Empire of the atom, p.1
Empire of the Atom, page 1
JUNIOR SCIENTISTS stood at the bell ropes all day, ready to sound forth the tidings of an important birth. By night, they were exchanging differing opinions as to the possible reason for the delay.
The expected child had actually been born a few hours after dawn. He was a weak and sickly fellow, and he showed certain characteristics that brought immediate dismay to the Leader household. His mother, Lady Tarda, when she wakened, listened for a while to his piteous crying, then commented acidly: “Who frightened the little wretch? He seems already afraid of life.”
Scientist Joquin, in charge of the delivery, considered her words an ill omen. He had not intended to let her see the monstrosity until the following day, but now it seemed to him that he must act swiftly to avert calamity. He hurriedly sent a dozen slave women to wheel in the carriage, ordering them to group around it in close formation to ward off any malignant radiation that might be in the bedroom.
Lady Tania was lying, her slim body propped up in bed, when the astonishing procession started to squeeze through the door. She watched it with a frown of amazement and then the beginning of alarm. She was not a soft spoken creature, and even the presence of a scientist in the room did not restrain her.
She said violently, “What is going on here, Joquin?”
Joquin fluttered his head at her in distress. Did she not realize that every ill-tempered word spoken at this period only doomed the child to further disasters? He noted, startled, that she was parting her hps to speak again— and, with a slight prayer to the atom gods, he took his life in his hands.
He took three swift strides towards the bed, and clapped his palm over her mouth. As he had expected, the woman was so astounded by the action that she did not immediately resist. By the time she recovered, and began to struggle weakly, the carriage was being tilted. And over his arm, she had her first glimpse of the baby.
The gathering storm faded from her blue eyes. After a moment, Joquin gently removed his hand from her mouth, and slowly retreated beyond the carriage. He stood there, quailing with the thought of what he had done, but gradually, as no verbal lightning struck at him from the bed, his sense of righteousness reasserted itself. He began to glow inwardly, and ever afterwards claimed that what he had done saved the situation as much as it could be saved.
The woman was looking at the child more intently now. And Joquin, briefly, looked at her. He was surprised to realize how much he had not previously let himself see, but had simply glanced at in a scanning fashion. His new impression was even worse than it had been. The child had a big head for its frail body. Its shoulders and arms were the major visible deformity. The shoulders sloped down from the neck at a steep angle, making the body appear almost triangular. The arms seemed “twisted, as if the bone—and the muscle and skin with it—had been given a full turn. It seemed as if each arm needed to unwind in order to be right. The boy’s chest was extremely flat, and all the ribs showed through the stretched skin. The rib cage spred out in a web of bone that extended down too far for normalcy.
That was all. But it was evidently enough, for the Lady Tania swallowed visibly.
Joquin, switching his gaze to her, said hurriedly, “This is the worst stage, Lady. Frequently, the result after a few months or years is reasonably—satisfactory.”
He had almost said “human.” He was aware of her gaze swinging towards him. He waited uneasily, but all she said finally was, “Has the Lord Leader, the child’s grandfather, been in?”
Joquin inclined his head. “The Lord Leader saw the baby a few minutes after it was born. His only comment was to the effect that I should ascertain from you, if possible, when you were affected.”
She did not reply immediately, but her eyes narrowed even more. Her thin face grew hard, then harsh. She looked up at the scientist at last. “I suppose you know,” she said, “that only negligence at one of the temples could be responsible.”
Joquin had already thought of that, but now he looked at her uneasily. Nothing had ever been done about previous “children of the gods,” but it had been growing on him that the Linns at least regarded this a special case. He said slowly, “The atom gods are inscrutable.”
The woman seemed not to hear. Her cold voice went on, “The child will have to be destroyed, I suppose. But you may be sure that, within a month, there will be compensatory stretching of scientific necks such as the world has not seen in a generation.”
She was not a pleasant person when aroused, the Lady Tania Linn, daughter-in-law of the Lord Leader.
It proved easy to trace the source of the mutation. The previous summer, Tania, tiring of a holiday on one of the family’s west coast estates, returned to the capital before she was expected. Her husband, General-of-the-Realm Creg Linn, was having extensive alterations made to the Hill Palace. No invitation was forthcoming from her sister at the other end of the city, or from her stepmother-in-law, the stately wife of the Lord Leader. Tania, perforce, moved into an apartment in the Town Palace.
This assortment of buildings, though still maintained by the state, had not been used as a residence for several years. The city had grown immense since it was built, and long since the commercial houses had crowded around it. Due to a lack of foresight, by an earlier generation, title had not been taken to the lands surrounding the palace, and it had always been deemed unwise to seize them by force. There was one particularly annoying aspect of the failure to realize the profitable potentialities of the area. This was the scientists’ temple that towered in the shelter of one wing of the palace. It had caused the Lady Tania no end of heartache the previous summer. On taking up residence, she discovered that the only habitable apartment was on the temple side, and that the three most beautiful plate windows faced directly on the blank lead walls of the temple.
The scientist who had built the temple was a member of the Raheinl group, hostile to the Linns. It had titillated the whole city when the site was made known. The fact that three acres of ground were available made the affront more obvious. It still rankled.
The agents of the Lord Leader discovered at the first investigation that one small area of the lead wall of the temple was radioactive. They were unable to determine the reason for the activity, because the wall at that point was of the required thickness. But the fact was what they reported to their master. Before midnight of the second day after the child was born, the decision was in the making.
Shortly before twelve, Scientist Joquin was called in and told the trend of events. Once more he took his life in his hands. “Leader,” he said, addressing the great man direct, “this is grave error into which your natural irritation is directing you. The scientists are a group, who, having full control of atomic energy dispensation, have developed an independent attitude of mind, which will not take kindly to punishments for accidental crimes. My advice is, leave the boy alive and consult with the scientists’ council. I will advise them to remove the temple of their own volition, and I feel sure they will agree.”
Having spoken, Joquin glanced at the faces before him. And realized that he had made a mistake in his initial assumption. There were two men and three women in the room. The men were the grave, lean Lord Leader and the plumpish Lord Tews, who was Lady Lydia’s only son by her first marriage. Lord Tews was acting General-of-the-Realm in the absence of Lord Creg, Tania’s husband, who was away fighting the Venusians on Venus.
The women present were the Lady Tania, who was still in bed, her sister, Chrosone, and the Lord Leader’s wife, Lydia, who was stepmother-in-law to the two younger women. The Lady Tania and her sister were not on speaking terms, but they did maintain an indirect communication through Lord Tews. That individual managed his liaison role with an easy intelligence and—at least so it seemed to Joquin—genuine enjoyment.
Hopefully, Joquin watched the Lady Lydia, seeking in her face and attitude some indication of her purpose. He regarded her as a woman of enormous evil potential. Because of her, the pattern of behavior of the Linn family had radically altered. A handsome, middle-aged woman, with well-formed features, she was more dangerous than anything that crawled. Gradually, as the cunning pattern of her intrigue had spread octopus-like through the government, each person affected had in his own way learned how to deal with it. Counter-intrigues, schemes, constant vigilance, consciousness of unknown danger that might threaten or strike at any time—this had been the price. The sustained strain had hurt the Linn family. The poison was in them now, also. Tense and nervous, unhappy and vindictive, they were here in this room, their thoughts hidden but their motives predictable, and all because of the older woman.
Nevertheless, it was to the Lord Leader’s wife that Joquin looked for a clue as to the finality of the decisions that had been made. Tall, thin, remarkably well preserved, she was the prime mover for destruction. If she had an opinion
—and she always had an opinion—she would already have been working behind the scene. If she had managed to persuade her compromise-minded husband to take this specific action, then the stage was set for disaster.
Even as he divined from their manner that they had called him for psychological reasons only, Joquin forced himself to assume that he was being consulted. The pretense was hard to maintain. He had the impression that they listened to his statement, as a matter of going through a form, but that actually little attention was paid to his words. Lord Tews glanced at his mother, a faint smile on his plumpish face. She half-lowered her eyelids, as if to hide the thoughts that were there. The two sisters remained frozen-faced, staring at Joquin. The Lord Leader ended the tension by nodding a dismissal to the scientist.
Joquin went out, quivering. He had the wild idea that he would send a warning to the endangered temple scientists. But he quickly abandoned that as hopeless. No message from him would be allowed out of the palace. He retired, finally, but he was unable to sleep. In the morning, the fearful rescript that he had visualized all through the night was posted on the military board, for all to read. Joquin blinked at it palely. It was simple and without qualification.
It commanded that every scientist of the Raheinl temple was to be hanged before dusk. The property was ordered seized, and the buildings razed to the ground. The three acres of temple ground were to be converted into a park.
It did not say that the park was to be added to the Town Palace of the Linns, though this later turned out to be the fact. The rescript was signed in the firm hand of the Lord Leader himself. Reading it, Joquin recognized that a declaration of war had been made against the power of the temple scientists.
THE SCIENTIST Alden was not a man who had premonitions. And certainly he had none as he walked slowly along towards the Raheinl temple. The morning glowed around him. The sun was out. A gentle breeze blew along the Avenue of Palms which stalked in stately fashion past his new home. His mind was the usual cozy kaleidoscope of happy reminiscences, and a quiet joy that a simple country scientist had in only ten years become the chief scientist of the Raheinl temple.
There was but one tiny flaw in that memory, and that was the real reason for his swift promotions. More than eleven years ago, he had remarked to another junior that, since the gods of the atom had yielded certain secrets of mechanical power to human beings, it might be worthwhile to cajole them by experimental methods into revealing others. And that, after all, there might be a grain of truth in the vague legends about cities and planets ablaze with atomic power and light. Alden shuddered involuntarily at the brief remembrance. It was only gradually that he realized the extent of his blasphemy. And when the other junior coolly informed him the following day that he had told the chief scientist—that had seemed like the end of all his hopes.
Surprisingly, it turned out to be the beginning of a new phase in his career. Within a month he was called for his first private conversation with a visiting scientist, Joquin, who lived in the palace of the Linns. “It is our policy,” Joquin said, “to encourage young men whose thoughts do not move entirely in a groove. We know that radical ideas are common to young people, and that, as a man grows older, he attains a balance between his inward self and the requirements of the world. In other words,” the scientist finished, smiling at the junior, “have your thoughts but keep them to yourself.”
It was shortly after this that Alden was posted to the east coast. From there, a year later, he went to the capital. As he grew older, and gained more power, he discovered that radicalism among the young men was much rarer than Joquin had implied. The years of ascendancy brought awareness of the foolishness of what he had said. At the same time, he felt a certain pride in the words, a feeling that they made him “different” from, and so superior to, the other scientists. As chief, he discovered that radicalism was the sole yardstick by which his superiors judged a candidate for promotion. Only those recommendations which included an account of unusual thinking on the part of the aspirant, however slight the variance from the norm, were ever acted upon. The limitation had one happy effect. In the beginning, his wife, anxious to be the power behind the power at the temple, declared herself the sole arbiter as to who would be named for promotion. The young temple poets visited her when Alden was not around, and read their songs to her privately.
When they discovered that her promises meant nothing, their visits ceased. Alden had peace in his home, and a wife suddenly become considerably more affectionate…
His reverie ended for there was a crowd ahead, and cries and murmurs that had an unpleasant sound to them. He saw that people were swarming around the Raheinl temple. Alden thought blankly, “An accident?” He hurried forward, pushing through the outer fringes of the throng. He felt abrupt rage at the way individuals resisted his advance. Didn’t they realize that he was a chief scientist? He saw mounted palace guardsmen urging their horses along the edge of the crowd a few score feet away, and he had his mouth open to call on them to assist him, when he saw something that stopped his words in his throat. His attention had been on the temple proper. In his endeavor to move, his gaze flicked over the surrounding park.
Five of Rosamind’s young poets were hanging from a tree limb at the edge of the temple grounds farthest from the temple. From a stouter tree nearby, six juniors and three scientists were still kicking spasmodically. As Alden stood paralyzed, a dreadful screaming came from four initiates whose necks were just being fitted with rope halters. The screaming ended, as the wagon on which they were standing was pulled from under them.
Scientist Alden tottered through the crowd before the Raheinl temple on legs that seemed made of dough. He bumped into people, and staggered like a drunken man, but he was only dimly aware of bis gyrations. If he had been the only person in the group reacting, he would have been marked instantly, and dragged off to the gibbet. But the executions caught the throng by surprise. Each new spectator casually approaching to see what was going on suffered his own variation of tremendous shock. Women fainted. Several men were sick and others stood with glazed eyes.
As he approached one trailing end of the crowd, he was able to think again in flashes of insight. He saw an open gate; and he had darted through it, and was floating— that was the new sensation in his legs—through the underbrush, when it struck him that he was inside the grounds of the Town palace of Lord and Lady Creg Linn.
That brought the most terrible moment of the morning. Trapped, and of his own doing. He collapsed in the shelter of an ornamental shrub, and lay in a half faint of fright. Slowly, he grew aware that there was a long, low outhouse ahead, and that trees would shelter him most of the way. He recognized that he could not safely hope to return the way he had come, nor dared he remain where he was. He rose shakily to his feet, and the gods were with him. For he found himself shortly crouching in the long, narrow, hay storeroom adjoining the stables.
It was not a good hiding place. Its width was prohibitively confining, and only by making a tunnel in the hay near the door farthest from the stables did he manage to conceal himself. He had barely settled down when one of the stable doors a dozen feet to his right opened. A four-pronged fork flashed in a leisurely fashion, and withdrew transporting a bundle of hay. With a casual kick, the stablehand slammed the door shut, and there was the sound of retreating footsteps. Alden lay, scarcely breathing. He was just beginning to emerge from his bunk, when, bang! another door opened, and another fork gathered its hay, and departed.
Despite the nervous shocks, by noon his mind had almost resumed functioning. He had his first theory as to why he had escaped the round-up that had caught the others. Only two weeks before, he had moved to his new residence on the Avenue of Palms. The soldiers must have proceeded to his old address, and then had to cross the city to his new home, with the result that he had left the house by the time they arrived.
Of such tenuous fabrics the patterns of his escape were woven. Alden shivered, and then, slowly, anger built up inside him, the deadly, gathering anger of a man wrongly persecuted. It was a fury that braced him for eventualities, and he was able at last to think with clear-cut logic of what he must do. Obviously, he could not remain within the grounds of the Town palace. Odd little memories came to his aid, things he had observed in earlier years without being aware that he did so. He recalled that every few nights hay ricks turned into the palace gates. Judging by the emptiness around him, a new supply must be almost due. He must leave before the afternoon was out.
He began to struggle along the line of hay to the right. There was a gate on that side, and he remembered having once glimpsed the stables through it while taking a walk. By sneaking out of the end door and around the side of the stable, and then through that gate— If only he could find another set of clothes— Surely, there would be work clothes hanging up in the stables, preferably, in view of the long hair that scientists affected, a woman’s overdress—
