"Geeze!" Forry thought, and the extent of his excitement could begauged byhis use of the mild expletive. He abhorred the use, even in his mind, of the most dilute of expletives.
"Geeze! This is just like Gernsback! Or Early Campbell!"
The Tocs and the Ogs were not human beings. They were amphibiouscreatures who passed back and forth from a state of pure energy to that ofmatter. Theyformed configurations of bound energy in one condition andconfigurations ofmatter in the other. Their shape depended on that which they wishedto imitate--or to create. But they did have limitations of size andshape. Thesmallest body that could be formed was about the size of a large foxor, if theytook to the air, a large bat. When they existed as, the smalleranimals, theycarried the energy excess in an invisible form as a sort of exhausttrail. Or perhaps the analogy could be energy packed into an intangible andtransparentsuitcase.
"What is your true shape?" Forry said.
"You were not to talk," Alys said, flashing white teeth. Shelooked so beautiful and so young that he felt a pang of desire. Or was it anache for his own lost youth?
"We have no true shape, unless you would call the shape we usethe most our true one. I suppose you could, since long utility of a particularshape resultsin a certain 'hardening' of that shape. It becomes more difficult tochange itas time goes on. And it requires more energy to keep it in a nonhumanform. So, since most of us have been in the human shape for so long, you mightsay thatthat is our true shape."
The Ogs and the Tocs had come into contact when space travel wasinvented. Neither used rockets or antigravitational machines. They traveledfrom one placein space to another by means of a very peculiar device. That is, itwas peculiarfrom the human viewpoint.
The device was made of a synthetic metal formed into the shape ofa largegoblet or chalice. That particular form was required because onlythat form could gather, or focus, the mental energies of a Mover. Perhaps acloser translation of the Toc word would be Captain. The Captain was theonly personwho could activate the device so that the Tocs could be teleportedfrom one point in space to another.
"Why would the Captain be the only one able to activate thedevice--this chalice?" Forry said.
"That is the limitation of this device, let us call it theGrail," Alyssaid. "It has a certain superficial resemblance to the grail of yourmedieval myths, although the inner surface has a geometry that would be alien, even terrifying, to human eyes.
"The Grail is matter, but it is activated only by a certain raretype ofenergy radiation. Of brainwave radiation, I suppose you would callit, but thereis more to it than that. Anyway, the Grail, to act as a spaceship, ora teleporter, must be controlled by a Mover, or Captain. And there wereonly abouta hundred Captains born for every million of us born."
"Born?" Forry said, his eyebrows raising. "How can an energyconfigurationbe born?"
She waved her hand impatiently and said, "I am speaking byanalogy only. IfI have to explain every detail of an exceedingly complex culture, we'll be here for twenty years. Let me talk."
The Ogs had discovered their Grails and found their Captains thesame time as the Tocs. There was travel between the two planets almost at onceand war a little later. The Ogs were evil and wanted to enslave the Tocs.
Forry had some mental reservations about this. He would waituntil he had heard the Ogs' side before he judged.
The Tocs had repulsed the Ogs with heavy losses on both sides. Finally, there was peace. The Tocs and the Ogs then turned their attentions toother worlds. Since distance meant nothing to the Grail, since a hundredthousand light years could be traversed as swiftly as a mile, that is, instantaneously, the universe was open to both races.
But with the billions on billions of habitable planets in theuniverse, andthe limited number of Captains, only a few could be explored. Earthwas one of them, and about a thousand Tocs had come here. Almost immediately, the Ogs hadsent an expedition here also. The peace did not extend to planetsoutside their system, so the Ogs had no compunctions about attacking the Tocs.
The Ogs and Tocs had waged a mutually disastrous war. They haddestroyedeach other's Grail and killed each other's Captains. And so they weremarooned on Earth.
"We lived among the humans but not of them," Alys said. "Ourability to takedifferent forms gave rise to a number of superstitions about thesupernaturalorigins of vampires, werewolves, fairies, and what have you. We Tocs were the basis of the good fairies, although we changed into animal shape, orother shapes, quite often. But we weren't hostile to human beings, that is, if theyfollowed the proper ethics we weren't."
Over the ten thousand years, the War, the occasional killing ofhuman beings, and suicide cut the original number of about two thousandTocs and Ogsdown to about a hundred each. However, every Toc or Og whose materialform was slain was not dead. He became an energy configuration again and couldregainmaterial form. But this process took a long time on Earth because themagneticconditions here were not the same as in the mother system.
"That accounts for ghosts?" Forry said.
"Yes. Human beings don't have ghosts. When they die, they areforever dead. But a Toc or Og who has died in material form needs to attach himselfto a locale where he has both the optimum magnetic conditions and humanbeings. Hehas to, shall we say, `feed' off the energy of human beings. And whenhe has gained enough form, in a phase which you humans call ectoplasm, heneeds blood or sex to get a completely material body. The Tocs need sex and theOgs needblood."
She paused and then said, "One of us recently regained corporealform bycontact with Herald Childe. She literally fucked herself into flesh. Of course, she was able to do it far more swiftly with Childe than she wouldhave with one who was completely a human being."
CHAPTER 34
"What the hell does that mean?" said Forry, who almost neverswore.
"I mean that Childe is the only Captain in existence. But hedoesn't know it as yet."
"Why not?"
"Because he was born half-human and raised by human parents. Because a Captain has a delicate psychic constitution and must be handleddelicately untilhe has fully matured. Childe is a fully mature man in the physicalsense, but heis a baby in regard to his psychic powers."
"Just one minute," Forry said. "I don't want to digress, but ifyou beingscan come back to material life after being killed, why haven't theseCaptainsthat were killed come back to life?"
"Some did and were killed by one side or the other because theirexistence could not be kept secret. Others never made it because conditionsweren't right. You see, if we had a Captain and a Grail, we could not only return toour home world. We could also bring all our departed comrades back intocorporeality. TheToc or Og in his pure energy-complex phase is a rather mindlessbeing. He hassome intelligence, but the main reason he gets back to matter is thathe has a drive to do so, an instinct. He wanders around until he happens tocome across a locale with the proper setup for reconverting him. And reconversiontakes a longlong time generally."
"Pardon the interruption," Forry said.
If he had not seen that transformation from middle age to youth, he would have thought he was experiencing the world's biggest hoax. But he wasconvinced. He was actually talking, face to face, with an extraterrestrial. Onethat would have made the strangest creature of science-fiction, or even those inWeird Tales magazine, rather mundane.