President Gibbs gave me the official send-off. I knew that I was to be selected as one of the Four and the Four, of course. I saw my marks on the honor list, and then the Other People's emissaries had been swarming all over the neighborhood for a couple of days, questioning my father and those who knew me. But it didn't seem real, somehow, until I got the sealed-channel wire that ordered me to zip down to Lincoln and see the President.
Things had been growing worse for a long time. There have always been troublesome crackpots on Earth, as long as we've had a history. Before the Others came, with their laws of science and sanity, it was even worse, of course.
But I'd never seen it as bad as this. In the tube to the rocketport I was accosted by a man, shabby and furtive, who seemed to know by my appearance and possibly by secret, underground ways, that I had been chosen. There was fierce urgency in his voice as he spoke to me. What he said was absurd—gibberish about the rights of humans to rule their own planet, about the intolerance and rigidity of the laws of the Others—but there was a certain strength in the way he said it.
I ordered him to leave me alone. Had there been a lawman around, I should have turned him in for speaking treason—though with the corruption of the human courts, beyond doubt he would have gone free. I told him what I thought of him and his demented kind. I tried to explain to him, reasonably, how much good the Others had done Earth. How they had ended the folly of war and international dispute; the absurdity of democracy and so-called free elections. . . .
Well, he was not moved, nor had I expected him to be. But he saw, I know, from the way I spoke and the positive assurance in my manner, that I was no weakling.
I thought there were the beginnings of tears in his eyes as he turned away. But all the way down to Lincoln, for the full two hours of the journey, I was conscious that I was being observed. It only ended when I presented my order-wire to the armed human guards at the door and was admitted to the Presidential Mansion.
And then I was too absorbed to think much about the almost open insurrection that was threatening Earth. For the guards conducted me to a door and I walked in.
I'm afraid I succumbed to a little emotion. One of the Other People was there—and an important one, too! You know that there are only seventy-seven of them on the Earth anyhow—never more, never less—and they keep pretty busy all the time. They have little time for humans, with their constant investigation into Earth's possibilities and resources and history—all, of course, for the good of humanity, despite Collard's lies.
It's a wonderful thing about the Other People—they always work, one hundred per cent of the time. Human beings are handicapped because they have to sleep, sure. But even their waking hours many of them spend in totally useless things—playing games, writing books, reading, talking—great Strength, how much talking they do! I'm human-born, I realize, and I shouldn't be flattering myself. But even the Other People have said that I am almost more like a member of their own race.
That is a proud thing to remember—though the mind machine may blank that memory out for me within the hour, or make me hate that memory. It may make me human again.
I fear that.
But there was an Other in President Gibbs' mansion. I'd seen the Others before, one or two of them. But this one was the first I'd seen that had the wide orange circles around his irises to show he was a member of the king class. Tall, gray-skinned, looking as though he were constantly overbalanced by the weight of the flapping, ponderous fat-wings that grew out of his spindly back, he was an absorbing sight. They say that the Others used to swim around in the water of their home planet, long ago. I don't know, but those fat-wings were not made to work in any atmosphere, even the thin one of their light, dying world. They look something like a seal's flippers, but rigidly muscular and utterly boneless.
As a member of the king class, the Other had a name. It was Greg. He said, "You are Ralph Symes. You have been chosen as one of the Four and the Four. Come up before me."
I made my feet move, and walked up to him. I stood before him and he looked at me out of his tawny, orange-rimmed eyes. He was seated in a crystal, thronelike chair, but it was on a pedestal and his eyes were level with mine. They looked deep inside me, dizzyingly deep. They penetrated—Strength, how they penetrated my innermost consciousness! There was a heavyness in those tawny eyes, and a sort of dark thing—a chill, cutting thing that had me swinging by my long, furry tail from some antediluvian tree, while my ape-brothers chattered and giggled around me.
Then I remembered that I was human only by the mischance of birth, and one of the Four and the Four by choice. Then I could look back at him. Not insolently. If I had been insolent to Greg I would have died at his hand then and there—or at my own. But I could look into his eyes and see that the darkness was the shadow of a mind so superior that I couldn't see into it, and that the heavyness was strength, harsh and raw, but still just to those who, like me, served it.
Then President Gibbs stood up. I hadn't seen him before, though he was an impressive figure for a human. He had wanted to be of the Four and the Four in his youth, and had almost succeeded. Only a physical weakness had prevented him from becoming of the elect. But he had become president later, which was something of a consolation.
He said, "Citizen Ralph Symes, you have been honored by selection as one of the Four and the Four. You have subscribed to the code of the Vassal Earth. You know the penalties if, as a member of the Four and the Four, you fail to carry out the wishes of Greg and his honored fellows. You will begin your course of training within the next half hour. One hundred days thereafter you will be given your instructions. What they will be I do not know, nor does any human save the Four and the Four." He handed me a large, ornate box, paused a moment before he went on, looking at me thoughtfully.
"This," he said at length, "is your crown. Cherish it. Now it is only a symbol of your status, but when it is attuned to your mind and the power is released at the end of the hundred days, remember—it is the most powerful shield and weapon ever conceived. Never use it carelessly."
Greg, always working, not taking part in the discussion just then, had been doing intricate and mysterious things with a small knobbed apparatus on the arm of his crystal chair. He looked up from it after a second and stared at me.
He said, "They are ready for you. Take him to the ship, President." He almost emphasized the "president," but not quite. It was with his thin-whiskered cheeks that he pointed it up, made it a humorous title that you might give a child. His lips quivered and drew together, almost in a smile.
The Others never quite smile, though. Not like humans, who laugh and laugh at nothing.
I would have gone wherever he commanded, but I'm afraid I hesitated. I looked around and was conscious of what I had missed in the quick excitement of this thing. Just the President, Greg and myself; no one else was in the great chamber.
"Pardon," I said. "Forgive me. I do not mean to question you, but when will the presentation—"
Greg's cheeks twitched again, then were abruptly still. "Presentation?" he said, so softly that I almost missed the note of steel in his voice. "What do you mean?"
"Why," I floundered, "the presentation—the investiture. When I am given my crown. My induction as one of the Four and the Four, when the assembly is held, and the rejoicings. Forgive me," I said, "but I had expected—"
President Gibbs interrupted, "Due to the unsettled conditions this year—" but Greg waved him aside.
"There will be no formal presentation," said Greg, and the steel was naked now. "None at all. You have your crown. Do you question me?"
Disappointment swarmed up inside me. It was what I had always dreamed of. I could hardly bear to have it taken from me. The crowds, the cheers, my father, excited, seeing me for the last time. . . .
But I was now one of the Four and the Four, and I couldn't have human emotions. I said, "Forgive me," for the third time.
That was all.
We left Greg there,
sitting and fumbling with his chair-arm apparatus. The President escorted me out—and he opened the door for me.
I got into the zip-ship that was waiting, and was seated in a sealed compartment. I heard the rockets roar a second later. The ship zoomed off.
I fell asleep shortly. I think a hypnophone was planted in the chamber, for I woke up in a strange bed in a strange room. But before I slept, I was thinking, thinking of the strangeness of the fact that the Other People had permitted a break in their routine. The presentation ceremonies were a part of the whole business of the Four and the Four, part of the rule of the Other People over Vassal Earth.
The unsettled conditions that President Gibbs had mentioned must go even deeper than I thought.
I woke up in a strange room. . . . Well, I am no traitor, though I may be about to become one, here in this room with a city burning about me and an empire dying. They shall not make me one, whatever devilish—or human—torture they bring to bear on me. Even though Collard has turned renegade to the Four and the Four, even though I have added to his disgrace and mine by not killing him when I might have, I shall not betray what I have sworn to revere.
What I learned in those one hundred days I am bound by oaths on the linked triangles of the Other People not to reveal. I will not tell, though Collard may.
I learned much. I am no longer quite human, even in appearance. Great strength is mine now, and I, like the Others, need never sleep. Solid, tormented days we spent in the ray chambers, I and the other three young men who were chosen with me. Had you seen us before the one hundred days, seen the four of us together, you might have thought we were brothers. The rigid tests of the masters insured that, with their emphasis on great height, strength and vitality.
But when the hundred days were through—we were identical; stamped of the same mold, forged in the same fires of growth, milled on the same sharp edge of learning.
The animal pinkness of human flesh left us, and our skin took on a greenish cast, as chlorophyll cells were absorbed into us. We can swallow up pure light energy and convert it, like a plant, to heat and force. Our flesh was transmuted in other ways, to great tensile strength. Oh, we have to eat still. But the food is only for the replacement of cells which die and wear off, not for energy.
The one hundred days passed quickly. Collard and I, and two others who do not matter, being dead, were the four youths. The Four and the Four are not all trained together. The four maidens are taught and rebuilt to be simple recorders, animate libraries for the use of the Others.
They also are placed in ray chambers, but the rays that flood their bodies, tear them down and rebuild them, are of a different order. The retentive capacity of their brains is increased, and the other functions become lesser. Physically they are not changed, for they need not be. The wise Others do not tamper with what need not be changed.
This is what is done with the four maidens. I may tell it, for it is no secret. Collard will be on his way back to Earth soon, arrowing through the void at mind speed, the first human to make the trip in that direction.
I pray that the Others will be prepared for him. But whether they are or not this secret is out.
The Others on Earth are constantly studying, always learning. All men know what they study—the Earth, and its unexplored potentialities. What they learn is telepathically transcribed on to the ray-sensitized brains of the four maidens. The maidens learn to be telepathic in their one hundred days. They receive a burden of knowledge, four of them each year.
And when they have absorbed al1 that has been learned by the Others in their year, they are sent back to the green world from which the Others came.
The four youths bring them there; that is our destiny.
I shall not tell you how, for if Collard dies that must remain a secret. But the crowns we wear have much to do with it. They are, as Gibbs said, a perfect weapon and a perfect shield. They are also a perfect vehicle. With their aid we can spurn gravity, cast the Earth aside, cleave the thin air at light speed. Nor need we breathe, and so we can travel the space between the planets.
Enough of that. I can still see the machine in my mind's eye, and the flames still dance above the stricken city. My hour, too, is running short.
The one hundred days ended, and we were not men any more. We were gathered together, the four of us, plus the two Others who had supervised our training. One of the Others spoke, bid us take off the human garments we wore and dress in purple-red coveralls, ornamented with the linked triangles of the Others. Self-healing, perfectly insulated, these would prevent our absorbing too much energy from the naked rays of the sun while still in Earth's vicinity, yet would keep us warm when we attained outer space, en route to the far star around which spun the planet of the Others.
While he was talking, a zip-ship sighed into the air overhead and slowly settled down beside us, the wide purple fans of its underjets lighting up the darkness all around. Overhead the calm stars twinkled. There was no moon.
A couple of humans—special police, clad in tunics and emblems like ours, but without the crowns—were running the ship. One opened the port and stepped out. His companions inside handed limp white figures out to him—the four maidens. He deposited them gently on the ground. Then, without a word to any of us, he got back in the ship. The port closed and it lay quiescent, waiting for the girls to be removed so that its jets could flare without cremating them on the spot.
There were no last-minute instructions. We knew what we were to do. Collard and I and the other two walked over to the unconscious, unbreathing maidens, whose life-processes had been suspended by the science of the Others to fit them for the journey through airlessness.
We picked them up, clasped them under our arms. They were light burdens, for they were only girls. Attractive girls, surpassingly beautiful, even, for only superior physical and mental specimens get into the Four and the Four.
The Others stood and watched us, without words. There was nothing they needed to tell us. Collard was the leader, he with his strange streak of humanity in him, human strength that did not have the chill rigidity of the strength of the masters, but could bend and give way where their strength broke, and then return; Collard looked around at the remainder of us and saw that we were ready; Collard seized the leadership, and it was he who said the word of command.
And all of us, four youths and maidens, set out on an incredible journey. Each man of us raised up his arm. Each of us willed the pull of gravity to relinquish its hold, denied the existence of weight and Earth-pull. We rose into the air with gathering speed.
A moment, and we were shrieking through the dense air of the lower strata, not looking down or back, but conscious that the Earth was dwindling underneath. A moment after that and the air was a thin, weak thing that no longer held us back. Coldness began to seep in. Our lungs worked hard, until the soothing, tingling power of the crowns and the heat suits took hold, and warmth and air were luxuries we did not need.
And then, not abruptly, there was no air.
The trip may have been long; I have no way of knowing, for the time was not like the passage of hours or days on a planet. Onward we fled, faster until even the stars were crawling about in space, and we could see them slide slowly behind us. Their colors changed and disappeared. Behind us the stars were red; ahead, deep, smoky violet. And then, quickly, all the stars were ahead of us, with different colors being the only thing that showed where they really were, as we caught up with and passed the light rays that came from behind. Faster than light—infinitely faster—we went, while the stars crept slowly around and winked from violet to red as we fled past them.
Then we knew by the signs we had been taught to watch for that we had arrived. And our wills, greater than human and multiplied by the crowns we wore, changed their impulse and concentrated on slowing us, stopping us.
Picture us there in space, the Four and the Four. Four men whose only life was in the mind for that time, whose bodies might as well not have been. And the
girls we carried across the void, unmoving and rigid as ourselves. . . .
But we slowed and slowed more, and a green planet detached itself from the twinkling cosmos of stars that again were beating at us with white rays and blue, and red and yellow and all of the normal colors. The green planet grew larger.
It might have been a dozen seconds, and it might have been a thousand years since our journey had begun. But there we were, standing on a strange blue-green earth, moving our arms and legs again, breathing once more. And unhurriedly there walked toward us one of the Others, moving without strain on this light world, looking at us as he came. He had been waiting. He had known when we would come. . . .
2
Green Planet of Madness
Collard looked in at me. I cannot have much time left, by the expression on his face. There was pity there, and a curious friendliness that frightens me. He must believe that his mind machine will warp my brain, make me betray the Others. Absurd! Why, his machine is compounded of the science of the Others and their superhuman artisanry. He stole it from them, as he stole the strength and intellect they gave him in his training for the Four and the Four. He—
It does not matter. I must be brief.
There were bad things even on the planet of the Others. I was prepared for that, for I knew that nothing was perfect, not even in the wisdom of the masters. Collard was not prepared for it, with his curious human optimism that could not be wiped out of him; with his impossible ideals.
The one who had been waiting for us when we landed asked no questions, made no remarks. He beckoned us to follow him, and we carried the girls into a strangely un-ornate building, that looked as though it had been poured in magenta glass around the thing it was built to house. It had odd shapes and angles, curious wavy buttresses cascading away from the main structure, but they were not for decoration. You could see that they were needful to the purpose of the building.