The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (83 page)

Garr reflected that it was very interesting. It was even more interesting that people who were forced to lie about their loyalty ceased to think of such statements as lies. They were conventions, as normal as the “So sorry you must go” at parting.

The Truth Machines could detect lies that men knew were lies but they had created adjustments in the population so that men no longer considered protestations of loyalty as having any meaning at all. Candidates for the Guard, of course, underwent an examination so rigorous that no instinctive rebel could hope to escape detection.

Only human robots joined the Guard. They were infinitely loyal, to be sure, but they could not be intelligent. It was an inevitable paradox that the precautions for the King’s safety had created a population in which nine men out of ten could not possibly resist the temptation to murder the King if opportunity offered.

The ground-car swerved and the door opened. A guard at the Palace gate checked the meter on the ground-car. He, Garr, had got into the car at the matter-transmitter. It had come by the most direct route to the Palace. It had not stopped anywhere. Garr had not seen or spoken to anyone. The guard waved the ground-car on.

Garr, of course, was not a criminal or under suspicion. To the contrary, he was trusted as few men had ever been trusted before. In the past four centuries only five persons had been sent to other planets for study.

Garr was trusted to an amazing extent. But these were routine measures for persons with the confidence of the King. An ordinary citizen, before entering the Palace, would have been subjected to an examination requiring months, which might very well have wrecked his mind and nervous system.

* * * *

The car stopped finally. Garr got out. His prints were taken in an Identity-Machine. He spoke into an analyzer which checked his voice-pattern, vowel-formation and certain key consonants against his voice. He was admitted to the Quarter of the Domestics of the Palace.

But before he could reach his own quarters—and his wife and children—his call was ringing in all the corridors. He sighed slightly and reported to the nearest Command-Integrator station. He had not seen his wife for two years but he obeyed orders.

Ten minutes later he shivered atop a platform on one of the monster landing-shafts of the Palace. He was two thousand feet in the air and the Palace and the city and the fields beyond were spread out below him. The horizon was an indefinite number of miles away. An icy wind blew.

Lift-doors popped and other men came out to shiver with him. There was Kett, the King’s Physician. There was Nord, the pathologist. In five minutes twenty men stood waiting on the landing-platform. They were the top physicians of Loren, the most capable surgeons, the very cream of the medical skill of the kingdom.

Something swooped down from overhead, grew huge, grew monstrous, alighted. The twenty men filed up into its under-slung cabin. It was one of the great atmosphere-cruisers which hovered always above the Palace, ready with ravening beams to destroy any menace to the tranquility of the King’s realm. It lifted and went hurtling off to the southward. An officer stalked into the cabin with a document in his hand.

“Sirs,” he said in an official voice, “you have been summoned at the desire of the King”—here he saluted smartly—“because of the indisposition of His Majesty’s favorite
ylith
. His Majesty is in residence an hour’s journey away. You are informed of this fact that you may reflect upon your knowledge of the indispositions that may afflict his Majesty’s
ylith
and be prepared to diagnose and treat the ailment.”

He swung about, stepped through a door and vanished. There was silence in the cabin. Garr glanced out a window. The ground flowed swiftly past, below. The cruiser—its complement was two hundred men—flung southward at twice the speed of sound.

Garr reflected without emotion that he had been kept from seeing his wife and children, after two years, that he and these others might consider the illness of a hairless small monstrosity which had been inbred to artificial standards until it was as purely parasitic as the Ki— He stopped the thought calmly and turned to listen to his neighbors.

Nord was saying anxiously, “I hope my assistant carries on the experiment adequately. It was the climax of three months’ work. I have great hopes—if he carries on properly.” Then he said dutifully, “But of course in an emergency like the illness of the King’s
ylith—
”

A dark man whom Garr remembered as the best brain-surgeon on Loren said evenly, “I was in the middle of an operation.”

The others knew what that meant. One does not interrupt a brain-operation of the caliber this man alone could do. Some unknown human being had died because of the illness of the King’s pet.

Kett, the King’s Physician, said inquiringly, “Garr, I believe you have just returned. You have news for us?”

Garr smiled very faintly. “Not news. A discovery to be verified. On Yorath they are much excited but the decision must be made with care.”

Kett grunted. His hands were trembling a little. He was, past question, the greatest medical man on the planet. But if he failed in the service of the King matters would go hard with him. When the King died he would die also in any case.

A devoted servant could not survive the disgrace of not being able to cure his King. And if the King chose to make it a command that his loathsome pet be cured, then the King’s Physician must commit suicide if unable to obey. Garr felt no envy for Kett.

“Don’t tell me,” said Nord hopefully, “they’ve developed something intelligible to explain psychosomatic tissue changes?”

“It’s nothing so simple,” said Garr. He hesitated and said uncomfortably, “It’s a new electronic circuit. You know that our devices have had minimum pick-up of nerve-currents from brains and muscles.

“When the signal is faint enough it is no stronger than the random shot-effect currents in the apparatus itself. When we amplify a sufficiently faint signal we get only meaningless static.”

Nord said impatiently, “Of course! I’ve cursed it often enough!”

“This new circuit,” said Garr, “filters out the random impulses. It seems to work. Apparently there is now no lower limit to the signals that can be picked up and amplified without distortion.”

The dark man, the brain-surgeon, leaned forward.

“I’ve brought back one device they’ve made with the new circuit,” said Garr, hesitating to speak. “I’d rather not say what they think it does.”

“What,” asked Nord, “did you see it do?”

Garr looked out of the window again. There were clouds below. There was blue sea ahead—a sea it was forbidden for commoners to navigate, because the King had a palace on one of its islands. He turned his head resolutely back.

“It brings messages from somewhere,” said Garr. “Coherent and specific messages. It brings sights, sounds, smells and other physical sensations from a level of energy lower than anything we have ever tapped before. I used it, and I saw—well—sights and places and—persons—that do not exist in our cosmos.”

“Artificial delirium?” asked Kett, feigning interest to hide the shaking of his hands. “Induced illusions?”

“I would rather not say,” said Garr. “I thought of the possibility while using the device. I raised the question with—the person I was talking to.”

He added wryly, “It is two-way communication, by the way. Messages come up from a level below previous detection. They also go down to a level below previous control. I was—talking to someone about what I saw and heard and that someone gave me proof that it was not delirium. Illusion—perhaps. Delirium—no!”

The blue sea flowed underneath the cruiser, three miles down. Garr realized that men for whom he had great respect were listening very attentively.

“I would rather not talk about it,” he said awkwardly. “It is quite unreasonable. Not the circuit, of course—that is simple enough. There is no doubt that it does amplify, quite clearly, signals previously too faint to be detected. But the evidence is not conclusive on where the signals come from.”

Someone said with skeptical mildness, “A microscopic culture?”

“I would rule that out absolutely,” said Garr. “I have used the device. But the received signals are of the order of micro-micro-micro-milliwatt-seconds energy.”

There was silence. Twenty of the best brains of Loren listened to Garr. Before he went to Yorath he had done good work. When he made a statement on a subject concerning his specialty he was worth listening to. This was distinctly linked with psychosomatic medicine. Illusion and psychosomasis are relevant. Nord leaned forward.

“You spoke of speaking to someone, of raising a question,” he observed. “This someone spoke—or communicated, at any rate—on a signal of no more than thousands of trillionths of watt-seconds energy. Who or what was the someone?”

Garr flushed slowly.

“My experience was exactly in line with the results of the Yorathians. But I would rather not describe my sense-impressions. I was—let us say that I seemed to be talking to my father. He proved to me that he was my father. He gave me excellent reasons for—ah—continuing to be a good boy.” He added apologetically, “My father has been dead for ten years.”

There was silence. Then someone said in a queer voice, “But that means you have scientific proof of the survival of personality?”

“That,” said Garr with restraint, “has been offered as an explanation on Yorath. It is an interesting speculation. So far, it is no more. There is not enough data. Of course, it has often been suggested that the ego, the id, the human personality, is a force-field, itself immaterial, which can only be detected by its effect upon matter.

“Other force-fields are also detected only by material effects. But up to now what might be termed personality-fields have affected only the substance of our brain-cells. It may be that nothing else has been a sensitive enough detector.

“The device I brought back is a superlatively sensitive detector. But it is purely speculation to guess that egos or personalities which are not associated with living brain-tissue can affect it.”

Kett spoke with sudden wistfulness. “It would mean that death is not the end. It would be the proof that the soul does not die with the body. Death would not be terrifying!”

Garr paused before he answered. “It would depend,” he said very carefully, “on what sort of life one had led.”

There were islands ahead and below. The great cruiser swooped down. It slowed. It came to a deft landing upon one of the great shafts of the King’s pleasure-palace which stood on one of the islands in the vast blue sea.

The twenty men stood up to go and examine the King’s pet
ylith.

Kett said in a low tone to Garr, “I shall come to see this device. I hope.”

Garr did not answer. He was being jostled by the others on the way to the landing-platform. There were guards everywhere, of course.

* * * *

Presently they came to the apartment where the King’s
ylith
lay fretfully, its piglike eyes glaring hate at all about it. Garr stood respectfully in the rear. The King’s Physician, Kett, took the beast’s temperature with a skin thermometer and compared it with the normal temperature as recorded by the Keeper of the Beasts.

Then, in succession, every resource of medicine was called into play. The beast had no fever. A fluoroscope showed no internal injury and no intestinal obstruction. Glandular secretions were normal. Everything was normal. There was nothing the matter with the
ylith
.

But it would not eat. It was sullen and foul of temper, and it wanted only to lie in one place with its eyes glaring hate. It had actually snapped at the King himself!

Kett, the King’s Physician, began to tremble perceptibly.

The King had commanded that his
ylith
be cured. If his command was not obeyed Kett would be disgraced. Disgraced, he would be doomed.

Garr drew him aside. He said softly, “You have heard of artificial neurosis produced in experimental animals. I would not suggest it if any physical symptom existed. But I think this
ylith,
as the King’s pet, would be treated like a great minister—or the King’s Physician.

“He would be kept always ready to be produced at the King’s command. He would wait long hours on the bare chance that the King might desire his presence. He might be flown two thousand miles or kept waiting for his dinner or perhaps kept from seeing his wife and children if the King happened to think of him. Is it not so?”

Kett’s hands shook as he nodded. Garr went on. “These inbred animals are like the aristocracy—also inbred. They have not the stamina of us common mortals. I think he has developed a neurosis of frustration. He can do nothing that he desires, only what the King desires. So he revolts and desires to do nothing at all. He wishes only to be let alone.”

Kett said hopelessly, “But then what, Garr? What can be done for a sick soul?”

“That is twice you have used the term ‘soul’,” said Garr drily. “It is most unscientific—and a
ylith
is not supposed to have a soul. But you can remove it. He is sick because he perceives his frustration.