Brain Palaeo

by Arn Romulus, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

Working on the theory that an electronic current variation is set up by thought processes within the human brain, Alex Larsen and his fellow scientists developed a system of telepathic cerebral communication. Nothing, it seemed, could be more valuable. Here was a soundless means of communication without complex or bulky equipment. But there was the matter of a mysterious thought-voice that interrupted the experiment...

Release date: October 27, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 121

Sample

Vadin stood motionless, shoulders a little hunched, hands hanging listlessly at his sides as he stared through the big crystal pressure port at the weird vista of jagged rocks and petrified lava cones that went to make up the barren landscape of Conzan, third in magnitude of Pirivar’s fourteen moons. Unheedful of the low sounds his companion was making, the man turned his gaze on Pirivar itself. Its great bulbous orb with the wide ring of suspended matter girding it like a vast belt loomed enormous in the purple sky. Harsh light threw grotesque shadows on the foreground landscape. Pirivar was like a monstrous dream, a nightmare reeling across the sky on its stately, never-changing journey. Vadin hated Pirivar with the hate of a man who sees no escape, has no knowledge of what he would seek were it possible to leave the barren world of Conzan, knows no freedom from tyranny. Conzan to him was the beginning and the end. And yet he longed, with a deep subconscious prompting, to learn those things which in all the recorded past had been forbidden.

He might have remained where he was for several hours if Roka had not suddenly come up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Why do you stare so?” she whispered.

Without turning he answered: “You know why I stare.”

“Like a trapped thing; that is what you feel, isn’t it? But you cannot alter it, Vadin. None of us can. We were born to this life. It is our life and the only one we shall ever know.”

“With children we shall never see to follow under the same cursed heel of tyranny!” Vadin swung round angrily, hopelessly, grasping the woman by the arms, holding her fiercely before him.

She nodded very slowly. Her wide black eyes were full of tears. “That is inevitable,” she whispered. “And yet we can still find happiness, as we do.”

“Happiness?” he sneered. “What is that, my Roka? A myth from the dead past that merely reaches our life as a tiny whisper without any meaning! One day I shall destroy the tyrants. Then there may be happiness for us, for our race.”

The woman shook herself free from his restraining grip. She turned away helplessly, head bowed in misery.

“Only death can bring that,” she murmured.

He watched her cross the big apartment with its complex array of equipment, its generators, banks of transistors, coils and tubes, its numerous pressure ports looking out over Conzan, its elevator giving access to the wealthy bowels beneath the barren surface.

Suddenly she turned to face him, her slender figure tense and rigid. There was despair, dismay and anger in her face. Her hands clenched spasmodically as if she fought to control herself by a great effort.

“Vadin, we are fools to delude ourselves!” she breathed. “What should we do if the tyrant control was no longer there to guide us? How should we live? Don’t you see that our very lives depend on the one thing we hate and fear?”

He softened, stirred by her emotion, stirred, too, by the beauty of her. But it tore at his heart when he realised that even that, even her very being must be laid to the credit of the tyranny. Vadin knew enough of the history of the past to realise the truth of it. This race to which he belonged was said to have sprung from only seven beings, all men like himself. Now it numbered a thousand, people of both sexes, their number and balance being strictly controlled by the Masters of Conzan. Only through their wizardry did the race exist at all, so legend had it. Bewildering, then, to know that what they hated most had given them life, which, of itself was precious.

He looked at Roka fondly, conscious of her more deeply than ever before. Roka was his mate, his appointed mate, yet one which he would have chosen himself had it not been already ordained and ordered by the tyranny. Without that ordering he could never have had her, and he knew it, which only made things seem worse than they were. He was like a man who stumbled through an endless forest, searching for some path to tread yet ignorant of what a path would look like.

Roka came back towards him now, her arms outstretched in a plea without words. They clasped each other, glad of that small gift of freedom left to them there on Conzan, the only world they knew.

Presently: “Vadin, your restlessness makes me sad. Other men are not like you. Why cannot you be still and without resentment beneath the yoke of rule?”

He forced a sour grin. “You mean apathetic,” he said. “There is no pride in apathy, Roka, only weakness. We are a weak people or we should have risen up centuries ago, freeing ourselves from the yoke you mention. Because I resent the tyranny does it make me a fool, a traitor, or a man with … some courage? What does it make me, my own?”

She stared up at his face for long seconds on end. Then her eyes dropped away and she clung to him tightly, convulsively.

“It makes you the bravest fool alive!” she sobbed. “Even in thought revolt is dangerous! Don’t risk your life and so desert me for the arms of death, my Vadin. I could not stand that, and would destroy myself to be with you as dust in the girdle of Pirivar!”

His voice was bitter when he answered: “Would that the Masters of Conzan were up there in the sky!” he said. “Their forms would make dust as good as ours!”

“But not so laden with oppression.”

He looked down at her for several moments of silence. Suddenly his shoulders squared off, his head went up and back.

“Let me show you something, Roka,” he said.

She eyed him with sudden apprehension, sensing that in his words there was danger for himself, for all of them perhaps.

“What is it you have done?” she whispered.

For answer he led her into the second laboratory which opened off the main apartment. This was a sanctum where only Vadin himself was permitted to work on delicate research as directed by the tyrant Masters of Conzan, those same Masters that Vadin so hated.

“I must not enter here!” murmured Roka nervously. She tried to hang back, afraid.

Vadin laughed abruptly. “Do you think I should bring you within these walls if I thought it would put you ill peril?” he said. “I value you far too much for that risk. No, the tyrants will remain in ignorance, for even with their powers of omniscience they can still be fooled—as I have discovered only recently. Come, Roka, set your eyes on something that may one day spell freedom for our race!” He spoke the words boldly, proudly, yet was still aware that one false step would mean ruin to the vaguely forming plans and hopes he cherished.

On a small bench against the opposite wall was a litter of complex equipment laid out in apparently haphazard fashion. Vadin ignored it, though he saw that Roka’s wide eyes were on it in puzzled curiosity. Instead of explaining or speaking of his research work he opened a concealed drawer in the end of the bench.

“This,” he breathed fervently, “will give us the power!”

In his hand was a crude looking instrument. To Roka’s eyes it meant little for she did not understand the portent of his words.

“How can power come to slaves?” she queried. In her tone was a hint of the apathy which gripped all their race, an apathy which had spurred Vadin on and turned him into a solitary champion against the common foe.

“Power shall come through individual courage and mortal inventiveness,” he answered enigmatically. “This, my Roka, is a weapon!”

“A weapon …? I do not understand. What is that?”

He smiled with indulgent amusement. “You are so naive in your ignorance, yet I do not blame you. How should you know different? You have never contemplated violence against tyranny, have you? None of us has, more’s the pity! But it must come or there will never be an end to slavery.” He balanced the instrument in the palm of his hand. It weighed heavily, a clumsy thing, yet one which had power and so could provide power to the man who grasped it. All Vadin’s plans were founded on it, and now he shared his knowledge with the woman.

“A weapon,” he whispered softly. “It is finished and will give us mastery over our own lives, the power to end all tyranny and so release us from age-long bondage. Is that not a noble prospect for such as us?”

She shivered uncontrollably. “I fear it!” she said. “Don’t you see what would happen if they discovered it? Or even if they had some suspicion of your foolish plan? Oh, Vadin, take care! If anything befell you—as I feel so dreadfully afraid that it might—then my life is done!” She covered the weapon with her hands, shutting it off from her sight, afraid of glancing at it even. In her mind it grew to be the means of destroying all she held dear, not a weapon of attack and release, but a channel for the ruin of what little pleasure they could call their own.

“You shall see before long,” he breathed. “From my own gropings in the dim subconscious I drew out sufficient theory on which to work. Now that basis takes shape in this. It will project a shaft of negatively charged particles most effectively when used in a vacuum. There is vacuum enough to suit such a discharge outside this building, or anywhere on the surface of Conzan for that matter.”

The woman frowned blankly. “Vadin, I am as much a scientist as you, but I do not understand this theory.”

He smiled again. “That is only because the science we practise on behalf of the Masters is too narrow to give scope to individual ideas,” he replied. “I am fortunate in being employed in this place, for here there is an opportunity for more careful research—apart from that ordered by the tyranny.

“The theory is simple once it is grasped. This weapon is what might be called an electronic discharger. That is a term you will never have heard. Indeed I had to invent it for the occasion!”

Her interest was aroused. “Electronic discharger …?” she whispered. “Explain more simply, Vadin, for though I look on this thing as foolish and dangerous yet I am a woman, and curious to share a secret.”

“Which is why I brought you here. But to go on.… As you know, the Masters possess a positive potential of several thousand brattilgrovits on which they depend for motivation. That potential is drawn from the positive static in the body of Conzan itself. We cannot, nor ever could, neutralise the static thus used. Similarly, we cannot hope to gain ascendancy over the cerebral potential. It is protected and beyond our physical contact. Only through violent physical contact could we hope to disrupt the working of the brain tissues. But to paralyse movement of any one of the Masters within range of this weapon would be a great step towards securing power. Once a Master was immobilised it would be possible to approach sufficiently near it to wreck the vital tissue structure. Do you follow, Roka?” His gaze was intense, earnest, pleading with her to understand.

She frowned, sorting it out in her own mind.

“Put simply,” she ventured, “you mean to create a fusing circuit within a Master so attacked and thus immobilise it? I think I understand. Their bodies are positive in character, the mechanism actuated through the medium of a minute negative potential drawn from the girdle radiations of Pirivar itself. Am I on the right lines, Vadin?”

He nodded, pleased. “Exactly! And on such a basis of theory, if a strong negative discharge were introduced so as to impinge on the collectivators a fusing element would be introduced. The Masters have no safety relays, for it has never been necessary to guard against such an unexpected discharge. They would, therefore, be paralysed by the negative contact of a charged shaft of electronic particles.”

“It might work,” she whispered doubtfully. “But still I am afraid. We all know that their minds control us in the smallest action if we happen to be under command. Do you imagine the brain tissue would not be sharp enough to protect its complex web even though its carrier were paralysed?” She shook her head stubbornly. “No, Vadin mine, the plan is a brave one, yet I fear it to be doomed.”

Once again it was the man who smiled, goaded perhaps by a secret conceit which at times was the only fault he possessed likely to irritate his mate. Now she frowned when she saw the smile, for she knew him too well to mistake it. He was about to produce something else for her stupefaction, something in which his own pride would out-weigh the natural pleasure of sharing a secret with her.

“I am not done yet,” he said quietly. “Don’t frown so, Roka. You are too beautiful ever to frown.”

“It was in despair at your own ignoble qualities of conceit,” she replied a little coldly. “But go on; what fresh wonder is maturing in that agile brain of yours? I’m weak enough to be anxious to learn.”

“As always,” he murmured. “Your remark that peril would not be countered by paralysing motivation among the Masters is perfectly reasonable. They could still level their devilish cerebral power against an attacker. But that is where human inventiveness shows itself superior. Such a danger must, therefore, be neutralised by some form of shield.”

Her interest quickened once more. Gone was the moment of resentment at his manner. If what he hinted at was fact removed from the realm of theory then Vadin had travelled a long way in knowledge.

“You have such a shield?” she whispered breathlessly.

“I am working on it,” he temporised. “It is not yet completed. Until it is we are powerless to make a move, as you will agree, I think. The weapon of itself is not sufficient; we must have protection before, during and after its use. But let me show you something of my work, Roka.”

He took her by the hand and moved on to another bench. Here again, concealed in a cabinet in this c. . .