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Read Ebook: Forever We Die! by Marlowe Stephen Rognan Lloyd Illustrator
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Ebook has 661 lines and 24175 words, and 14 pages
"Reincarnation," Rhodes said. "At least, a planet-wide belief in reincarnation. It's unique in the galaxy, as far as we know, and it sets the pattern for Kedaki civilization."
"You are making a planet-wide study?"
Rhodes shook his head. He'd been asked these questions many times before, but it was the subject he loved and he felt himself warming to it. "Not a planet-wide study," he said. "Just this city. Just Junction City. But if you can learn how a sweeping social institution controls one center of population, then...."
"I'm sure," the interrogator said dryly.
"Besides, there are the ruins outside the city."
"Indeed, there are the ruins."
"Because an anthropologist is interested in the history of his subject as well as its merely ephemeral present. And there are those who believe that the Balata 'kai ruins hold the origin of your belief in metempsychosis...."
"Do you, Rhodes?"
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"Have you found anything to fortify this belief?"
"I have."
"What have you found?"
"You have seen these tablets?"
"Yes," said Rhodes.
"Where?"
"The Temple of the Golden Dome, Balata 'kai."
"They are there now?"
"No," said Rhodes. "I took them."
"You took them where?"
"Well, I hid them."
"Where?"
Rhodes grinned. "I'm not going to answer that," he said. He was thinking. Prolong the interview, Phil old boy. Because it's clean here, and neither too warm nor too cold, and you can sit comfortably or stand if you want to.
"Why aren't you going to answer it?"
Rhodes grinned again. "I realize this isn't very important to you...."
"Everything is important to me while I do my job."
"Don't tell me," Rhodes said incredulously, "that I'm in jail and being tortured because I won't tell you where I've hid an anthropological curiosity which may not even be genuine!"
Rhodes felt suddenly sleepy. He'd been awakened to come here. He was always awakened to come here, sometimes after what he thought was a full night's sleep and sometimes after what seemed only a few moments. He listened sleepily as the interrogator went on, surprisingly doing most of the talking. He hardly heard the words, had all he could do to keep his head from slumping down on the desk. It just wasn't very important. It was preliminary to what really mattered, to the questions about Earth history, sociology, engineering, economy, which always followed.
But why me? Rhodes thought. My subject is extra-terrestrial anthropology....
Rhodes stood up and paced back and forth. The interrogator permitted this, even encouraged it. There was neither room to stand nor to pace in Rhodes' cell, a fact which made it difficult for Rhodes to do anything but cooperate completely with his interrogator. Well, why shouldn't I cooperate? he thought. If I cooperate, they'll let me out of here. Let me out of here? No, how can they do that? They're holding an extra-Kedakian illegally, and they know it, and I know it, and they know I know it. My God, Rhodes thought suddenly, are they going to kill me when they're finished with me? It seemed the only logical outcome of all this.
"... population growth of the Earth colony on the planet Mars?"
Rhodes supplied the answer, knowing it was one you could find in any textbook on the Martian colony back in the solar system. All this, he thought, for what? Because Kedak is resisting its incorporation into the Galactic League? Because the Kedaki rulers want to be left alone, fearing that their doctrine of reincarnation will be discredited by intercourse with other worlds?
But the one maddening question remained: why Rhodes?
"... titanium deposits on the moons of Jupiter?"
"Sorry," Rhodes said, "I don't know the answer to that one."
At that moment, the room shook.
Trained since his imprisonment to expect the unexpected, Rhodes thought it was part of the treatment. But the interrogator seemed surprised.
There was a deep rumbling which seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the planet. The room shook again. Rhodes felt himself flung violently across it, colliding with the far wall. The interrogator's head slammed against the metal desk, then the interrogator stood up, blood on his face.
"Guard!" he cried. "Take this man back to his cell at once!"
The room shook a third time, plaster sifted down from the ceiling, and a big crack appeared over Rhodes' head. Through it he saw daylight--the first daylight he'd seen in three months, if he could believe the interrogator.
"Guard!" screamed the interrogator, his composure gone.
Kedak was, Rhodes knew, an earthquake-prone planet. All young worlds were, and Kedak was a young world. Was this, then, an earthquake?
The room swayed, tilted. Rhodes staggered uphill back to the desk, clutching its edge for support. Underfoot, there was a rolling, booming sound. You could not merely hear it, you could feel it. It rolled on from a long way off, coming closer every second, like the distant boom of a thousand cannon fired at split-second intervals.
The door opened, and the guard stood there. The interrogator pointed at Rhodes, shouting something which was swallowed completely by the rolling, booming sound. The guard shouted something back, unheard in the noise, then walked toward Rhodes.
He never reached the Earthman.
The room rocked. The floor came up suddenly, jarringly, and the ceiling came down.
The guard stood there, a look of horror on his face. Not fear of death, Rhodes found himself thinking in the final few seconds. The Kedaki, believing in metempsychosis, did not fear death. But the choking, blinding fear of any man a split-second before personal catastrophe.
Then, literally, the ceiling fell.
The guard pivoted slowly, as if he had all the time in the world to return to the door. He took one small step and the ceiling hit him. It came down not in one sheet but sectionally, Rhodes found himself thinking with amazing objectivity, because--see?--the guard is being struck now, but I haven't been touched....
The guard fell, and the ceiling crumpled on top of him. Rhodes saw the guard's head, very close to the floor, bent at right angles to his body, which was stretched out and hidden by the shards of plaster and stone. There was a worm of blood trickling from the guard's nose. His eyes were opened wide, but the eyeballs had rolled up in the sockets.
The interrogator screamed, and Rhodes heard the sound faintly above the thunderous booming before the tons of plaster and stone came down on both of them.
He stood up.
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