The Prodigal Sun

by Philip E. High

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

Power-Greedy. Men wished to rule the world, but one man stood in their way. Peter Duncan came from the planet Mattrain - but who was he? Was he human? If so, whence came his vastly superior intellect and technical knowledge? These were mysteries the Administration feared - because they could not find the answer to them. Too late they saw danger. For, by then, Peter Duncan had escaped and taken refuge in the Devastated Areas, from which he continued his fight to save the human race from final utter destruction. But then, he had a reason. Martha of the chestnut hair and striking beauty, who alone knew his secret and who taught him how to love.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 192

Sample

THEY had not named the age. In truth there were few words to describe it. The world had known times of plenty and times of famine; ages of freedom and years of dictatorship. There had even been brief, if localized, periods of near perfection—but this was not one of them.

This period took all the worst, threw them together and made quite sure that nothing good got in.

It was not really the world’s fault. She had been pitch-forked into it. Mankind had just concluded his first interstellar war but the word “victory” was purely relative.

True, the enemy was flat on his back and quite helpless but Earth had emerged from the encounter on all fours. But today, five years after the enemy’s unconditional surrender, she was still licking her wounds and unable to climb to her knees.

The race was sick—sick of its leaders and sick of each other. Its gut ached from overdoses of expediency and its sinews creaked with the bitterest cynicisms.

Whether the men in the long conference room were products or victims of the age is an academic question and wholly irrelevant—it didn’t make them any more pleasant. They were mean, hard men, influenced by no consideration except advancement in their wholly personal. rat-race.

This was the age of dog-eat-dog. Here the cheap chiseller, the terrorist and the extortioner burgeoned like weeds on a refuse heap.

First there was General Statten, a harsh little man with beady eyes and the face of an irritable peanut. The General wore a smart uniform, with impressive rows of ribbons and decorations, but he had flown a desk in an impregnable H.Q. two thousand feet under the Andes. He was a political general, a brilliant organizer with a singular ability for discrediting those immediately above him. Statten’s climb to the top had been a tour de double-cross.

Facing him was Dowd, the industrialist who, during the years of sorrow, had acquired a financial empire without parallel in human history. Dowd was insatiable. Grown drunk with power, he had developed an everlasting thirst for more. He would have liked to possess the world, but Kaft, who represented the Secret Police, stood in his path.

Neither could bring the other down without causing his own collapse. Dowd had insinuated himself so deeply into the financial sinews of the race that he could not be removed without collapse of the economy resulting. Kaft, on the other hand, had kept revealing secret files, and his untimely death would bring them to light. So both took great care to ensure that the other stayed alive. But they hated each other venomously.

It was difficult to understand, even in war, how a police state had developed from a loosely democratic government. People don’t turn round and say: “Let’s have a Secret Police”—or do they?

In an all-out war, manufacturing plants are switched from luxury goods to war materials. Inevitably there are shortages and out of the shortages grows the black market.

In war the best food goes to the fighting men and there is rationing for the civilian population. A thousand and One petty criminals rush forward to bleed off the flow of supplies. The black market flourishes and beside it spring up subsidiary rackets—grafting on government contracts, phoney committees preying on the patriotic, forged papers for the draft-dodger.

The government has to counter these activities by emergency powers and specially trained forces have to be created to deal with civil corruption. Maybe, after all, people do turn round and say: “Let’s have a Secret Police.”

Kaft was it. He had borrowed the techniques of all the police systems which had preceded him and added a few of his own.

After a twenty-five year war it had become so bad that people were afraid to be silent in case their lack of words was interpreted as ‘sullen resentment against existing order’. They no less feared to speak.

Kaft, with his pinched, pink, senile face and scraggy heck, was a man with a mouth like a coin-slot in a vending machine, listening and biding his time.

“I don’t like it.” Rickman rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “It’s all very well for Dowd to rub his hands and dream of extending his empire, but this could be dangerous. In my opinion, we could do without our visitor. I think this man is a louse—he could also be a menace.”

Taking the cigar from his mouth he pointed it at them. “I’ll concede that his knowledge is valuable—immensely valuable. But getting at it is another thing. A jewel encrusted bomb is just as dangerous as the other kind and digging out a few of the gems isn’t much use if the damn thing blows your head off before you’ve finished.”

“Bombs have been de-fused before now,” Dowd said stubbornly.

“Bombs we understand.”

“Even bombs that we don’t. The Vrenka had a lot of gimmicks in the war but we licked most of them.”

“It’s a menace to the whole race.” There were rare occasions when Rickman teetered on the brink of political honesty. “This louse sat out the whole war on a neutral planet and we’re going to welcome him back as a V.I.P. Hell, he may not even be Duncan—he might be a damned alien or, at the very least, a plant for the Mattrain. All this red carpet stuff is being laid on because Dowd wants to bleed him of advanced technologies. I repeat, it’s damned dangerous. Best keep him away.”

He thrust his cigar back in his mouth and chewed at it angrily. “We could sell out the race for thirty technical blue-prints and Dowd could be chief Judas.”

Dowd sighed and smiled twistedly. He did not look at the politician but addressed the others. “When our public-spirited friend draws on his meagre biblical knowledge I must confess I am impressed. However”—Dowd paused and smiled meaningfully—“Mr. Rickman should take time off for self-analysis because, believe me, he is highly skilled in the art of implication.” He looked at the other directly. “Mr. Rickman would like others not only to arrange the crucifixion but to wash his hands as well. What our political friend is trying to say without implicating himself is: “Let’s knock our visitor off as soon as he arrives.”

“I protest!” Rickman was on his feet, flushed and angry.

“Order! Order! ” Hodges the chairman banged his gavel noisily. “The purpose of this meeting is procedure.”

“Gentlemen—please.” Kaft rose, his timing, as always, was perfect. “Mr. Rickman’s apprehensions are not only understandable but commendable.” He paused. His genius for soothing insincerities was well known but seldom failed to convince at the time. “It is quite true that Duncan may be a plant for the Mattrain or, at the very least, working for their espionage organization—but we are not quite fools. Duncan will be under constant surveillance and”—he smiled slyly—“I have detailed a special bodyguard to ‘protect’ him. After the first few public receptions Duncan won’t get near enough to anyone or anything to be dangerous.”

“One question.” General Statten’s little eyes were hard but alert. “I have received information that Independent News have appointed a permanent contact. Thanks to their blasted charter rights we couldn’t block the move.”

Kaft smiled thinly. “We didn’t try—too obvious. Let him report until public interest wanes.”

Rickman said: “Who is this contact and what’s his job?”

Kaft leaned down and extracted something from a briefcase. “I have his file here. His job is to write up a day-by-day account of Duncan and his reactions to Earth. If we handle this carefully we may learn quite a lot.”

“And the contact himself?”

“A man named Mark Gaynor. He’s been screened, of course. Has a flair for factual reporting but fortunately is an extrovert and without subtlety. An excellent war record, incidentally. Organized and personally led four successful commando raids on Vrenka bases in the later stages of the war. Decorated twice, achieved the rank of major …” Kaft closed the file slowly. “A hard, tough man but excellent for our purpose. If we have to rub out Duncan in a hurry we’ve a scapegoat conveniently to hand.”

“Sounds as if this goat could butt back—and hard,” Rickman said savagely.

Kaft smiled. “We’ll make quite sure he butts the man we choose.”

“We’re going to look this prodigal over personally?”

“But of course. Interrogation of such a man is not a task for subordinates. We must handle this with subtlety. At first, at least, he must feel he is among friends.”

The transfer ship hung ready in space, withdrawn-looking and somehow timeless; a dull black, pear-shaped blob flung carelessly and rather incongruously against an un-winking mist of stars.

At a distance, but close enough to be pointed, four bulbous, heavily armed cruisers stood ready and waiting.

During the war the Mattrain, despite the tactical position of her Empire directly between the two warring races, had remained uncompromisingly neutral. It was not a stand which had endeared her to the human race—surely one humanoid people should help another? Worse, since first contact, the Mattrain had brusquely cold shouldered all attempts to establish friendly relations. Keep away and stay away had been her only response to countless suggestions of trade, cultural exchanges, pleas for medical assistance by which Earth sought to establish profitable relations with a people several thousand years ahead in culture and technology.

It was this technical superiority which had prevented both races seizing the Mattrain worlds for their own advantage. Both were acutely aware that the Mattrain could have beaten them to their knees in a matter of days.

Again there were rumours. No one quite knew where these rumours originated but put together they spelled out something unpleasant. It was said that the Mattrain had something but no one knew quite what it was. Attacking the Mattrain would be suicide for anyone, even their technical superiors—if there were any.

There were a million guesses as to what the ‘something’ was but no one had put forward any definite theory. Only one man might know, only one man might have an answer—the man who had sat out the entire war on those neutral Mattrain planets. A man called Peter Duncan.

The Mattrain ship, when it finally arrived, was so small it was almost an insult. Here was no dignity, no ceremony, no sense of the appropriate.

The cruiser commanders had the uneasy feeling they were being laughed at. The Mattrain pilot was probably indulging in mocking and slightly vulgar signs with his fingers. All this pointed show of force and they’d sent that—a tiny, bronze-coloured cube no bigger than a ground car.

They would have liked to have done something about it. They would have liked to have shown this cock-a-hoop flea-cage just what they felt about it. Their resentment was made worse by chagrined realization that this same flea-cage could probably beat hell out of the lot of them.

The Mattrain ship touched the side of the transfer vessel, hung there briefly, then drifted away. Watchers saw it boost rapidly to a killing gravity, exhale sudden brightness and flick abruptly into hyper-drive.

Transfer was over.

The transfer ship was beaming vision and sound but viewers on Earth caught only a brief glimpse of a fair-haired, smiling man emerging from the transit lock. He was lost almost immediately in a grim reception committee of white-coated and bemasked medics. They hustled him quickly away and the white doors of the medical laboratories slid shut in front of the tele-mikes.

Viewers had a long wait—medical science was taking no chances.

The experts began on the assumption that he was non-human and worked backwards. Fortunately they had his natal charts but it made them no less thorough. They checked his blood, respiration, retina pattern, fingerprints and his sexual organs. They measured, weighed and analysed the contents of his bowels, stomach and bladder. They ran off charts on reflexes, glandular reactions and the results of deliberate bruising and cuts. They removed fragments of flesh and skin, scrapings from the teeth and hair from his head and body. Slowly they became reassured.

At the end of the sixth gruelling hour the chief medic removed his hygienic mask. “I have no reasons to suppose you are not human. Our tests give reasonable grounds for assuming you are the original Duncan.” The chief medic was not an ungracious man—just frustrated, suffering from a sense of anti-climax. Somehow the whole business had turned out to be routine and utterly mundane.

There was nothing startling about Peter Duncan. A slim, quiet man with fair, rather untidy hair. Certainly he seemed almost unnaturally healthy and well-muscled but, apart from that, a man you might meet anywhere. Wide but not striking blue eyes, a good strong chin, a long, amused and faintly mocking mouth—hell, the man was ordinary.

“Nothing ever happens to me,” the Chief Medic thought savagely. He had spent almost the entire war in a military hospital a thousand feet underground, the probable cause of his sense of frustration. He’d never seen the war—only the beds, the lines of casualties tossed like unwanted car-cases, one after another, on the brightly lit operating tables.

“You may dress. Food will be brought as soon as you are ready.” Belatedly and with some effort, he added: “Good luck, Duncan.” The By God, you’ll need it showed only in his eyes.

Outside, the tele-mikes were still “live” and waiting. One of the news circuits was filling in the time by giving a résumé of past events.

It was a particularly cloying broadcast, deliberately slanted and pre-digested for the lower intelligence brackets and, therefore, coated with an unreal intimacy. It was, however, reasonably accurate:

“No one will ever know what happened to the Mackley. Loading and pre-flight checks had proceeded normally. She blasted out of orbit dead on schedule with one hundred and eighty-three passengers and a crew of thirty-five.

“She was never seen again. Her last routine message was received five days out of orbit, but after that her fate is one of the mysteries of space.

“We do know, however, that a Mattrain vessel recorded a disturbance, possibly an explosion on her instruments, and went to investigate.

“The aliens found only drifting metallic dust but, nonetheless, their instruments were recording distress signals. They immediately centred on these calls and found a single life-craft.”

The announcer paused dramatically then continued: “Within this vessel the aliens found a man child, a six-months-old baby, the sole survivor of the ill-fated Mackley.

“Whether the child’s mother had a premonition of danger and carried her baby boy to safety before the Mackley met her end we shall never know. Perhaps there was prior warning—but that, also, will never be known …

“To give the Mattrain their due, they immediately notified Earth and arrangements were made to return the child to its own race.

“Fate, however, decreed otherwise. Before the negotiations could be completed, Earth’s Empire was invaded by the cone ships of Vrenka. And, in the years of terror which followed, the Mackley and the baby boy were forgotten.

“Only today, thirty years after the Mackley’s disappearance, does the survivor return, no longer a baby but a mature man—a man named Peter Duncan.”

There was a carefully timed pause. “What can we expect of this man Duncan, raised on an alien planet by alien foster parents? Here is a symbol denoting the unknown. A human being, yes, but with an alien background and an alien education, a man whose mind must reason differently from our own. A man to whom our way of life, our hopes, dreams and aspirations, may be totally incomprehensible.”

The announcer lowered his voice dramatically. “Why does he return now to his own race? We must not remind ourselves that he was in no great haste to return when our resources and strength were strained to the limit.

“Again, what does he bring us? Does he come with the blessings of a superior technology or as agent of an alien race? Is he friend or foe? Does he despise or pity us?

“All these questions must be asked and, when answered, proved beyond any shadow of doubt.

“Although today we kill the fatted calf for the returning prodigal, shall we one day deplore his return and the efforts we made to make him welcome…?”

Duncan sat down to the solitary meal which the announcer had described as the fatted calf. Earth had do. . .