The Guardians - Irving E. Cox, ebook, Temp
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The Guardians
Cox, Irving
Published:
1955
Type(s):
Short Fiction, Science Fiction
Source:
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Copyright:
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Mryna Brill intended to ride the god-car above the rain mist. For a long
time she had not believed in the taboos or the Earth-god. She no longer
believed she lived on Earth. This paradise of green-floored forests and
running brooks was something called Rythar.
Six years ago, when Mryna was fourteen, she first discovered the
truth. She asked a question and the Earth-god ignored it. A simple ques-
tion, really: What is above the rain mist? God could have told her. Every
day he answered technical questions that were far more difficult. In-
stead, he repeated the familiar taboo about avoiding the Old Village be-
cause of the Sickness.
And consequently Mryna, being female, went to the Old Village. There
was nothing really unusual about that. All the kids went through the ru-
ins from time to time. They had worked out a sort of charm that made it
all right. They ran past the burned out shells of the old houses and they
kept their eyes shaded to ward off the Sickness.
But even at fourteen Mryna had outgrown charms and she didn't be-
lieve in the Sickness. She had once asked the Earth-god what sickness
meant, and the screen in the answer house had given her a very detailed
answer. Mryna knew that none of the hundred girls and thirty boys in-
habiting Rythar had ever been sick. That, like the taboo of the Old Vil-
lage, she considered a childish superstition.
The Old Village wasn't large—three parallel roads, a mile long, lined
with the charred ruins of prefabs, which were exactly like the cottages
where the kids lived. It was nothing to inspire either fear or legend. The
village had burned a long time ago; the grass from the forest had grown
a green mantle over the skeletal walls.
For weeks Mryna poked through the ruins before she found anything
of significance—a few, scorched pages of a printed pamphlet buried
deep in the black earth. The paper excited her tremendously. It was dif-
ferent from the film books photographed in the answer house. She had
never touched anything like it; and it seemed wonderful stuff.
She read the pamphlet eagerly. It was part of a promotional advertise-
ment of a world called Rythar, "the jewel of the Sirian Solar System."
The description made it obvious that Rythar was the green paradise
where Mryna lived—the place she had been taught to call Earth. And the
pamphlet had been addressed to "Earthmen everywhere."
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Mryna made her second find when she was fifteen, a textbook in astro-
nomy. For the first time in her life she read about the spinning dust of
the universe lying beyond the eternal rain mist that hid her world.
The solid, stable Earth of her childhood was solid and stable no longer,
but a sphere turning through a black void. Nor was it properly called
Earth, but a planet named Rythar. The adjustment Mryna had to make
was shattering; she lost faith in everything she believed.
Yet the clock-work logic of astronomy appealed to her orderly mind. It
explained why the rain mist glowed with light during the day and
turned dark at night. Mryna had never seen a clear sky. She had no visu-
al data to tie her new concept to.
For six years she kept the secret. She hid the papers and the astronomy
text which she found in the Old Village. Later, after the metal men came,
she destroyed everything so none of the other women would know the
Earth-god was a man.
At first she kept the secret because she was afraid. For some reason the
man who played at being god wanted the kids to believe Rythar was
Earth, the totality of the universe enveloped in a cloud of mist. She knew
that because she once asked god what a planet was. The face on the
screen
in
the
answer
house
became
frigid
with
anger—or
was
it
fear?—and the Earth-god said:
"The word means nothing."
But late that night a very large god-car brought six metal men down
through the rain mist. They were huge, jointed things that clanked when
they walked. Four of them used weapons to herd the kids together in
their small settlement. The two others went to the Old Village and blas-
ted the ruins with high explosives.
Vaguely Mryna remembered that the metal men had been there be-
fore, when the kids were still very small. They had built the new settle-
ment and they had brought food. They lived with the children for a long
time, she thought—but the memory was hazy.
As the years passed, Mryna's fear retreated and only one thing became
important: she knew the Earth-god was a man. On the fertile soil of
Rythar there were one hundred women and thirty men. All the boys had
taken mates before they reached seventeen. Seventy girls were left un-
married, with no prospect of ever having husbands. A score or more be-
came second wives in polygamous homes, but plural marriage had no
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appeal for Mryna. She was firmly determined to possess a man of her
own. And why shouldn't it be the Earth-god?
As her first step toward escape, Mryna volunteered for duty in the an-
swer house. For as long as she could remember, the answer house had
stood on a knoll some distance beyond the new settlement. It was a
square, one-room building, housing a speaking box, a glass screen and a
console of transmission machinery. Anyone in the settlement could con-
tact god and request information or special equipment.
God went out of his way to deluge them with information. The
simplest question produced voluminous data, transmitted over the
screen and photographed on reels of film. Someone had to be in the an-
swer house to handle the photography. The work was not hard, but it
was monotonous. Most of the kids preferred to farm the fields or dig the
sacrificial ore.
A request for equipment was granted just as promptly. Tools, ma-
chines, seeds, fertilizers, packaged buildings, games, cloth-
ing—everything came in a god-car. It was a large cylinder which hissed
down from the rain mist on a pillar of fire. The landing site was a flat,
charred field near the answer house. Unless the equipment was unusu-
ally heavy, the attendant stationed in the house was expected to unload
the god-car and pile aboard the sacrifice ores mined on Rythar.
God asked two things from the settlement: the pieces of unusually
heavy metal which they dug from the hills, and tiny vials of soil. In an
hour's time they could mine enough ore to fill the compartment of a god-
car, and god never complained if they sometimes sent the cylinder back
empty. But he fussed mightily over the small vials of Earth. He gave very
explicit directions as to where they were to take the samples, and the
place was never the same. Sometimes they had to travel miles from the
settlement to satisfy that inexplicable whim.
For two weeks Mryna patiently ran off the endless films of new books
and unloaded the god-car when it came. She examined the interior of the
cylinder carefully and she weighed every possible risk. The compart-
ment was very small, but she concluded that she would be safe.
And so she made her decision. Tense and tight-lipped Mryna Brill
slipped aboard the god-car. She sealed the lock door, which automatic-
ally fired the launching tubes. After that there was no turning back.
The dark compartment shook in a thunder of sound. The weight of the
escape speed tore at her body, pulling her tight against the confining
walls. She lost consciousness until the pressure lessened.
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