The World Between and Other Stories Read online

  The Chief Elder nodded. “A definite choice has been made.”

  “What was his score in the test?”

  “By your scoring system—seventeen eighty. He did poorly as Arthur Caversham; he tried to explain the advantages of nudity to the policeman. He lacked the ability to concoct an instant subterfuge; he has little of your quick craft. As Arthur Caversham he found himself naked. He is sincere and straightforward, hence tried to expound the positive motivations for his state, rather than discover the means to evade the penalties.”

  “Tell me more about this man,” said Prime shortly.

  “As Bearwald the Halforn, he led his band to the hive of the Brands on Mount Medallion, but instead of burning the hive, he called forth to the queen, begging her to end the useless slaughter. She reached out from the doorway, drew him within and killed him. He failed—but the computer still rated him highly on his forthright approach.

  “At Therlatch, his conduct was as irreproachable as yours, and at the Imagicon his performance was adequate. Yours approached the brilliance of the Master Imagists, which is high achievement indeed.

  “The Rac tortures are the most trying element of the test. You knew well you could resist limitless pain; therefore you ordained that all other candidates must likewise possess this attribute. The new Prime is sadly deficient here. He is sensitive, and the idea of one man intentionally inflicting pain upon another sickens him. I may add that none of the candidates achieved a perfect count in the last episode. Two others equaled your score—”

  Prime evinced interest. “Which are they?”

  The Chief Elder pointed them out—a tall hard-muscled man with rock-hewn face standing by the alabaster balustrade gazing moodily out across the sunny distance, and a man of middle age who sat with his legs folded under him, watching a point three feet before him with an expression of imperturbable placidity.

  “One is utterly obstinate and hard,” said the Chief Elder. “He refused to say a single word. The other assumes an outer objectivity when unpleasantness overtakes him. Others among the candidates fared not so well; mental readjustments will be necessary in almost all cases.”

  Their eyes went to the witless creature with vacant eyes who padded up and down the aisle, muttering quiedy to himself.

  “The tests were by no means valueless,” said the Chief Elder. “We learned a great deal. By your system of scoring, the competition rated you most high. By other standards which we Elders postulated, your place was lower.”

  With a tight mouth Prime inquired, “Who is this paragon of altruism, kindliness, sympathy and generosity?”

  The lunatic wandered close, fell on his hands and knees, crawled whimpering to the wall. He pressed his face to the cool stone, stared blankly up at Prime. His mouth hung loose, his chin was wet, his eyes rolled apparently free of each other.

  The Chief Elder touched the mad creature’s head. This is he. Here is the man we select.”

  The old Galactic Prime sat silent, mouth compressed, eyes burning like far volcanoes.

  At his feet the new Prime, Lord of Two Billion Suns, found a dead leaf, put it into his mouth, and began to chew.

  The Devil on Salvation Bluff

  A few minutes before noon the sun took a lurch south and set.

  Sister Mary tore the solar helmet from her fair head and threw it at the settee—a display that surprised and troubled her husband, Brother Raymond.

  He clasped her quivering shoulders. “Now, dear, easy does it. A blow-up can’t help us at all.”

  Tears were rolling down Sister Mary’s cheeks. “As soon as we start from the house the sun drops out of sight! It happens every time!”

  “Well—we know what patience is. There’ll be another soon.”

  “It may be an hour! Or ten hours! And we’ve got our jobs to do!”

  Brother Raymond went to the window, pulled aside the starched lace curtains, peered into the dusk. “We could start now, and get up the hill before night.”

  “‘Night’?” cried Sister Mary. “What do you call this?”

  Brother Raymond said stiffly, “I mean night by the Clock. Real night.”

  “The Clock…” Sister Mary sighed, sank into a chair. “If it weren’t for the Clock we’d all be lunatics.”

  Brother Raymond, at the window, looked up toward Salvation Bluff, where the great clock bulked unseen. Mary joined him; they stood gazing through the dark. Presently Mary sighed. “I’m sorry, dear. But I get so upset.”

  Raymond patted her shoulder. “It’s no joke living on Glory.”

  Mary shook her head decisively. “I shouldn’t let myself go. There’s the Colony to think of. Pioneers can’t be weaklings.”

  They stood close, drawing comfort from each other.

  “Look!” said Raymond. He pointed. “A fire, and up in Old Fleetville!”

  In perplexity they watched the far spark.

  “They’re all supposed to be down in New Town,” muttered Sister Mary. “Unless it’s some kind of ceremony…The salt we gave them…”

  Raymond, smiling sourly, spoke a fundamental postulate of life on Glory. “You can’t tell anything about the Flits. They’re liable to do most anything.”

  Mary uttered a truth even more fundamental. “Anything is liable to do anything.”

  “The Flits most liable of all…They’ve even taken to dying without our comfort and help!”

  “We’ve done our best,” said Mary. “It’s not our fault!”—almost as if she feared that it was.

  “No one could possibly blame us.”

  “Except the Inspector…The Flits were thriving before the Colony came.”

  “We haven’t bothered them; we haven’t encroached, or molested, or interfered. In fact we’ve knocked ourselves out to help them. And for thanks they tear down our fences and break open the canal and throw mud on our fresh paint!”

  Sister Mary said in a low voice, “Sometimes I hate the Flits…Sometimes I hate Glory. Sometimes I hate the whole Colony.”

  Brother Raymond drew her close, patted the fair hair that she kept in a neat bun. “You’ll feel better when one of the suns comes up. Shall we start?”

  “It’s dark,” said Mary dubiously. “Glory is bad enough in the daytime.”

  Raymond shot his jaw forward, glanced up toward the Clock. “It is daytime. The Clock says it’s daytime. That’s Reality; we’ve got to cling to it! It’s our link with truth and sanity!”

  “Very well,” said Mary, “we’ll go.”

  Raymond kissed her cheek. “You’re very brave, dear. You’re a credit to the Colony.”

  Mary shook her head. “No, dear. I’m no better or braver than any of the others. We came out here to found homes and live the Truth. We knew there’d be hard work. So much depends on everybody; there’s no room for weakness.”

  Raymond kissed her again, although she laughingly protested and turned her head. “I still think you’re brave—and very sweet.”

  “Get the light,” said Mary. “Get several lights. One never knows how long these—these insufferable darknesses will last.”

  They set off up the road, walking because in the Colony private power vehicles were considered a social evil. Ahead, unseen in the darkness, rose the Grand Montagne, the preserve of the Flits. They could feel the harsh bulk of the crags, just as behind them they could feel the neat fields, the fences, the roads of the Colony. They crossed the canal, which led the meandering river into a mesh of irrigation ditches. Raymond shone his light into the concrete bed. They stood looking in a silence more eloquent than curses.

  “It’s dry! They’ve broken the banks again.”

  “Why?” asked Mary. “Why? They don’t use the river water!”

  Raymond shrugged. “I guess they just don’t like canals. Well,” he sighed, “all we can do is the best we know how.”

  The road wound back and forth up the slope. They passed the lichen-covered hulk of a star-ship which five hundred years ago had crashed on Glory. “It seems impossib
le,” said Mary. “The Flits were once men and women just like us.”

  “Not like us, dear,” Raymond corrected gently.

  Sister Mary shuddered. “The Flits and their goats! Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.”

  A few minutes later Raymond fell into a mudhole, a bed of slime, with enough water-seep to make it sucking and dangerous. Floundering, panting, with Mary’s desperate help, he regained solid ground, and stood shivering—angry, cold, wet.

  “That blasted thing wasn’t there yesterday!” He scraped slime from his face, his clothes. “It’s these miserable things that makes life so trying.”

  “We’ll get the better of it, dear.” And she said fiercely: “We’ll fight it, subdue it! Somehow we’ll bring order to Glory!”

  While they debated whether or not to proceed, Red Robundus belled up over the northwest horizon, and they were able to take stock of the situation. Brother Raymond’s khaki puttees and his white shirt of course were filthy. Sister Mary’s outfit was hardly cleaner.

  Raymond said dejectedly, “I ought to go back to the bungalow for a change.”

  “Raymond—do we have time?”

  “I’ll look like a fool going up to the Flits like this.”

  “They’ll never notice.”

  “How can they help?” snapped Raymond.

  “We haven’t time,” said Mary decisively. “The Inspector’s due any day, and the Flits are dying like flies. They’ll say it’s our fault—and that’s the end of Gospel Colony.” After a pause she said carefully, “Not that we wouldn’t help the Flits in any event.”

  “I still think I’d make a better impression in clean clothes,” said Raymond dubiously.

  “Pooh! A fig they care for clean clothes, the ridiculous way they scamper around.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  A small yellow-green sun appeared over the southwest horizon. “Here comes Urban…If it isn’t dark as pitch we get three or four suns at once!”

  “Sunlight makes the crops grow,” Mary told him sweetly.

  They climbed half an hour, then, stopping to catch their breath, turned to look across the valley to the colony they loved so well. Seventy-two thousand souls on a checkerboard green plain, rows of neat white houses, painted and scrubbed, with snowy curtains behind glistening glass; lawns and flower gardens full of tulips; vegetable gardens full of cabbages, kale and squash.

  Raymond looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

  Mary asked, “How do you know?”

  “Remember the drenching we had last time Urban and Robundus were both in the west?”

  Mary shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Something’s got to mean something. That’s the law of our universe—the basis for all our thinking!”

  A gust of wind howled down from the ridges, carrying great curls and feathers of dust. They swirled with complicated colors, films, shades, in the opposing lights of yellow-green Urban and Red Robundus.

  “There’s your rain,” shouted Mary over the roar of the wind. Raymond pressed on up the road. Presently the wind died.

  Mary said, “I believe in rain or anything else on Glory when I see it.”

  “We don’t have enough facts,” insisted Raymond. “There’s nothing magic in unpredictability.”

  “It’s just—unpredictable.” She looked back along the face of the Grand Montagne. “Thank God for the Clock—something that’s dependable.”

  The road wandered up the hill, through stands of horny spile, banks of gray scrub and purple thorn. Sometimes there was no road; then they had to cast ahead like surveyors; sometimes the road stopped at a bank or at a blank wall, continuing on a level ten feet above or below. These were minor inconveniences which they overcame as a matter of course. Only when Robundus drifted south and Urban ducked north did they become anxious.

  “It wouldn’t be conceivable that a sun should set at seven in the evening,” said Mary. “That would be too normal, too matter-of-fact.”

  At seven-fifteen both suns set. There would be ten minutes of magnificent sunset, another fifteen minutes of twilight, then night of indeterminate extent.

  They missed the sunset because of an earthquake. A tumble of stones came pelting across the road; they took refuge under a jut of granite while boulders clattered into the road and spun on down the mountainside.

  The shower of rocks passed, except for pebbles bouncing down as an afterthought. “Is that all?” Mary asked in a husky whisper.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  Raymond handed her the canteen; she drank.

  “How much further to Fleetville?”

  “Old Fleetville or New Town?”

  “I don’t care,” she said wearily. “Either one.”

  Raymond hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know the distance to either.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here all night.”

  “It’s day coming up,” said Raymond as the white dwarf Maude began to silver the sky to the northeast.

  “It’s night,” Mary declared in quiet desperation. “The Clock says it’s night; I don’t care if every sun in the galaxy is shining, including Home Sun. As long as the Clock says it’s night, it’s night!”

  “We can see the road anyway…New Town is just over this ridge; I recognize that big spile. It was here last time I came.”

  Of the two, Raymond was the more surprised to find New Town where he placed it. They trudged into the village. “Things are awful quiet.”

  There were three dozen huts, built of concrete and good clear glass, each with filtered water, a shower, wash-tub and toilet. To suit Flit prejudices the roofs were thatched with thorn, and there were no interior partitions. The huts were all empty.

  Mary looked into a hut. “Mmmph—horrid!” She puckered her nose at Raymond. “The smell!”

  The windows of the second hut were innocent of glass. Raymond’s face was grim and angry. “I packed that glass up here on my blistered back! And that’s how they thank us.”

  “I don’t care whether they thank us or not,” said Mary. “I’m worried about the Inspector. He’ll blame us for—” she gestured “—this filth. After all it’s supposed to be our responsibility.”

  Seething with indignation Raymond surveyed the village. He recalled the day New Town had been completed—a model village, thirty-six spotless huts, hardly inferior to the bungalows of the Colony. Arch-Deacon Burnette had voiced the blessing; the volunteer workers knelt to pray in the central compound. Fifty or sixty Flits had come down from the ridges to watch—a wide-eyed ragged bunch: the men all gristle and unkempt hair; the women sly, plump and disposed to promiscuity, or so the colonists believed.

  After the invocation Arch-Deacon Burnette had presented the chief of the tribe a large key of gilded plywood. “In your custody, Chief—the future and welfare of your people! Guard it—cherish it!”

  The chief stood almost seven feet tall; he was lean as a pike, his profile cut in and out, sharp and hard as a turtle’s. He wore greasy black rags and carried a long staff, upholstered with goat-hide. Alone in the tribe he spoke the language of the colonists, with a good accent that always came as a shock. “They are no concern of mine,” he said in a casual, hoarse voice. “They do as they like. That’s the best way.”

  Arch-Deacon Burnette had encountered this attitude before. A large-minded man, he felt no indignation, but rather sought to argue away what he considered an irrational attitude. “Don’t you want to be civilized? Don’t you want to worship God, to live clean, healthy lives?”

  “No.”

  The Arch-Deacon grinned. “Well, we’ll help anyway, as much as we can. We can teach you to read, to cipher; we can cure your disease. Of course you must keep clean and you must adopt regular habits—because that’s what civilization means.”

  The chief grunted. “You don’t even know how to herd goats.”

  “We are not missionaries,” Arch-Deacon Burn
ette continued, “but when you choose to learn the Truth, we’ll be ready to help you.”

  “Mmph-mmph—where do you profit by this?”

  The Arch-Deacon smiled. “We don’t. You are fellow-humans; we are bound to help you.”

  The chief turned, called to the tribe; they fled up the rocks pell-mell, climbing like desperate wraiths, hair waving, goat-skins flapping.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” cried the Arch-Deacon. “Come back here,” he called to the chief, who was on his way to join the tribe.

  The chief called down from a crag. “You are all crazy people.”

  “No, no,” exclaimed the Arch-Deacon, and it was a magnificent scene, stark as a stage-set: the white-haired Arch-Deacon calling up to the wild chief with his wild tribe behind him; a saint commanding satyrs, all in the shifting light of three suns.

  Somehow he coaxed the chief back down to New Town. Old Fleetville lay half a mile farther up, in a saddle funnelling all the winds and clouds of the Grand Montagne, until even the goats clung with difficulty to the rocks. It was cold, dank, dreary. The Arch-Deacon hammered home each of Old Fleetville’s drawbacks. The chief insisted he preferred it to New Town.

  Fifty pounds of salt made the difference, with the Arch-Deacon compromising his principles over the use of bribes. About sixty of the tribe moved into the new huts with an air of amused detachment, as if the Arch-Deacon had asked them to play a foolish game.

  The Arch-Deacon called another blessing upon the village; the colonists knelt; the Flits watched curiously from the doors and windows of their new homes. Another twenty or thirty bounded down from the crags with a herd of goats which they quartered in the little chapel. Arch-Deacon Burnette’s smile became fixed and painful, but to his credit he did nothing to interfere.

  After a while the colonists filed back down into the valley. They had done the best they could, but they were not sure exactly what it was they had done.

  Two months later New Town was deserted. Brother Raymond and Sister Mary Dunton walked through the village; and the huts showed dark windows and gaping doorways.