Tom Godwin - The Greater Thing

The holstered revolver clattered to the pavement and Harker dropped to his knees, his arms hugged about his stomach, moaning and gibbering. Thorne cut the ropes that bound his legs to the pillar and picked up the revolver. He stared down at Harker and watched him wilt, still moaning, until he was half sitting, half lying, on the ground. All the arrogance had left him, all the domineering cruelty was gone from his face. He looked up at Thorne, sweat standing out on his ashen face and only fear showing in it.

“I’m dying—you killed me!” He mouthed the words with numb and terrified accusation. “I’m going to die! ”

Thorne’s smile was like a thin sliver of frosted steel. “It was pleasant to watch the others die, wasn’t it? But it’s different when it’s yourself—and the cut of a hot blade hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

“I… I—” Harker tried to speak, then his eyes widened as he looked through and beyond Thorne, seeing something that was utter horror. He shuddered convulsively and sank limply to the pavement. His throat rattled harshly, once, then he was still.

Thorne looked down at the silent, shapeless thing that had been Harker. Sometimes there was a little justice in the world—Harker had surely died by his sword.

He turned away and started back toward the river. The brief, brittle satisfaction was over. Harker had died—he had killed him as he had wanted to do—but it could not fill the empty years before him. He would return to the river and go back to the old, hopeless life; live out the empty years ahead.

The empty years—They had been empty before, but he had not known how empty until a slender, courageous girl had filled a day and night of them with her warmth. Now, they would be all the lonelier for her brief presence.

The moon was high overhead, and the room where she lay would no longer be flooded with its light. She would be lying there in the darkness, with the light gone from her eyes, and he should go to her. He should brush the golden hair back from her face and fold her hands, with the chains tinkling on her wrists. He should tell her once again that he was sorry—

He passed the toy shop, and the ghost of Lorrine seemed to walk with him. The Star of Bethlehem—It was a beautiful symbol—It will always be —How deep and gentle had been her faith.

He walked on, the familiar street bringing back the memory of her with aching vividness. It was here she had said, “You’ve never had anyone who cared for you?” and he had cut her with the coldness of his answer. And it was here that she had told him of the things they would do when they were free. He had been grim and silent—he should have talked to her and let their last hour be one of friendship, and the confidences of those who face the same peril.

She had known, somehow, that it was her last hour and she had wanted him to talk to her, to pretend with her that it was not her last hour and to warm the cold dread of it. She had been frightened by the loneliness of it and she had appealed to him, in her way, to not let her be so alone.

He had thought it better to act hard and indifferent. He had not really understood, then, and now it was too late.

“Johnny!”

He jerked his head up and saw her coming down the walk toward him. It was Lorrine, her footsteps clicking softly as she hurried toward him, the chains on her wrists jingling and the tenderness and radiance in her smile.

He waited, his face hard and haggard. It was an illusion, something to turn the knife deeper in his heart. Lorrine was dead—he had killed her. This was a vision conjured by his own sorrow, and she would vanish in a moment. She would stand before him, to drive the knife deeper, then, when he reached out to touch her, she would not be there. She would be gone, but the knife in his heart would remain.

She stopped before him, the smile trembling uncertainly. “Johnny! Aren’t you… aren’t you glad to see me?”

“No!” he answered harshly. “You’re not Lorrine… I killed her!”

“I am!” She laid her hand on his arm. “See—I’m as real as you are.”

Her hand was warm and real. He held to it, as though by so doing he could prevent her from vanishing.

“But I shot you,” he said. Doubt assailed him, and he demanded fiercely, “Are you really Lorrine, or are you something sent to torment me?”

“I’m Lorrine,” she said. “I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you. I’m Lorrine—it was the thing in this city.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like an amoeba in a way, only much more complex. It can change form at will, and it can do almost any-thing. It was watching us all the time we were coming through the city. It couldn’t understand why we did the things we did—why we believed in something enough to die for it. It couldn’t understand, and it wanted to know. It’s more intelligent than humans, but only with physical things. It had no emotions and couldn’t comprehend such things. So, when I was dying, it came to me and reproduced my mind and emotions in itself.

“It was an experience different from anything it had ever known and, for a long time, I don’t think it was itself. But it remembered me and began to work on me before it was too late. It took all this time for it to reconstruct the tissues, and it came back to normal and remembered you just after you killed Harker. It saw you weren’t hurt, so it let me go and it went back to the central part of the city.

“And do you know what it’s doing?” There was joyous elation in her eyes. “It’s getting ready to help us! Now it wants to do what I wanted to do, and it can —it can make things for us that will let us overthrow the State in a week. And it’s going to do that. It’s going to help us, and then our people will be free!”

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “I couldn’t believe such a thing at all, but you’re here and alive.” He drew her closer to him. “A man gets weary of death and violence and he wants things he knows he can never have. If this is true, what you said, maybe it will mean the end of it all—maybe the time will come when a man can have these things he wants.”

“It will!” she said. “I know it will!”

“If this thing can help us destroy the State, what then?” he asked. “We’ll owe it our freedom and our lives. How will we repay it?”

“It doesn’t want us to feel grateful,” she said. “It’s helping us because it wants to help us. And it said it would retire behind a force-field barrier after its work was done. It said it would be better for it to do that. But it will lower the barrier years and years from now, and when humans come into the city it will have something it wants to tell them.”

“I don’t understand, and I find it hard to believe,” he said. “But if this is true, it doesn’t matter whether I understand this thing’s way of thinking. It has promised to help us, and it gave you back to me—that’s all that really matters after all.”

He stood for a while, content to hold lier close and let the reality of her presence wash away all the hurt and bitterness of the hours before.

“It’s been a long and lonely night, Lorrine, and I thought I had lost you. Now we’ll see a new day, and the loneliness is over.”

“The loneliness is over, Johnny—forever and ever!”

An intelligent entity can learn much in fifteen years, of things that are nonlife and of the here and now; of things that react for but the moment, with neither will nor purpose.

But in the motivations of Lorrine was a purpose that went back into Time; back to the very beginning; back, back down two billion years. In her motivations was not unreason but a wisdom accumulated during millennia upon millennia of experience with life and living; a wisdom gained from lessons hard-learned by trial and error and born as instincts into the succeeding generations.