Ross Rocklynne - People of the Darkness

She hung before him, unspinning, rigid in space, staring at him astounded. “I?” she cried. “ I? ”

“You,” insisted Swift. “you ride the skies like a thing that owns the universe. But even your beauty burns out of you when you are crossed. Obviously, you do not own even yourself, much less the universe. You fancy yourself to be so much better a breed than we, but are you? We have observed that your reasoning power is undeveloped; your bright prettiness is seen to be only glitter and turns black when someone brave enough to speak his mind to you — like myself—”

“Like yourself?”

The thought ripped into Swift. He started to speak again, but no words would come. An inner trembling had stopped him. His excitement controlled him, and then fear. What had he said? Sun Destroyer was not leaving; she was, on the contrary, spinning in the heavens. Her golden internal lights again spangled within her. Far from chasing her away, he had rekindled her purpose. Mirth darted across the open spaces from Sun Destroyer and impinged again on Swift.

“You are not brave, Swift,” said Sun Destroyer; her laughter tore at him. “You are frightened. As all of you are frightened — not of what I might do to your intricate toy over which you have labored so long, no. You are frightened of my perfection!” Languidly upon the skies, indulgently observing them, she rotated. The throng hung silent; then they fluttered into motion as Sun Destroyer again turned upon the monster sun and its many planets.

Sun Destroyer’s thoughts came musingly. “Swift says it was luck. But was it? In my perfection, need I make elaborate computations for such simple work as placing a planet? We shall see. Perhaps I shall show you that it was skill, born out of the fabric of me!”

Even before she finished speaking, energy coalesced within her. A spheroidal lump of hot matter formed. It was a planet. As it cooled down and cleared itself of raging fumes, Sun Destroyer flung it out on the tip of a tractor beam.

“It is a small planet,” said Sun Destroyer offhandedly. “Back now, Swift!” and away the planet went in a shallow loop as solar attraction bent the angle of its path. Swift had indeed moved back. He was numbed to new fear. Small the planet was, but…

Suddenly the gathering of youths surged on the sky. A hundred outraged cries rang as that tiny, seemingly inoffensive planet became a plundering demon. It glided across the orbit of the outermost world, which in turn faltered and collided with its fellow in the next orbit. A racking commotion now ensued; a full dozen planets were caught in a holocaust of cross motion. The thrown planet in the meantime skipped through a dozen other orbits in a planetary dance that ended in chaos. Several planets dropped into their primary. The monster sun shuddered rackingly. Solar prominences burned the sky, incinerating all the inner planets. Sun Destroyer’s planet looped around the other side of the system and with what seemed calculated precision reduced all the middle orbits to ruin. Suddenly there was no order at all. Planets collided, exploded, fell into the sun. Finally the sun itself exploded.

Where the beautiful, complex toy had reposed was ravening space, heaven’s inferno. The energy creatures rode out the storm, rode the waves of heat and demon light. When it was over, they fluttered back together, whirling and expanding and darting off into side spaces looking for the object of their hate. But Sun Destroyer had not gone. She hung precisely where she had been, discarding excess luminescence from the monster flare.

“She destroyed our sun, as she destroys all suns!”

“It was a bad calculation, very bad,” said Sun Destroyer mournfully. “I suppose I am not so skillful after all. Perhaps Swift was right.”

Of all that gathering, only Swift and White Galaxy knew the truth. And Swift was therefore mute. He abjectly wished her to go, her and her cascading yellow gleams, and her promise of a further threat that he could not name.

Sun Destroyer did go, with a final flaunting glance at the angered and grieving crowd. Out went her propellants, and she rushed away across the galaxies, weaving between the stars, touching them not.

Sun Destroyer, flinging herself through star cluster after star cluster, suddenly felt a thrill of fright.

She stopped her headlong motion, thrusting her visions into the backward distance. The fright grew as she saw the being who came in her wake. It was a green-light twice as large as herself.

“Stop, Sun Destroyer!”

The thought came clearly and firmly. Sun Destroyer’s unease persisted. Saying no word, she waited for the green-light to catch up with her.

They hung in space facing each other. Quiverings of exuded radiance sparkled along the rim of the older green-light’s body.

“My daughter,” said Sun Dust sadly. “Why must you cause others unhappiness?”

Some of Sun Destroyer’s unease disappeared. It was replaced by defiance.

“I seek only my own happiness,” she retorted.

“By destroying that of others?”

“Did I destroy that of others?” asked Sun Destroyer, as if in surprise.

“There are many strange tales of you,” Sun Dust said gently. “The other youths are fearful when you come. You take their peace.”

“I do not mean to, mother. I only know that I seek my own happiness. I care not about other things. It seems right and proper that I do as I do.” She added, pointedly, sharply: “I doubt if any thing will change me.”

The Mother hung motionless. Sun Destroyer began to rotate upon the heavens, to rotate and expand, while the running streams of yellow gleams agitated within her. The pain of her younger years was returning to her, carried, it seemed, in the sorrowfulness of this being. And she did not wish it to return — did not wish it to!

The mother said, “Sun Destroyer — my daughter.” Distress was in her voice. “Could you not find other means to satisfy your desires? Surely there are more worthwhile things than destruction, are there not?”

“Ah, yes,” said Sun Destroyer mockingly. She almost could not believe that these words were being said. “You echo the credo of Darkness, mother — of him who sired me. Darkness, dreaming that he would solve the secrets of all that is. He solved nothing. Darkness! He should have listened to Oldster, who knew the truth, that not too high a value must be placed on one’s life — nor any life. Darkness, the fool.”

Dark grew the golden gleams within her, for her thoughts were dark and running with pain.

Darkness himself awakened her pain. She quivered deep within, as if to force from her being the monstrous blight. Sharply she said to this being who also awakened her pain:

“I have been very happy. I have been happy because I do not consider myself — or others — as sacred appendages of the universe. Why would you take that happiness from me?”

For a long time the older green-light held visions on her youngest child. She was remembering that day long ago when Darkness burst through from another universe, searching for the significance of life, and finding it only in death. Fright was in Sun Dust, fright of Sun Destroyer, and fear for Sun Destroyer. On that day many years ago when Sun Destroyer lay in her cradle in the seventeenth band of hyperspace, Darkness passed by on his way to death and gazed upon his child. What was in his gaze, and what did his presence mean?

Sun Dust felt her knowledge, a hidden knowledge, that somehow was evoked by memory of that which Darkness carried: the sphere of Great Energy.

Energies unknown spearing through the cradling space where this one of the golden effulgences had grown. Sun Destroyer she was, a destroyer indeed, and not only of suns. Mindless and wanton destruction was her credo, and utter and complete satisfaction of personal desires. Sun Dust knew the truth as she would never know it again. She had bred a child who was as different as horror was different from peace.