Ross Rocklynne - People of the Darkness

She said faintly, “No, there was nothing of you in Darkness, my child.”

The pain was gone. Sun Destroyer felt new energies within her and brightening thoughts. Deliberately, as if to give her growing elation its expression, she reached out with pressor beam and tractor ray and tore a nearby sun into flaming ruin, scattering the fragments the length and depth of a galaxy.

Her mother could only look at her.

But Sun Destroyer was pleased again, and uncaring. Soft, languid lights took shape in her body. How quickly her thoughts ran, how brightly she saw herself! “Darkness,” she mused. “Ah, Darkness! He sought the end and the meaning of all life — but who are we to say that he failed? Mother, look upon me! Am I not flawless?” Quickly she spun in smooth sphericity, mirror-like and gleaming. “Am I not the meaning that Darkness sought? Do I not personify that for which life has sought ever since life first came to be? Yes, I am that meaning!

“Life seeks happiness. That is its meaning. But life fails to find happiness. The reasons, I am sure, are obvious; for from the beginning we have imbued ourselves with a sacred love of ourselves. We have become so inflated with the idea of being alive that we consider the universe made for us. Then, out of our respect for ourselves, we manufacture respect for others, and how wrong it is to do so. You must see the meaning, mother.”

“I hear only words,” came the thoughts of Sun Dust. But Sun Destroyer dreamed on. “Life blunders,” she whispered. “Each of us sacrifices some of himself to maintain the happiness of others. When we seek happiness for others a part of us dies. Therefore, I — I, Sun Destroyer, and only I — am the meaning that Darkness was seeking, the meaning that he created, all unknowingly. For see! I am happy. My desires are sated. I do as I will, without thought for the happiness of others.”

A foam of red sparks leaped unbidden from the complex energy fields of her body.

“But I breed unhappiness by trying to do as you wish me to do, mother,” she said darkly. “I shape myself with your desires — and I die!”

“No,” said Sun Dust.

“I die!” said Sun Destroyer, and charged bitterly, “You have not listened.”

“I listened, I heard. My child, I heard only words.”

Sun Destroyer stared at her, at this great quiet creature who hung athwart space and who was moved only to sorrow and love. No, Sun Dust would never understand; how could she understand one who was the end product of all her race? How could she or any like her ever know what lay in the thought swirls of Sun Destroyer? But she must understand! At least she must know of Sun Destroyer’s secret yearning, and she must know something of the answers to its fulfillment.

And if she did not, who would?

A gulf as wide as that spanning two universes yawned in horror before her.

“Mother.” The word trembled out of her. “There is something I must know. A little while ago, a great knowledge came to me. I knew — and know not how I knew — that there is a band of space beyond the forty-eighth.”

“Beyond the forty-eighth? Beyond? No, my child.”

“Yes! I ascended the bands. Up through to the topmost — and I sought to break through — into the forty-ninth. There is a forty-ninth band. Yes, I sought to fling myself past the band of life into a forty-ninth, and I failed. Failed!”

The quiet sphere of Sun Dust was no longer quiet. The cry of this strange being who was her daughter was a pain within her. “I am glad you failed,” whispered Sun Dust. “For if there is a forty-ninth band, the knowledge bodes you no good. I know nothing of this forty-ninth band. Nor has anyone spoken of it. Therefore how could it be? If others know nothing of it, how can you?”

“I do know,” said Sun Destroyer sharply. “As for how I know, it is for the reasons I gave you.” Abruptly, she was luxuriating in the rightness of that which she knew. The mystery of her greatness lured her. “Why, it must be, mother, that I am the only energy creature ever to sense the existence of the forty-ninth band! After all, I must be the very reason for the existence of all life. In me is centered the driving force of all our race. Therefore, I shall go into the forty-ninth band!”

“My child!” Sun Dust’s distress was tinged with a growing horror. “You do not know what you say.”

“I know,” the dreaming thoughts of Sun Destroyer came. “Pain was mine when first I knew of the forty-ninth; but then the pain was gone. The forty-ninth band cannot bode ill for me — not if pain goes!

“Somehow there is a way to shatter the wall between the band of life and the forty-ninth. I shall shatter that wall.”

Abruptly, she disappeared into a hyperspace.

Sun Dust did not try to follow. The forty-ninth band! There was, there could be, no such thing. And yet…

She pursued a slow, spiritless trail across her jeweled amphitheater, and knew a sadness that she should have been instrumental in bringing Sun Destroyer into being.

For the fourth time, Sun Destroyer impelled herself into the forty-eighth band, where the universe seemed entirely to lose its true character in an infinity of colorless, rampant life energy. There was in her, though she did not realize it, a growing fright. Thrice she had sought, by sheer momentum, to break through into the forty-ninth band, of whose existence she was as certain as of life itself. Thrice she had failed. Thrice she was forced to forget her failure, and dropped back through the scale of bands, now and then reaching out to split one blazing sun after another. Each time the memory of failure persisted, leading her into an unbearable morass of discontent. For the fourth time she returned.

“It is naught but a foolish impulse,” she told herself smolderingly. “I shall try again, and then, if I fail, I shall fail forever.”

Subsequently, there was the clicking in her consciousness which told her that she should indeed have entered the forty-ninth band; but around her was nothing but the life energy of the forty-eighth.

Momentarily, fury exploded; she stilled it, and with monumental effort thrust the problem from her. She dropped to the first band, that of true space, heartlessly ruptured a magnificent quadruple system of stars, and sped savagely away across the universe, a plundering, destroying creature, in search of creatures her own age.

“I shall play and destroy and torment my fellow creatures from now on,” she told herself firmly. “Thus I shall seek the happiness which I, as the end product of all life, am deserving of. Ah, the forty-ninth band is but a chimera, which I would follow but to reap my own eternal discontent!”

The tens of thousands, the millions of years fled. Sun Destroyer truly played, if the viciousness with which she acted could be called play. Idleness could not be tolerated; monotony was to be avoided. Sun Destroyer must destroy. There was a sheer magnificence to be experienced when one sent two stars across a galaxy to crash upon each other with supernal bursts of energy. To dash amongst her own kind, and completely without regard for their desires, to disrupt their carefully wrought toys, to scatter them, to disappear into a hyperspace with a taunting word — such was the rightful action of him who would be eternally without discontent!

Yes, one must play, and in playing give no thought either to the future or the past. Also, one must be without a goal, and must plan nothing. Goals somehow disappeared or their value diminished as one approached them; plans in turn never held true to themselves, but were forever distorting themselves or even turning full-circle to become the opposite of what they were intended to become. The forty-ninth band? Even if such existed, it could no longer exert its dread fascination upon her. With these rigid attitudes, reasoned Sun Destroyer, she would extract from existence the unending pleasure which, surely, was the rightful heritage of life.