A. E. Van Vogt - Slan

VIP免费

2024-12-08 0 0 581.74KB 108 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Slan (v1.1)

A.E. Van Vogt, 1946

Chapter One

His mother's hand felt cold, clutching his.

Her fear as they walked hurriedly along the street was a quiet, swift pulsation that

throbbed from her mind to his. A hundred other thoughts beat against his mind, from the

crowds that swarmed by on either side, and from inside the buildings they passed. But only

his mother's thoughts were clear and coherent -- and afraid.

'They're following us, Jommy,' her brain telegraphed. 'They're not sure, but they suspect.

We've risked once too often coming into the capital, though I did hope that this time I could

show you the old slan way of getting into the catacombs, where your father's secret is

hidden. Jommy, if the worst happens, you know what to do. We've practiced it often

enough. And, Jommy, don't be afraid, don't get excited. You may be only nine years old, but

you're as intelligent as any fifteen-year-old human being.'

Don't be afraid. Easy to advise, Jommy thought, and hid the thought from her. She

wouldn't like that concealment, that distorting shield between them. But there were

thoughts that had to be kept back. She mustn't know he was afraid also.

It was new and exciting, as well. He felt excited each time he came into the heart of

Centropolis from the quiet suburb where they lived. The great parks, the miles of

skyscrapers, the tumult of the throngs always seemed even more wonderful than his

imagination had pictured them -- but then size was to be expected of the capital of the

world. Here was the seat of the government. Here, somewhere, lived Kier Gray, absolute

dictator of the entire planet. Long ago -- hundreds of years before -- the slans had held

Centropolis during their brief period of ascendancy. Jommy, do you feel their hostility? Can

you sense things over a distance yet?'

He strained. The steady wave of vagueness that washed from the crowds pressing all

around grew into a swirl of mind clamor. From somewhere came the stray wisp of thought:

'They say there are still slans alive in this city, in spite of all precautions. And the order is

to shoot them on sight.'

'But isn't that dangerous?' came a second thought, obviously a question asked aloud,

though Jommy caught only the mental picture. 'I mean a perfectly innocent person might be

killed by mistake.'

'That's why they seldom shoot on sight. They try to capture them and then examine

them. Their internal organs are different from ours, you know, and on their heads are -- '

'Jommy, can you feel them, about a block behind us? In a big car! Waiting for

reinforcements to close in on us from in front. They're working fast. Can you catch their

thoughts, Jommy?'

He couldn't! No matter how hard he reached out with his mind and strained and perspired

with his trying. That was where her mature powers surpassed his precocious instincts. She

could span distances and disentangle remote vibrations into coherent pictures.

He wanted to turn around and look, but he didn't dare. His small, though long, legs

twinkled underneath him, half running to keep up with his mother's impatient pace. It was

terrible to be little and helpless and young and inexperienced, when their life demanded the

strength of maturity, the alertness of slan adulthood.

His mother's thoughts stabbed through his reflections: 'There are some ahead of us now,

Jommy, and others coming across the street. You'll have to go, darling. Don't forget what

I've told you. You live for one thing only: to make it possible for slans to live normal lives. I

think you'll have to kill our great enemy, Kier Gray, even if it means going to the grand

palace after him. Remember, there'll be shouting and confusion, but keep your head. Good

luck, Jommy.'

Not until she had released his hand, after one quick squeeze, did Jommy realize that the

tenor of her thoughts had changed. The fear was gone. A soothing tranquillity flowed from

her brain, quieting his jumping nerves, slowing the pounding of his two hearts.

As Jommy slipped into the shelter made by a man and a woman walking past them, he

had a glimpse of men bearing down on the tall figure of his mother, looking very ordinary

and very human in her slacks and pink blouse, and with her hair caught up in a tightly

knotted scarf. The men, dressed in civilian clothes, were crossing the street, their faces dark

with an expression of an unpleasant duty that had to be done. The thought of that

unpleasantness, the hatred that went with it, was a shadow in their minds that leaped out at

Jommy. It puzzled him even in this moment when he was concentrating on escape. Why was

it necessary that he should die? He and this wonderful, sensitive, intelligent mother of his! It

was all terribly wrong.

A car, glittering like a long jewel in the sun, flashed up to the curb. A man's harsh voice

called loudly after Jommy: 'Stop! There's the kid. Don't let that kid get away! Stop that boy!'

People paused and stared. He felt the bewildering mildness of their thoughts. And then he

had rounded the corner and was racing along Capital Avenue. A car was pulling away from

the curb. His feet pattered with mad speed. His abnormally strong fingers caught at the rear

bumper. He pulled himself aboard and hung on as the car swung into the maze of traffic and

began to gather speed. From somewhere behind came the thought: 'Good luck, Jommy.'

For nine years she had schooled him for this moment, but something caught in his throat

as he replied: 'Good luck, Mother.'

The car went too fast, the miles reeled off too swiftly. Too many people paused in the

street and stared at the little boy clinging so precariously to the shining bumper. Jommy felt

the intensity of their gazes, the thoughts that whipped into their minds and brought jerky,

shrill shouts to their lips. Shouts to a driver who didn't hear.

Mists of thought followed him then, of people who ran into public booths and telephoned

the police about a boy caught on a bumper. Jommy squirmed, and his eyes waited for a

patrol car to swing in behind and flag the speeding auto to a halt. Alarmed, he concentrated

his mind for the first time on the car's occupants.

Two brain vibrations poured out at him. As he caught those thoughts, Jommy shuddered,

and half lowered himself toward the pavement, prepared to let go. He looked down, then

dizzily pulled himself back into place. The pavement was a sickening blur, distorted by the

car's speed.

Reluctantly, his mind fumbled into contact again with the brains of the men in the car.

The thoughts of the driver were concentrated on his task of maneuvering the machine. The

man thought once, flashingly, of a gun carried in a shoulder holster. His name was Sam

Enders, and he was the chauffeur and bodyguard of the man beside him -- John Petty, chief

of the secret police of the all-powerful Kier Gray.

The police chiefs identity penetrated through Jommy like an electric shock. The notorious

slan hunter sat relaxed, indifferent to the speed of the car, his mind geared to a slow,

meditative mood.

Extraordinary mind! Impossible to read anything in it but a blur of surface pulsations. It

wasn't, Jommy thought, amazed, as if John Petty could be consciously guarding his

thoughts. But there was a shield here as effective in hiding true thoughts as any slan's. Yet

it was different. Overtones came through that told of a remorseless character, a highly

trained and brilliant brain. Suddenly there was the tail end of a thought, brought to the

surface by a flurry of passion that shattered the man's calm: 'I -- I've got to kill that slan

girl, Kathleen Layton. That's the only way to undermine Kier Gray -- '

Frantically, Jommy attempted to follow the thought, but it was gone into the shadows,

out of reach. And yet he had the gist. A slan girl named Kathleen Layton was to be killed so

that Kier Gray might be undermined.

'Boss,' came Sam Enders' thought, 'will you turn that switch? The red light that flashed on

is the general alarm.'

John Petty's mind remained indifferent. 'Let them alarm,' he snapped. 'That stuff is for

the sheep.'

'Might as well see what it is,' Sam Enders said. The car slackened infinitesimally as he

reached to the far end of the switchboard; and Jommy, who had worked his way

precariously to one end of the bumper, waited desperately for a chance to leap clear. His

eyes, peering ahead over the fender, saw only the long, bleak line of pavement, unrelieved

by grass boulevards, hard and forbidding. To leap would be to smash himself against

concrete. As he drew back hopelessly, a storm of Enders thoughts came to him as Enders'

brain received the message on the general alarm:

' -- all cars on Capital Avenue and vicinity watch for boy who is believed to be a slan

named Jommy Cross, son of Patricia Cross. Mrs. Cross was killed ten minutes ago at the

comer of Main and Capital. The boy leaped to the bumper of a car, which drove away

rapidly, witnesses report.'

'Listen to that, boss,' Sam Enders said. 'We're on Capital Avenue. We'd better stop and

help in the search. There's ten thousand dollars' reward for slans.'

Brakes screeched. The car decelerated with a speed that crushed Johnny hard against the

rear end. He tore himself free of the intense pressure and, just before the car stopped,

lowered himself to the pavement. His feet jerked him into a run. He darted past an old

woman, who clutched at him, avarice in her mind. And then he was on a vacant lot, beyond

which towered a long series of blackened brick and concrete buildings, the beginning of the

wholesale and factory district.

A thought leaped after him from the car, viciously: 'Enders, do you realize that we left

Capital and Main ten minutes ago? That boy -- There he is! Shoot him, you fool!'

The sense of the man Enders drawing his gun came so vividly to Jommy that he felt the

rasp of metal on leather in his brain. Almost he saw the man take aim, so clear was the

mental impression that bridged the hundred and fifty feet between them.

Jommy ducked sideways as the gun went off with a dull plop. He had the faintest

awareness of a blow, and then he had scrambled up some steps into an open doorway, into

a great, dark-lit warehouse. Dim thoughts reached out from behind him:

'Don't worry, boss, we'll wear that little shrimp out.'

'You fool, no human being can tire a slan.' He seemed to be barking orders then into a

radio: 'We've got to surround the district at 57th Street ... Concentrate every police car and

get the soldiers out to -- '

How blurred everything was becoming! Jommy stumbled through a dim world, conscious

only that, in spite of his tireless muscles, a man could run at least twice as fast as his best

speed would carry him. The vast warehouse was a dull light-world of looming box shapes,

and floors that stretched into the remote semidarkness. Twice the tranquil thoughts of men

moving boxes somewhere to his left impinged on his mind. But there was no awareness of

his presence in their minds, no knowledge of the uproar outside. Far ahead, and to his right,

he saw a bright opening, a door. He bore in that direction. He reached the door, amazed at

his weariness. Something damp and sticky was clinging to his side, and his muscles felt stiff.

His mind felt slow and unwieldy. He paused and peered out of the door.

He was staring into a street vastly different from Capital Avenue. It was a dingy street of

cracked pavement, the opposite side lined with houses that had been built of plastic a

hundred or more years before. Made of virtually unbreakable materials, their imperishable

colors basically as fresh and bright as on the day of construction, they nevertheless showed

the marks of time. Dust and soot had fastened leechlike upon the glistening stuff. Lawns

were ill-tended, and piles of debris lay around.

The street was apparently deserted. A vague whisper of thought crept forth from the

dingy buildings. He was too tired to make certain tile thoughts came only from the buildings.

Jommy lowered himself over the edge of the warehouse platform and dropped to the hard

concrete of the street below. Anguish engulfed his side, and his body had no yield in it, none

of the normal spring that would have made such a jump easy to take. The blow of striking

the walk was a jar that vibrated his bones. The world was darker as he raced across the

street. He shook his head to clear his vision, but it was no use. He could only scamper on

with leaden feet between a gleaming but sooty two-story house and a towering, stream-

lined, sea-blue apartment block. He didn't see the woman on the veranda above him, or

sense her, until she struck at him with a mop. The mop missed because he caught its

shadow just in time to duck.

'Ten thousand dollars!' she screamed after him. 'The radio said ten thousand. And it's

mine, do you hear? Don't nobody touch him. He's mine. I saw him first.'

He realized dimly that she was shouting at other women who were pouring out of the

tenement. Thank God, the men were away at work!

The horror of the rapacious minds snatched after him as he fled with frightened strength

along the narrow walk beside the apartment building. He shrank from the hideous thoughts

and flinched from the most horrible sound in the world: the shrill voice clamor of people

desperately poor, swarming in their dozens after wealth beyond the dreams of greed.

A fear came that he would be smashed by mops and hoes and brooms and rakes, his

head beaten, his bones crushed, flesh mashed. Swaying, he rounded the rear corner of the

tenement. The muttering mob was still behind him. He felt their nervousness in the turgid

thoughts that streamed from them. They had heard stories about slans that suddenly almost

overshadowed the desire to possess ten thousand dollars. But the mob presence gave

courage to individuals. The mob pressed on.

He emerged into a tiny back yard piled high with empty boxes on one side. The pile

reared above him, a dark mass, blurred even in the dazzle of the sun. An idea flashed into

his dulled mind, and in an instant he was climbing the piled boxes.

The pain of the effort was like teeth clamped into his side. He ran precariously along over

the boxes, and then half lowered himself, half fell into a space between two old crates. The

space opened all the way to the ground. In the almost darkness his eyes made out a deeper

darkness in the plastic wall of the tenement. He put out his hands and fumbled around the

edges of a hole in the otherwise smooth wall.

In a moment he had squeezed through and was lying exhausted on the damp earth

inside. Pieces of rock pressed into his body, but for the moment he was too weary to do

anything but lie there, scarcely breathing, while the mob raged outside in frantic search.

The darkness was soothing, like his mother's thoughts just before she told him to leave

her. Somebody climbed some stairs just above him, and that told him where he was: in a

little space underneath back stairs. He wondered how the hard plastic had ever been

shattered.

Lying there, cold with fear, he thought of his mother -- dead now, the radio had said.

Dead! She wouldn't have been afraid, of course. He knew only too well that she had longed

for the day when she could join her dead husband in the peace of the grave. 'But I've got to

bring you up, Jommy. It would be so easy, so pleasant, to surrender life; but I've got to

keep you alive until you're out of your childhood. Your father and I have spent what we had

of life working on his great invention, and it will have been all for nothing if you are not here

to carry on.'

He pushed the thought from him, because his throat suddenly ached from thinking of it.

His mind was not so blurred now. The brief rest must have helped him. But that made the

rocks on which he lay more annoying, harder to bear. He tried to shift his body, but the

space was too narrow.

Automatically, one hand fumbled down to them, and he made a discovery. They were

shards of plastic, not rocks. Plastic that had fallen inward when the little section of the wall

had been smashed and the hole through which he had crawled was made. It was odd to be

thinking of that hole and to realize that somebody else -- somebody out there -- was

thinking of the same hole. The shock of that blurred outside thought was like a flame that

scorched through Jommy.

Appalled, he fought to isolate the thought and the mind that held it. But there were too

many other minds all around, too much excitement. Soldiers and police swarmed in the

alleyway, searching every house, every block, every building. Once, above that confusion of

mind static, he caught the dear, cold thought of John Petty:

'You say he was last seen right here?'

'He turned the corner,' a woman said, 'and then he was gone!'

With shaking fingers Jommy began to pry the pieces of shard out of the damp ground. He

forced his nerves to steadiness, and began with careful speed to fill the hole, using damp

earth to cement the pieces of plastic. The job, he knew with sick certainty, would never

stand close scrutiny.

And all the time he worked he felt the thought of that other person out there, a sly,

knowing thought, hopelessly mingled with the wild current of thoughts that beat on his

brain. Not once did that somebody else stop thinking about this very hole. Jommy couldn't

tell whether it was a man or woman. But it was there, like an evil vibration from a warped

brain.

The thought was still there, dim and menacing, as men pulled the boxes half to one side

and peered down between them -- and then, slowly, it retreated into distance as the shouts

faded and the nightmare of thoughts receded farther afield. The hunters hunted elsewhere.

For a long time Jommy could hear them, but finally life grew calmer, and he knew that night

was falling.

Somehow the excitement of the day remained in the atmosphere. A whisper of thoughts

crept out of the houses and from the tenement flats, people thinking, discussing what had

happened.

At last he dared wait no longer. Somewhere out there was the mind that had known he

was in the hole and had said nothing. It was an evil mind, which filled him with unholy

premonition, and urgency to be away from this place. With fumbling yet swift fingers, he

removed the plastic shards. Then, stiff from his long vigil, he squeezed cautiously outside.

His side twinged from the movement, and a surge of weakness blurred his mind, but he

dared not hold back. Slowly he pulled himself to the top of the boxes. His legs were lowering

to the ground when he heard rapid footfalls -- and the first sense of the person who had

.been waiting there struck into him. A thin hand grabbed his ankle, and an old woman's

voice said triumphantly: 'That's right, come down to Granny. Granny'll take care of you, she

will. Granny's smart. She knew all the time you could only have crept into that hole, and

those fools never suspected. Oh, yes, Granny's smart. She went away, and then she came

back and, because slans can read thoughts, she kept her mind very still, thinking only of

cooking. And it fooled you, didn't it? She knew it would. Granny'll look after you. Granny

hates the police, too.'

With a gasp of dismay, Jommy recognized the mind of the rapacious old woman who had

clutched at him as he ran from John Petty's car. That one fleeting glimpse had impressed the

evil old one on his brain. And now, so much of horror breathed from her, so hideous were

her intentions, that he gave a little squeal and kicked out at her.

The heavy stick in her free hand came down on his head even as he realized for the first

time that she had such a weapon. The blow was mind-wrecking. His muscles jerked in

spasmodic frenzy. His body slumped to the ground.

He felt his hands being tied, and then he was half lifted, half dragged for several feet.

Finally he was hoisted onto a rickety old wagon, and covered with clothes that smelled of

horse sweat, oil and garbage cans.

The wagon moved over the rough pavement of the back alley, and above the rattling of

the wheels Jommy caught the old woman's snarl. 'What a fool Granny would have been to

let them catch you. Ten thousand reward -- Bah! I'd never have gotten a cent. Granny

knows the world. Once she was a famous actress, now she's a junk woman. They'd never

give a hundred dollars, let alone a hundred hundred, to an old rag and bone picker. Bah on

the whole lot! Granny'll show them what can be done with a young slan. Granny'll make a

huge fortune from the little devil -- '

Chapter Two

There was that little boy again, who had once been friendly, and was now so nasty. And

she sensed several other boys were with him.

Kathleen Layton stiffened defensively, then relaxed. There was no escape from them

where she stood at the five-hundred-foot battlements of the palace. But it should be easy,

after these long years as the only slan among so many hostile beings, to face anything, even

what Davy Dinsmore, age eleven, had suddenly become.

She wouldn't turn. She wouldn't give them any intimation that she knew they were

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Slan(v1.1)A.E.VanVogt,1946ChapterOneHismother'shandfeltcold,clutchinghis.Herfearastheywalkedhurriedlyalongthestreetwasaquiet,swiftpulsationthatthrobbedfromhermindtohis.Ahundredotherthoughtsbeatagainsthismind,fromthecrowdsthatswarmedbyoneitherside,andfrominsidethebuildingstheypassed.Butonlyhismother'...

展开>> 收起<<

A. E. Van Vogt - Slan.pdf

共108页,预览6页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

A. E. Van Vogt - Slan

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: