Gordon Dickson: Hour of the Horde

Miles looked for a long second at Luhon.

“So that’s why we’ll be taking over the galaxy from them,” he went on. “Because from that moment on, they’ll have begun to die—somewhere in their race consciousness—just like any prehistoric species that took the wrong evolutionary road and finally came up against something it couldn’t handle.”

“But, friend Miles,” said Luhon, “even if they do die off and we take their place, if we hold on to our instincts, how can we gain what they gained at the price of giving up their instincts? Where can we go—”

“By another route,” said Miles, “any other evolutionary road where we hold on to instinct and emotion. They couldn’t have given that sort of road much of a try, or they wouldn’t have turned away from it so early. They closed a door to themselves that the rest of us, with luck, are going through into a much bigger universe.”

“Bigger?” Luhon’s tone was doubtful.

“Of course bigger,” said Miles. “Take the overdrive—it’s from instinct and emotion that you get into overdrive. Can you imagine getting it any other way?”

“But we can’t spend all our future fighting off invaders, Miles.”

Miles smiled. “Is that all you think overdrive is good for? That’s the least of what it can do for you. It’s a basically creative force—”

Miles broke off and put a friendly hand on the smooth, gray-skinned shoulder beside him.

“You’ll see,” Miles said. “You’ll understand, once I explain it. And I’ll be explaining it to all of you from the Fighting Rowboat, once everyone’s here for the meeting.” He checked himself again. “Which reminds me, we’d better be getting back to welcome the rest of them as they get here. Marie?”

She rose from her chair, her finger in her book to mark her place, and walked back toward the road.

But under Miles’ hand, Luhon stood still. His attention suddenly caught and arrested, he was leaning forward, staring at the painting. Miles waited and for a moment watched the gray face, in blunt profile, staring at the shapes and colors on the stretched cloth.

Finally, Luhon sighed briefly and relaxed his attention. He turned to Miles, looking sideways and up at the taller human being.

“You’ve got a lot of sun in it, friend Miles,” he said. “Is that—”

Miles’ smile widened. He pushed the shoulder he still held, lightly, turning Luhon about, back toward the road, and they started for the car that still waited there.

“That’s right,” said Miles as they went. “That’s overdrive, too. There in my painting, and yes—there is a lot of sun in it.”

So they went. But in fact, Luhon was correct. For though the scene was the same as the one Miles had painted on the day—years ago, it seemed now—that the sun had turned sullen and red, there was a difference in this canvas.

Once again the painted scene showed the river, the river bluffs, the green lawns and red-brick university buildings—not as they appeared objectively, but grayed and hardened, stained with the marks of old, savage, animal guilts and primitive human failures. Once again the brush of Miles had shown the works of man sitting in grim judgment on man himself. For all his searching, his artistic vision had not been changed in that, after all.

But something new had been added.

Over the whole scene now lay a new quality of sunlight in the full value of its illumination. It filled every corner of the painting. It lay over and around the hardness and the stains, and although it did not hide them, it laid hold on and altered all the parts of the picture.

Gathered up, held, and bound by that new sunlight now, the river, bluffs, and finally, buildings—all the past and present—seemed to melt and flow together into a single soaring structure. A structure capable of being destroyed, perhaps, but never of being turned by outside force alone from its common, fierce, and instinctive striving… upward into the light.