James White - The First Protector

The image of An Leathros expanded to show groups of young men, over two hundred of them in all, who were stripped to the waist and with their breaths and their sweat steaming about them in the cold air as they pulled sleds containing finished stone blocks up the slopes toward the mouth of a tunnel that was fringed with an apron of dark, freshly turned earth. They heard the young mens' voices as the picture closed on one of the groups and followed them through the tunnel into the caverns of the laboratory while it was still a-building. Without exception the men worked willingly, cheerfully, and hard for they had been promised a great reward for both their sweat and their secrecy, and the recorded words of the older Ma'el explained why.

"… So that there would not be too many unexplained disappearances from one locality, the workforce was recruited and transported from all over Hibernia. My intention at the time was to reward each of them with the gold that would buy them land for farms and cattle, if that was their desire, and thus attract to them the most comely of women for their wives. But at the conclusion of their work, the quality of which pleased me greatly, I decided to give them an additional reward.

"I decided to administer single doses of the Bliss drug.

"It was a substance that I encountered during the early years of the investigation which, according to the records of the sea explorer and adventurer, Jason, gave great pleasure and forgetfulness to those who consumed it. I acquired and tested this drug, and used Taelon science to modify its effects so that it would no longer be addictive.

"Primarily I was acting out of gratitude, but I also expected to benefit in that its administration would further reduce the possibility of them accidentally revealing the position of my laboratory. The substance stimulates the mind into an extended period of pleasure while, on awakening, it wipes all related events and surroundings from the memory so that the experience is remembered only as a pleasant, confused, and fading dream. As well as rewarding them with gold for their faithful service, I wanted to give them a period of ecstasy during which they would forget the reason why they had been given the reward in the first place-"

–

They watched the images as, at Ma'el's direction, the workers swallowed the tiny capsules and shortly after collapsed onto their beds or the nearest clear area of floor. They saw the wide smiles, the eyes that stared fixedly at some unseen object of pleasure or were tightly closed and with every muscle in their bodies locked in a paroxysm of ecstasy. Time passed and they remained thus, neither eating, drinking, sleeping, nor even moving while periodically their faces were suffused with a strangely colored blush. But when they at last returned to their real world, they had not forgotten their ecstatic dreams.

Instead they sought out Ma'el, at first pleading desperately with him, then demanding and finally threatening him with death if he did not give them more Bliss. Unwilling to do so because of its totally unexpected and mind-damaging aftereffects, Ma'el was forced to seal himself inside a force field while he worked desperately to produce an antidote.

At intervals they had glimpses of the older Ma'el striving endlessly over devices that flashed lights and made low, humming noises, or among delicate, strangely shaped transparent goblets large and small containing liquids of many colors, but mostly it was the actions of the Bliss victims that they were being shown. Many of the formerly pleasant and well-behaved young men they had seen were now throwing themselves against the invisible wall with which Ma'el had surrounded his workplace, screaming and fighting each other, damaging their faces, fists, and frequently breaking limbs in their frenzy to get closer to Ma'el and the Bliss that only he could give them. But they were shown the others, too.

In every cave large or small there was more screaming and fighting and cursing. Ma'el had been carelessly generous in his distribution of the Bliss, and from overheard scraps of angry, shouted conversation it seemed that there were those who suspected that their work mates had received more than one of them and were hiding the others for future use. The result was that they fought each other, viciously and without mercy like wild animals rather than the thinking, hardworking, and friendly beings that Ma'el had come to like well enough to want to reward them with pleasure. The broken furniture and smashed crockery in their living quarters were explained because they had been used to bludgeon or stab or cut each other to death with the sharp edges. Those who fought in the main caverns were using loose rocks, their teeth, or fingers to club and blind and tear each other to pieces.

By the time Ma'el had the antidote ready, the floors and connecting steps of the laboratory caverns ran red with blood and none of his workers remained alive.

There followed a rapid series of images showing Ma'el using one of his floating litters to transfer the bodies one by one to a small, unused cavern which he filled with them to its roof before collapsing and sealing its entrance, ending with the original view of the tunnel leading from the hillside into the laboratory, which was also collapsed and sealed with fallen rock. This scene remained, flickering with the rapid passage of years until the wound in the earth was covered over with greenery and all trace of the entrance tunnel was gone.

The image dissolved with a burst of color to leave only empty air above the stone platform. Declan looked at Sinead, thinking that her features were as pale and still as those of a corpse, and feeling that his own must have been the match of hers. It was Ma'el who spoke first.

'The responsibility for killing all of those human workers is mine," he said. His voice had never revealed any emotion and it did not do so now. "I await your judgment, and punishment."

Declan closed his eyes tightly, unable to speak. The bloody images were being thrown with all their horror onto the black screens of his eyelids, a sight hundreds of times worse than the aftermath of the bloodiest battle he had ever experienced. But Sinead was saying the words that he wanted to speak.

"That, that was horrible, ghastly," she said, and shuddered. "All those young men turning upon each other and… But, but you were only trying to reward them out of kindness, not to kill them. From my own knowledge I know how kind you can be, whether it was to myself, that woman whose fortune you told in Cobh market, or even in your treatment of the beasts of burden we've used. You did not intend to do this terrible thing."

Ma'el inclined his head slowly then turned it to look at Declan, who had opened his eyes again but was still trying to calm his mind. It seemed a long time even to himself before he could speak.

'The perpetrator of such a horrendous crime deserves the ultimate punishment," he said thoughtfully, "the forfeit of his own life for the lives he has taken no matter how few or many that may be. You admit to having two reasons for acting as you did, the first one laudable and the second selfish. You wished to reward them for their services, and to make sure that the knowledge of you and the work done here would not be passed on to others. You achieved the second by causing all of them to die.

–

"Old man," he went on gravely, "and I think of you as that even though we both know that you are not a man, or even a human being, and are old indeed. Rightly has Sinead said, now and many times in the past, that you are a gentle and kindly man who had no intention of perpetrating this evil deed, and it is plain that it was your kindliness that caused you to commit it. For my part, I believe for both our parts, the judgment must also be tempered with kindness and the punishment is not for us to administer. From what we know of you, it is and has been administered over many centuries of time by yourself, for the memory of the terrible thing that a kind and thoughtful man has done will always be in your mind and, for you, that is the worst of all punishments.