SLAVE OF ETERNITY

                             By ROGER DEE

                   _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
                   tooth ... these were the familiar
                  laws of man--Far more fiendish was
                      Heric's punishment--eternal
                    life for the death he'd taken!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Super Science Stories May 1950.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"You have no choice," the patrolman said. "The Council sends for you."

He moved across the veranda of Heric's cottage, bulking dark against
the sky-glow of Nyark the first city. On the slope of lawn below stood
his copter, its beetle-black shell glistening faintly in the starshine.

Heric stood rigid with alarm in his doorway, still holding the book
he had been reading. The night-wind ruffling his hair and the homely
sounds from the kitchen where Marta prepared their evening meal made
his danger doubly fantastic.

"They've found out somehow about my dreams," Heric said. "They'll put
me through the adjuster and I'll come out of it--someone else. I won't
go!"

He was a mild man, overseer of the cereal grain fields outside Nyark
the first city, holding the confidence of his superiors and the respect
of his workers. He and Marta had been happy in the quiet eddy of their
isolation, until the dreams came.

The patrolman took a gleaming silver shock-cone from his belt. "I am
sorry, Arnol Heric. You must come with me."

Stark panic made Heric drop his book and strike out wildly, smashing a
fist into the officer's face. The patrolman staggered back, teetered
for balance on the veranda's edge and fell heavily. The sound of his
head striking the stone walkway below was as definite as the thud of a
dropped melon.

Heric went down the steps and knelt to feel the man's limp wrist. There
was no pulse. He put an ear to the slack lips, and there was no breath.
Shock numbed him and drove his thoughts into strange, tortured channels.

"I've killed him," he said.

A sound caught his ear and he looked up to see Marta on the dark
veranda above him, her face a pale oval blur with enormous,
fright-widened eyes. "I didn't intend this to happen, Marta. I--I lost
my head."

She came down at once and put a soft hand on his shoulder. "Of course,
of course, darling. Here, let me help you."

Together they lifted the patrolman's body into the copter's control
seat, where it lolled bonelessly against the instrument panel. Heric
touched a button and the machine rose and soared eastward on a random
course away from Nyark the first city.

They watched, holding hands like uneasy children, until it was lost
against the stars. Then they went inside to the light and warmth of
their cottage.

Heric voiced the thought first: "They'll send for me again tomorrow,
when he doesn't return."

He had again the ominous sensation, felt a dozen times in as many days,
of being very close to understanding the strange auguries that had so
troubled his sleep of late. For a moment he hovered on the brink of
complete comprehension before his fearful thought recoiled, leaving him
uneasy and bewildered.

When he slept the dream came more strongly than before.

       *       *       *       *       *

_The sere globe of Earth spun below him, frightfully riven by the
half-healed wounds of some ancient cataclysm. Dull seas steamed and
rain fell and vegetation crept across the scars, but there was life in
one place only._

_There was a ruined city like a forest of standing shards, rising stark
and cold against a desolate sky. A horde of silent figures poured
through its streets, bent upon a myriad errands whose purposes he might
have guessed but dared not--he found himself one of the throng, yet his
dread of understanding hid their intent as a mist might have obscured
their faces. The crowd moved always eastward, its thousand faces rapt
in impossible ecstasy. His own expectancy mounted to an unbearable
pitch, stifling him with the promise of total understanding. He had
only to follow them and--_

He awoke to find himself crouched on the cold floor of his bedroom,
drenched with perspiration and trembling violently from the strain of
fighting back the monstrous concept toward which his dream had carried
him.

Marta's voice was urgent in his ears. Marta's hands tugged at his arm,
her breath was warm on his damp face. "Arnol, wake up! _Arnol!_"

For an instant he had an indescribable sense of being infinitely
multiplied, as if this moment were reproduced forever, a single frame
in a succession that stretched endlessly before and behind him. Then
the dream tilted and swept away and he let Marta lead him, unresisting,
back to bed.

For a long time he lay shivering in the darkness, his face hidden
against her warm shoulder. And at last, when the tension had gone out
of him, he slept again.

       *       *       *       *       *

They came for him at daybreak, four burly patrolmen with Council
insignia on their helmets and silver shock-cones in their hands. Heric
looked back as he entered their copter to see Marta on the verandah,
lovely in the soft disarray of her too-early rising, her eyes bright
and blind with unshed tears.

"I'll come back," he called. "It's going to be all right!"

When the copter rose he waved at her, buoyed up unexpectedly by the
ring of certainty he had managed to force into his voice. He had a
last glimpse of Marta before distance and the morning mists hid her, a
small, forlorn figure with raised face staring after him, her belted
house-robe fluttering in the wind.

They sank through the ordered vastness of Nyark the first city, into
a bustle and rush that was symbolic of the Council's will to restore
Nyark--and finally Earth--to their former glory. Heric was led to a
quiet chamber where the Council, in their deep crescent of seats behind
the Leader's throne, awaited him.

He had seen them before only in newscasts, when it had awed him a
little to think that in their hands lay the destiny of a world in
rebirth. He was surprised now to feel that their wrinkled parchment
faces and thin bodies, hidden under sleeveless blue robes, lent them a
futile anonymity rather than the distinction he had expected. _Why_, he
thought, _they look like scrawny, earthbound birds._

"Why am I here?" Heric demanded. Rebellion grew in him, roughening his
voice. "I have broken no law, nor have I been lax in my overseeing. I
protest this adjustment to what you call normalcy."

"Yet you must endure it, Arnol Heric," the Leader said. A rustle of
assent whispered through the robed Council. "You should not have defied
our messenger. It may be too late now."

Anger swelled Heric's demand. "What do you mean?"

[Illustration: He felt the breath of madness touch him....]

His answer was a great, cloudy bubble that sprang from nowhere about
him. The Council vanished behind its milky haze. There was a brief
sensation of motion, and after that--nothing.

       *       *       *       *       *

_He was in the void of his dreams again, imprisoned in darkness.
But there was a difference--the dull globe of Earth spun faint and
misty, half-seen through an obscuring curtain. A smooth, hypnotic
thought-current flowed into his mind from the adjuster, commanding him,
warring with the half-sensed truth that still sought his awareness._

_"You are Arnol Heric, overseer of cereal plantings. You have had
no disturbing dreams. Forget, Arnol Heric. There is no need for
alarm...."_

_There was a long struggle before his will fought clear, and he knew
that the Leader's fear of being too late had been realized. The pitted
Earth-sphere grew plain, the desolate city sharpened and drew near. He
walked the thronged streets and turned his face toward the east, and
this time he did not repulse the truth when it lay before him._

_There was a silent room where a figure reclined laxly in a chair made
massive by its crystal maze of shining coils. Two guards flanked the
chair watchfully, and in it sat--_

_Himself._

Anger shook him like a terrible wind, without warning. It was all a
monstrous farce, then--he was the center of it all, and they had hidden
him in his overseer's niche to blind him to reality.

He opened his eyes in the adjuster, pushing the futile thought-current
from his mind. The guards stiffened at his movement, their silver
shock-cones ready.

"I know myself now," Heric said. He stood up, shaking off the web of
crystal contacts from the adjuster. "And I know you. Put away your
useless weapons."

They dropped their cones and stood with lowered eyes, waiting his
pleasure with a deference that made his lip curl. He left the room
without a backward look, knowing they would warn the Council but having
no need now for secrecy.

He went down a wide-arched corridor, striding with sure step to the
city's heart. He found the power source at ground level, in a vast
dim cavern full of soft-purring machines. He singled out the great
operations board with its master switch that controlled the city's
life--and in his path he found the Leader and his council, shielding
the control from him with the massed crescent of their bodies.

"Stand back," Heric commanded.

The Council stirred uneasily, but did not break.

"Hear us out, Arnol Heric," the Leader begged. "Remember that we, being
not-human, yet have human emotions. We are the end result of the robot
race men created to serve them in ages past, and you are right when
you suppose that we may not defy you because we are your property. But
there is a thing which you do not know, hidden from you even in your
dreams for your own safety. Stay your hand, Master."

The sound of Heric's laughter echoed emptily through the vast room.

"Stay my hand and let you adjust me into submission again? Let you send
me back to planting wheat, drowning my identity in ignorance? I know
the human race is almost dead--I know that you hide the truth from the
few of us who remain because you think us doomed to extinction. You
would bury us in ignorance and rule in our stead as if you were men and
we your servants."

"_We_ are the servants," the Leader said. "Yet you would immobilize us.
Why?"

"Because I would rather know my fate and meet it without your
meddling," Heric answered. "Because I do not believe that my race
can ever die completely. I shall stop you in your tracks like the
mechanical things you are, and I shall find the others of my people who
are left and start life over with them. And this time we shall know
better than to build machines!"

       *       *       *       *       *

"We have no desire to perpetuate ourselves," the Leader said. "We were
created to serve humanity, and to insure our obedience to the love
of men was made our strongest instinct. Without men our life would be
an endless torture of loneliness, for we can be happy only in your
happiness. We hid the truth from you, and kept you busy outside Nyark
the first city, to protect your sanity."

Heric took a forward step. "Back, all of you!"

They drew aside to let him pass. The Leader knelt as Heric brushed by
him, and the Council knelt with averted faces behind him. Their sigh
whispered through the great room.

"Wait, Arnol Heric. Do you know that we have made you immortal?"

[Illustration: "Wait, Arnol Heric. Do you know that we have made you
immortal?"]

He paused with his hands upon the master control, disturbed by a
resurgence of that indescribable extension he had felt on waking from
his dream. Angrily he shook it off, bracing himself.

He wrenched open the switch.

The machine-murmur died. The cavernous chamber stilled until Heric's
heart beat loud in the tomblike silence. The Council knelt motionless,
like even rows of cold statuary.

He turned from them and went through the hushed room and out into the
streets of Nyark the first city. Silence lay before him. Vehicles stood
unpowered, drivers frozen. In the shops the crowds hovered motionless
like static, three-dimensional shadows.

He went swiftly through the dead city with his face turned toward the
hills. The silence bore him down with an implacable weight, and the
desire to escape it grew upon him until he found himself running,
dodging wildly in and out among stalled vehicles and frozen pedestrians.

He reached the city's edge, but the sun and wind of open country did
not dispel his oppression. The sun was as silent as the city, and the
breeze was a drear lament in his ears. Loneliness crept at his heels
like a black, timorous hound; he felt as if he were the only living
thing in a dead and forgotten world. Panic claimed him.

It was noon when he reached his cottage. He crawled up the verandah
steps, spent and panting, and found the silence with him here even in
his last retreat.

"Marta!" he croaked. He pulled himself erect, clutching at the arched
doorway for support.

"Marta!"

He had been so sure that there would be other men. He had been able to
fend off madness back there on the plain, only because he had known
that Marta was here waiting for him....

He found her standing in the silent living room, her still face turned
toward the door through which he must come when he returned. She wore
the clinging, colorful gown he had liked best, and her bright, fair
hair was carefully arranged as if she were on the point of going out.

Her lashes were lowered as if in sleep, and he had the instant
conviction that she had closed her lids to hide the mechanical luster
of her eyes from him when he should come and find her.

"_Marta_," he whispered.

He sagged against the entrance arch, with the bitter sound of the
Leader's words in his ears: "We can be happy only in your happiness...."

Not one of them was human, not even Marta. He was the last man on Earth.

And he was immortal.

This was the thing that had been hidden from him even in his dream,
lest he go mad. This silence that pressed him down was the silence of
eternity.

He was alone in a world of death and dust, and would be alone forever.

He felt the breath of madness touch him. He heard the Council's sighing
whisper of "_Immortal_ ..." and he recalled the eerie sensation of
infinite multiplication that had come to him when he pulled open the
master switch.

He thought: _How many times has this happened? And how many times will
it happen again?_

When he spoke, he used unconsciously the same words he had used when he
left her at daybreak.

"I'll come back, Marta," he said. "It's going to be all right."

Then he went outside and turned his face toward the silent city and
began to run....