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Schoenberg said: "You mean& ahhh. I think I begin to see. You mean one has
really been here for five hundred years, and you-serve it?"
"I am going shortly to offer to the god of Death a special sacrifice,
consisting of some people we no longer need. I can show you. You will be
convinced."
"Yes, I believe you can show me. I believe you. Well. This puts a different
face on things, all right, but not in the way you intended. If I wouldn't help
you in a local war, I'm not going to help you in a mass extermination."
"Schoenberg, when we have done with this planet what we will, when it is
moribund, my god assures me that the ship's drive can be restored sufficiently
to take it out into space again and after a voyage of many years to reach
another star whose planets also are polluted by the foul scum of life. I and a
few others, members of my Inner Circle, will make this voyage, continuing to
bear the burden of hideous life on our own bodies that we may free many others
of it on other worlds. There are emergency recycling systems on your ship that
will nourish us adequately for years.
"The voyage, as I have said, will be many years in duration. Unless you agree
to cooperate with me from this moment on you will be brought with us as a
prisoner. You will not die. There are ways of preventing suicide, my master
assures me, things he can do to your brain when he has time to work on it.
"You will be useful on the voyage, for we will have need of a servant. You
will not be tortured-I mean, not much at any one time. I will see to it that
your sufferings never become sharp enough to set one day of your existence
apart from another. I may die before the voyage is over, but some of my
associates are young men and they will follow my orders faithfully. You
Earthmen are very long-lived, I
understand. I suppose you will-what did the old Earthmen
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call it?-go mad. No one will ever admire your exploits. There will be none to
admire. But I suppose you might continue to exist to an age of five hundred
years."
Schoenberg had not moved. Now a muscle twitched in his right cheek. His head
had bowed a very little, his shoulders were a little lower than before.
Andreas said: "I would much prefer to see you make a sporting finish, myself.
Go out with a noble gesture. If you cooperate in my plans, a different future
for you might be arranged. You will only be helping us to do what we are going
to do anyway.
"If you cooperate, I will give you"-Andreas held up a hand, thumb and
forefinger barely separated-"just a little chance, at the very end. You will
not win, but you will die nobly in the attempt."
"What kind of chance?" Schoenberg's voice was low and desperate now. He
blinked repeatedly.
"Give you a sword, let you try to hack your way past one of my fighting men,
to get to the berserker and cut it into bits. Its cabling would be quite
vulnerable to such an attack."
"You wouldn't really do that! It is your god."
Andreas waited calmly.
"How do I know that you would really do that?" The words burst out as if
involuntarily.
"You know now what I will do if you do not cooperate."
The silence in the little room stretched on and on.
Only three men, not counting a slave or two, now remained
on their feet under the pleasant trees of the gods' otherwise deserted park.
Farley and Thomas stood facing each other, their eyes meeting like those of
two strangers encountering each other by chance in a wilderness both had
thought uninhabited. In the background the priest was giving orders to the
slaves; there was the chunk of a shovel starting a new grave.
Farley looked down at what lay on the ground. Jud had not smiled at his wound
and gone off on a blithe stroll among the trees. Kelsumba was not laughing on
his way to an eternal feast with gods. Farley did not care to stay and watch
them rolled into a little pit. Feeling a slow emergence from his sensation of
invulnerability, he turned and started on the uphill road once more.
Thomas the Grabber, still wiping at his spear, came along silently and
companionably. They left the priest behind. Here the pavement of the road was
very smooth and well maintained, and it was neatly bordered with stones in a
pattern that put Farley in mind of certain formal walks on his father's large
estate.
Now, with what seemed to Farley stunning ordinariness, they were coming
through the last trees of the forest and around the road's last curve. Vistas
opened, and gardens and orchards were visible in the distance to either side.
Ahead, the road ran straight across thirty or forty meters of well-
tended lawn, and then it entered the citadel-city of the gods.
The gate by which it entered, of massive timbers banded with wrought metal,
was tightly closed just now. The high wall of the city was a blinding white in
the sun, and Farley was now close enough to see how huge and heavy its stones
were. He wondered how they had been stained or painted to make
them look like bone.
But nothing happened inside him when he beheld their goal, the place where
Thorun dwelled. Immortality was draining from him rapidly.
"Thomas," he said, slowing to a halt. "The whole thing is too-ordinary."
"How's that?" asked Thomas, amiably, stopping at his side.
Farley paused. How to explain his disappointment? He could not understand it
well himself. He said what came to his tongue, which was only: "There were
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sixty-four of us, and now there are only two."
"But how else could it have worked out?" Thomas asked reasonably.
A few weeds grew through the rocks beside Thorun's gateway. Lumps of the dried
dung of some pack animal lay at the roadside. Farley threw back his head and
closed his eyes. He groaned.
"What is it, friend?"
"Thomas, Thomas. What do you see here, what do you feel? Suddenly I am having
doubts." He looked at his companion for help.
Thomas shook his head. "Oh my friend, there is no doubt at all about our
future. You and I are going to fight, and then only one of us is going living
through that gate."
There was the gate, tough ordinary wood, bound with bands of wrought metal,
its lower parts showing a little superficial wear from the brushing passages
of countless men and women, slaves and animals. Behind such a gate there could
be nothing but more of the same world in which Farley
now stood, in which he had lived all his life. And if he reached the gate of
the Temple inside, would it be any different?
The priest Yelgir, whom they had left behind, came on now to pass them, giving
Farley an uneasy smile as he did so. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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