Part 1

Two Way Destiny

By Frank Belknap Long

They were alone on an enchanted planet, a lost Eden glowing with beauty and strangeness. But over them hung a cloud of tribal hate.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe October 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_As science fiction has increased its speculative scope there has come into its orbit a new and largely unexplored world of shining possibilities--the world of comparative ethnology. Why do some primitive human societies glorify hate, fear, cruelty, war, and others live at peace with their neighbors? In this unusual novelette the gifted and versatile Frank Belknap Long has penetrated to the very core of the mystery with dramatically compelling logic._

She was kneeling when I saw her, her face half in shadows, her girlishly slender figure mirrored by the cool-running stream at her feet.

You'd think that on a planet like Dracona a man would be safe from shock. Between the fire mountains and the sea, and the snowy-crested birds that never stop singing you'd think that nothing could surprise him.

Remember Blake's City and Garden, his New Jerusalem with its shining Eden just over the hill? Well--Dracona is just as tremendous as that, even though it's all a garden wilderness with the city part left out.

Surely on Dracona there was enough nerve-tingling beauty everywhere to enchant a lad with my capacity for enjoyment. Why couldn't I have accepted that beauty as a near approach to paradise, content in the knowledge that I was my own master under the stars? Why did I have to step into a forest clearing and let a slender pale girl strip away all of my defenses, leaving me as naked as a new-born babe to the great, roaring winds of unreason?

If I had shouted the question then and there the forest might have murmured in reply: "It's because you haven't seen a woman for so long. It's because loneliness is a destructive blight, and you're a young romantic fool."

It might have shouted that to my mind, to the tumultuously pounding blood at my temples. But it wouldn't have been a complete answer.

I knew she wasn't from Earth the instant she raised her eyes, and looked at me. Mocking eyes she had, of a deep, lustrous violet, and her pale hair clustered in little, golden ringlets about her brow, giving her the tantalizingly defiant aspect of a woman with enough of the eternal tease in her to be secretly amused by her own beauty.

* * * * *

She was collecting zoological specimens in the pollen-scented Draconian dusk. Not me, especially. Just iridescent spider bats, darter birds with vermilion beaks, and flying lizards which measured forty-eight inches straight across their wing-tips.

To be strictly accurate--there was only one lizard. It was thrashing wildly about in the metallic net at her back, the glow from the stationary lure-light giving it the aspect of some fiery monster which she had enticed from its cave by her beauty, and trapped at the risk of her life.

As I returned her stare she blinked in amazement, then laughed outright, the gulfs between us dissolving in a sudden, warming intimacy that was like nothing I'd ever known before.

To keep the scales from dipping too cruelly to her side I threw in everything I had that could be weighed and measured. Mother Earth still gives her sons a good start physically. Surely I was big and strong enough to please her, with a grip no man could break.

Furthermore, I knew how to look after myself. I'd been born and bred to the thunder of primitive rocket jets, and I could walk any jungle like a native, bargain and hold my own. I was a man who would fight tooth-and-nail to justify what I was and always would be at heart--an Earthborn trader.

We of Earth are traders still! We haven't forgotten how to rejoice when waterfalls crash on rocks white with foam, and the mists of morning rise clear and cold to the wheeling stars. I was prepared to tell her what that meant in terms of human dignity, human worth.

I was prepared to remind her that the real target of a trader is the unknown. Everything else he does, or fails to do, is a prelude to the kind of wayfaring that brought the restless human breed to Tragor.

Tragor! The scales started dipping her way, and I couldn't stop them. She was a woman of Tragor, with the star-bright insignia of her heritage gleaming on the folded-back flaps of her weather jacket.

I thought of how human civilization had shifted from Earth to the stars, and what it meant to stand at the hub of the Galaxy in Tragor City. I thought of Tragor City as a man will who is eager not to remain a child in the eyes of one who has never known the meaning of childhood.

I thought of the thousand square miles of research laboratories, the museums and the libraries, the sports arenas swimming in a golden radiance and the sky-mirroring splendors of the biogenetic fulfillment centers. I thought of the schools where teaching had become an exact science completely integrated with human needs.

I remembered that no woman of Tragor could ever become tender and yielding without first dissecting a man. I told myself she'd see through me the instant I spoke to her. With her understanding of the conflict between the sexes the primitiveness in me would stand out like a gall blister on a sturdy oak.

Right at that moment I didn't feel so sturdy. But I knew I'd have to speak first. I couldn't just stand there staring her out of countenance.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," I said. "I didn't mean to stare, but I couldn't very well help myself. I don't quite know how to say it. You're not just an attractive woman. I wouldn't have stared if you were just one woman in ten--or one woman in twenty. I stared because I think you're the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

She flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd never stop staring," she said.

"You're angry," I said. "Don't be. Many men must have told you how beautiful you are. I just happen to mean it."

"Please," she whispered. "Are Terrans always that abrupt?"

"We have a reputation for candor," I said. "If I hadn't told you why you left me speechless you'd have been angry for the wrong reason. You may take that as a compliment."

"I'm not sure I want to."

"You must know how lovely you are," I protested. "Why should you resent being told the simple truth?"

"Perhaps this is one of my bad-tempered days," she said, her eyes searching my face. "You don't look like the kind of man who would deliberately try to embarrass anyone. No man is wise enough to be gallant by design, and make the pretense seem casual and completely honest. You're right, of course. I had no reason to be angry."

She came toward me, straightening her hair, her eyes crinkling with undisguised amusement.

"I still don't know who you are."

"The name's Hargon," I said. "Taro Hargon. I came here to trade with the natives. I get on fairly well with them."

Her eyebrows went up. "Natives? I haven't seen any."

"You will," I promised her.

You can accept almost any reality when it's thrust upon you, even the wonder of a woman of Tragor facing you in a wilderness Eden with a warmth so unmistakable it makes your senses reel.

Her name was Kallatah, and she had come to Dracona alone in a faster-than-light cruiser to collect zoological specimens for the natural history museum at Tagga. Just for the record, Dracona's the fourth planet of a second-magnitude sun in the Constellation Cygnus, and it's as far from Tragor City as it is from Earth. Tagga is a suburb of Tragor City--a white and beautiful metropolis in its own right.

"It's my first important assignment," she told me. "Naturally I've got to make good at it. You see, there's a new director of biological research on the Guiding Council, and from all reports he's the kind of man who is only impressed by results. When I have my first interview with him he'll forget I'm a woman. I'll have to shine as a scientist who doesn't make mistakes."

"You've made one already," I told her.

I walked past her, stared into the net. The captive lizard was twisted into a repulsive-looking knot, its verdigris-colored tail thrashing furiously back and forth. Draconian flying lizards are monstrous brutes. They're four feet in length and have a metallic green sheen to them, and when they have reason to hate their jaws can close with a ferocity unparalleled in nature.

Visualize a Tyrant King dinosaur with ribbed, skeletal wings, reduced to the dimensions of a kangaroo, and you'll have a fairly accurate mental picture of one.

All they do is eat. Birds and small mammals, fruits, berries and nuts. In twenty-four hours a Draconian flying lizard can eat three times its weight in food. But a man is safe if he keeps his distance, for they are lazy by nature and don't attack without provocation.

"They're taboo animals," I told her. "The natives call them 'Servants of the Mountain.' If your purpose was to infuriate the natives you couldn't have made a better start."

She returned my stare with a strange mixture of alarm and defiance. "I had no way of knowing that!" she protested. "This planet is down on the charts as uninhabited. A virgin wilderness. If there are intelligent primitives here--"

Her face grew suddenly strained. She stared about her as if seeking an answer for something intangible that was pressing in upon her thoughts and undermining her confidence in herself.

I was feeling it too. A kind of cold unpleasantness with underpinnings of loneliness and dread. When you're thousands of light years from Earth you've got to hold tight to your anchorage in the past, your primal birthright of friendship and trust.

There were a thousand ties linking me to Earth, and that distant jungle world was just a stopping off point to me in a web of heart-warming memories that sustained me night and day. No matter how lonely I became I could always tell myself that I'd soon be going back to the people and places I'd known all my life. I was far away, sure. But there would always be friends awaiting my return.

Freeze that memory chain, shatter the brittle links, and the human mind has no refuge left anywhere in time or space. I had only to substitute Tragor for Earth to know how Kallatah must have felt. But before I could move to her side all of the links snapped, and we were caught up in a jungle new and terrible and strange, with all points of reference stripped away.

I'd experienced that horror before and I knew exactly what to expect.

It began with a dull flickering, a faint shifting of light and shadow at the edge of the clearing. Leaves swirled up from the forest floor, and a solid wall of vegetation began to sway, to tremble and twist about. As Kallatah cried out in alarm a tangled mass of bright, toadstool-like growths split up into dozens of spinning fragments, the air about them crackling and bursting into flame.

With a sudden, roaring sound a tree collapsed, dislodging a screaming shrewlike beast that scampered into the clearing with its tail between its legs. There was a moment of awful silence while the jungle built up tensions past all sanity. The clearing became a trap brimming with a malevolence as unnerving as the ticking of some hidden detonating device.

A black blur of panic rose to encompass me as a concentration of hatred almost palpable plucked agonizingly at my mind. I was following the motion of the foliage with sick horror when out of the jungle came another beast, web-footed, walking upright.

In utter silence it stumbled to and fro, its froglike body glistening with swamp water, its stalked eyes luminous with fright. It advanced and retreated, bent double, and went into a kind of frantic waltz.

What happened then was as unexpected as it was terrifying. The light grew dazzling again, as if a cloak of fire had descended on the clearing. With a harsh screeching the frog leapt high into the air and was slammed back against a tree by a force that ploughed a furrow in the ground clear across the clearing.

I watched it sink to the ground with a broken back, shaken both by the violence which had been done to it, and an unnerving glimpse of Kallatah's white face staring at me from the shadows. So terrible was the wrath unleashed that it had taken on a blind purposelessness. I knew that everything in the clearing was marked for destruction unless--

I crossed to where Kallatah was standing, and gripped her by the shoulders.

I spoke urgently, almost harshly. "The natives are watching us!" I warned. "When they saw you capture that lizard their anger got out of hand. Do you understand? They're trying to kill us with their minds."

"What can it mean?"

She swayed against me and I caught the faint fragrance of her hair. She was trembling so I wondered if she had really heard me, or if the fear in her voice was no more than an echo of the dread she must have felt on seeing the frog-creature go hurtling through the air.

I started shaking her, forcing her to look at me. "They're poltergeists," I told her. "They can set fires and move objects from a distance. The power resides in an area of the brain which civilization seems to blunt. It's an ESP faculty which was part of man's original survival equipment. Our cavemen ancestors could reach out with their minds in that way too."

She still seemed not to hear me. In desperation I raised my voice, continuing to shake her. "They get to our minds first--in a horrible, primitive sort of way. They strip our minds bare so that we'll feel isolated--lost. Primitive man could kill off his enemies in the same way--by paralyzing them with a mental projection of the jungle as a kind of trap. Paralyzing them with fright, then closing the jaws of the trap."

"I don't believe it!" she almost sobbed.

"You'll be convinced if you don't do as I say!" I warned.

* * * * *

She drew back from me, as if firmly determined not to be convinced.

"You find out these things by studying primitives in different stages of development," I went on urgently. "Don't forget--I'm an Earthborn trader. You of Tragor may scoff, but I've studied dozens of primitive humanoid groups. I know that they can be won over if you handle them just right."

"What's just right?"

"Play along with me," I urged. "Follow my cue."

"Play along--"

"An old Earth expression. We've got to play up to them, put on an act."

Before she could protest or cry out I swept her into my arms. I ran my hands through her hair, raised her chin, and kissed her--very firmly and determinedly for an instant.

"This is part of the act," I whispered.

Being a woman of Tragor, she could hardly have believed that my impulsiveness had been prompted solely by a desperate human need for companionship in a moment of shared danger. She must have known it went deeper than that, and she would have been right. A giddiness swept me like a gusty hurricane wind on a tidal estuary bright with a thousand pulsating tropical blooms.

I released her suddenly, and she leapt back, her eyes startled and accusing. "You're either a madman or a sick child!" she whispered.

"We'll talk about it later," I said. "Now is not the time."

"I feel sorry for you."

"Later."

The clearing quieted down, and there was silence for a moment. Then out of the forest they came, walking three abreast. Geipgos, the old tribal chieftain, and his son Slagoon, and the warriors with their rippling muscles glinting in the pollen-scented dusk, and their spears held high in a cautious withholding of wrath.

You couldn't call it a greeting. They were still shaken with anger, still ready to kill.

I went forward to meet them, with Kallatah in the crook of my arm. I'd talked and bargained and haggled with them a dozen times, but now I was seeing them for the first time through her eyes.

I have a curious gift of empathy. I could share her awe and admiration, and the stunned incredulity which must have made her doubt the evidence of her eyes.

The natives of Dracona are physically comely and well-proportioned, and they carry themselves with such an air of easy grace that you have to look twice to realize that they are not entirely like ourselves.

They have three eyes, but the extra one is so smoothly lidded that when it remains shut you scarcely notice it. Their three extra, slightly attenuated arms are not obtrusive, for they carry them pressed closely to their sides. And the green sheen of their skins looks more bronze than green in the forest gloom, and is hence far less startling than might be supposed.

They had such keen, discerning eyes, and mobile features that when they smiled in friendly greeting it was hard to think of them as primitives at all.

* * * * *

They were not smiling now.

I tightened my hold on Kallatah's wrist, and looked Geipgos straight in the eye--the big forehead eye which opened slowly to glow with fierce reproach and scorn.

"Mukith Mani-Bumini!" I said. That translated out as: "I would know the reason for your displeasure, old friend!"

It was an excellent beginning and it brought an instant, completely understandable reply. The fire mountain had been complaining all day. Now the reason was clear to all. One like myself, only a female, had taken captive a Servant of the Mountain. Her punishment and death must follow as a matter of course.

Geipgos' three eyes watched me, as if seeking in the frailties we had in common some excuse for my defense of such a female monster.

"Tun Huhji Swan," I said. "This woman is more dear to me than life itself."

I waited for his astonishment to subside, then went on quickly. "She is my mate. She is the adored one of my heart. The Servant of the Mountain flew to join us when he saw how deliriously happy we were. He wished to give us his blessing."

It was a good beginning only if I could convince Geipgos that the lizard had flown into the net of its own free will, and had its own peculiar reason for not wanting to leave.

"The Servant of the Mountain is free to go," I said. "He waits only to rejoice in the complete consummation of our happiness."

"He waits to rejoice?" said Geipgos.

"In the glorious fulfillment of our happiness, yes."

It was the wisest thing I could have said, for primitives everywhere are natural-born feast makers. Rejoicing in the happiness of the newly-wed is second nature to them.

I could see that Geipgos was impressed. He raised his arm, and gestured to the warriors. Still scowling, but without hesitation, they strode past us, grouped themselves about the net and started prodding the lizard with their spears. Gently, firmly, and with great deference.

Suddenly the startled creature gave a shrill scream, swung about, and began untangling itself. The warriors leapt back in awe, lowered their spears, and waited to see what the Servant of the Mountain would do next.

It went right on screaming.

It was still screaming when it left the net like a bat out of a well. Straight across the clearing it soared and into the trees, missing Geipgos by a scant twelve inches.

What it did was perfectly natural under the circumstances, but its effect on Geipgos was tantamount to the lightning conversion of a miracle enacted for his benefit alone. He swung toward me, utter self-castigation in his eyes.

The Servant of the Mountain had been wiser than Geipgos. It had stayed until prodded, indicating a desire to stay. Amends must be made for the doubting of a friend. The female, my mate, must be the guest of Geipgos.

Kallatah stared at me with a wild surmise. "What did you tell him?" she asked. "What did he _say_ to you?"

"We're to go to their village," I told her. "We're to go as honored guests."

At a command from Geipgos a litter sixteen feet square was set down before us, and we got into it. Four tall warriors grouped themselves with prideful eagerness about the conveyance, and lifted it to their shoulders, Geipgos and his son fell back with gestures of deep respect, and a procession formed behind us, and we were borne forward across the clearing like the idols of some primitive fertility cult whose wrath could shrivel crops and cause a blight to descend upon the land.

Amidst shouts of jubilation and an incredible bowing and scraping we were borne swiftly along a jungle trail between towering walls of vegetation. And then out on a sloping mountainside which overlooked a valley swimming in a deep, golden haze.

The trail descended the mountain in a corkscrew curve, with many evil-looking twists and turns. To be carried on a litter down a steep trail is always hazardous and I would have preferred to remain silent. But when I saw how alarmed Kallatah looked I thought it best to keep right on talking.

Across the valley loomed the largest volcano on Dracona and as I gestured toward it I did my best to sound cheerful.

"That mountain has our friends worried," I said. "It's been rumbling off and on for weeks. You've got to remember that to a primitive a fire mountain is just about the most terrifying object in nature. Why do you think those lizards are taboo animals?"

* * * * *

I laid my hand on her arm. "An accident of nature, nothing more. The lizards live just inside the crater, high up where the heat can't harm them. Naturally they've become identified with the volcano. To Geipgos and his warriors the ugly-looking beasts are Servants of the Mountain who can stay its wrath. Capture them, abuse them, and the wrath of the mountain will be unleashed in all its fury. The pattern is a primitive one, but completely logical from their point of view."

Kallatah looked at me steadily for a moment. "It almost became a pattern of death for us," she said.

"I know," I said. "But don't forget it's an ugly pattern for them too. A pattern of never-ceasing terror, of semi-starvation."

One of the warriors thrust his face close to us to ask if we were all right. I nodded, and he fell back with a gratified grin to resume his position in the procession.

"It's tragic how one little taboo can hold a race back," I went on. "You've seen how keenly intelligent they are. If that taboo hadn't plagued them for hundreds of years they'd be truly civilized by now."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Kallatah said. "What do you mean by a pattern of starvation."

"Those lizards eat the natives out of house and home," I told her. "Literally--and it's horrible. When we come to the village you'll see what emaciated skeletons the women and children are. The lizards are so sacred they can't be killed off without angering the mountain."

It was then that Kallatah surprised me. She gave a low whistle.