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THE BUTTONED SKY
By Geoff St. Reynard
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of
Science and Fantasy August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness.
But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazed
fearfully at--THE BUTTONED SKY
CHAPTER I
The squire he sat in Dolfya Town,
He swilled the blood-dark wine:
"O who can blight my happiness,
Or face the power that's mine?"
Then up there spoke his daughter fair:
"The priest can end your joy;
The globe can sap your might away,
And the Mink can you destroy!"
--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The day that Revel killed a god, he woke early. There was a bitter taste
in his mouth, and a pain in his ear where somebody'd hit him during a
shebeen brawl the night before. He rolled over on his back. The bed was
a hollowed place in the earth floor, filled with leaves and dried grass
and spread with yellow-brown mink skins sewn into a big blanket; he'd
slept on it every night of his twenty-eight years, but this morning it
felt hard and uncomfortable.
The water gourd was empty. In the cold gray mists of dawn he groped his
way sleepily to the well behind the hut, and drew up the bucket.
"Damn the gentry!" he burst out. The bucket, an ancient thing made of
oak slats pegged together with wooden dowels, was half filled with dirt
and rotten brush. "Curse their lousy carcasses to hell!" he yelled, and,
suddenly scared, looked around to see if perhaps a god was floating
somewhere near him. But no yellow glimmering showed in the mists.
Laboriously he cleaned out the well, dropping the bucket time after time
and dragging up loads of trash. Some roving band of gentry had fouled
the water for sport. Anything that hurt the ruck, made them more work or
injured them in any way, was sport for the squirarchy.
At last he got a bucket of cold and almost clean water, filled the big
gourd and carried it back to the one-room hut. The morning that had
begun badly was getting worse; his mother's limp was painful to see; she
must have had a hard night. Bent and gray and as juiceless as the grass
of their beds, she slept more lightly and fretfully with every passing
month. Many years before a squire had ridden her down in the lanes of
Dolfya Town, as she scurried out of the path of his great stallion, and
her broken leg had mended crookedly. A few hours on the mink-covered bed
crippled her up so that moving was an agony.
With the impious brain at the center of his skull--Revel had long before
decided that he had a number of brains, one obedient, one rebellious,
one dull, one keen and inquisitive, and so on--with the impious brain he
now cursed the gods and the gentry and the priests, and everyone above
the ruck who preyed on them and made their lives so stinking awful. If
he had thought then of killing a god, the idea would have seemed
pleasant indeed. But quite impossible, of course, for a man of the ruck
did not touch a god, much less slay one.
He did not think of such a thing, but cursed the gods briefly and then
turned off his impious brain and began to wolf down his food. He paid no
attention to what he ate--it was the same old bread of wild barley
seeds, the same old boiled rabbit.
When he finished, he glanced at his mother, feeling sorry for her,
wishing that she would go to the shebeens with him and have at least a
little happiness before she died. He wondered if she had ever known any
joy, any hope such as he had in drunken flashes now and then of belief
that life might some day be better for the ruck. He shook his head,
grabbed his miner's pick, booted his brother in the ribs to waken him,
and left the miserable hut to walk to the mine for his day's work.
The day was brightening, and above him in concentric circles to the
horizon and beyond hovered the eternal red and blue buttons. He looked
up grimly. Always there, in all the spoken history of man, stretched
above the world to keep watch on every action of the ruck. The buttons
were full of gods, omnipotent, omnipresent.
The mine was a mile from his hut, which lay on the outskirts of Dolfya.
It was halfway down a long valley, a gut between hills pitted with many
other mines. There coal was dug for the gentry and the priests. He
walked up to the entrance, gave his name telepathically to the god-guard
at the top of the shaft, and went down the ladders until he'd reached
his level. Another god passed him there, its aura of energy just
touching his skin and tingling it into small bumps.
* * * * *
Shutting off the thoughts of his various brains from any probing mind
that might be eavesdropping, he said to himself, Always, always they're
near a man! You go out of your hut and there's a god, a big golden globe
hanging in the air shoving its tentacles at you and reading your mind.
You come down the mine shaft and every hundred feet or so you see the
yellow luminosity. Why can't they leave us alone! Why can't they stick
to their temples, and exact their worship on Orbsday, instead of all
week long, all day long, every day in the year!
He came to his work place, a dead-end tunnel. Jerran was there before
him, as usual. Revel grinned at him. Jerran was a runty wisp of a man,
with a face the color of old straw, and he had been Revel's friend since
the day he came to the mine from distant Hakes Town by the sea. A
wonderful drinking companion, Jerran, but he wouldn't brawl ... strange!
He was forever pulling Revel out of fights and trying to teach him
serenity.
As Revel greeted him, he involuntarily glanced at the end of the tunnel.
There, behind a carefully casual erection of boulders, lay their secret
cave. They'd broken into it the morning before, and after no more than a
hasty glimpse of unknown wonders, and a check to see that no globes were
in sight, they'd walled up the opening and begun to dig along the
shaft's sides. Revel wasn't quite sure why he had followed Jerran's lead
in keeping it secret, but the brain which had decided to do it must be
the rebellious one. All secrets were taboo to the ruck, who were
required to report all finds to the gentry or the god-guards.
Now a globe came drifting down the corridor, and Revel got quickly to
work, prying coal from a vein with his pick. The thing passed him,
flicking his mind lightly with its own, and went on to the end of the
tunnel. He watched it from the tail of his eye. Its glow brightened with
interest; it shifted back and forth before the rampart of rocks.
They hadn't kept a tight enough check on their excitement yesterday! The
globes could sense emotions long after the man who'd had them left a
spot, and if the emotion were anger or grief or strong excitement, the
globes could detect their residue as much as forty-eight hours later.
The thing floated back to them, briskly now, and ordered Revel
telepathically to pull down some of the rocks at the end.
He eyed it coolly, his various brains walled with the protective screen
that he had learned to erect between his thoughts and the outside world.
This screen was made of shallow ideas, humdrum speculations on prosaic
things--the last woman he'd had, the good feeling he got from working
this rich vein of coal after some days of poor luck, even (to make the
god think it was hearing secret desires) a wish that he might taste the
wine that the gentry drank. He could throw up the screen and forget it,
using his core of brains for serious plans.
A dozen rocks displaced, he thought, and we're doomed. For not telling
the gods about the cave, he and Jerran would be given to the squires for
the next big hunt.
So, without much hope of living through the next minute, but believing
it was the only thing he could do now, he shoved Jerran to one side,
raised his pick and slammed it with all his might into the center of the
small, gold, eight-tentacled sphere.
And Revel had killed a god!
The feel of the pick slashing through it told him that: it was like
hitting an overripe melon. The globe recoiled, dragged itself off the
pick, and sank toward the floor, wobbling and dripping yellow ooze, with
its aura of energy fading quickly into air. Jerran said quietly, "No
others in sight. We're lucky!" and began to make a hole in a pile of
discarded rocks. "Help me hide it, Revel."
"You can't hide it," he said dully. "They're telepathic, after all. It
must have signaled its consorts."
"They can't hear or send messages through rock," said Jerran, working
away. Revel automatically started to help him.
"How do you know?"
"We've proved it."
Revel heard the phrase, wondered who "we" might be; but so much had
happened in the last seconds that he did not question Jerran. He
couldn't absorb all the shattering facts. A man could not only touch a
god, he could murder it! The gods were not all-powerful, for they could
not perform telepathy if rock were in the way. Truly it was a morning of
wonders. The world was falling around him.
* * * * *
He stared at the limp corpse of the globe. The tentacles were already
shriveling up, the emanation of energy that surrounded the living orbs
was gone. He bent, sniffed; no odor. He peered at it keenly, in the soft
blue light of the mine's lanterns, then straightened.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
He spun on one heel, the pick arcing round to gut whoever was behind
him. He had a glimpse of a short red beard and a popping walleye, and
stopped his whirl by an instantaneous checking of his whole muscular
system. The pick's point, still splattered with god's gore, was nudging
his brother's belly.
"Nobody could have halted such a swing but you, Revel," said Rack
absently. His good eye, ice blue and sharp as a bone needle, was fixed
on the dead globe. "What happened?"
"An accident," said Jerran. "The god interposed itself between your
brother's pick and the coal."
"That's right," said Revel. He had been lying to his brother for years,
but he never grew reconciled to it; still, Rack was a man with but one
brain, and that one servile and obedient to every whim of the gentry,
the priests, the gods. So he had to be lied to.
Rack brought his gaze to Revel's tense face. "I got in the way of your
pick," he said heavily. "You have the keenest nerves, the strongest body
in the mines. This was no accident."
Revel began to grow cold in the head and the bowels. If Rack was
convinced that he'd slain the god on purpose, then he'd report him. The
religion that held the world so tightly was greater than any family
bonds. He looked up at Rack. The man was a giant towering four inches
over Revel's six feet one, and sixty pounds heavier. Rack's eyes were
blue and white, Revel's lustrous brown; the elder's hair and beard were
flame-colored, the younger had a sleek chocolate-brown thatch with a
hint of rich black in its sheen, and was clean-shaven.
I'd hate to kill you, big man, thought Revel, but if I must, to save my
neck, I will.
Jerran thrust his pick under the flaccid corpse and tossed it with one
quick motion into the hole. He piled rocks on it, as Revel stamped the
yellow ichor out thin and stringy, spread rock dust and jetty coal
fragments over it till no sign of the murder remained.
"I'll report it," said Rack, apparently making up his mind.
"Then I'll say you did it," snapped Jerran, turning on him like a mouse
baiting a bear. "What chance would you stand in the temple against me,
whose cousin serves in the mansion of Ewyo of Dolfya?"
It was true, Jerran was slightly higher in the ruck than the brothers,
being related to a servant of the gentry. Revel hoped Rack would be
scared off by the threat. He had become perfectly cold now and could in
the blinking of an eyelash bury his pick in Rack's head, but he didn't
want to do it.
When Rack said nothing, Revel spoke. "Brother, agree to hold your
tongue, or by Orb, I'll cut you down where you stand!"
Rack glanced at his own pick. "You could do it," he acknowledged.
"You're fast enough. All right. I promise." He turned to his work
stolidly; only Revel could see that he was blazing with anger.
The three began to dig coal from the wall. Revel kept glancing at the
small Jerran. What was there to the man that he had never suspected? How
did he know that globes were stymied by rock? Why had he taken the death
of the god so lightly?
_What was Jerran, anyhow?_