Synthetic Men Page 27

  And Rog, stalking away by himself, knew that he must be triply careful, for somehow he sensed that in that shining ball was contained the whole future of the tribe....

  In the weeks to come he made many trips back to the sphere. With every visit his wonder grew.

  By intuition and study he became convinced that the place was a repository in which some race long dead—a "tribe" was his only word for them—had sought to preserve the knowledge of their civilization for those to come later. His agile mind told him why it had been necessary.

  Mankind had worked itself up to the point where it had too much leisure, and turned its energy to the destruction of others. The inevitable result was self-destruction. But the ten he had seen in the pictures stole away and created this museum of history and science, to aid mankind when it must again struggle upward.

  Under Luk-no's subtle whispering the tribe grew incensed against Rog and watched him constantly, seeking to learn where he went on the days he was absent. They resented the things he "invented" with such regularity. Little did they realize he was but copying things he saw in the sphere.

  The thing that astounded them most, even Rog himself, was the wheel.

  He hacked a section of a log into a rough cylinder about three feet thick and bored a hole through it for an axle. Two of these "wheels" he joined together by a peeled pole and made a crude sort of cart, more, perhaps, like a wheelbarrow. But the simple contraption did the work of many men in hauling rocks and meat. Had it not been for the tremendous jealousy it aroused among other young men in the settlement, he would have been acclaimed a hero.

  Another day he fashioned a device consisting of a bent stick held in a permanent arc by a piece of rawhide. When a notched branch, skinned clean of bark and twigs, was launched by the bowstring, it flew with sufficient force to kill a squirrel. Rog was as delighted as a child with his bow and arrow, and spent many hours practicing with it.

  There were other things in the museum that brought deep lines to his forehead. He was already beginning to comprehend the principle of the water-wheel and the pulley, but when he saw a man hanging from a great bag high in the air, or a hunter killing a bear by pointing a smoking stick at it, he was stupefied.

  Just six weeks after his discovery of the ball, he found something that froze him with sheer terror, that sent him running away, vowing never to return.

  On this day he had gone down the stairs through a number of floors, until he came to a room in the very bottom of the sphere. The door to the chamber was closed. It was an unusual door, of a gleaming material that made him blink, and had a single character in the center of it: a red circle from which a small sector had been removed. The sector hovered over the gap, as if asking to be replaced.

  Rog pushed the door open and went in, suddenly stopped. His face froze, then brightened with eagerness. Hastily he went to the bubble-like dome of glass in the middle of the room.

  Then he was standing rigid with shock. On a low couch under the glass bell lay an old man clad in flowing, white garments. But he was different from the tribe's old men. He was taller and frailer. His brow was lofty, instead of being crowded down over his eyebrows, and his expression was serene in death.

  Rog shoved his nose against the glass, studying the dignified figure. He wished, suddenly, that the old man were not dead, for he could undoubtedly explain all these things to him that had him puzzling so hopelessly. At last his gaze wandered to the maze of machines at the head of the couch.

  There was nothing there that he could begin to understand. Just a battery of glass and metal and tubes. Two red wires led from the machinery to a board on which were a number of dials and things that Rog scarcely gave a second glance.

  Then, all at once, he stiffened. His eyes fastened on a shining red circle of metal, exactly the same as the symbol on the door. And there was a section out of it, lying there asking him to put it back in!

  Now he went to it and lifted the heavy little bit of red stuff. It had prongs that fitted into corresponding holes in the rest of the circle which was firmly fixed to the board. Rog knew he was supposed to shove the sector into place. His fingers were trembling as he hesitated. Suddenly he bent forward and pushed the prongs home!

  There was an instant of utter silence. His primitive mind told him that this was a moment of moments, though he knew not why. Gradually a low humming told him his action had taken results. The machinery glowed and wheels began to turn slowly, then faster and faster, until they were spinning discs of silver.

  Rog's eyes fastened on the ancient's face. Why, he did not know. Perhaps he was asking him to answer.... He scowled. Were his eyes deceiving him, or had the placid white face become flushed?

  "Agh!" A hoarse bark of terror burst from Rog's throat. The old man's eyes were open and he was looking straight at him!

  The young aborigine had seen enough. He turned and fled, caring for nothing but his own life now.

  For a week he was afraid even to think of what he had seen. His mind was outraged by the thought of the dead returning to life.

  He worked so hard with the tribe now that they were amazed at the change in him. It was growing on towards winter, and stores of roots, edible weeds, and dried meat were crowded into the smoky, dark caves in which they lived. The winters had been growing so heavy that the Old Man had even mentioned moving farther south, where they had observed birds and certain animals went in cold weather. This winter they were taking no chance of starving. Great supplies of food were being put in long ahead of time.

  But in spite of Rog's industry, Luk-no found time to run him down, secretly, to Sarak. The two of them would mumble between themselves, Luk-no furtive and prattling, the Old Man smoldering with righteous indignation. And presently the Old Man, who was actually only about fifteen years older than Rog, would take it upon himself to chastise him. His great, bulging muscles would strain as he cudgelled him.

  Rog sweltered under the mistreatment ... but this trouble was as nothing compared to the burning curiosity to know what he had done the last time he went to the globe. Even Lo could not be let in on such a secret. She, too, would class him with Ta, then.

  The day came when he could stand it no longer.

  Almost without his own volition he found himself far back in the hills, making swiftly towards the museum. He did not rush in as heretofore when he reached it. He crept up and poked his head inside the portal, wide-eyed and breathing hard. There was the sound of a twig's breaking behind him, and he whirled, flattening out against the wall.

  "Do not be afraid." It was the smiling patriarch who spoke. "I am Johann Adam, the man you restored to life. I am here to help you."

  But Rog could not understand the strange, musical sounds he made. He continued to crouch there, waiting.

  The old man spread his hands. "I have slept long, if you represent man of today. But follow me." And he gestured to the boy, passing on into the sphere.

  Then there followed an hour of the most thrilling, most baffling, conversation he had ever known. Johann Adam took a big pad and a writing-stick and made picture after picture, while Rog crouched near him, fearing to stay, and yet hating the thought of missing anything by leaving. The first time Adam extended the pad to him to see what he had written, he shrank back and almost ran away.

  Somehow he knew that it was ridiculous, his being afraid of a man so much feebler than he, and he stiffened his feeble courage. But there was a tiny voice inside him that whispered that the ancient had a power that transcended that of mere muscles. Rog remembered the smoking sticks that killed bears....

  Finally he glanced at the pad, and then took it. The diagram was a repetition of the old man and child in the chart in the room above. A smile claimed his features. He pointed upward and gave the pad back.

  Adam was pleased. He seemed to inventory Rog's quick eyes and his smooth, broad brow. Then he was writing again. The younger man's fear broke down completely under the force of his desire for learning. Within a few minutes he was si
tting on the floor beside Johann Adam, nodding and grinning and sometimes frowning in puzzlement. But a story was unfolding to him. He was learning how the sphere happened to be.

  Laboriously he pieced together the fact that Adam and nine other men had foreseen what was to happen to the earth and its super-civilization. Knowing that destruction of modern culture was on the way, they had sought to preserve some part of it for humanity when—and if—men emerged from the darkness at some future time.

  They had constructed the globe and filled it with every scrap of knowledge known to man. Then they constructed the last room of all, the chamber in which Adam was to lie awaiting the renewal of his suspended life, or the death that would be complete.

  On the eve of the last of the terrible, cataclysmic wars that burned mankind from earth like a searing flame from outer space, Johann Adam entered the globe and the others went back, to die.

  Their supposition had been correct. The last great invention of the war gods, a corrosive gas, had got out of control. Within a space of years men were wiped from the face of earth.

  What happened then Adam could not say. Perhaps man had struggled up from the bottom of evolution's ladder again; perhaps a tribe of high-type apes had been left after the catastrophe, and were now Rog's people, developed by a few thousand years. At any rate, the world was again stumbling through the dark shadows of the Stone Age. And from that murky period civilization was slowly crawling back to its former golden age.

  And Rog knew who would take the lead in the advance. He himself, under the guidance of Johann Adam, would be the Old Man of all Old Men! He would be instrumental in leading his people away from the paths that would deter their progress. All this he would do, with Lo at his side!

  He took the drawing-stick himself, then, and made what crude signs he could to tell of the strained conditions at the caves. Adam frowned and nodded slowly. Clearly he was worried. The death of this man, whom he knew was hundreds of years ahead of his time, might nullify all his chances of aiding the world.

  Then a gleam of hope lighted his eyes. By pictures he showed Rog what to do. He was to bring Lo with him and stay here in the globe until he had learned enough to be able to convince the tribe of his superiority. Until the day when he must be recognized as the leader of them all!

  He was reluctant to leave Adam, and yet eager to carry out his instructions. Trembling with anticipation, he took his clumsy club over his shoulder and ran back through the trees towards the river....

  He came back to the caves to find an angry group awaiting him. Sarak stood at the entrance to the cave, leaning on his club. He was an imposing figure in his anger. His sloping shoulders bulged massively under a mat of black hair, and his short body was tight with muscles drawn hard by hatred.

  "Sluggard!" he spat at Rog. "You run off and hide, do you, while others work? Already black clouds gather, but you let old men and women, as well as the younger ones, find food to keep the fat on your bones during the long winter."

  Rog stiffened with anxiety. He saw Lo watching him wide-eyed and white of face, and realized Luk-no was grinning at his predicament. He decided on a bold lie. "I was stalking a deer," he said. "I followed it far into the hills, but could not get close enough to kill it. Had I succeeded, it would have fed more mouths than what roots I could have gathered."

  The Old Man snorted. "You do not even lie well," he snarled. "You carry only a club. Did you think to get close enough to kill it with that?" His close-set, red-rimmed eyes blazed. "Where is your spear?"

  "I—I lost it," Rog faltered.

  "Lost it, did you?" shouted Sarak. "Well, I have not lost my club, smooth-faced one! Feel its anger, now, and remember, when you feel like sleeping in the forest instead of working."

  His wide mouth was distorted, baring ugly black snags of teeth as he advanced. The thick cudgel, weighted with a stone, came up over his head.

  For a moment Rog considered springing in to battle. His mind weighed his chances. Against Sarak, perhaps, he might have had a chance of coming out alive, but the tribe was incensed against him now. Luk-no would lead them against him should he vanquish the bloodthirsty Old Man.

  Then blows were raining down upon his head and back. As best he could, he warded them off with his club, but the blood sprang from half a dozen wounds in the first few seconds. He went to his knees, dazed and bleeding. Sarak shouted and screamed and danced, in savage enjoyment of his tribal right to punish, justifiably or not. His thick lips gleamed with saliva.

  And Rog bit his lip against the pain and bore it. He ground down the hate welling up within his breast, because he must come out of this alive. Whatever it cost him, he must endure it, or the secret of the museum might die with Johann Adam. A bitter laugh was torn from his lips at the thought that his only motive in living was to help the tribe!

  The wall of leering faces swam before his vision. The ruler's countenance loomed before them all, twisted with savagery. His breathing was stertorous, rasping through clenched teeth. At last Rog could stand no more. The club fell from his hands and he sprawled on his face in the cavern.

  Sometime during the night he awoke. His body was a mass of bruises and cuts. It gave him excruciating agony to force his head from the floor, but he did so, and cast a slow glance about him. Then he saw what he wanted.

  Painfully he inched himself to Lo's side and aroused her, placing his hand quickly over her mouth to stifle the outcry. "It's me," he whispered. "Rog. Listen to me, Lo. I want you to go away with me!"

  Instantly the girl was wide awake. "Go away!" she echoed.

  He nodded. "Not for good. Just for a few moons. Then we will come back, and I will become the Old Man!"

  Now Lo was trembling with excitement. Before she could question him, he bent nearer and whispered, "Pay attention to what I say, but don't ask questions. We are going back into the forest, to a great, shining stone I found. And we must go tomorrow, as soon as the tribe is not noticing us."

  Then, hurriedly, he told her of the sphere. She was puzzled, almost inclined to doubt him, but the energy and sincerity of his manner told her he was not lying. A groan from one of the sleepers sent him scuttling back to his place, to lie there sleepless until the sun came up and shot long, golden lances into the cave.

  He was so tense in the morning that he could scarcely force himself to pretend to work. Lo stayed near him. Fear and hope battled within him. Failure now would mean that Johann Adam would wait in vain, out in the forest, for him to come back. He would know Rog could not help him, at last, and then ... what?

  He would become older rapidly, for he had many years on his shoulders already. Time would almost surely cut him down before he could find anyone in any of the tribes intelligent enough to know he was not a devil. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead at the thought of so much knowledge being wasted. Though he could not know it, his concern for the secrets of the museum marked him as the first scientist in many thousands of years.

  When the sun had climbed high over the tops of the leafy trees Rog saw his chance. The others had scattered, paying him little attention. In a flash he had darted to Lo's side and hissed, "Now! We must run fast!"

  They crept to the edge of the clearing and then sprang into the thick, cool darkness of the underbrush. Under the swift feet the miles slipped past. Rog was tense and anxious, Lo eager as a child and a little frightened. She did not know what he did: That upon their reaching the sphere safely depended thousands of years of evolution.

  And then, almost without warning, they were springing into the small circle of bare ground surrounding the shining ball of metal. They stopped just a few feet away from the closed door and stood hand in hand while Rog shouted.

  After a moment the bar across the portal began to turn. Then it had swung open ... and in that same instant something took place that drained every drop of blood from Rog's face and left him shivering in dumb despair.

  Not fifty feet behind them a confused shouting arose, and to their shocked gazes were revealed
the running forms of a dozen of the tribesmen, led by Sarak, himself!

  A groan of despair came from the lips of Johann Adam. Lo sank to the ground and waited for the clubs to end her life with that of Rog. But Rog was too stupefied to do or say anything. His club hung from nerveless fingers. The sight of twelve men rushing upon him seemed not to register in his mind.

  Then he moved. The club swung up over one shoulder, and he stepped forward one pace. His words carried strongly across the intervening distance.

  "Wait!" he shouted. "I would do battle with Sarak alone. One so weak and stupid as he has no right to rule!"

  They stopped. It was a young man's right, if he were so foolish, to challenge the Old Man to battle. It meant that his wisdom and strength were questioned, and only by a battle to the death could it be settled. Sarak roared his acceptance, and the others were bound to wait.

  He strode from the knot of savage tribesmen, cudgel lofted over his head. Taunts and threats crowded his flabby lips.

  It was a daring move that Rog was making. Unless he challenged Sarak and demanded a fight alone with him, they would be massacred. Perhaps if he won, the tribe would still exact payment, for Luk-no was at the head of the men, waiting for his chance to avenge himself.

  They crashed together with a sickening sound of stone on flesh. Blood spurted from Rog's head, where Sarak's club had grazed him. The sight of the blood brought a scream of triumph from the Old Man, he raised the weapon again in his stubby hands.

  Rog released the club with his right hand and shot a hard fist into the other's face. Thrown off guard, Sarak had to fall back as his son swept in upon him. His years of experience saved him as he warded off every blow expertly. He drove in a hard sweep of the cudgel that rocked against the younger man's shoulder.