CHAPTER 13

When Bowdler and Grundy had first sounded out Comstock and had asked him the questions that had led him so far from the normal law-abiding life that had been his, one of the mainsprings of his conduct had been envy mixed with disgust that the Fathers whom formerly he had so revered had become monsters in his mind. Monsters who had used the whole planet as a breeding ground for their harems. For when the thought that only the Fathers were really fathers had struck Comstock he had resolved that he too would like to take part in such noble work.

Along with the sexual motive, Comstock had decided that if the Fathers controlled the world, he too would like to have a share in either controlling the world as it was, or perhaps with luck, helping to change the control in such a way that their world would be a better place to live in.

This mixture of ideas had resulted in his mental picture of the Fathers becoming an amalgam of monsters of pride, venery and power.

Looking about the room Comstock decided that he could not possibly have been further wrong in the way he had pictured the Fathers.

For his first feeling as his unbelieving eyes swept around the table at which the Fathers sat, was one of pity.

Far from being the creatures with inflated egos, the monsters of uxoriousness that his inflamed imagination had painted, these men who guided the affairs of his world were invalids... The lame, the halt and the blind.

Each face was torn by pain, every body bore the stigmata of some fatal disease.

Only the Grandfather, ridiculously tall and spare, standing at the far end of the gigantic room was as his imagination had foretold He would be.

In the silence that greeted them Comstock finally turned to Grundy and said, "I ... I don't understand."

The Grandfather walked to the head of the table and prepared to speak. While they waited, Grundy whispered, "Think a moment. The only cure for disease that our people know is vice. Right?"

Nodding, Comstock waited.

"But the only people on the whole planet who know how this cure works, what psychic machinery is involved, are the Fathers."

Comstock gulped and thought of his heart.

"To become a Father," Grundy added hurriedly as The Grandfather raised his hand for silence, "is a sentence of death. For once you know how sin cures sickness, it can no longer cure you."

"Fathers," The Grandfather said, and involuntarily, Comstock felt his heart fill with awe, so imbued had his upbringing been with respect and worship of the figure called The Grandfather; he tried to control the emotion that threatened to unman him, for his temptation was to fall down before The Grandfather.

"Fathers," the deep organ bass went on, "you know why we are gathered in this extraordinary conclave. So successful has been the regime that I have caused to come into being, that no longer can we hope to recruit new Fathers from amongst those brave souls who rebel against the government we have set up. Not for fifty years has a new rebel appeared to challenge our power. Therefore, as you all know, Father Bowdler, because he is the healthiest appearing of any of you, was empowered to go out into the world and find rebellious souls whom we may be able to use as leaders.

"I feared when first I caused the apparatus of power to be set up as I have done, that there would be instant and successful rebellion. It did not then occur to me that I would be too successful and that rebellion would be bred out of the blood of our people.

"We have, as you know only too well, arrived at a period of stasis from which our world may never recover.

"It therefore devolves upon the men who stand before you as well as the women who have made common cause with them, to come to our aid.

"Now that aid is to be given, what these new Fathers will be able to do before death claims them, I do not know. All that I can say with any assurance, is that if something is not done and done quickly, our world will go down the road to static death, never knowing what has toppled it from the high estate it held."

* * * * *

Comstock's mind was almost incapable of digesting what The Grandfather was saying. It had all happened much too quickly. To be raised in a matter of moments from a position where death seemed imminent first to a position on the Board of Fathers, and now, if he understood correctly, to be told that the future of the world was somehow his responsibility, was just too much.

His first instinctual response was to desire escape. Turning around he saw, directly behind him, a door which was ajar. Not that he wanted to escape very far, he just wanted to go off in a dark corner and sit and think the whole thing out.

The Grandfather was still speaking, as Comstock, unobserved, began to step backwards. The others, Comstock's fellow rebels were leaning forward, greedily drinking in what The Grandfather was saying.

"You will, in the next day or two," The Grandfather was saying as Comstock backed closer to the door, "be told just how our government operates. You will be told how, when the last scientists were martyred by an unreasoning mob, they tried, before death claimed them, in their wisdom to set up non-mechanical devices that would cure the sick. They knew that in the period of dark reaction by which they were swept to death, anything that smelled of machinery was doomed to destruction.

"You will then understand why I was in effect forced to cause this world of ours to enter a period of the strictest moral upbringing. Only under such a regime could the psychosomatic mechanisms that the scientists had explained, be able to work.

"I have been only too successful as you know. I have, by the restrictions I set up, brought into being a world where people fear sickness not because of the pain it brings, but because of the shame the sins which cure it bring in its path."

Then the door was near enough so that Comstock was able to duck through it. There was a hard bench just outside and as Comstock sat down on it, his brain awhirl, he heard the deep voice of The Grandfather say, just as Comstock pushed the door closed, "But enough of the way our world works now. I think the next subject under discussion will be just what we can do to make our world take the step from an inner-directed culture with ancestor-directed overtones, on and up to the next normal step which is an other-directed culture."

* * * * *

Inasmuch as the last thing that Comstock remembered clearly was when he brought the "car" under control and then tied up the man he knew as the Picaroon, he sat on the hard bench, his buttock muscles sore from lack of sleep, his stomach gurgling loudly from lack of food and water, and tried to reconstruct just what had been happening to him.

It was no use. There was a lapse he could not account for. He remembered that the Picaroon had asked him a question, but luckily he could not remember how it was phrased, and then the next thing he knew he was getting out of the R.A.'s car, being guided into the fearful sanctum of the Fathers, and then, first fearing instant death, he had then been apprised of his accession to power. Then the membership of the Board of Fathers had been revealed to be a sentence of death, and before his weary, battered brain could recover from that, The Grandfather had made it clear that the world's future was somehow his responsibility.

Comstock was only too aware of his mortality, as everyone is when fatigue has lowered one's defenses. He slouched down on the bench and tried to rationalize some of the recent events.

Aside from Pat, he would be only too grateful if the whole benighted affair had never been and he could once more awaken in bed with his mother near to comfort him.

The door on the far side of the room opened and an R.A. entered. Comstock was sunk too far down in a welter of self-pity to do more than raise his head tiredly and look at the R.A.'s stern face. The uniformed man produced a stun-gun and said, "You are under arrest."

Before Comstock could bother to tell the man that he was a little behind in his knowledge of what had been happening, the gun did its work.

Stunned, Comstock fell off the bench and crashed onto the floor. His head landed so hard that the result was instant unconsciousness. The effect of the gun's energy bolt would merely have been to immobilize his bodily functions. But the blow knocked him out.

* * * * *

When he opened his eyes and was again aware of life and its processes, he had been moved. He did not know it immediately but he had been transferred to The Grandfather's aerie.

The first thing that Comstock was aware of was the fact that he was seated in a chair unlike any he had ever seen before. It was big, and comfortable in a way, except that from the arms of it came metal bands that encompassed his forearms preventing the slightest movement. Around his legs, similar bands held his calves against the legs of the chair.

Directly in front of him was the most tremendous desk he had ever seen. Around the walls of the room which was completely circular were little holes, just big enough for the muzzles of stun-guns to project through. The port holes were no more than ten inches apart so that every inch of his body was being menaced at all times.

As intelligence returned to him, he looked dully at the too tall figure of The Grandfather who sat behind the desk. The long beard curved gracefully down the giant chest. More tired than he had ever been in his life, Comstock thought in woolly fashion of how nice it would be to curl up in The Grandfather's lap, as he had been taught by his mother, and forget all his cares.

Thinking of The Grandfather's lap made him remember, with a guilty start, that he had no idea of what had happened to Pat.

Before he could ask, The Grandfather said, "You have managed to do something that no one has done in more years than I like to think about. Why did you sneak away from the Board room, Comstock?"

The omnipresent muzzles of the circle of stun-guns preyed heavily on Comstock's muddled mind. He did not answer the question.

The Grandfather said, "I am not used to having to ask a question twice. Why did you leave when I was speaking? Did you not believe what I was saying?"

There was a curious expression, Comstock realized, on The Grandfather's face. Was it possible that what The Grandfather had said, down below, was not the truth? Could it be that Bowdler was as befuddled as the rest of them? Was some tremendous game, so complicated as not to be understood being played?

"I am waiting," The Grandfather said.

Comstock's slack face betrayed nothing. He was too tired, too confused, too upset to even hazard an opinion. Finally he croaked, "The only reason I left, was because I wanted to think."

"To think?" The tone was satirical. "Curious, most of my people are content to allow _me_ to do all the thinking."

How despairingly Comstock wished that he too could let The Grandfather do all his thinking, but it was much too late for that.

Hunching over his desk, The Grandfather leaned forward and said, "Speak up, man, don't force me to employ certain methods which I have used on occasion."

Speak up! When all he wanted to do was lay his weary head on that comforting beard and forget everything? Speak up when his tongue was thick with thirst and his stomach growling with hunger? Speak up when his sleepless head was involuntarily dropping from time to time from sheer fatigue?

Why didn't the old fool leave him alone? How far could a man be pushed? What did he have to lose now that he knew that membership on the Board of Fathers meant a lingering death by heart disease? A wave of adrenaline shot through his system as anger burned brightly.

He almost snarled as he asked, "Suppose _you_ do some answering? Suppose _I_ ask the questions for a change?"

Leaning back in his chair The Grandfather's face reflected no emotion at all.

Comstock snapped. "Suppose you tell me how you've stayed in power so long! Some of those earth books I read in Bowdler's library made me wonder about a lot of things, Grandfather. And I'd like to know some of the answers!

"Tell me, how have you stayed in power so long?"

"Because," The Grandfather said, "since you ask, because of fear."

Of that emotion there was none in Comstock. He was beyond any ordinary feelings at all. They had all been washed away.