The Altar at Asconel

by John Brunner

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

Whether or not he had wanted to turn back at the last minute, he couldn't have - the wave of dirty, hungry people carried him helplessly along in their fervour reach the temple. Like dope addicts, he told himself, they don't even care about themselves, only about the thing that is inside the temple! He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden's chair, and men and women were offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek - whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was . . . I'll find out, he told himself grimly, when I enter these doors . . . (First published 1965)

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 144

Sample

AT LAST, after almost ten years, the moment had come. He felt himself ready for the task he had undertaken.


Spartak of Asconel closed the latest of hundreds of books which he had consulted, drew a deep breath, and gazed around his
cell. Other books were piled high on every shelf; beside them were tape, crystal and disc recordings, reels of microfilm,
manuscripts—the winnowings of a decade-long search through the unparralleled store of knowledge here on Annanworld.


The switch from student to teacher was as easy as picking up the microphone of his own recorder and uttering the first words.
Yet it was somehow not easy at all. In one instant he would change the pattern of his life—not obviously, as when he left
Asconel forever, but subjectively. The realization brought with it a curious floating sensation, as though he were suspended
in space between two planets.


Abruptly he was impatient with his own reluctance. His hand closed on the microphone as though seizing a noxious plant that must be gripped firmly to prevent it stinging, and he
began to speak in a measured voice, not diffident or hesitant, but nonetheless unassured, as if it were a long time since
he last made a dogmatic assertion of the truth.


And that was so. Life on Annanworld centered on a single basic assumption: that mankind knew a great deal, but understood
virtually nothing.


“The fall of the Empire,” he commenced, and heard in imagination the crashing of worlds like bowling-balls being hurled down
a skittle-alley, “is for most people shrouded in a mystery only less deep than the obscurity attending its foundation, and
that although the former event is closer to us in time than the latter by some ten thousand years. The reason in both cases
is the same, and so simple that it generally has to be pointed out before it is noticed. It is as difficult to maintain detailed
records during a landslide as it is during an explosion.


“The erosive effect of ten millennia has stripped the deceitful flesh from the story of the Imperial rise; today we are fortunate
enough to have only the skeleton arrayed before us. We know that we were borrowers; we know that we inherited the abandoned
property—most significantly, the interstellar ships—of a people who matured and died in the galactic hub while we were struggling
outward from our legendary planet of origin. We know that this chance bequest allowed our race to spread among millions of
stars like an epidemic disease. We know that our reckless habit of spending our resources as though their store was infinite
was sustained for the entire lifetime of the Argian Empire by the billion-vessel spacefleet of our mysterious benefactors.
Details beyond this bare outline, however, can now almost certainly never be reclaimed. It is as though one were to blink
and find a century had passed. Blink now, and man is creeping along the galactic rim, in those areas which were later to be
regarded as the home of mutants and pirates—but which, significantly, were and remain the only areas where interstellar ships
have been built by human beings. Blink again, and Argus is already a wealthy world, imposing economic domination on its neighbors
like Phaidona. Blink once more, and the Empire’s writ runs all the way to the Marches of Klareth, and the threshold of the Big Dark.”


Now he was warming to his tale, the greatest in the checkered span of human history. His hooded eyes saw other sights than
the plain stone walls of the tiny room; the note of uncertainty was fading from his voice. He was scarcely aware of the opening
of his door, and did not turn to look at the gray-clad novice who appeared in the entrance.


“So total was the absorption of our borrowings into the pattern of human development,” he continued, “that tens—perhaps hundreds—of
billions of people were born and died without being able to conceive an alternative to the structure of the Empire. Yet …
something strained past its limit. Something was overburdened, and broke. And the Empire fell.”


The novice, impatient perhaps, moved from one foot to the other; the disturbance caught a fragment of Spartak’s attention,
and he bowed his bearded head in a brief nod of acknowledgment, though without breaking the flow of his discourse.


“The collapse left more worlds than we can count suspended, as it were, in a void between a glorious past and a future so
bleak it has been nicknamed, already, the Long Night. Most relapsed towards barbarism; having been dependent for millennia
on the tightly-knit network of galactic trade they could not support their own populations. Others, somewhat more fortunate,
contrived to hold on to a portion of what they had formerly enjoyed, but at the expense of extreme privation and a near-total
denial of individual liberty. An example in this category was Mercator, which conquered and then bled two nearby worlds to
preserve itself. Again, there were worlds—including Argus itself, the galactic capitol—where the dissolution proceeded slowly
enough for adjustments to be made without undue violence.”


A draft from the still-open door stirred some notes before him, and reminded him that the novice was waiting for a chance
to speak to him. He began to hurry, wishing to get the whole of his initial argument on record before interrupting himself.


“The purpose of this present work, however, is to make a contribution towards the documentation of the first truly human expansion through the galaxy—one, that is, which does not depend on the leavings of another species. It may never take
place; we may have squandered our energies too swiftly, and already be going into a permanent decline. On the optimistic assumption
that the present trend is to be reversed, the seeds of such a regeneration may most likely be found on worlds sufficiently
far from the cataclysmic effect of Argus’s decay to have maintained their society under the guidance of benevolent rulers,
like Loudor, Klareth, and the subject of this study: my home world of Asconel.”


He put aside the microphone, and the hum of the recorder died. Shifting his lanky body in its coarse brown robe to face the
intruder, he looked questioningly at him.


“I’m sorry, Brother Spartak,” the novice said. “Brother Ulwyn sent me with a message from the gatehouse. There is a man demanding
to see you who claims to be your brother.”


Spartak repressed an exclamation of astonishment and put his hand to his crisp brown beard. He said, “Ah—well, it’s not impossible.
I have brothers, though I never expected to see one of them on Annanworld.…What’s his name?”


The novice looked unhappy, and shuffled his sandal-clad feet on the stone flags. He said, “I’m afraid Brother Ulwyn didn’t
tell me.”


“What does he look like? Did you see him?”

“I caught a glimpse of him through the bars of the gate. He’s—well, not as tall as you are, and he has red hair. And there’s
a long scar down his right cheek, which looks like a sword-cut.” The novice added the final detail eagerly.


“That’s not very helpful—all three of my brothers have red hair and all are shorter than I am, and last time I saw them none
had a sword-scar!”


“He bears no resemblance to you that I could tell,” the novice suggested after a pause.

“That’s no help either,” Spartak grunted. “I call them my brothers, but in fact we’re half-brothers, only. Well, it can hardly
be Hodat, who rules on Asconel, so it must be either Vix or Tiorin. Does he—? But why am I asking these ridiculous questions?
All you have to do is send him in!”


“Unfortunately—” The novice swallowed in enormous embarrassment. “Unfortunately Brother Ulwyn cannot admit him. He carries a gun, and will not part with it.”


In spite of himself, and his oath of allegiance to the principles of his non-violent Order, Spartak felt he was beginning
to grin. “It sounds like Vix,” he said gravely. “Tell me, has he already threatened to burn his way in if the gate isn’t opened?”


“I—I imagine so, from Brother Ulwyn’s agitation,” the novice confirmed, and ventured a shy smile.

“That’ll be Vix,” Spartak murmured, and got to his feet. “Ten years haven’t changed him very much, that’s obvious. Well, I’ll
go with you and find out what he wants.”


They passed through twilit passages, cool for all the baking heat of noon outdoors, and walked the length of the gravel paths
between the crisp green lawns, the low trees and beds of carefully tended flowers. Here and there, groups of gray-clad novices—among
them an occasional off-world student in gaudier clothing—gathered about their brown-robed tutors, discussing knotty points
of human history. Spartak caught random phrases as he passed, but only a few, for without realizing he had quickened his stride
till the novice was scuttling to keep up. After all, the appearance of a brother he hadn’t seen in a decade—even a half-brother—was
an event.


At the threshold of the gatehouse Brother Ulwyn came to meet them. That was an event, too; the gatekeeper was stout, elderly
and usually imperturbable. Now his round face was sweat-shiny and his voice wheezed with agitation.


“That—that ruffian!” he exploded. “He carries arms all about him! He offered violence to me—to me! And on Annanworld! You must calm him, Spartak, and persuade him to enter—already there’s a jeering crowd from the village
beyond the gate, and more are gathering all the time.”


“Let me through, and I’ll talk with him,” Spartak said.

“But calm him, and bring him in,” Brother Ulwyn stressed, reaching for the bunch of keys that swung at his girdle. “Do you
know, I think if the peephole had been larger he’d have dragged me through it?”


Moments later Spartak emerged onto the dusty roadway that led up from the village in the valley a short walk distant. As Ulwyn had said, a crowd had gathered on the other side of the road, grinning and chattering. A few paces away
from them, sitting on a milestone and looking thunderously angry, was Vix, the sword-scar about which the novice had spoken
milk-white on his rage-red cheek. It was small wonder that Ulwyn had been agitated; across his back Vix wore an energy gun
which would probably have been capable of razing the gatehouse with a single bolt.


Spartak threw his hood back on his shoulders. Vix stood up. He spoke his brother’s name in a strange, uncertain voice: “Spartak—?”

“Yes, it’s I. Though the beard is new to my face since last we met.”

All the fury, and with it all the spirit, seemed to drain out of Vix in an instant. “So it’s true,” he said warily, and spat
in the dust before turning with a shrug to ease the weight of his gun and starting along the road towards the village.


PUZZELED, the gaping country-folk fell silent, apart from one who laughed. But he too was silent the moment after Vix had scythed
him with a murderous glare.


“Vix!” Spartak cried, and lost the self-control which ten years on Annanworld had ingrained in him. He caught up his robe
and closed the distance between himself and his half-brother in a dozen loping strides, the loose soles of his sandals slapping
up little clouds of yellow dust. “Was that why you came to seek me out?”


Vix spun to face him and set his hands squarely on his hips. He had to throw back his head to look directly into the younger
man’s eyes; he was head and shoulders shorter of the two, but made up in muscles like steel springs for his lack of inches.


“I couldn’t believe I’d been told the truth about you!” he blazed. “I never thought that the son of a Warden of Asconel would
skulk in his hole and make no move to right injustice! Well, now I’ve had it forced down my throat. I’m off to find Tiorin and see if he still speaks a language with which an honest man needn’t fear to foul his mouth!”


“What are you talking about?” said Spartak in icy tones.

Vix’s green eyes flashed. “Ah, so you think to save your newly bearded face, do you? What’s this—you’re claiming not to have
heard the news? That’s rich! On Annanworld, the university planet of the Empire, where all knowledge is collected and stored!”


Spartak took a deep breath, fighting the premonition that had overcome him at Vix’s astounding behavior. He said, “Our business
is more with the past, trying to analyze what brought about the downfall of the Empire, than with the present. I’ve been doing
the research for a history of Asconel, but the latest news I’ve had is—oh—five years old at least.”


“Save the sales talk for the yokels,” Vix grunted, jerking his head towards the villagers grouped by the roadside. “Well—I’ll
believe you, because you’re my own father’s son. And then I’ll see what counterfeit metal you hide under that cheap brown
robe. Hodat is dead, and—”


“Dead?” Spartak blurted. “When? How?”

And on the instant, so swiftly that he returned to full attention in time for Vix’s answer, he felt himself transported back
in space and time to their last meeting: in a glade on the royal island of Gard, in Asconel’s placid tropical ocean.


They had come together, the three brothers, alone: Tiorin the eldest, Vix the next, and—standing a little apart, because he
had been apart from birth, being the child of his father’s second wife—Spartak.


For long moments after the departure of the attendants who had accompanied them here, there was no sound except the distant
plashing of the summer sea and the quiet humming of insects about their immemorial business of fertilizing the flowers. Spartak
used the time to look at his half-brothers and fix them in his memory. He would miss them, despite the fact that they had
never been as close to him as they were to each other.


They had the red hair of their mother and the stocky, brawny build of their father; so did Hodat, who was to be Warden of
Asconel at noon today. But Spartak had the gaunt tallness of his mother’s line, rooted in a past of which even she herself knew little—the late Warden had taken her a year after being left a widower, and then she was only a wandering
singer and teacher who had been born twenty systems distant of an unknown father. Younger than Vix by four years, he already
had the scholar’s stoop, the hooded thoughtful eyes of one much given to study.
. . .