Closed System

'I won't offer you a drink,' she said, with afunny little grin. 'I don't think I could stand another of yourdrinks.' 'Pat, it was necessary. We're so close now. Wehad to know what chance there was of your being

followed here, and, knowing you, I don't thinkwe'd have gotten the whole truth without the drugs.There's no lasting ill effect.' 'As there was with the dexiapherzede?' 'I didn't know that the side effects were so terri­ble. I swear that to you.' 'And yet you kept me pumped full of it for sevenand a half days.' She looked down.

'Why didn't you just tell me you wanted tocome here to Dorchlunt?' 'I wasn't sure of you, Pat. And it was so vitalthat I get the diamond here. I couldn't go back toZede II with you with the diamond aboard. They would have —' She paused.

'The diamond is here?' She nodded. 'Who are they, and what would they have donewith the diamond?'

She sighed again. 'Pat, it's a long story. Perhapswe had better have that drink.'

'I'll do it, and I'll stay carefully beyond yourreach,' he said, moving to the bar to pour thatvery good Taratwo brandy. He sat on the arm ofthe sofa. She was curled into a chair, legs partiallyunder her.

'When my brother was fifteen he went to ZedeII on a government scholarship to continue hisstudy of ancient history. He did his thesis on theZedeian war of a thousand years ago. He was quitethe young prodigy, astounding the learned profes­sors with his skill in writing, and with his ability to retain knowledge, so they opened the archives to him, gave him free run. He discovered a govern­ment file tucked away in crates of documents whichhad once been classified top secret, but were thenso old that secrecy didn't matter. Most of themwere just dry statistics—the accounts of interestabout the war had long since been removed andfiled elsewhere—but my brother was, and is, avery thorough man. He found one encoded docu­ment and spent weeks with the computers break­ing the code.'

Pat eased himself down onto the sofa. Appar­ently she was going to take a long time getting up to present-day events.

'You know the background of the Zedeian war?'

'In summary, yes.'

'There's more tradition still alive on the Zedeworlds than in the rest of the UP,' she said. 'Theirlegends are more explicit, for example. I've readthe books of Zedeian myths and legends. They refer, not too specifically, and sometimes in fanci­ful, symbolic language, to the original world, tothe Old Earth.'

'Yes, I've heard of some of those myths. Seriousscholars discount them, because, after all, the Zede worlds were settled by the same people who set­tled the original UP planets.'

'But the Zedeians, at least the traditionalists,insist that the Zede worlds were settled separately,and only later, after thousands of years, mergedwith the growing UP.'

'Well, whatever,' Pat said.

'The Zedeian myths state that before the nu­clear war on Old Earth, Earth was split by rivalrybetween two philosophies, or beliefs, or forms ofgovernment—that part is not quite clear. TheZedeians, even back in the dark beginnings of theirhistory, had a tradition of militarism. They saythat they are the descendants of the greatest raceof warriors ever produced on Old Earth, and thatwas the feeling that led, in part, to the war.'

'Makes sense,' Pat said. 'Delusions of grandeur.'

'Ah?' she asked, raising an eyebrow. 'They hadfought the vastly more populous UP to a standstillbefore the UP used planet reducers.'

'OK, I'll concede that they're fighters,' Pat said.

'And more scientific advancesstill come fromthe Zede worlds than from the rest put together,'she said.

'I'd have to see figures on that.'

'No matter. Before the UP began to use planetreducers the Zedeians had been working on a new,very

powerful weapon. When it became apparentthat they would have to surrender they loaded allthe scientists and technicians who had been work­ing on that weapon onto a colonization ship—'

'Ah, ha,' Pat said.

'Yes. It's still there. Up there.' She glanced up­ward. 'Their mission was to lose themselves inspace. They traveled, however, in a predetermineddirection, the direction least likely to attract pur­suit. Toward the core. That way, if, somehow, theZedeians averted total defeat, ships could look forthem, and find them. They were ordered to con­tinue to work on the weapon, and they were very close to having it perfected. If they ironed out thelast flaws in it, they were to arm the six ship'slaunches—'

'Six launches against the UP battle fleets?'

'—and return to rescue the Zede Empire.'

'Let me do some guessing,' Pat said. 'Theyfound only this one poor, barren planet. They werenot too excited about it, but they'd gone just aboutas far toward the core as they could go. They putthe ship in orbit and continued to work on theweapon, and one of the experiments, or something,went wrong, disabling the ship, leaving them no choice but to land on the planet and make the bestof it.'

Corinne nodded. 'You've seen this world. It doesnot have the capacity to support a normal popula­tion, and the Zedeian scientists had few resources. It takes numbers, large numbers, to build a tech­nological civilization. The planet would not sup­port such numbers, so the scientists set up a systemwhich has lasted for a thousand years. They limitedpopulation growth by birth control, at first, andthen—and believe me, Pat, this is none of ourdoing—they had to resort to euthanasia of the old.'

'Justifying it as sending the individual to hishard-earned reward, heaven on Zede. How did the priests, or the scientists, get such a hold on them?'

'All of the ship's information, all data, books,tapes, everything, was destroyed in the explosionand fire. There was left only one set of books,books on the superstitions and religions of OldEarth. There are twelve volumes, and even the present-day priests believe them to be the originalvolumes brought out from Old Earth. We've datedthe material, however, and it's obvious that thebooks have been reproduced several times, becausethe existing ones are less than two thousand years old. However, the material seems to be authentic. My brother was ecstatic. He said they were, to his knowledge, the only surviving bit of printed material from Old Earth.'

'If that's true, the scholars of the galaxy deserveto be able to study them,' Pat said.

'Soon,' she said. 'Very soon.'

'Tell me about the books.'

'They were written in the language spoken by the people of Dorchlunt. There are dates. They're meaningless to us, even when we compare themwith the oral records of the mutated Earthlings.The books were first published in a year measuredby predestruction Earth calendars as 1896.'

'We know from our efforts on Old Earth thatseveral calendars were used before the destruction.'

'Yes, but the books are predestruction, very old,and very interesting. The author, a—I'll have tospell this— Klaus von Forster—' 'Funforster,' Pat said.

'Yes. The author tells of hundreds of deities. It seems that every small segment of the human raceon Old Earth had its own gods. Funforster madeno judgments. He, apparently, believed in no god.He simply recorded the works and the word andthe sacred writings of the various gods. The scien­tists used the books to create a code of laws andbehavior. The books gave them sacred authority,for why else had

they been saved from burning onthe ship?'

'May I see the books?'

'Yes, of course. Later. There is much more totell.'

'Before you begin, I'd like to know the source ofthis power.' He indicated the lights.

'It comes from a nuclear reactor,' she said.

Pat's eyes narrowed. 'My God,' he said.

'Didn't you know that the excuse the UP usedfor destroying planets was that the Zedeians wereusing

nuclear weapons?' 'I've probably read it, yes.' A thought came tohim. 'Your brother—did he also discover direc­ tions on

how to make nuclear weapons? And hassomeone tested nuclear weapons within the past decade or so?'

'We have no need of nuclear weapons,' she said.'The Zedeian weapon is far more final in results.'

'So is a planet reducer.'

'A planet reducer will be useless against ourweapon.'

Pat whistled. 'Tell me about the weapon.'

'Not just yet,' she said. 'You asked about the power source here. The colonization ship had anuclear reactor