Lords of Creation Page 6

  “What of the inland states, without a coast or ship?” asked Ellory, thinking of a tribal group in Wyoming or Tennessee.

  “They bring their share to a coast, to be shipped. For instance, the Jendra people, west of us, bring it in wagons and we ship it for them, for which they pay us in hides. The Lords of Antarka must be served without fail.”

  Sem Onger spoke of a law of the universe, judging from his tone.

  “If any tribe fails or refuses to give the tribute, their cities are destroyed and the people hunted to the hills. It has happened rarely.”

  Still that maddening resignation.

  Ellory stood, slowly shaking his head. He had crawled out of the crypt less than two months before. For that time, between visits of the Antarkans, he had seen only one phase of the present world.

  Now, stunned, he realized the true picture—oligarchy, in its most advanced form. The whole Stone Age world a feudal backyard! The favored few, in Antarctica’s ten cities, supported in luxury, idleness perhaps, by the gifts of food and labor from their primitive subjects.

  In return—nothing! Not even one iron plowshare. It was the most one-sided social system in the history of mankind.

  Ellory’s indignation flamed again, directed now at these people for their passive acceptance.

  “Do you think it’s right?” he snapped.

  “It has been so for a thousand years,” retorted Sem Onger guardedly.

  “They do not interfere otherwise,” shrugged Mal Radnor.

  “I am still chief of my land,” stated Jon Darm, rather doggedly.

  Little platitudes, drilled into them, undoubtedly, by the Lords of Antarka. Propaganda, blind and senseless.

  “But it’s tyranny. Bald-faced dictatorship!” exploded Ellory. “It’s worse, in degree, than the rule of Imperial Rome ever was! Or feudal aristocracy, or the African slave-trade, or the mass-regimentation of my time. It’s capitalistic exploitation on an all-profit basis! Don’t you see? It’s—”

  His voice ground to a stop. The future people stood dumbly, without understanding. His Twentieth Century terms went completely over their heads. He might be addressing deaf mutes. He stared from one to another helplessly.

  “No, Humrelly, it isn’t right!”

  It was Sharina’s soft voice. She alone had refrained from the reiteration of platitudes. She came forward, touching his arm, her eyes glowing.

  “We all know that, within our hearts. You have said it for us. But, Humrelly”—the glow died—“what can be done about it?”

  The others looked at him with the same unvoiced resignation. Their eyes repeated—“What can be done about it?”

  “Nothing can be done about that,” Sem Onger said flatly. “But, Humrelly, we will go to the ruins, as we planned. Perhaps we can do other things, down there.”

  The following day, a team of plodding oxen drew them south in a creaking wagon. The driver, a borrowed attendant from Jon Darm, followed a dirt road beside what had once been a smooth concrete highway—now a torn, upflung tangle.

  Ancient New York lay ahead.

  * * * *

  After a restless night, Ellory felt somewhat haggard. The revelation of the day before weighed oppressively. It had been bad enough to find the world in a second Stone Age, but worse to realize the Antarkan overlordship. Yet what could be done about it? The Antarkans had metals, science, power.

  Ellory looked around.

  The countryside was dotted with small crude huts. Figures toiled in the fields. Here and there a shepherd boy lazed before his flock of sheep or cattle.

  It was age-old, pastoral, primitive.

  It wasn’t barbarism, but neither was it civilization, save of an arrested kind. Ellory reflected deeply during the slow journey. There were so many things lacking that could make life more advanced. Man was meant to progress beyond such simple fundamentals. Metals could transform this static, monotonous setting into something much more vigorous. Science could give them radio, engines, books and all the paraphernalia that could make life so much more interesting and varied.

  And it would also, quite inevitably, cancel the gross tyranny of Antarka!

  Ellory sighed, as he reached this point of thought.

  Science and metals. They were inseparable. The whole history of civilization up to his time, and beyond, had been the history of metals. Gold and silver, most easily separated from dross, had played their part, in pre-history, kindling a spark in half-savage minds. Then, somewhere back in 4000 B.C., copper had intrigued the Egyptians as a decorative metal. By 3000 B.C. had come hard bronze, copper plus tin, already tipping the scales of warfare and empire.

  But in 1500 B.C. there had reared the colossus of human invention—iron. “Metal of Heaven” it had been called, because first seen in meteorites. Metal of war it quickly became, in the following centuries and so important that the early smiths, like Vulcan and Tubal-Cain, were immortalized in literature. Metal of science and industry it had eventually become, into and beyond the Twentieth Century.

  But now that chapter of history was closed.

  Without metals, what could Ellory do? He might devise the first crude forerunners of machines from his own knowledge, but he could not make them of clay. Earth had been gleaned of the all-important metal deposits which must be the basis of any mechanical civilization.

  Only hoarding Antarka had metals now.

  Ellory bitterly denounced his age, and that following, for selfishly robbing posterity and making possible the stage as it was set today. How could they have been so blind, blind? A historian of this day could write against that period— “criminal waste.”

  But take a remoter viewpoint, he told himself, say of 10,000 A.D. They would write—“Age of Gleaning Earth-Deposits. Inevitable that they would run out, one way or another, slow or fast. Machineless Period followed, through 5000 A.D., except for isolated Antarka. Then a new science achieved metal-and-power by , in the year ”

  Ellory thrilled. Perhaps he could fill in those blanks! Or was it just a dream that he had no reason to entertain for even a moment?

  Ellory’s heart quickened when, in the afternoon, they passed through what he suspected had been the Westchester of his New York. In a later New York it had evidently been part of the Maln city, by the numerous stone ruins scattered among the trees. Further on, the Bronx ruins were still more heaped. A ferryman took them across the river at this point, on a huge raft.

  Manhattan Island had for centuries been a goatfield. The nimble beasts were not bothered by the ruins and found plenty of good grazing.

  Ellory felt a sharper stab when he saw, on the Hudson shore, part of the huge stone bulwark that had once upheld one end of the George Washington Bridge. The bridge itself was gone. Further down, another and huger stone pylon gave evidence that here a mightier bridge had existed, built after his time.

  It too was gone.

  Now the ruins became fantastic heaps of half-buried, weed-grown rock, towering against the skyline. The wagon had to wind among them. At one place Ellory looked down into a pit and saw part of a concrete platform and some rotted ties. And bones.

  Mute evidence of a bomb that had blasted into a crowded subway station.

  “There is a record,” informed Sem Onger, “that at the fall of this city, three missiles with nuclear warheads wiped out all but a few thousand lives.”

  Ellory shuddered. The World Wars I and II had been but the first of many scientific wars, each succeedingly more terrible. But how could mankind have survived even one atomic war? There was some mystery here. He pulled his thoughts up from somber depths with an effort.

  “Where are we heading?” he asked. “On what part of the island will we find that unknown scientist’s vault?”

  “To the east, away from the river.” Sem Onger looked up in the sky
. “But I think we will have to wait for tomorrow. The sun is setting and my eyes are not good in twilight.”

  They stopped at a fairly clear spot and set up the tent, for Sharina. The three men would sleep under the broad wagon. Ellory watched as the attendant, after gathering firewood, struck a flint to it. When the fire had burned down to glowing embers, Sharina thrust meat wrapped in leaves, and potatoes, into the ashes. It was a hearty, savory meal, topped with coffee made in a thick stone pot.

  But Ellory found it strange to muse that these back-to-nature operations were occurring in the heart of what had once been a city of machines. A flick of a switch had turned on light, heat, music. Millions of people had lived almost effortlessly where now they must gather wood to start a fire. All man’s ingenuity had been taxed to create a mechanical Elysium.

  Now it was all gone.

  “Gone!”

  Ellory murmured the word as he stood there in the still night, unable to find sleep. The stars winked down on the shards of New York. Here and there a skeleton tower still pierced the sky, defying time. They were like eyeless, brooding monsters. A soft breeze sighed through their apertures, like the wailing of the countless dead who had inhabited them.

  Ellory felt the dull ache of nostalgia, then, thinking of that bustling, vibrant city he had known. With all its faults, his time had been good to live in.

  But then, firmly, he shook his mood away.

  Every man must have a place in the society in which he lives. He had had a place in the world he had left. He would make one here. Barring undefined Antarka, that had been his problem, ever since he had realized he was a scientist in a new world without science. He would try, somehow, to give them something of his science.

  His eyes narrowed speculatively.

  Maybe he could melt down those towers with huge charcoal fires and retrieve the metal. There were piles of iron-oxide powder at their bases, which could be reduced. Perhaps organized search among the ruins would uncover other metal supplies. This Second Stone Age needed launching into a Metal Age. If he could achieve that, it would be a step in the right direction.

  But how—with available metal so scarce? It seemed an insoluble problem. And piled on that, crushing the Stone Age people still lower, was Antarka.

  Ellory felt himself at the bottom of the heap, struggling against impossible odds. It did not help to think of ErMalne, Lady of Lillamra, and how she had humiliated him.

  Chapter 9

  RETURN OF THE METAL

  Sem Onger’s faulty memory, and the general hodgepodge of the ruins made it a search of two days before they found the stone-vault he had talked of.

  Earth had piled up around it. Part of the roof was caved in. Ellory scrambled down into the dank, musty interior, holding a lighted candle high. Sharina nimbly followed him, laughing at his proffered hand. Sem Onger very nearly pitched head-first, but Ellory’s hand steadied him in time.

  “This is it,” announced the old seer. “In his time most habitations were made gas-tight and bomb-proof, which explains why it has withstood so well.”

  It had been a laboratory.

  Ellory sensed that, though the moldy debris strewn about gave little indication. He began poking around eagerly, upturning encrusted objects from which scurried spiders and other crawling things.

  Sharina gasped when he held up a white skull from which two empty eye-sockets glared expressionlessly.

  “Our friend died at his work,” Ellory murmured. “Wonder what could have been so fascinating to him—hello! What’s this?”

  “Foil,” he exclaimed. “Lead foil wrapped around something—”

  A few minutes later he had peeled away dozens of sheets of the soft metal. When he removed the last sheet, a dull waxy lump was revealed. But it was dull only an instant.

  Then, suddenly, it began to glow in his hand.

  Dim warning clicked in Ellory’s mind, in the next second, when he saw the damp moisture on the roof turning to steam. With a choked cry he jammed the lead sheet over it and frantically bundled the others around it.

  “Just in time!” he muttered.

  The temperature in the room had gone up several degrees. They were perspiring.

  “What was that?” gasped Sharina.

  Sem Onger looked at Ellory. “Was that his—secret?”

  Ellory nodded, his eyes still shocked with thoughtful amazement.

  “Help me search through this other stuff for some more of his papers,” he directed.

  But hours later they realized that what records there may have been were destroyed, either by natural forces or by himself. Whatever enigma lay within the lead foil seemed destined to reMaln nameless and unexplained.

  Ellory looked over the junk they had uncovered.

  But it wasn’t exactly junk. The things buried deepest had been preserved most. There were many things—coils, condenser plates, glass prisms and lenses, parts of intricate mechanisms—that could be made useful with a little tinkering. Ellory felt a surge of joy. Without much stretch of imagination, this could become a laboratory.

  And if his busy suspicions were anywhere near correct, the lump of strange matter within the lead foil was the starting point for something important.

  “Let us go,” said Sem Onger impatiently. “Leave the rats to their doMaln.”

  “Wait!” Ellory said. “I want to try something. Blow out the candles.”

  They obeyed wonderingly.

  Ellory took the ball of lead-foil to the darkest corner and carefully unwrapped it again. The dull wax began to glow again but less brightly than before. Ellory scraped the tip of a strip of lead over the lump and rewrapped the rest.

  Then he exposed the tiny portion to the strong light coming down from the broken ceiling. The tip of the lead strip glowed like a diamond and seemed to be on fire. All around them the moisture on the walls turned to steam. The lead strip began to get warm in Ellory’s fingers.

  Face flushed from the heated air, Ellory’s eyes gleamed as he saw that the brightness of the glow was proportional to the amount of light touching it. He strode all around the vault, testing this fact. He trembled, all his scientific instincts alert.

  Radioactivity! “Slow” atomic power!

  And stopped or started at will by the application of light and darkness.

  When the heat in the chamber had become unbearable, from the released rays, Ellory led the way out. He placed the lead-strip on a stone block outside, watching. In the sunlight, it became incandescently brilliant and the lead became a molten blob.

  Ellory pushed his companions back.

  This was a degree of radioactivity thousands of times more active than radium. Soon the little pinpoint of ultrafire bored its way down into the stone. A minute later the big boulder cracked apart like an egg. A steamy hiss sounded as the disintegrating speck hit ground. A moment later all was quiet, with the self-exclusion of light on it.

  Ellory strode toward their wagon, almost forgetting his companions.

  “Is that some science?” queried Sem Onger, as if speaking of something tangible. “What will it do?”

  “Plenty, I hope!” Ellory grunted. “I’m going to come back here, old man, and work in this laboratory—solve the secret of that glowing wax.”

  “I’ll work with you,” said Sem Onger promptly. “But first we must ask Jon Darm’s permission.”

  Ellory nodded.

  “Particularly since I want to rifle the museum of every bit of metal it contains. I will need them.”

  “How long will you be here?” asked Sharina, with a veiled glance.

  “I don’t know,” Ellory replied slowly. “Perhaps a long time. Will you come and visit me now and then, angel?”

  “Yes, Humrelly,” she said simply.

  When they were halfway
back to the city, a cloud of dust came over the horizon back of them. It resolved itself into a group of horsemen, with Mal Radnor in the lead.

  The young war chieftain reined up beside the wagon. For a moment he glowered, looking from Ellory to Sharina. Ellory realized he had made a bad situation worse, by having Sharina along at all. He expected a scene.

  But then he saw that Mal Radnor’s face held a more significant errand.

  “War!” He said the word hoarsely.

  Sem Onger and Sharina stiffened, but it did not seem a total surprise to them.

  “With the Quoise people?” Sharina asked quickly.

  Mal Radnor bobbed his head, grimly. “They attacked our border patrol and drove us to the hills. They are advancing, thousands of them. As they have threatened for a year, they seek to push back our boundaries to the Hussan River. I go now to gather our reserves and lead back an army. Death to the Quoise!”

  With this war cry, the party of soldiers sprang away at a gallop. Ellory’s wagon followed at its slower pace. Excitement rode with them.

  “This is our tenth border war with the Quoise in the past generation,” Sem Onger explained to Ellory. “They hold the land to the south and west, to the shores of the ocean. They have always coveted the rich plains bordering the Hussan River.”

  Northern New Jersey, Ellory surmised, in terms of the states once comprising his vanished nation. Ellory knew vaguely that Jon Darm’s people, about a million strong, occupied most of what had been New York State. Their tribal name, the Noraks, was a language relic contraction of New York.

  Ellory asked further questions.

  Their “war” involved a few square miles of land. It would engage a few thousands of troops and cavalry, Malnly in hand-to-hand battle. Their weapons would be bows-and-arrows, wooden spears, and stone-headed clubs.