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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1df5739 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50940 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50940) diff --git a/old/50940-8.txt b/old/50940-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 11a2331..0000000 --- a/old/50940-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1059 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wailing Wall, by Roger Dee - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Wailing Wall - -Author: Roger Dee - -Release Date: January 16, 2016 [EBook #50940] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAILING WALL *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - Wailing Wall - - By ROGER DEE - - Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Galaxy Science Fiction July 1952. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - - An enormous weapon is forcing people to keep - their troubles to themselves--it's dynamite! - - -_Numb with the terror that had dogged him from the moment he regained -consciousness and found himself naked and weaponless, Farrell had no -idea how long he had been lost in the honeycombed darkness of the -Hymenop dome._ - -_The darkness and damp chill of air told him that he was far -underground, possibly at the hive's lowest level. Somewhere above -him, the silent audience chambers lay shrouded in lesser gloom, heavy -with the dust of generations and peopled only by cryptic apian images. -Outside the dome, in a bend of lazy silver river, sprawled the Sadr III -village with its stoic handful of once-normal Terran colonists and, on -the hillside above the village, Gibson and Stryker and Xavier would be -waiting for him in the disabled_ Marco Four. - -_Waiting for him...._ - -_They might as well have been back on Terra, five hundred light-years -away._ - -_Six feet away on either side, the corridor walls curved up faintly, a -flattened oval of tunneling designed for multiple alien feet, lighted -for faceted eyes demanding the merest fraction of light necessary -for an Earthman's vision. For two yards Farrell could see dimly, as -through a heavy fog; beyond was nothing but darkness and an outlandish -labyrinth of cross-branching corridors that spiraled on forever without -end._ - -_Behind him, his pursuers--human natives or Hymenop invaders, he had -no way of knowing which--drew nearer with a dry minor rustling whose -suggestion of imminent danger sent Farrell plunging blindly on into the -maze._ - -_--To halt, sweating, when a sound exactly similar came to him from -ahead._ - -_It was what he had feared from the beginning. He could not go on, and -he could not go back._ - -_He made out the intersecting corridor to his right, then a vague oval -opening that loomed faintly grayer than the wall about it. He darted -into it as into a sanctuary, and realized too late that the choice had -been forced upon him._ - -_It had been intended from the start that he should take this way. He -had been herded here like a halterless beast, driven by the steady -threat of action never quite realized._ They _had known where he was -going, and why._ - -_But there was light down there somewhere at the end of the tunnel's -aimless wanderings. If, once there, he could see--_ - -_He did not find light, only a lesser darkness. The tunnel led him -into a larger place whose outer reaches were lost in shadow, but whose -central area held a massive cylindrical machine at once alien and -familiar._ - -_He went toward it hesitantly, confused for the moment by a paramnesiac -sense of repeated experience, the specious recognition of_ déjà vu. - -_It was a Ringwave generator, and it was the thing he had ventured into -the dome to find._ - -_His confusion stemmed from its resemblance to the disabled generator -aboard the_ Marco Four, _and from the stereo-sharp associations it -evoked: Gibson working over the ship's power plant, his black-browed -face scowling and intent, square brown body moving with a wrestler's -easy economy of motion; Stryker, bald and fat and worried, wheezing up -and down the companionway from engine bay to chart room, his concern -divided between Gibson's task and Farrell's long silence in the dome._ - -_Stryker at this moment would be regretting the congenital optimism -that had prompted him to send his navigator where he himself could -not go. Sweating anxiety would have replaced Stryker's pontifical -assurance, dried up his smug pattering of socio-psychological truisms -lifted from the Colonial Reclamations Handbook...._ - - * * * * * - -"So far as adaptability is concerned," Stryker had said an eternal -evening before, "_homo sapiens_ can be a pretty weird species. More -given to mulish paradox, perhaps, than any alien life-form we're ever -likely to run across out here." - -He had shifted his bulk comfortably on the grass under the _Marco -Four's_ open port, undisturbed by the busy clatter of tools inside the -ship where Gibson and Xavier, the _Marco's_ mechanical, worked over -the disabled power plant. He laced his fingers across his fat paunch -and peered placidly through the dusk at Farrell, who lay on his back, -smoking and watching the stars grow bright in the evening sky. - -"Isolate a human colony from its parent planet for two centuries, -enslave it for half that time to a hegemony as foreign as the -Hymenops' hive-culture before abandoning it to its own devices, and -anything at all in the way of eccentric social controls can develop. -But men remain basically identical, Arthur, in spite of acquired -superficial changes. They are inherently incapable of evolving any -system of control mechanisms that cannot be understood by other men, -provided the environmental circumstances that brought that system into -being are known. At bottom, these Sadr III natives are no different -from ourselves. Heredity won't permit it." - -Farrell, half listening, had been staring upward between the icy white -brilliance of Deneb and the twin blue-and-yellow jewels of Albireo, -searching for a remote twinkle of Sol. Five hundred light-years away -out there, he was thinking, lay Earth. And from Earth all this gaudy -alien glory was no more than another point of reference for backyard -astronomers, a minor configuration casually familiar and unremarkable. - -A winking of lighted windows springing up in the village downslope -brought his attention back to the scattered cottages by the river, and -to the great disquieting curve of the Hymenop dome that rose above them -like a giant above pygmies. He sat up restlessly, the wind ruffling -his hair and whirling the smoke of his cigarette away in thin flying -spirals. - -"You sound as smug as the Reorientation chapter you lifted that bit -from," Farrell said. "But it won't apply here, Lee. The same thing -happened to these people that happened to the other colonists we've -found, but they don't react the same. Either those Hymenop devils -warped them permanently or they're a tribe of congenital maniacs." - -Stryker prodded him socratically: "Particulars?" - -"When we crashed here five weeks ago, there were an even thousand -natives in the village, plus or minus a few babes in arms. Since -that time they've lost a hundred twenty-six members, all suicides or -murders. At first the entire population turned out at sunrise and went -into the dome for an hour before going to the fields; since we came, -that period has shortened progressively to a few minutes. That much -we've learned by observation. By direct traffic we've learned exactly -nothing except that they can speak Terran Standard, but won't. What -sort of system is that?" - -Stryker tugged uncomfortably at the rim of white hair the years had -left him. "It's a stumper for the moment, I'll admit ... if they'd -only _talk_ to us, if they'd tell us what their wants and fears and -problems are, we'd know what is wrong and what to do about it. But -controls forced on them by the Hymenops, or acquired since their -liberation, seem to have altered their original ideology so radically -that--" - -"That they're plain batty," Farrell finished for him. "The whole setup -is unnatural, Lee. Consider this: We sent Xavier out to meet the first -native that showed up, and the native talked to him. We heard it all by -monitoring; his name was Tarvil, he spoke Terran Standard, and he was -amicable. Then we showed ourselves, and when he saw that we were human -beings like himself and not mechanicals like Xav, he clammed up. So did -everyone in the village. It worries me, Lee. If they didn't expect men -to come out of the _Marco_, then what in God's name _did_ they expect?" - -He sat up restlessly and stubbed out his cigarette. "It's an -unimportant world anyway, all ocean except for this one small -continent. I think we ought to write it off and get the hell out as -soon as the _Marco_'s Ringwave is repaired." - -"We can't write it off," Stryker said. "Besides reclaiming a colony, we -may have added a valuable marine food source to the Federation. Arthur, -you're not letting a handful of disoriented people get under your -skin, are you?" - -Farrell made an impatient sound and lit another cigarette. The brief -flare of his lighter pierced the darkness and picked out a hurried -movement a short stone's throw away, between the _Marco Four_ and the -village. - - * * * * * - -"There's one reason why I'm edgy," Farrell said. "These Sadrians may -be harmless, but they make a point of posting a guard over us. There's -a sentry out there in the grass flats again tonight." He turned on -Stryker uneasily. "I've watched on the infra-scanner while those -sentries changed shifts, and they don't speak to each other. I've -tracked them back to the village, but I've never seen one of them turn -in a--" - -Down in the village a man screamed, a raw, tortured sound that brought -both men up stiffly. A frantic drumming of running feet came to them, -unmistakable across the little distance. The fleeing man came up from -the dark huddle of cottages by the river and out across the grass -flats, screaming. - -Pursuit overtook him halfway to the ship. There was a brief scuffling, -a shadowy dispersal of silent figures. After that, nothing. - -"They did it again," Farrell said. "One of them tried to come up here -to us. The others killed him, and who's to say what sort of twisted -motive prompted them? They go to the dome together every morning, not -speaking. They work all day in the fields without so much as looking at -each other. But every night at least one of them tries to escape from -the village and come up here--and this is what happens. We couldn't -trust them, Lee, even if we could understand them!" - -"It's our job to understand them," Stryker said doggedly. "Our function -is to find colonies disoriented by the Hymenops and to set them -straight if we can. If we can't, we call in a long-term reorientation -crew, and within three generations the culture will pass again for -Terran. The fact that slave colonies invariably lose their knowledge of -longevity helps; they don't get it back until they're ready for it. - -"I've seen some pretty foul results of Hymenop experimenting -on human colonies, Arthur. There was the ninth planet of Beta -Pegasi--rediscovered in 3910, I think it was--that developed a -religious fixation on fertility, a mania fostered by the Hymenops to -supply expendable labor for their mines. The natives stopped mining -when the Hymenops gave up the invasion and went back to 70 Ophiuchi, -but they were still multiplying like rabbits when we found them. They -followed a cultural conviction something like that observed in Oriental -races of ancient Terran history, but they didn't pursue the Oriental -tradition of sacrosancts. They couldn't--there were too many of them. -By the time they were found, they numbered fourteen _billions_ and they -were eating each other. Still it took only three generations to set -them straight." - -He took one of Farrell's cigarettes and puffed it placidly. - -"For that matter, Earth had her own share of eccentric cultures. I -recall reading about one that existed as late as the twentieth century -and equaled anything we're likely to find here. Any society should be -geared to a set of social controls designed to furnish it, as a whole -with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of discomfort, but these -ancient Terrestrial Dobuans--island aborigines, as I remember it--had -adjusted to their total environment in a manner exactly opposite. They -reversed the norm and became a society of paranoiacs, hating each -other in direct ratio to nearness of relationship. Husbands and wives -detested each other, sons and fathers--" - -"Now you're pulling my leg," Farrell protested. "A society like that -would be too irrational to function." - -"But the system worked," Stryker insisted. "It balanced well enough, as -long as they were isolated. They accepted it because it was all they -knew, and an abrupt reversal that negated their accustomed habits would -create an impossible societal conflict. They were reoriented after -the Fourth War, and succeeding generations adjusted to normal living -without difficulty." - -A sound from overhead made them look up. Gibson was standing in the -_Marco's_ open port. - -"Conference," Gibson said in his heavy baritone, and went back inside. - - * * * * * - -They followed Gibson quickly and without question, more disturbed by -the terse order than by the killing in the grass flats. Knowing Gibson, -they realized that he would not have wasted even that one word unless -emergency justified it. - -They found him waiting in the chart room with Xavier. For the -thousandth time, seeing the two together, Farrell found himself -comparing them: the robot, smoothly functional from flexible gray -plastoid body to featureless oval faceplate, blandly efficient, totally -incapable of emotion; Gibson, short and dark and competent heavy-browed -and humorless. Except for initiative, Farrell thought, the two of them -could have traded identities and no one would have been able to notice -any difference. - -"Xav and I found our Ringwave trouble," Gibson said. "The generator is -functioning, but the warp isn't going out. Something here on Sadr III -is neutralizing it." - -They stared at him as if he had just told them the planet was flat. - -"But a Ringwave can't be stopped completely, once it is started," -Stryker protested. "You'd have to dismantle it to shut it off, Gib!" - -"The warping field can be damped out, though," Gibson said. "Adjacent -generators operating at different phase levels will heterodyne at a -frequency representing the mean variance between levels. The resulting -beat-phase will be too low to maintain either field, and one or the -other, or both, will blank out. If you remember, all Terran-designed -power plants are set to the same phase for that reason." - -"But these natives _can't_ have a Ringwave plant!" Farrell argued. -"There's only this one village on Sadr III, Gib, an insignificant -little agrarian township! If they had the Ringwave, they'd be -mechanized. They'd have vehicles, landing ports...." - -"The Hymenops had the Ringwave," Gibson interrupted. "And they left the -dome down there, the first undamaged one we've found. Figure it out for -yourselves." - -They digested the statement in silence. Stryker paled slowly, as if -it needed time for apprehension to work its way through his fat bulk. -Farrell's uneasiness, sourceless until now, grew to chill certainty. - - * * * * * - -"I think I've expected this, without realizing it, since my first -flight," he said. "It stood to reason that the Hymenops would quit -running somewhere, that we'd bump into them eventually out here on the -fringes. Twenty thousand light-years back to 70 Ophiuchi is a long way -to retreat.... Gib, do you think they're still here?" - -Gibson did not shrug, but his voice seemed to. "It won't matter one way -or the other unless we can clear the _Marco's_ generator." - -From another man it might have been irony. Knowing Gibson, Farrell and -Stryker accepted it as a bald statement of fact. - -"Then we're up against a Hymenop hive-mind," Stryker said. "And we -can't run away from it. Any suggestions?" - -"We'll have to find the interfering generator and stop it," Farrell -offered, knowing that was the only obvious solution. - -"One alternative," Gibson corrected. "If we can determine what -phase-level the interfering warp uses, we may be able to adjust the -_Marco's_ generator to match it. Once they're in resonance, they won't -interfere." He caught Stryker's unspoken question and answered it. "It -would take a week. Maybe longer." - -Stryker vetoed the alternative. "Too long. If there are Hymenops here, -they won't give us that much time." - -Farrell switched on the chart room scanning screen and centered it -on the village downslope. Scattered cottages with dark tiled roofs -and lamp-bright windows showed up clearly. Out of their undisciplined -grouping swept the great hemispherical curve of the dome, glinting -dully metallic in the starshine. - -"Maybe we're jumping to conclusions," he said. "We've been here for -five weeks without seeing a trace of Hymenops, and from what I've read -of them, they'd have jumped us the minute we landed. Chances are that -they left Sadr III in too great a hurry to wreck the dome, and their -Ringwave power plant is still running." - -"You may be right," Stryker said, brightening. "They carried the fight -to us from the first skirmish, two hundred years ago, and they damned -near beat us before we learned how to fight them." - -He looked at Xavier's silent plastoid figure with something like -affection. "We'd have lost that war without Xave's kind. We -couldn't match wits with Hymenop hive-minds, any more than a swarm -of grasshoppers could stand up to a colony of wasps. But we made -mechanicals that could. Cybernetic brains and servo-crews, ships that -thought for themselves...." - -He squinted at the visiscreen with its cryptic, star-streaked dome. -"But they don't think as we do. They may have left a rear guard here, -or they may have boobytrapped the dome." - -"One of us will have to find out which it is," Farrell said. He took -a restless turn about the chart room, weighing the probabilities. "It -seems to fall in my department." - -Stryker stared. "You? Why?" - -"Because I'm the only one who _can_ go. Remember what Gib said about -changing the _Marco's_ Ringwave to resonate with the interfering -generator? Gib can make the change; I can't. You're--" - -"Too old and fat," Stryker finished for him. "And too damned slow and -garrulous. You're right, of course." - -They let it go at that and put Xavier on guard for the night. The -mechanical was infinitely more alert and sensitive to approach than any -of the crew, but the knowledge did not make Farrell's sleep the sounder. - -He dozed fitfully, waking a dozen times during the night to smoke -cigarettes and to speculate fruitlessly on what he might find in the -dome. He was sweating out a nightmare made hideous by monstrous bees -that threatened him in buzzing alien voices when Xavier's polite -monotone woke him for breakfast. - - * * * * * - -Farrell was halfway down the grassy slope to the village when he -realized that the _Marco_ was still under watch. Approaching close -enough for recognition, he saw that the sentry this time was Tarvil, -the Sadrian who had first approached the ship. The native's glance took -in Farrell's shoulder-pack of testing tools and audiphone, brushed the -hand-torch and blast gun at the Terran's belt, and slid away without -trace of expression. - -"I'm going into the dome," Farrell said. He tried to keep the -uncertainty out of his voice, and felt a rasp of irritation when he -failed. "Is there a taboo against that?" - -The native fell in beside him without speaking and they went down -together, walking a careful ten feet apart, through dew-drenched grass -flats that gleamed like fields of diamonds under the early morning sun. -From the village, as they approached, straggled the inevitable exodus -of adults and half-grown children, moving silently out to the fields. - -"Weird beggars," Farrell said into his audiphone button. "They don't -even rub elbows at work. You'd think they were afraid of being -contaminated." - -Stryker's voice came tinnily in his ear. "They won't seem so strange -once we learn their motivations. I'm beginning to think this -aloofness of theirs is a religious concomitant, Arthur, a hangover -from slave-controls designed to prevent rebellion through isolation. -Considering what they must have suffered under the Hymenops, it's a -wonder they're even sane." - -"I'll grant the religious origin," Farrell said. "But I wouldn't risk a -centicredit on their sanity. I think the lot of them are nuts." - -The village was not deserted, but so far as Farrell's coming was -concerned, it might as well have been. The few women and children he -saw on the streets ignored him--and Tarvil--completely. - -He met with only one sign of interest, when a naked boy perhaps six -years old stared curiously and asked something in a childish treble of -the woman accompanying him. The woman answered with a single sharp -word and struck the child across the face, sending him sprawling. - -Farrell relayed the incident. "She said '_Quiet!_' and slapped him -down, Lee. They start their training early." - -"Their sort of indifference couldn't be congenital," Stryker said. His -tinny murmur took on a puzzled sound. "But they've been free for four -generations. It's hard to believe that any forcibly implanted control -mechanism could remain in effect so long." - -A shadow blocked the sun, bringing a faint chill to Farrell when he -looked up to see the great rounded hump of the dome looming over him. - -"I'm going into the dome now," he said. "It's like all the others--no -openings except at ground level, where it's riddled with them." - -Tarvil did not accompany him inside. Farrell, looking back as he -thumbed his hand-torch alight in the nearest entranceway, saw the -native squatting on his heels and looking after him without a single -trace of interest. - - * * * * * - -"I'm at ground level," Farrell said later, "in what seems to have -been a storage section. Empty now, with dust everywhere except in the -corridors the natives use when they come in, mornings. No sign of -Hymenops yet." - -Stryker's voice turned worried. "Look sharp for traps, Arthur. The -place may be mined." - -The upper part of the dome, Farrell knew from previous experience, -would have been given over in years past to Hymenop occupation, layer -after rising layer of dormitories tiered like honeycombs to conserve -space. He followed a spiral ramp downward to the level immediately -below surface, and felt his first excitement of discovery when he found -himself in the audience chambers that, until the _Marco's_ coming, had -been the daily goal of the Sadrian natives. - -The level was entirely taken up with bare ten-foot cubicles, each -cramped chamber dominated by a cryptic metal-and-crystal likeness -of the Hymenop head set into the metal wall opposite its corridor -entrance. From either side of a circular speaking-grill, the antennae -projected into the room, rasplike and alert, above faceted crystal -eyes that glowed faintly in the near-darkness. The craftsmanship was -faultless, stylized after a fashion alien to Farrell's imagining and -personifying with disturbing realism the soulless, arrogant efficiency -of the Hymenop hive-mind. To Farrell, there was about each image a -brooding air of hypnotic fixity. - -"Something new in Hymenop experiments," he reported to Stryker. "None -of the other domes we found had anything like this. These things have -some bearing on the condition of the natives, Lee--there's a path worn -through the dust to every image, and I can see where the people knelt. -I don't like it. I've got a hunch that whatever these damned idols were -used for succeeded too well." - -"They can't be idols," Stryker said. "The Hymenops would have known how -hard it is to displace anthropomorphism entirely from human worship. -But I think you're right about the experiment's working too well. No -ordinary compulsion would have stuck so long. Periodic hypnosis? Wait, -Arthur, that's an angle I want to check with Gibson...." - -He was back a moment later, wheezing with excitement. - -"Gib thinks I'm on the right track--periodic hypnosis. The Hymenops -must have assigned a particular chamber and image to each slave. The -images are mechanicals, robot mesmerists designed to keep the natives' -compulsion-to-isolation renewed. Post-hypnotic suggestion kept the -poor devils coming back every morning, and their children with them, -even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until -the _Marco's_ Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant -and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that -they're free; they don't know how--" - -Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across -the back of the head. - - * * * * * - -When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. -The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked -him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that -brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power -plant. - -He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, -drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind -him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board -totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches -clearly intended for alien handling. - -The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck -him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad. - -He saw his equipment pack then, lying undamaged at the foot of the -control board. Stryker's voice murmured from its audicom unit: "We're -in the dome, Arthur. Where are you? What level--" - -Farrell caught up the audicom, swept by a sudden wild lift of hope. -"I'm at the bottom of the dome, in the Ringwave chamber. They took my -gun and torch. For God's sake, hurry!" - -The darkness gave up a furtive scuffling of sandaled feet, the tight -breathing of many men. Someone made a whimpering sound, doglike and -piteous; a Sadrian voice hissed sharply, "_Quiet!_" - -Stryker's metallic whisper said: "We're tracking your carrier, Arthur. -Use the tools they left you. They brought you there to repair the -Ringwave, to give back the power that kept their images going. Keep -busy!" - -Farrell, only half understanding, took up his instrument case. His -movement triggered a tense rustle in the darkness; the voice whimpered -again, a tortured sound that rasped Farrell's nerves like a file on -glass. - -"_Give me back my Voice. I am alone and afraid. I must have -Counsel...._" - -Beneath the crying, Farrell felt the terror, incredibly voiced, that -weighted the darkness, the horror implicit in stilled breathing, the -swelling sense of outrage. - -There was a soft rush of bodies, a panting and struggling. The -whimpering stopped. - -The instrument case slipped out of Farrell's hands. On the heels of its -nerve-shattering crash against the metal floor came Stryker's voice, -stronger as it came closer. - -"Steady, Arthur. They'll kill you if you make a scene. We're coming, -Gib and Xav and I. Don't lose your head!" - -Farrell crouched back against the cold curve of the Ringwave cylinder, -straining against flight with an effort that left him trembling -uncontrollably. A spasm of incipient screaming seized his throat and -he bit it back savagely, stifling a terror that could not be seen, -grasped, fought with. - -He was giving way slowly when Xavier's inflectionless voice droned out -of the darkness: "Quiet. Your Counsel will be restored." - -There was a sudden flood of light, unbearable after long darkness. -Farrell had a failing glimpse of Gibson, square face blocked with light -and shadow from the actinic flare overhead, racing toward him through a -silently dispersing throng of Sadrians. - -Then he passed out. - - * * * * * - -He was strapped to his couch in the chart room when he awoke. The -_Marco Four_ was already in space; on the visiscreen, Farrell could -see a dwindling crescent of Sadr III, and behind it, in the black pit -of space, the fiery white eye of Deneb and the pyrotechnic glowing of -Albireo's blue-and-yellow twins. - -"We're headed out," he said, bewildered. "What happened?" - -Stryker came over and unstrapped him. Gibson, playing chess with Xavier -across the chart-room plotting table, looked up briefly and went back -to his gambit. - -"We reset the Ringwave in the dome to phase with ours and lugged you -out," Stryker explained genially. He was back in character again, his -fat paunch quivering with the beginning of laughter. "We're through -here. The rest is up to Reorientation." - -Farrell gaped at him. "You're giving up on Sadr III?" - -"We've done all we can. Those Sadrians need something that a -preliminary expedition like ours can't give them. Right now they are -willing victims of a rigid religious code that makes it impossible for -any one of them to express his wants, hopes, ideals or misfortunes to -another. Exchanging confidences, to them, is the ultimate sacrilege." - -"Then they _are_ crazy. They'd have to be, with no more opportunity for -emotional catharsis than that!" - -"They're not insane, they're--adapted. Those robot images you found -are everything to this culture: arbiters, commercial agents, monitors -and confessors all in one. They not only relay physical needs from one -native to another; they listen to all problems and give solutions. -They're _Counselors_, remember? Man's gregariousness stems largely from -his need to unload his troubles on someone else. The Hymenops came up -with an efficient substitute here, and the natives accepted it as the -norm." - -Farrell winced with sudden understanding. "No wonder the poor devils -cracked up right and left. With their Ringwave dead, they might as well -have been struck blind and dumb! They couldn't even get together among -themselves to figure a way out." - -"There you have it," Stryker said. "They knew we were responsible for -their catastrophe, but they couldn't bring themselves to ask us for -help because we were human beings like themselves. So they went mad one -by one and committed the ultimate blasphemy of shouting their misery in -public, and their fellows had to kill them or countenance sacrilege. -But they'll quiet down now. They should be easy enough to handle by the -time the Reorientation lads arrive." - -He began to chuckle. "We left their Counselors running, but we -disconnected the hypnosis-renewal circuits. They'll get only what -they need from now on, which is an outlet for shifting their personal -burdens. And with the post-hypnotic compulsion gone, they'll turn to -closer association with each other. Human gregariousness will reassert -itself. After a couple of generations, the Reorientation boys can write -them off as Terran Normal and move on to the next planetary madhouse -we've dug up for them." - -Farrell said wonderingly, "I never thought of the need to exchange -confidences as being so important. But it is; everyone does it. You and -I often talk over personal concerns, and Gib--" - -He broke off to study the intent pair at the chessboard, comparing -Gibson's calm selfsufficiency to the mechanical's bland competence. - -"There's an exception for your theory, Lee. Iron Man Gibson never gave -out with a confidence in his life!" - -Stryker laughed. "You may be right. How about it, Gib? Do you ever feel -the need of a wailing wall?" - -Gibson looked up briefly from his game, his square face unsurprised. - -"Well, sure. Why not? I tell my troubles to Xavier." - -When they looked at each other blankly, he added, with the nearest -approach to humor that either Farrell or Stryker had ever seen in him: -"It's a reciprocal arrangement. Xav confides his to me." - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wailing Wall, by Roger Dee - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAILING WALL *** - -***** This file should be named 50940-8.txt or 50940-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/9/4/50940/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Wailing Wall - -Author: Roger Dee - -Release Date: January 16, 2016 [EBook #50940] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAILING WALL *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>Wailing Wall</h1> - -<p>By ROGER DEE</p> - -<p>Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Galaxy Science Fiction July 1952.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph3"><i>An enormous weapon is forcing people to keep<br /> -their troubles to themselves—it's dynamite!</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><i>Numb with the terror that had dogged him from the moment he regained -consciousness and found himself naked and weaponless, Farrell had no -idea how long he had been lost in the honeycombed darkness of the -Hymenop dome.</i></p> - -<p><i>The darkness and damp chill of air told him that he was far -underground, possibly at the hive's lowest level. Somewhere above -him, the silent audience chambers lay shrouded in lesser gloom, heavy -with the dust of generations and peopled only by cryptic apian images. -Outside the dome, in a bend of lazy silver river, sprawled the Sadr III -village with its stoic handful of once-normal Terran colonists and, on -the hillside above the village, Gibson and Stryker and Xavier would be -waiting for him in the disabled</i> Marco Four.</p> - -<p><i>Waiting for him....</i></p> - -<p><i>They might as well have been back on Terra, five hundred light-years -away.</i></p> - -<p><i>Six feet away on either side, the corridor walls curved up faintly, a -flattened oval of tunneling designed for multiple alien feet, lighted -for faceted eyes demanding the merest fraction of light necessary -for an Earthman's vision. For two yards Farrell could see dimly, as -through a heavy fog; beyond was nothing but darkness and an outlandish -labyrinth of cross-branching corridors that spiraled on forever without -end.</i></p> - -<p><i>Behind him, his pursuers—human natives or Hymenop invaders, he had -no way of knowing which—drew nearer with a dry minor rustling whose -suggestion of imminent danger sent Farrell plunging blindly on into the -maze.</i></p> - -<p><i>—To halt, sweating, when a sound exactly similar came to him from -ahead.</i></p> - -<p><i>It was what he had feared from the beginning. He could not go on, and -he could not go back.</i></p> - -<p><i>He made out the intersecting corridor to his right, then a vague oval -opening that loomed faintly grayer than the wall about it. He darted -into it as into a sanctuary, and realized too late that the choice had -been forced upon him.</i></p> - -<p><i>It had been intended from the start that he should take this way. He -had been herded here like a halterless beast, driven by the steady -threat of action never quite realized.</i> They <i>had known where he was -going, and why.</i></p> - -<p><i>But there was light down there somewhere at the end of the tunnel's -aimless wanderings. If, once there, he could see—</i></p> - -<p><i>He did not find light, only a lesser darkness. The tunnel led him -into a larger place whose outer reaches were lost in shadow, but whose -central area held a massive cylindrical machine at once alien and -familiar.</i></p> - -<p><i>He went toward it hesitantly, confused for the moment by a paramnesiac -sense of repeated experience, the specious recognition of</i> déjà vu.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="356" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><i>It was a Ringwave generator, and it was the thing he had ventured into -the dome to find.</i></p> - -<p><i>His confusion stemmed from its resemblance to the disabled generator -aboard the</i> Marco Four, <i>and from the stereo-sharp associations it -evoked: Gibson working over the ship's power plant, his black-browed -face scowling and intent, square brown body moving with a wrestler's -easy economy of motion; Stryker, bald and fat and worried, wheezing up -and down the companionway from engine bay to chart room, his concern -divided between Gibson's task and Farrell's long silence in the dome.</i></p> - -<p><i>Stryker at this moment would be regretting the congenital optimism -that had prompted him to send his navigator where he himself could -not go. Sweating anxiety would have replaced Stryker's pontifical -assurance, dried up his smug pattering of socio-psychological truisms -lifted from the Colonial Reclamations Handbook....</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"So far as adaptability is concerned," Stryker had said an eternal -evening before, "<i>homo sapiens</i> can be a pretty weird species. More -given to mulish paradox, perhaps, than any alien life-form we're ever -likely to run across out here."</p> - -<p>He had shifted his bulk comfortably on the grass under the <i>Marco -Four's</i> open port, undisturbed by the busy clatter of tools inside the -ship where Gibson and Xavier, the <i>Marco's</i> mechanical, worked over -the disabled power plant. He laced his fingers across his fat paunch -and peered placidly through the dusk at Farrell, who lay on his back, -smoking and watching the stars grow bright in the evening sky.</p> - -<p>"Isolate a human colony from its parent planet for two centuries, -enslave it for half that time to a hegemony as foreign as the -Hymenops' hive-culture before abandoning it to its own devices, and -anything at all in the way of eccentric social controls can develop. -But men remain basically identical, Arthur, in spite of acquired -superficial changes. They are inherently incapable of evolving any -system of control mechanisms that cannot be understood by other men, -provided the environmental circumstances that brought that system into -being are known. At bottom, these Sadr III natives are no different -from ourselves. Heredity won't permit it."</p> - -<p>Farrell, half listening, had been staring upward between the icy white -brilliance of Deneb and the twin blue-and-yellow jewels of Albireo, -searching for a remote twinkle of Sol. Five hundred light-years away -out there, he was thinking, lay Earth. And from Earth all this gaudy -alien glory was no more than another point of reference for backyard -astronomers, a minor configuration casually familiar and unremarkable.</p> - -<p>A winking of lighted windows springing up in the village downslope -brought his attention back to the scattered cottages by the river, and -to the great disquieting curve of the Hymenop dome that rose above them -like a giant above pygmies. He sat up restlessly, the wind ruffling -his hair and whirling the smoke of his cigarette away in thin flying -spirals.</p> - -<p>"You sound as smug as the Reorientation chapter you lifted that bit -from," Farrell said. "But it won't apply here, Lee. The same thing -happened to these people that happened to the other colonists we've -found, but they don't react the same. Either those Hymenop devils -warped them permanently or they're a tribe of congenital maniacs."</p> - -<p>Stryker prodded him socratically: "Particulars?"</p> - -<p>"When we crashed here five weeks ago, there were an even thousand -natives in the village, plus or minus a few babes in arms. Since -that time they've lost a hundred twenty-six members, all suicides or -murders. At first the entire population turned out at sunrise and went -into the dome for an hour before going to the fields; since we came, -that period has shortened progressively to a few minutes. That much -we've learned by observation. By direct traffic we've learned exactly -nothing except that they can speak Terran Standard, but won't. What -sort of system is that?"</p> - -<p>Stryker tugged uncomfortably at the rim of white hair the years had -left him. "It's a stumper for the moment, I'll admit ... if they'd -only <i>talk</i> to us, if they'd tell us what their wants and fears and -problems are, we'd know what is wrong and what to do about it. But -controls forced on them by the Hymenops, or acquired since their -liberation, seem to have altered their original ideology so radically -that—"</p> - -<p>"That they're plain batty," Farrell finished for him. "The whole setup -is unnatural, Lee. Consider this: We sent Xavier out to meet the first -native that showed up, and the native talked to him. We heard it all by -monitoring; his name was Tarvil, he spoke Terran Standard, and he was -amicable. Then we showed ourselves, and when he saw that we were human -beings like himself and not mechanicals like Xav, he clammed up. So did -everyone in the village. It worries me, Lee. If they didn't expect men -to come out of the <i>Marco</i>, then what in God's name <i>did</i> they expect?"</p> - -<p>He sat up restlessly and stubbed out his cigarette. "It's an -unimportant world anyway, all ocean except for this one small -continent. I think we ought to write it off and get the hell out as -soon as the <i>Marco</i>'s Ringwave is repaired."</p> - -<p>"We can't write it off," Stryker said. "Besides reclaiming a colony, we -may have added a valuable marine food source to the Federation. Arthur, -you're not letting a handful of disoriented people get under your -skin, are you?"</p> - -<p>Farrell made an impatient sound and lit another cigarette. The brief -flare of his lighter pierced the darkness and picked out a hurried -movement a short stone's throw away, between the <i>Marco Four</i> and the -village.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"There's one reason why I'm edgy," Farrell said. "These Sadrians may -be harmless, but they make a point of posting a guard over us. There's -a sentry out there in the grass flats again tonight." He turned on -Stryker uneasily. "I've watched on the infra-scanner while those -sentries changed shifts, and they don't speak to each other. I've -tracked them back to the village, but I've never seen one of them turn -in a—"</p> - -<p>Down in the village a man screamed, a raw, tortured sound that brought -both men up stiffly. A frantic drumming of running feet came to them, -unmistakable across the little distance. The fleeing man came up from -the dark huddle of cottages by the river and out across the grass -flats, screaming.</p> - -<p>Pursuit overtook him halfway to the ship. There was a brief scuffling, -a shadowy dispersal of silent figures. After that, nothing.</p> - -<p>"They did it again," Farrell said. "One of them tried to come up here -to us. The others killed him, and who's to say what sort of twisted -motive prompted them? They go to the dome together every morning, not -speaking. They work all day in the fields without so much as looking at -each other. But every night at least one of them tries to escape from -the village and come up here—and this is what happens. We couldn't -trust them, Lee, even if we could understand them!"</p> - -<p>"It's our job to understand them," Stryker said doggedly. "Our function -is to find colonies disoriented by the Hymenops and to set them -straight if we can. If we can't, we call in a long-term reorientation -crew, and within three generations the culture will pass again for -Terran. The fact that slave colonies invariably lose their knowledge of -longevity helps; they don't get it back until they're ready for it.</p> - -<p>"I've seen some pretty foul results of Hymenop experimenting -on human colonies, Arthur. There was the ninth planet of Beta -Pegasi—rediscovered in 3910, I think it was—that developed a -religious fixation on fertility, a mania fostered by the Hymenops to -supply expendable labor for their mines. The natives stopped mining -when the Hymenops gave up the invasion and went back to 70 Ophiuchi, -but they were still multiplying like rabbits when we found them. They -followed a cultural conviction something like that observed in Oriental -races of ancient Terran history, but they didn't pursue the Oriental -tradition of sacrosancts. They couldn't—there were too many of them. -By the time they were found, they numbered fourteen <i>billions</i> and they -were eating each other. Still it took only three generations to set -them straight."</p> - -<p>He took one of Farrell's cigarettes and puffed it placidly.</p> - -<p>"For that matter, Earth had her own share of eccentric cultures. I -recall reading about one that existed as late as the twentieth century -and equaled anything we're likely to find here. Any society should be -geared to a set of social controls designed to furnish it, as a whole -with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of discomfort, but these -ancient Terrestrial Dobuans—island aborigines, as I remember it—had -adjusted to their total environment in a manner exactly opposite. They -reversed the norm and became a society of paranoiacs, hating each -other in direct ratio to nearness of relationship. Husbands and wives -detested each other, sons and fathers—"</p> - -<p>"Now you're pulling my leg," Farrell protested. "A society like that -would be too irrational to function."</p> - -<p>"But the system worked," Stryker insisted. "It balanced well enough, as -long as they were isolated. They accepted it because it was all they -knew, and an abrupt reversal that negated their accustomed habits would -create an impossible societal conflict. They were reoriented after -the Fourth War, and succeeding generations adjusted to normal living -without difficulty."</p> - -<p>A sound from overhead made them look up. Gibson was standing in the -<i>Marco's</i> open port.</p> - -<p>"Conference," Gibson said in his heavy baritone, and went back inside.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They followed Gibson quickly and without question, more disturbed by -the terse order than by the killing in the grass flats. Knowing Gibson, -they realized that he would not have wasted even that one word unless -emergency justified it.</p> - -<p>They found him waiting in the chart room with Xavier. For the -thousandth time, seeing the two together, Farrell found himself -comparing them: the robot, smoothly functional from flexible gray -plastoid body to featureless oval faceplate, blandly efficient, totally -incapable of emotion; Gibson, short and dark and competent heavy-browed -and humorless. Except for initiative, Farrell thought, the two of them -could have traded identities and no one would have been able to notice -any difference.</p> - -<p>"Xav and I found our Ringwave trouble," Gibson said. "The generator is -functioning, but the warp isn't going out. Something here on Sadr III -is neutralizing it."</p> - -<p>They stared at him as if he had just told them the planet was flat.</p> - -<p>"But a Ringwave can't be stopped completely, once it is started," -Stryker protested. "You'd have to dismantle it to shut it off, Gib!"</p> - -<p>"The warping field can be damped out, though," Gibson said. "Adjacent -generators operating at different phase levels will heterodyne at a -frequency representing the mean variance between levels. The resulting -beat-phase will be too low to maintain either field, and one or the -other, or both, will blank out. If you remember, all Terran-designed -power plants are set to the same phase for that reason."</p> - -<p>"But these natives <i>can't</i> have a Ringwave plant!" Farrell argued. -"There's only this one village on Sadr III, Gib, an insignificant -little agrarian township! If they had the Ringwave, they'd be -mechanized. They'd have vehicles, landing ports...."</p> - -<p>"The Hymenops had the Ringwave," Gibson interrupted. "And they left the -dome down there, the first undamaged one we've found. Figure it out for -yourselves."</p> - -<p>They digested the statement in silence. Stryker paled slowly, as if -it needed time for apprehension to work its way through his fat bulk. -Farrell's uneasiness, sourceless until now, grew to chill certainty.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"I think I've expected this, without realizing it, since my first -flight," he said. "It stood to reason that the Hymenops would quit -running somewhere, that we'd bump into them eventually out here on the -fringes. Twenty thousand light-years back to 70 Ophiuchi is a long way -to retreat.... Gib, do you think they're still here?"</p> - -<p>Gibson did not shrug, but his voice seemed to. "It won't matter one way -or the other unless we can clear the <i>Marco's</i> generator."</p> - -<p>From another man it might have been irony. Knowing Gibson, Farrell and -Stryker accepted it as a bald statement of fact.</p> - -<p>"Then we're up against a Hymenop hive-mind," Stryker said. "And we -can't run away from it. Any suggestions?"</p> - -<p>"We'll have to find the interfering generator and stop it," Farrell -offered, knowing that was the only obvious solution.</p> - -<p>"One alternative," Gibson corrected. "If we can determine what -phase-level the interfering warp uses, we may be able to adjust the -<i>Marco's</i> generator to match it. Once they're in resonance, they won't -interfere." He caught Stryker's unspoken question and answered it. "It -would take a week. Maybe longer."</p> - -<p>Stryker vetoed the alternative. "Too long. If there are Hymenops here, -they won't give us that much time."</p> - -<p>Farrell switched on the chart room scanning screen and centered it -on the village downslope. Scattered cottages with dark tiled roofs -and lamp-bright windows showed up clearly. Out of their undisciplined -grouping swept the great hemispherical curve of the dome, glinting -dully metallic in the starshine.</p> - -<p>"Maybe we're jumping to conclusions," he said. "We've been here for -five weeks without seeing a trace of Hymenops, and from what I've read -of them, they'd have jumped us the minute we landed. Chances are that -they left Sadr III in too great a hurry to wreck the dome, and their -Ringwave power plant is still running."</p> - -<p>"You may be right," Stryker said, brightening. "They carried the fight -to us from the first skirmish, two hundred years ago, and they damned -near beat us before we learned how to fight them."</p> - -<p>He looked at Xavier's silent plastoid figure with something like -affection. "We'd have lost that war without Xave's kind. We -couldn't match wits with Hymenop hive-minds, any more than a swarm -of grasshoppers could stand up to a colony of wasps. But we made -mechanicals that could. Cybernetic brains and servo-crews, ships that -thought for themselves...."</p> - -<p>He squinted at the visiscreen with its cryptic, star-streaked dome. -"But they don't think as we do. They may have left a rear guard here, -or they may have boobytrapped the dome."</p> - -<p>"One of us will have to find out which it is," Farrell said. He took -a restless turn about the chart room, weighing the probabilities. "It -seems to fall in my department."</p> - -<p>Stryker stared. "You? Why?"</p> - -<p>"Because I'm the only one who <i>can</i> go. Remember what Gib said about -changing the <i>Marco's</i> Ringwave to resonate with the interfering -generator? Gib can make the change; I can't. You're—"</p> - -<p>"Too old and fat," Stryker finished for him. "And too damned slow and -garrulous. You're right, of course."</p> - -<p>They let it go at that and put Xavier on guard for the night. The -mechanical was infinitely more alert and sensitive to approach than any -of the crew, but the knowledge did not make Farrell's sleep the sounder.</p> - -<p>He dozed fitfully, waking a dozen times during the night to smoke -cigarettes and to speculate fruitlessly on what he might find in the -dome. He was sweating out a nightmare made hideous by monstrous bees -that threatened him in buzzing alien voices when Xavier's polite -monotone woke him for breakfast.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Farrell was halfway down the grassy slope to the village when he -realized that the <i>Marco</i> was still under watch. Approaching close -enough for recognition, he saw that the sentry this time was Tarvil, -the Sadrian who had first approached the ship. The native's glance took -in Farrell's shoulder-pack of testing tools and audiphone, brushed the -hand-torch and blast gun at the Terran's belt, and slid away without -trace of expression.</p> - -<p>"I'm going into the dome," Farrell said. He tried to keep the -uncertainty out of his voice, and felt a rasp of irritation when he -failed. "Is there a taboo against that?"</p> - -<p>The native fell in beside him without speaking and they went down -together, walking a careful ten feet apart, through dew-drenched grass -flats that gleamed like fields of diamonds under the early morning sun. -From the village, as they approached, straggled the inevitable exodus -of adults and half-grown children, moving silently out to the fields.</p> - -<p>"Weird beggars," Farrell said into his audiphone button. "They don't -even rub elbows at work. You'd think they were afraid of being -contaminated."</p> - -<p>Stryker's voice came tinnily in his ear. "They won't seem so strange -once we learn their motivations. I'm beginning to think this -aloofness of theirs is a religious concomitant, Arthur, a hangover -from slave-controls designed to prevent rebellion through isolation. -Considering what they must have suffered under the Hymenops, it's a -wonder they're even sane."</p> - -<p>"I'll grant the religious origin," Farrell said. "But I wouldn't risk a -centicredit on their sanity. I think the lot of them are nuts."</p> - -<p>The village was not deserted, but so far as Farrell's coming was -concerned, it might as well have been. The few women and children he -saw on the streets ignored him—and Tarvil—completely.</p> - -<p>He met with only one sign of interest, when a naked boy perhaps six -years old stared curiously and asked something in a childish treble of -the woman accompanying him. The woman answered with a single sharp -word and struck the child across the face, sending him sprawling.</p> - -<p>Farrell relayed the incident. "She said '<i>Quiet!</i>' and slapped him -down, Lee. They start their training early."</p> - -<p>"Their sort of indifference couldn't be congenital," Stryker said. His -tinny murmur took on a puzzled sound. "But they've been free for four -generations. It's hard to believe that any forcibly implanted control -mechanism could remain in effect so long."</p> - -<p>A shadow blocked the sun, bringing a faint chill to Farrell when he -looked up to see the great rounded hump of the dome looming over him.</p> - -<p>"I'm going into the dome now," he said. "It's like all the others—no -openings except at ground level, where it's riddled with them."</p> - -<p>Tarvil did not accompany him inside. Farrell, looking back as he -thumbed his hand-torch alight in the nearest entranceway, saw the -native squatting on his heels and looking after him without a single -trace of interest.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"I'm at ground level," Farrell said later, "in what seems to have -been a storage section. Empty now, with dust everywhere except in the -corridors the natives use when they come in, mornings. No sign of -Hymenops yet."</p> - -<p>Stryker's voice turned worried. "Look sharp for traps, Arthur. The -place may be mined."</p> - -<p>The upper part of the dome, Farrell knew from previous experience, -would have been given over in years past to Hymenop occupation, layer -after rising layer of dormitories tiered like honeycombs to conserve -space. He followed a spiral ramp downward to the level immediately -below surface, and felt his first excitement of discovery when he found -himself in the audience chambers that, until the <i>Marco's</i> coming, had -been the daily goal of the Sadrian natives.</p> - -<p>The level was entirely taken up with bare ten-foot cubicles, each -cramped chamber dominated by a cryptic metal-and-crystal likeness -of the Hymenop head set into the metal wall opposite its corridor -entrance. From either side of a circular speaking-grill, the antennae -projected into the room, rasplike and alert, above faceted crystal -eyes that glowed faintly in the near-darkness. The craftsmanship was -faultless, stylized after a fashion alien to Farrell's imagining and -personifying with disturbing realism the soulless, arrogant efficiency -of the Hymenop hive-mind. To Farrell, there was about each image a -brooding air of hypnotic fixity.</p> - -<p>"Something new in Hymenop experiments," he reported to Stryker. "None -of the other domes we found had anything like this. These things have -some bearing on the condition of the natives, Lee—there's a path worn -through the dust to every image, and I can see where the people knelt. -I don't like it. I've got a hunch that whatever these damned idols were -used for succeeded too well."</p> - -<p>"They can't be idols," Stryker said. "The Hymenops would have known how -hard it is to displace anthropomorphism entirely from human worship. -But I think you're right about the experiment's working too well. No -ordinary compulsion would have stuck so long. Periodic hypnosis? Wait, -Arthur, that's an angle I want to check with Gibson...."</p> - -<p>He was back a moment later, wheezing with excitement.</p> - -<p>"Gib thinks I'm on the right track—periodic hypnosis. The Hymenops -must have assigned a particular chamber and image to each slave. The -images are mechanicals, robot mesmerists designed to keep the natives' -compulsion-to-isolation renewed. Post-hypnotic suggestion kept the -poor devils coming back every morning, and their children with them, -even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until -the <i>Marco's</i> Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant -and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that -they're free; they don't know how—"</p> - -<p>Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across -the back of the head.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. -The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked -him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that -brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power -plant.</p> - -<p>He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, -drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind -him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board -totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches -clearly intended for alien handling.</p> - -<p>The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck -him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad.</p> - -<p>He saw his equipment pack then, lying undamaged at the foot of the -control board. Stryker's voice murmured from its audicom unit: "We're -in the dome, Arthur. Where are you? What level—"</p> - -<p>Farrell caught up the audicom, swept by a sudden wild lift of hope. -"I'm at the bottom of the dome, in the Ringwave chamber. They took my -gun and torch. For God's sake, hurry!"</p> - -<p>The darkness gave up a furtive scuffling of sandaled feet, the tight -breathing of many men. Someone made a whimpering sound, doglike and -piteous; a Sadrian voice hissed sharply, "<i>Quiet!</i>"</p> - -<p>Stryker's metallic whisper said: "We're tracking your carrier, Arthur. -Use the tools they left you. They brought you there to repair the -Ringwave, to give back the power that kept their images going. Keep -busy!"</p> - -<p>Farrell, only half understanding, took up his instrument case. His -movement triggered a tense rustle in the darkness; the voice whimpered -again, a tortured sound that rasped Farrell's nerves like a file on -glass.</p> - -<p>"<i>Give me back my Voice. I am alone and afraid. I must have -Counsel....</i>"</p> - -<p>Beneath the crying, Farrell felt the terror, incredibly voiced, that -weighted the darkness, the horror implicit in stilled breathing, the -swelling sense of outrage.</p> - -<p>There was a soft rush of bodies, a panting and struggling. The -whimpering stopped.</p> - -<p>The instrument case slipped out of Farrell's hands. On the heels of its -nerve-shattering crash against the metal floor came Stryker's voice, -stronger as it came closer.</p> - -<p>"Steady, Arthur. They'll kill you if you make a scene. We're coming, -Gib and Xav and I. Don't lose your head!"</p> - -<p>Farrell crouched back against the cold curve of the Ringwave cylinder, -straining against flight with an effort that left him trembling -uncontrollably. A spasm of incipient screaming seized his throat and -he bit it back savagely, stifling a terror that could not be seen, -grasped, fought with.</p> - -<p>He was giving way slowly when Xavier's inflectionless voice droned out -of the darkness: "Quiet. Your Counsel will be restored."</p> - -<p>There was a sudden flood of light, unbearable after long darkness. -Farrell had a failing glimpse of Gibson, square face blocked with light -and shadow from the actinic flare overhead, racing toward him through a -silently dispersing throng of Sadrians.</p> - -<p>Then he passed out.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He was strapped to his couch in the chart room when he awoke. The -<i>Marco Four</i> was already in space; on the visiscreen, Farrell could -see a dwindling crescent of Sadr III, and behind it, in the black pit -of space, the fiery white eye of Deneb and the pyrotechnic glowing of -Albireo's blue-and-yellow twins.</p> - -<p>"We're headed out," he said, bewildered. "What happened?"</p> - -<p>Stryker came over and unstrapped him. Gibson, playing chess with Xavier -across the chart-room plotting table, looked up briefly and went back -to his gambit.</p> - -<p>"We reset the Ringwave in the dome to phase with ours and lugged you -out," Stryker explained genially. He was back in character again, his -fat paunch quivering with the beginning of laughter. "We're through -here. The rest is up to Reorientation."</p> - -<p>Farrell gaped at him. "You're giving up on Sadr III?"</p> - -<p>"We've done all we can. Those Sadrians need something that a -preliminary expedition like ours can't give them. Right now they are -willing victims of a rigid religious code that makes it impossible for -any one of them to express his wants, hopes, ideals or misfortunes to -another. Exchanging confidences, to them, is the ultimate sacrilege."</p> - -<p>"Then they <i>are</i> crazy. They'd have to be, with no more opportunity for -emotional catharsis than that!"</p> - -<p>"They're not insane, they're—adapted. Those robot images you found -are everything to this culture: arbiters, commercial agents, monitors -and confessors all in one. They not only relay physical needs from one -native to another; they listen to all problems and give solutions. -They're <i>Counselors</i>, remember? Man's gregariousness stems largely from -his need to unload his troubles on someone else. The Hymenops came up -with an efficient substitute here, and the natives accepted it as the -norm."</p> - -<p>Farrell winced with sudden understanding. "No wonder the poor devils -cracked up right and left. With their Ringwave dead, they might as well -have been struck blind and dumb! They couldn't even get together among -themselves to figure a way out."</p> - -<p>"There you have it," Stryker said. "They knew we were responsible for -their catastrophe, but they couldn't bring themselves to ask us for -help because we were human beings like themselves. So they went mad one -by one and committed the ultimate blasphemy of shouting their misery in -public, and their fellows had to kill them or countenance sacrilege. -But they'll quiet down now. They should be easy enough to handle by the -time the Reorientation lads arrive."</p> - -<p>He began to chuckle. "We left their Counselors running, but we -disconnected the hypnosis-renewal circuits. They'll get only what -they need from now on, which is an outlet for shifting their personal -burdens. And with the post-hypnotic compulsion gone, they'll turn to -closer association with each other. Human gregariousness will reassert -itself. After a couple of generations, the Reorientation boys can write -them off as Terran Normal and move on to the next planetary madhouse -we've dug up for them."</p> - -<p>Farrell said wonderingly, "I never thought of the need to exchange -confidences as being so important. But it is; everyone does it. You and -I often talk over personal concerns, and Gib—"</p> - -<p>He broke off to study the intent pair at the chessboard, comparing -Gibson's calm selfsufficiency to the mechanical's bland competence.</p> - -<p>"There's an exception for your theory, Lee. Iron Man Gibson never gave -out with a confidence in his life!"</p> - -<p>Stryker laughed. "You may be right. How about it, Gib? Do you ever feel -the need of a wailing wall?"</p> - -<p>Gibson looked up briefly from his game, his square face unsurprised.</p> - -<p>"Well, sure. Why not? I tell my troubles to Xavier."</p> - -<p>When they looked at each other blankly, he added, with the nearest -approach to humor that either Farrell or Stryker had ever seen in him: -"It's a reciprocal arrangement. Xav confides his to me."</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wailing Wall, by Roger Dee - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAILING WALL *** - -***** This file should be named 50940-h.htm or 50940-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/9/4/50940/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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