People of the Darkness Page 5
He was not alone. The others felt what he felt: the hated and hateful beat of a life-force, the life-force of a green-light, a vibrancy they knew too well. It impinged upon them from afar, and rushed upward in intensity as their questing vision rays lanced the skies.
A single thought grew from the gathering; of itself it seemed to wound the burning spaces.
“Sun Destroyer!”
As one, the gathering of purples and greens swung in a single direction; their visions reached far, through the constellations to find Sun Destroyer’s point of radiation. For it was she! They saw her, millions and hundreds of millions of miles away, yes, light-years away, yet devouring the paltry distances with demon stride. On she came, implacable in her discovery of them; on she came, emerging with rush and fuming commotion from between two distant galaxies, a train of ruptured, flattened, shattered, collided, churning, mashed and powdered suns in her wake. This was Sun Destroyer, destroying.
“Sun Destroyer!”
The fearful cry went up again, this time with a note of protest.
She flashed toward them, thrusting suns to right and left in chaotic abandon, thirsty in her power, satiate with energy. Young as she was, with an excellence and beauty of form and coruscation not seen in these skies; gold cascades of living energy poured within her outer confining rim; circling spangled brilliancies moved in lazy dance about her green central core, as if not moved by the violent power replete within the rest of her. Spheroidal she was, but with smoothnesses and liquidly mirror surfaces that none of these purple and green-lights saw in each other. In her shining beauty she hung at last before them, ceasing motion with one thrust of her parapropellants, while the heavens turned to fire in the throwing-off of her wasteful excess of burning energy.
“What do you do?” she asked. Mirth was in her tones. Her visions swept the frozen group, centering a moment on White Galaxy. White Galaxy, not beautiful as was Sun Destroyer, shrank back; but White Galaxy was growing. Soon he would mature, but not yet; his fear of Sun Destroyer was fear of her beauty, contrasted with his lack of beauty, or so he thought. He could not know the truth that lay behind her glance; yet it was only a glance as her visions slid away, to rest upon his half-made planet.
“We do nothing,” said Swift, taking the initiative in a bold move to scorn her. “Sun Destroyer, go back where you came from. We do not wish you here.”
“What do you do?”
She scoured the gathering with her visions, and then pierced through them to that area of sky they almost hid. Swift comprehension was in Sun Destroyer’s thoughts, for now she saw the planet-woven sun.
“A new solar system.” Admiration lingered in her thoughts. “A very complex one, too.” Amazement was hers. “It must have taken you a very long time, an exceedingly long time, to fabricate it.”
“An exceedingly long time,” agreed Swift in rising anger. “Sun Destroyer! Go away! You shall not make one move toward our solar system.”
Sun Destroyer seemed hardly to hear him. Languidly upon an axis she rotated as she studied the marvelous toy. “Never fear, Swift,” she said at last. “I have no intention of destroying your system. On the contrary, I shall assist you; together we shall add to its excellence! Of course, it is now my turn.”
She contracted to half her size. Pure energy pressed in upon itself with a blinding display of light and heat. Out upon the skies, twirling on the tip of a tractor beam went Sun Destroyer’s fifteen-thousand-mile planet.
“Back now, White Galaxy,” admonished Sun Destroyer. “You were a little slow, you know; naturally, you have lost your turn.” White Galaxy, still held by his fear of her beauty and of something else within her he could never name, did indeed move back, shrinking away from her. The other energy creatures fluttered on the sky in a restless wave.
“Stop her! She will destroy the sun as she destroys all suns!”
Sun Destroyer swung her lump of matter in ever-widened circles. Vainly in his anger, Swift swelled to twice his size, as if to block her from the sun. But there was no stopping Sun Destroyer. There seemed barely enough time for her to make an accurate set of equations before she loosed the twirling world. It rolled across the field of the sky at moderate speed while the dozens of youths watched abjectly.
“The planet is too massive,” murmured Luminescent.
“And moving far too slowly,” cried Sun Flame.
“The balance will be destroyed, and the system; our beautiful system, will cave in on itself!” said Darting Green Ray.
The planet went looping in. In the outermost level of orbits it seemed to falter badly. It fell to the next level, and conditions there turned out to be marvelously suited to its presence. Sun Destroyer’s planet sped true; it was gyrating around the massive sun in an almost perfect circle.
Immediately, Sun Destroyer contracted again, and produced still another planet without going through the formality of declaring this to be her turn also. The second planet hurtled true. Sun Destroyer placed a third, and yet a fourth; both went in without error. One hundred fourteen planets; the youths were awed; the poetic rhythms of those gleaming planets shuttling about the proud fierce sun stunned them. But Sun Destroyer would destroy it, destroy it!
“Stop her! Sun Destroyer, go back!”
Swift, caught between rage and fascination, uncertainly faced the mirth of Sun Destroyer. Within him, he felt the same shrinkage of spirits that afflicted White Galaxy. But he would not permit himself to back off; beautiful she was, and different, and for those reasons if no others she must be stood up to.
“It was hardly skill,” said Swift. “A matter of luck.”
“Luck?” Her green central core seemed to heave. The golden cascades within her darkened.
“Luck,” insisted Swift. His glance raked her with scorn. Within him grew an excitement. He had touched her monstrous vanity. Her mirth was gone. Her arrogant composure was dissolving. Where beauty had been grew ugliness. Forward Swift surged to taunt her, completely forgetful of what had been his objective, somehow to chase Sun Destroyer away. “Luck,” he repeated. “Luck! No computations were made. You apparently do not have the necessary intelligence to make them — or even to know they should be made.”
She hung before him, unspinning, rigid in space, staring at him astounded. “I?” she cried. “I?”
“You,” insisted Swift. “you ride the skies like a thing that owns the universe. But even your beauty burns out of you when you are crossed. Obviously, you do not own even yourself, much less the universe. You fancy yourself to be so much better a breed than we, but are you? We have observed that your reasoning power is undeveloped; your bright prettiness is seen to be only glitter and turns black when someone brave enough to speak his mind to you — like myself—”
“Like yourself?”
The thought ripped into Swift. He started to speak again, but no words would come. An inner trembling had stopped him. His excitement controlled him, and then fear. What had he said? Sun Destroyer was not leaving; she was, on the contrary, spinning in the heavens. Her golden internal lights again spangled within her. Far from chasing her away, he had rekindled her purpose. Mirth darted across the open spaces from Sun Destroyer and impinged again on Swift.
“You are not brave, Swift,” said Sun Destroyer; her laughter tore at him. “You are frightened. As all of you are frightened — not of what I might do to your intricate toy over which you have labored so long, no. You are frightened of my perfection!” Languidly upon the skies, indulgently observing them, she rotated. The throng hung silent; then they fluttered into motion as Sun Destroyer again turned upon the monster sun and its many planets.
Sun Destroyer’s thoughts came musingly. “Swift says it was luck. But was it? In my perfection, need I make elaborate computations for such simple work as placing a planet? We shall see. Perhaps I shall show you that it was skill, born out of the fabric of me!”
Even before she finished speaking, energy coalesced within her. A spheroidal lump of hot matter for
med. It was a planet. As it cooled down and cleared itself of raging fumes, Sun Destroyer flung it out on the tip of a tractor beam.
“It is a small planet,” said Sun Destroyer offhandedly. “Back now, Swift!” and away the planet went in a shallow loop as solar attraction bent the angle of its path. Swift had indeed moved back. He was numbed to new fear. Small the planet was, but…
Suddenly the gathering of youths surged on the sky. A hundred outraged cries rang as that tiny, seemingly inoffensive planet became a plundering demon. It glided across the orbit of the outermost world, which in turn faltered and collided with its fellow in the next orbit. A racking commotion now ensued; a full dozen planets were caught in a holocaust of cross motion. The thrown planet in the meantime skipped through a dozen other orbits in a planetary dance that ended in chaos. Several planets dropped into their primary. The monster sun shuddered rackingly. Solar prominences burned the sky, incinerating all the inner planets. Sun Destroyer’s planet looped around the other side of the system and with what seemed calculated precision reduced all the middle orbits to ruin. Suddenly there was no order at all. Planets collided, exploded, fell into the sun. Finally the sun itself exploded.
Where the beautiful, complex toy had reposed was ravening space, heaven’s inferno. The energy creatures rode out the storm, rode the waves of heat and demon light. When it was over, they fluttered back together, whirling and expanding and darting off into side spaces looking for the object of their hate. But Sun Destroyer had not gone. She hung precisely where she had been, discarding excess luminescence from the monster flare.
“She destroyed our sun, as she destroys all suns!”
“It was a bad calculation, very bad,” said Sun Destroyer mournfully. “I suppose I am not so skillful after all. Perhaps Swift was right.”
Of all that gathering, only Swift and White Galaxy knew the truth. And Swift was therefore mute. He abjectly wished her to go, her and her cascading yellow gleams, and her promise of a further threat that he could not name.
Sun Destroyer did go, with a final flaunting glance at the angered and grieving crowd. Out went her propellants, and she rushed away across the galaxies, weaving between the stars, touching them not.
Chapter II
Sun Dust
Sun Destroyer, flinging herself through star cluster after star cluster, suddenly felt a thrill of fright.
She stopped her headlong motion, thrusting her visions into the backward distance. The fright grew as she saw the being who came in her wake. It was a green-light twice as large as herself.
“Stop, Sun Destroyer!”
The thought came clearly and firmly. Sun Destroyer’s unease persisted. Saying no word, she waited for the green-light to catch up with her.
They hung in space facing each other. Quiverings of exuded radiance sparkled along the rim of the older green-light’s body.
“My daughter,” said Sun Dust sadly. “Why must you cause others unhappiness?”
Some of Sun Destroyer’s unease disappeared. It was replaced by defiance.
“I seek only my own happiness,” she retorted.
“By destroying that of others?”
“Did I destroy that of others?” asked Sun Destroyer, as if in surprise.
“There are many strange tales of you,” Sun Dust said gently. “The other youths are fearful when you come. You take their peace.”
“I do not mean to, mother. I only know that I seek my own happiness. I care not about other things. It seems right and proper that I do as I do.” She added, pointedly, sharply: “I doubt if any thing will change me.”
The Mother hung motionless. Sun Destroyer began to rotate upon the heavens, to rotate and expand, while the running streams of yellow gleams agitated within her. The pain of her younger years was returning to her, carried, it seemed, in the sorrowfulness of this being. And she did not wish it to return — did not wish it to!
The mother said, “Sun Destroyer — my daughter.” Distress was in her voice. “Could you not find other means to satisfy your desires? Surely there are more worthwhile things than destruction, are there not?”
“Ah, yes,” said Sun Destroyer mockingly. She almost could not believe that these words were being said. “You echo the credo of Darkness, mother — of him who sired me. Darkness, dreaming that he would solve the secrets of all that is. He solved nothing. Darkness! He should have listened to Oldster, who knew the truth, that not too high a value must be placed on one’s life — nor any life. Darkness, the fool.”
Dark grew the golden gleams within her, for her thoughts were dark and running with pain.
Darkness himself awakened her pain. She quivered deep within, as if to force from her being the monstrous blight. Sharply she said to this being who also awakened her pain:
“I have been very happy. I have been happy because I do not consider myself — or others — as sacred appendages of the universe. Why would you take that happiness from me?”
For a long time the older green-light held visions on her youngest child. She was remembering that day long ago when Darkness burst through from another universe, searching for the significance of life, and finding it only in death. Fright was in Sun Dust, fright of Sun Destroyer, and fear for Sun Destroyer. On that day many years ago when Sun Destroyer lay in her cradle in the seventeenth band of hyperspace, Darkness passed by on his way to death and gazed upon his child. What was in his gaze, and what did his presence mean?
Sun Dust felt her knowledge, a hidden knowledge, that somehow was evoked by memory of that which Darkness carried: the sphere of Great Energy.
Energies unknown spearing through the cradling space where this one of the golden effulgences had grown. Sun Destroyer she was, a destroyer indeed, and not only of suns. Mindless and wanton destruction was her credo, and utter and complete satisfaction of personal desires. Sun Dust knew the truth as she would never know it again. She had bred a child who was as different as horror was different from peace.
She said faintly, “No, there was nothing of you in Darkness, my child.”
The pain was gone. Sun Destroyer felt new energies within her and brightening thoughts. Deliberately, as if to give her growing elation its expression, she reached out with pressor beam and tractor ray and tore a nearby sun into flaming ruin, scattering the fragments the length and depth of a galaxy.
Her mother could only look at her.
But Sun Destroyer was pleased again, and uncaring. Soft, languid lights took shape in her body. How quickly her thoughts ran, how brightly she saw herself! “Darkness,” she mused. “Ah, Darkness! He sought the end and the meaning of all life — but who are we to say that he failed? Mother, look upon me! Am I not flawless?” Quickly she spun in smooth sphericity, mirror-like and gleaming. “Am I not the meaning that Darkness sought? Do I not personify that for which life has sought ever since life first came to be? Yes, I am that meaning!
“Life seeks happiness.That is its meaning. But life fails to find happiness. The reasons, I am sure, are obvious; for from the beginning we have imbued ourselves with a sacred love of ourselves. We have become so inflated with the idea of being alive that we consider the universe made for us. Then, out of our respect for ourselves, we manufacture respect for others, and how wrong it is to do so. You must see the meaning, mother.”
“I hear only words,” came the thoughts of Sun Dust. But Sun Destroyer dreamed on. “Life blunders,” she whispered. “Each of us sacrifices some of himself to maintain the happiness of others. When we seek happiness for others a part of us dies. Therefore, I — I, Sun Destroyer, and only I — am the meaning that Darkness was seeking, the meaning that he created, all unknowingly. For see! I am happy. My desires are sated. I do as I will, without thought for the happiness of others.”
A foam of red sparks leaped unbidden from the complex energy fields of her body.
“But I breed unhappiness by trying to do as you wish me to do, mother,” she said darkly. “I shape myself with your desires — and I die!”
“I die!” said Sun Destroyer, and charged bitterly, “You have not listened.”
“I listened, I heard. My child, I heard only words.”
Sun Destroyer stared at her, at this great quiet creature who hung athwart space and who was moved only to sorrow and love. No, Sun Dust would never understand; how could she understand one who was the end product of all her race? How could she or any like her ever know what lay in the thought swirls of Sun Destroyer? But she must understand! At least she must know of Sun Destroyer’s secret yearning, and she must know something of the answers to its fulfillment.
And if she did not,who would?
A gulf as wide as that spanning two universes yawned in horror before her.
“Mother.” The word trembled out of her. “There is something I must know. A little while ago, a great knowledge came to me. I knew — and know not how I knew — that there is a band of space beyond the forty-eighth.”
“Beyond the forty-eighth? Beyond? No, my child.”
“Yes! I ascended the bands. Up through to the topmost — and I sought to break through — into the forty-ninth. There is a forty-ninth band. Yes, I sought to fling myself past the band of life into a forty-ninth, and I failed. Failed!”
The quiet sphere of Sun Dust was no longer quiet. The cry of this strange being who was her daughter was a pain within her. “I am glad you failed,” whispered Sun Dust. “For if there is a forty-ninth band, the knowledge bodes you no good. I know nothing of this forty-ninth band. Nor has anyone spoken of it. Therefore how could it be? If others know nothing of it, how can you?”
“I do know,” said Sun Destroyer sharply. “As for how I know, it is for the reasons I gave you.” Abruptly, she was luxuriating in the rightness of that which she knew. The mystery of her greatness lured her. “Why, it must be, mother, that I am the only energy creature ever to sense the existence of the forty-ninth band! After all, I must be the very reason for the existence of all life. In me is centered the driving force of all our race. Therefore, I shall go into the forty-ninth band!”