The Zen Gun

13

At last Admiral Gruwert felt he had a proper outlet for his energies. He was enjoying his new role immensely.

Lifting his snout from the trough of choice delicacies he had installed in his office, he returned his attention to his duties.

The fleet was very nearly restored to operational status and was heading at top speed for Axaline Sector, the region it had been forced to quit when summoned to Escoria. Imperial Council Member Hiroshamak had given Gruwert explicit orders: there were signs that Axaline felt encouraged by recent events, not to revolt exactly, but to mount a campaign of stubborn civil disobedience, and the sector was to be discouraged by peremptory means.

The Axalines would find their error of judgement a most costly one. Gruwert recalled the planet Rostia. They would get no reprieve this time, he promised himself with satisfaction. It would be knuckle under at once or—

A voice interrupted his scanning of the weapons readiness reports. It was the new pig brigadier he had put in charge of the Drop Commando.

“Admiral, something odd is happening. One or two rebel pirates have been turning up. I thought they had all been dealt with.”

“Eh?” Gruwert thought quickly. “What have you done with them?”

“Scanned them away, naturally.”

Gruwert muttered under his breath. He was annoyed, while at the same time pleased that the Commandos were as keen as ever. They were armed permanently now, and stationed as a guard force throughout every ship of the fleet. It had not been lost on Gruwert that there might be internal dissension to deal with—indeed, he would not feel entirely safe until he received postings of some of the newly trained weasels whose loyalty was guaranteed.

“Don’t scan them,” he ordered. “If you find any more, take them alive. They’re probably the ones who started disappearing shortly after we were boarded. Remember? Those funny lines in the air? It was the space rent doing it.” He reflected again. “Some of our own people vanished too… leave that in my hands.”

“Yes sir.”

Gruwert cursed briefly as the Brigadier broke contact. Why did the Drop Commando have to bring him this news? It should have been picked up by Archier, the new Ship Management Officer! At any rate, he would need Archier to survey the ship’s population and see if any vanished personnel had reappeared.

He put out a call to Archier. To his fury, there was no answer. The man wasn’t contactable!

Such incompetence was all too believable! He would have him demoted yet again! He would have him cleaning the decks with the robots! The pesky human!

Gruwert suppressed his anger for long enough to think. The threat from the Tent in space still remained. The Imperial Council was supposed to be organising a special scientific organisation to deal with it, but Star Force wasn’t involved. Gruwert got the impression the Council was hoping the rent would go away on its own, which he didn’t really think was the right attitude.

If people really were reappearing from wherever it was they had vanished to, they probably had some valuable information.

He heaved himself to his trotters, telling his adjutant to stay where he was. Nothing like a personal appearance to an awkward moment for keeping the staff on their toes…

Fleet Admiral (Retired) Archier, now Acting Ship Management Officer, sat disconsolately holding hands with Hesper Positana. She had discarded her rebel’s uniform, after he had persuaded her that transportation to Diadem would not, any longer, mean a life of luxury and leisure. Instead, he had contrived to place her on the ship’s register.

“How could the humans among you let it happen?” she protested.

She still did not understand about Diadem. “It just happened,” he said simply.

“But they’re not people. They’re pigs. Pigs!”

“They are people. Hesper. To us, animals are people as well as human beings.”

“Well they’re not very nice people, are they?”

He was silent. He hardly dared mention what the future almost certainly held. A pig-ruled galaxy. A tyranny, probably, in which humans might even be relegated to second-class citizenship eventually. He was sure the pigs would never agree to share power with humans again, no matter what they said at present. The future belonged to them. They alone had the crude self-confidence, the ruthlessness, the lover of power.

Neither did he believe the coup had been as bloodless as Hiroshamak claimed. There must have been opposition. It looked, now, as if they had actually used the fleets. All except Ten-Fleet had been taken over simultaneously by senior pig officers. Obviously, then, there had been a deal of forward planning. Probably Gruwert and his pig pals had been waiting for a signal too…

“There’s talk of other species getting first-class citizenship too, if they prove themselves,” he remarked emptily.

“The weasels, most probably! They’ll grant them privileges, to make them even more enthusiastic.” Hesper squeezed his hand and leaned closer. “Just what is your loyalty to?” she asked anxiously. “Is it to the Empire, no matter who owns it? Or to mankind, and civilisation?”

“Need civilisation be man’s alone?”

“Yes!” she said emphatically. “Because only man is truly intelligent. These animals of yours—the only intelligence they have is what you gave them. It’s borrowed. Apart from that, they’re still undeveloped—not really sentient.”

Archier listened carefully to her words. They sounded novel and strange. Was this how people in the provinces thought?

He sighed. “I don’t know what you would have me do, Hesper. The pigs are in an invulnerable position. There’s scarcely any opposition that I’ve noticed among the flagship staff, and they are the most dedicated citizens in the Empire. In fact, I believe they welcome the pigs’ coup. The pigs will make the Empire strong again. Strong enough to claim the undisputed allegiance of every inhabited world. Strong enough eventually to embrace the whole galaxy—every biota-compatible planet. That’s what the people who run Star Force want, both men and animals.”

“That right, SMO,” said a lusty voice.

It was Gruwert. He came waddling forward, having apparently caught Archier’s last words. “It’s good you agree things have taken a turn for the better. But keep your communicator active in future, SMO. I’ve been looking for you.”

He swung on Hesper, peering at her. “I don’t believe I recognise you, my dear. What’s your section?”

“She’s in my department, Admiral,” Archier said quickly, noting with alarm the loathing with which Hesper stared back at his superior officer.

“And a most touching scene the two of you were putting on, if I may say so. Not showing a lack of, shall we say, enthusiasm for the new order, is she? If so you’d better talk some sense into her. Disloyalty won’t be tolerated!” His voice rose as he said this and he glared hard at Hesper. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want the Empire to be mighty, triumphant? The whole galaxy belongs to us of right, and it will all have to be held together. So make up your mind to it, because nothing can stop us now.”

“Something can stop you, animal.”

They turned on hearing the softly spoken words. A figure in a loose white garment was framed in the entrance to the chamber. The newcomer gazed on the scene as though not really seeing it, as though staring over their heads as something in the distance. Hesper recognised that look from her previous acquaintance with him. She knew he was observing them all keenly.

“Why, it’s the kosho,” Gruwert squealed in surprise. “I thought the pirates had killed you, kosho, or else the rent had taken you. Together with your master, the excellent Pout. What did happen to him?”

“He is safe,” Ikematsu said blandly. “He is on this ship somewhere. I saw him briefly, but he ran away from me. Yes, the rent took us. But we have returned. Everyone has returned.”

Gruwert’s eyes narrowed. He had been looking for Pout ever since taking command.

He switched his communicator to subvocal mode and spoke to his adjutant. “That man-ape, Pout. He’s on the ship, probably near where I am—I’m in the Ship Management Office. Have him found and brought to me.”

“You speak to someone,” Ikematsu said knowingly. He stepped into the room and beckoned behind him. Through the door came Sinbiane, leading Trixa by the hand and murmuring encouragement to him. The Diademian boy did not seem to know where he was. His eyes were glazed. His shoulders slumped.

Placing his hand on Sinbiane’s shoulder, Ikematsu addressed the pig. “I hear I should congratulate you on a new appointment. No doubt you are now even more anxious to have the chimera under your control. You suspected him of being the weapon that could destroy the Empire. How nearly right you were, pig. But the weapon is neither a new leader or a social idea, as you thought. That was a clever deduction, but the truth is simpler. Remember what the oracle said: ‘It has been disregarded because it is small.’ The ultimate weapon is in fact that little gun that Pout carries.”

“That toy?” Gruwert exploded. “What nonsense is this?”

The kosho, his bearing erect and with the odd stylised quality Hesper had often noticed, stepped away from the boys and swivelled to speak to all the three others present. The pig stiffened, his snout following him suspiciously.

“That electric pistol incorporates the most complete understanding of the laws of nature ever attained,” Ikematsu said. “It was made by a master of my order centuries ago, for a single reason: to render centrally governed empires impossible.

“The weapon was to accomplish this in a manner quite easy to understand. The zen gun, as it is called, is a sun-destroying handgun. To one qualified in its use the procedure is as follows. First, the gunman must get within three light years of the sun to be attacked. He then lines up the barrel with the target, and adjusts the beam so that it will spread to encompass the whole star. He then squeezes the trigger stud.

“The target star is disrupted by electrical means. As you know, positive and negative electricity differs only in the direction of the pseudo-spin of which electric force is composed. The zen gun, delving into the Simplex, inverts the pseudospin of all positive charges within the star, switching them to negative. A negligible amount of energy is involved in this simple but remarkable process. You may easily reason out the results. Since both electrons and protons now possess negative charge, there is repulsion both between the nuclei and electron shells of atoms, and between the nuclei of atoms. The star explodes. The electrons, with smaller mass, acquire the higher velocity. An expanding electron cloud totalling one four-thousandth of the mass of the whole star sweeps through the planetary system, ripping off atmospheres and destroying all life.

“The charge inversion lasts only seconds: the imbalance in the constituted universe cannot be maintained for longer than that. Anti-protons become protons again. But it is too late, the separation between charges has been accomplished. Some of the expanding electron cloud is attracted back to the main mass, but not enough to cancel the net positive charge on the more slowly exploding mass of atomic nuclei. In hours the positive cloud, the whole remaining mass of the star, has engulfed and disintegrated every planet of the system. It is millions of years before it attracts enough negative charge to become electrically neutral again. By that time it is too dispersed to coalesce. It never again becomes a star.

“So if you see that happening to a star within your territory, pig, you will know that you have received a warning and that the next sun to go will be the one illuminating your seat of government. The explosion is easily distinguishable from a nova or supernova. First there is a brilliant flash as the trapped protons ricocheting within the star are released. After that the star goes out, because as its stripped atomic nuclei recede from one another nuclear fusion ceases.”

Gruwert had been listening to the kosho’s story with intent concentration. Now he snorted, his little eyes glittering.

“This is not new. There already are ways to destroy stars.”

“With a handgun? No, only by moving titanic pieces of apparatus and colossal power sources close to the star—what enemy stands by and allows you to do that? Until now it has never been possible to destroy suns as an act of war. What makes the zen gun invincible is that it is small. One man can carry it unseen, it cannot be kept track of or detected. It is the equaliser between the individual and all the rest of the civilised universe. With just a sidearm, one man can now defeat an empire.”

The pig trembled slightly. Head lowered, he glared directly at Ikematsu. He looked as if he were about to charge at him. He had done a wise thing. Gruwert told himself, in bringing his bodyguard along. The stoat was stationed within call just up the corridor.

“Kosho, you speak treason, and shortly I shall have you arrested. Are you telling me you have this gun?”

“No, I do not have it. I had it, but I lost it.”

Gruwert snorted disdainfully. “This tale is preposterous. 1 do not believe a word of it. The man-ape’s toy is only a piece of wood.”

“Your disbelief will hasten the triumph of right,” Ikematsu responded blandly. “Before the chimera arrives, let me tell you something of the gun’s recent history. It may convince you.

“One gun is all that was ever made. Shortly after its manufacture my order was destroyed, in its original form, by political events. The weapon was lost, irrevocably, it was thought.

“Then, a few years ago, a kosho by the name of Orohisho Smith succeeded in finding it. Smith was not advanced enough spiritually to decode the gun fully, however, I do not think he was even interested in its ultimate use, only to exploit some of the secondary capabilities its mode of operation entails. Specifically, he wished to explore other facets of the Simplex. As a result of his meddling, the gun opened up the rent in space.

“Smith was never to know what he had done in his ignorance. He was tricked and made prisoner by one Torth Nascimento, who wished to keep him as a human specimen in a museum. To rob this man of his satisfaction, Smith took the course of self-destruction. Meantime his weapons, including the zen gun, had been placed in the museum’s weapons section, from where it was stolen by your friend Pout the chimera.

“It was then that I attached myself to Pout. My interest has been to see the gun fall into worthy hands, but 1 was honour-bound not to take it from him by force. Surprisingly, the gun responded to Pout a little. He was able to employ it as an anti-personnel weapon, and to give him personal power over others. He never guessed at its real secrets, of course. But he used to play with its settings. By doing this he unknowingly broke the gravitational bond between the planet Earth and its large satellite.”

Hesper, who with Archier had been listening in silence, gasped. “Is that what happened?”

“I don’t understand this,” Archier said. “There is no actual bond between gravitating bodies.”

“Strictly speaking you are right: gravitation is a screening effect. So I speak loosely. What the gun really did was to render Earth and the moon gravitationally transparent to one another.”

The kosho resumed his story. “You will recall that after the fleet entered the region effected by the rent a number of persons vanished. Among them were myself, Pout and these two boys. We were instantaneously transported to the surface of a planet, the same, I think, that the fleet was headed for. I will not dwell on what took place there. Suffice to say that at last I procured the zen gun from Pout, and I was able to remedy the damage done by my fellow kosho. I used the gun to close up the rent.”

“So if you’re telling the truth we don’t have that to worry about anymore.” Gruwert growled. “Good.”

“You never did. The rent would have closed up by itself, after a while. Another problem was inadvertently solved, however. As the rent closed, the entities that had come through it withdrew. But first they restored everything to the condition in which they found it. Everything they had dismembered they put together, everything they had moved they put back, in the twinkling of an eye. Those of us from this ship were put back on this ship, mended in body if not in mind.”

“The fleet has moved light years since you were taken,” Hesper said in puzzlement. “If you were put back where you were before, it would be into the void.”

Ikematsu gave his faint smile. “Evidently you have scant knowledge of physics. ‘Place’ as a physical reality applies only to material objects, not to empty space. This flagship is the ‘place’ from which we were taken, and it does not matter how it has altered its relationship with other places in the interim. Star Force’s intermat system,” he added casually, “works on the same principle.”

“Then where is the zen gun now?” Archier asked.

Ikematsu’s head turned. He was looking to the door. Pout had suddenly appeared there. He walked with a tired slouch, head down, arms hanging, as the ape in him had taken over completely. Blinking, he stumbled into the room, swayed, then leaned against a wall.

With him was a boy of about eight who seemed to have been pushing Pout ahead of him. On seeing Gruwert, the boy saluted self-consciously. “The chimera you ordered brought here, Admiral. We found him trying to hide in a clothes store. I, er, don’t think he’s very well.”

Feeling uneasy, Archier said. “That’s all. Go now. At once.”

As the boy left, Ikematsu answered Archier’s question. “The gun was not on me when I reappeared aboard the flagship. I reason that it, too, must have returned to its point of departure. I surmise that Pout has it.”

“SMO Archier!” Gruwert roared. “Get that gun!”

As if in a trance, Archier found himself moving towards the chimera, who suddenly flung up his arms to ward him off.

“No gun, no gun! Pout has no gun!”

“Look to see what you have in your bib, Pout,” Ikematsu said gently.

Blankly Pout stared at him. Then, trembling, he dipped his hand in his garment. It came out holding the zen gun.

“No gun!” he screamed. “No gun!” In terror he flung it from him. It clattered to the floor.

Archier picked it up as it fell to his feet. He turned it over in his hand. It looked so ordinary, so unfinished. How much was he to believe of the kosho’s tale? It was extraordinary, but well within the bounds of possibility. What else could explain the behaviour of Earth’s moon for instance?

If the kosho really had woven this and other happenings into a concocted story, then he really was uncommonly inventive. Gruwert, at any rate, gave the tale credence. After only a brief glance at the weapon Archier was examining, he was calling for his bodyguard.

Ikematsu shook his head warningly, “Your stoat is asleep. I dealt with him earlier. You face me alone.”

Gruwert shook with agitation. He knew how dangerous an adversary the kosho could be, even unarmed. He moved so as to put himself between Ikematsu and the door. “SMO,” he ordered quickly, “get out of here fast and take that gun to safety. I’ll hold this kosho back.”

“No!” Hesper shrieked. “Don’t let the pigs have it, or it’s slavery forever!”

Archier froze, only vaguely aware that Hesper was moving towards him. His mind was filling with images. A vision of Axaline, the place where they were going. He knew full well what Gruwert intended. Nuke a city here, beam a continent there. And then demand tribute. The slightest resistance and…

Then, too, there was Escoria. Hesper’s home sector. She claimed the fleet had nuked the moving teaching cities on Earth. Archier no longer disbelieved it. It would be just like Gruwert to arrange it behind his back.

And what a score he would settle with the sector as a whole, when they next went there!

“Give me that gun!” It was Gruwert’s voice, and it was distorted with passion, with rage at Archier’s lack of response. Even as he spoke, the pig charged. He bowled Archier over, reaching for the gun with his snout. Automatically Archier tried to keep the gun from the animal’s reach. The smell of the pig was all over him. He felt bristly hide against his skin frantic trotters scrambling and trampling on his limbs and body.

Then Hesper was with him, helping him struggle against the bulging, vigorous mass of lard. Somehow she hauled him from underneath Gruwert, who lost his balance and went sprawling on his side.

Archier staggered to Ikematsu. He pressed the gun into his hand. “You take it,” he gasped. “Do whatever you can!”

Gruwert, snorting and squealing, trotters sliding on the floor raised himself. Furiously he turned to face the kosho, backing off to charge him as he has Archier.

Before he could launch himself Ikematsu’s hand swept up. He spread two fingers, pointing them directly at the pig’s two eyes.

“Sleep.”

And Gruwert stood there, as motionless as a statue, his eyes open but unseeing.

As she joined Archier Hesper was breathing heavily. She stared down at the pig. “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.

“I have hypnotised him,” Ikematsu said simply.

With a look of intent concentration on his face, he was pressing the setting studs in a complicated sequence. “The die is cast,” he said to Archier. “You have made your decision: you have committed treason against the pigs’ Empire. Now we must all leave.”

“There’s no way off this ship for us,” Archier said, “unless you know of one.”

“Does not this gun reach into the Simplex? Have not the scientists always assured us that access to the Simplex means instantaneous travel to anywhere in our universe? Well, they are right.”

Again the kosho’s faint smile. He had finished what he was doing with the zen gun. He pointed the muzzle at each of his companions in turn, pressing the trigger stud each time.

The transition was without interval of time. Archier found himself standing on grassland in gathering dusk. The ground rose to a summit about a mile away, where he would see a building perched in outline against the darkening sky.

He was accustomed to using the intermat and so was not shocked or disoriented by the sudden change in surroundings, except that the air smelled unpleasantly bland and odourless. There were none of the additives he was used to, both on board ship and in the atmospheres of Diadem planets.

Then a breeze rippled the grass, and with it there came faint nameless scents.

He looked to see how Hesper had reacted. She seemed more bewildered than frightened, gazing about her with an expression of total bemusement. She had never used the intermat.

Pout had toppled over when deprived of the wall he had been leaning against and now sobbed with fear, until the kosho leaned over him and said something in a low, reassuring voice. He helped him to his feet.

“What planet is this?” Archier asked him.

“This is Earth.”

“Earth?” echoed Hesper. “The planet we were on before? But that’s impossible!”

“So everything you’ve told us about that gun is true.” Archier nodded at the weapon which Ikematsu still held limply in his hand. The kosho nodded, putting it away somewhere in his robe.

Curiously, Archier looked at him. “Why didn’t you help me when I was fighting with Gruwert?” he asked. “Why didn’t you take the gun from the chimera yourself? You could have done that, probably. If it comes to that, why did you have to tell the pig about the gun at all?” He paused. “It’s almost as if you set up what happened back there.”

When Ikematsu didn’t answer, Archier said, “I’ve heard koshos don’t get involved in political causes. Is that true?”

“Anything you hear about koshos is liable to be untrue,” Ikematsu said, with a hint of levity. Seriousness returned to his tone. “I will tell you the fact of it. My order has a rule: the kosho may not intervene directly in historical events. He may only act so as to create possibilities for actions by others. When I explained the nature of the zen gun to the pig, 1 was really speaking to you.”

“And if I had stayed loyal to the Empire? Or if Gruwert had won? You wouldn’t have interfered?”

“No.”

Archier shook his head. “There’s no point to this rule. It leaves everything to chance.”

“The rule does not exist for the benefit of civilisation. It exists to preserve the kosho from corruption. Yet, paradoxically, because of it the order is better able to serve mankind. The zen gun was made because a kosho foresaw that the pigs would eventually seize power. He left it to chance to preserve his weapon until that time.

“This is why the gun’s control is mental as well as manual. A pure animal cannot use it at all. The chimera Pout was able to use it a little, because he is partly human. But he would never be able to unlock its real secrets. For that, a spiritually trained intelligence is needed.”

“This kosho foresaw what the pigs would do? That long ago?” Archier was incredulous. “I can’t believe it.”

“But it was inevitable from the start. When you gave artificial intelligence to animals, you were giving base emotion an unnatural power of action. An animal with intelligence is still not equivalent to a man. It has no possibility of spiritual development, as a man has. This is easily proved. Animals do not experience what we call ‘beauty,’ for instance.”

Archier frowned. It was true: they were beauty-blind, as the phrase had it. Implants didn’t make any difference there.

“These creatures you have created should remain forever under the strict control of human beings,” Ikematsu went on, the grimness of his words belied by the habitual matter-of-factness of his tone. “Base passions exist within man also, but his higher nature is able to contend with them. When animals became your equals in society, with the same power of thought and speech and action, that struggle was exteriorised. A minute or so ago, Admiral Archier, it depended upon you alone as to whether the future belonged to man or to the pig. And who is to say that the pig will not yet triumph? Have you the courage to become a warrior against his Empire? To use the zen gun against him?”

“I?”

Archier felt as if he had been struck a blow. “I am not a kosho.”

“But you are a warrior.” Ikematsu laughed, without humour. “A kosho will not use the gun in war, Admiral Archier. I just explained that. Neither does one need to be a kosho to use it. One needs a degree of mental training, that is all.”

Lowering his head, Archier said, “What I just did is one thing, but 1 don’t think I can bring myself to be traitor enough for what you are suggesting.”

“Against the zen gun, the star fleets will be powerless to enforce obedience. But a man to use it must find the gun by himself. Well, we shall see. If my colleagues can analyse it successfully, the gun can be duplicated. Then the equaliser will remain always present…”

For a moment Ikematsu looked thoughtfully at Hesper. Then he pointed up the hill to the craggy outline. “That is a monastery where koshos receive part of their training. We shall go there now. The boy Trixa will be given mental therapy there.”

He slapped Pout on the back. “This poor tormented creature, too, needs treatment. He should have a better education than life has given him so far. Come.”

Slowly, moving as a group, they climbed through the slowly fading light to the looming, silent building.