The Saga of Lost Earths Read online

  Carl pushed out a sharp breath. He, himself, was an atavistic rebel with a craving for adventure. All those others—amiable sheep with their studiedly mild psych-codes.

  He scowled. “This metal, this Rare Earth, it seems to be alive, somehow. But why does it want us to kill ourselves?"

  Dr. Enoch put in. “Rare, indeed. So rare it wasn't known to exist until the Finnish mine near the Arctic Circle suddenly popped out with it. I've put samples of it to every known test. It doesn't fit in atomically with any of the Tables. In fact, in some ways it reacts as if only part of it exists in our concept of matter in space. As if it were not matter at all, but anti-matter. Anti-matter forced partially into our space-time and controlled!"

  Graves batted his gavel to indicate his disapproval.

  “With all due respect, Dr. Enoch, the rest of us don't go along with your theory that this odd specimen of Rare Earth is the result of some alien non-space invasion. We believe that it is simply an odd phenomenon in the natural course of events. Something like the drugs hashish, peyote, the magic mushrooms, and so on, which produce weird emotional effects on users. This metal does the same thing, only by mere tactile propinquity. We eradicated all those bad drugs, except for medical purposes. We will eradicate this too, once we have more information to work on."

  Dr. Enoch clucked sharp dismay. “By the time you finish your fiddlings Earth will have become a lifeless ball of rotting suicides."

  “What's your idea, Dr. Enoch?” Carl asked.

  “My niece and I have spent years studying sonics and their relationship to intelligent matter. We spent all of last summer in Finland and Lapland working on the folkloric songs of the Kalevala. We uncovered strange forces that exist in sound waves and light waves. We never quite made contact, but we came close. So very close!"

  “Close to insanity!” Graves snapped. “Next thing you will do is to equate this metal with voodoo puppets!"

  Carl saw Dr. Enoch's gray eyes spit fire, and Silia hasten to coax him out of blowing his top.

  “I seem to have been dragged into this thing,” Carl said. “I'd like to hear what Dr. Enoch has to say."

  Silla flashed him a swift smile. The others moved uncomfortably in their seats. Graves scowled, shrugged his grudging consent.

  “Briefly, here it is.” Dr. Enoch ignored the others, speaking directly to Carl. “Somewhere outside of our narrow concepts of space and time there exist beings. Intelligent beings quite unlike ourselves, subject to none of our laws of what constitutes matter, or energy. It is my firm belief that these Forces have visited our galaxy, our universe, our time, before this. Our ethnic legends are filled with stories of beings who somehow made themselves known and felt, then vanished.

  “Perhaps their motives are not inimical. Only curious. The Force with which we are contending is such a creature, or the result of his curious probing. The suicidal metal is a catalyst that enables him to make himself felt if not seen. He is still in the experimenting stages, sending out little Force tentacles through the Rare Earth metal. Perhaps he doesn't mean to cause death. Perhaps he is only endeavoring to examine our mental processes, but the reaction he obtains is lethal. The deaths may be merely a by-product of his tentative efforts to study us, the way we would study a protoplasmic culture under a microscope."

  “And you think that by sound waves we might make contact? Find out what gives?"

  Dr. Enoch's bushy head nodded vigorously.

  “Sound waves. Light impulses. I believe that some of our so-called primitive groups actually did make contact."

  “Like the heroes of the Kalevala?"

  “Yes. All of their magic was contained in songs. In word patterns."

  Carl rubbed his neck to relieve the bursting conviction that none of this was really happening! It was the stuff that dreams and adventure books were made of! He had fallen asleep at his computer-deck and-

  “Just where do I come in?"

  Professor Graves took over.

  “As we pointed out before: you possess an aggressive fight-motivation that has been painstakingly bred out of our people since the Third Atom War; you speak Finnish; your emp-esp is h5."

  “So?"

  “We want you to go to Finland. To the little mining village where the metal originates. Talk to the people. Intuit. Find out anything you can, anything which might help us in our war against-"

  “War against an inorganic mass of metallic rock!"

  “Or what lies behind it,” Dr. Enoch put in softly.

  Carl whistled. “I still don't know what I-"

  “Think of it this way, Carl.” Silia spoke up. “A long time ago, fearful of our atomic weapons, that any small squabble might touch off a war that would destroy our planet, the Psychs took over. It was as if our whole world had gone lunatic and needed drastic psychotherapy. What we got was a complete about face from our previous nationalistic belligerence. Eventually we were trained to believe that even a harsh word was regrettable and appalling. At the merest hint of an aggressive syndrome any Cities citizen was rushed to his own Psych-Control for a mind-cleaning."

  Her sea-green eyes met his and made sparks.

  “And somehow none of the treatments worked on me.” Carl grinned wryly. “I'm the proverbial bad apple."

  Silia's cherry lips smiled.

  “If you are, then we're lucky. Especially since you are Finnish, have an emp-esp of h5, and...” She stopped short, twin spots of red blushed her cheeks.

  “I ... what?"

  “You are an almost perfect prototype of the legendary Finnish warrior-lover, Lemminkainen."

  * * *

  CHAPTER V

  THERE WAS no question of refusal. On the strato-ship arcing over the unseen Arctic Circle to Helsinki, Carl strapped in for the rocket thrust, sat back and indulged himself in a wash of Finnish curses born out of marvel and disbelief. He was the only passenger. Everything top secret.

  He thought about all that had happened to him within the past twenty hours: it was insane, of course. How could he, Carl Lempi, muscles or no muscles, esp or no esp, battle an invader as completely alien as this probing Force?

  As Professor Graves had indicated, each passing hour brought the Psych-Head news of hundreds and thousands of new, random suicides. The only shred of sense they could glean out of this strange invasion was that in each case the Finnish Rare Metal was involved, either in the form of a manufactured alloy product, or a chunk of the raw mineral rock which had somehow or other strayed out of the processing procedures.

  Inasmuch as the new metal had proved wonderfully useful, possessing both pliability and great tensile strength, which lent these qualities in alloy form amazingly, the Cities were fall of it. By now the plants using it had been shut down, in spite of the howls of their management, and the labor element discreetly shifted elsewhere.

  Everyone was required to wear special gloves. Great warehouses of suspect products were sealed up. Still, the populace began to realize that there was something wrong. Why were so many great cartels suddenly shut down? Why were workers in many areas drained off to other jobs? Why was sunbathing, swimming, in fact every type of activity involving skin exposure, suddenly taboo?

  Only the world's severe Psych-Control prevented rumor spreading into blind panic. The non-aggressive citizens of the Cities accepted the plausible lies invented hastily for their benefit. Life went on. A child's toy, a table knife, a musical instrument—any of these or ten thousands of other things made of metal alloy might turn on you and kill you.

  Or force you to kill yourself.

  “I'm hungry,” Carl complained to the empty seats around him. His briefing hadn't admitted of animal needs.

  There was a two-way monitoring device over his head. It heard him. Five minutes later a waiter came out of the service alcove to the rear of the ship. He was small, wore heavily tinted glasses, and, of all things, a Lappish garment with an ermine-tailed parka. He carried a tray of food and set it down on the flop-table in front of Carl.

&
nbsp; Carl's attention was on the food, not on the waiter. Sniffing hungrily, he drooled at the sight of the red meat steak, the honest-to-Jumala vegetables, the warm rolls and the berry pie.

  “It looks real!"

  “It is,” the little waiter told him, taking a seat opposite Carl's. “That's one thing, at least; you'll be well fed, as any hero should be."

  Carl chomped his meal with gusto. Then he turned to the gnome in the blue parka. “You wouldn't by any chance have a cigar? I know smoking is taboo but-"

  The man across the aisle produced a packet of cigars out of his tunic and lit one up for Carl. “It's not tobacco, but a derivative of a marsh plant grown around Lake Imari, where you'll be going.” When he bent to light Carl's cigar for him, Carl blinked. There was something familiar about him, bundled up in all that handwoven, hand-dyed wool.

  Carl took hold of his wrist and flicked off the lighter.

  “You're not just a waiter."

  The little man shrugged, then made a thumb gesture at the monitor over their heads. Carl let go of his wrist with an understanding nod. The little man went back to his alcove, then reappeared five minutes later with a cup of ersatz coffee and a note tucked under the saucer.

  Carl ignored the coffee, read the note.

  “I am Dr. Enoch. My conscience would not permit me to see you risk your life, alone. When I requested permission to go with you I was refused. Psych-Head scorns the knowledge my niece and I have gleaned. Some of this knowledge might help you in your task—even save your life."

  Carl gave a noisy yawn for the benefit of the monitor. He fished out a pen and scribbled, at the bottom of Dr. Enoch's note: “What about Silia?"

  “It was hard enough for me to manage. Besides, I wouldn't let her come. The chances of our ever coming back from this venture are one in billions."

  While the land car swung Carl to his hotel along the wide avenues of immaculate Helsinki, Carl stared with wonder at the rows of lace-leafed trees and the splashes of colorful June flowerbeds in the park-like pedestrian areas. Here were towering monoliths, too, but not to be compared to the limitless complex of levels of the Cities to the south.

  Helsinki retained some of the charm of olden times by virtue of its lesser population.

  Carl breathed deep of the open, honest air.

  Pushing into the hotel's lobby, he was brought back to reality with a jolt. Here, the same robotic impersonal tenor of the Cities was evident. He flashed his Psych-Priv card at the automatic desk clerk and was shown to a windowless cubicle up in the higher levels. The porter who saw him to his bland bailiwick flashed open his door by demagnetizing the lock, and when Carl and his baggage were inside, locked it again.

  Carl was a prisoner.

  He grimaced around the green-psyched walls. The music extruding gently from the ceiling was Sibelius, which helped. It sang of great forests, cool blue lakes, foaming tides.

  He flicked out the bed from the wall, undressed, showered, and flaked out.

  Next morning he found a green-gold uniform neatly hung beside his bed. It was close-fitting, his size, and thermaled for his Arctic trek. It was Midsummer, the time of endless twilight; still who knew where he would end up?

  When the door buzzed open, Carl looked with curiosity at the odd, stocky Finn who came in with his breakfast tray. His wide face wore a persistently dour expression, his mouth was a pukko gash under flanging nostrils. His oversized ears gave the effect of being pointed; his slag-blonde hair needed cutting and had for some time.

  “I am your servant,” the ugly one said.

  “Servant?"

  He shrugged as he set out the food. “They call me Kullervo."

  The name rang a bell in Carl's mind, a kind of warning tocsin.

  “I have no need of a servant,” Carl told him.

  “They told me to stay near you,” Kullervo moved back against the wall, folded his oversized arms, and stood there. Carl tried to ignore the penetrating stare of those slanted mud-gray eyes.

  “Okay.” Carl shrugged. “If you insist."

  While he ate he mulled over that name. Kullervo. It had an ugly sound. It brought him dark, unpleasant emotions. Then it came to Carl, pushing up out of some subconscious rift in his brain.

  Kullervo. The bad boy of the Kalevala legends. The youth whose ugly exterior hid an even uglier nature. Kullervo of the Kalevala had allied himself with the Pahaliset, the Evil Ones. His nature was to be sinister, a harbinger of dire elemental forces. On top of everything else, Kullervo of the Kalevala had, like the tragic heroes of Sophocles and Aeschylus, committed sins which even the gods could not forgive.

  Here was the misbegotten creature who had been selected to accompany Carl on his trek and see to his needs. Selected by whom?

  Sipping his pretend-coffee, Carl pushed up a grin.

  “Anyway, all that's only an old legend. Eh, Kullervo?"

  The dour youth showed lupine teeth. He said nothing, but there was an odd look in those shifting eyes.

  Breakfast over, Carl told Kullervo he would like to take a walk around the city, for exercise. He didn't trouble to point out that he had to find Dr. Enoch before starting his journey north.

  He walked down Mannerheim Way, past the great patriot's equestrian statue, and further along the peninsula to the docks. He watched the lumber barges transfer their cargo to the great ocean freighters, barges which for centuries past had hauled the felled trees down the Kymi and Oulo Rivers. It was significant that the three large ships anchored in the quays belonging to the mineral warehouses and offices lay idle and unmanned, everything steel-fenced and triple bolted.

  He wandered off into the triangular park across the busy thoroughfare. It was pleasant under the sun-sprinkled trees. Carl dawdled along, scenting the iodide odor of the bay along with the smell of fish, listening to the swallows chirp among Plies. He wandered over to the plaza's central fountain and the statue of Sibelius, the Finnish composer who had set nature and the elements to music.

  His music drifted across the esplanade.

  Tapiola. Forest of gods and their creatures.

  Swan of Tuonela. The somber lake beyond which lies death.

  Carl's mind churned with Kalevala: legends. Lemminkainen, Son of Lempo. Lemminkainen, the beautiful, the golden apple of Ilmatar, creatrix of the universe. Swordsman and brash warrior. Vainomoinen, the wizard, who had dared to cross the black lake, defying even the rulers of the dead. Ilmarinen, the wondersmith, who had fashioned the arch of sky over the universe. The magic Sampo-

  “Is it not time?"

  Kullervo's harsh question pulled Carl out of his reverie. Standing at the rim of the fountain, Carl looked down in the water at Kullervo's image reflected in it. For a brief instant it seemed that the ill-starred youth wore a shabby dung-spattered garment and held up a sharp pukko knife. And he, Carl Lempi, had long golden hair braided across his golden-mailed chest, almost to the sword sheathed in a scabbard that shimmered with green and red fire.

  There it was, then gone.

  “Time to go back to the hotel, you mean."

  Kullervo shrugged his wide bent shoulders. “First, how about a real Finnish sauna, to wash away the taint of the toinen."

  Carl grinned. “Maybe you're right, Kullervo. I don't feel like a veiras. I feel that I belong here, more and more every hour.” He started off. “Where is this sauna?"

  They left the robo landcar at the city's edge. The afternoon sun glinted on scrub pines and an occasional clapboard house with woodsmoke curling out of its chimney. Kullervo's bandy legs stalked purposefully ahead of Carl into a stand of newgrowth fir which gave out onto a marshy meadow and a dark blue apron of a lake, fringed by birch and alder.

  Carl squinted up at the lowering skies; the blue and white morning and early afternoon had given way to wind-harried clouds, black with rain. From the purple horizon came an ominous roll of thunder.

  “Ukko is angry,” Carl said.

  Kullervo said nothing, prowling through the cattails across the fen
, leaving muddy little footstep-ponds in his wake. He was headed for a small ancient cabin on the lake's edge, where random rays reflected streaks of dull silver. Like an animal, he avoided the twisty path, charging beeline through the twittering willows.

  Blue puffs of smoke emerged from the log cabin's rock chimney. The door came open while they were yet twenty paces away.

  “Dr. Enoch!"

  The gnome-twist of mental genius smiled and nodded them in. There were hard, unpainted benches in the cabin proper, a rough table and some shelves; Carl noted also two nylon packs, bulging under their leather straps, leaning against the wall by the door.

  Dr. Enoch poured them out mugs of dark ale, sat himself opposite Carl. Kullervo sat apart from them, in the darkest corner.

  “The fire's all stoked up; the sauna's almost ready. We will talk while we bathe and beat each other with birch branches."

  Carl grinned. “But no diving in the lake after. I'm not Finnish enough for that, yet."

  While the heat welled up off the heated rocks and Carl felt the sweat river out of every pore, they talked.

  “I'm a little uneasy about Kullervo.” Dr. Enoch frowned, after the misshapen figure had hauled in buckets of ice-cold water for the dousing, and left. “But I had to see you, Carl. So far Psych-Head is keeping you under wraps, and Kullervo was the only local I could locate."

  “How'd he manage to get to me through the P-H barrier?"

  “Magic, of course.” Dr. Enoch seemed to come near meaning just that, Carl thought.

  “Forget him.” Carl swabbed his dripping face while the doctor flung more water on the rock stove. “I want to know everything I can, from your view, before I start my trek to Lake Imari."

  “Before we start our trek,” Dr. Enoch corrected. He scowled and wagged his sweat-dappled head. “Hard to know where to start. I've spent more than fifty years on my sonicsvibration theory. How can I possibly ... Never mind, I'll try.

  “You know about psychokinesis, latent mind power moving and even creating material objects. In fact, my guess is that you've got a lot of this inside of you, Carl, waiting for the time of extreme necessity that will set it off. All Finns have it, is my guess. That was why they were called wizards and demons. It's simple really. For many, many generations this mysterious race of seemingly commonplace tree choppers and fishermen have nurtured these mind vibrations, put them into song-legends. Racially they are tuned to the high oscillations which cause things to be. The Finn race is old, very old. Some of the evidence which Silia and I uncovered even hints that they didn't originate on this planet at all. They migrated here from somewhere else! They remember the old Powers, some of them, and on occasion they use them."