Poul Anderson: The Day of Their Return

Should I turn right around and run?

Where could I run to?

And Erannath —That decided him. What other friend remained to the free Aeneans? If the Ythrian was alive.

He stalked on. A pair of doorways gaped along his path. He flashed light into them, but saw just empty chambers of curious shape.

Then the floor slanted sharply downward, and he rounded a curve, and from an arch ahead of him in the right wall there came a wan yellow glow.

He gave himself no chance to grow daunted, snapped off his beam and glided to the spot. Poised for a leap, he peered around the edge.

Another cell, this one hexagonal and high-domed, reached seven meters into the rock. Shadows hung in it as heavy, chill, and stagnant as the air. They were cast by a ponderous steel table to which were welded a lightglobe, a portable sanitary facility, and a meter-length chain. Free on its top stood a plastic tumbler and water pitcher, free on the floor lay a mattress, the single relief from iridescent hardness.

“Erannath!” Ivar cried.

The Ythrian hunched on the pad. His feathers were dull and draggled, his head gone skull-gaunt. The chain ended in a manacle that circled his left wrist.

Ivar entered. The Ythrian struggled out of dreams and knew him. The crest erected, the yellow eyes came ablaze. “Hyaa-aa,” he breathed.

Ivar knelt to embrace him. “What’ve they done?” the man cried. “Why? My God, those bastards—”

Erannath shook himself. His voice came hoarse, but strength rang into it “No time for sentiment. What brought you here? Were you followed?”

“I g-g-got suspicious.” Ivar hunkered back on his heels, hugged his knees, mastered his shock. The prisoner was all too aware of urgency; that stood forth from every quivering plume. And who could better know what dangers dwelt in this tomb? Never before had Ivar’s mind run swifter.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think they suspect me in turn. I made excuse to flit off alone, came back and landed under cover of dust storm, found nobody around when I entered. What got me wonderin’ was letter today from my girl. She’d learned of Merseian secret agent at large on Aeneas, telepath of some powerful kind. His description answers to Jaan’s of Caruith. Right away, I thought maybe cruel trick was bein’ played. Jaan should’ve had less respect for my feelin’s and examined—I didn’t show anybody letter, and kept well away from Arena as much as possible, before returnin’ to look for myself.”

“You did well.” Erannath stroked talons across Ivar’s head; and the man knew it for an accolade. “Beware. Aycharaych is near. We must hope he sleeps, and will sleep till you have gone.”

“Till we have.”

Erannath chuckled. His chain clinked. He did not bother to ask, How do you propose to cut this?

“I’ll go fetch tools,” Ivar said.

“No. Too chancy. You must escape with the word. At that, if you do get clear, I probably will be released unharmed. Aycharaych is not vindictive. I believe him when he says he sorrows at having to torture me.”

Torture? No marks … Of course. Keep sky king chained, buried alive, day after night away from sun, stars, wind. It’d be less cruel to stretch him over slow fire. Ivar gagged on rage.

Erannath saw, and warned: “You cannot afford indignation either. Listen. Aycharaych has talked freely to me. I think he must be lonely, shut away down here with nothing but his machinations and the occasional string he pulls on his puppet prophet. Or is his reason that, in talking, he brings associations into my consciousness, and thus reads more of what I know? This is why I have been kept alive. He wants to drain me of data.”

“What is he?” Ivar whispered.

“A native of a planet he calls Chereion, somewhere in the Merseian Roidhunate. Its civilization is old, old—formerly wide-faring and mighty—yes, he says the Chereionites were the Builders, the Ancients. He will not tell me what made them withdraw. He confesses that now they are few, and what power they wield comes wholly from their brains.”

“They’re not, uh, uh, super-Didonans, though … galaxy-unifyin’ intellects … as Jaan believes?”

“No. Nor do they wage a philosophical conflict among themselves over the ultimate destiny of creation. Those stories merely fit Aycharaych’s purpose.” Erannath hunched on the claws of his wings. His head thrust forward against nacre and shadow. “Listen,” he said. “We have no more than a sliver of time at best. Don’t interrupt, unless I grow unclear. Listen. Remember.”

The words blew harshly forth, like an autumn gale: “They preserve remnants of technology on Chereion which they have not shared with their masters the Merseians—if the Merseians are really their masters and not their tools. I wonder about that. Well, we must not stop to speculate. As one would await, the technology relates to the mind. For they are extraordinary telepaths, more gifted than the science we know has imagined is possible.

“There is some ultimate quality of the mind which goes deeper than language. At close range, Aycharaych can read the thoughts of any being—any speech, any species, he claims—without needing to know that being’s symbolism. I suspect what he does is almost instantly to analyze the pattern, identify universals of logic and conation, go on from there to reconstruct the whole mental configuration—as if his nervous system included not only sensitivity to the radiation of others, but an organic semantic computer fantastically beyond anything that Technic civilization has built.

“No matter! Their abilities naturally led Chereionite scientists to concentrate on psychology and neurology. It’s been ossified for millions of years, that science, like their whole civilization: ossified, receding, dying … Perhaps Aycharaych alone is trying to act on reality, trying to stop the extinction of his people. I don’t know. I do know that he serves the Roidhunate as an Intelligence officer with a roving commission. This involves brewing trouble for the Terran Empire wherever he can.

“During the Snelund regime, he looked through Sector Alpha Crucis. It wasn’t hard, when misgovernment had already produced widespread laxity and confusion. The conflict over Jihannath was building toward a crisis, and Merseia needed difficulties on this frontier of Terra’s.

“Aycharaych landed secretly on Aeneas and prowled. He found more than a planet growing rebellious. He found the potential of something that might break the Empire apart. For all the peoples here, in all their different ways, are profoundly religious. Give them a common faith, a missionary cause, and they can turn fanatic.”

“No,” Ivar couldn’t help protesting.

“Aycharaych thinks so. He has spent a great deal of his time and energy on your world, however valuable his gift would make him elsewhere.”

“But—one planet, a few millions, against the—”

“The cult would spread. He speaks of militant new religions in your past—Islam, is that the name of one?—religions which brought obscure tribes to world power, and shook older dominions to their roots, in a single generation.

“I must hurry. He found the likeliest place for the first spark was here, where the Ancients brood at the center of every awareness. In Jaan the dreamer, whose life and circumstances chanced to be a veritable human archetype, he found the likeliest tinder.

“He cannot by himself project a thought into a brain which is not born to receive it. But he has a machine which can. That is nothing fantastic; human, Ythrian, or Merseian engineers could develop the same device, had they enough incentive. We don’t, because for us the utility would be marginal; electronic communications suit our kind of life better.