People of the Darkness Page 8

  It was gone.

  Why? What blind impulse made her cut the lifeline to her own universe? “Because,” the still voice came, so still it could not claim real substance, “with the sphere goes your pain, daughter of Darkness.” For, yes, pain was gone, at least for now. And now she too must go — faster, sweeping pell-mell across the littered seas of the sky, and faster, to outrun thought.

  She could not outrun thought, but neither could she outrun the self-rebuilding processes within her. After a dozen light-years a measure of her old self returned, and came the thought of Oldster. Oldster! Ah, now she knew of his secret lair, and she would go there.

  She paused, a struggling thought like a burning pain within her. “I must see my child again, for perhaps I may never—”

  The thought burned and flamed and died, as she irately swept its implications of horror away, No, she would return. Vanguard would know her, he would know Sun Destroyer; he would know the real Sun Destroyer, destroyer of suns and recipient of endless joy; and Vanguard would learn from her. In vicious delight, she swept out with a tractor beam and lumped a dozen hot young stars into a galaxy-destroying supernova. Avidly she fed on the sight of the inferno, the useless havoc, the careless destruction she had wrought — and snapped herself into the fifteenth band of lightlessness.

  Chapter V

  Oldster Awakens

  Lightlessness came. No matter; she would find Oldster by the very pulsation of his slowing thoughts.

  She impelled herself through hyperspace without benefit of light, toward the near rim of the universe where the ancient one resided.

  Abruptly, energy surged against her thought swirls — and the energy was that of thought, so feeble, so incredibly faint, that it could have emanated from none other than him she sought! She hovered, as if pushed back by the wavefront of enfeebled thoughts. She trembled unaccountably, filled with a dread she could not analyze. Those thoughts! There was in them a harrowing timbre of suffering, and they dwelt part in death and part in life. Were these idealess thoughts those of Oldster, and had he lived with them the uncounted millions or billions of years? Then he must be mad, mad! In revulsion she fled back, and again hovered, bitter with rage toward herself, fighting the horror she had shared.

  “Oldster!”

  She whispered the name.

  “Oldster!”

  She cried it out, and felt it flung back stridently as if in a chamber; but it was the reverberating chamber of her own mind. Nonetheless, in sheer reflex she moved nearer the source of those stripped thoughts — and nearer, throwing the name out clearly but softly at first, then putting the full power of her thought voice behind it. Her fear, as she planned, was destroyed. She hurled herself full at the foci of the feeble thought waves, and cried into lightlessness.

  “OLDSTER!”

  Silence.

  And still silence.

  Then the complex energy fields of her body constricted. Horror again claimed her, but this time she would not give way to its impulses. The monstrous creature was awakening; she felt the racking spasms if its thought as if a vast, a torpid body were pulling itself in torture from an immeasurable deep.

  “Oldster,” she whispered tremulously. “Awaken! Awaken! It is I, the daughter of Darkness, who calls to you!”

  Motion, of a great quivering form,of a mind that had scarcely known motion for ages. It struck at her from the dark with repellent force. She could scarcely endure the reality of this immured creature, dead to himself and to others, and yet heaving and twisting and expanding back to life. If only she could see him, surely her dread would vanish. Then he would be but another energy creature, ancient but conceivable. In this palling dark, though, she could not even dream his realness!

  Yet he who had been dead for so long now was rising to the dreadful pain of life, for abruptly space about her was thick with the torment of unformed thoughts: Out of his sludge of forgetfulness he was coming. She had goaded him, she, Sun Destroyer, who had destroyed his sleep, as was her unequaled right.

  “Awaken!” she cried.

  “I awake.”

  The voice was faint, as if from a far distance. But it was a voice, approachable and solid. Sun Destroyer surged in uncontrollable bodily expansion toward it, making the voice large in her mind, and forming an image of Oldster to go with it. Yes, he was real; he was only real, and not mere image.

  Her fright was gone.

  “I have come across the darkness, Oldster,” she said. “And I am the daughter of Darkness, whom you knew in long ages past!”

  The thought waves of the being grew in volume, racking space in their spasm of untold despair, so that Sun Destroyer found herself again shrinking from dread.

  “Who calls?” the ancient one suddenly cried; the bitter protest smote Sun Destroyer. “Who calls him who sought above all things not to be disturbed? Then it is in vain, and my agony must begin again. Go away, daughter of Darkness, if such you are! Ah, I care not for Darkness nor the emptiness he crossed. It is peace alone I seek, and the dark emptiness of nonexistence. I am sad, and the wakefulness you have brought me back to is an agony I cannot bear. Go away, I implore you, daughter of Darkness, and leave me once again to seek the peace you destroy. Go. Go!”

  “I cannot go. Even as you gave Darkness the secret of Great Energy, so now must you give an answer that I seek. Listen to me, Oldster.”

  “I listen to nothing save my own despair,” the creature said dully. “You have brought me back to a pain I had thought never to endure again. Leave me, leave me!”

  “I shall not leave you, Oldster, for I too know the meaning of pain.”

  She spoke arrogantly. The furies were rising in her. Oldster, no less than myriad others, was to bow before her; already he was hers, brought back to torment at her bidding.

  “I shall not leave you, Oldster,” she repeated in disdain. “I have dared to awaken you; shall I then dare to let you sleep again? No, Oldster, you shall remain awake until I have of you all that I wish. You shall not lie in decrepit uselessness and seek to hide your knowledge from me, who is the ultimate of my race; who possesses within her, save for a link I cannot supply, the ability to penetrate beyond the forty-eighth band of life and into the forty-ninth!”

  Silence, heavy with portent, rushed in on her. Her own words seemed to fill the vacuous silence. The dark of the fifteenth band pressed against her, so that she found herself searching for a single ray of light to leaven the unknown menace of Oldster. For he was wise; perhaps he was powerful also! Perhaps he was using the silence to crush her. She started forward half in fear. “Oldster—”

  “Quiet, my child.”

  Then, as if he were throttling a pain that stabbed through and again through him, Oldster’s mutter came:

  “She speaks in words that mean nothing; she, daughter of Darkness — Sun Destroyer! Ah, now I know of you!” And indeed, Sun Destroyed felt the impact of Oldster’s thoughts probing in one lightning thrust through her memory swirls, before she was able to close them in one resentful effort.

  “You have no right!” she cried.

  Oldster said heavily, “There is no right and there is no wrong, my child, as you yourself contend. Oh, Sun Destroyer, Sun Destroyer, I sorrow for you, as I sorrow for others who, someday, may be like you.”

  Sun Destroyer drew back uncertainly. “I know not why you should sorrow for me.” Now she spoke again with arrogance, so that Oldster would understand. “I sorrow for no one, Oldster. I am completion within myself, and expect nothing from anyone outside myself.”

  “Then that is but another chimera you follow.” His voice dragged, heavy with a foreboding that Sun Destroyer could not comprehend. “If you indeed are able to penetrate the forty-ninth band, daughter of Darkness, then do I sorrow for you all the more. Oh, Sun Destroyer,” he burst out, “return where you came from, and take your child with you. Your child, Sun Destroyer! What will happen to your child?”

  “I shall return to him,” she said.

  “You do not
know!” Oldster’s voice came in racking beat. “You think you are mistress of your universes, but your course is the course of self-destruction. Sun Destroyer, I who know it is best tell you this. Return to your child, return to your universe if you can, but help your child — for he will need your help!

  “And you must forget the forty-ninth band.”

  “Forget the forty-ninth band?” All else was swept away, thoughts of her child, of the great enveloping chill that was settling over her. Yes, she would return to her child, for what could stop her; but forget the forty-ninth band? “No,” she cried. She felt herself surging against the bonds this creature would throw about her. “Oldster, you are old, and your thoughts are old. You dwell in a hermitage, and there is no joy for you. Perhaps you also hope to destroy my joy, after having destroyed your own.”

  “No, my child, ” came Oldster’s mutter.

  Sun Destroyer would not stop. “You are wise, Oldster, but sometimes youth is wiser.” Her voice raged. “Have I not found that which all my race has sought through all of time? For I have struck away my bonds. Now see! I have even no pity of you and your wakeful state. Nor shall I have pity, even when that which I wish is given to me. Perhaps,” she added in demon humor, “I shall keep you awake, for all the years of my life, even after I find the forty-ninth band.”

  Oldster moved in his space; she felt the restless beat of his thoughts.

  “Her dreams are too great,” he muttered. “Even her dreams of torturing me shall not come to pass. But because she dreams, she dreams of a forty-ninth band, and there can be none — not a true one. Daughter of Darkness, hear me: there can be no true forty-ninth band!”

  She said coldly, “There could not be any forty-ninth band other than a true one. You speak meaninglessly, or you lie.”

  “I do not lie; the forty-ninth band is not real.”

  “You lie, or so you are not as wise as I thought, for I know of a forty-ninth! I first knew of it when I was very young, and all your vaunted wisdom cannot stay me in my course. Now I need but the knowledge you have gained through the millions of years. Surely, in that knowledge, lies the clue.”

  “My knowledge is of no use to such as you,” replied Oldster. His voice was dull, his thoughts feeble and embittered. “My knowledge will only harm you, for of what use can you put it — except to find a forty-ninth band which does not truly exist. Oh, Sun Destroyer, Sun Destroyer, go away, while there is yet time. Believe me, I know things of you that you do not know of yourself! Ah, I will not give you this knowledge you desire!” and Sun Destroyer felt his thoughts withdraw, as if he were again preparing to wrap himself in his mindless dark.

  She surged forward with a sharp cry, coming so close to the great unseen hulk that she felt the radiation of his aura.

  “You shall never rest, Oldster,” she whispered into the looming hulk, “if such is your decision. If you do not give me this knowledge, I shall never give you peace. Never to rest again, never to sleep, never a hope of that extinction you long for! To think you are safe, to sink toward slumber — only to awaken as I burst into your retreat! That shall be your fate, Oldster, wherever you are, for all the years of my life, and all the years of my son’s life!

  “I speak truly. Now do you think to refuse me?”

  “No.”

  The single word came in drumming beat. Sun Destroyer heard it, and could not believe. But her ecstasy began.

  “I am to be told how to reach the forty-ninth band?”

  “You are to be given that knowledge which I have, Sun Destroyer, and with it you will find your forty-ninth band. I give you your wish, daughter of Darkness, not from fear of you and your witless threats—” Oldster paused as if to underscore his meaning, and an inner trembling seized her, for she saw in his words the same kind of remorseless taunt she had meted out to him. Again she surged toward him, crying out, knowing she must not allow herself to be turned back by her own weapons being used against her; but Oldster’s drumming thoughts blanketed about her.

  “Peace, my child,” he muttered. “I wish no ill for you; but I know I must give you what you wish. For now there is only the single path you may follow.

  “But later on, you will beseech me.”

  “Beseech you!” The cry was torn from her. Then, in wonder, “Beseech you, when I, the highest of my race, have attained that which will complete my whole life?”

  “You will plead with me, Sun Destroyer, plead with me to bring you back.” Oldster was shuddering, racked with a despair that vibrated across the spaces between them, but Sun Destroyer felt only a puzzled wonder that he should despair, when eternal happiness lay before her. For Oldster’s battle with her was lost, and in the lightlessness of the fifteenth band, she permitted herself to rotate in gloating victory, awaiting his command.

  And it came.

  “Sun Destroyer, receive the knowledge I am about to give you!”

  Sun Destroyer’s ecstasy reached its peak as she erased awareness, as Oldster’s probing mind grasped her memory swirls in tight bands of energy, as the knowledge he chose for her flooded in resistless tide…

  Chapter VI

  The Forty-Ninth Band

  The thousands of years passed, and Oldster felt her go, slipping in ecstasy through the layers of space that held the fifteenth band in untrammeled dark. He felt her go, away from him, away from all that is, and he listened long to the silences of hyperspace. At last he felt the whispered drumbeat of her voice.

  “It is there, Oldster, the knowledge I sought. Oldster, you have guided me well. Now let me prove that I am the ultimate of all life. Oldster, farewell!”

  Again there was silence for Oldster, and the bare beginning of peace. But would there or could there be peace from now on, with Sun Destroyer dispersed upon the universe, when any moment she might recur to him like a memory more frightful than any of those in all his long life? Yes, she would infest him, not because of her threat, but because she could not will otherwise.

  But for now she was gone, leaving with him double reason not to think, not to feel, not to hope. Time would pass, the ache would dull, and perhaps again his thoughts would stop. Thoughts! How they brought him pain and depthless despair! Better to fight them again, to begin the old battle, to slough them off, even with the threat of Sun Destroyer hanging over him. Convulsively, he drew his thoughts in about him, quieting them, soothing them, erasing remembrance of all the glowing universe.

  Perhaps she would not come…

  Oldster drowsed, and drowsed deeper still. Tens of thousands, a million years passed. Outside the fifteenth band of lightlessness life had its being, and the nebulae and galaxies and stars and the lesser things of the heavens spun unceasingly, in brilliant internal or borrowed splendor. Inside reposed he who desired not to think. Toward blessed coma Oldster drifted.

  “Oldster!”

  Without substance the name pierced him. He knew not how much time had elapsed. However long or short, it had not been long enough. But now all was silence again; he had dreamed. It had been an outlaw thought, and his name had not been cried out after all.

  “Oldster!”

  The name was real, and the cry was real. Oldster listened dully to its unwelcome echoes within him. The agony of wakefulness shot through him, and yet he knew that he must awake — for Sun Destroyer called.

  “I awake,” he muttered. “You call me again, my daughter, when I seek peace. But I awake.”

  “I call for your aid, Oldster!”

  The voice of Sun Destroyer was shot through with horror.

  “I need your help!”

  “And have you indeed reached the forty-ninth band, Sun Destroyer?” Oldster questioned wearily.

  “I have reached it, Oldster — it is about me!”

  “Then,” Oldster muttered, “there is a new sorrow that I must learn to blot out in thoughtlessness. Sun Destroyer, had you but listened! Had you but returned to your universe! Had you but taken your child with you!”

  There was blank silence. And S
un Destroyer’s voice came, penetrating down through the bands of hyperspace that separated her from Oldster.

  She spoke, in tremulous wax and wane, “My child! Vanguard! He whom I created. How long has he been alone? How long!” Her voice washed away, as if her thoughts too were swept up to pinnacles unseen. Thinly came her thoughts again. “I do not understand of what you speak, Oldster. What have I to do with things of other bands, or even the true band? For see! I am truly set apart from my race. I am in the forty-ninth band!”

  “Yes, my daughter,” whispered Oldster bitterly. “You are in the forty-ninth band. Then why was it you again broke my slumber?”

  “I wish to return,” said Sun Destroyer. “For a moment! Oldster, I wish to return and again see my child.”

  Oldster whispered, “But tell me what it is you see. What is the nature of the forty-ninth band? Does it hold happiness, eternal without end?”

  “Oh, it does, Oldster, it does! And yet — Oldster!” Her thoughts came in drumbeat, rhythmic, ominous, dulling. “I see dead stars — and black gulfs surrounded by stars which are not matter. They move, in patterns strange to the sight — circling, with no recourse to the laws of motion. They split, and the lumps of nothing split — and from them are born whole galaxies! Blazing, spinning galaxies. Creation is about me, I am drowning in its beauty, and I would be happy, Oldster, I would be happy if—”

  “Yes, my child. You would be happy except for—”

  “Except for the shadows,” Sun Destroyer cried. “The shadows, with their pointed tips, creeping in from everywhere; the ugly shadows, quietly drawing away all of the matrix from which creation spins… it is so black! Black as your fifteenth band, Oldster! How will I return? I knew a strange peace when I looked upon my child, and it seemed that all things had been explained to me!”