Barrington Bayley - The Seed of Evil

He smiled and thrust the weapon into the belt of his utility garment along with the other guns he already carried.

Hauling the load along the rough turf to his time-vault soon had him sweating, but he kept at it. He calculated that he had less than a mile to go when he was interrupted, first by a loud rustling in a nearby clump of vegetation, and then by the appearance of two of the inheritors of the Earth.

In a way they were grotesquely manlike. They could walk almost as easily upright as they could on all fours. Their forepaws were adapted for grasping, the toes having developed into tough, stubby fingers. In one of those paws the leading wolf carried a stone axe.

Julian looked at them, stunned. In like manner they stared back at him. Then the leader crouched, snarled and came at him in a bounding run with the axe upraised. Frantically Julian dropped the staves of the sledge and clawed at the pistol he carried in his belt. Gleaming yellow eyes stabbed into his brain. Then Julian drew and fired.

The shot rang out loudly. The wolf hurtled to the ground and lay there panting, blood beginning to ooze from the wound. The second creature paused for a moment, then turned and fled with a loping gait.

Taking careful aim, Julian squeezed the trigger again. The round failed to fire. Cursing, he pulled out Neverdie’s weapon and destroyed the fleeing animal with its red beam.

Experiment revealed that every other round in his gun was dead. He had unknowingly played a game of Russian Roulette in reverse, and had come up with the only bullet that could have saved him. Luck was indeed with him today. And with Neverdie’s weapon he would have no trouble in defending himself—if its charge lasted long enough.

Keeping a wary look-out, he continued on his way. Already he had identified his attackers as being descended from some wolf-like ancestor, but he wasted no time in thinking out the implications of that. The task in hand required all his concentration.

He encountered no more wolves before reaching the time-vault. Once inside, he first attended to making himself secure, finding the piece of vault wall that Neverdie had excised and using it, together with a workbench, to close the opening up again. It wouldn’t hold against a determined assault, but he still had the alien gun.

Then he carried Neverdie into the vault’s second chamber and strapped him to the main worktable. That done, he took time to rest, during which Neverdie awoke.

He could see that the alien had recovered, though no word came from him. Instead, Neverdie seemed to be looking around him, as if assessing his position. Finally Julian got up and began to inspect his equipment. At last Neverdie addressed a question, his voice slightly ragged through the diaphragm.

“I suppose it is no good trying to dissuade you?”

“Absolutely no good.”

Privately Julian was worried. Much of his equipment was still in good order—that part of it made of non-decaying material, like the surgical instruments. But much of it was useless. He no longer had any reagents, for instance, and would be hard put to make any chemical investigations. Almost all the research he could do was surgical anatomy.

The depressing fear of failure began to overcome him once again, but he made an effort to pull himself together. Perhaps torture would be the most effective method, he told himself, of finding out what he wanted to know.

He walked over to Neverdie and began laying out instruments. “I haven’t any anaesthetic,” he said in an apologetic tone. “Unfortunately your species has a rather high nervous sensitivity, hasn’t it? Make it easy on yourself, Neverdie. Co-operate and it will be quicker and less painful.”

As he spoke he wondered how much pain would induce him to give up an immortality he had already gained. Not any amount, in his opinion. Doubtless Neverdie was similarly motivated.

Nevertheless he got to work on the alien, who was strapped upside down like a huge overturned beetle. Some of his manipulations were torture, pure and simple, but some of them were a survey of Neverdie’s anatomical and nervous systems. Neverdie gave vent to recurrent strangled shrieks and squirmed a good deal as far as his bonds would allow; but that was all. Julian remained aware of the need not to kill his subject and proceeded with care, but he did not feel over-anxious on that score. An immortal being must be physically capable of surviving quite drastic bodily disorder, he reasoned. After a while he absentmindedly left off torture for its own sake and gave himself up to the enjoyment of study.

Nestling just below the brain was a spherical object, like a pearl two inches in diameter.

A massive nerve ganglion surrounded the shining ball, but no nerves, either axons or dendrites, appeared to be actually attached to it. The arrangement was like a nest containing a beautiful, perfect egg. To Julian’s mind the sphere was an artificial object, not native to Neverdie’s body, and he spent some time examining it.

“What will happen if I remove that pearly sphere just below your brain?” he asked, making sure that the alien was conscious.

There was no answer, so Julian, slowly and cautiously, did as he had threatened. He held the pearl up to the light in a pair of calipers and stared at it in fascination. He felt entranced, attracted, drawn on. The sphere seemed to radiate something into his mind, like a candle in otherwise absolute darkness.

A shuddering sigh whispered from Neverdie’s voice diaphragm. “It’s done, then,” he said slowly, as though through a mist of pain.

“Is this what I was seeking?” murmured Julian.

“The Seed…. The Seed of Evil.”

Julian placed the pearl on the palm of his hand. It felt smooth and cool.

“You have nothing to defend any longer,” he said. “Why not explain it all? I would appreciate it.”

With great effort Neverdie replied. “It was not myself I sought to protect, but you. Let me make one last effort to dissuade you. The Seed you hold in your hand is the means to immortality, as you call it. Properly speaking it is biological permanence. All that is necessary is for the Seed to enter your body. To swallow it will be enough, for it will migrate to the most appropriate place, whereupon it will undertake to readjust all the body’s functions with such perfection that it achieves… biological perpetual motion. All the processes which normally cause decay are rendered null and void. The Seed’s properties are even more remarkable than that. It will repair the most appalling injuries to its host; even if the body is completely destroyed it will lie quiescent until coming in contact with biological material, even if only humus, when it will endeavour to reconstruct that body, and usually it will succeed. Thus it is almost impossible to die, impossible even to commit suicide. The only way the arrangement can end is for the Seed to be taken away and given to someone else, whereupon it will forsake the old body and serve the new, for it is able to adapt itself to any conceivable living form in the universe.”

“So far you are making a poor job of dissuasion,” Julian commented.

“What would make such a life unbearable?”

Julian thought for a moment. “Fear of losing it?”

“No. Guilt. The guilt of having stolen it.”

Julian laughed humourlessly. “Do I look like a person who feels guilt?”

“No, but you will change. All change who receive the Seed. Everything looks different after a few million years—even after a few thousand. Yes, perhaps even after a few hundred years you will be tortured by the guilt which you must endure forever—or until——”

Neverdie’s speech was interrupted by hoarse sounds of agony.

“It would be interesting to know how this remarkable device was manufactured,” Julian mused, unmoved by Neverdie’s pain.