Jack Williamson - Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods

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BROTHER TO DEMONS,

BROTHER TO GODS

To Joan

Parts of this novel first appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact and in Galilo/Magazine

of Science and Fiction.

by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis New York

Manufactured in the United States of America

ONE: STEPSON TO CREATION

The multiverse creates itself.

It had no beginning; neither will it end.

Each new universe is wombed as a fire-egg, born through a contracting black hole. Expanding

in space-time, ripening new black holes, it sows the eternal manifold with new fire-eggs of its

own. Cooling, each new cosmos gives birth to galaxies and suns, to worlds of life and change,

sometimes to intellect.

Flowing out of chaos, the multiverse is blind. Its law is chance. It has neither plan nor will. Its

creatures are chance atoms, tossed together in the flux of mindless force. Such were the premen,

who called themselves men.

Evolved by chance mutation on the hallowed planet Earth, the premen came by chance upon

the art of genetic engineering and so became their own Creators, the mortal precursors who

fathered the Four Creations.

The first act of creation formed the trumen, the perfected human race, purged of all ancestral

evil and planned to supplant the premen.

The second act of creation produced the mumen, the variform men, shaped to fit their several

functions in many universes.

The third act of creation gave being to the stargods themselves.

Still merely premen, blind to the splendor of true perfection, the Creators then neglected to

rest from their triumphs, but went on instead to father yet another creation. The issue of their

error was a race of demons, creatures of power without beauty, mind without truth, desire without

justice. Evil revivals of the ancestral beast, they rebelled against their makers and the gods,

seeking to usurp the whole multiverse.

The god Belthar perceived their emergent malevolence. Returning across space from his own

domain, he reconquered the holy Earth, ended the folly of the Creators, and erased their

monstrous last creation.

In benign solicitude, the supreme Belthar continues to rule the sacred planet, granting power

to his variform defenders, wisdom to the trumen, sons to their most fortunate daughters, and

mercy to the surviving premen. His sovereign will gives law to chaos, and his omniscience

illuminates the multiverse.

His glory endures forever.

—The Book of Belthar

Two naked waifs, paternity unknown. A black halfgod, proud son of Belthar himself. A lovely

young goddess, touring the sacred sites of her ancestral Earth. A yelping dog and a frightened rat.

A red-scaled mutant guardian, its third eye flashing thunderbolts.

Old chaos in collision with stellar divinity . . .

The god Belthar had leveled the crown of Pike's Peak for his North American temple. All

black granite, it could hold half a million chanting worshippers. It was empty, however, on that

chill spring morning when a small skimmer marked with the triple triangle of the Thearchy

dropped to a parking terrace on the slope beneath it.

The halfgod Quelf left the skimmer with five attendant sacristans. His mother had been a

dancer who satisfied Belthar. Inheriting her dark grace and his father's towering power, he was

commonly arrogant, but his bold tread faltered as they reached the elevator.

"Leave your boots," he told the blue-robed trumen. "There's a live goddess here."

He had long ago learned the mixture of impudence and flattery that pleased his godly father,

but Zhondra Zhey was a casual transient from remote stellar dominions, a dangerous unknown.

"She's a starship pilot." He bent to set his own boots in the rack. "Visiting Earth while her

ship's in orbit. The Lord has ordered us to serve her."

The sacristans straightened and stared, but shuffled after him into the elevator without

comment. He had taught them silence.

They emerged between great black columns under the rim of the vault, which was a blue-

black star-map, all aglow with shifting lines that showed the space-routes of the explored

multiverse. Heads bent, they marched out across the polished floor, which mirrored all those far

dominions. The central altar was a vast black disk that held the sacred apartments. Kneeling

beneath it, holding up his offering, the halfgod intoned a formal invocation to the goddess.

Before he was done, she appeared at a high window, gestured as if to check him, and stepped

out into the air. Wearing only her aura and the diamond star of her space-pilot's rating, she

dropped to the granite bench before him and floated just above it, anchored to the stone with only

one rosy toe.

"You— Your Divinity!"

Conflicting impulses shook his voice. Pink and slim beneath her softly iridescent nimbus, the

goddess was still no more than a lovely child, not out of her second century, yet already

overwhelmingly alluring. Fond of young girls, he was used to taking what he wanted. But no

mortal virgin had ever come clothed in her perilous power.

"Favor, Great One!" Torn between lust and terror, he dropped his eyes to the casket of rare

Terran gems he had brought. "Humbly, we implore your gracious acceptance of our insignificant

gift." Sweaty hands quivering, he raised the casket. "Eagerly, we await your all-wise

instructions—"

"Stand up, Quelf." Her Terran diction was pure, her tone gently chiding. "I want no gifts."

"Forgive us. Your Divin—"

The casket had slipped from his fingers. Her slender hand moved slightly. Flowing from it, her

shimmering nimbus reached out to catch the casket, lifted it over his head and into the hands of a

startled sacristan behind him.

"Save your offering for the premen," she said. "I think they need it more than I do. I've come

to see their reservation. Please arrange it."

Clumsily, he stood up.

"We obey." His avid eyes were fixed on that tempting toe. "However, if Your Divinity deigns

to tour the holy planet, there are better sights. The Asian Temple, which is Belthar's most sacred

dwelling. His statue on the Andes—"

"I'm going to Redrock."

"Indulgence!"

Her mild tone had given him courage to look up, and her bright-washed beauty stabbed him

with a hotter regret that he had not inherited all his father's privileges and powers. She waited,

aloof, aware, a little amused.

"If Your Divinity cares about the aboriginal life, there's the European Zoo. The Terran

creatures there include a fine preman habitat."

"I prefer to visit the people at Redrock."

"People?" His rising tones echoed unthinking scorn. "They're miserable animals. Wallowing

in their own filth. So squalid that the Lord Belthar had ordered their removal—"

"That's why I'm here. The premen created us. I'm afraid that fact has been forgotten. I want to

see them while there's time."

"Forgiveness!" he protested. "But those stinking beasts at Redrock are the last dregs of a dying

race. The real Creators died for their final folly a thousand years ago. If Your Divinity is

concerned with history, we humbly suggest the Museum of Terran Evolution in Antarctica.

There's a Smithwick Memorial Hall, with authentic reconstructions of the genetic engineers in

their laboratory—"

"Take me to the reservation."

"Your Divinity, we obey."

Redrock was a straggle of brown mud huts beside an irrigation ditch that was also a sewer.

Four larger buildings enclosed the grassless plaza: the jail, the town hall, and the twin chapels of

Thar and Bel, dedicated to the god of Earth in his major aspects of wisdom and love.

By Quelf's command, old wooden doors wore new blue paint. Litter had been raked from the

mud-rutted road, and a strip of gold carpet rolled along it from the chapel of Bel on the plaza to

the agency mansion on its green-terraced hill above the odors and vermin of the town.

The premen had been warned, and the landing skimmer was greeted with an apprehensive

hush. The sacred procession emerged on the plaza and marched up the carpet toward the agency.

Two mutant soldiers stalked ahead, the dry sun burning on black crests and ruby scales. The

halfgod followed, dark nose held high, as if offended by every reek around him. Four blue

sacristans carried the canopied chair of honor, the divine tourist smiling out as if delighted with

everything she saw.

A dog barked.

A child screamed.

A brown rat slithered out of an alley, darted across the carpet. A dirty mongrel darted after it,

yelping with excitement. A small naked boy splashed across the green-scummed ditch, running

after the dog. They veered toward the goddess.

Quelf hissed an order. One muman guardian spun to face the intrusion. Lightning stabbed

from its black-lensed crest. The dog's body spun across the carpet and tumbled into a puddle.

"Make way!" the halfgod shouted. "Make way for Her Divinity!"

The boy looked five years old. Brown and thin, he wore only splashes and smears of drying

mud. Planted at the center of the gold carpet, he stared up at the holy procession with dark, wet

eyes.

"You—" A sob racked and choked him. "You killed Spot!"

"Davey!" a tiny girl shrieked from the alley behind him. "Come away, Davey. Don't let the

deadeyes hurt you."

The boy stood fast.

"Off!" the halfgod snapped. "Off the road!"

"Killer!" The boy shook his grimy fist. "I'll make you sorry!"

"What" Anger stiffened Quelf. "You insolent pup!"

He gestured at the scar-marked mumen. Both bent their lenses toward the boy. Violent

pathmaker beams hissed around him. Yowling, the naked girl came splashing to him through the

gutter.

"Hold everything!"

The goddess froze them with that gold-toned command. Levitating from the chair, she came

sailing over the halfgod and the mumen and sank toward the carpet in front of the boy. Smiling,

she paused to watch the girl, who was darting to pick up the dog.

"Who are you children?"

The boy studied her solemnly.

"I'm Davey," he said at last. "Davey Dunahoo."

"But I have no name." The girl came panting back to his side, lugging the limp body of the

dog, which seemed heavier than she. "They call me—" In the reek of the charred brown fur, she

sneezed twice. "They call me Buglet."

"Don't you have parents?"

"I never had a father." Davey stopped to consider her again. "My mother was a girl at La

China's. A drunk man stabbed her." Gravely, he nodded at the girl. "Spot found Buglet lying in

the weeds beyond the dump. She was sick. She can't remember who she is."

"Where do you live?"

"Nowhere." He shrugged. "Anywhere."

"In the street," the girl piped. "When it rains, El Yaqui lets us sleep in his barn. Sometimes he

finds a bone for Spot."

"Mercy, Your Divinity." The halfgod came striding around the mumen. "The reception is

waiting for us." He glowered at the muddy urchins. "I've warned you off the road."

"You can kill dogs." The boy stared back. "But -you can't kill the Multiman—"

"Blasphemy!" the halfgod roared. "Belthar will put a stop to that—"

.The goddess raised a shining hand.

"Multiman?" She turned to frown at Quelf. "Who is Multiman?"

"A wicked heresy. Forbidden by the Thearchy, but still current among these stupid premen."

He grinned at the defiant children. "I believe their removal will put an end to it."

She floated back to the children.

"Please forgive us." She settled toward them, smiling. "I do want to help you. Won't you tell

me what you need?"

The boy stared blankly, but the girl crept forward with the dog in her arms.

"If you're a goddess, please make Spot alive again."

"I can't do that." She gave Quelf a quick wry glance. "Not even Belthar could reanimate your

pet."

"The Multiman could," the boy insisted. "If he had come."

He took the dog from Buglet's arms. Silently he turned, to wade back across the ditch to the

mud-walled alley. Buglet splashed after him. The goddess glided back to her chair, and the

procession marched on again through the sharp sewer reek.

A few sun-browned children in blue-and-white uniforms watched from the schoolyard. At one

corner a withered woman sat on a leaner donkey, waiting impassively. At El Yaqui's trading post

a dozen men looked up from the drinks and the games on their sidewalk tables, and a plump dark

girl in a bright red wrapper leaned from a second-floor window to stare at the passing goddess.

At the end of the carpet strip, on the clean green lawn beneath the white marble steps of the

agency, the preman leaders and the truman agent waited, robed in official white. Bowing to the

chair, the agent humbly begged the favor of the goddess. The premen were eager to entertain

their sacred guest in the agency garden.

Zhondra left her chair and levitated after him to inspect the display of preman arts and crafts.

A dark silent youth stood sweating beside a plow, the garden wall behind him hung with sample

plants of cotton, corn, beans and hemp. A one-legged smith bent over his anvil and forge, shaping

hot metal, preparing to shoe a mule. Two shy girls in clean white gowns showed a relief map of

the whole reservation, its red buttes and canyons modeled in clay. A row of silent matrons

offered tacos and hamburgers and rice balls, with mescal and beer and tea.

The goddess tasted politely. When she asked to make the premen a gift, the agent called for El

Yaqui. A lean grave man with brooding eyes and a far-off smile, he accepted the casket of gems

with a silent bow that seemed indifferent.

"Your Divinity, these are the premen." Following the goddess back to her chair, Quelf spoke

with covert satisfaction. "You'll find no Creators among them."

"Yet they look more unfortunate than harmful. I see no cause for their destruction."

"But they aren't to be destroyed," the halfgod protested. "They are simply to be resettled. On a

virgin world in the Ninth Universe."

"Why?" Her violet eyes probed him. "Is Belthar afraid of heretics?"

"If my Lord Belthar dreads anything, I'm not aware of it. The problem is simply living space.

The premen never accepted civilization. Out of place in our sacred culture, they're dwindling

away. Only a generation ago the survivors from the other continents were gathered here. Now

they're too few to make efficient use of the land they occupy."

"This wasteland? Who needs it?"

"The Lord Belthar has graciously approved an engineering project of my own." He beamed

with self-approval. "A dam across the lower canyon. Desalting plants and tunnels to fill a wide

new lake with Pacific water. The entire reservation will be flooded."

"Your own project?" She looked away at the tall red buttes and the vast bare flats, then keenly

back at him.

"The actual plans were drawn by truman engineers, but I'll have a palace on the lake. And—"

"I see." Her cool voice cut him off. "What about this Multiman?"

"Pure myth." He chuckled. "Preman logic is the joke of the planet. Though the Lord Belthar

has been their ruler for a thousand years, they still cling to irrational beliefs in their old imaginary

gods. Buddha, Brahma, Allah—the list is endless. The Multiman heresy may well be a distorted

folk recollection of the Fourth Creation." He chuckled again. "The Lord Belthar took care of

that."

"Not if you ask Davey Dunahoo." With a thoughtful glance at the straggle of huts, she

levitated into her chair. "Perhaps Belthar is wise to get the premen out of his universe."

Zhondra Zhey went on to visit the Museum of Terran Evolution. She paid a formal call at

Belthar's Asian Temple, but felt no regret when the god of Earth was not in residence. Her

starship loaded with a precious cargo of gum from the seedpods of a mutant poppy that flourished

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摘要：

BROTHERTODEMONS,BROTHERTOGODSToJoanPartsofthisnovelfirstappearedinAnalogScienceFiction/ScienceFactandinGalilo/MagazineofScienceandFiction.Copyright©1976,1977,1978,1979byJackWilliamsonAllrightsreserved,includingtherightofreproductioninwholeorinpartinanyformPublishedbyTheBobbs-MerrillCompany,Inc.India...

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