The Celestial Blueprint and Others Stories Page 6

  “Look here, captain,” said Rastignac, “why don’t you try a swig yourself? Go ahead. There’s plenty. And I’m sure Their Majesties would be pleased to contribute some of it on this joyous occasion. Besides, I can always make more for the Kings.

  “As a matter of fact,” he added, winking, “I expect to get a pension from the courts as the Kings’ Old Equalizer-maker.”

  The crowd laughed. The Amphib, afraid of losing face, took the bottle—which contained wine rather than fruit juice. After a few long swallows, the Amphib’s eyes became red and a silly grin curved his thin, black-edged lips. Finally, in a thickening voice, he asked for another bottle.

  Rastignac, in a sudden burst of generosity, not only gave him one, but began passing out bottles to the many eager reaching hands. Mapfarity and the two egg-thieves helped him. In a short time, the pile of bottles had dwindled to a fourth of its former height. When a mixed group of guards strode up and demanded to know what the commotion was about, Rastignac gave them some of the bottles.

  Meanwhile, Archambaud slipped off into the mob. He lurched into an Amphib, said something nasty about his ancestors, and pulled his knife. When the Amphib lunged for the little man, Archambaud jumped back and shoved a Human-Amphib into the giant flipper-like arms.

  Within a minute, the square had erupted into a fighting mob. Staggering, red-eyed, slur-tongued, their long-repressed hostility against each other released by the liquor which (heir bodies were unaccustomed to, Human, Ssassaror and Amphib fell to with the utmost will, slashing, slugging, fighting with everything they had.

  None of them noticed that every one who had drunk from the bottles had lost his Skin. The Skins had fallen off one by one and lay motionless on the pavement where they were kicked or stepped upon. Not one Skin tried to crawl back to its owner because they were all nerve-numbed by the wine.

  Rastignac, seated behind the wheel of the Jeep, began driving as best he could through the battling mob. After frequent stops, he halted before the broad marble steps that ran like a stairway to heaven, up and up before it ended on the Porpoise Porch of the Palace. He and his gang were about to take the two heavy chests off the wagon when they were transfixed by a scene before them.

  A score of dead Humans and Amphibs lay on the steps, evidence of the fierce struggle that had taken place between the guards of the two monarchs. Evidently, the King had heard of the riot and hastened outside. There the Amphib-changeling King had apparently realized that the rebellion was way ahead of schedule, but he had attacked the Amphib King anyway.

  And he had won, for his guardsmen held the struggling flipper-footed Amphib ruler down while two others bent his head back over a step. The Changeling-King himself, still clad in the coronation robes, was about to draw his long ceremonial knife across the exposed and palpitating throat of the Amphib King.

  This in itself was enough to freeze the onlookers. But the sight of Lusine running up the stairway towards the rulers added to their paralysis. She had a knife in her hand and was holding it high as she ran toward her foster-father, the Amphib King.

  Mapfarity groaned, but Rastignac said, “It doesn’t matter that she has escaped. We’ll go ahead with our original plan.”

  They began unloading the chests while Rastignac kept an eye on Lusine. He saw her run up, stop, say a few words to the Amphib King, then kneel and stab him, burying the knife in his jugular vein. Then, before anybody could stop her, she had applied her mouth to the cut in his neck.

  The Human-King kicked her in the ribs and sent her rolling down the steps. Rastignac saw correctly that it was not her murderous deed that caused his reaction. It was because she had dared to commit it without his permission and had also drunk the royal blood first.

  He further noted with grim satisfaction that when Lusine recovered from the blow and ran back up to talk to the King, he ignored her. She pointed at the group around the wagon but he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He was too busy gloating over his vanquished rival lying at his feet.

  The plotters hoisted the two chests and staggered up the steps. The King passed them as he went down with no more than a curious glance. Gifts had been coming up those steps all day for the King, so he undoubtedly thought of them only as more gifts. So Rastignac and his men walked past the knives of the guards as if they had nothing to fear.

  Lusine stood alone at the top of the steps. She was in a half-crouch, knife ready. “I’ll kill the King, and I’ll drink from his throat!” she cried hoarsly. “No man kicks me except for love. Has he forgotten that I am the foster-daughter of the Amphib King?”

  Rastignac felt revulsion but he had learned by now that those who deal in violence and rebellion must march with strange steppers.

  “Bear a hand here,” he said, ignoring her threat.

  Meekly she grabbed hold of a chest’s comer. To his further questioning, she replied that the Earthman who had landed in the ship was held in a suite of rooms in the west wing. Their trip thereafter was fast and direct. Unopposed, they carted the chests to the huge room where the Master Skin was kept.

  There they found ten frantic biotechnicians excitedly trying to determine why the great extraderm—the Master Skin through which all individual Skins were controlled—was not broadcasting properly. They had no way as yet of knowing that it was operating perfectly but that the little Skins upon the Amphibs and their hostage Humans were not shocking them into submission because they were lying in a wine-stupor on the ground. No one had told them that the Skins, which fed off the bloodstream of their hosts, had become anesthetized from the alcohol and failed any longer to react to their Master Skin.

  That, of course, applied only to those Skins in the square that were drunk from the wine. Elsewhere all over the kingdom, Amphibs writhed in agony and Ssassarors and Terrans were taking advantage of their helplessness to cut their throats. But not here, where the crux of the matter was.

  XII

  THE LANDSMEN rushed the techs and pushed them into the great chemical vat in which the twenty-five hundred foot square Master Skin floated. Then they uncrated the lead-leaf-lined bags filled with stolen geese and emptied them into the nutrient fluid. According to Mapfarity’s calculations, the radio-activity from the silicon-carbon geese should kill the big Skin within a few days. When a new one was grown, that, too, would die. Unless the Amphib guessed what was wrong and located the geese on the bottom of the ten-foot deep tank, they would not be able to stop the process. That did not seem likely.

  In either case, it was necessary that the Master Skin be put out of temporary commission, at least, so the Amphibs over the Kingdom could have a fighting chance. Mapfarity plunged a hollow harpoon into the isle of floating protoplasm and through a tube connected to that poured into the Skin three gallons of the dream-snake venom. That was enough to knock it out for an hour or two. Meanwhile, if the Amphibs had any sense at all, they’d have rid themselves of their extraderms.

  They left the lab and entered the west wing. As they trotted up the long winding corridors Lusine said, “Jean-Jacques, what do you plan on doing now? Will you try to make yourself King of the Terrans and fight us Amphib-changelings?” When he said nothing, she went on. “Why don’t you kill the Amphib-changeling King and take over here? I could help you do that. You could then have all of L’Bawpfey in your power.”

  He shot her a look of contempt and cried, “Lusine, can't you get it through that thick little head of yours that everything I’ve done has been done so that I can win one goal: reach the Flying Stars? If I can get the Earthman to his ship I’ll leave with him and not set foot again for years on this planet. Maybe never again.”

  She looked stricken. “But what about the war here?” she asked.

  “There are a few men among the Landfolk who are capable of leading in wartime. It will take strong men, and there are very few like me, I admit, but—oh, oh, oppositionl” He broke off at sight of the six guards who stood before the Earthman’s suite.

  Lusine helped, and within a minute t
hey had slain three and chased away the others. Then they burst through the door—and Rastignac received another shock.

  The occupant of the apartment was a tiny and exquisitely formed redhead with large blue eyes and very unmasculine curves!

  “I thought you said Earthman?” protested Rastignac to the Giant who came lumbering along behind them.

  “Oh, I used that in the generic sense,” Mapfarity replied. "You didn’t expect me to pay any attention to sex, did you? I’m not interested in the gender of you Humans, you know.”

  There was no time for reproach. Rastignac tried to explain lo the Earthwoman who he was, but she did not understand liim. However, she did seem to catch on to what he wanted and seemed reassured by his gestures. She picked up a large book from a table and, hugging it to her small, high, and rounded bosom, went with him out the door.

  They raced from the palace and descended onto the square. Here, they found the surviving Amphibs clustered into a solid phalanx and fighting, bloody step by step, towards the street that led to the harbor.

  Rastignac’s little group skirted the battle and started down the steep avenue toward the harbor. Halfway down, he

  glanced back and saw that nobody as yet was paying an; attention to them. Nor was there anybody on the street t both them, though the pavement was strewn with Skins am bodies. Apparently, those who’d lived through the firs savage mel£e had gone to the square.

  They ran onto the wharf. The Earthwoman motioned t< Rastignac that she knew how to open the spaceship, but th Amphibs didn’t. Moreover, if they did get in, they wouldn know how to operate it. She had the directions for so doinj in the book hugged so desperately to her chest. Rastigna surmised she hadn’t told the Amphibs about that. Appar ently they hadn’t, as yet, tried to torture the informatioi from her.

  Therefore, her telling him about the book indicated sh trusted him.

  Lusine said, “Now what, Jean-Jacques? Are you still goinj to abandon this planet?”

  “Of course,” he snapped.

  “Will you take me with you?”

  He had spent most of his life under the tutelage of hi Skin, which ensured that others would know when he wa; lying. It did not come easy to hide his true feelings. So i habit of a lifetime won out.

  “I will not take you,” he said. “In the first place, thougl you may have some admirable virtues, I’ve failed to detec one. In the second place, I could not stand your blood drinking nor your murderous and totally immoral ways.”

  “But, Jean-Jacques, I will give them up for you!”

  “Can,the shark stop eating fish?”

  “You would leave Lusine, who loves you as no Earthwomai could, and go with that—that pale little doll I could breal with my hands?”

  “Be quiet,” he said. “I have dreamed of this moment al my life. Nothing can stop me now.”

  They were on the wharf beside the bridge that ran u{ the smooth side of the starship. The guard was no longei there, though bodies showed that there had been reluctanc< on the part of some to leave.

  They let the Earthwoman precede them up the bridge. Lusine suddenly ran ahead of him, crying, “If you won’t have me, you won’t have her, either! Nor the stars!”

  Her knife sank twice into the Earthwoman’s back. Then, before anybody could reach her, she had leaped off the bridge and into the harbor.

  Rastignac knelt beside the Earthwoman. She held out the book to him, then she died. He caught the volume before it struck the wharf.

  “My God! My God!” moaned Rastignac, stunned with grief and shock and sorrow. Sorrow for the woman and shock at the loss of the ship and the end of his plans for freedom.

  Mapfarity ran up then and took the book from his nerveless hand. “She indicated that this is a manual for running the ship,” he said. “All is not lost.”

  “It will be in a language we don’t know,” Rastignac whispered.

  Archambaud came running up, shrilled, “The Amphibs have broken through and are coming down the street! Let’s get to our boat before the whole bloodthirsty mob gets here!”

  Mapfarity paid him no attention. He thumbed through the book, then reached down and lifted Rastignac from his crouching position by the corpse.

  “There’s hope yet, Jean-Jacques,” he growled. “This book is printed with the same characters as those I saw in a book owned by a priest I knew. He said it was in Hebrew, and that it was the Holy Book in the original Earth language. This woman must be a citizen of the Republic of Israeli, which I understand was rising to be a great power on Earth at the lime you French left.

  “Perhaps, the language of this woman has changed somewhat from the original tongue, but I don’t think the alphabet has. I’ll bet that if we get this to a priest who can read it— there are only a few left—he can translate it well enough for us to figure out everything.”

  They walked to the wharf’s end and climbed down a ladder to a platform where a dory was tied up. As they rowed out to their sloop Mapfarity said:

  “Look, Rastignac, things aren’t as bad as they seem. If you haven’t the ship nobody else has, either. And you alone have the key to its entrance and operation. For that you can thank the Church, which has preserved the ancient wisdom for emergencies which it couldn’t forsee, such as this. Just as it kept the secret of wine, which will eventually be the greatest means for delivering our people from their bondage to the Skins and, thus enable them to fight the Amphibs back instead of being slaughtered.

  “Meanwhile, we’ve a battle to wage. You will have to lead it. Nobody else but the Skinless Devil has the prestige to make the people gather around him. Once we accuse the Minister of Ill-Will of treason and jail him, without an official Breaker to release him, we’ll demand a general election. You’ll be made King of the Ssassaror; I, of the Terrans. That is inevitable, for we are the only skinless men and, therefore, irresistible. After the war is won, we’ll leave for the stars. How do you like that?”

  Rastignac smiled. It was weak, but it was a smile. His bracket-shaped eyebrows bent into their old sign of determination.

  “You are right,” he replied. “I have given it much thought. A man has no right to leave his native land until he’s settled his problems here. Even if Lusine hadn’t killed the Earthwoman and I had sailed away, my conscience wouldn’t have given me any rest. I would have known I had abandoned the fight in the middle of it. But now that I have stripped myself of my Skin—which was a substitute for a conscience— and now that I am being forced to develop my own inward conscience, I must admit that immediate flight to the stars would have been the wrong thing.”

  The pleased Mapfarity said, “And you must also admit, Rastignac, that things so far have had a way of working out for the best. Even Lusine, evil as she was, has helped towards the general good by keeping you on this planet. And the Church, though it has released once again the old evil of alcohol, has done more good by so doing than . .

  But here Rastignac interrupted to say he did not believe in this particular school of thought, and so, while the howls of savage warriors drifted from the wharfs, while the structure of their world crashed around them, they plunged into that most violent and circular of all whirlpools—the Discussion Philosophical.

  THE CELESTIAL BLUEPRINT

  by Philip Jose Farmer

  I

  THE ARROGANCE with which B. T. Revanche strode through the outer office of Bioid Electronic was enough to convince anyone that he was a V.V.I.P. His little eyes straying neither to left nor right, long fat cigar stabbed straight ahead, quilllike hair bristling in all directions, he was a stout little porcupine of a man. And like that spear-backed creature, he knew that no one would stop him. If they did, they’d regret it— so help them!

  Very few people ever paced so fearlessly through the waiting rooms of Bioid. Most persons sat a long time on the “heel-cooling” chairs, and when they were summoned to enter the Sanctum Sanctorum, they were seldom escorted by a Bioid treacher.

  But B. T. Revanche—contrary to ru
mor, the initials did not stand for Blood Thirsty—walked into the skyscraper that overlooked the free city of Messina, and did not bother to announce himself. Taking it for granted that he’d be recognized wherever he went, he did not even switch off his personal anti-espionage field.

  Such a gesture of simple courtesy would have seemed to him an affront to his prestige.

  He brushed aside those who looked as if they might get

  in his way, stepped into an antigravity elevator, and was whisked up fifty stories to the immense suite of Bioid’s GHQ. There, a gold-plated treacher picked him up and preceded him, barking out his name with flattering precision.

  “Make way for Signor Revanche! One side or a leg off, please! Lo, he cometh!”

  Revanche frowned, and bit down on his cigar. He didn’t like the slightest suspicion of levity in regard to himself.

  Despite a twinge of annoyance, however, he was impressed by the offices. Blazing slogans hung along the walls: Bioid is more than skin deep! Our trinity: Art & Science & Da Vincelleo! Perfect both inside and out! For the Gods —and Da Vincelleo!

  Diagrams and sketches of the great Messinan’s works hung here and there—drawings of the human body in various positions, along with pictures of Bioid robots in corresponding postures.

  Poised on plastiglass were germanium brains, startlingly life-like statues that breathed, and a mounted gorilla, last of his species, shot by the great Da Vincelleo himself. If you stepped on a plate set in the floor while admiring it, it would reach out for you—reach out and roar loud enough to scare the shorts off you.

  B. T. Revanche paused for an instant before one of the statues, and manipulated a dial at its base. It was that of an attractive woman clothed in a simple tunic of green-gold gauze, her limbs gazelle-slender in the glare.

  “Speak to me, baby,” he said.

  The plastiskin woman spoke, her lips arching in a seductive smile. “Good afternoon, man of culture. I am not alive, but there is a grace and beauty in all of Da Vincello’s creations, and, when you look at them, you forget that you have come here to pass an idle hour.