The Slaves of Heaven

by Edmund Cooper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

'Welcome to Heaven', said the voice. 'The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.' Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers - huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population. Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called 'heaven'. And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 187

Sample

BERRY LAY CONTENTEDLY AGAINST Vron, savouring the sweet smell of her body, methodically kneading her large, hard breast as he sucked out the unwanted milk. Vron yielded a great deal of milk, being greatly a woman. She made far more than little Vron would ever take; and, for the time being, the clan did not have any other babies. It would be a pity to waste the milk. It would be a crime.

He glanced at Vron’s face. Her eyes were closed, her lips were open. She seemed happy. He slipped his hand between her legs and began to fondle her. She gave a low groan of pleasure, but did not move.

Little Vron, sitting on the warm summer grass by the side of her father and mother, observed the entire operation with innocent interest. After a few moments, it reminded her that she, too, was entitled to take milk. She crawled to Vron’s other breast, imperiously pushed away the soft doeskin that covered it and groped possessively for the nipple. She found it.

Vron shivered joyfully. Then every muscle in her body seemed to relax. She whimpered with sheer ecstasy. Her man was on one side, her child was on the other. She did not think of herself as a milch cow. For a time, she was mother to the world.

Presently, Berry realised that he had emptied the breast. He kissed Vron on the lips. She tasted her own milk, and was amazed at its sweetness.

“It was good?” she asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“It was good, very good.” Berry’s fingers were creating devastation between her legs, but she did not want him to take them away. She knew he would not take them away.

He laughed. “I have given hunger to the little one.”

“To me also,” said Vron, opening her eyes.

Again he laughed. “Then I will satisfy your hunger as you have satisfied mine.”

“Berry, let the little one finish.”

“Then she must finish soon,” he said. “There are things which do not keep well in the warmth of the sun.”

Berry sat up, plucked a blade of grass and began to chew it. He was content. Why should he not be content? Since the death of Amri, two seasons ago, he had been chief of the clan. He had a woman of his own—no one else had—and he had a girl child. True, a boy child would have been better. But a man cannot ask for everything to come his way. It was against the laws of nature.

Still, thus far the gods had been very kind to him. No! I will not think that, he told himself fiercely. I don’t care what the old ones believe. There are no gods, there is no heaven in the sky. These are dreams fit only for children, not for grown men. There are only natural things—things we know. The sun, the moon, the stars. The seasons. Wind, rain, snow, ice. Rivers, lakes, oceans. And the living creatures that dwell on the earth and in the air and in the water. Hunger and love, and death and birth. These are natural things. These are things we can understand. There are no gods! Who has ever seen a god? Who has ever returned from heaven to tell us what it is like? There are no gods.

But there were the Night Comers.

“Your forehead is wrinkled, Berry. Are you unhappy?”

“No. I am thinking. That is all.”

Vron gave an indolent sigh. The baby still pleasured her by taking prodigious quantities of milk from her swollen breast.

“Thinking is hard. Do not weary yourself, my man. The sun is warm. Little Vron is almost finished.”

“Good.”

Vron could never understand that thinking was not an arduous task for Berry, but a form of relaxation, a kind of pleasure. Vron did not like to think. Why should she? She was a woman with much milk in her breasts, a child at her side, the promise of more to come, and with the chief of her clan for a mate. She was in clover.

What did that mean?

It was a saying the old ones used. Berry knew what clover was. It was a tiny plant with three round leaves, not good to eat. To find a fourleaf clover was supposed to be a sign of good omen. But what did the words mean? What was the point of being in clover if you could not eat it as a food that would enable you to survive?

Yet Berry realised that he, too, was in clover. He was not a blood member of the Londos, but he was now chief of the clan. The Londos had found him abandoned as a baby in the forest. His face had turned black and puckered like the skin of the sweet black berries that were good to eat when trees began to cast their leaves. He had been near to death. But there had been a woman of the Londos people, Mari, with breasts full of milk and a recently dead boy child to mourn.

Mari had given him her milk; and because his face was like the black berries, she had called him Berry. Mari had been taken by the Night Comers when Berry had been with her only seven summers.

He remembered the scene vividly. He remembered the ordeal. He could not move. He could not cry out. Nor could anyone else. He could only watch Mari being dragged away, like a piece of meat, by the silver-clad Night Comers.

The image had been burned into his brain. The Night Comers were real because he had seen them. Gods and heaven were not real because no one had ever claimed to see gods or to return from heaven. But the Night Comers were real. And they had to be men. A strange kind of men, but still men. Not gods, but men.

They took women. Women only. So they had to be men.

“Little Vron has finished,” said big Vron. “I am ready for you, Berry.”

He looked at the baby. Asleep, now, drunk upon milk, mouth wide open. She had fallen from the breast in a state of stupor.

“And I am ready for you, Vron,” he said, feeling the flesh between his legs grow painful with desire.

He sank the aching flesh into her. And she sighed, and groaned with the pleasure of receiving it.

He fondled her, caressed her, held her breasts savagely and took great pleasure as a residue of milk squirted up into his face.

But even as his seed pulsed into her body, he was thinking of the mystery of the Night Comers.

THE LONDOS PEOPLE WERE not numerous. Nor were they warlike. They would fight if they had to, but only if there was no way of avoiding battle. Some of the other clans—particularly the northern ones, the Manches people, the Jords and the Glaskas—made fighting their way of life. They fought chiefly for women, being constantly short of women because the Night Comers took more or less equally from every clan. And who could stand against silver ghosts?

But, despite all the strange stories, Berry remained convinced that the Night Comers were not ghosts, as he was also convinced that they were not gods. It was known that they always wore silver garments. It was said that their very look could freeze a man, as if he were held in ice, so that he could not move a muscle for many hours. But it was said also that they had no faces, no heads. So how could creatures with no faces freeze a mansimply by looking at him?

It was said that these faceless beings took the women they captured to heaven. But that was old men’s talk, children’s talk, women’s talk. There was no heaven; and the Night Comers were only men with strange skills, men who needed a constant supply of women. Perhaps, Berry thought, they have no women of their own. That is why they must steal ours. So, if a way could be found to stop the Night Comers from stealing women, they would die out. For, he argued, without women to breed from, any clan—no matter how skilful its men were—was doomed.

That is why, since he had become chief of the clan upon the death of Amri, Berry had devised an alarm system. It consisted of a long, thin, barely visible cord that was placed round the encampment at night, supported at about a leg’s length from the ground by forked sticks five paces apart. If anyone or anything pressed against the cord, attempting to pass, a metal bell would begin to ring. Berry was very proud of the bronze bell. It was plunder—a souvenir of one of the rare occasions when the Londos had engaged in battle and had defeated a strong force of Jords.

So far, the bell had warned only of the incursion of wild dogs, pigs, a wounded bull and a stag that had obviously been hunted all day and was half out of its mind with fear. The Londos called the alarm system Berry’s dog-bell. But they were glad of its existence. Since it had been brought into use, the Night Comers had not stolen any women. Perhaps that was an omen.

Berry, himself, did not place much faith in his alarm system. He knew it was crude, but it was the best he could devise—for the time being. He thought also that, if the Night Comers were as skilful as he surmised, they would find a way of taking the women they required without causing the bell to ring.

But the bell would have to be used until he could think of something better. Meanwhile, it gave the clan a sense of security. And that was something.

The Londos people were nomadic. They had been nomadic for generations, though their wanderings were restricted mainly to the south country. Like every other tribe or clan, they knew the hot spots and avoided them sedulously. Men who sought refuge in the hot spots—clan outcasts, criminals, those whose minds were unclear —did not usually live long. Or, if they did, strange things happened to them. They developed horn or bone where there should only be flesh. They grew limbs where there should be no limbs. They went blind or began to see what others could not see.

Best of all, particularly in the summer, the Londos liked to stay close to the sea. The sea was bountiful. It gave forth an abundance of food—crabs, lobsters sometimes, cockles, mussels, many kinds of fish. If one had to choose gods, thought Berry, the sea would be one of the best gods of all. It was the source of much life, much food. Unlike the land, the sea was untainted. There were no hot spots. Or none that were known.

Berry was even thinking of building a permanent settlement near the sea. But it would need careful preparation to convince the clan that this was a good thing to do. Not only was the wandering way of life in their blood, but it was reinforced by a belief that to live permanently in one place brought disaster.

According to legend, the hot spots, had once been huge settlements containing many, many clans. According to legend, these people had been greatly skilled in magic. They did not need to hunt or fish, or collect mushrooms, nuts, apples, berries and other things that were good to eat. Their magic, so the old ones said, had been so great that they could make food as they required it. Also they were supposed to have been able to make light and heat without the use of fire, so that it mattered not to them when the sun went down or when winter came; for they could create their own night and day and their own seasons at will.

But, the tellers of tales maintained, their magic was of no avail when the ground became too hot. It grew hot because too many people lived and walked upon it and spent all the days of their lives in one place, never journeying to unspoiled land to make a new camp. And when the ground became hot, pestilence came, destroying the great settlements, making the land on which they had been built unfit to be used by men for evermore.

Berry did not believe in magic; but he was half inclined to believe that the hot spots might once have been great settlements with far too many people. Perhaps these people did have strange skills. Perhaps, as was said, they could turn night into day and winter into summer. But not by magic. And perhaps they did not fully understand the nature of the skills they used. And very likely that was why they perished.

However, and whatever the truth about the hot spots might be, it would be difficult to convince the Londos that a permanent settlement was a good thing. Difficult, but not impossible.

Berry himself was aware of all the practical arguments for and against. The arguments against were: if you stayed in one place, you would soon exhaust the surrounding countryside of its game and its edible plants; your limbs would become weak because you did not constantly harden them by travelling; your women would spend too much time sitting around, chatting and making mischief because they did not have to engage in the hard work of setting up camp or getting ready to move on; and, finally, the ground would become hot because too many people walked upon it. But, also, there were strong arguments for staying in one place. You could build permanent weather-proof dwellings so that winter would not take its toll of the very old and the very young; you could devise fortifications for additional protection against other clans and the Night Comers; you could have fires that never need be put out; you could plant seeds of things that were good to eat; you could build boats and go out fishing whenever the sea was calm; and, in short, you could live better and more comfortably than was possible if you were constantly on the move.

Unless the ground became hot…

But Berry did not seriously believe that the ground could become hot because too many people lived and walked upon it. Besides, the Londos were a small clan, Even if the tellers of tales were right, it would take the trampling of the feet of many large clans to make the ground poisonous. And that could not possibly happen for generations.

So, one day, when the time was ripe, he would convince the clan that it would be a good thing to make a permanent home close to the sea. Then they would be able to make the best possible use of the food provided by the sea and the land. They would be able to stop living upon the edge of disaster, the edge of starvation. The Londos would be able to grow.

These thoughts passed through Berry’s head as he lay close to Vron in the darkness of their doeskin tent. Through small gaps between the loosely laced flaps of the doorway, he could see the stars dimming as the black sky slowly faded into grey. Soon the sun would rise and the day begin. He sighed. Another day when he would have to make decisions that might turn out to be good or bad but that only he could make because he was clan chief.

Amri had been stabbed to death because he. . .