The Star Virus

For a full minute he stood stock-still, a frown of concentration on his face. His unseeing eyes stared straight ahead, but the compact camera, with rapt attention, was trained on the lens.

"Your surmise was not as wrong as you think," he said finally, speaking slowly and wonderingly. "As closely as I can compute, then atom for atom, the doped light-producing region does match the stars of the galaxy—but the galaxy as it existed roughly a trillion years ago. Not surprisingly, you failed to recognize it, the formation having changed considerably since then."

Rodrone and Redace glanced unbelievingly at one another. They had spent weeks in comparing a galactic map with an estimated distribution of the "dope" content of the lens. Sinnt, in a breathtaking feat, had carried out a vast range of such comparisons in only a minute. There was no point in even admiring such an ability, springing as it did from a technique of linking a brain with a computer. Briefly Rodrone wondered what it would be like to think that way, what godlike feeling it might bring.

"So what do you infer?" he asked huskily.

"As yet, nothing. But we have much work to do. My son will help us."

He turned, murmured into a communicator unit. Shortly, a door opened and a young boy entered. Rodrone judged him to be about twelve years old. His head was a mass of dark curls. Unlike his father, he had alert, shining blue eyes; nevertheless, a twin to his father's camera squatted incongruously large on his right shoulder, and the lenses glowed with life. Further, a freshly shaved bald patch showed where a computer input socket had been surgically implanted into his skull.

Sinnt must have noticed their expression of distaste. "It is a duty to instruct one's children. To put them on the right path," he said sternly.

"Isn't that the mistake your father made?" Clave asked softly.

The scientist refused to answer, but he smiled scornfully. It was the first time they had seen him smile, and it was to be the last.

VI

On and on staggered the demented monk. His band had grown on the journey until now it was a jostling mass which in some way was still controlled by his lashing whip. Cripples, deformed and mutilated people made up a good part of the horde. They streamed ahead of the monk, dressed in tatters, quarreling among themselves and exchanging spiteful blows.

The end of their journey was in sight. It was a walled city. The tall, gleaming ramparts were leveled off with mathematical precision, and beyond them, alabaster towers and elevated streets formed a perfect, symmetrical design. The whole city exuded orderliness and method. The banners that depended from the walls and square-cut buildings also proclaimed mathematical order. There were pythagorean triangles, ellipses, parabolas and golden sections.

The monk's rabble camped before this splendid city, jeering and screaming obscenities. The intention was all too plain: to tear down the walls, to destroy and kill until nothing remained but smoking ruins.

His body tense, the monk sent his whip snaking out over the throng. At his bidding they rushed the walls, piling against it and trying to scramble over each other's bodies. But the walls were too high, too smooth and too strong. They fell back, cursing and spitting, denied the spoils that had been promised them.

Throughout, one companion had stood close by his brown-garbed leader. He had relayed orders, supported the monk when he stumbled and brought food to him when they stopped for rest. Now, in his exasperation, the monk took a long wavy-bladed knife from beneath his cloak and stabbed to death his only friend. Contemptuously he pushed the body aside with his foot. The rabble howled, shaking fists at the gleaming city, spreading out before it and threatening siege.

The monk sat down on a rock, brooding.

Eventually Rodrone forced himself to avert his eyes from the compelling scene. Unaccountably, he was sweating. It was like waking from a nightmare.

He had no idea why the story of the faceless monk affected him so, any more than he knew why, in contrast to all the other picture-dramas, it continued indefinitely. Or why it alone had human beings for participants. Could it be, he wondered, that the lens was trying to tell him something?

Moodily he sighed. He felt tired, and lonely, now that Clave and Redace no longer came to the house.