The Stolen Sun Read online

  Time was a man-contrived illusion based on a false in-terpretation of cosmic mathematics while Wayne listened to the old man's song, as his ancient fingers moved across the strings of the magic thing he held across that silver-figured robe. Wayne's Manship galaxy of cynical all-kill vanished. The power behind the singer's eyes, and the song he sangj split time and eternity wide. The rolling rocking words were great giants stalking out of the past. They tramped Wayne's mind. They evoked images. Images not only of color but of texture and piney scents. He was, suddenly, all that he heard and saw and sensed. He was one with the cool breeze brushing the valley's forest and the sun-drunk lake. He was the sound of the crane as it swooped and skimmed the cattails of the metsola. He was the golden dawn lavishing its splendor on the last flakes of snow dotting the achingly familiar landscape, from the flinted cliffs to the sea and on across bleak wastes into the burling northwind; he was of the small lives in the ocean where the foaming tide smashed black rock, where curlews bleated, where heron waded the fens.

  The dream, wrenched out of his being by the blow, seemed to move lazily, comfortably glow, across his inner secret mind; yet it lasted no time at all, for it stopped Time. He seemed' to lift and pull himself toward the swirling mist, toward the old man.

  "Mitar

  The old man stopped playing his kantele; nodded.

  "Hyva vo, Waino, my son of many sons."

  "Son?"

  "There have been many, but none such as you."

  "What—what do you want? Where do you come from?"

  "From beyond the tapestry that Ilmatar weaves forever, my son. From apart. I have been waiting for you, roving the stars endlessly in my copper boat, searching—for youl I have cozened Ilmatar into changing the warp and woof of her Pattern so that I could find you. Praise Ufcko, it has happened at last, and now you must follow—"

  Follow. Follow. Follow ...

  The word was a two-note chime, a final plucking of those golden strings, echoing faintly, faintly, faintly—across the abrupt wrenching pain of waking. His head bumped on the steps as the two waylayers yanked him over on his back to continue their fumble-fingered search for his credits case.

  Wayne's head roared with angry pain, yet now he remembered. His esper talents strained, as his muscle and nerve cells strained to coordinate and move him into action.

  Little bitch. Why didn't she take the loot when it was all laid out for her? Never mind, I'll take care of her, good. She won't pull that crap again!

  "Hey!" The other, the bigger one, located the case and fished it out triumphantly from the in-pocket under Wayne's left arm where its bulge matched the cut of the uniform. "I got it!"

  "Good!" the piano playing mantis croacked. "Now, let's get back to the pad. I've got something to give Doreen."

  "Her split?"

  "Split lip," the mantis growled. "Damn slut almost lost us a—"

  The staccato sotto voce confab lasted just long enough. Wayne had lain there across the steps, limply, eyes closed. Now he snapped open his eyes and moved, with cougar swiftness, at the amorphous shadows lumped above him. Rage was a sometime thing in Wayne Panu, but in the rare moments when it did overtake him,it possessed him in toto, like cornered lightning.

  His esp gauged the trajectory; his balled fist, with all the fury of a well-directed thunderbolt behind it, struck. The big man went down, with a low surprised grunt. The mantis squeaked and fled, but not far. Wayne was esping his wallet and replacing it when the piano player moved back in on him. Wayne esped the weasely desperation that had revived the mantis* lapse of couage; now he had a needle-like knife and his idea was to jab it in Wayne's throat while his right hand was thrust inside his tunic. Wayne's poke had become an obsession by now. He had seen it and lost it twice tonight.

  The pasty face glowed in the dark from his need to make this nit. The skinny arm uplifted and swept forward in a convulsive lunge.

  Wayne caught the wrist; a momentary sense of cruelty fired his brain, cruelty against cruelty. The mantis would take it out on Doreen. His arm muscles wrenched back. Bone snapped. The mantis' scream of agony filled the black alley. Wayne let go and the little man fled, moaning.

  "What the hell's going on down there?"

  Wayne looked up at the half-dressed frame bulking the open doorway at the top of the stairs where yellow light splashed.

  "It's me, Chuck. Come on. Let's get out of here."

  Chuck rumpled his black curls and grinned. "Okay, Captain. Gimme a minute to put my clothes on. And tell your friends to can the noise, huh?"

  IV

  Somehow the dawn action was accomplished; the un-guessable reservoirs in a man that war brings out were tapped; mission accomplished; and Wayne flung himself on his bunk and to all intents and purposes died for twelve hours. Chuck had somehow got it into his head that Wayne had followed him to the forbidden area out of some subconscious Freudian need to go there; next evening his bang on the door of Wayne's Captain's cubicle and his cheerful grin when he was inside told Wayne he was all set for another round.

  Wayne put both feet down, hard. By the time he had explained what happened (they were both too beat and occupied on the run to communicate more than was absolutely necessary) and added a few gratuitious remonstrances about Chuck's behavior and where it was leading him, Reader Sotomeyer removed himself, chastised, to play ping-pong in the PX with anyone he could snag down.

  Dr. Delph called Wayne in for a conference and a psych-check. Delph was small and pudgy and, from behind his thick trifocals, he watched Wayne's every gesture with a prideful wonder. He, of all others, understood the magnitude of such a phenomenon as a Wayne Panu: a farmboy from Proxima with a mind-talent as inexplicable as the mysterious stirring of primordial Terran slimes into life. What talents the other Manship gleanings from the Fleet itself possessed was only a modicum; it sufficed when individually tuned by brain-pattern to the brain of each man's super-sophisticate ship, but the breathtaking cellular empathy that Wayne's automatic chart grafts indicated was minimal. On the other hand, perhaps it was just as well that everyone didn't…

  "How's your hand?"

  'Hand?"

  "The fight." Doctor Delph's eyes narrowed; his mouth v curved a faint smile. "Oh, I know all about the other night. Don't worry, Wayne. I mean, for Sotomeyer. The CO. doesn't know and he won't know. But I have to know. Everything."

  Wayne cocked an eyebrow. "Everything?"

  "Within reason." Delph paced his office-lab twice, then whirled. "Wayne, I'm worried about you. You have changed in the past few weeks. It's subtle, but it's there. You're doing your job as Well as ever, but there is something."

  Wayne was silent. What could he say? How could he even start to vocally explore the strange wonders that spurted into tendril-like being in his mind—out there in Deep, or lying on his bunk, on the rim of sleep? The glimpses of an impossible copper boat where there was nothing but black space. The old man with the harp. How could he speak of these things, even to such a brilliant psychologist as Dr. Delph? He'd have to put him down as losing his mental grip. He would theorize that Wayne was victim to the terrible mental strain of empathizing with Lady and that such aberrations might endanger the whole Manship program. He would be released from duty.

  No. He had to keep quiet about these things. The war-push against the Mephiti was too crucial. He would thrust these visions and fancies aside, kill them, drown them in physical and mental effort as never before.

  "Is it the girl, Doreen?" Dr. Delph's voice was gentle, willing to understand.

  Wayne frowned. "Maybe she has something to do with it. Is she all right? Can't we do something?"

  "We already have," the doctor reassured him. "She will be on her way to Terra within the week, on a returning cargo vessel. Her alleged 'friends' are in custody."

  "Doreen?"

  "She is. new at the game, apparently. Unless some past charges come up, she'll be let off with a suspended sentence. She'll be all'right."

  "I hope so." Wayne met the p
sych's eyes. "Thanks." Delph waved away his gratitude. "Now, what else? I know there's more and I don't want any of your Spartan heroics. I want to know if you're ready to go out again. How about a short leave? Luna, maybe? Port Mars?"

  Wayne shook his head. "No. I—I'm happier out here. It's clean and honest. The kind of death you face out here is fast and it's unprogrammed. It's not calculated, like—"

  "I understand. More than you think, Wayne. Out in that big black vacuum you're beyond all human foibles and perverse emotions. You feel close to something enormous and somehow comforting. Like a cosmic womb. Your ship, Lady, helps you, too. She is incapable of guile."

  Wayne was surprised. This was the first time Dr. Delph had revealed his own psyche to this extent. The leap of hunger behind the trifocals made Wayne want to tell Dr. Delph everything—about the illusionary copper boat, about the old man, everything. Still, he could be reading the hope in those shrewd eyes wrong. Delph was dedicated to serving mankind, no matter what the serving might lead to. It was a soul-searing job, and it didn't pay off in dreamless nights.

  Wayne stared at the walls, the metal walls that could be disassembled along with the whole Base when the time came for another predatory thrust into a new frontier. His eyes were dull, his mouth bleak.

  "Guilt," he gritted. "That's the word for it, isn't it, Doctor?"

  The psych-head read his thought. "I suppose it is. Why should Man imagine himself master of the universe? Why not some other race? Why anybody? Can't we just live and let live?"

  "Well?"

  "Think about it, Wayne. Think. Man is master up until now only because he hasn't met his match yet. It could happen at any time. Since man first recognized himself as a self-conscious entity he has had to fight. The elements. Hunger. Animals. Plagues. He is still fighting. In spite of his attempts to thwart overpopulation, it happened. It had to. Longevity increased, and the natural instinct to procreate pushed man off his mother-world and eventually out here into the stars.

  "We didn't want to kill. We tried not to. But the aliens we met in our space-treks forced the old dictum: kill or be killed. We tried to live side by side with them. It didn't work, any more than it did when the European ancients swept across the Western American plains and destroyed the American Indians, one way and another. Our superior technology, our better witch-doctors, our hideous weapons, made us superior. So the aliens died.

  "Still we tried to live with the alien civilizations we met in our outsurge. We established colonies among them. What happened? The Fleet couldn't police them properly. Space is tob wide and empty. We found colonies burned out. Destroyed. And there are so very few worlds on which human life can sustain itself, so—"

  "So all-kill." Wayne's mouth was a tight line.

  "Yes. All-kill. In a way it's more merciful."

  "Merciful!"

  "Before we know them or they us." He clapped Wayne on the shoulder. "Maybe we've met our match at last. The Mephiti have systematically destroyed every one of our ships that came near them', armed or unarmed. They have weapons we know nothing about. They keep destroying our colonies out of hand."

  "And we, theirs," Wayne muttered.

  Dr. Delph's voice was taut, tinged with reproach: "Each race must fight for its own, Wayne. You have exceptional talents, but you are man. It's the same out here as it was in the Terran jungles many eras ago. Survival. No form of life can last long cuddling up to its natural enemy. A rabbit can't run with a wolf pack. Nature is nature, whether it's a small valley or many light-years in all directions. We've only moved out into larger forests."

  The laser needles bit into his brain as he sank back into the air-cushioned seat; as always, Dr. Delph personally supervised the cortical hookup which, when Wayne activated it by throwing the control, would marry him to Lady all over again. He endured the brief pain and watched the indicator lines move up to full contact. Then, with a small salute for the psych and the ground crew, Wayne sent Lady darting like a needle-nose far away from the rock-chunk Base into the endless black—Chuck close behind.

  He forgot about Chuck. His mind jumped with contrary ideas. Paradoxes hard to reconcile. After the initial push came long hours of physical idleness, strapped to his flow-seat. Lady could take better care of them just now than he could, programmed as she was for instantaneous response to the occasional problems encountered in the flight toward today's objective. He checked to make sure Chuck's Man-ship was where it ought to be, but he avoided conversation. There was still a touch of bad feeling between them; mostly it was that Chuck still burned from the eating out Wayne had given him. Let it lay, until the vacuum silence and the awesome knowledge of the vast reaches separating the two of them from their kind demanded human contact.

  He thought about Proxima, about the little farm of shining green plantings and the crystal ridges hemming them in. He thought how simple life had been, and good. If only one could somehow go back…

  He couldn't go back. He had come too far. And, as Dr. Delph kept assuring him, he was too badly needed. Panu was the key to a whole new terrible kind of .war, and, as the psych had put it: No form of life can last long cuddling up to its natural enemy. Nature is nature. You have exceptional talents, but you are Man. Each race must fight for its own…

  Wayne's innate sensitivity, his distaste for what an ironic Fate had specially fitted him for, made him an idealist. If only Man and the Mephiti could somehow get together. Surely there was room in the universe for two major races! Yet—it takes two to make a peace pact, and nobody had yet been able to figure a way to communicate with the Mephiti. Who knew what was on their totally alien minds?

  He thought about the Old Man of his dream. He thought about the first time he'd seen the copper boat. It was after a particularly important kill. Usually Wayne didn't look back; he didn't want to see the ravening flame of death he and Lady had left in their wake. This time he had, and the sight had shattered him. Drowsing from the tranquilizer Lady made him take when his reactions, out of shock, became erratic and irrational, he glanced out through the vid for comfort from the patterned flint points that were suns.

  And there it was.

  Unbelievable, of course. A riveted-together copper shipl In Deep Space! Impossible. His soul had been seared too deep and too often. Its overwhelming need for something to cling to had created the Copper Boat, an anachronistic hero-thing. And, when all-kill became too much for him, it happened again. He would look out, his eyes and his soul begging for something: and there it would be. Transitory. A brief-lived phantom.

  Then, in that sordid alleyway, the white-bearded Old Man with the—the kantele. Kantele? What made him use such a word? From what deep well in his mind did such a word come? There were more! The Old Man had sung his song in an ancient lost language, and Wayne had understood!

  If only he could remember more. If only—

  "Wainomoinen."

  Wayne's blood leaped. That name.

  "Chuck!" he grated. "It's you!"

  Sotomeyer's grin appeared like the Cheshire cat's when Wayne reached up and flipped the between-ships vid. "Who did you expect, Santa Claus?"

  "But—that name! Where did you hear that?" Chuck laughed. "You, of course."

  "Me?"

  The grin changed shape, became pensive. "Maybe you don't know it, buddy-boy, but lately you've been putting on some way-out performances."

  "What do you mean?" Waye's voice was a knife.

  "Well, I know you're super-esp, buddy-boy, and all that. I'm minor league, so I just trundle along behind and keep my trap shut. But lately—wow!"

  "Give," Wayne snapped. "I want to know."

  Chuck squirmed thoughtfully. "Well, we all know about talking to youself on these Deep gigs; that's why they use the buddy system so much. But, when you go off into one of your snits—what kind of goggledegook is that, anyway?"

  Wayne breathed deep. He forced his hands not to tremble and his voice to remain calm. "You said Wainomoinen. You remembered that. What else?"

  "I'
ll try," Chuck said. "First I thought you had been hitting the blash too hard. Sometimes it does that when you're not used to—"

  Wayne ignored the implication that he was a secret drinker or hashish eater. "Try to remember."

  "The lingo is like rippling water, when it's not like cracking nuts with your teeth." He grinned wryly, then sobered and took a deep breath. "Hold onto your hat. Suihki suk-kula piossa. Kaami kaessa kaaperoitsi. How about that?"

  The rocking phrases were awkwardly spoken but the musical sounds sent a chill rivering down Wayne's spine. Could it possibly be?

  "Any more?"

  "Sure. Plenty. But I can only remember some of it. My recall's high, but this language is something else. There were words, names I guess, that you repeated over and over.

  Like Wainomoinen. And—yeah—Ukko. Once you scared hell out of me by yelling out: 'Ukko! Maiden valo! Kadot-taa!'"

  Some groping tendril within Wayne's molecules reached way down, down beyond Time, struggling to drag up with it the meaning of the words. And did.

  Our light! Our sun! Ukko, help us!

  With the knowledge came cerebral pain, then Lady nipped in urgently. Her mind-whip pulled him away from the chaotic brink of time-fall and into the present.

  "Red alert! Red alert! Target dead ahead!"

  Wayne's hand went out and snapped the umbilical switch; Chuck's face vanished while its amiability changed abruptly into a mask as he, too, blended with his Manship.

  The eggs the ships would lay were cushioned deep in their bellies; when the target was near enough Wayne would push buttons and the light sound bombs would plummet onto a remote area of the Mephiti planet. When the Manships were safely out of range the timers would activate and the eggs would spume out a beautiful self-propelling flame, a screaming river of flame, which would presently and in a very short time cover the whole planet, killing every trace of life on it. Everything except indigenous low-level flora, if any. Timing was everything, and it was Wayne's action that would accomplish the destruct for both ships; Chuck was still only a reader and observer, although his manship did its part as carrier.