“Nursery tales are true tales—if you understand them.” Rafe took a short, casual step toward the other, and one of the two dogs nearest him stiffened and snarled slightly. Rafe stopped. “Good and evil are like parts in a play. You picked one part to play. That leaves me the other.”
“It needn’t be,” said the man on the throne. “You’re more like me than anyone else in the world. Why isolate yourself? Why destroy yourself?”
“Who’s going to be destroyed remains to be seen,” Rafe said. “Construction’s what I’m after. I want people to keep on building. You want them to stop it.”
There was a strange, throaty sound from Ab, as if a word was trying to tear itself loose from his vocal cords but lacked the strength.
“That’s right, Ab,” said Rafe, although he continued to keep his eyes on the man on the throne who sat utterly still, his hands folded in his lap. “Keep trying.”
“You’re my son, you know,” said the Old Man to Rafe, ignoring the others, “my spiritual son, just as Shaitan was. Now you’ve killed your brother and you’re the only one left. You can inherit the world from me when the time comes, if you won’t fight me now.”
“I don’t want to inherit,” Rafe said. “I want something to love. And I’ve chosen the human race for that—my race. I want this new power to go to them, to be used by them, for them, and for their future. So they’ll survive and grow strong.”
“Love,” husked the Old Man. “That’s also an illusion—like good and evil. There is no love. Any more than there’s kindness or cruelty or achievement or failure. There’s only survival, going on as far as possible until the stopping point. You’re young. That’s what makes you talk like this.”
“And you’re old—too old,” said Rafe. “So old you’d make a world of slaves so that you could be the only one to go on living indefinitely—”
There was another faint sound from Ab.
“That’s right, Ab,” said Rafe, still with his eyes as unwaveringly fixed on the Old Man as the watchful eyes of the guard dogs were fixed on him, “that’s what he wanted. That enabling effect you talked about, and I guessed at, is the sort of thing that could let a man mend his own body and guard it against the breakdown of old age. He’s probably several hundred years old, our master here, but he still wants to keep on living. And he wants to keep on living as the absolute ruler and owner of the human race. Am I wrong, Thebom Shankar—if that’s your name?“
“One of my names,” said the Old Man. “But not the name for you to use. Out of all those in the world, I offer you now the chance to call me Father. Refuse the chance and I can’t let you continue to exist. Decide. The time is short. Decide now.”
“I’ve already decided,” said Rafe. “I told you. The enabling effect will eliminate the need for the cryonic storage of cosmonauts on the long trips to the stars. Since men can live as long as they want, it won’t matter how long the trip is—and even then, if time weighs too heavy on them, the cosmos can hibernate as long as they want and wake up when they’re almost where they’re going. This is what I want—not an endless life for just you, and for myself after you.”
“You’ll get neither, then.” Thebom Shankar seemed to whisper, but his whisper filled the room as if he had shouted the words. “Only destruction. Have you forgotten the words of Zeus? I sang those words once, first under the name of Homer. Do you remember how Zeus tells the other gods to take one end of a chain while he takes the other, and they can see for themselves how his strength is still greater than all of theirs combined? For I’m also Zeus. My strength is greater than the strength of any number of sons—even if you had Shaitan, or a dozen Shaitans, alive again and joined with you against me. Acknowledge me or die. I’m lonely for companionship after all these years, or you’d never get this chance. Acknowledge me—”
Thebom Shankar stopped speaking. His eyes moved slightly to look from Rafe into the ground around Ab. These stood or sat, apparently unmoved, but Rafe’s eyes followed the direction of Shankar’s gaze to the stiffly upright, seated figure of Forebringer. Forebringer’s right hand had now moved from the arm of his chair and was halfway out of sight inside his plum-colored jacket. Looking closely, Rafe saw that the veins were standing out on the man’s forehead and that the hand was slowly, slowly, as if against some great counterforce, inching its way into the jacket.
“Always”—Shankar’s whisper once more filled the room—“there are little men who try the impossible. Watch and learn, my prospective son.”
Shankar lifted his right hand slowly from his lap and pointed—not with his index but with his middle finger—at the UN Marshal.
“Willet Forebringer,” he whispered. “In your desire to oppose me, to harm me, you offend me, and you are therefore of no more use to me upon this Earth. Willet Forebringer, I order you to die.”
Something like the compulsion Shaitan had attempted to use upon Rafe as he held the huge man in a strangle hold washed faintly against Rafe’s mind now. But it was the compulsion of a command, not to love, but to self-destruct, and it was aimed, not at Rafe, but at Forebringer. For a second or two more, Forebringer’s hand continued to creep in under his jacket. Then it stopped. The stiffly upright body fell back a few inches against the back rest of the chair it sat in, and stayed there, staring now at the ceiling of the room. The halted hand fell from the jacket opening, onto the still knees, and a small handgun rolled from the lax fingers to the polished floor. Shankar’s own hand dropped back down into his lap.
“So,” said Shankar, bringing his eyes back to Rafe. “Every night now the whole world dreams under the power broadcast. And the carrier wave of that broadcast brings me the force, the charge, of all their released emotions. This comes to me, who gathers it in like a storage battery, to give me power of life and death, as you’ve seen just now. Can you face a power like that, son-to-be? You know better than to think you can.”
“Ab,” said Rafe, his eyes still locked on Shankar’s. “How’re you doing, Ab? You know enough about the power broadcasts to believe you can break loose if someone like me can do it. I need help, Ab. You know what help.”
“Son-to-be,” said Shankar. “Now you’ve killed this other man. Even if you acknowledge me now, he’ll have to die—”
“Lucas!”
The word tore itself suddenly from Ab’s lips, as if shot forth by some inner explosion.
“Lucas!” Ab shouted again. “Now! Now!”
The three guard dogs were on their feet, their attention turned for the first time from Rafe to one of the two open windows. Shankar’s hand, which he had half raised, stopped in mid-air. There was a rustle of plants from outside the window and a gray body shot over the sill of the window into the room. Lucas looked around at them all.
The guard dogs were bristling and growling. The one between Rafe and the entrance to the room was nearest to the window where Lucas had come in. It was crouched now, snarling, the hair bushed up on the back of its neck. Lucas’s gaze swept down to Ab, moved across to Shankar.
Slowly, without a sound, the wolf walked toward the nearest dog, looking through and past it. The snarls of the dog mounted, clashing with the noise the other two were making. But none of the three moved from the spot where they were standing. Almost as if he did not hear or see them, Lucas moved on through the room, and as he got close to the nearest dog, the snarls of the animal lowered in volume. Its body crouched, lower and lower. As he reached it, finally, its belly was on the floor and its snarls had faded into whines. It rolled on its back before him, whimpering, reaching up at him with one paw.
Lucas stood over it for a second, pausing but still not looking down, making no sound himself. Then he moved on, past Rafe without looking at him, still at a walking pace, toward the other two dogs.
These doubled the sound of their snarling. They jerked about from one paw to the other, as if eager to move but held in their places by invisible leashes. Only as Lucas approached, they too lost their snarls in whines and gradually crouche
d before the wolf.
“Look at them, Shankar!” Ab’s voice broke out, suddenly free, and loud in the room. “Did you think any training, or power broadcast, could make them face up to a wolf? The real controls are behind, as Rafe says—the old instincts stop them.”
Lucas was past the last two dogs now. He paused, looking up at Shankar as he had looked up at Shaitan.
“Little men,” said Shankar, “are always fools.”
He lowered his half-raised hand to an arm of the throne and touched it. A small aperture opened in the scrolled end of the throne arm, and a light winked momentarily.
There was a sharp, abruptly cut off howl from Lucas. He leaped into the air, and a second later a smell of burnt fur spread through the room. Landing on the polished floor, Lucas struggled upright on shaky legs, and then—his eyes already glazing—turned and lurched to one side, throwing his dying body between Shankar and the chair where Gaby sat beside Ab.
“My . . .” rattled Lucas’s voice. He tried to lift his head to Gaby’s knee, but the reach was too far. “My Gab . . .”
His head dropped. He shuddered and lay still, dying but not yet dead.
For Rafe, the world broke open. For a last time, the old gut-twisting empathy woke in him—and joined his soul with Lucas’s. Suddenly, he was the wolf and knew everything the wolf had loved and lost facing an enemy that had always been too well armed for the simple animal mind to defeat.
“No,” he said to Shankar, and it was as if he heard his own voice from a very great distance. Ab had fallen on his knees beside Lucas, and was fumbling with the side of Lucas’s furry neck. Shankar still sat with his fingertips on the arm of his throne. “No,” said Rafe. “Lucas isn’t going to die. This time it’s you who’ll die—at my hands.”
There was a terrible sorrow and a fury in him that had nothing to do with words. That which he felt could only be told by action. His eyes locked with Shankar’s and there was no need for spoken words. Understanding flowed between the two of them—the understanding of two men who go aside together quietly, so that one may come back alone.
Lucas is the last, Rafe’s understanding said to Shankar’s. The last of all those who came against you to be killed. No more living things will be killed by you . . .
About the two of them, time and space were changing. Illusion or reality, it made no difference, for the only important realness now was the space that separated Rafe from Shankar. About them, the world shrank. The solar system, the universe, shrank until it was no more than a bubble from which the part where they two faced each other bulged upward, each smaller part bulging larger than the larger part to which it belonged—this world from the shrunken universe, this island from the tiny world, this building from the small island, this room, this little distance between Rafe and the man on the throne . . .
It was less than twenty feet, the distance that separated them. But it was also farther than twice around the universe. They stayed facing each other; and from room and island, world and universe, there flowed up to each of them, borne on a carrier wave of the broadcast power, that type of strength to which each was most kin, from all the other lives alive on Earth.
Like invisible rivers of fire, one bright, one dark—both sensed rather than seen—the strengths filled up in each of them. Rafe took a step toward the throne.
Shankar’s fingers came down on the throne arm, and once more the light winked from the little aperture in the arm’s end. But this time the laser beam that the light signaled had to reach twice around the universe to kill, and in the changed space between Rafe and Shankar it died harmlessly, barely inches from the throne.
Rafe took another step forward. The room darkened.
The wolf was only a beast, the understanding of Shankar said to Rafe, and for his sake you’ve traded your chance of heaven for hell.
He was one of all living things, answered Rafe, and it was you who tried to trade his life for death.
There was dark everywhere now except along the narrow path between them, where light still lingered.
Not even this matters, said Shankar.
All things always matter—this, most of all, said Rafe. He was walking against the power of Shankar now, which was trying to keep him from the throne, and it was like walking up a vertical slope. The last of the light went, and he was blind. But he could not be blocked off from the knowledge of where Shankar still waited, and he kept on moving toward the Old Man.
Son-that-will-never-be-now, said Shankar, you should have believed me when I said your strength could never match mine. You’re less than halfway here.
I’m still coming, said Rafe.
The air went away from around him. There was nothing to breathe. All heat went, except that which he held inside him. He struggled on, feeling the cold and the airlessness plucking at his will.
You’re half dead already, the understanding of Shankar reached him. And I wait here, strong with centuries of dead men’s strength. All that holds you up is the little good will of those alive today, of those who want the stars or mourn a dying wolf.
If what I carry could be killed in the human race, answered Rafe, both it and I would have died long since. Don’t lie to me, true Father of Lies. The strength that comes to me is more unkillable, and older, than that which reaches you.
He was close now—he could feel the presence of Shankar, less than a fraction of a universe away.
Only a little farther, said Shankar. You’re almost to your death. Comfort yourself while you can with the dream that your strength is older and greater than mine. It and you will go down together. Heroes die, but evil never dies. Do you think Shaitan is dead because you helped kill him? Wait just a few years and there will be another just like him to skin small animals and hang them on upside-down crosses.
Rafe made one last step and felt Shankar, at last, close enough to touch.
Now, said Shankar, you are here. You’ve come this far to destroy me, but all you’ve done is brought yourself to me for your own destruction. Now, I point at you as I pointed at that other, and I say to you as I said to him: You have offended me, Rafael Harald, and I order you to die!
Out of the darkness that still hid Shankar came the touch of something against Rafe’s chest. It was like the end of an unyielding rod, with a cold so cold it burned against his heart clear through the heatlessness that had already almost frozen the life within him. He felt it now, burning the heart from him, and knew that he was dying. And still his hands had not closed on Shankar, sitting hidden before him in darkness.
I will, he thought with every particle of strength that remained in him. Thinking this, he flung himself forward on the rod of cold as a man might fling himself upon a naked sword in order to come to grips with his enemy.
His hands closed on darkness, and darkness came into his mind at last, taking it over utterly . . .
* * *
17
And so Rafe Harald died.
But he was not allowed to remain dead. A time came when sight and hearing returned to him. He recognized that he lay on a white bed in a white room and that Gaby and Ab and others came to see him from time to time.
Then one day, without warning, a gray, shaggy head shoved itself over the edge of the bed, took his wrist gently in jaws that could have crushed it like a chicken wing, arid whined. Then words came back to him at last.
“Lucas?” he said.
Someone touched something at the foot of the bed in which he lay, and the upper third of the bed tilted, raising him so that he saw not only Lucas, but Gaby and Ab and another man in a business suit and with a stethoscope hanging around his neck.
“Yes,” said Lucas. “I’m here.”
“You ought to know it’d be Lucas,” Ab said to Rafe. “You were the one who wouldn’t let him die.”
“I?” said Rafe. “How did you know that?”
“I told them,” said Lucas.
“As soon as he could talk again, he told us,” said Gaby. “And now, finally, you’ve s
tarted to talk, too.” Her voice trembled a little on the last words.
Rafe slowly shook his head. There was a bitter hollowness in him that he had to disappoint them.
“It’s over,” he said. “I died. Shankar killed me.”
“Come on, now!” said Ab. “We know better than that. Your heart’s as steady as a metronome.” He grinned at Rafe. “We can’t help it if you’ve been too lazy to get out of bed.”
Rafe did not smile back.
“Shankar,” he said. “Where is he?”
Ab sobered.
“Cremated,” Ab answered. “We thought we might as well play safe.”
“Play safe?” Rafe stared at Gaby’s brother. “You mean he’s dead, too?”
“You killed him,”, said Lucas, “and made me live.”
“I?” Rafe sat gazing, from Lucas to the rest of them. “I couldn’t have. He killed me first.”
He saw them watching him with eyes that did not believe him.
“I don’t even remember touching Shankar,” said Rafe. “How could I have killed him?”
“You touched him, all right,” said Ab. “You took forty years, it seemed, to walk from where you were up to where he sat. But when you got there, you fell on top of him, and both of you fell out of the throne onto the floor. All of a sudden, then, we could all move, and when we got to you and Shankar, you had your hands on his neck and he was dead.”
“Hands?” said Rafe. He looked down at his hands lying on the white bedspread. They were thinner than he ever remembered seeing them, fragile looking.
“If he killed you first,” said Ab, “then you broke his neck after you were dead. And that’s not possible, even for someone like you.”
“Isn’t it?” said Rafe. And then, even through the lightlessness of his mind, a bitter humor took him. He chuckled, still looking at his hands. “Reflexes!” he said. “The fastest man in the world. Just fast enough, when the time came, to kill someone after I’d been killed myself.”