Fire Pattern

CHAPTER 13

Jerome slept during most of the flight to the Antarctic, but—although he was no longer afraid for his life—his sleep was troubled by strangely pessimistic dreams.

He had listened to accounts of how a team of some twenty Dorrinians, forsaking their code of non-violence, had armed themselves and hunted down Prince Belzor. They had found him in a well-equipped bivouac near the southern tip of the Amity condominium. Although three days had passed since the death of Marmorc on Mercury, the Prince had still been in a state approaching catalepsy, so drained of vital energies that he had been unable to move or put up any kind of telepathic defence. A Dorrinian had promptly injected air into Belzor’s blood-stream, producing a complete cessation of the already feeble heart activity within thirty seconds. The body, apparently dead from natural causes, had then been placed in a snowdrift more than a kilometre from the tent. Although it had been the beginning of Spring in the Antarctic, there had been a blizzard in progress in that part of Graham Land and the temperature had been -18°C. The body had quickly been lost to view under a layer of powdery snow, and the Dorrinian execution squad had returned to the CryoCare headquarters and had been dispersed.

“We were very lucky,” Paul Nordenskjöld had said to Jerome. “Not one man was lost in the operation—but things would have been very different if the Prince had been in possession of his faculties.”

Nordenskjöld, spokesman for the dozen men and women who were also on the flight south, had maintained a discreet distance most of the time, allowing Jerome to rest and adjust to the new circumstances. The news of Belzor’s death had brought him a pang of relief—only then could he admit to himself that he had fully expected to die at the hands of the alien superman—but there had been no consequent happiness or peace of mind. The erasure of his fears about Belzor had opened the floodgate for all his pent-up apprehensions about the immediate and long-term future.

The lenticular opal on his finger was an aesthetically pleasing object; the story of the Dorrinian people and their dream was one of epic grandeur and courage; the word “reincarnation’ was charged with ethereal and spiritual connotations—but underlying all the lofty abstractions were realities of a different order. Realities such as four thousand diseased corpses. Jerome was on his way to a strange rendezvous with those corpses, bringing them the gift of life. But what sort of life was it going to be? The Dorrinians believed their infant statelet would quickly win acceptance among the nations of Earth, but Jerome could see nuclear augmentations of the aurora australis. In a world where mutilation and death were common penalties for incorrect skin pigmentation, what were the prospects for an alien sept whose origins reeked of every death taboo known to mankind?

Furthermore, what were his personal prospects? What was the outlook for a spindly giant, crushed by a body weight two-and-a-half times its norm, willing conscript of the undead, traitor to every man, woman and child on Earth?

How can all this have happened to me? Jerome had asked himself the question more than once during the flight. A major calamity should be the outcome of a major mistake, but all I did was stop off at an ordinary suburban house in Whiteford on my way to work.

If only I had driven on by…

“We’ll be landing in about ten minutes.” Nordenskjöld said, rousing Jerome from his uneasy drowsing. He was a swarthy man whose tight-curled black hair and Italianate features were ill-matched with his Nordic name. His burgundy necktie, like those of the other men, bore the CC symbol of CryoCare.

“Thank you.” Jerome levered himself upright with difficulty and glanced at the time display on the walnut panelling of the executive suite he was occupying. It said 14.08.

“We have dropped about twenty minutes behind schedule because we were forced to make a wide detour around Santiago,” Nordenskjöld explained. “The city was hit by a tactical nuclear weapon two days ago, and the Chileans are firing at everything they see.”

“It’s so good to be back.” Jerome looked at the quilted snowsuit which Nordenskjöld was offering him and thought about having to venture into the polar coldness. “Before you cram me into that thing, may I try the brandy again?”

“Of course.” Nordenskjöld went to a cocktail cabinet and returned with a glass of brandy. Jerome, who had rarely drunk alcohol in his old incarnation, had impulsively ordered brandy earlier in the flight. He had been hoping to find some hint of comfort in the warmth of the drink, but his Dorrinian senses had revolted at the taste. This time the reaction was less severe and he was able to get three sips down before his stomach gave a tentative heave. He handed the glass back, grateful for the glow which was kindling inside him, and struggled into the duvet garment with Nordenskjöld’s aid.

“Hey, am I going on some kind of expedition?” he said as another man brought him thick-soled thermal boots.

“You will only have to walk a short distance from a personnel transporter to the entrance of the Cryodome, but the temperature is in the region of minus thirty at the moment,” Nordenskjöld said. “And it’s almost as cold inside the dome.”

“I see,” Jerome said, filled with a sudden desperate yearning to have done with everything that was cold and inhuman, alien and unnatural. “Exactly what is going to happen when I go in there? Will I have to look at thousands of dead bodies?”

“I can’t discuss these things with you.”

“But I’m the Bearer of the Thabbren.”

“You’re not a Guardian.”

“Well, whatever’s going to happen, I hope it’s over soon. I just want to get it over with.” As though triggered by Jerome’s words, the seat belt warning signs began to glow. A faint rumbling sound accompanied by a momentary tilting sensation told him the aircraft had spread its metal plumage to the full for a landing. He looked out of the nearest window and experienced a déjà vu sensation as he saw a scene almost identical to his first glimpse of North Dakota. The entire world seemed to be made of trackless snowfields, frozen in perpetual twilight. A minute later the aircraft touched down on a strip of heated mesh and gradually came to a halt with a roar of reverse thrusting engines. Nordenskjöld and the others remained immobile in their seats until the turbines had given their last dying wail and the warning lights were extinguished.

No point in rushing things at the last minute, Jerome thought. Not after a wait of three-and-a-half thousand years.

He tried to imagine what was going through the Dorrinians’ minds as they moved stolidly and silently about the aircraft, adjusting snowsuits and gloves, collecting belongings from lockers, behaving much like commuters at the end of a routine flight. The task was impossible, he realized. Only a devout Christian who had actually observed the Second Coming could have an inkling of what these minutes meant to these ordinary looking men and women who had made the awesome mental leap between worlds in the furtherance of a dream.

Jerome felt compelled to be silent as the passenger exit was opened and stairs were put in place from below. He stood up and found that the hours of rest during the flight had made little difference to his physical incapacity. His head rolled grotesquely and his knees tended to buckle with every plodding step, as though he had been weighted down with many sandbags. He was breathing heavily by the time he got out on to the small platform at the head of the stair.

“I don’t want to be carried,” he said to Nordenskjöld as several men steadied him with solicitous hands.

“I quite understand.” Nordenskjöld nodded gravely. “It would also be better for us if the Bearer of the Thabbren arrived with dignity.”

“So be it.” Holding his breath to lessen the pain the gelid air was inflicting on his nostrils, Jerome fixed his eyes on the nearest of the track-laying vehicles which were waiting beside the plane and made his way to it. He tried to step up into its passenger compartment unaided, but his legs were simply unable to raise his body the short distance against the implacable pull of the planet. Others, seemingly gifted with Herculean power, half-lifted him and guided him into a seat. Only Nordenskjöld joined him in the compartment. There was a moment’s delay while the rest of the party boarded the other vehicles, then the little convoy moved off in the direction of distant blue-white lights.

Here we go, Jerome thought. One last little chore to perform for these people, and then I…That’s the question. Take up permanent residence in a wheelchair? In a hydrotherapy unit?

The surrounding bleakness served to depress his mood even further, and insulated in his cocoon of introspection he scarcely noticed when the vehicle began passing through gateways in wire fences. It was only when it crawled to a halt at a flat dome of a building, more than a hundred metres across, that he was again touched by the unearthly mystery and power of the occasion. His heart began a steady drumbeat as he realized that the unique moment was at hand, the moment when the histories of two worlds would fuse into one—with incalculable results.

The Four Thousand were about to be roused from their millennia-long slumber.

“We can go no closer to the entrance,” Nordenskjöld said, interrupting his reverie. “Do you think you can walk that far?”

Jerome studied the fan-shaped flight of steps which rose to the dome’s entrance. They were very wide, curving to the line of the building’s perimeter, and very shallow, gently ascending between granite windbreaks and heaps of cleared snow. This was where the Dorrinian he had seen die on the surface of Mercury should have walked in majesty and triumph as the chosen Bearer of the Thabbren, but fate had decreed that Rayner Jerome should take his place.

“I’ll be all right,” Jerome said. “Just put me on my feet.”

He waited without moving, not daring to negotiate the drop to the ground on his own, until Nordenskjöld had descended. The Dorrinian helped him out of the vehicle and stood back, looking pale and tense, as Jerome swayed for a second and then began his laboured ascent to the dome’s dark-shadowed entrance. Jerome reached the first step, raised his right foot on to it with comparative ease, and by leaning forward and exerting all the strength of his thigh successfully elevated the rest of his body. His left foot trailed into place beside the other, and he was stable again.

That wasn’t too bad, he thought. Only seven more to go.

Two unexpected events occurred simultaneously.

Behind Jerome, Paul Nordenskjöld emitted a tortured cry.

And ahead of Jerome, to the right of the stair, a mound of snow broke open, powdering away in the breeze, to disclose the figure of a man who was carrying a rifle.

Jerome, transfixed by fright, gaped at the apparition. The man raised his free hand and slowly drew back the hood of his parka, giving Jerome a clear view of his face, a face which had a strange familiarity to it. Jerome gave a quavering sigh as recognition came to him.

There was a moment of tumultuous silence, then the man said, “That’s right, Rayner—against all the odds, we meet again.”

Had Jerome been able he would have fled, obeying the dictates of instinct, heedless of his inability to outpace a bullet, but he was in the grip of a sick paralysis and all he could do was stand, teetering, on the first step and stare at the face which had once been his own.

They lied to me, he thought numbly. They lied because they knew I could never face this.

“No, they didn’t lie,” Belzor said. The fools had me—they actually had me!—and it’s a measure of their sheer incompetence that I’m still alive.”

Jerome willed his legs to let him back away, but all that happened was that a shudder went through his body.

Belzor gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. “You can’t leave, Rayner—not until you know all that you ought to know, all that your friends have kept from you.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Jerome mumbled.

“Yes, I made a serious mistake when I disposed of Marmorc the way I did,” Belzor said. “Under normal circumstances twenty Dorrinians would have been no match for me, not even when they had overcome their na;ïve prejudice against your world’s beautiful weaponry, but I was too weak to fight them. The only way I could win the struggle was by making them believe I had lost it—and that was so easy to do. The intelligent course would have been for them to fire bullets through my brain, but the fools weren’t even aware that I was influencing them when they contented themselves with stopping my heart and leaving me to freeze.”

Belzor smiled calmly. “This body I inherited from you was in extremely bad condition, Rayner. You would have died from arteriosclerosis within a matter of months, but now it is perfect and will continue to be that way for many years.”

Jerome, distraught and faint, became aware that another voice—a telepathic voice—was sounding above the clamour of his thoughts. The Prince cannot harm you, Rayner. He made a mistake in coming here. He has not regained his former powers, and we are containing him. He is unable to move or aim the rifle at you. Take the Thabbren into the dome.

“The fools are right in one respect,” Belzor said. “My kald energy has been greatly depleted, and for that reason they are able to contain me. It is an even match at present—tens of Guardians against one of me—but they are wrong to believe that I have made a mistake in meeting you here.”

The power of hatred enabled Jerome to speak firmly. “It was a mistake, Belzor. You tried to kill me.“

Belzor smiled again, unperturbed. “I fired at you and missed. You fired at me and hit. That more than put you even.”

“It wasn’t a game—you killed Pitman.”

“You’re not seriously concerned about that, are you? A Dorrinian body-snatcher! An alien invader who was in the very act of setting you up for a transfer! Be logical, Rayner.”

“I’m trying to be logical,” Jerome said, emboldened by the assurance that Belzor posed no physical threat. “And I still say you made a mistake in coming here.”

“But consider my alternative. I could have gone into hiding somewhere and allowed you to deliver the Thabbren, to reincarnate four thousand powerful Dorrinians who have good reason to want me dead. That would have been the real mistake.”

The Prince cannot prevent you delivering the Thabbren, a silent voice told Jerome. Carry it into the dome now!

Jerome took a pace towards the next stair. “You tried to kill me, Belzor.“

“I underestimated you that day at the lake, Rayner,” Belzor said. “The fact that you are back on this planet shows how much I underestimated you, but that is part of the past. I now know that you are intelligent enough to do what is best for you and your own people. That is my justification for meeting you here—I am staking my life on your intelligence.”

“But…” Jerome stiffened his legs to steady the leaden weight of his body. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that you are going to give me the Thabbren. You, of your own free will, are going to give me the Thabbren and allow me to draw off its kald energies, thus consigning the Four Thousand to oblivion, for ever.”

Carry the Thabbren into the dome NOW!

Jerome raised weighted arms and pressed his hands to his temples. “Why?” he said to Belzor. “Why should I do as you say?”

“Because, Rayner, I am going to tell you the truth about the Four Thousand…the truth which has been so carefully concealed from you by your highly ethical friends…and when you hear it…”

There was a screaming and a keening in Jerome’s mind, echoes of telepathic warfare rolling and reverberating through neural pathways. He saw Belzor stagger and grow pale.

“And when you hear it,” Belzor ground out, each word like the splintering of a bone, “you will decide, of your own free will, that the Four Thousand have no place in your world…or in any other…”

CARRY THE THABBREN INTO THE DOME NOW!

“The Guardians grow angry and afraid, but they can’t impose their will on you while I am alive. Listen to me and make your own decision, Rayner Jerome.” Belzor paused, looking as though he might fall, and when he spoke again his voice seemed weaker. “The Four Thousand, whose kalds you brought to Earth, were absolute controllers of Dorrin before the Days of the Comet. They were supertelepaths who had interlinked to form a composite mind of almost infinite power. You have seen what a single supertelepath can do. Try to imagine that ability raised to the power of four thousand.

“If the Dorrinian composite mind is brought into existence again it will be absolute overlord of every being on this planet. It will decide everything. It will control everything. As a human being you treasure your free will, Rayner Jerome—and I am telling you now that this could be your last opportunity to make use of it.

“Do not make the wrong decision!”

Jerome found that he was swaying, almost losing the battle to keep his burdensome body upright. He was breathing hard, and the cold was tearing at his lungs, but the pain was remote and unimportant. The coppery disc of the Sun, almost quenched in the greyness of the horizon, was dimly illuminating a battlefield. There was no sound from the Dorrinians behind him, and Belzor had fallen silent—watching and waiting—but there was a psychic conflict raging all about him, even though he could barely sense its shivers and shocks. And he, trapped at the centre of the battle, was being required to make an impossible decision, without even being sure that Belzor’s fantastic assertion was true.

“I speak the truth,” Belzor said. “Look at me.”

Jerome looked at the face which had once been his own, saw the eyes begin to lase, felt the beginnings of the special pain…

And he was on Earth twenty thousand years earlier, vicariously present as the colonists from space set up their encampments and spread their civilization, untroubled by competition from the indigenous tribes. The settlers were not surprised to find human beings already present—most of the suitable worlds in that region of space had been seeded during long-forgotten migrations—and they were on a technological crest which made them confident of their ability to deal with any adversity.

But the first major threat came from within.

A successful mutation occurred, creating individuals who possessed certain psi powers, including that of telepathy. The dominant genes of the mutation would have permeated the entire gene pool in the normal course of events, but the non-psi majority quickly became alarmed and took action to isolate the mutants. They chose to place them on the planet nearest the Sun because its natural conditions would force the mutants to live underground, unable to develop the physical resources needed for space travel.

But they failed to foresee that the telepaths would breed supertelepaths, and that the supertelepaths would coalesce into composite entities of increasing size and power, reaching the ultimate in the form of the Four Thousand—the vast aggregate mind which assumed total control of every aspect of life on the planet…

The pain faded and Jerome saw that Belzor had sunk to his knees. The near-subliminal shrilling in Jerome’s mind was rising in pitch and intensity, becoming unbearable, evidence that the psi battle was nearing its climax.

“It’s time for you to make that decision, Rayner,” Paul Nordenskjöld said from behind Jerome. “We are slowly overcoming the Prince, and in an hour’s time we will be able to take the decision out of your hands. But for the present you retain your freedom of choice. Are you going to use it wisely? Are you going to side with the evil that is Belzor, allow him to destroy the Thabbren, and accept whatever reward he decides to give you?”

“I’ll make you immortal,” Belzor whispered. “I’ll give you body after body. You can live for ever.”

Nordenskjöld responded at once. “Think carefully, Rayner. You know what Belzor is. As soon as he has the Thabbren in his hands he will kill every Dorrinian here, and quite probably he will kill you as well. But even if he did keep his promise there would be no eternal life for you—because your world is rushing to destruction. The coming nuclear winter will see the end of all human life on this planet.

“And that brings us to the other choice you can make on behalf of every man, woman and child on Earth.

“All you have to do is carry the Thabbren into the dome, and there will be an end to war. And to famine. And to disease. And to crime against man, and crime against the planet. Your cherished free will can never have been as precious to you as at this moment, Rayner. We don’t offer eternal life to you as a person—but your kind can grow as old as the Sun.”

Jerome stood quite still for three beats of his jolting heart, then he began to walk towards the dark entrance of the dome. His knees sagged at every step and he knew that if he fell it would be impossible for him to rise again, but he managed to move in a straight line and to prevent his head from wobbling. It was important that the Bearer of the Thabbren should arrive with dignity.

Belzor’s voice was tortured, so faint that it might have been a telepathic communication. “Don’t be a fool, Jerome! Don’t let them trick you! Do you really believe you’re acting under your own free will at this moment? Do you think you have ever had…?”

Jerome continued walking towards the dome.

The circular main chamber was filled with a chill white mist which all but obscured the banks of metred caskets. Rows of ceiling lights glowed like faint greenish moons. At a central location on the floor was a slim pedestal which terminated in a large hemispherical crystal. Jerome knew without being told, as in a dream, that he must go to the pedestal. He was no longer aware of the physical process of walking.

As in a dream, he approached the pedestal and saw there was a disc of platinum set into the crystal’s flat upper surface. As in a dream, he removed his left glove.

The opal ring of the Thabbren slid off his finger easily, and he placed it on the disc.

There was no sound, no visible consequence of his action, but the etheric agitation in his mind, the nearly-heard clamour of telepathic conflict, came to an abrupt end.

Belzor is dead, he thought, without emotion. He turned away from the pedestal, intending to walk back to the group who were waiting at the chamber’s entrance, but the weight of his body was suddenly insupportable, the fierce gravity of Earth too much to contend with any longer. He stumbled and went down hard on to his knees, and waited helplessly while Nordenskjöld and another man rushed to his aid. They raised him to his feet and carried him out of the chamber and its shifting silvered mists into an anteroom.

Jerome tried to smile at Nordenskjöld as he was being placed in a chair. “I didn’t expect to be so…so weak. I don’t know if I can go on like this for very long.”

“You won’t have to,” Nordenskjöld said. “We reward our own.”

“But I don’t see what you can…”

There was an instant of pain, the special pain, and Jerome found himself kneeling in the drifted snow beside the flight of steps leading up to the Cryodome. He stood up and, even in his turmoil of shock and confusion, was aware that the action had been accomplished with complete lack of effort. There was a solid object in his right hand. He looked down at the rifle and—trying to express the inexpressible—threw the weapon away, sending it whirling high over the windbreaks.

His body and soul had been reunited, and he felt right. There was nothing in the universe, he realized, which could have compensated for the loss of that feeling. He turned and walked towards the dome, noting that his unaided vision was now perfect. He was on the top step when Nordenskjöld emerged from the dark rectangle of the entrance.

“You don’t have to spend any more time here, Rayner,” Nordenskjöld said as he took Jerome’s arm and turned him away from the circular building. “The plane is at your disposal, and you can leave as soon as it is refuelled.”

“Wait!” Jerome refused to move. “You can’t just drop me like this.”

Nordenskjöld’s face was solemn. “You have been used and to some extent abused, but you are also being rewarded. Belzor was not lying about your previous life expectancy, but the physical form you now inhabit is as perfect as a human body can…”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jerome cut in. “What’s going to happen about…everything? Have the Four Thousand been reincarnated? Are they going to contact the United Nations? And what about the…?”

“Not so fast,” Nordenskjöld said, beginning to smile. “We are not going to rush things—not after being patient for thousands of years. The presence of the Four Thousand on Earth will remain secret until the time is ripe. They can work better that way, with less upheaval in your world’s affairs. I’m sure you can see that is the best way.”

Jerome was dissatisfied. “But what about all the people on Mercury? I was told there was going to be a big space programme to bring them all here.”

“That will all be taken care of in due course. The world will be told that the astronaut who was rescued from Mercury died of cardiac arrest, and that he claimed to have been born on Mercury in an underground colony. The Dorrinian vacuum suit and its radio will also be shown in the right places. Those measures will stimulate enough world interest to ensure that there will be more missions to Mercury, and from that point on the situation can develop at its own pace.”

“It isn’t going to work,” Jerome said. “Even if the Dorrinians can keep quiet about the Four Thousand and how they got here, any Terrans you bring back will shout their heads off.”

Nordenskjöld shook his head. “No, Rayner. They will say only what the Four Thousand want them to say. They will remember only what the Four Thousand want them to remember.”

“Can the Four Thousand exercise that much control over so many people at once?”

“Of course.” Nordenskjöld’s eyes were locked hard with Jerome’s. “That is a simple task.”

“What this all boils down to,” Jerome said steadily, accepting that it would be futile to run, is that something has to be done about me.”

“Don’t be alarmed, Rayner,” Nordenskjöld said with great gentleness. “We are a very ethical people.”