunu appeared to you in the wilderness. The televiewer, incidentally,
is another of our new developments; the old machines of that type used
both a transmitter and receiver, but this one works on the principle
you can see once in a while in nature, when atmospheric refraction is
just right to reassemble the light from a distant object and project
its picture in the air. Only very recently we perfected the reverse
application of the effect, so that under good conditions we can project
a three-dimensional image--mirage--over large distances.
"But those methods are inadequate for working directly on the minds of
the peoples. Few as we are, we can't appear openly as authors of the
change; for the time being, let them think it a natural phenomenon.
However," his eyes met Torcred's and held them in a challenging gaze,
"very much could be done to smooth a people's way toward civilization
by an agent who belongs by birth to it...."
"I was a terrapin once," said Torcred steadily. "Now I am a man of
the race of man. And in the eyes of the terrapins I am an outcast,
accursed."
"I know. But your very return, when they think you dead, may help the
break-down of the old habits and customs.... I don't say it will be
easy. But I believe the desert has sharpened your wits."
* * * * *
Torcred considered. The mark on his forehead burned, but he remembered
how there had been compassion in Vazcled's face even as he wielded the
knife, and that his worst enemy was discreditably dead in the desert.
"Perhaps," he muttered.
"If you go back," said Ladna quietly, "I go too."