Part 9 (1/2)
Again he sensed something incredibly wrong.
He was almost on top of the pickers before he saw them, so well did the colour of their skins match the hue of the brown foliage. He thought at first he had come across a company of negroes, and it was several seconds before anguished realisation told him that the blue-brown of their skins was the result of prolonged exposure to the blue, atrocious moon.
Most were nearly naked, some completely so, and they squatted on their haunches, Asiatic style, between the die-straight rows, eyes staring ahead, apparently unseeing, while their hands gathered thecepi. Everyone was in an advanced state of cepi hypnosis. Dalroi might have been wrong, but he could have sworn that among the nearer group of degraded faces he could identify at least two of the members of the fact-finding group he had started out to trace. He shrugged. There was nothing he could do for them now.
There are many ways to gather cepi. The best way is to puncture the sac before it is fully ripe, and to allow the sap therein to dry in a small, milky tear on the outside of the growing pod. Such an operation needs to be performed with care, for the un-dry liquor is barbarously addictive and induces raw hallucinations completely without the restraint of prepared cepi. It is easily absorbed through the skin.
Those who gather cepi tears with unprotected hands either die or are forced by the power of the drug to remain pickers for the rest of their short, befuddled lives. To gratify such an addiction a man willingly enters a state of slavery on a cepi field, and, since like all cepi derivatives the drug was specific, only that source could satisfy the craving.
Dalroi reconnoitred carefully. There were no guards that he could see; none would be needed, for cepi kept its own narcotic watch on pickers who attempted to default - but a line of sheds and lights on the edge of the shadow suggested an encampment where the pickers slept. Humidifier heads dotted about the rows argued that part of the cultivation process was a heavy drenching of the foliage. The two facts taken together suggested a daily routine or cycle of events. Dalroi became thoughtful.
Cepi was the kingpoint of the Failway slave empire; destroying the cepi destroyed Failway, but it would also bring death or madness to thousands dependent on Failway drugs. It would be a difficult decision to make.
”If Failway can be broken it can only be by one man who can't be touched by force or guile, fear or pity; one man whose frenzy is such that he could bear a million murders on his conscience without snapping; a man whose terrible thirst for vengeance would lead him on where even dedicated madmen fear to tread.” Cronstadt had said that to him.
And: ”It had to he somebody tough and somebody who was not afraid to kill; it had to be somebody with a pa.s.sionate and relentless hatred of Failway and with a mind strong enough not to burn out under the strain ... whose innate capacity and ruthless determination ... transcended all other emotions.”
”A highly intelligent gutter-rat,” said Dalroi to n.o.body in particular. ”That's me!”
The sound of his voice shocked him, for he was not in the habit of talking to himself. An alert part of his mind tripped on the incident and a.n.a.lysed it. The answer was worrying. Somehow the subtle vapour from the blossoms was affecting his thinking. Knowing the soporific effect of cepi on a non-addicted person he realised that if he was to take any effective action against the field he had better start quickly. Within an hour the vapour would have robbed him of his purpose; after two hours he might not bother to leave ...
ever.
Again a voice swam in his mind. This time his own: ”Failway grows like a malignant cancer ... you can't remove such barbarous poisons ... you have to take up a knife and hack out the rotting flesh ... cauterising the wound with red-hot iron and cooling the iron with tears of pain.”
”d.a.m.n!” said Dalroi. The decision was made. He looked for a point as far away from the cepi as possible, where he could do some serious destructive thinking. Outside the sphere of light from the unG.o.dly moon a vast, dark plain lurked in black bewilderment. There was no indication that mortal foot had ever travelled or explored except where the blue moon shone. Dalroi walked out into the darkness.FIFTEEN
The cepi field was of earth, declining gently to a flat, gla.s.sy surface. Obviously the soil for the field had been imported and laid over whatever composed the basic plane of the continuum. The idea of dimensionless plain intrigued Dalroi. It was another of those mathematical abstractions become reality.
He knelt and tried the surface with his hand. Not hot, not cold; gla.s.sy and flawless as far as he could tell.
As to its composition, he remembered Gormalu's paradox: ”Nothing inside, and the inverse of nothing outside it, or vice versa according to your mathematical standpoint.”
The picture clarified. The mathematics of Failway projection had located on one side of the theoretical two-dimensional figure. On this surface Failway had set its pleasure installation walled against n.o.body knew what, and outside the wall they had established a field of cepi. Beyond that the plain stretched to ...
infinity? Unchanged ... limitless ... empty? The notion worried him.
How do you know a place is infinite until you've reached the edge and proved it not so? How do you know it is empty until something comes out of the darkness and proves that it is not? It is unnatural for men to live on the very edge of the unknown and not be eternally curious.
A sudden dip in the illumination behind him broke the chain of thought. The moon was growing paler and duller with the pa.s.sing seconds. He returned to the edge of the field and studied the position. The pickers had left the field, and the humidifiers were starting their saturating micro-spray. Here was a change in the cycle. Now, if ever, was the time to make his move.
The half-plan forming in his mind crystallised to completeness. Centrally in the field stood four towers which, drawing together as they ascended, supported the incredible spire on which burned the ultraviolet moon. That the structure was two miles high awed Dalroi not a bit. He was more interested in the fact that the illumination was controllable.
Searching carefully he located the cable-run to the towers, and, near the edge of the field, he found the control cabin, a small blockhouse which straddled the cable channel. Dalroi approached it warily, finally throwing a clump of earth at the metal roof. Nothing happened, so he guessed the technician responsible for dimming the moon had already left.
The door was unlocked, so he entered and closed it behind him. The cabin was warm and vibrating with the surge of power even though the moon was only at quarter intensity.
The controls were unfamiliar but a rapid a.n.a.lysis of their functions extracted a guiding principle. Much of the equipment concerned primary ignition, and this he ignored. He was not so much concerned with extinguis.h.i.+ng the moon as with taking it to such intensity that the radiation became intolerable to the cepi.
The task could prove dangerous. A meter graduated in novemdecillions, function unspecified, made the hair rise on the back of his neck. One false move when juggling with such power could well roast him where he stood.
With taut hands, and his brow dripping with perspiration, he turned the energy up. Needles climbed scales and approached and pa.s.sed red warning limits without incident. The hum of power sang through the cabin like the tune of a thousand bees.
The light increased not in linear proportions but exponentially, rising to swift brilliance and still increasing almost as fast as the eye could adapt. The artificial moon became a sun, spilling blue fire. Searing radiation cut into the land and into the dark foliage with merciless intensity. Dalroi drew the s.h.i.+elds as far as he could while balancing the controls, the next best thing to a prayer hovering on his lips.
The colour-s.h.i.+ft of the radiated light told him that the delicate balance of the elements in the sun had beendestroyed. The visible light s.h.i.+ft was towards the red end of the spectrum, and the heat rising fast as the energy entered the infra-red band.
If this was a simple drift of the radiation frequencies, the whole energy output might well enter the E.H.F.
radio band, with unpredictable consequences. If, however, the sun was spreading its emissions over a wider portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum, part of the energy would excite radiations into the X-ray and gamma-radiation bands. The control cabin had a thin lead s.h.i.+eld but this would be no protection against concentrated hard radiation, nor had he any means of knowing when he had received a fatal dosage.
It was a risk too grave to take. He punched the power off fast, hoping that it had achieved its purpose, and waited for the brilliance to subside. He had to time his movements carefully. As soon as the terrain outside was tenable the police squads would be coming out to get him. If he stayed too long he was set fair to be cut down by the local security force; if he moved too quickly he was chancing an unknown density of hard radiation with equally deadly results. Only ... a glance at the heavily-blued monitoring window shattered his calculations with a new problem which made the others pale into insignificance. The radiation outside, far from decreasing, had grown tenfold in its brilliance. The artificial sun was going nova.
He had heard of such things from the days when artificial luminaries had been sent into orbit about the earth to eliminate night. One such device, doubtless contaminated by cosmic debris, also went nova. A large continent called Africa changed its contours overnight; but that was a long time ago and n.o.body had dared to try it since. Now the hectic plasma-furnace high above his head had started a similar reaction, consuming the very elements which strove to contain it, and continuing without need of the energy input which had brought it into life.
Dalroi hastily brought the shutter over the window. The door was already shut fast but the light outside was so intense that the mere scatter rebounding from the crevices between the door and the frame flooded the interior with a level of radiation which hurt his eyes. An examination of the walls and roof of the cabin showed him that the structure offered but meagre protection, being merely to s.h.i.+eld the technicians while the sun was being first run up to criticality. No provision had been made for this sort of catastrophe; indeed, it was doubtful if any sort of protection was possible.
He wondered idly how long the tower would last in the face of the heat which was still building rapidly. A rough calculation a.s.sured him that most of it would vaporise when the hyper-critical stage was reached.
At about that time also the lead s.h.i.+elding of the cabin would be falling in silvery driblets soon to be followed by the molten steel of the framework. The point was hypothetical. Dalroi figured he would be dead and dry long before the metals came to pouring point.
The temperature rose mercilessly. Already the walls were too hot to touch and the ventilators were admitting a smoke-laden fug which told of the fire ravaging the cepi in the field. Dalroi shut the ventilator tight. Though he badly needed the air-change he had to avoid the stupefying cepi fumes for as long as possible. Only as a last resort would he welcome its release from pain.
Dull thunder rocked the structure and knocked him on to the floor. A rising, continuous scream, like the voice of a thousand rocket jets, savaged his ears. Everything vibrated as though caught in the teeth of a mighty, rocking storm.
That is it! thought Dalroi.
Something coming: a million banshees swooping down; ten million express trains driving down a vertical shaft; a hundred million intercontinental rockets converging on the same point at thesame instant. Upheaval: fire spitting, earth shattering, winding, clawing, driving, universe-shaking cataclysm ... the terrible removal from disorientation to something worse and back again with soul-twisting transition. Time lapse! Time relapse! Time collapse!
”Die!” said the living fire.
”Hate!” said Dalroi. ”Hate!”
CONCEPTION! DECEPTION!.
TRANSCRIPTION! ABSTRACTION!.
HATE! HATE! HATE!.
Bruising shock; boulder upon boulder; shoulder twisted; knee where backbone used to be. Flesh afire, forehead flaming, eyes incandescent.
He could smell his flesh scorching as he struggled to his feet only to find his shoes were burning. Suddenly the light was gone. A swift s.h.i.+ft from yellow into red, and he was standing in a helpless darkness that snored like a giant. He fought the shutter from the window, ignoring the blistering heat of the metal. Dying radiation sauntered in.
The sun had disappeared. Before him, far across the wasted field was a young volcano whose slopes concealed the wanton pit which the sun had burned for itself in falling. Somewhere far below, the sun still lived and spewed gouts of red-hot porridge into the loud and dying air. The crisis was over. Only when he noticed the ruined instruments under his hand did Dalroi realise that he had no right to be alive.