The Guardians Read online

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  +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note: | | | | This story was published in _Astounding Science Fiction_, June | | 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the | | U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

  THE GUARDIANS

  BY IRVING COX, JR.

  _It's not always "The Truth shall set you free!"Sometimes it's "Want of the Truth shall driveyou to escape!" And that can be dangerous!_

  Illustrated by van Dongen

  Mryna Brill intended to ride the god-car above the rain mist. For a longtime she had not believed in the taboos or the Earth-god. She no longerbelieved she lived on Earth. This paradise of green-floored forests andrunning brooks was something called Rythar.

  Six years ago, when Mryna was fourteen, she first discovered the truth.She asked a question and the Earth-god ignored it. A simple question,really: What is above the rain mist? God could have told her. Every dayhe answered technical questions that were far more difficult. Instead,he repeated the familiar taboo about avoiding the Old Village because ofthe Sickness.

  And consequently Mryna, being female, went to the Old Village. There wasnothing really unusual about that. All the kids went through the ruinsfrom time to time. They had worked out a sort of charm that made it allright. They ran past the burned out shells of the old houses and theykept their eyes shaded to ward off the Sickness.

  But even at fourteen Mryna had outgrown charms and she didn't believe inthe Sickness. She had once asked the Earth-god what sickness meant, andthe screen in the answer house had given her a very detailed answer.Mryna knew that none of the hundred girls and thirty boys inhabitingRythar had ever been sick. That, like the taboo of the Old Village, sheconsidered a childish superstition.

  The Old Village wasn't large--three parallel roads, a mile long, linedwith the charred ruins of prefabs, which were exactly like the cottageswhere the kids lived. It was nothing to inspire either fear or legend.The village had burned a long time ago; the grass from the forest hadgrown a green mantle over the skeletal walls.

  For weeks Mryna poked through the ruins before she found anything ofsignificance--a few, scorched pages of a printed pamphlet buried deep inthe black earth. The paper excited her tremendously. It was differentfrom the film books photographed in the answer house. She had nevertouched anything like it; and it seemed wonderful stuff.

  She read the pamphlet eagerly. It was part of a promotionaladvertisement of a world called Rythar, "the jewel of the Sirian SolarSystem."

  The description made it obvious that Rythar was the green paradise whereMryna lived--the place she had been taught to call Earth. And thepamphlet had been addressed to "Earthmen everywhere."

  Mryna made her second find when she was fifteen, a textbook inastronomy. For the first time in her life she read about the spinningdust of the universe lying beyond the eternal rain mist that hid herworld.

  The solid, stable Earth of her childhood was solid and stable no longer,but a sphere turning through a black void. Nor was it properly calledEarth, but a planet named Rythar. The adjustment Mryna had to make wasshattering; she lost faith in everything she believed.

  Yet the clock-work logic of astronomy appealed to her orderly mind. Itexplained why the rain mist glowed with light during the day and turneddark at night. Mryna had never seen a clear sky. She had no visual datato tie her new concept to.

  For six years she kept the secret. She hid the papers and the astronomytext which she found in the Old Village. Later, after the metal mencame, she destroyed everything so none of the other women would know theEarth-god was a man.

  At first she kept the secret because she was afraid. For some reason theman who played at being god wanted the kids to believe Rythar was Earth,the totality of the universe enveloped in a cloud of mist. She knew thatbecause she once asked god what a planet was. The face on the screen inthe answer house became frigid with anger--or was it fear?--and theEarth-god said:

  "The word means nothing."

  But late that night a very large god-car brought six metal men downthrough the rain mist. They were huge, jointed things that clanked whenthey walked. Four of them used weapons to herd the kids together intheir small settlement. The two others went to the Old Village andblasted the ruins with high explosives.

  Vaguely Mryna remembered that the metal men had been there before, whenthe kids were still very small. They had built the new settlement andthey had brought food. They lived with the children for a long time, shethought--but the memory was hazy.

  As the years passed, Mryna's fear retreated and only one thing becameimportant: she knew the Earth-god was a man. On the fertile soil ofRythar there were one hundred women and thirty men. All the boys hadtaken mates before they reached seventeen. Seventy girls were leftunmarried, with no prospect of ever having husbands. A score or morebecame second wives in polygamous homes, but plural marriage had noappeal for Mryna. She was firmly determined to possess a man of her own.And why shouldn't it be the Earth-god?

  As her first step toward escape, Mryna volunteered for duty in theanswer house. For as long as she could remember, the answer house hadstood on a knoll some distance beyond the new settlement. It was asquare, one-room building, housing a speaking box, a glass screen and aconsole of transmission machinery. Anyone in the settlement couldcontact god and request information or special equipment.

  God went out of his way to deluge them with information. The simplestquestion produced voluminous data, transmitted over the screen andphotographed on reels of film. Someone had to be in the answer house tohandle the photography. The work was not hard, but it was monotonous.Most of the kids preferred to farm the fields or dig the sacrificialore.

  A request for equipment was granted just as promptly. Tools, machines,seeds, fertilizers, packaged buildings, games, clothing--everything camein a god-car. It was a large cylinder which hissed down from the rainmist on a pillar of fire. The landing site was a flat, charred fieldnear the answer house. Unless the equipment was unusually heavy, theattendant stationed in the house was expected to unload the god-car andpile aboard the sacrifice ores mined on Rythar.

  God asked two things from the settlement: the pieces of unusually heavymetal which they dug from the hills, and tiny vials of soil. In anhour's time they could mine enough ore to fill the compartment of agod-car, and god never complained if they sometimes sent the cylinderback empty. But he fussed mightily over the small vials of Earth. Hegave very explicit directions as to where they were to take the samples,and the place was never the same. Sometimes they had to travel milesfrom the settlement to satisfy that inexplicable whim.

  For two weeks Mryna patiently ran off the endless films of new books andunloaded the god-car when it came. She examined the interior of thecylinder carefully and she weighed every possible risk. The compartmentwas very small, but she concluded that she would be safe.

  And so she made her decision. Tense and tight-lipped Mryna Brill slippedaboard the god-car. She sealed the lock door, which automatically firedthe launching tubes. After that there was no turning back.

  The dark compartment shook in a thunder of sound. The weight of theescape speed tore at her body, pulling her tight against the confiningwalls. She lost consciousness until the pressure lessened.

  The metal walls became hot but the space was too confining for her toavoid
contact entirely. Four narrow light tubes came on, with a dull,red glow, and suddenly a gelatinous liquid emptied out of ceiling vents.The fluid sprayed every exposed surface in the cubicle, draining throughthe shipment of sacrifice ores at Mryna's feet. It had a choking,antiseptic odor; it stung Mryna's face and inflamed her eyes.

  Worse still, as the liquid soaked into her clothing, it disintegratedthe fiber, tearing away the cloth in long strips which slowly dissolvedin the liquid on the floor. Before the antiseptic spray ceased, Mrynawas helplessly naked. Even her black boots had not survived.

  The red lights went out and Mryna was imprisoned again in the crushingdarkness. A terror of the taboos she had defied swept her mind. Shebegan to scream, but the sound was lost in the roar of the motors.

  Suddenly it was over. The god-car lurched into something hard. Mryna wasthrown against the ceiling--and she hung there, weightless. The piecesof sacrifice ore were floating in the darkness just as she was. Themotors cut out and the lock door swung