Children of the Lens (38 page)

"I am ready," and the Red Lensman launched her thought.

Clarrissa Kinnison did not know, then or ever; did not have even the faintest inkling of what she did or of how she did it. Nor, tied to her by bonds of heritage, love, and sympathy though they were and of immense powers of mind though they were, did any of the Five succeed, until after centuries had passed, in elucidating the many complex phenomena involved. And Mentor, the ancient Arisian sage, never did understand.

All that any of them knew was that an infinitely loving and intensely suffering woman, stretched rigidly upon a bed, hurled out through space and time a passionately questing thought: a thought behind which she put everything she had.

Clarrissa Kinnison, Red Lensman, had much—and every iota of that impressive sum total ached for, yearned for, and insistently demanded her Kim—her one and only Kim. Kim her husband; Kim the father of her children; Kim her lover; Kim her other half; Kim her all in all for so many perfect years.

"Kim! KIM! Wherever you are, Kim, or whenever, listen! Listen and answer! Hear me—you must hear me calling! I need you, Kim, from the bottom of my soul… Kim! My Kim! KIM!!"

Through countless spaces and through untellable times that poignant thought sped; driven by a woman's fears, a woman's hopes, a woman's all-surpassing love; urged ever onward and ever outward by the irresistible force of a magnificent woman's frankly bared soul.

Outward… farther… farther out… farther…

Clarrissa's body went limp upon her bed. Her heart slowed; her breathing almost stopped. Kit probed quickly, finding that those secret cells into which he had scarcely dared to glance were empty and bare. Even the Red Lensman's tremendous reserves of vital force were exhausted.

"Mother, come back!"

"Come back to us!"

"Please, please, mums, come back!"

"Know you, children, your mother so little?"

They knew her. She would not come back alone. Regardless of any danger to herself, regardless of life itself, she would not come back until she had found her Kim.

"But do something, Mentor—DO SOMETHING!"

"Do what? Nothing can be done. It was simply a question of which was the greater; the volume of the required hyper-sphere or her remarkable store of vitality…"

"Shut up!" Kit blazed. "We'll do something! Come on, kids, and we'll try…"

"The Unit!" Kathryn shrieked. "Link up, quick! Cam, make mother's pattern—hurry it!! Now, Unit, grab it—make her one of us, a six-ply Unit—make her come in, and snap it up! There! Now, Kit, drive us… DRIVE US!"

Kit drove. As the surging life-force of the Unit pushed a measure of vitality back into Clarrissa's inert body, she gained a little strength and did not grow weaker. The children, however, did; and Mentor, who had been entirely unmoved by the woman's imminent death, became highly concerned.

"Children, return!" He first ordered, then entreated. "You are throwing away not only your lives, but also long lifetimes of intensive labor and study!"

They paid no attention. No more than their mother would those children abandon such a mission unaccomplished. Seven Kinnisons would come back or none.

The four-ply Arisian pondered; and brightened. Now that a theretofore impossible linkage had been made, the outlook changed. The odds shifted. The Unit's delicacy of web, its driving force, had not been enough; or rather, it would have taken too long. Adding the Red Lensman's affinity for her husband, however… Yes, definitely, the Unit should now succeed.

It did. Before any of the Five weakened to the danger point the Unit, again five-fold, snapped back. Clarrissa's life-force, which had tried so valiantly to fill all of space and all of time, was flowing back into her. A tight, hard, impossibly writhing and twisting multidimensional beam ran, it seemed, to infinity and vanished.

"A right scholarly bit of work, children," Mentor approved. "I have arranged the means of his return."

"Thanks, children. Thanks, Mentor." Instead of fainting, Clarrissa sprang from her bed and stood erect. Flushed and panting, eyes flamingly alight, she was more intensely vital than any of her children had ever seen her. Reaction might—would—come later, but she was now all buoyantly vibrant woman. "Where will he come into our space, and when?"

"In your room before you. Now."

Kinnison materialized; and as the Red Lensman and the Gray went hungrily into each other's arms, Mentor and the Five turned their attention toward the future.

* * *

"First, the hyper-spatial tube which was called the 'Hell-Hole in Space'," Kit began. "We must establish as fact in the minds of all Civilization that the Ploorans were actually at the top of Boskone. The story as we have arranged it is that Ploor was the top, and—which happens to be the truth—that it was destroyed through the efforts of the Second-Stage Lensmen. The 'Hell-Hole' is to be explained as being operated by the Plooran 'residuum' which every Lensman knows all about and which he will never forget. The problem of dad's whereabouts was different from the previous one in degree only, not in kind. To all except us, there never were any Eddorians. Any objections? Will that version hold?"

The consensus was that the story was sound and tight.

"The time has come, then," Karen thought, "to go into the very important matter of our reason for being and our purpose in life. You have intimated repeatedly that you Arisians are resigning your Guardianship of Civilization and that we are to take over; and I have just perceived the terribly shocking fact that you four are now alone, that all the other Arisians have already gone. We're not ready, Mentor; you know we're not—this scares me through and through."

"You are ready, children, for everything that will have to be done. You have not come to your full maturity and power, of course; that stage will come only with time. It is best for you, however, that we leave you now. Your race is potentially vastly stronger and abler than ours. We reached some time ago the highest point attainable to us: we could no longer adapt ourselves to the ever-increasing complexity of life. You, a young new race amply equipped for any emergency within reckonable time, will be able to do so. In capability and in equipment you begin where we leave off."

"But we know—you've taught us—scarcely anything!" Constance protested.

"I have taught you exactly enough. That I do not know exactly what changes to anticipate is implicit in the fact that our race is out of date. Further Arisian teaching would tend to set you in the out-dated Arisian mold and thereby defeat our every purpose. As I have informed you repeatedly, we ourselves do not know what extra qualities you possess. Hence I am in no sense competent to instruct you in the natures or in the uses of them. It is certain, however, that you have those extra qualities. It is equally certain that you possess the abilities to develop them to the full. I have set your feet on the sure way to the full development of those abilities."

"But that will take much time, sir," Kit thought, "and if you leave us now we won't have it."

"You will have time enough and to spare."

"Oh—then we won't have to do it right away?" Constance broke in. "Good!"

"We're all glad of that," Camilla added. "We're too full of our own lives, too eager for experiences, to enjoy the prospect of living such lives as you Arisians have lived. I am right in assuming, am I not, that our own development will in time force us into the same or a similar existence?"

"Your muddy thinking has again distorted the truth," Mentor reproved her. "There will be no force involved. You will gain everything, lose nothing. You have no conception of the depth and breadth of the vistas now just beginning to open to you. Your lives will be immeasurably fuller, higher, greater than any heretofore known to this universe. As your capabilities increase, you will find that you will no longer care for the society of entities less able than your own kind."

"But I don't want to live forever!" Constance wailed.

"More muddy thinking." Mentor's thought was—for him—somewhat testy. "Perhaps, in the present instance, barely excusable. You know that you are not immortal. You should know that an infinity of time is necessary for the acquirement of infinite knowledge; and that your span of life will be just as short, in comparison with your capacity to live and to learn, as that of Homo Sapiens. When the time comes you will want to—you will need to—change your manner of living."

"Tell us when?" Kat suggested. "It would be nice to know, so we could get ready."

"I could tell you, since in that my visualization is clear, but I will not. Fifty years—a hundred—a thousand—what matters it? Live your lives to the fullest, year by year, developing your every obvious, latent, and nascent capability; calmly assured that long before any need for your services shall arise, you shall have established yourselves upon some planet of your choice and shall be in every respect ready for whatever may come to pass."

"You are—you must be—right," Kit conceded. "In view of what has just happened, however, and the chaotic condition of both galaxies, it seems a poor time to vacate all Guardianship."

"All inimical activity is now completely disorganized. Kinnison and the Patrol can handle it easily enough. The real conflict is finished. Think nothing of a few years of vacancy. The Lensmakers, as you know, are fully automatic, requiring neither maintenance nor attention; what little time you may wish to devote to the special training of selected Lensmen can be taken at odd moments from your serious work of developing yourselves for Guardianship."

"We still feel incompetent," the Five insisted. "Are you sure that you have given us all the instruction we need?"

"I am sure. I perceive doubt in your minds as to my own competence, based upon the fact that in this supreme emergency my visualization was faulty and my actions almost too late. Observe, however, that my visualization was clear upon every essential factor and that we were not actually too late. The truth is that our timing was precisely right—no lesser stress could possibly have prepared you as you are now prepared.

"I am about to go. The time may come when your descendants will realize, as we did, their inadequacy for continued Guardianship. Their visualizations, as did ours, may become imperfect and incomplete. If so, they will then know that the time will have come for them to develop, from the highest race then existing, new and more competent Guardians. Then they, as my fellows have done and as I am about to do, will of their own accord pass on. But that is for the remote future. As to you children, doubtful now and hesitant as is only natural, you may believe implicitly what I now tell you is the truth, that even though we Arisians are no longer here, all shall be well; with us, with you, and with all Civilization."

The deeply resonant pseudo-voice ceased; the Kinnisons knew that Mentor, the last of the Arisians, was gone.

Epilogue

To you who have scanned this report, further greetings:

Since I who compiled it am only a youth, a Guardian only by title, and hence unable to visualize even approximately either the time of nor the necessity for the opening of this flask of force, I have no idea as to the bodily shape or the mental attainments of you, the entity to whom it has now been made available.

You already know that Civilization is again threatened seriously. You probably know something of the basic nature of that threat. While studying this tape you have become informed that the situation is sufficiently grave to have made it again necessary to force certain selected minds prematurely into the third level of Lensmanship.

You have already learned that in ancient time Civilization after Civilization fell before it could rise much above the level of barbarism. You know that we and the previous race of Guardians saw to it that this, OUR Civilization, has not yet fallen. Know now that the task of your race, so soon to replace us, will be to see to it that it does not fall.

One of us will become en rapport with you as soon as you have assimilated the facts, the connotations, and the implications of this material. Prepare your mind for contact.

Christopher K. Kinnison.

The End