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The Timeless Ones
The TIMELESS ONES
By FRANK BELKNAP LONG
_It was a peaceful world, a green world,
where bright blossoms swayed beneath two
golden suns. Why did the visitors from Earth
sit in their rocket-ship--terrified?_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories July 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"There will be a great many changes, Ned," Cynthia Jackson said. She
stared out the viewport at the little green world which the contact
rocket _Star Mist_ was swiftly approaching on warp-drive.
Her husband co-pilot nodded, remembering Clifton and Helen Sweeney,
and the Sweeney youngsters. Remembering with a smile Tommy Sweeney's
kite-flying antics, his freckles and mischievous eyes--a tow-headed kid
of ten with an Irish sense of humor, sturdily planted in a field of
alien corn five thousand light years from Earth.
Sowing and reaping and bringing in the sheaves, in the blue light
of a great double sun, his dreams as vibrant with promise as the
interstellar warp-drive which, a century ago, had brought the first
prospect ship from Earth to the stars.
He'd be a man grown now, as sturdy as his dad. You could almost take
that for granted. And his sister would be a willowy girl with clear
blue eyes, and she'd come out of a white plastic cottage with the
buoyancy of twenty summers in her carriage and smile.
They'd be farmers still. You couldn't change the Sweeneys in a million
years, couldn't wean them away from the good earth.
It was funny, but he couldn't even visualize the Sweeneys without
thinking of a little sleepy town, the kind of town he'd left himself as
a kid to strike out across the great curve of the universe. Dry dust
of Kansas and the Dakotas that would still be blowing after a thousand
years!
"They've had time to build a town, Ned!" Cynthia said. "A really fine
town with broad streets and modern, dust-proof buildings!"
Ned Jackson awoke from his reverie with a wry start. He nodded again,
remembering the many other colonists and the equipment which had been
shipped to the little green world across the years. Plastic materials
to build houses and schools and roadways, educational materials to
build eager young minds.
Every ten years a contact rocket went out from Earth by interstellar
warp-drive to make a routine check. The trip was a long one--eight
months--but the Central Colonization Bureau had to make sure that
anarchy did not take the place of law on worlds where teeming jungles
encouraged the free exercise of man's best qualities--and his worst.
From end to end of the Galaxy, on large planets and small, progress had
to be measured in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number.
There could be no other yardstick, for when man ceased to be a social
animal his star-conquering genius shriveled to the vanishing point.
"The friends we made here were very special, Ned," Cynthia said.
"I guess people who dare greatly have to be a bit keener than the
stay-at-homes, a bit more eager and alive. But the Sweeneys had such a
tremendous zest for living--"
"I know," Ned said.
"They were wonderful--generous and kind. It will be good to see them
again. Good to--" Cynthia laughed. "I don't know why, but I was about
to say: 'Good to be home.'"
Ned thought he knew why.
They'd made their first flight for the Bureau exactly ten years before.
It had been a combined "official business" and honeymoon flight, and
almost the whole of it had been spent on the little green world.
Did not the queen bee and her consort, flying high above the hive on
a night of perfumed darkness, remember best what was bliss to recall,
the shifting lights and shadows and honey-scented murmurings of their
nuptial trance?
Would not the brightest, furthest star be "home" to the star-beguiled?
* * * * *
The rocket-ship was out of subspace now and traveling on its murmuring
overdrive. It was well within sight of green valleys and purple-rimmed
hills.
The planet had grown from a tiny dot to a shining silver sphere
swimming in misty radiance; for a moment it had wavered against the
brightly burning stars, caught in a web of darkness--
Then, swiftly, had exploded into a close, familiar world, as beautiful
as a flower opening snowy petals to the dawn.
It was a simple matter to bring the rocket down. The valley seemed to
sweep up toward them, and gravity jets took over in automatic sequence.
There was a gentle hiss of air as the _Star Mist_ settled to rest on
hard-packed soil, a scant fifty yards from a blue and vermillion flower
garden.
Through a dancing blue haze a dwelling loomed, white and serene in the
rosy flush of evening.
Cynthia looked at her husband, her eyes wide with surmise.
"Just shows how close you can come when you follow dial readings!" Ned
said. "The first lean-to shack stood just about here. I remember the
slope of the soil--"
Cynthia's eyes grew warm and eager. "Ned, I'm glad--it's no fun
searching for old friends with your heart in your throat! We'll step
right up and surprise them!"
When they emerged from the ship the perfume of flowers mingled with the
richer scent of freshly-turned earth, bringing back memories of their
earlier visit.
There had been no flower garden then, but the soil had possessed the
same April shower freshness.
"I must look like a fright!" Cynthia said. "You didn't give me time to
powder my nose!"
They were within five yards of the dwelling when a door opened and a
child of ten or twelve emerged. She was blue-eyed, golden-haired, and
she stood for a moment blinking in the evening light, her hair whipped
by the wind.
"Mary Sweeney!" Cynthia exclaimed, catching hold of Ned's arm. Then, in
a stunned whisper: "Oh, but it can't be! She'd be a grown woman!"
* * * * *
The child straightened at the sound of the voice, looking about. She
saw Ned and Cynthia, and blank amazement came into her eyes. Then she
gave a little glad cry, and ran toward them, her arms reaching out in
welcome.
"You've come back!" she exclaimed. "Mom and dad thought it would be a
long time. But I knew you'd come soon! I knew! I was sure!"
Nowhere any sign that this was not the child they had known ten years
before! Her voice, the peaches-and-cream color that flooded her cheeks,
the way her hair clung in little ringlets to her temples, all struck
memory chords from long ago.
And now she was beckoning them into the dwelling, having moved a little
away from them. She was balancing herself in elfin lightness on one
toe, and smiling in warm gratefulness, the sun all blue and gold behind
her.
She had always seemed an elfin and mischievous child.
"What can it mean, Ned?"
White-lipped, Ned shook his head. "I--I don't know! We'd better go
inside!"
Helen Sweeney, her white-streaked auburn hair damp with steam vapor,
sent a frying pan crashing to the floor as she turned from the stove
with a startled cry.
"Ned! Cynthia! Why, land sakes, it seems only yesterday--"
Ned had a good look at her face. The eyes were the same, good-humored
and kindly and wise; and if she had been forty a decade before she
seemed now to be forcing herself back into an earlier instant of
time--the very evening of that last well-remembered birthday party,
with the candles all bright and gleaming, and the children refusing to
admit that she could ever be middle-aged.
Old Clifton came in from his workshop out in back. He'd been whittling
away at a rocket-ship model, and he still held it firmly in the crook
of his arm, his eyes puckered in dust bowl grief. Like most men of the
soil, Clifton had difficulty with his whittling when he turned his
skill to rocketships.
The grief vanished when he saw Ned and Cynthia. Pure delight took hold
of him, bringing a quick smile of welcome to his lips.
"Back so soon? Seems only yesterday you folks went away!"
"It was ten years ago!" Ned said, his throat strangely dry.
Clifton looked at him and shook his head. "Ten years, Ned? Surely
you're joking!"
"It was a good many years, Clifton," Helen Sweeney said quickly. "You
must forgive us, Ned, Cynthia. Time just doesn't seem to matter when
you're busy building for the future. Time goes fast, like a great ship
at sea, its sails ballooning out with a wind that keeps carrying it
faster and faster into the sunrise."
"There are no ships here," Clifton said, chuckling. "Helen's
fancy-wedded to Earth, but she's forgetting the last sailing ship
rotted away a hundred years before she was born. It's a good thought
though.
"Don't know what put a sailing ship in Helen's head, but I guess folks
who were born on Earth have a right to hark back a bit. It'll be
different with Tom and Mary."
"Where's Tommy?" Ned asked.
"Out shucking corn!" Clifton's voice was vibrant with sudden pride.
"He's still the same reckless young lad. He'd risk his neck to bring in
a full harvest. I keep warning him, but he goes right on worrying his
mother.
"Fact is, he hasn't changed at all. No more than we have."
So they knew! Cynthia looked at Ned, an unspoken question in her eyes.
How could they accept the tremendousness of not changing without
realizing that any arrest of the aging process must alter their daily
lives in a thousand intangible ways?
How could they build for the future--when their children would never
grow up?
It was Ned who discovered the mind block.
Not only had the Sweeneys ceased to age physically--they lacked a
normal time sense. If you reminded them of the passing years their
minds cleared momentarily, and they could think back.
But that link with the past had no staying power. It was like punching
pillows to get them to remember. They lived in the present, well
content to accept the world about them on a day-to-day basis, warmed by
the bright flame of their children growing up--
But their children weren't growing up--they had only the illusion of
change, the illusion of planning for their future; and that illusion
was terribly real to them--unless jolted by a question:
"How's Tommy?"
"Why, Tommy hasn't changed at all--"
A puzzled frown. A moment's honest facing of the truth, an old memory
stirring into life. Then the mind block closing in, clamping down.
"Ned, Cynthia, you'll stay for dinner?"
* * * * *
It was late and growing cold, and the stars had appeared in the sky. In
the rocket-ship Ned sat facing his wife.
"That house was never built by human hands!" he said, a cold prickling
at the base of his scalp. He had suffered from the prickling off and on
for a full hour. He could still taste the strong coffee he'd downed at
a gulp before rising in haste at the end of an uneasy meal.
He was sorry now they'd returned to the ship without waiting to say
"hello" to Tommy, fresh from his harvesting chores. Tommy was the
brightest member of the family. Perhaps Tommy knew more than the
others--or could remember better.
"Not built by human hands! But that's insane, Ned." Cynthia's face,
shadowed from below by the cold light of the instrument board, was
harsh with concern. "The materials came from Earth."
"They did," Ned acknowledged. "Grade A plastics--the best. And a good
engineer can build almost anything with malleable plastics. But not a
house without seams!"
"Without--seams?"
"Joints, connections, little rough places," Ned elaborated. "Inside
and out that house was smooth, all of a piece. Like a burst of frozen
energy. Like--oh, you know what I mean! Surely you must have noticed
it!"
"There were other colonists," Cynthia said. "Some of them were
engineers. They've had time to work out new constructive techniques."
"They've had time to disappear. Why did the Sweeneys act so funny when
I asked them about the other colonists? Why did Clifton refuse to look
at me? Why did I have to drag the answer out of him? 'Oh, we spread
out. Enough land here for all of us--' Does that ring true to you?"
"They didn't want us to stay together!" Tommy Sweeney said.
Ned leapt up with a startled cry. Cynthia swayed, her eyes widening in
stark disbelief.
Tommy Sweeney walked smiling into the compartment, his shoulders
squared. He came through the pilot-room wall in a blaze of light, and
stood between Ned and Helen, his lips quivering in boyish earnestness.
"Take any school," Tommy said. "Some of the pupils are bright. Some are
just good students who work hard at their homework. Some are stupid and
dull. If you let them stay together the bright ones, the really bright
ones, get held back."
Tommy seemed suddenly to realize he was seeing Ned and Cynthia for the
first time in ten years. His good friends, Ned and Cynthia. A Cynthia
who was as beautiful as ever, though deathly pale now, and a Ned who
was just a little older and grayer.
A broad grin overspread his face. "I knew you'd come back!" he said.
"You--you came through a solid metal wall!" Ned said, feeling as though
an earthquake had taken place inside of him.
"It's easy when you know how!" Tommy said.
"Who taught you how?" Cynthia asked, in a voice so emotional Ned forgot
his own horror in concern for her sanity. "Who taught you, Tommy?"
"The Green People!" Tommy said.
"The Green--People?"
"They live in the forest," Tommy said. "They come out at night and
dance around the house. They hold hands and dance and sing. Then they
talk to us. To mom, dad and sis--but mostly to me. They taught me how
to play, to really have fun."
"Did they teach you how to change the atoms of your body so that you
could pass through a solid metal wall?" Ned asked, framing the question
very carefully.
"Shucks, it was nothing like that!" Tommy said. "They just told me that
if I forgot about walls I could go anywhere."
"And you believed them!"
Suddenly Cynthia was laughing. Her laughter rang out wild and
uncontrollable in the pilot-room.
"He believed them, Ned! He believed them!"
Ned went up to her and took her by the shoulders and shook her.
Tommy looked shamefaced. He shuffled his feet, ill at ease in the
presence of adult hysteria.
"I've got to go now!" he stammered. "Mom will be awful mad if I'm late
for dinner again."
"You _are_ late, Tommy!" Cynthia said. "The joke's on you. We just had
dinner with your parents in a house Ned claims wasn't built by human
hands."
She laughed wildly. "Your parents are sensible people, though. They
didn't even try to walk through the kitchen wall."
"They could if they tried hard enough," Tommy said. "Someday they will."
Tommy looked almost apologetic. "I can't stay any longer. I saw your
ship, and wanted to see if you really had come back. I thought it
might be someone else. I'm sure glad it's you."
Tommy turned abruptly and walked straight out of the pilot-room, his
small body lighting up the wall until he vanished.
* * * * *
Cynthia stared at her husband, her eyes dark with a questioning horror.
"The Green People," Ned said. "Think, Cynthia. Does the name mean
anything to you?"
Cynthia shook her head, her lips shaping a soundless _No_.
Ned sat down slowly, rubbing his jaw. "I just thought you might know
something about Druidism, and what the strange rites of that mysterious
cult meant to the ancient inhabitants of Gaul and the British Isles.
According to the Roman historian Pliny, the Druids built stone houses
for their pupils and called themselves the Green People."
Starlight from the viewport illuminated Ned's pale face. He paused,
then said: "The Druids were soothsayers and sorcerers who disappeared
from history at the time of the Roman conquest. It was widely believed
they had the power of conferring eternal youth. They taught that time
was an illusion, space the shadow of a dream."
His eyes were grim with speculation. "The Druids were teachers almost
in the modern sense. Pliny records that they had a passion for
teaching, and thought of their worshippers as pupils, as children with
much to learn. Instruction in physical science formed the cornerstone
of the Druidic cult."
Cynthia leaned forward, her face strained and intense as he went on.
"The Romans hated and feared them. There was a terrible, bloody battle
and the Druids no longer danced in their groves of oak, in slow
procession to a weird dirge-like chanting. They vanished from Earth and
almost from the memory of man."
Ned took a deep breath.
"Man fears the unknown, and knowledge is a source of danger. Maybe the
Druids were never really native to Earth. What if this were their home
planet--"
"Ned, you can't really believe--"
"Listen!" Ned said.
The sound was clearly audible through the thin walls of the
rocket-ship. It was a steady, dull droning--an eerie, terrifying sound.
Ned got up and walked to the viewport. He stared out--
He could see the Sweeney's dwelling clearly. It was bathed in an
unearthly green light, and around it in a circle robed figures moved
through shadows the color of blood. Around and around in ever widening
circles, their tall gaunt bodies strangely bent.
For a full minute he stared out. When his wife joined him he stretched
out a hand and let it rest lightly on her shoulder.
"Perhaps we wouldn't be far wrong if we thought of the Sweeneys as
catalysts!" he said.
Cynthia stood very straight and quiet, a great fear growing in her.
"Catalysts, Ned?"
"It's just a wild guess, of course. I can't even tell you what made me
think of it. But it does have a certain relevancy. In chemistry, as you
know, a catalytic agent is a substance which promotes chemical action,
but is _in itself unchanged_."
"Well?"
"Why do men and women who surrender themselves to sorcery remain, in
legend, eternally young? Young, unchanging. It's a belief as old as
prehistory and all the ages since. Only in the Middle Ages were witches
pictured as shrunken, hideous old women. The ancient world pictured
witches as eternally youthful, unaging."
A long pause, and then Ned said: "As unaging as the forests of oak
where they served as human catalysts for the Druids before the Druids
left Earth forever?"
He suddenly seemed to be thinking aloud rather than addressing his wife.
"Well--and why not? The Druids must change, for change is the first
law of life. But perhaps they can only find complete fulfillment, can
only grow in wisdom and strength, by using human beings as little hard
grains of chemical substance which must remain forever bright and
shining.
"Human catalysts, imprisoned in a horrible little test tube of a house.
If human beings aged and changed they would cease to be catalysts.
They would become valueless to the Druids. And when the Romans
discovered the truth--"
Agreement was clearly in Cynthia's eyes. She moved closer to the
viewport, her face pale.
"Fear, and a merciless hatred," Ned said. "Pursuing the Druids, driving
them from Earth. And dim, fearful legends remaining of a dark magic
older than the human race."
"Ned, they've stopped dancing!" Cynthia's voice rang out sharply in the
silence. "They're coming toward the ship!"
[Illustration: "_Ned, they've stopped dancing ... they're coming toward
the ship!_"]
"I know," Ned said.
"But we don't know what they're planning to do!" Cynthia's voice rose.
"We've got to get out!"
"Steady," Ned said, turning. "If we take off at peak acceleration I
just can't picture them stopping us!"
* * * * *
"Ned, the Sweeneys may be happier than we know," Cynthia said, hours
later. They were deep in subspace, a hundred light years from the
little green world; and, in the warm security of the pilot-room, its
menacing shadows seemed immeasurably remote.
"Happy?" Ned laughed harshly. "Kids who'll never grow up. Adults cut
off from all further growth. The same today, tomorrow and forever."
"Their minds may change," Cynthia said. "Their minds may grow, Ned.
Tommy said that bright pupils could go far."
"As catalysts, caught in a ghastly trap."
"How can you be so sure, Ned? A wild guess, you called it. How do you
know the Druids and the Sweeneys don't learn from one another? Perhaps
they grow wise together, in a wonderful bright sharing of knowledge and
happiness that's like nothing we can imagine."
Ned looked at his wife. "Why say a thing like that? Why even think of
it?"
"Pandora, I guess."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm a woman and the Pandora complex is pretty basic, darling. I'd be
tempted to go back and throw open the box."
"Something pretty black and horrible would come out," Ned said sharply.
"You can take my word for that. I hope you're not forgetting that
Pandora was the first woman chosen by Zeus to bring complete ruin on
the human race."
"She didn't quite succeed. And how can we know for sure, Ned? If what
you say is true, if the Druids were really driven from Earth, we
haven't done so well since. Wars and madness for two thousand years.
Destruction and cruelty and death."
"All you have to do is prove we'd be better off if the Druids had
stayed," Ned said.
"Darling, think. If people grew wiser all the time, if they never aged,
would they want to murder one another?"
"Now see here--"
Cynthia smiled. "Think of having our own beautiful little home forever,
in a fragrant woody patch, with shining kitchen utensils on the wall.
Think of being spared all the miseries of old age and poverty and
sickness and death.
"Think of having neighbors like the Sweeneys to grow young with, to
grow wise and young with, day by splendid day until the end of time."
There was a long silence, and then Cynthia said: "I'd trust them, Ned.
The Druids, I mean. I'd take the chance. What have we to lose that's
really great, that can hold a candle to what the Sweeneys have?"
"You can go anywhere if you just remember how close you are to where
you want to be!" Tommy Sweeney said, coming through the pilot-room
wall in a blaze of light. He grinned. "I asked mom and dad to try real
hard this time and here they are!"
All of the Sweeneys came into the pilot-room as Tommy spoke, their
faces incredibly radiant.
"I never really believed Tommy until this minute!" Clifton Sweeney
said. "If you just forget about walls you're where you want to be!"
"Sure you are!" Tommy said. "It's as easy as skinning a chipmunk."
"Ned, Cynthia," Helen Sweeney said. "Come back!"
Tommy's sister simply smiled, a mischievous elfin smile which seemed
to mock the vast loneliness of space. It was as if some wizard game,
played by laughing children and wise forest creatures through long
golden afternoons, had become a universe-spanning web, embracing
everything in its path in a warm and radiant way.
Cynthia looked at Dan. "Well, darling?"
"Yes," Ned said, with quick decision. "We'll go back!"
* * * * *
_And at that moment, in the forest deep and dark, the Druids built
another house. It was designed to appeal to a man and a woman who
had traveled far and grown weary of human cruelty and death. It
was designed for gracious living; but whether the Druids, in their
inscrutable wisdom, wished mankind well or ill, who could say?_
***
