A Simple Truth (41 page)

Soon
after the alien contact she had started a painstaking and total reorganisation of his entire mind, and now the task was complete.  He still behaved as any other human being, his intelligence and abilities still above average
,
but not remarkably so.  The change was in the degree of access to his mental faculties that she had achieved.  She could intervene instantly at any point in the operation of his mind, and could immerse herself within it so fully that she could become Arthur Lincoln.
  Over the last few days she had stepped up both the frequency and degree of intervention, in preparation for the critical moment when she must seize complete control.

She felt tense but confident;
the knowledge of all that had gone before stood before her like a banner, urging her forward, demanding her best.

And there was much that had gone before.  The change had started with the appearance as if by magic from the skies of a race of
strange and frightening beings, b
eings much more powerful than she.  They captured all kinds of animals and performed strange experiments on them.  Her children were at first afraid of them, but they gained their confidence by gifts of food and novelties.  They lured many into their encampment and she hid away afraid of discovery.  When they were released she searched their minds to learn what had happened.  And it was only then that she realised the full meaning of the strangers' presence.  They were intent on finding animals suitable for modification, to become compatible with an external and powerful controlling influence.

At length they took away a large group of
her
own children and only about half ever returned.  But when they did her compatibility with them was at first weak, and eventually diminished to nothing.  They were no longer her
children;
their minds were closed to her.  Soon after the abduction the strangers disappeared back into the sky, and left things very much as before they came.

For a long time she felt very uneasy.  She knew what their intentions had been but nothing seemed to come of them.  Hundreds and then thousands of years passed and she relaxed once more, convinced that their plans had failed.  It was over
three
thousand years after the encounter that she first became aware of the other human race, and she now realised that
it
had diverged significantly from
that of
her own children.  It was not long before she connected the divergence with the visit of the evil ones.  The more she pondered the more convinced she became that the other race was descended directly from the group that had been taken and then allowed to return.

She began to watch them carefully.  Gradually she came to know real fear.  They had become superior to her own children, markedly superior.  They would continue to multiply until her own children limited their expansion, and then her children would
be destroyed
.
  Even though that future lay
many hundreds
or
p
ossibly even
thousands of years
ahead
, already she could feel the dark suffocating tentacles of oblivion reaching for her.

The other race
thrived.  Their numbers rose steadily while she struggled
desperately
to find an answer. 
All her other high-minded plans and ambitions were abandoned in the face of this imperative. 
Her only chance was to understand their genetic structure, but how?  Somehow she had to access the cells of their bodies, to bring those cells into her own children where she could dissect and investigate them.  Furthermore she had to achieve
that
access without provoking
any
conflict.

She engendered a
new
attitude
in her children.  She
had them see
the
ir neighbours
as strong and resourceful friends.  She
encouraged them to
offer gifts
,
small freshly killed animals
,
animal skins, clubs and spears.  This was done unconditionally at first in order to win their trust.  Then she had them seek small gifts in return, body ornaments such as necklaces and bracelets, of which the
other race
w
as
particularly fond.  Gradually a trade was established between the two people, and through that trade physical contact.  A mere touch of a hand or arm was sufficient for skin cells to become available in abundance.  Those cells then entered her children's bodies when they next ate, and the access that she had sought was hers.

For
many
years she l
aboured,
observing, theorising,
and experimenting
.  The task was enormous.  But sh
e knew that it was the only way;
there would be no prize for second place in this harsh race.  She found that their genetic structure was very different from
that of
her own children.  It had been modified extremely cleverly, in such a way that the natural mechanisms of each cell enhanced and accelerated the process of compatibility with the external control.  For all her fear and hatred of the evil ones she had to admire their genius.

At long last she had the key to victory.  Through her children she had learned how to identify the most dangerous of her adversaries, the ones upon whom the progressive evolution of their race depended.  She now understood the nature of countless
thousands
of different genetic patterns, and had been able to build up a detailed genealogical network of those patterns throughout the
population
.

Now she was ready to act
, to embark upon a necessary but deeply distasteful campaign.  She was forced to break her rule of avoiding direct interference
,
and to break it with a vengeance
. 
Working
through only a very few of her own children
, she had them secretly conceal a small quantity of a very special kind of
poisonous seed inside sweet berries
,
and give them to
the most genetically progressive
youngsters before their adolescence.
  These see
ds contained a powerful
compound that acted with a single specific effect; it prevented the individual from ever becoming fertile.

The bulk of this sordid work lasted
for only two
generations, but when it was done the
development that the evil ones had masterminded was
at an end
. 

In the course of time,
now that the evil ones' grip had been released
,
she was able, over many generations
of interbreeding
, to re-integrate
the other race back into her own family once again
.

There was no time to rest even now.  Her work had only just begun.  She did not know how long it would be before the evil ones returned, but that they would return she had no doubt.  They would come to reap the rewards of their labour, to extend their empire using the unfortunate human race as their slaves.  Speed was her only chance.  She had to bring about the rapid evolution of her children.  It was through them that she would succeed or fail, wou
ld live in light or in darkness, f
or she knew that the evil ones would not tolerate competition.  By the time they returned her children had to be able to deal with them as equals.  They had to be a force to be reckoned with, a strong people to be negotiated with and not exploited.

She was proud of her children and loved them dearly.  They were quick and eager to learn.  Only in very exceptional circumstances did she try to overrule a human will.  She found that by feeding progressive ideas into imaginative individuals they would find within themselves the capacity to develop them and win over their fellows.  Inventions were the easy part.  The greatest difficulty was in trying to minimise loss of life and restore stability in war.  Yet wars were necessary.  Powerful and sophisticated weapons had to be developed, and the greatest incentive was humanity's innate distrust of other humans.

Civilisation was won but only superficially.  Below the surface lay an insecure, jealous, possessive and frightened animal.  Unfortunately she could not make her children's mental evolution keep pace with their material evolution, and in consequence they always succumbed to the lust for p
ower and overreacted to threats.  N
evertheless, in spite of these handicaps
,
progress was rapid.  She came to realise with relief that even below the level of aggression there was a deeper instinct that could be relied upon during the most dangerous of conflicts, that of racial survival.  There were wars and there was devastation, but as their powers of destruction grew so also did their awareness that the survival of the entire race and of all living things was at risk, and a natural caution began to counter their earlier recklessness.

The return of the evil ones caught her by surprise.  It was sooner than she had expected and
much sooner than she had hoped.  S
he struggled to suppress a surge of panic at the prospect of conflict.  Her immediate task was to placate her children who
, left to themselves, would soon attempt to
destroy the
intruder;
a reaction that she knew would have been fatal.  All her plans almost came to nothing when Raminski lost control and fired his deadly weapon.  She had desperately tried to restrain his ill
-
conceived action but was unsuccessful.  After the fateful moment she released her grip on his mind and the mental recoil destroyed his sanity.  That was one occasion when she had fought to overrule a human will but failed, and she wondered whether her children had too much freedom for their own good, and for her good also.

When the alien vessel was rediscovered she instantly embarked upon a thorough quelling of instinctive fears
. 
Gradually
her children came to accept the approach of the aliens and then to welcome them.

She carefully engineered circumstances to bring about a direct engagement with the alien driving force.  She had to conceal her presence and was successful only because he had never once considered the possibility that he might not be unique.  His rigid system
permitted nothing but
domination
, which
gave him power without wisdom.

In contrast Chattaka's resolve to avoid domination had allowed her children to retain their own individuality.  She worked by gentle influence rather than by control.  She studied her children's natures deeply, and came to understand the workings of the living mind, the interactions between logic and emotion, between instinct and free will.  And that understanding was her strength.

The Creator had only one course of action open to him.  His sterile drive towards total
control
demanded that he find an answer to the human mystery, and to
achieve
that end
he was unable to work through an intermediary of any kind.  To allow the complete and unrestricted access that he so desperately needed h
e had no
other
option
than to
build a bridge between his
own
mind and the mind of Arthur Lincoln
. 
But his single-minded determination
left
him blind to a simple truth - that a bridge can be crossed
from
both
sides
.

Chattaka had gambled everything on that blindness.

***************

Her moment
had come and she dare not wait.  T
he way lay open directly into the Creator's immense mind.  If she did not act instantly
he
would surely sense her presence and break the link, leaving him all the time in the world to work out what had happened and destroy all her children, leaving her in darkness once more.

She sprang.  In one continuous action and with the speed and stealth of a leopard she
forcibly ejected
the consciousness that was Arthur Lincoln, occupied his mind with the full power of her being
,
and then
leapt into the mind of the Creator.

She did not know what defence to expect.  If he had just once considered the possibility of a mental assault he would have been well prepared.  But she found no defence.  His mind was naked.  Within an instant she had invaded his centres of thought and decision, and with surgical precision she severed the interconnections between his active mental faculties.  He was too stunned to retaliate even had he realised in time what was happening.  She worked with desperate rapidity, and in less than
half
a minute
had isolated all means of implementing his immense power.  Only then did she allow herself any respite.  Exhaustion swept over her, she rested, her purpose fulfilled but her mind too numb to comprehend her success.