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spent the whole night. Ave stood beside Mada.
"What's happened? Can I help you in any way?"
"There is no happiness in this world," cried Ave. "But in your power
there is another world!"
The Elder raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
"There is another world in space," explained Ave, and he told the Elder
all about what had happened.
Um Sat became thoughtful.
"So I must accept Yar Jupi's conditions and, in my turn, demand that he
send his daughter to Terr? Doesn't that seem incredible? To take refuge in
space?"
"But that would mean salvation not only for me and Ave," intervened
Mada. "It would be the fulfilment of a dream: to help the Faetians, to find
them a new world. Nanny and Mother were thinking about it. Not only Ave and
I, but all of us could be happy there. It's not just for myself that I'm
ready to fly to Terr. That's what I'm going to tell my father."
Mada understood global problems in no way more deeply than Um Sat.
"What duties as an astronaut can Mada carry out?" asked Um Sat sternly.
"I am a Sister of Health. We are needed everywhere. And not only for
the children."
"That's true," agreed Um Sat. "Ave Mar, you will stay here, no one is
going to look for your secretary. Mada must go to her chambers and lock
herself in. Ave, see your young wife as far as the Dread Wall. It's a good
thing that you both look on the trip to Terr as an exploit, not just as an
escape."
After their departure, the Elder sat for a while in reflection. Then he
summoned several sages of learning who had arrived for the session. They
filled his cell. Many of them were roundheads, but there were longfaces as
well. As they came in, each touched his right eyebrow with his left hand.
When the cell was packed full, Um Sat asked if he should fly from Faena on
the eve of possible events for which, in the name of Justice, the toilers
and their friends had been preparing for so many cycles.
After all, he was an adherent of the struggle against the proprietors
on both continents, although he had not fully fathomed its depths.
Those present decided unanimously that Um Sat, the personification and
pride of learning on Faena, should go into space to find the continents that
the Faetians needed. Many of them considered that in this way they would
best safeguard the life of the great Elder, but no one said anything about
it to him.
Um Sat threw his hands apart. He must submit to the general decision.
He had now received the right to act. When Ave returned, Um Sat called the
Dictator's secretary over the closed TV. The screen lit up and the slits of
the secretary box glittered on it.
"Dictator Jupi, most illustrious of the illustrious, consents to
receive the honorary longface Um Sat and is sending an escort for him,"
announced the box, which had been programmed to speak in the old style. The
screen went blank.
"What?" whispered Ave Mar. "Go into the Lair? Doesn't this mean that
Yar Jupi wants to take a hostage?"
The Elder smiled sadly.
"The risk is not so great."
An officer of the Blood Guard soon appeared in the cell. Ave's blood
froze. Before him stood the living Yar Alt.
The caller bowed to the Elder, glanced casually at Ave and said
pompously:
"The greatest of the great, the Dictator Yar Jupi, gave you the right,
honorary long-face, to enter his presence. I have been sent to escort you to
the palace."
Ave Mar had the impression that even the Blood Guard officer's voice
was the same as Alt's. Had he really come back from the dead? Perhaps the
paralysis caused by the bullet had only been temporary. But why didn't he
rush at Ave the way he had done in Mada's room?
The officer of the Blood Guard merely glanced indifferently again at
Ave Mar and bowed to him.
"In the name of the most illustrious Dictator, I bear apologies to the
honoured guest."
As soon as the officer of the Blood Guard and Um Sat had gone out, Ave
Mar rushed to the door of the cell. To his amazement, it was unlocked. Only
then did Ave Mar realise that the officer's face had been innocent of a
scar.
Dictator Yar Jupi was waiting impatiently for Um Sat Omnipotent by
grace of the Blood Council, capable in favour of the proprietors of sending
millions of Faetians to their death and ready to unleash a disintegration
war at any moment, he was powerless to safeguard the one life that was the
most dear to him.
Yar Jupi was a complicated person. He understood extremely well whom he
was serving and how. After losing his wife in his time, he had come to hate
the roundheads from whom she had contracted a fatal disease while nursing
them. This hatred had finally found expression in a barefaced doctrine which
it was impossible to believe, but which proved convenient to the proprietors
from the Blood Council. Now, at the height of power, when he was ostensibly
leading the life of an ascetic in voluntary seclusion, love for his daughter
had become the only ray of light to Yar Jupi. Everything else was darkness:
fear for his own life, terror of a war which he was nevertheless preparing
himself, terror also of the toilers and of his own masters who were ready to
get rid of him.
The thing that mattered to him most now was Mada's safety. She was the
only one he would want to save from among the millions of doomed.
But how?
And so, in fulfilment of the complex plan that had occurred to him, he
had appeared unexpectedly during a session of Peaceful Space in the Temple
of Eternity. And now Um Sat was due to arrive.
The officer of the Blood Guard, Yar Alt's brother, handed Um Sat over
to two security robots which led the sage of learning through low-ceilinged,
sumptuously furnished halls.
Urn Sat glanced out of the corner of his eye at his unwieldy bodyguards
or escorts with their cubic heads and hooked, scaly manipulators.
In one of the rooms, a box with glittering slits in it, just like the
one that the Dictator used, said with programmed floweriness in the
impeccable ancient manner:
"Urn Sat, honorary longface, may pass through the door in front of him,
on the other side of which there awaits him the most blissful meeting with
the greatest of the great, the most brilliant of the brilliant, Yar Jupi,
Dictator of the continent of the Superiors."
The door opened of its own accord, the robot security guards fell
behind and Urn Sat went into the grim, empty dungeon with the grey walls.
Yar Jupi, bearded, hook-nosed, with a shaven skull and upslanting
eyebrows, rushed to meet the visitor, riveting him with a piercing, half-mad
stare.
"Does Urn Sat realise what honour and trust has been afforded him?" he
shouted.
"Yes, so be it," sighed the Elder. "Though I be unworthy of such
honour, I may be trusted."
"I am going to talk as Superior to Superior, the more so since you are
famous for your mind," said the Dictator more calmly this time.
According to the ritual, the guest was supposed to reply that his
brains were below comparison with the divine and enlightened intellect of
Yar Jupi, but Um Sat calmly said:
"I shall converse with the Dictator Yar Jupi as an Elder of learning
with a politician, striving to understand and be understood."
Yar Jupi started, his nose twitched and his face was distorted by a
nervous grimace. He looked sideways at a niche under the window. There were
wonderful flowers standing in it. Their tender, dark-blue corollas with the
golden sprinkling of the finest stars, each with up to six petals, looked
down, dangling on bowed stems.
This was a miracle, bred by the nurserymen on the orders of Yar Jupi, a
passionate lover of flowers. But it was not their evening beauty that
attracted him. The submissive horticulturalists had managed to breed a
vegetable miracle, or rather monster, which exuded an aroma that was
poisonous, however gentle it might seem. Any Faetian who inhaled it was
stricken down with a fatal disease. More than once, rare visitors to this
study, excessively independent-minded comrades-in-arms, received by the
Dictator with unexpected warmth, sometimes even a few of his
over-discontented masters, the big proprietors, had been privileged to sniff
the greatest of all treasures. On returning home, they had died in agony
without suspecting why.
Needless to say, a reliable ventilation system was sucking the
dangerous scent out of the room.
"Well?" asked the Dictator nervously.
"After thinking it over all night, I have decided to accept your offer
and lead the expedition to the planet Terr."
Yar Jupi started and sighed with relief.
"Urn Sat, having become an honorary longface, you confirm your wisdom.
I shall glorify this on both continents. However, yesterday in the Temple of
Eternity, I had in mind one stipulation which you will have to observe."
"I also wanted to add a condition to my consent to head the
expedition."
"I can't bear it when conditions are imposed on me," said the Dictator,
raising his voice slightly.
"It is rather the first practical step to complementing the space
crew."
"I shall complement the space crew with longfaces, the most worthy of
the worthy."
"Perhaps Dictator Yar Jupi will remember yesterday's promise to include
any of the longfaces in the crew."
"I confirm that, even if it means my daughter."
"The daughter of Dictator Yar Jupi?" Dm Sat was truly astonished. It
had never even entered his head that the Dictator himself would talk about
her first.
"Do you dare to regard my daughter as ballast on the flight when she is
a Sister of Health?" said Yar Jupi, raising his voice.
Both men fell silent, studying each other. No matter how clever he
might be, it had never occurred to Urn Sat that the Dictator had thought of
saving his daughter from the horrors of a disintegration war by sending her
on a space expedition; and however cunning and crafty Yar Jupi might be, he
could not have presumed that Dm Sat had come to him solely in order to
obtain his consent to his daughter's flight to Terr.
"So you don't want her to fly?" demanded Yar Jupi ominously. "You're
worried about her? I appreciate that Would you care to go over to those
flowers? They are beautiful, are they not? Have you ever seen the like?
Savour their aroma!.."
"I have never seen anything more beautiful than the daughter of
Dictator Yar Jupi. Have no doubt that she will be the fairest flower on
Terr..."
"Then we shall leave those blossoms in peace," interrupted Yar Jupi
curtly.
Chapter Seven
The body of Kutsi Merc was lying in a damp underground passage behind
blank walls with a spiral ornament.
The casing of the artificial hump had been pierced and the air was
entering it, slowly destroying the safety fuse.
No one on Faena, however, had an inkling of this danger on the day of
the ceremonial farewell to the astronauts leaving for the planet Terr.
The expedition consisted of three Culturals and three Superiors, one of
the latter being Mada Jupi.
For the toilers in the fields and workshops of Powermania, the day of
the send-off was declared a public holiday so that the Faetians could go out
on the road all the way as far as Cape Farewell, as the Dictator had named
part of the Great Beach near the cosmodrome. This was the usual point of
departure for all space probes, and also for the ships of the Superiors who
were maintaining contact with Space Station Deimo. The proprietors hoped to
gain considerable profits from the possible colonisation of the planets and
were not parsimonious with their out lays.
Mada and Ave could not escape the feeling that they would soon find
themselves being pursued. They were riding in the same steam-car as Dm Sat
The old scientist was pensive and sad.
The young members of the expedition kept either looking back over their
shoulders or looking intently at the Faetians who flashed past, standing on
either side of the road and throwing flowers under the wheels of the car.
There were roundheads and longfaces among them. They stood closely packed
side by side, as if there were no distinction between them. For many
Faetians, a joint expedition of the two continents to a planet was a symbol
of peace and inspired them with the hope that it might be possible not only
to come to terms on Faena and avoid a war, so but to send part of the
population to other planets.
Many Faetians had come out onto the road with their children.
The Faetian landworkers were conspicuous with their dark suntan. Those
who toiled in the workshop buildings had earthy complexions. But
particularly noticeable were the Faetians from the deep mines. The coal-dust
had so ingrained itself into their pores that their skin seemed dark, as if
they were of another race and were neither longfaces nor roundheads.
Mada had withdrawn wholly into herself, depressed by what was
happening. Like a true Faetess, she evaluated everything through the images
near to her. She hardly remembered her own mother, but her nanny was to her
a symbol of everything that she was leaving behind on Faena. She felt
troubled because happiness lay ahead of her, whereas here... She shut her
eyes tight.
When she opened them again, she saw that the road had reached the
ocean. She looked at Ave, and her expression spoke volumes.
Ave had been thinking all the time about the Faetians standing by the
roadside. Tomorrow they would return to workshops filled with the noise of
lathes and the reek of oil. They would take up their stations by moving
belts conveying the frames of machines in the process of stage-by-stage
assembly, and they would stay there with no hope of Justice, compulsorily
and joylessly toiling to the end of their hopeless days.
Ave Mar knew that on his shoulders lay the responsibility for the
outcome of the space flight and how much it meant to all these deprived
people.
Millions of these Faetians were also dreaming of happiness and the
right to have children, whatever shape their heads might be. The means of
annihilation alone must no longer be taken from the civilised world. Faena
could not exist like that!
Um Sat was thinking sadly about the same thing. He was reflecting that
the laws governing life of the whole community of the Faetians must
evidently be understood like the laws of nature. The most serious mistake,
apart from the discovery and promulgation of the means of disintegrating
matter, was that, having lived until old age, he did not understand those
laws. Why, for example, were the Faetian toilers creating with their hands
not only what was needed to all for life, but also that which was capable of
cutting that life off? Why did these crowds now seeing them off tolerate the
power of a maniac who had made war his goal in life? Yar Jupi had now
conceived the idea of making a grand gesture, of sending out an expedition
to look for new "space continents". But how would the settlers live out
there? According to the former laws of Faena, taking injustice and the
threat of wars into space? No, true wisdom was in seeking not only new
planets to inhabit, for which even Yar Jupi was prepared, but new laws by
which to live that would scare the daylight out of him. Only why had the
half-crazed Dictator let his daughter go out into space so easily? It was no
picnic, after all!..
As he compared one detail with another, the old sage of learning
suddenly came to the frightening conclusion that the Dictator might be
trying to save his daughter from an imminent disintegration war on Faena.
He looked in a different light at the crowds of Faetians who were
seeing him off. Would he ever see them again?
Mada pressed Ave's hand and looked round eloquently. Ave understood her
fears...
Her alarm was not unfounded... Much had indeed been discovered in the
Dictator's palace.
Grom Alt, the brother of the dead Yar Alt, had stumbled on the trail.
This was the Grom Alt who had escorted Um Sat to the Dictator.
The officer of the Blood Guard noticed a dark streak on the floor
running from the Blood Door to Mada Jupi's chambers, to the underground
passage. Grom Alt was of too humble a rank to use the "blood" passage. But
he decided that at all costs he must check what that stain was. He scraped
up a sample of the dried substance and hurried to the laboratory.
His hands shook when, in secret from the others so as not to share his
discovery with anyone, he established the composition of the test, a method
taught to Blood Guard officers while at school, where skilful use was made
of foreign science.
He was so agitated that his hair became damp, although it was almost
standing on end. He had established that the stain on the floor was blood!
He hesitated to report his discovery to the Dictator, especially since
Mada had shown up and had seen her father. True, she had not been
accompanied by her nanny as usual. If something had happened, she could have
told the Dictator herself. But after his meeting with her, Yar Jupi had been
aloofly solemn. He had proclaimed a historical decision that had left the
whole palace and after that the whole continent dumbfounded, then delirious
with joy. The whole leadership had choked with effusions in which they had
pointed out to the ordinary people that the Wisest of the Wise was also the
most Fearless of the Valiant, prepared even to risk his beloved daughter's
life for the welfare of the Faetians, thinking of their distant future and
also of universal progress and of peace between the continents.
The obsequious joy in the Dictator's palace impeded Grom Alt's
investigation. Everyone he met could talk about nothing except the exploit
of Yar Jupi and his daughter.
In such an atmosphere, it was positively dangerous to draw anyone's
attention to a bloodstain that could cast a shadow on Mada, who had been
pronounced heroine of the day. Grom Alt found it particularly suspicious
that Mada had not left the Blood Door to her chambers open and that her
nanny had still failed to show up.
He decided to consult his brother, even if it meant sharing the honour
of the possible discovery with him. But Yar Alt had disappeared.
It could be that Yar Jupi had sent his trusted Supreme Officer on some
mission, as often before.
Grom Alt decided to act at his own risk. While Mada, amid sobs and
compliments, was being seen to the cosmodrome, Grom Alt, who had remained
behind on duty, went to the girl's chambers. The Blood Door was locked, but
not by automatic machines this time. All he needed was the skeleton key
which he had been taught to use in the Blood Guard school. Grom Alt went
cautiously into the pale-blue room.
He not only found the body of Mada's nanny lying on the couch, but that
of his own brother.
A poisoned bullet!
Yar Alt's pistol was lying nearby. Such a weapon could only have been
carried by the Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard.
Grom Alt examined the weapon. There were no bullets left in it. His
brother was not the kind of Faetian to have had only one round left in the
magazine and to have used it on himself. On whom had the others been used?
With mixed feelings of regret and disgust, Grom Alt looked at his
brother's cold body. They had never been good friends in his lifetime. Yar
Alt had forever oppressed his younger brother. And now there he was, lying
dead at Grom Alt's feet, thereby giving him a foothold on the next rung of
the career ladder.
Grom Alt was so pleased with his comparison of the corpse to a rung on
the ladder that he could not withhold himself and set his foot on the body,
but promptly jerked it away again and hurried out of the nauseating room
into the garden, then straight to the Dictator.
It was not easy getting through to Yar Jupi, in spite of the shocking
news that Grom Alt was bringing him.
The impartial secretary box would understand nothing. Feelings did not
exist for it, and the security robots and the door automatic machines of the
Dictator's study were controlled solely by that brainless box.
To tell the truth to the box would mean a refusal for sure, because the
stupid machine would promptly record in its memory all the circumstances of
the affair and send it for investigation to the officers of Criminal
Investigation, who hated the officers of the Blood Guard. They would risk
reporting the incident to the Dictator only after the findings of the
Criminal Investigation officers who, of course, would squeeze Grom Alt out
of the picture.
That was why Grom Alt decided to lie to the secretary box, inventing a
version according to which he had a most important message for the Dictator;
it had been given to him by Mada Jupi in person on the way to Cape Farewell.
After all, she was his cousin!
"You may give me the gist of the beautiful Mada's words," jabbered the
box, which was packed full with electronic circuits. "The Greatest of the
Great will study it when he checks my daily entries."
"I have nothing to tell you, meritorious guardian of memory. I must
deliver a certain object to the Greatest of the Great, the most Illustrious
of the Illustrious. If you, as a guardian of memory, could take this object
to the Greatest of the Great, I would be at peace."
The confounded box resisted for a long time, but gave way in the end.
The secretary box impartially reported to the Dictator that Grom Alt,
officer of the Blood Guard, begged to be received without use of the screen.
The Dictator was very busy. He had held a conference of the higher
military ranks who, of course, were not admitted to his presence but simply
attended on the monitor screens in his office. On the eve of the
disintegration war, no one had access to Yar Jupi. He feared his masters
from the Blood Council perhaps more than his subordinates.
The conference ended at last.
"Officer of the Blood Guard Grom Alt," creaked the secretary box, "you
may pass through the door to genuflect before the most Illustrious of the
Illustrious."
The agitated Grom Alt went into the Dictator's unprepossessing office,
afraid to raise his head and look at the face of the man who had invented
the Doctrine of Hatred. Like his brother, he aped the Dictator's external
appearance in every way.
According to the ritual, Grom Alt genuflected and, staring at the
floor, told in a trembling voice about the trail of blood leading into the
beautiful Mada's chambers and about the bodies he had found in there.
"Despicable robot of the guard! What are you drivelling about?"
"May your wrath descend on the foul murderers who plotted evil against
you and your incomparable daughter, and whose traces I was able to uncover.
I grieve over my brother's fate and am happy that your daughter did not
become a victim of the villainous conspiracy."
"Conspiracy?" roared the Dictator, and he quivered from head to foot.
He stood with clenched fists and glared with crazed eyes at the
terrified officer, who did not know what was going to happen next.
Yar Jupi only reflected for a moment. The discovery of this
over-zealous officer of the Blood Guard could upset all his calculations and
force him to cancel the orders he had only just given to his military men.
Yar Jupi roared with laughter.
"So that's how it is, is it?" shouted the Dictator through his
laughter. "You bring me news of the infinite grief of the Faetians who could
not bear to part with my incomparable Mada?"
"I meant something altogether different"
"Brainless insect! Answer my questions!"
"I am in fear and trembling."
"Why did my Supreme Officer Yar Alt die?"
"He was poisoned by a bullet."
"Who had such bullets, apart from him?"
"No one."
"Then is it not clear to you, insect, that, enamoured of the beautiful
Mada, the Supreme Officer committed suicide in her room as a mark of his
hopeless yearning for her?"
"But the nanny's body..."
"Was she not attached to her mistress? Did not the low creature
understand that with the departure of her mistress to another planet, she
would become an ordinary roundhead, insignificant and despised, as is only
right?"
"What? She took her own life?" Grom Alt was dumbfounded, remembering
the wound in Lua's throat and shaking with fear at the thought that he had
displeased the Dictator.
Yes, he certainly had displeased the Dictator. Yar Jupi was not at all
disposed to ascertain why only two had been killed when at any moment
hundreds of millions of Faetians could perish. The more so that this could
hold up the space expedition that was meant to save Mada's life.
"However, this stripling from the Blood Guard will hardly keep his
mouth shut," thought Yar Jupi.
The Dictator gently raised the terror-stricken officer off his knees.
"My good sentinel Grom Alt! You have every justification for replacing
your suicide brother. Thank fate that true Faetians are the slaves of their
feelings. If you should ever fall in love with a beautiful Faetess and she
does not reciprocate your feelings, behave as did your elder brother. But
allow me, as one who is proud of a daughter capable of inspiring such
powerful emotions, to thank you for your faithful service and for bringing
me news that has made my heart rejoice. I shall show you the treasure of my
flower collection, which is unrivalled on Faena. These blooms are as
beautiful as the Faetesses of our dreams. Savour their aroma."
Grom Alt obediently went to the niche where he could see the incredibly
beautiful blossoms, dark-blue as the sky before evening and glittering with
the gold spangles of new-lit stars.
"How do you like that perfume, my trusty sentinel?" asked Yar Jupi,
turning away.
"I have never breathed anything more enchanting. I feel an uncommon
lightness all over my body. I feel like flying."
"Perhaps you will indeed fly one day, as the incomparable Mada is
flying at this moment. If she discovers a life-supporting planet, then many
longfaces will fly there to turn new continents into lands of the
Superiors."
"Those words must be engraved on eternal stone. Each thought in here is
like a disintegration explosion; it flashes and it casts down."
"The scent of the flowers is undoubtedly calling forth your eloquence.
Order yourself the tunic of a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard."
A blissful Grom Alt, who had never expected such a turn of events, flew
out of the Dictator's office as if on wings.
If the secretary box had somehow been able to fathom the feelings of
living Faetians, it would have noticed Grom Alt's unusual state of mind. But
the box was only a machine and merely noted how much time the visitor had
spent with the Dictator. Very little...
And it took very little time for Grom Alt to feel ill. He collapsed in
the Blood Guard barracks and died in dreadful agony.
In the meantime, the automatic secretary began compiling a report on
the state of the armed forces after the preparations announced by the
Dictator for a disintegration war. But Yar Jupi switched off the power
supply to the pestilential box in a fury. He had been watching on the screen
the last moments of the expedition's lift-off for Terr, mentally seeing off
his daughter. With his whole being he suffered the parting with her and
squeezed his temples between the palms of his hands until it hurt.
He had seen Mada, with a strange look on her face, run her eyes round
the cosmodrome before she entered the lift-cage, her gaze resting on the
ocean with its white bands of foam on the crests of the waves. She was
followed by a Faetian, evidently one from the other continent.
For a moment, Yar Jupi was troubled at seeing a curly-haired half-breed
so close to his daughter, but then he remembered that she would at least
stay alive. He sighed heavily. He had a feeling that he had stepped on a
steep and slippery surface. He could not keep his footing. And below him
yawned an abyss.
Ave Mar and Mada were looking through the barred lift-cage. The ocean
was expanding and the horizon seemed to be lifting up the clouds. Ave turned
round and saw on the opposite side another ocean, a living one of massed
Faetian heads with their faces upturned to the rocket. As if to symbolise
Faena's overpopulation, they were jammed incredibly close together. A sudden
spasm of yearning clutched at Ave's throat. Would he ever come back again?
But he looked at Mada. They had chosen this course themselves, and let it
not be only the course of their own happiness. Ave still had little
understanding of the true forces driving Faena into war. He only wished with
all his heart that the mysterious planet Terr would prove suitable for
settlement by Faetians and that the danger of a disintegration war would be
over and done with forever. Ave again remembered Kutsi Merc, who had brought
him here, brought him and Mada together and had, in fact, given his life for
their happiness. May his bones rest in peace...
Kutsi Merc's bullet-riddled hump had not been taken to its goal, but
the delayed-action fuse, decaying under the action of the air, was measuring
out the last moments of peace on the planet Faena.
End of Part One
Explosion
Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike, beat them down!
Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!
W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet
Chapter One
There was uproar on Space Station Deimo.
Station engineer Tycho Veg, handsome, prematurely grey-haired, slow and
pensive, was looking in disapproval at the bustle that had just begun. But
it was not in conformity with his mild nature to interfere in anything: he
gave way in all things to his wife, Ala Veg, and she was the one who had
thought of holding a banquet in honour of the arriving spaceship Quest.
The still unfaded beauty Ala Veg had become bored at home on Faena with
teaching astronomy to blockheaded Superiors. She insisted on leaving with
her husband for the space station, which only took married couples with the
required special qualifications. They would be able to return to their three
children left on Faena after earning enough to last them for the rest of
their lives, and Tycho Veg would finally become a workshop proprietor.
Ala Veg, with the pedigree face of a Superior, a fine, straight nose, a
short upper lip and a sensual mouth, went about with a permanently haughty
frown; she considered herself and her husband the two most important
Faetians on the base.
However, the wife of the station chief, Nega Luton, who had illegally
taken over the post of Sister of Health without being a qualified doctor,
was of a different opinion. Encouraged by her husband, Mrak Luton, a
corpulent donkey, she passed herself off as the first lady of space and
never missed an opportunity to sting Ala Veg with a reference to the
children she had abandoned. Ala would parry these blows, sparing neither
Nega's barrenness nor her unattractive appearance.
Lada, the young but well-upholstered cook and gardener, a good-natured
woman with an affectionate smile on her broad, snub-nosed face, did
everything quickly and efficiently, trying to please everybody. She adored
her husband, proud that he, Brat Lua, was the only one of the roundheads,
thanks to his mother's position in the Dictator's family, who had been able
to obtain an education on Danjab, the continent of the Culturals. He was
sent to Deimo both as jack-of-all-trades and as a representative of the
roundheads who were to move to the uncomfortable planet of Mar. Lada Lua
willingly followed him to serve all the inhabitants of Deimo.
A signal from her communications bracelet found Lada Lua in the
greenhouse, a transparent cylindrical corridor thousands of paces long.
Apart from Lada, no one used that corridor because it was on the axis of the
space station and there was no artificial gravity created by centrifugal
force as in the other quarters on the station. The nurserywoman did not feel
her weight as she floated in and out among the air-roots of the plants. The
function of soil was performed by a nutritive mist of the saps that the
roots needed. The harvest in space was much bigger than on Faena.
The signal found Lada Lua collecting sweet fruits for the forthcoming
banquet.
Holding on to the air-roots, Lada Lua hurried to answer Ala Veg's call.
She had to float quite a distance through the tangled air-roots and then go
down the shaft inside a spoke of the giant wheel, in whose rim all the
station's quarters were housed.
The cage in the shaft seemed to fall down into an abyss. The feeling of
weight began to appear only at the end of the ride, when the cage slowed
down and stopped. The doors opened automatically. Lada Lua, her normal
weight restored, walked out into the corridor, which seemed to tilt upwards
before and behind her. She did not, however, have to climb any gradients.
Ala Veg was rushing about her cabin, exasperated at the clumsiness of
her husband who was on his knees, unsuccessfully trying to pin some kind of
frill to her gown.
Lada Lua threw up her hands in delight.
Ala Veg unceremoniously dismissed her husband and he went off to
prepare the welcome for the approaching ship, which would have to refuel. He
realised that his wife was bored to death with the monotonous days and
tedious dinners at the common table, the faces that she was sick of seeing,
always the same ones, the same words heard so many times and the mutual
friction that grew worse from day to day. Tycho Veg tried to understand his
wife, to excuse her failings, to put them down to homesickness and to her
pining for her children. He was missing them himself. If only one of them
was here, they would be so happy! But the presence of children was not
allowed on the space stations. The Superiors, when complementing the staff
on Deimo, managed to oppress the roundheads there too. Nega Luton was
barren, Ala Veg already had three children and at her age, which she kept
secret, she had not decided to have a fourth. As a result, the ban only
affected the young Lua couple, who could not have children on the planet,
nor on the space station.
After helping Ala Veg to dress, Lada Lua ran to the kitchen with its
glittering pans and dials to boil, roast and bake...
But the communications bracelet summoned her again, this time to Nega
Luton. That important lady loved comforts and luxury more than anything. Her
husband, a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard, had supplied her with all
these in full measure on Faena. Least of all had the Lutons wanted to go
into space. However, they had ended up there by order of the Dictator.
Lada Lua switched the automatic kitchen machines to a set program and
hurried off to Nega Luton.
When the spaceship Quest went into orbit round Deimo and approached the
station for docking, Mada and Ave never left the porthole.
The enormous planet Mar with its convex rim filled over half the
window. Sol no longer looked like a brilliant round star, but had become a
blinding disc with a magnificent corona. For a short while, the planet
blotted out its own star, plunging the ship into a swiftly-passing night.
Hand in hand, Mada and Ave greeted this unusual dawn of their new life,
waiting for the brilliant, curly-fringed Sol to begin rising from behind the
hump of Mar. The black surface of the deserts turned brown, and gradually,
according to height, there followed one after another all the most delicate
hues of a gigantic rainbow that did not hang over the rain-washed forests
and plains, as on their native Faena, but embraced the desert planet in a
crescent that merged with the rim of the gigantic sphere. Mada caught her
breath. She could only squeeze Ave's fingers in silence.
Then the rainbow glittered at one point and the Faetians saw Deimo,
their first destination. It was the brightest star in the heavens, rising
swiftly over the rim of the rainbow.
As it drew nearer, Deimo became a gigantic, irregularly shaped lump of
rock, and soon a small star became visible next to it. This was Space
Station Deimo, the Faetians' destination.
Then they were able to see that this star was a ring inclined at slight
angle to the mass of Mar. Comparable to the planet Sat, it was a satellite
of Mar's satellite. Finally, their eyes began to ache with staring at this
artificial metal structure, which was reflecting the rays of Sol.
The first pilot of Quest, Smel Ven, the celebrated astronaut of the
Superiors, was executing a complicated manoeuvre to approach the axis of the
station's wheel and dock on to the central compartment. The silvery tail of
the greenhouse extended from the station, a bright line receding into the
darkness.
When Quest moved up to Deimo station, engineer Tycho Veg summoned Brat
Lua to the central compartment as the mechanic who did the heavy work. Mrak
Luton, the chief of the station, did not consider it necessary to go up to
the central compartment in order to "float about on the loose" in null
gravity. He preferred to stay in the ring corridor and paced round it,
important and pompous, with his hands thrust behind his back.
The name Mrak (Gloom), given to him in his early youth, suited him: a
pudgy, rectangular face, sparse grey hair and small, suspicious eyes under
the tufted eyebrows.
He did not linger by the lift-cage but continued promenading in the
same direction all the time until finally, after he had gone round the whole
outer ring, he turned up in the corridor on the other side.
However, all three Faetesses, unable to restrain their curiosity, met
at the lift-cage.
The first to come out into the corridor was the exceptionally tall Dm
Sat.
The ladies respectfully inclined their heads.
Two Faetians came next.
The giant Gor Terr, up to the eyes in whiskers, was the ship's flight
engineer and one of the men who designed it. He had a pronounced stoop,
thanks to which his arms seemed uncommonly long. His friends used to joke
that in height, strength and appearance he resembled the ancestors of the
Faetians. However, his low, hairy brow hid an exceptional mind.
His new friend, Toni Fae, educated and refined, wrote poetry. He had a
round face, a thin nose and wide-open eyes behind big spectacles.
Nega Luton took charge of the gigantic Gor Terr. Ala Veg took the
youthful Toni Fae under her wing.
Um Sat went of his own accord to the roundhead Lada Lua.
"Will the gentle Faetess show me to where I can have a rest?"
Lada Lua blushed and, beside herself with happiness, led the great sage
to his appointed cabin.
Ala Veg ran down the corridor with a provocative laugh, beckoning Toni
Fae to catch up with her. She conducted him into a comfortable cabin and sat
down in a light chair.
"And so is it not true, Toni Fae, that we have kindred souls. Is it by
chance that we are both astronomers, that we find ourselves amid the stars
and are sitting within reach of one another?"
Toni Fae took off his spectacles to see more clearly.
"The stars have made us friends, is it not so?" continued Ala Veg, well
aware of the effect she was having on the young visitor.
"For the sake of everything I see here, it was well worth flying to the
stars," he murmured, lowering his eyes.
"I already know that you're a poet. But you are also an astronomer. I
want us to have views in common."
"I would like that so much!"
They were silent for a moment as they gazed at one another.
"Soon there will be a banquet. We shall sit side by side."
"Oh, yes!" Toni Fae nodded his head. "But we must also take Gor Terr
under our wing. He is as helpless as I am."
"I love the helpless ones," laughed Ala Veg, affectionately touching
Toni Fae's hand. "You are a charming boy and I'm so happy that you have
arrived. If only you knew how fed up we are with one another here!"
Mrak Luton, who was finishing his stroll along the corridor as if no
one had arrived at the station, had in fact been carefully measuring his
pace. Of all the new arrivals, he regarded the Dictator's daughter as most
important. For that reason, he went up to the lift-cage at the precise
moment when Mada, Ave and Smel Ven, the first pilot, came out of it.
The chief of the station was chewing it over in his mind: after
lift-off from Faena, the Dictator's daughter had married Ave Mar, son of the
Ruler of the Culturals. What was this? Politics?
"May they be prolonged, the successful cycles in the life of the Wisest
of the Wise who had the good fortune to have such a daughter," was the
flowery welcome with which he greeted Mada, and he announced that she and
Ave had been given two magnificent cabins in opposite compartments of the
station.
Mada flared up.
"Was not Station Deimo in electromagnetic communication with Quest?"
she asked angrily.
Mrak Luton shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
"If the customs of the Superiors are effective on the station,"
continued Mada, as if giving an order, "then you must give my husband and
myself a double cabin and send the roundheaded Lua couple there at once."
The station chief bowed respectfully as low as his paunch would allow.
"They exist to serve. May the cycles in the lives of the Dictator and
the Ruler be prolonged," he concluded, glancing at Ave for the first time.
Mrak Luton personally conducted the young couple to the best cabin on
the station, and on the way he showed the glowering Smel Ven his quarters.
Then he found Brat Lua and Tycho Veg who had just emerged from the central
compartment. He ordered Brat Lua to find his wife and report with her to
Mada and Ave. Only then did he notice that Smel Ven was still standing
outside his cabin door. Mrak Luton went up to him and heard the following
words, uttered in a half-whisper:
"The Dictator will hardly approve of such hasty hospitality." Smel Ven
vanished, slamming the door behind him.
Mrak Luton stared dully at the plastic-covered door.
Brat Lua not only brought his wife to Ave and Mada, he also brought
drawings. He was a calm Faetian of medium height, with a tight, glossy skin
and intent eyes.
Since his mother had become Mada's nanny he had grown up away from her,
but had always felt her influence. She had even managed to bring her son and
her charge together and make them friends. However, their meetings had soon
become impossible. The Dictator shut himself off from the world behind
walls. The boy learned humiliation and injustice. Impressionable and proud,
he became more and more withdrawn.
He had a rare determination. Mother Lua taught him that only knowledge
would compel even those who were oppressing the roundheads to take him
seriously. And so he fought stubbornly for every crumb of knowledge.
The result was that even in early youth, his face acquired an
expression of firmness and concentration.
He fell in love with Lada Nep before his departure for Danjab, the
continent of the Gutturals, to finish his education there. Finally persuaded
by the nanny and Mada herself, Yar Jupi agreed, although he kept his real
opinion to himself.
For several cycles, Lada devotedly waited for her betrothed, intending
after his return to leave immediately on the Dictator's orders for Space
Station Deimo, created by him to consolidate his authority and ostensibly to
fulfil his plan of resettling the roundheads on Mar.
Brat Lua was now hurrying to share with Mada and Ave the fruits of his
reflections and of sleepless nights spent at his drawings.
"I've been planning how to make life better for the roundheads," he
said hurriedly but firmly. "I've planned the construction of deep
underground cities with an artificial atmosphere. On the surface of Mar, in
the midst of the deserts which you see in the porthole, I have been planning
oases of fertility. It will be enough to water them with melted water from
the polar ice and deliver it to them along underground rivers. These will
have to be excavated." He looked trustingly at his listeners. "I have been
waiting so long for real men of learning!"
Mada went up to Brat Lua.
"We have known one another since childhood, and we both loved Mother
Lua."
" 'Loved' her?" The Faetian went suddenly on his guard, staring hard at
"What's happened? Can I help you in any way?"
"There is no happiness in this world," cried Ave. "But in your power
there is another world!"
The Elder raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
"There is another world in space," explained Ave, and he told the Elder
all about what had happened.
Um Sat became thoughtful.
"So I must accept Yar Jupi's conditions and, in my turn, demand that he
send his daughter to Terr? Doesn't that seem incredible? To take refuge in
space?"
"But that would mean salvation not only for me and Ave," intervened
Mada. "It would be the fulfilment of a dream: to help the Faetians, to find
them a new world. Nanny and Mother were thinking about it. Not only Ave and
I, but all of us could be happy there. It's not just for myself that I'm
ready to fly to Terr. That's what I'm going to tell my father."
Mada understood global problems in no way more deeply than Um Sat.
"What duties as an astronaut can Mada carry out?" asked Um Sat sternly.
"I am a Sister of Health. We are needed everywhere. And not only for
the children."
"That's true," agreed Um Sat. "Ave Mar, you will stay here, no one is
going to look for your secretary. Mada must go to her chambers and lock
herself in. Ave, see your young wife as far as the Dread Wall. It's a good
thing that you both look on the trip to Terr as an exploit, not just as an
escape."
After their departure, the Elder sat for a while in reflection. Then he
summoned several sages of learning who had arrived for the session. They
filled his cell. Many of them were roundheads, but there were longfaces as
well. As they came in, each touched his right eyebrow with his left hand.
When the cell was packed full, Um Sat asked if he should fly from Faena on
the eve of possible events for which, in the name of Justice, the toilers
and their friends had been preparing for so many cycles.
After all, he was an adherent of the struggle against the proprietors
on both continents, although he had not fully fathomed its depths.
Those present decided unanimously that Um Sat, the personification and
pride of learning on Faena, should go into space to find the continents that
the Faetians needed. Many of them considered that in this way they would
best safeguard the life of the great Elder, but no one said anything about
it to him.
Um Sat threw his hands apart. He must submit to the general decision.
He had now received the right to act. When Ave returned, Um Sat called the
Dictator's secretary over the closed TV. The screen lit up and the slits of
the secretary box glittered on it.
"Dictator Jupi, most illustrious of the illustrious, consents to
receive the honorary longface Um Sat and is sending an escort for him,"
announced the box, which had been programmed to speak in the old style. The
screen went blank.
"What?" whispered Ave Mar. "Go into the Lair? Doesn't this mean that
Yar Jupi wants to take a hostage?"
The Elder smiled sadly.
"The risk is not so great."
An officer of the Blood Guard soon appeared in the cell. Ave's blood
froze. Before him stood the living Yar Alt.
The caller bowed to the Elder, glanced casually at Ave and said
pompously:
"The greatest of the great, the Dictator Yar Jupi, gave you the right,
honorary long-face, to enter his presence. I have been sent to escort you to
the palace."
Ave Mar had the impression that even the Blood Guard officer's voice
was the same as Alt's. Had he really come back from the dead? Perhaps the
paralysis caused by the bullet had only been temporary. But why didn't he
rush at Ave the way he had done in Mada's room?
The officer of the Blood Guard merely glanced indifferently again at
Ave Mar and bowed to him.
"In the name of the most illustrious Dictator, I bear apologies to the
honoured guest."
As soon as the officer of the Blood Guard and Um Sat had gone out, Ave
Mar rushed to the door of the cell. To his amazement, it was unlocked. Only
then did Ave Mar realise that the officer's face had been innocent of a
scar.
Dictator Yar Jupi was waiting impatiently for Um Sat Omnipotent by
grace of the Blood Council, capable in favour of the proprietors of sending
millions of Faetians to their death and ready to unleash a disintegration
war at any moment, he was powerless to safeguard the one life that was the
most dear to him.
Yar Jupi was a complicated person. He understood extremely well whom he
was serving and how. After losing his wife in his time, he had come to hate
the roundheads from whom she had contracted a fatal disease while nursing
them. This hatred had finally found expression in a barefaced doctrine which
it was impossible to believe, but which proved convenient to the proprietors
from the Blood Council. Now, at the height of power, when he was ostensibly
leading the life of an ascetic in voluntary seclusion, love for his daughter
had become the only ray of light to Yar Jupi. Everything else was darkness:
fear for his own life, terror of a war which he was nevertheless preparing
himself, terror also of the toilers and of his own masters who were ready to
get rid of him.
The thing that mattered to him most now was Mada's safety. She was the
only one he would want to save from among the millions of doomed.
But how?
And so, in fulfilment of the complex plan that had occurred to him, he
had appeared unexpectedly during a session of Peaceful Space in the Temple
of Eternity. And now Um Sat was due to arrive.
The officer of the Blood Guard, Yar Alt's brother, handed Um Sat over
to two security robots which led the sage of learning through low-ceilinged,
sumptuously furnished halls.
Urn Sat glanced out of the corner of his eye at his unwieldy bodyguards
or escorts with their cubic heads and hooked, scaly manipulators.
In one of the rooms, a box with glittering slits in it, just like the
one that the Dictator used, said with programmed floweriness in the
impeccable ancient manner:
"Urn Sat, honorary longface, may pass through the door in front of him,
on the other side of which there awaits him the most blissful meeting with
the greatest of the great, the most brilliant of the brilliant, Yar Jupi,
Dictator of the continent of the Superiors."
The door opened of its own accord, the robot security guards fell
behind and Urn Sat went into the grim, empty dungeon with the grey walls.
Yar Jupi, bearded, hook-nosed, with a shaven skull and upslanting
eyebrows, rushed to meet the visitor, riveting him with a piercing, half-mad
stare.
"Does Urn Sat realise what honour and trust has been afforded him?" he
shouted.
"Yes, so be it," sighed the Elder. "Though I be unworthy of such
honour, I may be trusted."
"I am going to talk as Superior to Superior, the more so since you are
famous for your mind," said the Dictator more calmly this time.
According to the ritual, the guest was supposed to reply that his
brains were below comparison with the divine and enlightened intellect of
Yar Jupi, but Um Sat calmly said:
"I shall converse with the Dictator Yar Jupi as an Elder of learning
with a politician, striving to understand and be understood."
Yar Jupi started, his nose twitched and his face was distorted by a
nervous grimace. He looked sideways at a niche under the window. There were
wonderful flowers standing in it. Their tender, dark-blue corollas with the
golden sprinkling of the finest stars, each with up to six petals, looked
down, dangling on bowed stems.
This was a miracle, bred by the nurserymen on the orders of Yar Jupi, a
passionate lover of flowers. But it was not their evening beauty that
attracted him. The submissive horticulturalists had managed to breed a
vegetable miracle, or rather monster, which exuded an aroma that was
poisonous, however gentle it might seem. Any Faetian who inhaled it was
stricken down with a fatal disease. More than once, rare visitors to this
study, excessively independent-minded comrades-in-arms, received by the
Dictator with unexpected warmth, sometimes even a few of his
over-discontented masters, the big proprietors, had been privileged to sniff
the greatest of all treasures. On returning home, they had died in agony
without suspecting why.
Needless to say, a reliable ventilation system was sucking the
dangerous scent out of the room.
"Well?" asked the Dictator nervously.
"After thinking it over all night, I have decided to accept your offer
and lead the expedition to the planet Terr."
Yar Jupi started and sighed with relief.
"Urn Sat, having become an honorary longface, you confirm your wisdom.
I shall glorify this on both continents. However, yesterday in the Temple of
Eternity, I had in mind one stipulation which you will have to observe."
"I also wanted to add a condition to my consent to head the
expedition."
"I can't bear it when conditions are imposed on me," said the Dictator,
raising his voice slightly.
"It is rather the first practical step to complementing the space
crew."
"I shall complement the space crew with longfaces, the most worthy of
the worthy."
"Perhaps Dictator Yar Jupi will remember yesterday's promise to include
any of the longfaces in the crew."
"I confirm that, even if it means my daughter."
"The daughter of Dictator Yar Jupi?" Dm Sat was truly astonished. It
had never even entered his head that the Dictator himself would talk about
her first.
"Do you dare to regard my daughter as ballast on the flight when she is
a Sister of Health?" said Yar Jupi, raising his voice.
Both men fell silent, studying each other. No matter how clever he
might be, it had never occurred to Urn Sat that the Dictator had thought of
saving his daughter from the horrors of a disintegration war by sending her
on a space expedition; and however cunning and crafty Yar Jupi might be, he
could not have presumed that Dm Sat had come to him solely in order to
obtain his consent to his daughter's flight to Terr.
"So you don't want her to fly?" demanded Yar Jupi ominously. "You're
worried about her? I appreciate that Would you care to go over to those
flowers? They are beautiful, are they not? Have you ever seen the like?
Savour their aroma!.."
"I have never seen anything more beautiful than the daughter of
Dictator Yar Jupi. Have no doubt that she will be the fairest flower on
Terr..."
"Then we shall leave those blossoms in peace," interrupted Yar Jupi
curtly.
Chapter Seven
The body of Kutsi Merc was lying in a damp underground passage behind
blank walls with a spiral ornament.
The casing of the artificial hump had been pierced and the air was
entering it, slowly destroying the safety fuse.
No one on Faena, however, had an inkling of this danger on the day of
the ceremonial farewell to the astronauts leaving for the planet Terr.
The expedition consisted of three Culturals and three Superiors, one of
the latter being Mada Jupi.
For the toilers in the fields and workshops of Powermania, the day of
the send-off was declared a public holiday so that the Faetians could go out
on the road all the way as far as Cape Farewell, as the Dictator had named
part of the Great Beach near the cosmodrome. This was the usual point of
departure for all space probes, and also for the ships of the Superiors who
were maintaining contact with Space Station Deimo. The proprietors hoped to
gain considerable profits from the possible colonisation of the planets and
were not parsimonious with their out lays.
Mada and Ave could not escape the feeling that they would soon find
themselves being pursued. They were riding in the same steam-car as Dm Sat
The old scientist was pensive and sad.
The young members of the expedition kept either looking back over their
shoulders or looking intently at the Faetians who flashed past, standing on
either side of the road and throwing flowers under the wheels of the car.
There were roundheads and longfaces among them. They stood closely packed
side by side, as if there were no distinction between them. For many
Faetians, a joint expedition of the two continents to a planet was a symbol
of peace and inspired them with the hope that it might be possible not only
to come to terms on Faena and avoid a war, so but to send part of the
population to other planets.
Many Faetians had come out onto the road with their children.
The Faetian landworkers were conspicuous with their dark suntan. Those
who toiled in the workshop buildings had earthy complexions. But
particularly noticeable were the Faetians from the deep mines. The coal-dust
had so ingrained itself into their pores that their skin seemed dark, as if
they were of another race and were neither longfaces nor roundheads.
Mada had withdrawn wholly into herself, depressed by what was
happening. Like a true Faetess, she evaluated everything through the images
near to her. She hardly remembered her own mother, but her nanny was to her
a symbol of everything that she was leaving behind on Faena. She felt
troubled because happiness lay ahead of her, whereas here... She shut her
eyes tight.
When she opened them again, she saw that the road had reached the
ocean. She looked at Ave, and her expression spoke volumes.
Ave had been thinking all the time about the Faetians standing by the
roadside. Tomorrow they would return to workshops filled with the noise of
lathes and the reek of oil. They would take up their stations by moving
belts conveying the frames of machines in the process of stage-by-stage
assembly, and they would stay there with no hope of Justice, compulsorily
and joylessly toiling to the end of their hopeless days.
Ave Mar knew that on his shoulders lay the responsibility for the
outcome of the space flight and how much it meant to all these deprived
people.
Millions of these Faetians were also dreaming of happiness and the
right to have children, whatever shape their heads might be. The means of
annihilation alone must no longer be taken from the civilised world. Faena
could not exist like that!
Um Sat was thinking sadly about the same thing. He was reflecting that
the laws governing life of the whole community of the Faetians must
evidently be understood like the laws of nature. The most serious mistake,
apart from the discovery and promulgation of the means of disintegrating
matter, was that, having lived until old age, he did not understand those
laws. Why, for example, were the Faetian toilers creating with their hands
not only what was needed to all for life, but also that which was capable of
cutting that life off? Why did these crowds now seeing them off tolerate the
power of a maniac who had made war his goal in life? Yar Jupi had now
conceived the idea of making a grand gesture, of sending out an expedition
to look for new "space continents". But how would the settlers live out
there? According to the former laws of Faena, taking injustice and the
threat of wars into space? No, true wisdom was in seeking not only new
planets to inhabit, for which even Yar Jupi was prepared, but new laws by
which to live that would scare the daylight out of him. Only why had the
half-crazed Dictator let his daughter go out into space so easily? It was no
picnic, after all!..
As he compared one detail with another, the old sage of learning
suddenly came to the frightening conclusion that the Dictator might be
trying to save his daughter from an imminent disintegration war on Faena.
He looked in a different light at the crowds of Faetians who were
seeing him off. Would he ever see them again?
Mada pressed Ave's hand and looked round eloquently. Ave understood her
fears...
Her alarm was not unfounded... Much had indeed been discovered in the
Dictator's palace.
Grom Alt, the brother of the dead Yar Alt, had stumbled on the trail.
This was the Grom Alt who had escorted Um Sat to the Dictator.
The officer of the Blood Guard noticed a dark streak on the floor
running from the Blood Door to Mada Jupi's chambers, to the underground
passage. Grom Alt was of too humble a rank to use the "blood" passage. But
he decided that at all costs he must check what that stain was. He scraped
up a sample of the dried substance and hurried to the laboratory.
His hands shook when, in secret from the others so as not to share his
discovery with anyone, he established the composition of the test, a method
taught to Blood Guard officers while at school, where skilful use was made
of foreign science.
He was so agitated that his hair became damp, although it was almost
standing on end. He had established that the stain on the floor was blood!
He hesitated to report his discovery to the Dictator, especially since
Mada had shown up and had seen her father. True, she had not been
accompanied by her nanny as usual. If something had happened, she could have
told the Dictator herself. But after his meeting with her, Yar Jupi had been
aloofly solemn. He had proclaimed a historical decision that had left the
whole palace and after that the whole continent dumbfounded, then delirious
with joy. The whole leadership had choked with effusions in which they had
pointed out to the ordinary people that the Wisest of the Wise was also the
most Fearless of the Valiant, prepared even to risk his beloved daughter's
life for the welfare of the Faetians, thinking of their distant future and
also of universal progress and of peace between the continents.
The obsequious joy in the Dictator's palace impeded Grom Alt's
investigation. Everyone he met could talk about nothing except the exploit
of Yar Jupi and his daughter.
In such an atmosphere, it was positively dangerous to draw anyone's
attention to a bloodstain that could cast a shadow on Mada, who had been
pronounced heroine of the day. Grom Alt found it particularly suspicious
that Mada had not left the Blood Door to her chambers open and that her
nanny had still failed to show up.
He decided to consult his brother, even if it meant sharing the honour
of the possible discovery with him. But Yar Alt had disappeared.
It could be that Yar Jupi had sent his trusted Supreme Officer on some
mission, as often before.
Grom Alt decided to act at his own risk. While Mada, amid sobs and
compliments, was being seen to the cosmodrome, Grom Alt, who had remained
behind on duty, went to the girl's chambers. The Blood Door was locked, but
not by automatic machines this time. All he needed was the skeleton key
which he had been taught to use in the Blood Guard school. Grom Alt went
cautiously into the pale-blue room.
He not only found the body of Mada's nanny lying on the couch, but that
of his own brother.
A poisoned bullet!
Yar Alt's pistol was lying nearby. Such a weapon could only have been
carried by the Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard.
Grom Alt examined the weapon. There were no bullets left in it. His
brother was not the kind of Faetian to have had only one round left in the
magazine and to have used it on himself. On whom had the others been used?
With mixed feelings of regret and disgust, Grom Alt looked at his
brother's cold body. They had never been good friends in his lifetime. Yar
Alt had forever oppressed his younger brother. And now there he was, lying
dead at Grom Alt's feet, thereby giving him a foothold on the next rung of
the career ladder.
Grom Alt was so pleased with his comparison of the corpse to a rung on
the ladder that he could not withhold himself and set his foot on the body,
but promptly jerked it away again and hurried out of the nauseating room
into the garden, then straight to the Dictator.
It was not easy getting through to Yar Jupi, in spite of the shocking
news that Grom Alt was bringing him.
The impartial secretary box would understand nothing. Feelings did not
exist for it, and the security robots and the door automatic machines of the
Dictator's study were controlled solely by that brainless box.
To tell the truth to the box would mean a refusal for sure, because the
stupid machine would promptly record in its memory all the circumstances of
the affair and send it for investigation to the officers of Criminal
Investigation, who hated the officers of the Blood Guard. They would risk
reporting the incident to the Dictator only after the findings of the
Criminal Investigation officers who, of course, would squeeze Grom Alt out
of the picture.
That was why Grom Alt decided to lie to the secretary box, inventing a
version according to which he had a most important message for the Dictator;
it had been given to him by Mada Jupi in person on the way to Cape Farewell.
After all, she was his cousin!
"You may give me the gist of the beautiful Mada's words," jabbered the
box, which was packed full with electronic circuits. "The Greatest of the
Great will study it when he checks my daily entries."
"I have nothing to tell you, meritorious guardian of memory. I must
deliver a certain object to the Greatest of the Great, the most Illustrious
of the Illustrious. If you, as a guardian of memory, could take this object
to the Greatest of the Great, I would be at peace."
The confounded box resisted for a long time, but gave way in the end.
The secretary box impartially reported to the Dictator that Grom Alt,
officer of the Blood Guard, begged to be received without use of the screen.
The Dictator was very busy. He had held a conference of the higher
military ranks who, of course, were not admitted to his presence but simply
attended on the monitor screens in his office. On the eve of the
disintegration war, no one had access to Yar Jupi. He feared his masters
from the Blood Council perhaps more than his subordinates.
The conference ended at last.
"Officer of the Blood Guard Grom Alt," creaked the secretary box, "you
may pass through the door to genuflect before the most Illustrious of the
Illustrious."
The agitated Grom Alt went into the Dictator's unprepossessing office,
afraid to raise his head and look at the face of the man who had invented
the Doctrine of Hatred. Like his brother, he aped the Dictator's external
appearance in every way.
According to the ritual, Grom Alt genuflected and, staring at the
floor, told in a trembling voice about the trail of blood leading into the
beautiful Mada's chambers and about the bodies he had found in there.
"Despicable robot of the guard! What are you drivelling about?"
"May your wrath descend on the foul murderers who plotted evil against
you and your incomparable daughter, and whose traces I was able to uncover.
I grieve over my brother's fate and am happy that your daughter did not
become a victim of the villainous conspiracy."
"Conspiracy?" roared the Dictator, and he quivered from head to foot.
He stood with clenched fists and glared with crazed eyes at the
terrified officer, who did not know what was going to happen next.
Yar Jupi only reflected for a moment. The discovery of this
over-zealous officer of the Blood Guard could upset all his calculations and
force him to cancel the orders he had only just given to his military men.
Yar Jupi roared with laughter.
"So that's how it is, is it?" shouted the Dictator through his
laughter. "You bring me news of the infinite grief of the Faetians who could
not bear to part with my incomparable Mada?"
"I meant something altogether different"
"Brainless insect! Answer my questions!"
"I am in fear and trembling."
"Why did my Supreme Officer Yar Alt die?"
"He was poisoned by a bullet."
"Who had such bullets, apart from him?"
"No one."
"Then is it not clear to you, insect, that, enamoured of the beautiful
Mada, the Supreme Officer committed suicide in her room as a mark of his
hopeless yearning for her?"
"But the nanny's body..."
"Was she not attached to her mistress? Did not the low creature
understand that with the departure of her mistress to another planet, she
would become an ordinary roundhead, insignificant and despised, as is only
right?"
"What? She took her own life?" Grom Alt was dumbfounded, remembering
the wound in Lua's throat and shaking with fear at the thought that he had
displeased the Dictator.
Yes, he certainly had displeased the Dictator. Yar Jupi was not at all
disposed to ascertain why only two had been killed when at any moment
hundreds of millions of Faetians could perish. The more so that this could
hold up the space expedition that was meant to save Mada's life.
"However, this stripling from the Blood Guard will hardly keep his
mouth shut," thought Yar Jupi.
The Dictator gently raised the terror-stricken officer off his knees.
"My good sentinel Grom Alt! You have every justification for replacing
your suicide brother. Thank fate that true Faetians are the slaves of their
feelings. If you should ever fall in love with a beautiful Faetess and she
does not reciprocate your feelings, behave as did your elder brother. But
allow me, as one who is proud of a daughter capable of inspiring such
powerful emotions, to thank you for your faithful service and for bringing
me news that has made my heart rejoice. I shall show you the treasure of my
flower collection, which is unrivalled on Faena. These blooms are as
beautiful as the Faetesses of our dreams. Savour their aroma."
Grom Alt obediently went to the niche where he could see the incredibly
beautiful blossoms, dark-blue as the sky before evening and glittering with
the gold spangles of new-lit stars.
"How do you like that perfume, my trusty sentinel?" asked Yar Jupi,
turning away.
"I have never breathed anything more enchanting. I feel an uncommon
lightness all over my body. I feel like flying."
"Perhaps you will indeed fly one day, as the incomparable Mada is
flying at this moment. If she discovers a life-supporting planet, then many
longfaces will fly there to turn new continents into lands of the
Superiors."
"Those words must be engraved on eternal stone. Each thought in here is
like a disintegration explosion; it flashes and it casts down."
"The scent of the flowers is undoubtedly calling forth your eloquence.
Order yourself the tunic of a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard."
A blissful Grom Alt, who had never expected such a turn of events, flew
out of the Dictator's office as if on wings.
If the secretary box had somehow been able to fathom the feelings of
living Faetians, it would have noticed Grom Alt's unusual state of mind. But
the box was only a machine and merely noted how much time the visitor had
spent with the Dictator. Very little...
And it took very little time for Grom Alt to feel ill. He collapsed in
the Blood Guard barracks and died in dreadful agony.
In the meantime, the automatic secretary began compiling a report on
the state of the armed forces after the preparations announced by the
Dictator for a disintegration war. But Yar Jupi switched off the power
supply to the pestilential box in a fury. He had been watching on the screen
the last moments of the expedition's lift-off for Terr, mentally seeing off
his daughter. With his whole being he suffered the parting with her and
squeezed his temples between the palms of his hands until it hurt.
He had seen Mada, with a strange look on her face, run her eyes round
the cosmodrome before she entered the lift-cage, her gaze resting on the
ocean with its white bands of foam on the crests of the waves. She was
followed by a Faetian, evidently one from the other continent.
For a moment, Yar Jupi was troubled at seeing a curly-haired half-breed
so close to his daughter, but then he remembered that she would at least
stay alive. He sighed heavily. He had a feeling that he had stepped on a
steep and slippery surface. He could not keep his footing. And below him
yawned an abyss.
Ave Mar and Mada were looking through the barred lift-cage. The ocean
was expanding and the horizon seemed to be lifting up the clouds. Ave turned
round and saw on the opposite side another ocean, a living one of massed
Faetian heads with their faces upturned to the rocket. As if to symbolise
Faena's overpopulation, they were jammed incredibly close together. A sudden
spasm of yearning clutched at Ave's throat. Would he ever come back again?
But he looked at Mada. They had chosen this course themselves, and let it
not be only the course of their own happiness. Ave still had little
understanding of the true forces driving Faena into war. He only wished with
all his heart that the mysterious planet Terr would prove suitable for
settlement by Faetians and that the danger of a disintegration war would be
over and done with forever. Ave again remembered Kutsi Merc, who had brought
him here, brought him and Mada together and had, in fact, given his life for
their happiness. May his bones rest in peace...
Kutsi Merc's bullet-riddled hump had not been taken to its goal, but
the delayed-action fuse, decaying under the action of the air, was measuring
out the last moments of peace on the planet Faena.
End of Part One
Explosion
Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike, beat them down!
Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!
W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet
Chapter One
There was uproar on Space Station Deimo.
Station engineer Tycho Veg, handsome, prematurely grey-haired, slow and
pensive, was looking in disapproval at the bustle that had just begun. But
it was not in conformity with his mild nature to interfere in anything: he
gave way in all things to his wife, Ala Veg, and she was the one who had
thought of holding a banquet in honour of the arriving spaceship Quest.
The still unfaded beauty Ala Veg had become bored at home on Faena with
teaching astronomy to blockheaded Superiors. She insisted on leaving with
her husband for the space station, which only took married couples with the
required special qualifications. They would be able to return to their three
children left on Faena after earning enough to last them for the rest of
their lives, and Tycho Veg would finally become a workshop proprietor.
Ala Veg, with the pedigree face of a Superior, a fine, straight nose, a
short upper lip and a sensual mouth, went about with a permanently haughty
frown; she considered herself and her husband the two most important
Faetians on the base.
However, the wife of the station chief, Nega Luton, who had illegally
taken over the post of Sister of Health without being a qualified doctor,
was of a different opinion. Encouraged by her husband, Mrak Luton, a
corpulent donkey, she passed herself off as the first lady of space and
never missed an opportunity to sting Ala Veg with a reference to the
children she had abandoned. Ala would parry these blows, sparing neither
Nega's barrenness nor her unattractive appearance.
Lada, the young but well-upholstered cook and gardener, a good-natured
woman with an affectionate smile on her broad, snub-nosed face, did
everything quickly and efficiently, trying to please everybody. She adored
her husband, proud that he, Brat Lua, was the only one of the roundheads,
thanks to his mother's position in the Dictator's family, who had been able
to obtain an education on Danjab, the continent of the Culturals. He was
sent to Deimo both as jack-of-all-trades and as a representative of the
roundheads who were to move to the uncomfortable planet of Mar. Lada Lua
willingly followed him to serve all the inhabitants of Deimo.
A signal from her communications bracelet found Lada Lua in the
greenhouse, a transparent cylindrical corridor thousands of paces long.
Apart from Lada, no one used that corridor because it was on the axis of the
space station and there was no artificial gravity created by centrifugal
force as in the other quarters on the station. The nurserywoman did not feel
her weight as she floated in and out among the air-roots of the plants. The
function of soil was performed by a nutritive mist of the saps that the
roots needed. The harvest in space was much bigger than on Faena.
The signal found Lada Lua collecting sweet fruits for the forthcoming
banquet.
Holding on to the air-roots, Lada Lua hurried to answer Ala Veg's call.
She had to float quite a distance through the tangled air-roots and then go
down the shaft inside a spoke of the giant wheel, in whose rim all the
station's quarters were housed.
The cage in the shaft seemed to fall down into an abyss. The feeling of
weight began to appear only at the end of the ride, when the cage slowed
down and stopped. The doors opened automatically. Lada Lua, her normal
weight restored, walked out into the corridor, which seemed to tilt upwards
before and behind her. She did not, however, have to climb any gradients.
Ala Veg was rushing about her cabin, exasperated at the clumsiness of
her husband who was on his knees, unsuccessfully trying to pin some kind of
frill to her gown.
Lada Lua threw up her hands in delight.
Ala Veg unceremoniously dismissed her husband and he went off to
prepare the welcome for the approaching ship, which would have to refuel. He
realised that his wife was bored to death with the monotonous days and
tedious dinners at the common table, the faces that she was sick of seeing,
always the same ones, the same words heard so many times and the mutual
friction that grew worse from day to day. Tycho Veg tried to understand his
wife, to excuse her failings, to put them down to homesickness and to her
pining for her children. He was missing them himself. If only one of them
was here, they would be so happy! But the presence of children was not
allowed on the space stations. The Superiors, when complementing the staff
on Deimo, managed to oppress the roundheads there too. Nega Luton was
barren, Ala Veg already had three children and at her age, which she kept
secret, she had not decided to have a fourth. As a result, the ban only
affected the young Lua couple, who could not have children on the planet,
nor on the space station.
After helping Ala Veg to dress, Lada Lua ran to the kitchen with its
glittering pans and dials to boil, roast and bake...
But the communications bracelet summoned her again, this time to Nega
Luton. That important lady loved comforts and luxury more than anything. Her
husband, a Supreme Officer of the Blood Guard, had supplied her with all
these in full measure on Faena. Least of all had the Lutons wanted to go
into space. However, they had ended up there by order of the Dictator.
Lada Lua switched the automatic kitchen machines to a set program and
hurried off to Nega Luton.
When the spaceship Quest went into orbit round Deimo and approached the
station for docking, Mada and Ave never left the porthole.
The enormous planet Mar with its convex rim filled over half the
window. Sol no longer looked like a brilliant round star, but had become a
blinding disc with a magnificent corona. For a short while, the planet
blotted out its own star, plunging the ship into a swiftly-passing night.
Hand in hand, Mada and Ave greeted this unusual dawn of their new life,
waiting for the brilliant, curly-fringed Sol to begin rising from behind the
hump of Mar. The black surface of the deserts turned brown, and gradually,
according to height, there followed one after another all the most delicate
hues of a gigantic rainbow that did not hang over the rain-washed forests
and plains, as on their native Faena, but embraced the desert planet in a
crescent that merged with the rim of the gigantic sphere. Mada caught her
breath. She could only squeeze Ave's fingers in silence.
Then the rainbow glittered at one point and the Faetians saw Deimo,
their first destination. It was the brightest star in the heavens, rising
swiftly over the rim of the rainbow.
As it drew nearer, Deimo became a gigantic, irregularly shaped lump of
rock, and soon a small star became visible next to it. This was Space
Station Deimo, the Faetians' destination.
Then they were able to see that this star was a ring inclined at slight
angle to the mass of Mar. Comparable to the planet Sat, it was a satellite
of Mar's satellite. Finally, their eyes began to ache with staring at this
artificial metal structure, which was reflecting the rays of Sol.
The first pilot of Quest, Smel Ven, the celebrated astronaut of the
Superiors, was executing a complicated manoeuvre to approach the axis of the
station's wheel and dock on to the central compartment. The silvery tail of
the greenhouse extended from the station, a bright line receding into the
darkness.
When Quest moved up to Deimo station, engineer Tycho Veg summoned Brat
Lua to the central compartment as the mechanic who did the heavy work. Mrak
Luton, the chief of the station, did not consider it necessary to go up to
the central compartment in order to "float about on the loose" in null
gravity. He preferred to stay in the ring corridor and paced round it,
important and pompous, with his hands thrust behind his back.
The name Mrak (Gloom), given to him in his early youth, suited him: a
pudgy, rectangular face, sparse grey hair and small, suspicious eyes under
the tufted eyebrows.
He did not linger by the lift-cage but continued promenading in the
same direction all the time until finally, after he had gone round the whole
outer ring, he turned up in the corridor on the other side.
However, all three Faetesses, unable to restrain their curiosity, met
at the lift-cage.
The first to come out into the corridor was the exceptionally tall Dm
Sat.
The ladies respectfully inclined their heads.
Two Faetians came next.
The giant Gor Terr, up to the eyes in whiskers, was the ship's flight
engineer and one of the men who designed it. He had a pronounced stoop,
thanks to which his arms seemed uncommonly long. His friends used to joke
that in height, strength and appearance he resembled the ancestors of the
Faetians. However, his low, hairy brow hid an exceptional mind.
His new friend, Toni Fae, educated and refined, wrote poetry. He had a
round face, a thin nose and wide-open eyes behind big spectacles.
Nega Luton took charge of the gigantic Gor Terr. Ala Veg took the
youthful Toni Fae under her wing.
Um Sat went of his own accord to the roundhead Lada Lua.
"Will the gentle Faetess show me to where I can have a rest?"
Lada Lua blushed and, beside herself with happiness, led the great sage
to his appointed cabin.
Ala Veg ran down the corridor with a provocative laugh, beckoning Toni
Fae to catch up with her. She conducted him into a comfortable cabin and sat
down in a light chair.
"And so is it not true, Toni Fae, that we have kindred souls. Is it by
chance that we are both astronomers, that we find ourselves amid the stars
and are sitting within reach of one another?"
Toni Fae took off his spectacles to see more clearly.
"The stars have made us friends, is it not so?" continued Ala Veg, well
aware of the effect she was having on the young visitor.
"For the sake of everything I see here, it was well worth flying to the
stars," he murmured, lowering his eyes.
"I already know that you're a poet. But you are also an astronomer. I
want us to have views in common."
"I would like that so much!"
They were silent for a moment as they gazed at one another.
"Soon there will be a banquet. We shall sit side by side."
"Oh, yes!" Toni Fae nodded his head. "But we must also take Gor Terr
under our wing. He is as helpless as I am."
"I love the helpless ones," laughed Ala Veg, affectionately touching
Toni Fae's hand. "You are a charming boy and I'm so happy that you have
arrived. If only you knew how fed up we are with one another here!"
Mrak Luton, who was finishing his stroll along the corridor as if no
one had arrived at the station, had in fact been carefully measuring his
pace. Of all the new arrivals, he regarded the Dictator's daughter as most
important. For that reason, he went up to the lift-cage at the precise
moment when Mada, Ave and Smel Ven, the first pilot, came out of it.
The chief of the station was chewing it over in his mind: after
lift-off from Faena, the Dictator's daughter had married Ave Mar, son of the
Ruler of the Culturals. What was this? Politics?
"May they be prolonged, the successful cycles in the life of the Wisest
of the Wise who had the good fortune to have such a daughter," was the
flowery welcome with which he greeted Mada, and he announced that she and
Ave had been given two magnificent cabins in opposite compartments of the
station.
Mada flared up.
"Was not Station Deimo in electromagnetic communication with Quest?"
she asked angrily.
Mrak Luton shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
"If the customs of the Superiors are effective on the station,"
continued Mada, as if giving an order, "then you must give my husband and
myself a double cabin and send the roundheaded Lua couple there at once."
The station chief bowed respectfully as low as his paunch would allow.
"They exist to serve. May the cycles in the lives of the Dictator and
the Ruler be prolonged," he concluded, glancing at Ave for the first time.
Mrak Luton personally conducted the young couple to the best cabin on
the station, and on the way he showed the glowering Smel Ven his quarters.
Then he found Brat Lua and Tycho Veg who had just emerged from the central
compartment. He ordered Brat Lua to find his wife and report with her to
Mada and Ave. Only then did he notice that Smel Ven was still standing
outside his cabin door. Mrak Luton went up to him and heard the following
words, uttered in a half-whisper:
"The Dictator will hardly approve of such hasty hospitality." Smel Ven
vanished, slamming the door behind him.
Mrak Luton stared dully at the plastic-covered door.
Brat Lua not only brought his wife to Ave and Mada, he also brought
drawings. He was a calm Faetian of medium height, with a tight, glossy skin
and intent eyes.
Since his mother had become Mada's nanny he had grown up away from her,
but had always felt her influence. She had even managed to bring her son and
her charge together and make them friends. However, their meetings had soon
become impossible. The Dictator shut himself off from the world behind
walls. The boy learned humiliation and injustice. Impressionable and proud,
he became more and more withdrawn.
He had a rare determination. Mother Lua taught him that only knowledge
would compel even those who were oppressing the roundheads to take him
seriously. And so he fought stubbornly for every crumb of knowledge.
The result was that even in early youth, his face acquired an
expression of firmness and concentration.
He fell in love with Lada Nep before his departure for Danjab, the
continent of the Gutturals, to finish his education there. Finally persuaded
by the nanny and Mada herself, Yar Jupi agreed, although he kept his real
opinion to himself.
For several cycles, Lada devotedly waited for her betrothed, intending
after his return to leave immediately on the Dictator's orders for Space
Station Deimo, created by him to consolidate his authority and ostensibly to
fulfil his plan of resettling the roundheads on Mar.
Brat Lua was now hurrying to share with Mada and Ave the fruits of his
reflections and of sleepless nights spent at his drawings.
"I've been planning how to make life better for the roundheads," he
said hurriedly but firmly. "I've planned the construction of deep
underground cities with an artificial atmosphere. On the surface of Mar, in
the midst of the deserts which you see in the porthole, I have been planning
oases of fertility. It will be enough to water them with melted water from
the polar ice and deliver it to them along underground rivers. These will
have to be excavated." He looked trustingly at his listeners. "I have been
waiting so long for real men of learning!"
Mada went up to Brat Lua.
"We have known one another since childhood, and we both loved Mother
Lua."
" 'Loved' her?" The Faetian went suddenly on his guard, staring hard at