The Seed of Evil Read online

  He switched on an oscilloscope. “Well, the next step is to arrange this special environment: an environment of pure light. It should be possible, I reasoned, to bring about a self-reflecting pattern of coherent light which would reinforce itself indefinitely, and that would transcend the space-time barrier. I admit I made some use here of certain mystical diagrams such as the Kabbala, which incidentally also describes existence as proceeding from out of light—‘limitless light’. The enneagram, an old Sufi symbol, was even more useful; it possesses cybernetic properties the Kabbala lacks. Be all that as it may, I can now announce the problem to be essentially solved. I have light that can hurtle back to its original source—very special, very dense light. You find the adjective incongruous? To us, of course, light is the most tenuous of substances, but to God it must seem solid and palpable. It is, after all, what he used to manufacture everything else. And if it comes to that, natural light only seems tenuous to us because it is constantly dispersing. Do you know there are lasers now that can produce a light pressure of two and a half million atmospheres? The ray gun is already with us.”

  Having delivered this feverish lecture and finished his adjustments, Rodrick straightened and stared at me triumphantly. “I calculate that this device will produce a rod of radiation which will strike God like a bolt of hardened steel. What we have here is also a ray gun of sorts, Harry. The ultimate gun!”

  Believing that I was only humouring Rodrick in his little fantasy, I asked: “But why should anyone want to do such a thing?”

  Rodrick’s lips quirked. “Because it’s never been done, perhaps? No, that’s being facetious. Perhaps it’s to end the fawning ingratiation towards God one sees in people. The universe should exist on its own, should be independent. I’ll feel better knowing it’s broken free of the father-figure. I am by inclination, you see, emphatically an atheist.”

  Rodrick said this light-heartedly. But suddenly, to my bewilderment, his tone changed and his expression became a sneer. “No, I’ll tell you why it is,” he said quickly. “It’s because God is far from being the source of all that’s good in the world, if you want my opinion. Life is a sordid business, all pain, frustration, disappointment and misery. What chance has anybody got to accomplish anything? Just look around you—children dying of cancer … everything going wrong. … I’ll tell you something: this world’s been put together like a Mickey Mouse watch! It’s a shoddy, botched-up job! I tell you, He deserves everything He’s going to get!”

  This outburst, so astonishing from my point of view, was the first hint I had ever received that Rodrick felt so bitter about the moral aspects of existence, or indeed that he functioned on the level of feeling at all. He thrust a pair of goggles at me and told me to put them on. When I had done so he switched on his machine and the lasers began to discharge.

  Even through the darkened shades the intricate display they projected was dazzling. The maze of light grew brighter and brighter as the beams traced out their endlessly returning path. The glow seemed to expand, to slowly engulf the mirrors and prisms that bent and reflected the light. For a while it all grew hazy, like a picture of a distant star cluster. Then it seemed to become more strongly defined, to solidify, until finally it became so bright that I could no longer bear it and I turned away.

  When I looked again, the apparatus was dead. Later Rodrick was to explain that a fuse had blown. But at the time he merely whipped off his goggles and spoke in a flat, cracked voice.

  “It’s done. God is dead.”

  I laughed, though without enthusiasm. “Really, Rodrick, how preposterous,” I said, removing my own goggles. Then I saw his flat and lifeless eyes, and I knew that the mistake was mine.

  Not in Rodrick alone do I notice the difference. I see it in everything and in everyone, including myself. Conversation these days is mechanical and repetitive, and one has but to look into people’s eyes to realise that they are all dead inside. Life continues in a fashion, of course: the machinery of the universe grinds on. But the days and nights have a blankness about them, a tedious emptiness. There are sunsets, dawns, the phases of the moon, the procession of the seasons, but all unenlivened by that majestic ambience that formerly shone through them.

  What did God supply, after all, when he was alive? He supplied the beauty, the meaning and the mystery, with which the physical world was then imbued. This was what theologians meant, perhaps, when they said that the creation was continuous. But now it is all gone. There is no beauty, no inner life. Even colours have become flat and dull.

  And so I can report that the Satanic rebellion succeeded one July evening in a small English town, and that God, not quite omnipotent as it turned out, is dead. I will ask no one to verify this event for themselves as for many, of course, it will have passed unnoticed. As for Rodrick, I grow tired of his stale utterances, of his dead mackerel eyes, of his increasing lethargy. Though we still meet for our customary talks, he repeats himself now in a manner that once he would simply not have permitted himself. Often he will simply sit and repeat like a parrot, “God is dead, God is dead. We are alone.” It is a long time now since I heard anything original from him.

  The Ship that Sailed the Ocean of Space

  Rim is the kind of man who would poke his head into Hell just to see how hot it is there.

  He’s thickset, not very tall—but physical features like these don’t count for much when you look at Rim these days. All you see is a dishevelled, bleary layabout who scratches himself all the time because we gave up bathing and washing years ago.

  Rim and I have got a pretty cushy number. We’re in this orbiting spaceship out beyond Neptune, and we’re supposed to be researching into the incidence of high-energy particles and all that stuff. Or rather, Rim is, because I don’t know anything about physics. I’m supposed to be his companion, to stop him from feeling lonely.

  That’s a laugh. But I’m an old pal of Rim’s, and I never made out too well on Earth as far as jobs are concerned. When he told me about this easy-living deal, well, I was glad to get away from the nomadic life.

  Actually, Rim is one of the system’s best physicists, and could do much more valuable research, but this is the only job he can get since he punched the director of Sub-Nuclear Research at London University. Still, I think I prefer it out here.

  Actually, it’s quite O.K. Not like Hell—too cold—but we’re snug and warm in our quarters. Occasionally Rim condescends to spend a few hours at his job of tracking down the little wiggly particles and whatnot, the rest of the time we spend lounging around, boozing, quarrelling, sometimes leading to brawls—Rim always wins but I swear I’ll beat the bones out of him before I’m done. We’ve got a lifetime’s supply of brown ale. It takes us about a year to get through it, then we head back to Earth to restock, and make our way out here again.

  Last time we were home Rim was told off about his meagre reports; but this period I haven’t noticed him do any work at all.

  You can’t blame him. It’s a bit routine for a man like Rim and he was meant for better things.

  Sometimes we get tired of the inside of the research ship so we suit up and go and sit outside, squeezing brown ale through our suits’ fluid intakes, and gazing at the universe. Space is a fine sight, especially out here where the sun is hardly more than a very bright star. It’s very dark, but not dim, that is, you can see all right, but there’s nothing nearby to see. It’s cold, and lonely.

  Still, Rim and I don’t mind. We’ve both had our fill of human beings, and I hear they’re talking about prohibition down on Earth now.

  Anyway, it was as we were sitting out there one day that I suddenly noticed that I could see something.

  I pointed it out to Rim. It was a dark object, too small and distant to have any features, but it occluded stars, and light reflected off it.

  “Boy,” Rim said wonderingly, “maybe it’s an asteroid.”

  This idea pleased him. We’d never before found any asteroids out here, but there were some explosi
ves in the storeroom for blowing them open if we did. Rim loves playing with explosives.

  We scrambled through the airlock, took off our helmets and went to the control room. Rim soon got the object on the view-screen and took a few instrument sightings. “She’s moving about thirty miles an hour,” he told me as he started up the manoeuvring jets. “We’ll go and have a look.”

  “Thirty miles an hour? That’s not very fast, is it?”

  “Relative to us.” Through the matted hair and whiskers that all but covered his face, I discerned a slight frown. “I expect it’s in orbit, same as us.”

  “Then why has it got a velocity difference of thirty miles per hour? It ought to have the same velocity.”

  Rim didn’t answer. He had a bottle to his lips. But when we got closer to the asteroid, he started tapping the massometer impatiently. Finally he gave it a brutal kick.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” I demanded.

  “The massometer,” he mumbled, “it’s not working.”

  “What d’you mean? It must be working.”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, that thing out there’s got to have some mass! Anyway, we’re close enough now, let’s get outside and have a first-hand view.”

  Well, it wasn’t an asteroid.

  I supposed it was about half a mile long, and about a seventh of that across the beam. Overlapping strips of a dull substance covered it, running lengthwise. To say there was something funny about it would be a polite underestimation.

  For one thing, I couldn’t seem to estimate its shape, except that it was longer than it was broad. Every time I cast my attention at it to make a visual assessment, it seemed to evade me by sliding away without moving. Slippery as a fish, as far as the mind goes. But dammit, every time I looked at that thing I felt I was looking up at it. I kept wanting to climb up it to see what was on top.

  In fact, we both tried to. We coasted all round it on our suit jets, trying to work out what was wrong. But it was no good: from every angle it presented the same appearance, the same maddening impression that we were looking at it from below, that there was something else to see on the upper side.

  Also, there was another funny thing. In space, you don’t have any sense of up or down. There’s only here and there.

  Eventually we gave up and landed on the body itself. Flipping on my intercom, I heard Rim scratching himself inside his suit.

  “Well,” he ventured, “it isn’t a natural object. It’s an artifact.”

  “Oh, daddy,” I sniggered, “I would never have known if you hadn’t told me.”

  “All right, shut up.” Sulkily he moved away, muttering to himself as he bent to examine the strange hull. A minute later his voice sounded again, loud and friendly now that he had found something else to divert him.

  “Say, this material is queer stuff,” he said. “I can’t get any sound out of it.”

  “Well, what sort of sound do you expect in space?”

  “I mean I can’t get any conducted sound when I strike it with my glove. It doesn’t even feel as though it offers resistance to my hand—yet my hand stops short, as it should, when I press against it. Do you know something? I think our massometer was working after all. This thing hasn’t got any mass!”

  “Big deal!” I offered sardonically.

  He straightened up and came closer. “I’m out of beer,” he told me. “Got a bottle?”

  Silently I handed him one and listened to his unsavoury gurglings as he squeezed the ale into his headpiece and straight down his throat.

  The excitement must have given him a thirst. He finished the pint in forty seconds, slung the bottle into the void, and blinked, peering with his weak beery gaze at our discovery. I could practically see the stuff oozing out of his eyeballs.

  “It’s a ship,” he said. “It can’t be anything else. If it’s a ship it must be hollow. I’d like to take a look inside.”

  “I’d rather you stuck to nuclear particles.”

  “Aah. …” Rim went limp inside his suit, which in the absence of gravity is the equivalent of flinging oneself into an armchair. He gets very depressed at times, and I could see he had a mood coming on.

  “Stay here,” he instructed after a while. “I’m going to get my tool kit.”

  He nearly blew me into space with a fountain of poorly controlled propellant, and rocketed over to the research ship. I imagined him thumping around inside, cursing and turning the place upside down. Since he hadn’t entered the laboratory for six months he would have forgotten where everything was. However, he appeared twenty minutes later with a tool bag and auxiliary power pack swinging from his neck.

  “Yippee, here I come!” he yelled as he came streaking across the ten-mile distance to the alien ship. By the time I got to where he landed he had clamped himself against the side and was fitting together a power drill.

  “What are you going to do?” I queried.

  “Drill a hole.”

  “Are you crazy—” I began. Then I lowered my voice. “Look, if whatever’s inside there wanted to meet us he’d have come out by now. Where’s your tact? Besides, you can’t just go drilling a hole in somebody else’s ship! You might let all the air out.”

  “No, they’ll be all right,” he answered casually. “If they’re smart enough for space travel they’re smart enough to take care of a little puncture. Anyway, I’m only drilling to find out what the hull’s made of.”

  With that he made a connection, and crouching over the drill, applied it to the side of the ship.

  For a few moments I watched the tip slide into the plank-like structure, but then a queasy feeling came over me and I didn’t feel like seeing any more.

  I sauntered off and rounded the bend of the ship, idly contemplating its odd, belly-like curve. For some reason I kept looking for a keel—but of course there wasn’t any keel. It was only that strange fancy, the same one that insisted the ship floated upright.

  Floated? Well, yes, I thought. I suppose things can be said to float in space.

  I was about to go back to see how Rim was getting on, when a movement caught my eye. Something bright and pointed was emerging through the planking. …

  “Rim!” I squealed in fright. “Your drill’s coming through the other side!”

  The drill-tip stopped moving. “How far away are you?” “About fifty yards!”

  Rim gave an unbelieving curse, and came zooming round to join me. His eyes bulged when he saw the drill-tip. “That drill’s only eight inches long. How can it penetrate fifty yards? Go and see—no, stay here a minute!”

  He put weight on his jets and galloped off round the bend. “I’m moving the drill now,” his voice informed. “Is that tip waggling?”

  “Y-Yes,” I bleated, watching the tip move slowly in and out. “You’ve made two holes instead of one!”

  “But it’s impossible. Here—grab the tip and move it about a bit, we’ve got to make sure.”

  After hesitation, I firmly grasped the metal drill and pushed, then pulled, meeting a resistance I knew came from Rim. His voice yelped in my ears. “The handle! It’s moving in my hand!”

  “I’m scared,” I admitted, by my tone of voice as well as by the statement.

  “Then come round here with me, I’m scared too!”

  I was surprised to hear that anything could frighten Rim, but the thought of that only urged me on the faster. However, when I came upon him he seemed to have regained his control, though he still crouched over the drill and held it in a tetanus grip.

  “Do you know what I think?” he whispered, staring up at me. “There’s no space inside there!”

  “What, you mean it’s solid all the way through?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head with exasperation. “Listen, do you remember how much drill is protruding the other end?”

  “About four inches.”

  “And do you know how much I inserted this end? Four inches! The tip goes in here and instantly reappears fifty yards away. There’s no
distance inside the ship. No distance means no space. The interior of this ship is void of space.”

  There was a long pause. “Let’s go back to quarters,” I said feebly.

  Rim muttered to himself, shaking his head. But he pulled out the drill, disconnected it and made ready to leave.

  And then the drill began to bend and waver, in a way no solid object could. That wasn’t all. The arm and hand with which Rim held the tool began to bend and waver too, to flow, as if it were made of smoke and being distorted by air currents. Rim gave a wild yell when he saw the impossible contortions of his arm.

  Now part of his space armour began to behave in the same way. It was as if Rim were being sucked—sucked towards the hole he had drilled.

  “Get away, Rim!” I shouted, though I was too terrified to help him myself.

  For a moment he stared wonderingly at his body as it elongated and streamed, then he started up his jets and before I knew what was happening we were both hurtling towards the research ship without thought of the other. Almost blind with haste, I scrambled through the airlock to find Rim already waiting for me in the living quarters.

  “Rim,” I gasped. “You made it quick. Are you all right?”

  “Of course!” he snapped irritably. “Perfectly all right. It wasn’t me that was being malformed, it was just the space I occupied.”

  I peered closely at his body but didn’t find one trace of any deformation. He was his usual robust, unhealthy, disgusting self.

  He chewed the lid off a beer bottle and commenced to gulp the contents, allowing some of it to dribble down his chest. I helped myself to one, too, and it tasted good enough to bathe in, not that I thought of bathing.

  “Don’t you see what happened?” Rim said between gargles, flopping on to a couch. “It was space—pouring through the hole. There wasn’t any space inside. Well, now we know: space behaves like a fluid.”

  “I thought space was just nothing,” I replied, also gargling.

  “Space has structure,” he asserted seriously. “Direction: north, south, east, west, zenith, nadir. It has distance. Good God!” His over-ripe brown eyes suddenly alive with emotion, Rim leaped from the couch and switched on all the outer view-screens. “Look! All the sidereal universe is contained in space. Everything! Except. …” His voice tailed off into mutterings again. He let the empty bottle fall from his fingers and took another from one of the crates we always have piled up all over the place. Slowly he dropped back on to the couch, sullenly thoughtful.