Dragon's Island and Other Stories, page 1
Dragon’s Island
and
Other Stories
Dragon’s Island and
Other Stories
Jack Williamson
Five Star • Waterville, Maine
Copyright © 2002 by Jack Williamson
Additional copyright information on page 339.
All stories reprinted by permission of the author and his
agents, the Spectrum Literary Agency.
All rights reserved.
This collection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Five Star First Edition Science Fiction and Fantasy Series.
Published in 2002 in conjunction with
Tekno-Books and Ed Gorman.
Cover illustration by Ken Barr.
Set in 11 pt. Plantin by Rick Gundberg.
Printed in the United States on permanent paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williamson, Jack, 1908-
Dragon’s Island and other stories / Jack Williamson.
p. cm.—(Five Star first edition science fiction and fantasy series)
Contents: Stepson to creation—Guinevere for everybody— Dragon’s Island.
ISBN 0-7862-4314-7 (he : alk. paper)
1. Science fiction, American. I. Title. II. Series.
PS3545.I557 D73 2002
813’.52—dc21 2002067510
Dragon’s Island and
Other Stories
Contents:-
Introduction
Stepson to Creation
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Guinevere for Everybody
Dragon’s Island
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Introduction
The invention of a new technology can change the way we live. One early example is the use of fire, the art of flaking stone another. Writing was later, printing far later. Most of them came thousands of years apart, but recently the pace has grown faster. The last century gave us electronics, nuclear energy, and genetic engineering.
The creation of new species had begun ten thousand years ago, when we turned wolves into dogs. It went on with the domestication of plants and other animals, which transformed us from hunter-gatherers to city builders, but only as an art. Genetic engineering as a science had to wait for James Watson and Frederic Crick to discover the double helix of DNA.
Until then, the idea had made great science fiction. I was fascinated long ago by H. G. Wells’The First Men in the Moon. His Selenites are shaped to play their roles in a hive-like society; they hardly exist as individuals. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, has people also grown to fit. He makes a telling point: his brave new world is planned and run by intelligent men of good will. His Savage, however, brought up in New Mexico as a free individual, finds its perfection intolerable. He hangs himself.
My own Dragon’s Island was published in 1951, a few years ahead of Watson and Crick. I believed for years that I had coined the term “genetic engineering.” I’m still proud of this passage in the epigraph:
Man may now become his own maker. He can remove the flaws in his own imperfect species, before the stream of life flows on to leave him stranded on the banks of time with the dinosaurs and trilobites—if he will only accept and use the new science of genetic engineering.
But the torch is passing on. The editors of the OED seem to have found the term in a science paper published in 1949. As Andy Warhol observed, everybody is famous, if only for fifteen minutes.
Stepson to Creation
The multiverse creates itself.
It had no beginning; neither will it end.
Each new universe is wombed as a fire-egg, born through a contracting black hole. Expanding in space-time, ripening new black holes, it sows the eternal manifold with new fire-eggs of its own. Cooling, each new cosmos gives birth to galaxies and suns, to worlds of life and change, sometimes to intellect.
Flowing out of chaos, the multiverse is blind. Its law is chance. It has neither plan nor will. Its creatures are chance atoms, tossed together in the flux of mindless force. Such were the premen, who called themselves men.
Evolved by chance mutation on the hallowed planet Earth, the premen came by chance upon the art of genetic engineering and so became their own Creators, the mortal precursors who fathered the Four Creations.
The first act of Creation formed the trumen, the perfected human race, purged of all ancestral evil and planned to supplant the premen.
The second act of Creation produced the mumen, the variform men, shaped to fit their several functions in many universes.
The third act of Creation gave being to the stargods themselves.
Still merely premen, blind to the splendor of true perfection, the Creators then neglected to rest from their triumphs, but went on instead to father yet another creation. The issue of their error was a race of demons, creatures of power without beauty, mind without truth, desire without justice. Evil revivals of the ancestral beast, they rebelled against their makers and the gods, seeking to usurp the whole multiverse.
The god Belthar perceived their emergent malevolence. Returning across space from his own domain, he reconquered the holy Earth, ended the folly of the Creators, and erased their monstrous last creation.
In benign solicitude, the supreme Belthar continues to rule the sacred planet, granting power to his variform defenders, wisdom to the trumen, sons to their most fortunate daughters, and mercy to the surviving premen. His sovereign will gives law to chaos, and his omniscience illuminates the multiverse.
His glory endures forever.
— The Book of Belthar
ONE
Two naked waifs, paternity unknown. A black halfgod, the proud son of Belthar himself. A lovely young goddess, touring the sacred sites of her ancestral Earth. A yelping dog and a frightened rat. A red-scaled mutant guardian, its third eye flashing thunderbolts.
Old chaos in collision with stellar divinity …
The god Belthar had leveled the crown of Pike’s Peak for his North American temple. All black granite, it could hold half a million chanting worshippers. It was empty, however, on that chill spring morning when a small skimmer marked with the triple triangle of the Thearchy dropped to a parking terrace on the slope beneath it.
The halfgod Quelf left the skimmer with five attendant sacristans. His mother had been a dancer who satisfied Belthar. Inheriting her dark grace and his father’s towering power, he was commonly arrogant, but his bold tread faltered as they reached the elevator.
“Leave your boots,” he told the blue-robed trumen. “There’s a live goddess here.”
He had long ago learned the mixture of impudence and flattery that pleased his godly father, but Zhondra Zhey was a casual transient from remote stellar dominions, a dangerous unknown.
“She’s a starship pilot.” He bent to set his own boots in the rack. “Visiting Earth while her ship’s in orbit. The Lord has ordered us to serve her.”
The sacristans straightened and stared, but shuffled after him into the elevator without comment. He had taught them silence.
They emerged between great black columns under the rim of the vault, which was a blue-black star-map, all aglow with shifting lines that showed the space-routes of the explored multiverse. Heads bent, they marched out across the polished floor, which mirrored all those far dominions. The central altar was a vast black disk that held the sacred apartments. Kneeling beneath it, holding up his offering, the halfgod intoned a formal invocation to the goddess.
Before he was done, she appeared at a high window, gestured as if to check him, and stepped out into the air. Wearing only her aura and the diamond star of her space-pilot’s rating, she dropped to the granite bench before him and floated just above it, anchored to the stone with only one rosy toe.
“You—Your Divinity!”
Conflicting impulses shook his voice. Pink and slim beneath her golden nimbus, the goddess was still no more than a lovely child, not out of her second century, yet already overwhelmingly alluring. Fond of young girls, he was used to taking what he wanted. But no mortal virgin had ever come clothed in her perilous power.
“Favor, Great One!” Torn between lust and terror, he dropped his eyes to the casket of rare Terran gems he had brought. “Humbly, we implore your gracious acceptance of our insignificant gift.” Sweaty hands quivering, he raised the casket. “Eagerly, we await your all-wise instructions—” “Stand up, Quelf.” Her Terran diction was pure, her tone gently chiding. “I want no gifts.”
“Forgive us, Your Divin—”
The casket had slipped fr om his fingers. Her slender hand moved slightly. Flowing from it, her shimmering nimbus reached out to catch the casket, lifted it over his head and into the hands of a startled sacristan behind him.
“Save your offering for the premen,” she said. “I think they need it more than I do. I’ve come to see their reservation. Please arrange it.”
Clumsily, he stood up.
“We obey.” His avid eyes were fixed on that tempting toe. “However, if Your Divinity deigns to tour the holy planet, there are better sights. The Asian Temple, which is Belthar’s dwelling. His statue on the Andes—”
“I’m going to Redrock.”
“Indulgence!”
Her mild tone had given him courage to look up, and her bright-washed beauty stabbed him with a hotter regret that he had not inherited all his father’s privileges and powers. She waited, aloof, aware, a little amused.
“If Your Divinity cares about the aboriginal life, there’s the European Zoo. The Terran creatures there include a fine preman habitat.”
“I prefer to visit the people at Redrock.”
“People?” His rising tones echoed unthinking scorn. “They’re miserable animals. Wallowing in their own filth. So squalid that the Lord Belthar has ordered their removal—” “That’s why I’m here. The premen created us. I’m afraid that fact has been forgotten. I want to see them while there’s time.”
“Forgiveness!” he protested. “But those stinking beasts at Redrock are the last dregs of a dying race. The real Creators died for their final folly a thousand years ago. If Your Divinity is concerned with history, we humbly suggest the Museum of Terran Evolution in Antarctica. There’s a Smithwick Memorial Hall, with authentic reconstructions of the genetic engineers in their laboratory—”
“Take me to the reservation.”
“Your Divinity, we obey.”
Redrock was a straggle of brown mud huts beside an irrigation ditch that was also a sewer. Four larger buildings enclosed the grassless plaza: the jail, the town hall, and the twin chapels of Thar and Bel, dedicated to the god of Earth in his major aspects of wisdom and love.
By Quelf s command, old wooden doors wore new blue paint. Litter had been raked from the mud-rutted road, and a strip of gold carpet rolled along it from the chapel of Bel on the plaza to the agency mansion on its green-terraced hill above the odors and vermin of the town.
The premen had been warned, and the landing skimmer was greeted with an apprehensive hush. The sacred procession emerged on the plaza and marched up the carpet toward the agency. Two mutant soldiers stalked ahead, the dry sun burning on black crests and ruby scales. The halfgod followed, dark nose held high, as if offended by every reek around him. Four blue sacristans carried the canopied chair of honor, the divine tourist smiling out as if delighted with everything she saw.
A dog barked.
A child screamed.
A brown rat slithered out of an alley, darted across the carpet. A dirty mongrel darted after it, yelping with excitement. A small naked boy splashed across the green-scum ditch, running after the dog. They veered toward the goddess.
Quelf hissed an order. One muman guardian spun to face the intrusion. Lightning stabbed from its black-lensed crest. The dog’s body spun across the carpet and tumbled into a puddle.
“Make way!” the halfgod shouted. “Make way for Her Divinity!”
The boy looked five years old. Brown and thin, he wore only splashes and smears of drying mud. Planted at the center of the gold carpet, he stared up at the holy procession with dark wet eyes.
“You—” A sob racked and choked him. “You killed Spot!”
“Davey!” A tiny girl shrieked from the alley behind him. “Come away, Davey. Don’t let the deadeyes hurt you.”
The boy stood fast.
“Off!” the halfgod snapped. “Off the road!”
“Killer!” The boy shook his grimy fist. “I’ll make you sorry!”
“What?” Anger stiffened Quelf. “You insolent pup!”
He gestured at the scar-marked mumen. Both bent their lenses toward the boy. Violent pathmaker beams hissed around him. Yowling, the naked girl came splashing to him through the gutter.
“Hold everything!”
The goddess froze them with that gold-toned command. Levitating from the chair, she came sailing over the halfgod and the mumen and sank toward the carpet in front of the boy. Smiling, she paused to watch the girl, who was darting to pick up the dog.
“Who are you children?”
The boy studied her solemnly.
“I’m Davey,” he said at last. “Davey Dunahoo.”
“But I have no name.” The girl came panting back to his side, lugging the limp body of the dog, which seemed heavier than she. “They call me—” In the reek of the charred brown fur, she sneezed twice. “They call me Buglet.”
“Don’t you have parents?”
“I never had a father.” Davey stopped to consider her again. “My mother was a girl at La China’s. A drunk man stabbed her.” Gravely, he nodded at the girl. “Spot found Buglet lying in the weeds beyond the dump. She was sick. She can’t remember who she is.”
“Where do you live?”
“Nowhere.” He shrugged. “Anywhere.”
“In the street,” the girl piped. “When it rains El Yaqui lets us sleep in his barn. Sometimes he finds a bone for Spot.” “Mercy, Your Divinity.” The halfgod came striding around the mumen. “The reception is waiting for us.” He glowered at the muddy urchins. “I’ve warned you off the road.”
“You can kill dogs.” The boy stared back. “But you can’t kill the Multiman—”
“Blasphemy!” the halfgod roared. “Belthar will put a stop to that—”
The goddess raised a shining hand.
“Multiman?” She turned to frown at Quelf. “Who is Multiman?”
“A wicked heresy. Forbidden by the Thearchy, but still current among these stupid premen.” He grinned at the defiant children. “I believe their removal will put an end to it.”
She floated back to the children.
“Please forgive us.” She settled toward them, smiling. “I do want to help you. Won’t you tell me what you need?”
The boy stared blankly, but the girl crept forward with the dog in her arms.
“If you’re a goddess, please make Spot alive again.”
“I can’t do that.” She gave Quelf a quick wry glance. “Not even Belthar could reanimate your pet.”
“The Multiman could,” the boy insisted. “If he had come.”
He took the dog from Buglet’s arms. Silently he turned, to wade back across the ditch to the mud-walled alley. Buglet splashed after him. The goddess glided back to her chair, and the procession marched on again through the sharp sewer reek.
A few sun-browned children in blue-and-white uniforms watched from the schoolyard. At one corner, a withered woman sat on a wasted donkey, waiting impassively. At El Yaqui’s trading post, a dozen men looked up from the drinks and the games on their sidewalk tables, and a plump dark girl in a bright-red wrapper leaned from a second-floor window to stare at the passing goddess.
At the end of the carpet strip, on the clean green lawn beneath the white marble steps of the agency, the preman leaders and the truman agent waited, robed in official white. Bowing to the chair, the agent humbly begged the favor of the goddess. The premen were eager to entertain their sacred guest in the agency garden.
Zhondra left her chair and levitated after him, to inspect the display of preman arts and crafts. A dark silent youth stood sweating beside a plow, the garden wall behind him hung with sample plants of cotton, corn, beans, and hemp. A one-legged smith bent over his anvil and forge, shaping hot metal, preparing to shoe a mule. Two shy girls in clean white gowns showed a relief map of the whole reservation, its red buttes and canyons modeled in clay. A row of silent matrons offered tacos and hamburgers and rice balls, with mescal and beer and tea.
