Tài liệu The Helpful Hand of God pdf

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(From "Vogarian Revised Encyclopedia":
SAINTS: Golden Saints, properly, Yellow Saints, a term of contempt applied
by the Vogarian State Press to members of the Church Of The Golden Rule be-
cause of their opposition to the war then being planned against Alkoria. See
CHURCHES.
CHURCH, GOLDEN RULE, OF THE: A group of reactionary fanatics who
resisted State control and advocated social chaos through "Individual Freedom."
They were liquidated in the Unity Purge but for two-thousand of the more able-
bodied, who were sentenced to the moon mines of Belen Nine. The prison ship
never arrived there and it is assumed that the condemned Saints somehow over-
powered the guards and escaped to some remote section of the galaxy.)
Kane had observed Commander Y'Nor's bird-of-prey profile with de-
tached interest as Y'Nor jerked his head around to glare again at the
chronometer on the farther wall of the cruiser's command room.
"What's keeping Dalon?" Y'Nor demanded, transferring his glare to
Kane. "Did you assure him that I have all day to waste?"
"He should be here any minute, sir," Kane answered.
"I didn't find the Saints, after others had failed for sixty years, to then
sit and wait. The situation on Vogar was already very critical when we
left." Y'Nor scowled at the chronometer again. "Every hour we waste
waiting here will delay our return to Vogar by an hour—I presume you
realize that?
"It does sound like a logical theory," Kane agreed.
Y'Nor's face darkened dangerously. "You will—"
Quick, hard-heeled footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The
guard officer, Dalon, stepped through the doorway and saluted; his eyes
like ice under his pale brows and his uniform seeming to bristle with
weapons.
"The native is here, sir," he said to Y'Nor.
He turned, and made a commanding gesture. The leader of the Saints
appeared; the man whose resistance Y'Nor would have to break.
A frail, white-bearded old man, scuffed uncertainly into the room in
straw sandals, his faded blue eyes peering nearsightedly toward Y'Nor.
"Go to the commander's desk," Dalon ordered in his metallic tones.
The old man obeyed and stopped before Y'Nor's desk, his hands
clasped together as though to hide their trembling.
"You are Brenn," Y'Nor said, "and you hold, I believe, the impressive
titles of Chief Executive of the Council Of Provinces and Supreme Elder
of the Churches Of The Golden Rule?"
4
"Yes, sir." There was a faint quaver in old Brenn's voice. "I welcome
you to our world, sir, and offer you our friendship."
"I understand you can produce Elusium X fuel?"
"Yes, sir. Our Dr. Larue told me the process is within our ability.
We—" He hesitated. "We know you haven't enough fuel to return to
Vogar."
Y'Nor stiffened in his chair. "What makes you think that?"
"It requires a great deal of fuel to get through the Whirlpool star
cluster—and even sixty years ago, the Elusium ores of Vogar were al-
most exhausted."
Y'Nor smiled thinly. "That reminds me—you would be one of the
Saints who murdered their guards and stole a ship to get here."
"We killed no guards, sir. In fact, all of them eventually joined our
church."
"Where is the ship?"
"We had to cut it up for our start in mechanization."
"I presume you know you will pay for it?"
"It was taking us to our deaths in the radium mines—but we will pay
whatever you ask."
"The first installment will be one thousand units of fuel, to be pro-
duced with the greatest speed possible."
"Yes, sir. But in return"—the old man stood a little straighter and an
underlying resolve was suddenly revealed—"you must recognize us as a
free race."
"Free? A colony founded by escaped criminals?"
"That is not true! We committed no crime, harmed no living thing… ."
The hard, cold words of Y'Nor cut off his protest:
"This world it now a Vogarian possession. Every man, woman, and
child upon it is a prisoner of the Vogarian State. There will be no resist-
ance. This cruiser's disintegrators can destroy a town within seconds,
your race within hours. Do you understand what I mean?"
The visible portion of old Brenn's face turned pale. He spoke at last in
the bitter tones of frightened, stubborn determination:
"I offered you our friendship; I hoped you would accept, for we are a
peaceful race. I should have known that you came only to persecute and
enslave us. But the hand of God will reach down to help us and—"
Y'Nor laughed, a raucous sound like the harsh caw of the Vogarian
vulture, and held up a hairy fist.
"This, old man, is the hand for you to center your prayers around. I
want full-scale fuel production commenced within twenty-four hours. If
5
this is done, and if you continue to unquestioningly obey all my com-
mands, I will for that long defer your punishment as an escaped crimin-
al. If this is not done, I will destroy a town exactly twenty-five hours
from now—and as many more as may be necessary. And you will be
publicly executed as a condemned criminal and an enemy of the Vogari-
an State."
Y'Nor turned to Dalon. "Take him away."
S
cared sheep," Y'Nor said when Brenn was gone. "Tomorrow he'll
say that he prayed and his god told him what to do—which will be
to save his neck by doing as I command."
"I don't know—" Kane said doubtfully. "I think you're wrong about his
conscience folding so easily."
"You think?" Y'Nor asked. "Perhaps I should remind you that the abil-
ity to think is usually characteristic of commanders rather than sub-en-
signs. You will not be asked to try to think beyond the small extent re-
quired to comprehend simple commands."
Kane sighed with weary resignation. An unexpected encounter with
an Alkorian battleship had sent the Vogarian cruiser fleeing through the
unexplored Whirlpool star cluster—Y'Nor and Kane the two surviving
commissioned officers—with results of negative value to those most af-
fected: the world of the Saint had been accidentally discovered and he,
Kane, had risen from sub-ensign to the shakily temporary position of
second-in-command.
Y'Nor spoke again:
"Since Vogarian commanders do not go out and mingle with the nat-
ives of a subject world, you will act as my representative. I'll let Brenn
sweat until tomorrow, then you will go see him. In that, and in all sub-
sequent contacts with the natives, you will keep in mind the fact that I
shall hold you personally responsible for any failure of my program."
The next afternoon, two hours before the deadline, Kane went out into
the sweet spring air of the world the Saints had named Sanctuary.
It was a virgin world, rich in the resources needed by Vogar, with
twenty thousand Saints as the primary labor supply. It was also, he
thought, a green and beautiful world; almost a familiar world. The cruis-
er stood at the upper edge of the town and in the late afternoon sun the
little white and brown houses were touched with gold, half hidden in the
deep azure shadows of the tall trees and flowering vines that bordered
the gently curving streets.
6
Restlessness stirred within him as he looked at them. It was like going
back in time to the Lost Islands, that isolated little region of Vogar that
had eluded collectivization until the year he was sixteen. It had been at
the same time of year, in the spring, that the State Unity forces had
landed. The Lost Island villages had been drowsing in the sun that after-
noon, as this town was drowsing now—
He forced the memories from his mind, and the futile restlessness they
brought, and went on past a golden-spired church to a small cottage that
was almost hidden in a garden of flowers and giant silver ferns.
Brenn met him at the door, his manner very courteous, his eyes dark-
shadowed with weariness as though he had not slept for many hours,
and invited him inside.
When they were seated in the simply-furnished room, Brenn said,
"You came for my decision, sir?"
"The commander sent me for it."
Brenn folded his thin hands, which seemed to have the trembling
sometimes characteristic of the aged.
"Yesterday evening when I came from the ship, I prayed for guidance
and I saw that I could only abide by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you."
"Which means," Kane asked, "that you will do what?"
"Should we of the Church be stranded upon an alien world, our fuel
supply almost gone, we would ask for help. By our own Golden Rule we
can do no less than give it."
"Eighteen hours ago I issued the order for full-scale, all-out fuel pro-
duction. I've been up all night and day checking the operation."
Kane stared, surprised that Y'Nor should have so correctly predicted
Brenn's reaction. He tried to see some change in the old man, some evid-
ence of the personal fear that must have broken him so quickly, but there
was only weariness, and a gentleness.
"So much fuel—" Brenn said. "Is Vogar still at war with Alkoria?"
Kane nodded.
"Once I saw some Alkorian prisoners of war on Vogar," Brenn said.
"They are a peaceful, doglike race. They never wanted to go to war with
Vogar."
Well—they still didn't want war but on Alkoria were Elusium ores and
other resources that the Vogarian State had to have before it could carry
out its long-frustrated ambition of galactic conquest.
7
"I'll go, now," Kane said, getting out of his chair, "and see what you're
having done. The commander doesn't take anybody's word for
anything."
B
renn called a turbo-car and driver to take him to the multi-purpose
factory, which was located a short distance beyond the other side of
town. The driver stopped before the factory's main office, where a
plump, bald man was waiting, his scalp and glasses gleaming in the
sunshine.
"I'm Dr Larue, sir," he greeted Kane. He had a face that under normal
circumstance would have been genial. "Father Brenn said you were com-
ing. I'm at your service, to show you what we're doing."
They went inside the factory, where the rush of activity was like a bee-
hive. Machines and installations not needed for fuel production were be-
ing torn out as quickly as possible, others taking their place. The work-
ers—he craned his neck to verify his astonished first-impression.
All of them were women.
"Father Brenn's suggestion," Larue said. "These girls are as competent
as men for this kind of work and their use here permits the release of
men to the outer provinces to procure the raw materials. As you know,
our population is small and widely scattered—"
A crash sounded as a huge object nearby toppled and fell. Kane took
an instinctive backward step, and bumped into something soft.
"Oh … excuse me, sir!"
He turned, and had a confused vision of an apologetic smile in a pretty
young face, of red curls knocked into disarray—and of amazingly short
shorts and a tantalizingly wispy halter.
She recovered the notebook she had dropped and hurried on, leaving
a faint cloud of perfume in her wake and a disturbing memory of
curving, golden tan legs and a flat little stomach that had been exposed
both north and south to the extreme limits of modesty.
"A personnel supervisor from Beachville," Larue said. "She was sun-
bathing when the plane arrived to pick her up and had no time to obtain
other clothing. Father Brenn firmly insisted upon losing not one minute
of time during this emergency."
A crane rumbled into view and its grapples seized the huge object that
had fallen.
"Our central air-conditioning unit," Larue said. "It had to go."
"You're putting something else in its place, of course?"
8
"Oh yes. We must have more space but Father Brenn opposed the plan
of building an annex as too dangerously time consuming. The only al-
ternative is to tear out everything not absolutely essential."
Kane left shortly afterward, satisfied that the Saints were doing as
Brenn had said.
He went back out in the spring sunshine where the turbo-car was still
waiting for him, debated briefly with himself, and dismissed the driver.
After so many weeks in the prison-like ship, it would be pleasant to walk
again.
A grassy, tree-covered ridge ran like the swell of a green sea between
the plant and the town. He stopped on top of it, where the town was al-
most hidden from view, and looked out across the wide valley. Shadows
moved lazily across it as cotton-puff clouds drifted down the blue dome
of the sky, great white birds like swans were soaring overhead, calling to
one another in voices like the singing of violins, bringing again the
memories of the Lost Islands—
"And the Vogarian lord gazed upon his world and found it good!"
He swung around, his hand dropping to his holstered blaster, and
looked into the green, mocking eyes of a tawny-haired girl. She was
beautiful, in the savage way that the hill leopards of Vogar were beauti-
ful, and her hand was on a pistol in her belt.
Her eyes flickered from his blaster up to his face, bright with
challenge.
"Want to try it?" she asked.
She wore a short skirt of some rough material and her knees were
dusty, as though she had walked for a long way. These things he noticed
only absently, his eyes going back to the bold, beautiful face. For twenty
years he had been accustomed to the women of Vogar; colorless in their
Party uniforms and men's haircuts, made even more drab by the mascu-
line mannerisms they affected. Not since the spring the Lost Islands died
had he seen a girl like the one before him.
"Well?" she asked. "Do you think you'll know me next time?"
He walked to her, while she watched him with catlike wariness.
"Hand me that pistol," he ordered.
"Try to take it, you Vogarian ape!"
He moved, and a moment later she was sitting on the ground, her eyes
wide with dismayed surprise as he shoved the pistol in his own belt.
"Resisting a Vogarian with a deadly weapon calls for the death pen-
alty," he said. "I suppose you know what I can do?"
She got up, defiance like a blaze about her.
9
"I'll tell you what you can do—you can go to hell!"
The thought came to him that there might be considerable pleasure in
laying her over his knee and raising some blisters where they would do
her the most good. He regretfully dismissed the idea as too undignified
for even a sub-ensign and asked:
"Who are you, and what are you doing here with that pistol?"
She hesitated, then answered with insolent coolness:
"My name is Barbara Loring. I heard that you Vogarians had deman-
ded that we agree to surrender. I came down from the hills to disagree."
"Is a resistance force meeting here?"
"Do you think you could make me tell you?"
"There are ways—but I'm not here to use them. I am not your enemy."
A little of the hostility faded from her face and she asked, "But how
could a Vogarian ever not be our enemy?"
He could find no satisfactory answer to the question.
"I can tell you this," she said. "I know of no resistance organization. I
can also tell you that we're not the race of cowards you think and we'll
fight the instant Father Brenn gives the word."
"For one who speaks respectfully of Brenn," he said, "your recent
words and actions weren't very religious and refined."
Fire flashed in the green eyes again. "Up in the Azure Mountains,
where I come from, we're not very refined and we like being that way!"
"And why do you carry guns?" he asked.
"Because all along our frontier lines are rhino-stags, cliff bears, thunder
hawks, and a lot of other overgrown carnivora that don't like us—that's
why."
"I see." He took the pistol from his belt and held it out to her. "Go back
to your mountains, where you belong, before you do something to get
yourself executed."
Y
'Nor, waiting impatiently in the ship, was grimly pleased by the
news of Brenn's change of attitude.
"Exactly as I predicted, as you no doubt recall. How long until they
can have a thousand units of fuel produced?"
"Larue estimated fourteen days at best."
Y'Nor tapped his thick fingers on his desk, scowling thoughtfully. "As
little as seven extra days might force Vogar to accept the Alkorian peace
terms because of lack of fuel—the natives can work twice as hard as they
expected to. Tell old Brenn they will be given exactly seven days from
sunrise tomorrow.
10
"And summon Dalon and Graver. I want them to make use of every
man on the ship for a twenty-four hour guard-and-inspection system in
the plant. The natives will get no opportunities for stalling or sabotage."
Brenn was writing at his book-laden table when Kane went into his
cottage the next morning.
"These are called edicts," Brenn said, after greeting him, "but I possess
no law-making powers and they are really only suggestions."
Brenn shoved the paper to one side. The script was somewhat differ-
ent from that of Vogar.
The Vogarian inspection and guard system is no more than an expected pre-
caution against sabotage. The Vogarians must be regarded as potential friends
who now treat us with suspicion and arrogance only because they do not yet
realize the sincerity of our desire to help them to any extent short of surrender—
Kane looked up from the uncompleted, surprisingly humble, edict and
Brenn asked:
"Your commander, sir—he is now pleased with our actions?"
"Not exactly. He will disintegrate a town seven days from sunrise this
morning if all the fuel isn't produced by then."
"Seven—only seven days?" There was startled disbelief on Brenn's face.
"But how can he expect us to produce so much fuel in so short a time?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry—it's something I would have argued against
if I hadn't had too much sense to try."
"Seven days—" Brenn said again. "We can only pray that God will let it
be time enough."
Kane walked on to the plant. The hilltop where he had met the girl
was deserted and he felt a vague disappointment.
The plant was hot without the air-conditioner, especially in the vicin-
ity of the electronic roasters. The girls looked flushed and uncomfortable,
but for the redhead who still wore her scanty sunsuit. The armed Vogari-
ans looked incongruously out of place among the girls and were sweat-
ing profusely. Kane made a mental note to have them ordered into trop-
ical uniforms.
He found Dalon prowling like a wolf among his guards.
"It's inconceivable that these women could ever be a menace," Dalon
said, "but I'm taking no chances."
He saw Graver, the cruiser's Chief Technician; a thin, dry man who
seemed to be as emotionless as the machines and electronic circuits that
were his life.
11
"They're doing everything with astonishing competence," Graver said.
"My technicians are watching like hawks, though."
Larue was not in his office. His secretary, a brown-eyed woman of
strikingly intelligent appearance, said, "I'm sorry, sir—Dr. Larue had to
go back to town for a few minutes. May I give him your message?"
"No, thanks," he said. "Father Brenn is probably performing that un-
pleasant chore right now."
S
ince Dalon and Graver seemed to have the situation at the plant
well in hand, Kane decided to make a tour of the outer provinces
where the ores were being mined. An efficient plant would be worthless
if it did not receive sufficient ore.
He spent four days on the inspection tour; much longer than he had
expected to be gone but made necessary by the fact that the small Elusi-
um mines were widely scattered in rugged, roadless areas and he had to
walk most of the distance. The single helicopter on Sanctuary was being
used to fly the ore out but it was operating on a schedule that caused
him to miss it each time.
Each mine was being worked by full day-and-night crews; in fact, by
more men than necessary. The reason for that, and for the way the men
silently withheld their hostility, was made apparent in a bit of conversa-
tion between two miners that he overheard one day:
"… So why all of us here when not this many are needed?"
"They say Father Brenn wanted to get all the men out of town, away from the
cruiser, so there would be no trouble—and you know there would have been if
we had stayed. He wants to get the cruiser on its way back to Vogar, they say, so
we can get busy producing weapons to fight the Occupation force… ."
He returned on the fifth evening of the allotted seven days and
stopped by Brenn's cottage before going on to the ship. The old man was
working in his garden, his trembling hands trying to tie up a red-
flowered vine.
Kane tied it for him and he said, "Thank you, sir. Did you find the
mining to be as I had said?"
"I found more than that. You know, don't you, that Y'Nor will return
with the Occupation force a hundred days after leaving here?"
"Yes—I know that that is his intention."
"I understand that you're going to try to build weapons while he's
gone. Don't, if you think anything of your people, let them do it. Nothing
you could build in a hundred days would last a minute against a
cruiser's disintegrators."
12
"I know," Brenn said. "We are supposed to choose between bloody,
hopeless resistance and eternal slavery, aren't we? But why should either
fate befall a peaceful race?"
Kane asked the logical question: "Why shouldn't it?"
"The laws of God have always been laws of justice and mercy. Not
even the Vogarian State can change them."
He thought of the way the State had changed the Lost Islands in one
bloody, violent afternoon. Brenn, watching his face, said:
"You are skeptical and bitter, my son—but you will learn that a harm-
less old man can speak with wisdom."
"No," he said. "There is neither justice nor mercy in the universe. I
know from experience. A man can only choose between the lesser of two
evils—and almost anything is less evil than Y'Nor when he's mad."
He went to the plant the next morning. Inside, wherever he looked, he
saw girls in shorts and halters. The place seemed to be alive with par-
tially clad women. He went to the nearest bulletin board and read
Brenn's edict of four days before:
Since the excessively warm temperature of the plant causes much discomfort
and thereby impairs the efficiency of all workers, and since maximum efficiency
will be required to produce the fuel in the extremely short time permitted us, it is
suggested that the cool sunsuits of the Beachville girls become the standard work
uniform until further notice. These may be obtained for the asking in Depart-
ment 5-A.
The next day's edict read:
Some have hesitated to follow yesterday's edict through a sense of modesty.
This is most commendable. However, the situation is very critical, our lives de-
pend upon the highest degree of efficiency we can attain, and a hot, miserable
worker is not efficient. Your bodies are God's handwork—do not be ashamed of
them.
The edict for the next day read simply, warningly:
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.
T
he Vogarian guards and inspectors, now in tropical uniforms, still
looked out of place with their holstered weapons but their former
cold arrogance was gone and the attitude of the girls had changed from
polite reserve to laughing, chattering friendliness.
He found Dalon in a far corner; cornered, literally, by the red-haired
personnel supervisor who was spitting like a cat as she said:
13