Short Fiction · The Timeless Ones (2/2)

“Ned, you can’t really believe⁠—”

“Listen!” Ned said.

The sound was clearly audible through the thin walls of the rocket-ship. It was a steady, dull droning⁠—an eerie, terrifying sound.

Ned got up and walked to the viewport. He stared out⁠—

He could see the Sweeney’s dwelling clearly. It was bathed in an unearthly green light, and around it in a circle robed figures moved through shadows the color of blood. Around and around in ever widening circles, their tall gaunt bodies strangely bent.

For a full minute he stared out. When his wife joined him he stretched out a hand and let it rest lightly on her shoulder.

“Perhaps we wouldn’t be far wrong if we thought of the Sweeneys as catalysts!” he said.

Cynthia stood very straight and quiet, a great fear growing in her.

“Catalysts, Ned?”

“It’s just a wild guess, of course. I can’t even tell you what made me think of it. But it does have a certain relevancy. In chemistry, as you know, a catalytic agent is a substance which promotes chemical action, but is in itself unchanged.”

“Well?”

“Why do men and women who surrender themselves to sorcery remain, in legend, eternally young? Young, unchanging. It’s a belief as old as prehistory and all the ages since. Only in the Middle Ages were witches pictured as shrunken, hideous old women. The ancient world pictured witches as eternally youthful, unaging.”

A long pause, and then Ned said: “As unaging as the forests of oak where they served as human catalysts for the Druids before the Druids left Earth forever?”

He suddenly seemed to be thinking aloud rather than addressing his wife.

“Well⁠—and why not? The Druids must change, for change is the first law of life. But perhaps they can only find complete fulfillment, can only grow in wisdom and strength, by using human beings as little hard grains of chemical substance which must remain forever bright and shining.

“Human catalysts, imprisoned in a horrible little test tube of a house. If human beings aged and changed they would cease to be catalysts. They would become valueless to the Druids. And when the Romans discovered the truth⁠—”

Agreement was clearly in Cynthia’s eyes. She moved closer to the viewport, her face pale.

“Fear, and a merciless hatred,” Ned said. “Pursuing the Druids, driving them from Earth. And dim, fearful legends remaining of a dark magic older than the human race.”

“Ned, they’ve stopped dancing!” Cynthia’s voice rang out sharply in the silence. “They’re coming toward the ship!”

“I know,” Ned said.

“But we don’t know what they’re planning to do!” Cynthia’s voice rose. “We’ve got to get out!”

“Steady,” Ned said, turning. “If we take off at peak acceleration I just can’t picture them stopping us!”

“Ned, the Sweeneys may be happier than we know,” Cynthia said, hours later. They were deep in subspace, a hundred light years from the little green world; and, in the warm security of the pilot-room, its menacing shadows seemed immeasurably remote.

“Happy?” Ned laughed harshly. “Kids who’ll never grow up. Adults cut off from all further growth. The same today, tomorrow and forever.”

“Their minds may change,” Cynthia said. “Their minds may grow, Ned. Tommy said that bright pupils could go far.”

“As catalysts, caught in a ghastly trap.”

“How can you be so sure, Ned? A wild guess, you called it. How do you know the Druids and the Sweeneys don’t learn from one another? Perhaps they grow wise together, in a wonderful bright sharing of knowledge and happiness that’s like nothing we can imagine.”

Ned looked at his wife. “Why say a thing like that? Why even think of it?”

“Pandora, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a woman and the Pandora complex is pretty basic, darling. I’d be tempted to go back and throw open the box.”

“Something pretty black and horrible would come out,” Ned said sharply. “You can take my word for that. I hope you’re not forgetting that Pandora was the first woman chosen by Zeus to bring complete ruin on the human race.”

“She didn’t quite succeed. And how can we know for sure, Ned? If what you say is true, if the Druids were really driven from Earth, we haven’t done so well since. Wars and madness for two thousand years. Destruction and cruelty and death.”

“All you have to do is prove we’d be better off if the Druids had stayed,” Ned said.

“Darling, think. If people grew wiser all the time, if they never aged, would they want to murder one another?”

“Now see here⁠—”

Cynthia smiled. “Think of having our own beautiful little home forever, in a fragrant woody patch, with shining kitchen utensils on the wall. Think of being spared all the miseries of old age and poverty and sickness and death.

“Think of having neighbors like the Sweeneys to grow young with, to grow wise and young with, day by splendid day until the end of time.”

There was a long silence, and then Cynthia said: “I’d trust them, Ned. The Druids, I mean. I’d take the chance. What have we to lose that’s really great, that can hold a candle to what the Sweeneys have?”

“You can go anywhere if you just remember how close you are to where you want to be!” Tommy Sweeney said, coming through the pilot-room wall in a blaze of light. He grinned. “I asked mom and dad to try real hard this time and here they are!”

All of the Sweeneys came into the pilot-room as Tommy spoke, their faces incredibly radiant.

“I never really believed Tommy until this minute!” Clifton Sweeney said. “If you just forget about walls you’re where you want to be!”

“Sure you are!” Tommy said. “It’s as easy as skinning a chipmunk.”

“Ned, Cynthia,” Helen Sweeney said. “Come back!”

Tommy’s sister simply smiled, a mischievous elfin smile which seemed to mock the vast loneliness of space. It was as if some wizard game, played by laughing children and wise forest creatures through long golden afternoons, had become a universe-spanning web, embracing everything in its path in a warm and radiant way.

Cynthia looked at Dan. “Well, darling?”

“Yes,” Ned said, with quick decision. “We’ll go back!”

And at that moment, in the forest deep and dark, the Druids built another house. It was designed to appeal to a man and a woman who had traveled far and grown weary of human cruelty and death. It was designed for gracious living; but whether the Druids, in their inscrutable wisdom, wished mankind well or ill, who could say?