Part 25 (1/2)
”What?”
And Sophia: ”What are you talking about?”
”The sick, decadent, tired old creatures you consider your superiors.
Parasites. They need hosts in order to survive. Their old hosts have been milked dry, have become too highly specialized, are now incapable physically or emotionally of meeting a wide variety of environmental challenges. The Nowhere Journey is to find a suitable new host. They have found one. You of Earth.”
”I don't understand,” Temple said, remembering the glowing accounts of the 'superboys' he had been given by his brother Jason. ”I just don't get it. How can we be duped like that? Wouldn't someone have figured it out? And if they have all the power everyone says, there isn't much we can do about it, anyway.”
Arkalion scowled darkly. ”Then write Earth's obituary. You'll need one.”
”Go ahead,” Sophia told Arkalion. ”There's more you want to say.”
”All right. Temple's thought is correct. They have tremendous power.
That is why you could be duped so readily. But their power is not concentrated here. These much-faster-than-light s.h.i.+ps are an extreme rarity, for the power-drive no longer exists. Five s.h.i.+ps in all, I believe. Hardly enough to invade a planet, even for them. It takes them thousands of years to get here otherwise. Thousands. Just as it took me, when I came to Mars and Earth in the first place.”
”What?” cried Temple. ”You....”
”I am one of them. Correct. I suppose you would call me a subversive, but I have made up my mind. Parasitism is unsatisfactory, when the Maker got us started on symbiosis. Somewhere along the line, evolution took a wrong turn. We are--monsters.”
”What do you look like?” Sophia demanded while Temple stood there shaking his head and muttering to himself.
”You couldn't see me, I am afraid. I was the representative here to see how things were going, and when my people found you of the Earth divided yourselves into two camps they realized they had been considering your abilities in halves. Put together, you are probably the top culture of your galaxy.”
”So, we win,” said Temple.
”Right and wrong. You lose. Earthmen will become hosts. Know what a back-seat driver is, Temple? You would be a back seat driver in your own body. Thinking, feeling, wanting to make decisions, but unable to.
Eating when the parasite wants to, sleeping at his command, fighting, loving, living as he wills it. And peris.h.i.+ng when he wants a new garment. Oh, they offer something in return. Their culture, their way of life, their scientific, economic, social system. It's good, too.
But not worth it. Did you know that their economic struggle between democratic capitalism and totalitarian communism ended almost half a million years ago? What they have now is a system you couldn't even understand.”
”Well,” Temple mused, ”even if everything you said were true--”
”Don't tell me you don't believe me?”
”If it were true and we wanted to do something about it, what could we do?”
”Now, nothing. Nothing but delay things by striking swiftly and letting fifty centuries of time perform your rearguard action. Destroy the one means your enemy has of reaching Earth within foreseeable time and you have destroyed his power to invade for a hundred centuries. He can still reach Earth, but the same way you journeyed to Nowhere. Ten thousand years of s.p.a.ce travel in suspended animation. You saw me that way once, Temple, and wondered. You thought I was dead, but that is another story.
”Anyway, let my people invade your planet, ten thousand years hence.
If Earth takes the right direction, if democracy and free thought and individual enterprise win over totalitarian standardization as I think they will, your people will be more than a match for the decadent parasites who may or may not have sufficient initiative to cross s.p.a.ce the slow way and attempt invasion in ten thousand years.”
”Ten thousand?” said Temple.
”Five from Earth to Nowhere. The distance to my home is far greater, but the rate of travel can be increased. Ten thousand years.”
”Tell me,” Temple demanded abruptly, ”is this a dream?”