The First Protector ec-2 Read online

  Sinead, her hands and arms moving with such smooth and beautiful precision that her bones might have been made of water, was able to do it. Declan was not.

  Avoiding Sinead's eyes and feeling his face hot with shame, Declan said, "Ma'el, I don't think I can do this. I'm afraid of rematerializing the ship inside the rock and damaging it" He held up his hands and then indicated the chart on the ground. "The full-size control screen on the ship is difficult enough for me, but I'm too ham-fisted to operate a half-sized one like this, at least, not with the precision you require, and I do not want to try. I'm sorry, in this matter I am craven."

  Ma'el inclined his head. "The effect of one solid body materializing inside another would not only destroy both objects," he said gently, "it would cause a detonation which would remove a large proportion of the crust of your world, allow the core magma to overflow onto the surface and convert the atmosphere and oceans into superheated steam, and destroy all forms of life on the planet…"

  He heard Sinead join him in a quick intake of breath, but before they could say anything, Ma'el went on calmly, "…The vessel's systems include a fail-with-safety device that is designed to prevent such a catastrophe from happening, but by its very nature it is as yet untried. And you are in no sense craven. There is a difference between cowardice and caution, which is the recognition and acceptance of your personal limitations. Caution saves many of the lives that unthinking bravery wastes. You are excused this test without blame or reproach, so you should ease your mind.

  "Sinead," he added, "return the vessel to us here, then both of you rest and tomorrow you will break camp and prepare for departure…"

  –

  They flew eastward over the storm-tossed ocean, without seeing any sign of the fabled Adantis after which it had been named, and crossed the west coast of Hibernia to come to a stable hover above the city of Sligo. They had positioned themselves between the late afternoon sun and the gaze of any curious city dwellers and so had been rendered invisible, but they themselves could see far and wide through air washed clear by a recent rain squall. Declan's eyes roved inland and eastward across the gray expanse of Loch Gill to the Lachagh Hills, north to the long ocean rollers that broke white against the base of Roskeragh Point, southward to the Slieve Gamphs, shivering in wonder that he was able to view the land in this godlike fashion. To the west he could clearly see An Leathros, the hill above the strand that the Saxon visitors called Strand Hill, whose gentle, seaward facing slopes bore the tombs of the past kings of Connaught, and above them on the dark mountain of Knocknareagh, the burial chamber of the famed and infamous Queen Maeve herself, whose exploits in war were surpassed only on the scented battleground of her bed. Looking at the burial markers, their westward facing stone surfaces orange-gray in the setting sun, Declan shivered again without knowing why.

  "What reason," he said to Ma'el, "have you for coming to this place of the heroic dead?"

  "I have already said that it is a place of power for me,"

  – the old man replied in his usual inscrutable fashion, "where Iwill be able to renew myself and my magic before we set off again on the journeys that will enable me to complete my work. My buried laboratory is here."

  "What is a laboratory?"

  'Tonight you will enter one," Ma'el replied, "so that a description in words would be wasteful of our time." He pointed suddenly. "Sinead, your target is a circle thirty paces in diameter that is centered at the intersection of the lines joining those two, pale-colored grave markers, there and there, and a perpendicular line raised to that dark, square rock, just there…"

  "It looks like an ordinary stretch of grassy hillside," Sinead said.

  "… Our vessel's dock and servicing mechanisms," he continued, "as well as my laboratory are under that intersection point. We will land at night using our dark light system. If anyone should chance to see us, well, this area has witnessed many strange sights over the years. Horseless flying chariots, screaming and hissing banshees crossing the night sky, the flight of the Fairy King to name but a few. The witness would remain silent because his words would not be believed.

  "Compared with yesterday's examination in piloting," he ended reassuringly, "your three-dimensional space for maneuver is generous."

  Sinead nodded and Declan looked down again at the standing stones, thinking about his unhappy past and of the things that might have been had his father not disowned him, then he shrugged angrily and said, "It is not a place where I shall ever lie."

  Sinead turned to look at him for a long moment, her eyes blinking rapidly as if she was feeling a sudden sadness. But before she could speak, Ma'el raised a hand to point through the control canopy and she returned her attention to the scene below.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ma'el Report. Day 112, 197…

  The technical aspects of the training are reaching completion so that their further instruction has become a process of general education and discussion which, inevitably, leads to questions that I am unwilling to answer.

  'The extent of my underground laboratory awed and amazed them, but not enough to affect their ability to mentate in any significant way. Sinead and Declan are adaptable, resourceful, and, considering the less-than-civilized culture to which they belong, ethical people who are forced to survive among others of their kind who have much in common with many life-forms who infest the farther reaches of the Galaxy and are nothing but thinking and predatory animals lusting after power. These two are even more unusual for the reason that they have accepted and are comfortable with the knowledge that they live on a world rather than the world. For the members of any intelligent culture, whatever its planet of origin, this is a major step on the way to interstellar civilization.

  "Once they asked if it would be possible for me to fly them to Taelon. I told them that it was not, but the thought of the Commonality's response to such an event came close to making me lose control of my outwardly human form. Among the Earth people this emotional reaction is known as intense amusement.

  "It is natural in their new surroundings that they persist in asking about the laboratory's origin, and my continuing avoidance of giving the answer must in time lead to feelings of suspicion and distrust on their part. Strange as it seems even to me, I am afraid of losing their respect and, in spite of them belonging to a species of a lower level of physical and cognitive evolution, their friendship.

  "It would aid my decision as to whether or not I should give a truthful answer to this question if Sinead would furnish me with a timesight in which I had done so, as well as the emotional repercussions that would result. But no. Although erratic, her ability to see into the future is impressive in the detail of the images and incidents it reveals, but the only timesightings she has mentioned are short-range events of a personal nature concerning Declan and herself of which she is understandably reluctant to speak.

  "I remain undecided…"

  –

  A fall of rock and earth had long since blocked the direct passage to the open hillside, but that did not mean that Sinead and Declan were unable to take their daily walk.

  The space-vessel dock formed only a small part of the interlinked system of caverns and side caves that Ma'el called his laboratory. Wide, stone steps joined the caverns whose floors were on different levels and the same accurately chiseled stonework had been used in the making of large and small workbenches that were positioned in orderly groups inside every chamber, all of which became illuminated as soon as Sinead or himself entered them. The lighting revealed ceilings and walls that glittered as if they were streaming with water, but like the cavern in the Roman catacombs, the whole laboratory was so completely dry that it was plain that here, too, the glassy substance was protecting it from invading damp.

  The stone benches, which were topped with flat sheets of the same substance, held racks filled with large and small tools, some of which were made partly of glass, as well as large and more dangerous devices that made warning noises and flashed lights i
f they tried to lay a hand on one of them. But it was the system of caves leading off the larger chambers that most interested and puzzled them.

  "There is no sign of Taelon technology here," Sinead said, waving the hand light that Ma'el had given them for exploring in the smaller, unlit areas. It showed the remains of smashed and age-bleached wooden furniture including a low bed heaped with the desiccated remains of its covering blanket, pieces of broken platters and eating utensils thick with dust, and even what might have been the remains of food so ancient that even the maggots had died of old age. She went on, "These caves were used by people like ourselves. It is likely that they were the builders of this laboratory. But every time I ask about them, Ma'el changes the subject. It is a simple question so why won't he answer it? Are there other secrets he is still hiding from us?"

  Declan was silent for a moment, then he said thoughtfully, "I believe that he has grown to like and trust us. If a secret there is, he must have a strong reason for concealing it, whether it is for our benefit or his. We might be more easy in our minds if we do not know everything about him, and we should forebear to ask."

  "But Declan," she said, "I'm curious"

  He knew then that she would ask the question anyway and that it would probably be during their next meal together. He was right.

  "Giving the answer to your question," said Ma'el, "is forbidden by both the Synod and the Commonality of Taelon, as was the revelation of my other secrets. This one I concealed for personal reasons because speaking of it would cause pain to myself as well as both of you. Before I reveal it, have you had a timesight involving the past or future of this laboratory?"

  "I tried," Sinead replied, "but I could see neither into the past or future."

  "There could be two reasons for that," Ma'el said. "One is that you are not descended from any of the persons concerned because they did not have offspring and the second, I am hoping, is that the events that transpire here when you have full information are not so emotionally traumatic that they will affect our present relationship."

  "I-I don't understand you," said Sinead.

  "You will," Ma'el replied, rising to his feet. "Please follow me."

  He led them to a cavern that they had passed through every day but without spending time there because it held nothing but a low, stone platform surrounded by devices which had warned them away. Ma'el made a slow gesticulation with one hand and two chairs rose from the floor. He indicated that they should be seated.

  "Your collars and earpieces will enable you to understand the words that are spoken," he said, "and your eyes will tell you the rest. You will hear my voice as it was recorded in the past, but in the present I shall not speak unless you wish clarification, which you will indicate by raising a hand. We will begin."

  Above the stone platform there appeared a wide, vertical cylinder of light that showed bands of color that writhed within themselves as if someone was stirring a liquid rainbow until it settled into an image that was familiar to them, that of An Leathros, the Hill Above the Strand, in the brownish-green colors of winter as if it was being viewed from a descending space vessel. But it was not the same picture that they had seen days earlier. Although Ma'el's lips remained closed they heard his voice.

  "This is an excerpt of the report of Investigator Ma'el, made on the 12,775th day of the cultural evaluation of the peoples of Earth, and covering the events while my laboratory was under construction…"

  "Wait, wait, this can't be right," Declan broke in. His mind struggled with the numbers for a long moment because in his youth mathematics had been his least-favored subject. 'Twelve thousand, seven hundred days is, is thirty-five years, and add to that the age of this place. Judging by the condition of furniture in the caves, it could be centuries old…"

  "On Taelon we live longer than you do," Ma'el said. "Shall I continue…?"

  Declan wanted to ask how much longer, but the answer had shocked Sinead as well as himself into silence and the recorded voice of the old man, of the very old man it now seemed, resumed.

  The image of An Leathros expanded to show groups of young men, over two hundred of them in all, who were stripped to the waist and with their breaths and their sweat steaming about them in the cold air as they pulled sleds containing finished stone blocks up the slopes toward the mouth of a tunnel that was fringed with an apron of dark, freshly turned earth. They heard the young mens' voices as the picture closed on one of the groups and followed them through the tunnel into the caverns of the laboratory while it was still a-building. Without exception the men worked willingly, cheerfully, and hard for they had been promised a great reward for both their sweat and their secrecy, and the recorded words of the older Ma'el explained why.

  "… So that there would not be too many unexplained disappearances from one locality, the workforce was recruited and transported from all over Hibernia. My intention at the time was to reward each of them with the gold that would buy them land for farms and cattle, if that was their desire, and thus attract to them the most comely of women for their wives. But at the conclusion of their work, the quality of which pleased me greatly, I decided to give them an additional reward.

  "I decided to administer single doses of the Bliss drug.

  "It was a substance that I encountered during the early years of the investigation which, according to the records of the sea explorer and adventurer, Jason, gave great pleasure and forgetfulness to those who consumed it. I acquired and tested this drug, and used Taelon science to modify its effects so that it would no longer be addictive.

  "Primarily I was acting out of gratitude, but I also expected to benefit in that its administration would further reduce the possibility of them accidentally revealing the position of my laboratory. The substance stimulates the mind into an extended period of pleasure while, on awakening, it wipes all related events and surroundings from the memory so that the experience is remembered only as a pleasant, confused, and fading dream. As well as rewarding them with gold for their faithful service, I wanted to give them a period of ecstasy during which they would forget the reason why they had been given the reward in the first place-"

  –

  They watched the images as, at Ma'el's direction, the workers swallowed the tiny capsules and shortly after collapsed onto their beds or the nearest clear area of floor. They saw the wide smiles, the eyes that stared fixedly at some unseen object of pleasure or were tightly closed and with every muscle in their bodies locked in a paroxysm of ecstasy. Time passed and they remained thus, neither eating, drinking, sleeping, nor even moving while periodically their faces were suffused with a strangely colored blush. But when they at last returned to their real world, they had not forgotten their ecstatic dreams.

  Instead they sought out Ma'el, at first pleading desperately with him, then demanding and finally threatening him with death if he did not give them more Bliss. Unwilling to do so because of its totally unexpected and mind-damaging aftereffects, Ma'el was forced to seal himself inside a force field while he worked desperately to produce an antidote.

  At intervals they had glimpses of the older Ma'el striving endlessly over devices that flashed lights and made low, humming noises, or among delicate, strangely shaped transparent goblets large and small containing liquids of many colors, but mostly it was the actions of the Bliss victims that they were being shown. Many of the formerly pleasant and well-behaved young men they had seen were now throwing themselves against the invisible wall with which Ma'el had surrounded his workplace, screaming and fighting each other, damaging their faces, fists, and frequently breaking limbs in their frenzy to get closer to Ma'el and the Bliss that only he could give them. But they were shown the others, too.

  In every cave large or small there was more screaming and fighting and cursing. Ma'el had been carelessly generous in his distribution of the Bliss, and from overheard scraps of angry, shouted conversation it seemed that there were those who suspected that their work mates had received more than one of them and were
hiding the others for future use. The result was that they fought each other, viciously and without mercy like wild animals rather than the thinking, hardworking, and friendly beings that Ma'el had come to like well enough to want to reward them with pleasure. The broken furniture and smashed crockery in their living quarters were explained because they had been used to bludgeon or stab or cut each other to death with the sharp edges. Those who fought in the main caverns were using loose rocks, their teeth, or fingers to club and blind and tear each other to pieces.

  By the time Ma'el had the antidote ready, the floors and connecting steps of the laboratory caverns ran red with blood and none of his workers remained alive.

  There followed a rapid series of images showing Ma'el using one of his floating litters to transfer the bodies one by one to a small, unused cavern which he filled with them to its roof before collapsing and sealing its entrance, ending with the original view of the tunnel leading from the hillside into the laboratory, which was also collapsed and sealed with fallen rock. This scene remained, flickering with the rapid passage of years until the wound in the earth was covered over with greenery and all trace of the entrance tunnel was gone.

  The image dissolved with a burst of color to leave only empty air above the stone platform. Declan looked at Sinead, thinking that her features were as pale and still as those of a corpse, and feeling that his own must have been the match of hers. It was Ma'el who spoke first.

  'The responsibility for killing all of those human workers is mine," he said. His voice had never revealed any emotion and it did not do so now. "I await your judgment, and punishment."