Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

“Silence. I shall not let you breathe the scent of your own flowers. Prepare yourself for the most shameful execution of all. I am going to switch on all the monitor screens and before the eyes of your fellows / am going to hang you!”

Kutsi Merc tore down the curtains covering the screens. The monitors lit up.

The terrified military leaders and members of the Blood Council watched helplessly from them.

Kutsi deftly pulled a cord out of the curtains, deftly tied a noose, jumped onto the desk and attached the cord to the chandelier hook. The noose dangled directly under the lamps. The table had to be moved aside.

Then Kutsi stood Yar Jupi, who was shaking with terror, on the Dictator’s chair as if he were no more than a will-less puppet.

The robots moved away, watching the proceedings impassively. Kutsi noticed that on several screens the military leaders had covered their eyes with their hands, while on the others, the Faetians, with their cowls thrown back, were watching the progress of the execution with malignant glee.

“In the name of History,” announced Kutsi Merc, and he kicked the chair from under the Dictator’s feet.

Dobr Mar only came round from time to time, half-recumbent in the Ruler’s chair and in a far from comfortable position.

All the screens in the bunker were dead. The lamps of the emergency lighting glowed dully.

The military leaders and the anguished Sister of Health were still fussing over the Ruler. Her name was, Vera Fae. All her family had perished up above: father, mother, husband, three daughters—all except her son, who had flown to Terr with a space expedition. Vera Fae was in despair. She could find strength only in attending to the sick Ruler.

Dobr Mar had lost the power of speech. His tongue, right hand and right leg were paralysed. He could only communicate with his eyes. Vera Fae alone could understand him.

Haggard, her hair turned white in the last few hours, with tear-stained eyes, she had not lost the gentle touch and warm voice of the doctor—all that the Ruler could respond to.

There was no one to take over from him. The “Ruler’s friend”, who was supposed to do so according to the law, had been killed up above, like millions of other Faetians.

The military leaders announced through Vera Fae that the reserve torpedoes had been expended. But barbarians’ torpedoes were still showering down on their own continent, leaving a scene of total devastation.

The Ruler made an attempt to move. The Sister of Health looked into his eyes, trying to read his thoughts.

The chief of the disintegration weapons came up. He had been entrusted with that terrible means of aggression because of his known cowardice and reluctance to make his own decisions. Even this time he, too, wanted at all costs the Ruler’s written consent to the detonation of the last, superpowerful underwater disintegration device which had been delivered under Kutsi Merc’s supervision to the Great Shore, almost to the very place where Ave and Mada had once been surf-riding.

Dobr Mar could not understand the showily overdressed general who, his voice rising to a falsetto, tried to convince the Sister of Health by saying, “The destruction of the Dictator’s underground Lair is our only salvation. Such is the will of the Great Circle.”

Dobr Mar wearily closed his eyes.

“He agrees! He agrees!” said the hunchbacked general delightedly.

But Dobr Mar opened his eyes again and, in an effort to say something, stared at his desk.

Vera Fae took some inscribed tablets off it and held them in front of his eyes.

On seeing one of them, Dobr Mar looked down.

Vera Fae showed the tablet to the general.

“I know that!” he screeched like a cockerel. “When he invented the disintegration weapon, the honoured Elder Dm Sat wanted to restrict its use and frightened the Faetians with the apparent prospect of all the planet’s oceans being blown up.”

Dobr Mar closed his eyes.

“Does Ruler Dobr Mar agree?” persisted the general. “Can the Sister of Health sign on his behalf a document authorising the detonation of the underwater disintegration device?”

“How can I do that if the Ruler himself has reminded us of the great Elder’s warning?”

“A naive fabrication! As if all the waters of the oceans, in the event of a superpowerful explosion, would immediately disintegrate, releasing their energy like a supernova. And as if our whole planet would be turned into a tiny supernova.”

“Don’t you find that terrifying?” asked the Sister of Health.

“What could be more terrifying than what’s already happened? The Dictator of Powermania must be stopped at all costs. An underwater explosion by the Great Shore will start an earthquake; it will destroy his bunker down there. The oceanic tidal wave will rise to the heavens, crash down on the Lair and flood it. If the Sister of Health can convince the Ruler, he will agree. His written order is needed for the explosion. He alone is responsible for everything.”

The Sister of Health looked into the dim eyes of the sick man. He closed them.

“He agrees, at last he agrees!” howled the general, seizing the Ruler’s lifeless hand and applying it to the plate. “Explode it!” shouted the general in a thin voice and, his leg dragging, he ran out of the study, plate in hand.

Dobr Mar watched him go with a frightened look. He wanted to say something, but was unable to.

The Sister of Health came to her senses and tried to stop the general, but the Ruler felt worse and she had to help him, wiping his face that was twisted in a grimace and was covered with beads of sweat.

The general returned. The order had been passed on. The explosion would take place…

“I take no responsibility for anything!” he shouted.

Every Sister of Health has something of the mother in her.

Her desire to help a sick man, her maternal attitude to a suffering person, now helpless as a child and therefore as dear to her as if he were her own, were struggling in Mada with a keen, unjustified, as she considered, homesickness.

Unable to understand this feeling and rejecting it, she looked devotedly after Um Sat, whose life was now fading…

With his large beard, his piercing, yearning (for Faena, of course!) eyes, he was lying motionless on his couch. His illness was delaying the return of Quest and intensifying the homesickness that Mada and her colleagues felt for Faena.

As a Sister of Health, however, she had to rise above her personal sufferings and she looked after the Elder, trying to cure his mysterious illness, since a speedy return might mean his salvation. But there could be no thought of that with Um Sat so seriously ill. Mada looked after him devotedly; she was not only a Sister of Health to him, but a spiritual confidante. She admitted to him her yearning for Faena and received in return the Elder’s terrible confession that all the oceans on Faena might blow up as a result of a disintegration war. Mada shuddered, frowned and shook her head in protest.

By shouldering part of the Elder’s alarm, she eased his condition, affirming that matters could not go as far as such a catastrophe and they would surely go back to their Faena where they were so eagerly awaited.

On Mada’s instructions, Ave and Gor Terr went hunting in the forest. She would not let them touch the provisions intended for the return journey.

Return journey! It was a goal, a dream, a passionate desire, and it was not felt by Mada alone.

She told Toni Fae to stay by the electromagnetic communications apparatus which, for some strange reason, had gone silent. The thread linking Quest and their native planet had snapped. Mada reassured Toni Fae that the atmosphere of Terr was to blame: it was blanketing off the electromagnetic waves from Faena and Mar.