Chapter 3
THE SAME CONFERENCE as before, minus its chairman, met as quickly as possible. Lazarus told his story, Shultz reported on Ford’s condition. “The medical staff can’t find anything wrong with him. All I can say with certainty is that the Administrator is suffering from an undiagnosed extreme psychosis. We can’t get into communication with him.”
“Won’t he talk at all?” asked Barstow.
“A word or two, on subjects as simple as food or water. Any attempt to reach the cause of his trouble drives him into incoherent hysteria.”
“No diagnosis?”
“Well, if you want an unprofessional guess in loose language, I’d say he was scared out of his wits. But,” Schultz added, “I’ve seen fear syndromes before. Never anything like this.”
“I have,” Lazarus said suddenly.
“You have? Where? What were the circumstances?’
“Once,” said Lazarus, “when I was a kid, a couple of hundred years back, I caught a grown coyote and penned him up. I had a notion I could train him to be a hunting dog. It didn’t work.
“Ford acts just the way that coyote did.”
An unpleasant silence followed. Schultz broke it with, “I don’t quite see what you mean. What is the parallel?’
“Well,” Lazarus answered slowly, “this is just my guess. Slayton is the only one who knows the true answer and he can’t talk. But here’s my opinion: we’ve had these Jockaira doped out all wrong from scratch. We made the mistake of thinking that because they looked like us, in a general way, and were about as civilized as we are, that they were people. But they aren’t people at all. They are … domestic animals.
“Wait a minute now!” he added. “Don’t get in a rush. There are people on this planet, right enough. Real people. They lived in the temples and the Jockaira called them gods. They are gods!”
Lazarus pushed on before anyone could interrupt. “I know what you’re thinking. Forget it. I’m not going metaphysical on you; I’m just putting it the best I can. I mean that there is something living in those temples and whatever it is, it is such heap big medicine that it can pinch-hit for gods, so you might as well call ‘em that. Whatever they are, they are the true dominant race on this planet-its people! To them, the rest of us, Jocks or us, are just animals, wild or tame. We made the mistake of assuming that a local religion was merely superstition. It ain’t.”
Barstow said slowly, “And you think this accounts for what happened to Ford?’
“I do. He met one, the one called Kreel, and it drove him crazy.”
“I take it,” said Schultz, “that it is your theory that any man exposed to this … this presence … would become psychotic?”
“Not exactly,” answered Lazarus. “What scares me a damn’ sight more is the fear that I might not go crazy!”
That same day the Jockaira withdrew all contact with the Earthmen. It was well that they did so, else there would have been violence. Fear hung over the city, fear of horror worse than death, fear of some terrible nameless thing, the mere knowledge of which would turn a man into a broken mindless animal. The Jockaira no longer seemed harmless friends, rather clownish despite their scientific attainments, but puppets, decoys, bait for the unseen potent beings who lurked in the “temples.”
There was no need to vote on it; with the single-mindedness of a crowd stampeding from a burning building the Earthmen wanted to leave this terrible place. Zaccur Barstow assumed command. “Get King on the screen. Tell him to send down every boat at once. We’ll get out of here as fast as we can.” He ran his fingers worriedly through his hair. “What’s the most we can load each trip, Lazarus? How long will the evacuation take?”
Lazarus muttered.
“What did you say?
“I said, ‘It ain’t a case of how long; it’s a case of will we be let.’ Those things in the temples may want more domestic animals-us!”
Lazarus was needed as a boat pilot but he was needed more urgently for his ability to manage a crowd. Zaccur Barstow was telling him to conscript a group of emergency police when Lazarus looked past Zaccur’s shoulder and exclaimed, “Oh oh! Hold it, Zack-school’s out.”
Zaccur turned his head quickly an4 saw, approaching with stately dignity across the council hail, Kreel Sarloo. No one got in his way.
They soon found out why. Zaccur moved forward to greet him, found himself stopped about ten feet from the Jockaira. No clue to the cause; just that-stopped.
“I greet you, unhappy brother,” Sarloo began.
“I greet you, Krecl Sarloo.”
“The gods have spoken. Your kind can never be civilized (?).You and your brothers are to leave this world.”
Lazarus let out a deep sigh of relief. -
“We are leaving, Kreel Sarloo,” Zaccur answered soberly.
“The gods require that you leave. Send your bother Libby to me.”
Zaccur sent for Libby, then turned back to Sarloo. But the Jockaira had nothing more to say to them; he seemed indifferent to their presence. They waited.
Libby arrived. Sarloo held him in a long conversation. Barstow and Lazarus were both in easy earshot and could see their lips move, but heard nothing. Lazarus found the circumstance very disquieting. Damn my eyes, he thought, I could figure several ways to pull that trick with the right equipment but I’ll bet none of ‘em is the right answer-and I don’t see any equipment.
The silent discussion ended, Sarloo stalked off without farewell. Libby turned to the others and spoke; now his voice could be heard. “Sarloo tells me,” he began, brow wrinkled in puzzlement, “that we are to go to a planet, uh, over thirtytwo lightyears from here. The gods have decided it.” He stopped and bit his lip.
“Don’t fret about it,” advised Lazarus. “Just be glad they want us to leave. My guess is that they could have squashed us flat just as easily. Once we’re out in space we’ll pick our. own destination.”
“I suppose so. But the thing that puzzles me is that he mentioned a time about three hours~away as being our departure from this system.”
“Why, that’s utterly unreasonable,” protested Barstow. “Impossible. We haven’t the boats to do it.”
Lazarus said nothing. He was ceasing to have opinions.
Zaccur changed his opinion quickly. Lazarus acquired one, born of experience. While urging his cousins toward the field where embarkation was proceeding, he found himself lifted up, free of the ground. He struggled, his arms and legs met no resistance but the ground dropped away. He closed his eyes, counted ten jets, opened them again. He was at least two miles in the air.
Below him, boiling up from the city like bats from a cave, were uncountable numbers of dots and shapes, dark against the sunlit ground. Some were close enough for him to see that they were men, Earthmen, the Families.
The horizon dipped down, the planet became a sphere, the sky turned black. Yet his breathing seemed normal, his blood vessels did not burst.
They were sucked into clusters around the open ports of the New Frontiers like bees swarming around a queen. Once inside the ship Lazarus gave himself over to a case of the shakes. Whew! he sighed to himself, watch that first step-it’s a honey!
Libby sought out Captain King as soon as he was inboard and had recovered his nerve. He delivered Sarloo’s message.
King seemed undecided. “I don’t know,” he said. “You know more about the natives than I do, inasmuch as I have hardly put foot to ground. But between ourselves, Mister, the way they sent my passengers back has me talking to myself. That was the most remarkable evolution I have ever seen performed.”
“I might add that it was remarkable to experience, sir,” Libby answered unhumorously. “Personally I would prefer to take up ski jumping. I’m glad you had the ship’s access ports open.”