Last Enemy by H. Beam Piper (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

was putting away an oxygen-mask outfit, and the Assassin who had prevented Verkan Vall from drawing his pistol was his own follower, Marnik. And Klarnood, the Assassin-President, was sitting on the foot of the bed, smoking one of Prince Jirzyn’s monogrammed and crested cigarettes critically.

Verkan Vall looked at Marnik, and then at Klarnood, and back to Marnik.

“You got through,” he said. “Good work, Marnik; I thought they’d downed you.”

“They did; I had to crash-land in the woods. I went about a mile on foot, and then I found a man and woman and two children, hiding in one of these little log rain shelters. They had an airboat, a good one. It seemed that rioting had broken out in the city unit where they lived, and they’d taken to the woods till things quieted down again. I offered them Assassins’ protection if they’d take me to Assassins’ Hall, and they did.”

“By luck, I was in when Marnik arrived,” Klarnood took over. “We brought three boatloads of men, and came here at once. Just as we got here, two boatloads of Starpha dependents arrived; they tried to give us an argument, and we discarnated the lot of them. Then we came down here, crying Assassins’ Truce. One of the Starpha Assassins, Kirzol, was still carnate; he told us what had been going on.” The President-General’s face-became grim. “You know, I take a rather poor view of Prince Jirzyn’s procedure in this matter, not to mention that of his underlings. I’ll have to speak to him about this. Now, how about you and the Lady Dallona? What do you intend doing?”

“We’re getting out of here,” Verkan Vall said. “I’d like air transport and protection as far as Ghamma, to the establishment of the family of Zorda. Brarnend of Zorda has a private space yacht; he’ll get us to Venus.”

Klarnood gave a sigh of obvious relief. “I’ll have you and the Lady Dallona airborne and off for Ghamma as soon as you wish,” he promised. “I will, frankly, be delighted to see the last of both of you. The Lady Dallona has started a fire here at Darsh that won’t burn out in a half-century, and who knows what it may consume.” He was interrupted by a heaving shock that made the underground dome dwelling shake like a light airboat in turbulence. Even eighty feet under the ground, they could hear a continued crashing roar. It was an appreciable interval before the sound and the shock ceased.

For an instant, there was silence, and then an excited bedlam of shouting broke from the Assassins in the room: Klarnood’s face was frozen in horror.

“That was a fission bomb!” he exclaimed. “The first one that has been exploded on this planet in hostility in a thousand years!” He turned to Verkan Vall. “If you feel well enough to walk, Lord Virzal, come with us. I must see what’s happened.”

They hurried from the room and went streaming up the ascent tube to the top of the dome. About forty miles away, to the south, Verkan Vall saw the sinister thing that he had seen on so many other time-lines, in so many other paratime sectors—a great pillar of varicolored fire-shot smoke, rising to a mushroom head fifty thousand feet above.

“Well, that’s it,” Klarnood said sadly. “That is civil war.”

“May I make a suggestion, Assassin-President?” Verkan Vall asked. “I understand that Assassins’ Truce is binding even upon non-Assassins; is that correct?”

“Well, not exactly; it’s generally kept by such non-Assassins as want to remain in their present reincarnations, though.”

“That’s what I meant. Well, suppose you declare a general, planet-wide Assassins’ Truce in this political war, and make the leaders of both parties responsible for keeping it. Publish lists of the top two or three thousand Statisticalists and Volitionalists, starting with Mirzark of Bashad and Prince Jirzyn of Starpha, and inform them that they will be assassinated, in order, if the fighting doesn’t cease.”

“Well!” A smile grew on Klarnood’s face. “Lord Virzal, my thanks; a good suggestion. I’ll try it. And furthermore, I’ll withdraw all Assassin protection permanently from anybody involved in political activity, and forbid any Assassin to accept any retainer connected with political factionalism. It’s about time our members stopped discarnating each other in these political squabbles.” He pointed to the three airboats drawn up on the top of the dome; speedy black craft, bearing the red oval and winged bullet. “Take your choice, Lord Virzal. I’ll lend you a couple of my men, and you’ll be in Ghamma in three hours.” He hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with Verkan Vall, bent over Dalla’s hand. “I still like you, Lord Virzal, and I have seldom met a more charming lady than you, Lady Dallona. But I sincerely hope I never see either of you again.”

The ship for Dhergabar was driving north and west; at seventy thousand feet, it was still daylight, but the world below was wrapping itself in darkness. In the big visiscreens, which served in lieu of the windows which could never have withstood the pressure and friction heat of the ship’s speed, the sun was sliding out of sight over the horizon to port. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat together, watching the blazing western sky—the sky of their own First Level time-line.

“I blame myself terribly, Vall,” Dalla was saying. “And I didn’t mean any of them the least harm. All I was interested in was learning the facts. I know, that sounds like ‘I didn’t know it was loaded,’ but—”

“It sounds to me like those Fourth Level Europo-American Sector physicists who are giving themselves guilt-complexes because they designed an atomic bomb,” Verkan Vall replied. “All you were interested in was learning the facts. Well, as a scientist, that’s all you’re supposed to be interested in. You don’t have to worry about any social or political implications. People have to learn to live with newly-discovered facts; if they don’t, they die of them.”

“But, Vall; that sounds dreadfully irresponsible—”

“Does it? You’re worrying about the results of your reincarnation memory-recall discoveries, the shootings and riotings and the bombing we saw.” He touched the pommel of Olirzon’s knife, which he still wore. “You’re no more guilty of that than the man who forged this blade is guilty of the death of Marnark of Bashad; if he’d never lived, I’d have killed Marnark with some other knife somebody else made. And what’s more, you can’t know the results of your discoveries. All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an immediate situation, so you can’t say whether the long-term results will be beneficial or calamitous.

“Take this Fourth Level Europo-American atomic bomb, for example. I choose that because we both know that sector, but I could think of a hundred other examples in other paratime areas. Those people, because of deforestation, bad agricultural methods and general mismanagement, are eroding away their arable soil at an alarming rate. At the same time, they are breeding like rabbits. In other words, each successive generation has less and less food to divide among more and more people, and, for inherited traditional and superstitious reasons, they refuse to adopt any rational program of birth-control and population-limitation.

“But, fortunately, they now have the atomic bomb, and they are developing radioactive poisons, weapons of mass-effect. And their racial, nationalistic and ideological conflicts are rapidly reaching the explosion point. A series of all-out atomic wars is just what that sector needs, to bring their population down to their world’s carrying capacity; in a century or so, the inventors of the atomic bomb will be hailed as the saviors of their species.”

“But how about my work on the Akor-Neb Sector?” Dalla asked. “It seems that my memory-recall technique is more explosive than any fission bomb. I’ve laid the train for a century-long reign of anarchy!”

“I doubt that; I think Klarnood will take hold, now that he has committed himself to it. You know, in spite of his sanguinary profession, he’s the nearest thing to a real man of good will I’ve found on that sector. And here’s something else you haven’t considered. Our own First Level life expectancy is from four to five hundred years. That’s the main reason why we’ve accomplished as much as we have. We have, individually, time to accomplish things. On the Akor-Neb Sector, a scientist or artist or scholar or statesman will grow senile and die before he’s as old as either of us. But now, a young student of twenty or so can take one of your auto-recall treatments and immediately have available all the knowledge and experience gained in four or five previous lives. He can start where he left off in his last reincarnation. In other words, you’ve made those people time-binders, individually as well as racially. Isn’t that worth the temporary discarnation of a lot of ward-heelers and plug-uglies, or even a few decent types like Dirzed and Olirzon? If it isn’t, I don’t know what scales of values you’re using.”

“Vall!” Dalla’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm. “I never thought of that! And you said, ‘temporary discarnation.’ That’s just what it is. Dirzed and Olirzon and the others aren’t dead; they’re just waiting, discarnate, between physical lives. You know, in the sacred writings of one of the Fourth Level peoples it is stated: ‘Death is the last enemy.’ By proving that death is just a cyclic condition of continued individual existence, these people have conquered their last enemy.”

“Last enemy but one,” Verkan Vall corrected. “They still have one enemy to go, an enemy within themselves. Call it semantic confusion, or illogic, or incomprehension, or just plain stupidity. Like Klarnood, stymied by verbal objections to something labeled ‘political intervention.’ He’d never have consented to use the power of his Society if he hadn’t been shocked out of his inhibitions by that nuclear bomb. Or the Statisticalists, trying to create a classless order of society through a political program which would only result in universal servitude to an omnipotent government. Or the Volitionalist nobles, trying to preserve their hereditary feudal privileges, and now they can’t even agree on a definition of the term ‘hereditary.’ Might they not recover all the silly prejudices of their past lives, along with the knowledge and wisdom?”

“But ... I thought you said—” Dalla was puzzled, a little hurt.

Verkan Vall’s arm squeezed around her waist, and he laughed comfortingly.

“You see? Any sort of result is possible, good or bad. So don’t blame yourself in advance for something you can’t possibly estimate.” An idea occurred to him, and he straightened in the seat. “Tell you what; if you people at Rhogom Foundation get the problem of discarnate paratime transposition licked by then, let’s you and I go back to the Akor-Neb Sector in about a hundred years and see what sort of a mess those people have made of things.”

“A hundred years: that would be Year Twenty-Two of the next millennium. It’s a date, Vall; we’ll do it.”

They bent to light their cigarettes together at his lighter. When they raised their heads again and got the flame glare out of their eyes, the sky was purple-black, dusted with stars, and dead ahead, spilling up over the horizon, was a golden glow—the lights of Dhergabar and home.