1,000-Year Voyage (3 page)

“It is not a case of making a choice, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, pondering. “If we refuse to accede to your demand there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Even if we have children after that, your doctrines need not necessarily be inculcated into them. We can stop that if we choose.”

“How?” Merva Ansof snapped. “You seem to have overlooked the fact that Rigilus I is the commander of the vessel and still your Ruler. There is nothing that you dare do to him!”

“Why not?” Randos asked pointedly. “He is flesh and blood the same as us. There are ten of us against him so we can destroy him if we wish and if the circumstances were sufficiently serious we
would
do. What you do not seem to appreciate is, that now we have cut adrift from Earth and all its associations and so-called civilised fabric, we want to live like normal human beings without the need to dominate others, to have our own children, to live together and to teach those children whatever we feel they should know. We don't want to begin on the deadly basis that only vengeance is worth having.”

Rigilus sighed heavily and turned aside. He moved slowly across to the great window and stood looking down on the receding Earth. Already it was no more than a globe as the enormous space liner fled with an apparent complete lack of movement through space. Then Merva Ansof moved also, an epitome of feline grace as she swept across the floor, pausing at length at the Ruler's side.

“You can't let them get away with this, Rigilus,” she murmured, quietly, “you know you can't!”

“Ten of them against me,” he said with a brief glance. “What am I supposed to do about that? A man can only enforce his will if he has a certain amount of co-operation and a certain amount of backing. I have only got you, apparently. Two of us against ten?” He shrugged his enormous shoulders. “We have to accept circumstances sometimes, Merva.”

“I never accept circumstances.” Merva looked down on the Earth for a few moments, her green eyes seeming even greener with the emerald reflections cast back from the Mother planet. Rigilus glanced towards her. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman—that fact he had always known—but the repellent coldness of her and the merciless logic of her mind had always turned him against her from the emotional standpoint. Otherwise he and Merva Ansof would long ago have been joined in a union of world control.

“The solution,” Merva said, presently, her voice deep and quiet, “is far more simple than you think, Rigilus. Let these fools who were once all for us have their progeny. Even let these children be educated for several years as exactly as their parents wish. Let them think that they're getting away with it…. Whenever necessary there is nothing to stop the removal of the parents!”

Rigilus gave a start. “You cleverly avoid the use of the word ‘murder', my dear,” he commented.

“Murder is a silly, simple word, which dates back over a centuries. In these days murder is classed as elimination and that is not a matter of the passions: it is a matter of necessity. If anybody or anything stands in the way of achieving a certain objective, destroy it! That has always been my policy, Rigilus, and it has placed me beside you and there I have remained as long as I have been mature. Even as a child I eliminated the things that annoyed me. I sometimes think I am one of the few people who are gifted with a complete lack of conscience.”

With that, using a typical feminine cunning, Merva Ansof turned and walked to another window to survey the unholy prominences of the blinding sun. She knew she had left behind a very undecided ex-ruler. She had dropped into his mind the seed that she knew must flourish. Rigilus loved power every bit as much as she did, and his desire for vengeance was something he was prepared to bring to fruition no matter what the cost. And presently he turned. Majestic as an eagle, his keen eyes peering out from under the overhanging brows.

“I am inclined to think,” he said, slowly, “that perhaps you have a better grasp of the situation than I on this occasion, Randos.”

Randos gave a start of hope and glanced quickly at the others. Immediately every face turned towards Rigilus as he came forward once again into the centre of the lounge.

“Yes,” Rigilus continued, “have your children, by all means. I give you my word that I will make no attempt to indoctrinate them, but will give you absolute freedom to do as you wish with them, until they reach the age of maturity. When, however, they have reached the time when they are capable of assessing the situation for themselves I insist that it must be put to them whether or not reprisal should be sought upon those who have driven us into outer space.

“In that way they will not be influenced by me or by you, but will make their own decision. I do not for a single moment doubt what their decision will be, because as I said earlier they will have an inherited instinct concerning the situation and the sense of domination which they will inherit from you, will I think, make them determined to hand on to their own children the doctrine of which I have spoken.... But that is in the future. For the time being continue as you will. We cannot afford in this small circle here—for although you may not have realised it yet—each one of us is bound to be with the other until the day we die—any sign of friction whatever. The more we are compelled to be in each other's company the more necessary it is that we keep things on an even keel.”

By the window as she looked out towards the Moon, Merva Ansof smiled to herself. Rigilus I had done exactly as she had anticipated he would.

CHAPTER TWO

PLAN FOR SURVIVAL

SO began the strange odyssey of the twelve from Earth. With resistless power the space machine soon passed from the orbit of Mars, and ere long even the red planet was forgotten as the orbits of Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune and little Pluto were all passed in turn and the vessel travelled on into the true interstellar deeps and the inconceivably distant Alpha Centauri.

These relatively small distances across the Solar System were covered in a matter of a few months. Months in which the twelve spent their time orientating themselves to the new conditions. To a certain extent this was not a particularly difficult task since life was very little different from what it had been on Earth, the ship being a complete city within itself.

The only thing which was missing and which Merva Ansof felt, perhaps more than anybody, except perhaps Rigilus—was the need to control the progress and the behaviour of the masses. Here there was nothing to do but please themselves and do whatever they wished whenever they wished. Even at this point with only a few months gone by Rigilus was brought home to realising the sinister truth behind the People's Prosecutor's statement when he said that banishment was the worst punishment that could possibly befall a man of so dominant a personality as Rigilus.

He had become moody and restless, finding little to interest him since everything aboard the ship was more or less automatic and made no demands upon the scientific ingenuity for which he was remarkable. What particularly appalled him was the thought that the doctrine upon which heart was so set could not possibly start to even be mooted for many years yet.

Then as he was in one of these moods of black depression there drifted to his side the subtly smiling Merva Ansof. As usual she was gowned exquisitely in a sheath-like garment of vermillion red. Such was the warmth of the great lounge, her alabaster white shoulders and arms were bare and the sunlight cast through the window upon the absolute maturity of her bosom. She was a woman voluptuous to a degree, not only in the matter of sex, but in the matter of mind and the matter of power. For Merva Ansof the loss of the control of the Earthly solar system meant little: she had the sort of mind that could grasp even at universal power, and if possible gain it.

“Is something troubling you, Rigilus?” Her soft husky voice broke upon him as he gazed with troubled eyes through the great window upon the depths of space, now dusted with a host of shining stars.

He glanced towards her and, for a moment, even his almost impervious senses were shaken by the picture of carnal attractiveness that she presented.

“Naturally something is troubling me.” His voice sounded unnaturally curt as he endeavoured to cover up his emotions. “It is this absolute lack of anything to do which is grinding me down. I have always been a man of energy, one who must always be doing something, one who must have whole worlds to juggle with and whole nations to control. That I should have to sit here like a God on the Heights of Olympus, staring down on to the immensities of space without the power to command that space is something so bitter that I am lost for words.”

“In that,” Merva said gently, “you reveal a complete lack of discipline over your mind, Rigilus. You do not find me bemoaning my fate. You do not find me looking out over space and saying that I can't control it. I never look on anything which I cannot control!”

Rigilus looked at her sharply. This was a new mood even for Merva Ansof. He thought he had seen her in every possible emotional form, yet here was yet another phase of her complex and utterly merciless character.

She seated herself as he looked at her and the glow of light from the stars and the now distant sun set the soft texture of her sheath-like gown shimmering with a ruby brilliance.

“Rigilus,” she said, with an almost poisonous gentleness, “you and I in our control of the Solar System have never really had the time to get to know one another properly, have we?”

“I had hardly ever considered that necessary,” Rigilus responded, thinking. “We acted as two units in a thoroughly efficient machine and the necessity to know more of each other personally hardly entered into it.”

“Not then, perhaps,” Merva admitted, with a shrug of her satin-smooth shoulders, “but it enters into it
now
don't you think? The rest of these fools aboard this ship—those whom we trusted so much and who are now revealed as only thinking of themselves—are all married and intending to bring into this vessel reproductions of themselves, with their own limited little viewpoint and their ridiculous little sentimentalities which would make absolute nonsense of your own magnificent scheme of revenge. It is up to us Rigilus, to change all that.

“If they can have their progeny and instil into them their limited notions and doctrines of conscience and right living, why shouldn't we have our children and inculcate into them the things that we both are strong for vengeance upon those who drove us hither. By that,” Merva Ansof continued, her green eyes flashing a brief glance, “I do not mean that we should for one moment abandon the plan which I suggested to you earlier on, namely the elimination of the parents when the children have reached an age when they can be educated into understanding what we want them to understand. Meantime there is surely no reason why we cannot have children of our own, who can take over a leadership when we ourselves find we are getting beyond that.”

“In other words,” Rigilus said rather bluntly “what you're suggesting is marriage?”

“Naturally. I cannot imagine two people more suited to each other than you or I, Rigilus. You have the immense masculine strength and the power and I—,” Merva looked down at herself and gave a faint, almost tigerish smile, “—and I am obviously a woman, with every wile and subtlety that the name implies.”

As Rigilus didn't answer but still continued to look out of the window Merva rose to her feet and began to move slowly about the lounge. Rigilus did not watch her but he heard the soft silken rustle of her garments as she moved.

“I am not attempting to force anything upon you,” she said after a while, “I am merely suggesting it as the most commonsense move in the situation in which we now find ourselves. You and I want revenge and we mean to have it. But if something unexpected came along and the pair of us were wiped out of existence it would be nice to know that we had others who would carry on the plan for us even if we could not.

“All this, of course, is assuming that anything might happen to us before the children of our colleagues reach an impressionable age. For the furtherance of your plan, Rigilus, we have
got
to have children of our own, and from the very moment that they become able to comprehend things the doctrine of vengeance must be instilled into them.”

“You hardly sound like a potential mother-to-be,” Rigilus commented at last. “In fact you sound to me more like a machine deciding how many cogs it needs to make itself efficient.”

“Never mind what I sound like,” Merva replied, coldly, “confine yourself instead to the commonsense of the suggestion I have made! In fact, consider yourself fortunate that a man of your domination and character should have a woman offering herself to him! Few women come towards you, Rigilus, because you frighten them. There's a tremendous strength and purpose about you that the normal woman finds almost repugnant I should imagine. I though, being of a totally different calibre, can appreciate it.

“What is more, I want to know more about it. What is even more important I desire that the union of the mind that we have had so long in the control of other people's destinies should now be a union that will reproduce a reproduction of ourselves. I shall not put forward the suggestion again. All that I await is your answer.”

Rigilus was still silent. Not that there was really any point in him withholding his answer for he knew exactly what he was going to say. He had never in his life refused Merva Ansof, and he did not intend to refuse her now. He had never quite fathomed why he had always bowed to her suggestions because he was anything but a man of weak will or undeveloped individuality.

Deep down he wondered if it was because he was
afraid
of Merva Ansof. She was so unlike any other woman he had ever known. He turned at last and saw her standing looking at him, her green eyes with their long eyelashes wide and intent. Again the thought crossed his mind, was she a hypnotist? No, not that, he decided. Merva Ansof's secret lay in her tremendous subtlety and all the snake-like vice of which her sex was capable.

“Yes,” Rigilus said, almost simply. “I do believe that union between us might be a very sensible idea.”

She came forward at that and her dead white hands rested on his as they gripped the edge of the enormous window ledge.

“You will not have cause to regret this, Rigilus,” she said, quietly. “Your aims and ambitions always have been and always will be mine too.”

Rigilus nodded slowly.

“We shall tell the others, of course?”

“Of course. What else can we do? And as master of the ship you will have to perform the ceremony. I should imagine the others will be glad of our union. It will make us so much like—what is the old world phrase? One big happy family....”

Typically Rigilus wasted no more time. Leaving the lounge he headed through the main corridor to the big solarium where the rest of the party was gathered and coming into their midst, made his announcement. He had just come to the end of it when Merva Ansof herself came silently through the doorway and stood looking upon the others with that curiously mocking smile which she could use so effectively.

“Naturally,” Randos said, rising to his feet, “we are both delighted and encouraged, Rigilus, that you should have decided upon this course. The only thing that has surprised me is that you and Merva did not marry long ago.”

“So long as we do it now,” Merva herself remarked, “what does that matter? The need of marriage was not so great when we were on the Earth as it is now that we are outcasts in space. There remains nothing now, Rigilus,” she added, glancing towards him, “but for you to perform the ceremony. The old necessity of witnesses and so forth is eliminated by the fact that those of us here comprise the only world we know, or are ever likely to know again.”

Rigilus nodded slowly, seeming as though he found it difficult to absorb the fact that this giant space liner cleaving the silent depths was indeed their only world for all time to come. Then gathering himself together he went across to the nearby bookshelf, took down the Bible—still accepted among Earth People as a criterion for absolute solemnization—and came back again to where Merva was standing. In a matter of a moment he had recited the few lines necessary to make his marriage to Merva Ansof entirely legal, then from the little finger of his left hand be withdrew a small circlet of gold and slipped it upon Merva's third finger as she held out her hand towards him.

“All legal and complete,” he remarked, smiling at her seriously. “I am afraid, my dear, that if you are expecting anything in the nature of a romance you are going to be sadly disappointed. I am not a romantic man and never have been.”

“I don't want a romantic man,” Merva answered, studying the ring. “All I require is a man who has power, which, as his wife I can share.”

Such was the simple nature of the initial ceremony, so simple indeed that the remaining members of the banished party very soon forgot all about it. They accepted the day by day routine as a natural part of their lives and it was perfectly obvious from the remarks they passed now and again that they had entirely lost all remembrance of Rigilus' original statement concerning the scheme of vengeance.

For that matter Merva herself did not mention it either. She was quite content to bide her time, knowing that she was now in a quite unassailable position as the wife of Rigilus, and naturally she was quite determined that she would press her own case to the uttermost when, with the passage of years, the time arose to make the elimination of the unwanted ones necessary.

Not that she was idle as the days and months fled by and not only Earth but the entire Solar System retired into the infinite depths of space and was lost to sight amidst the constellations which formed the backdrop behind it.

“I am surprised, Rigilus,” she commented one morning as she came upon him at work in the enormous laboratory in the centre of the vessel, “that you accept so completely the fact that we can never complete our journey to Alpha Centauri.”

He glanced at her, giving his serious smile.

“I cannot see that there is anything in that to occasion surprise, Merva. As you are aware, we are no longer accelerating, but moving at a constant velocity. Since our speed is far below the speed of light, it is an irrefutable fact that neither you nor I—nor any of us aboard this ship for that matter—can live for the thousand years it will take to reach Alpha Centauri.”

“Are you absolutely sure of that?”

Rigilus hesitated, vaguely puzzled. He had always known Merva as a woman of extremely brilliant scientific ideas, and therefore one absolutely steeped in logic. That she should even assume to question the fact that he or herself could live for a thousand years was extraordinary.

“Of course I'm sure of it,” he answered at length, “and so must you be.”

“Matter of fact I'm not.” Merva reclined against the edge of the enormous machine bench. “I've been giving a great deal of thought to the matter during the last few weeks Rigilus. I have been thinking how wonderful it would be if you and I were still alive and in perfect condition mentally and physically at the end of our colossal journey. By that time we would have developed the mightiest scheme of vengeance that ever was.

“We might even have worked out the necessary mathematics to take us back across space at almost the speed of light, infinitely faster than our outward journey. The fuel is there, that we know, therefore the only thing that is needed is the necessary scientific ingenuity to defeat the blight of old age.”