Seeklight

“This is why I came back.” The old man was quite lucid now, his voice firm and lower in pitch. “I knew that, somehow, you might make your way here, and then you would need someone to explain.” He paused for a moment. “This is where you were born.

Here, and not from any woman’s womb.”

Daenek turned and looked into the calm, aged face.

Something in his own heart seemed to stop without pain, like a key turning in its latch.

Chapter XXII

There was only one thane. There had always been but one.

The priests who had come on the seedship had finished the cloning of those who would be the start of the world’s population.

Then, following the Academy’s programming, the priests had constructed the palace and installed an automated unit of the cloning apparatus, still in the gold sheathing that had protected its fragile devices from interstellar radiation, behind the doors for which there was only one key.

All the technology available to the Academy on Earth had gone to alter the genetic material for the thane, the man who would be the ruler of the society the priests were to set up.

Encoded in every cell of the first thane was the power to control other men’s minds, a power invisible but greater than any other human strength.

When the seedship had gone from Earth, the government confiscated the genetic alteration technology, and at last destroyed it. The danger was too great for it to be employed anywhere other than the far-off star to which the seedship was directed.

But there, the thane’s power was too great to be lost, or worse, to be spread through the population. The Academy had made provisions for the inheritance of the power. The cloning unit was kept active in the palace, a final world-encompassing secret known only to the thane and his closest circle. When the thane, who was otherwise sterile and without the possibility of an heir, grew old, an infant would be formed and nurtured in the cloning unit’s artificial womb from the genetic material contained in the thane’s cells. His ‘son’ would then be his own genetic duplicate, the thane’s power of command intact within him. The priests instructed each new child-thane according to the ancient programming of the Academy. When the supraluminal drives were developed, the Academy itself came out to the star and found the world they had created waiting for them.

The secret, the world’s final secret, remained intact with the power. The priests’ programming bound them in silence” of it.

So, from generation to generation, from the first thane onward into time, the thanes died but lived—immortal in the cycle of their rebirth.

Daenek looked at his face, reflected in one of the gleaming panels of the cloning apparatus. Somewhere, in a tank of blood-like nutrients he had floated as an embryo, and then, an infant, been brought into the world from the metal depths contained before him.

Behind him, the old man was waiting, silent—his explanation finished.

With one hand, Daenek touched his image. There was something left of the mask he had learned to form in it, but it soon faded. It’s my face now, he thought. My inheritance. The face of a thane. A wordless song of knowledge and power coursed through his veins.

“When the old thane was killed,” the old man spoke up, “the Regent had you exiled, though you were only an infant. So that he’d look merciful and just to the people. One of the thane’s court ladies went with you, to some small village—”

“I know,” said Daenek. A flood of memories had risen in him, memories from before a childhood near the quarry, memories of being a thane. Of growing sick with disgust at the loss of human-ness in mankind, at the slow drift with each generation of the world’s population towards sloth and the indifference to life that eats life. The resolve to change, to overthrow the old blood-sapping patterns, though it would mean eventually the end of the rule by thanes. And the mistake of letting it become known too soon, too soon to avoid the Academy’s treachery. Daenek studied his reflection and knew. This was the end of the search.

He turned towards the old man standing in the doorway of the chamber. “You have served the thane well,” said Daenek.

The old man nodded slowly. “I’m very tired.”

“Then rest.” Daenek felt the power move within himself and, with no word or motion necessary, commanded the old man to sleep. When the ragged figure had lain down next to the door, Daenek reached even deeper and stopped the aged heart. The bearded face relaxed into peace.

Moonlight silvered the upper stories of the palace. After an hour’s searching, Daenek found a smashed window on a side of the palace left unguarded by the bad priests. Caution was necessary, as he knew his power would have no effect on the machines, no matter how close their twisted parody of humanity came to being real.