Nidor 01.5
Astounding – January 1958
(1958)*
Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg
(as by Robert Randall)
illustrated by van Dongen
There are reactions which, once triggered, can neither be halted, altered, nor reversed, until they've run their course. On Nidor, certain individuals had done certain things... and thought they acted in full free will....
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Nibro peSyg Sesom, newly-elected Elder Grandfather of the Clan Ghevin, paced uneasily through the narrow corridors that circled the Kivar Temple in Holy Gelusar. He walked with a firm stride, scowling impatiently, waiting for word to come that his fellow members of the Council had finally assembled.
Nibro had reached the first of his goals—Council membership, at the unprecedented age of thirty-three. But his real work lay ahead of him.
There was something dank and foul in the air, he thought, as if the night rains still fell. Nibro peSyg turned to the short, stooped Nidorian at his side.
"Gwyl peDrang, remind me to have decent ventilation installed when the Great Temple is rebuilt."
"Decent ventilation. I'll make a note of it, Grandfather Nibro."
"Make sure that you do. I think if I had to spend the rest of my life inside this relic of antiquity I'd leave the priesthood and go back to engineering," Nibro peSyg growled. "I don't know how the Elder Grandfathers stood this place so long."
"They had no choice—until you reached the Council," Gwyl peDrang said tactfully. "Ever since the Great Temple was destroyed—"
"I know," Nibro peSyg said. He paused, leaning over the edge of a window, staring out into the city. It was mid-morning; the Great Light was climbing high, its bright rays diffusing through the pearl-gray cloud layer that covered Nidor. Impatiently, Nibro scratched the yellow-golden down on his corded right arm. "They haven't been able to afford a new Temple," he said. "Well, that's all over with now. I'll see to that. Great Light knows how they've stood it so long."
"I don't know either, Grandfather Nibro."
Nibro peSyg wheeled sharply and glared at his companion. "And stop that 'Grandfather Nibro' stuff. That was all right when I was a minor priest in Sugon. Now I'm the Elder Ghevin, and keep it in mind."
"I'm sorry, Elder Ghevin," Gwyl said quickly. "Force of habit, I guess; it's hard to remember that you're not a Sesom any more."
Nibro detected a certain note in the man's voice. He smiled and said, "I could hardly have remained a Sesom and been elected to the Council, could I? There already is an Elder Sesom. What's the matter? Getting sentimental over those meaningless Clan names?"
"Oh, no! I just—"
His protestations were cut short by the deep, sonorous crash of a gong in the main auditorium of the little temple.
"The Council is gathering," Nibro said. "Give me my cloak."
Gwyl took the blue cloak which he had draped over his arm and put it around Nibro's broad shoulders. The new Elder Ghevin fastened the metal gorget at his throat, shrugged his shoulders so that the cloak draped properly, and turned around.
"How does it look?"
Gwyl smiled approvingly. "Fine, Gran ... Elder Ghevin. Just fine."
"Good. Now you get busy with that list I gave you. Make sure my stuff is moved into the office by this afternoon. I've got a speech to make."
He turned and strode toward the main auditorium.
An acolyte stood outside the heavy bronze-ornamented door, his nose superciliously aloft as Nibro approached. "The Elders have gathered," the acolyte said. "They await you within."
Nibro peSyg nodded. In a sense, Nidor had been waiting for him a long time—thirty years, now. The Elders could wait a few minutes. "Are they all there?"
"Yes, Elder Ghevin." The acolyte squinted at Nibro obliquely, with much the same expression Gwyl had used. The look seemed to suggest there might be something wrong about a member of the Clan Sesom metamorphosing abruptly into a Ghevin.
Nibro wondered momentarily if he had made a mistake by forcing his way into the Council in this unorthodox way. He tightened his lips and banished the sudden doubt. He had seen the opportunity, and he had taken, it. Why shouldn't a man change clans, if he had a good reason for doing it?
He glowered at the acolyte. "Open the door."
The acolyte threw open the heavy door. Nibro peSyg stalked in.
The other fifteen Elders were in their time-ordained places, seated in a wide semicircle facing the door. Behind them, the ceiling aperture allowed the rays of the Great Light to enter—feebly.
The lens in the Great Temple must have been a thrilling sight, Nibro thought. I wish I had been old enough to see it before its destruction.
He glared at the fifteen. They were old men; they had seen the Temple. Their golden down had turned light silver with age.
His gaze rested on the empty seat at the far left—the seat that now belonged to him, as the Elder Ghevin. Next to that sat the Elder Lokness, next to him the Elder Yorgen, and so on across the dais to the Elder Brajjyd at the fat right.
Old dodderers, Nibro thought contemptuously. His eyes caught those of the Elder Lokness—the one Elder who had opposed Nibro's spectacular rise to the Council. Nibro smiled mockingly at the man.
The Elder Vyless, oldest and wisest member of the Council, rose and peered down at Nibro. "We welcome you to our midst as a member of the Council," he said.
Nibro smiled. "Good. I wouldn't want to stay where I'm not welcome."
"You have sent word you wish to address us, on this your first day of Councilhood. Is this true?"
"It is," Nibro said. He struck a conscious pose in the center of the floor, swelled his deep chest, pulled his big body erect. He was. an imposing figure, and he knew it. "I have waited for this day all my life," he said ringingly. "The day I could stand before the Council of Elders as an equal, and speak my mind."
"We know you will be an asset to us," old Vyless said.
Nibro folded his muscular arms. "Fellow Elders of Nidor, I have a very serious topic to bring before you today. Some of you—those who spoke with me at length before my election—are probably aware of what it is I'm about to say."
He paused for a moment. "It is thirty years since the Great Temple was destroyed. Thirty years since disaster swept over our world, since the madness wiped the Bel-rogas School from our midst, drove the devil Earthmen back to the skies, brought the Temple down in flames. And thirty years in which the Council of Elders has convened in this subsidiary temple, this ... this little shed not fit for stabling deests!
"An entire generation has grown up—my generation, fellow Elders—that has never seen the Great Temple, never known the thrilling sight of the Great Light cascading down from the mighty lens. And, I may add, has never felt the true grandeur and nobility of our way of life. We lack a focal point for our existence. The Way of our Ancestors is shattered, and must be rebuilt. The Temple—at the heart of Holy Gelusar—is still a blackened ruin!"
"And you propose that we rebuild it," interjected the Elder Lokness dryly. "I think we've been through this before, young man."
Nibro glanced angrily at the Elder Vyless. "Please request our brother of Lokness to hold his patience until I have finished speaking. And to address me with the respect due a member of the Council."
Lokness subsided, muttering bitterly.
"You may continue," the Elder Vyless said.
"Very well. Almost two cycles ago, in the great cataclysm that swept our world, the Council of Elders was reduced to a subsidiary role for the first time in the history of Nidor—for the emergency, it was said. A secular authority arose, the Directorate—represented now by that nonentity in Tammulcor, Ganz peDel. Fellow Council members, the emergency is long over—and still a Director rules in Tammulcor!"
He glanced from face to face. The Elder Sesom was beaming broadly—as he had every right to do, being Nibro's chief mentor. Yorgen, Danoy, Dmorno, and Hebylla, Nibro's main supporters, were smiling. The others seemed in internal conflict.
"You must remember one of the early acts of the Director when affairs stabilized after the destruction of the School and Temple," Nibro said carefully. "He taxed the banks—and built five new schools. Money for schools—and not for a Temple!"
"The Council in office at that time permitted the expenditure," Lokness said.
"The Council of that time was under the thumb of the Director!" Nibro roared. "The Elders had been chosen by the Director and his cohorts, if you will be good enough to recall. The Council was packed by illegal means." He paused; he realized he had better not press that point too hard.
"Very well," Nibro said. "Thirty years have passed. The Council has once again attained a measure of freedom—and the weakness of the Director in Tammulcor is known to all: Let us: tax the banks once again—and rebuild the Temple!"
There was a moment of stunned silence in the auditorium. Nibro had finally phrased the dream of every priest since the destruction of the Temple—and the words hung nakedly in the murky air.
Slowly, they seeped in.
"Just a minute!" Lokness thundered. He rose from his seat. "I think you've got an almighty nerve, Elder Ghevin! You come in here, untouched by the silver of age, scarcely half a day since you were elected to this august body, and presume to order us around and tell us what to do.
"The late Elder Ghevin was Elder Leader, but don't think that you lead the Council just because you have ... ah ... taken his place." The emphasis on the verb was hardly subtle.
Nibro smiled coldly at the thin-faced Elder. "A very good point, and one which we may as well decide right now. Since the Elder Leader's position is now vacant and the Council leaderless, we must elect a new one. Have you any suggestions?"
Lokness opened his mouth to say something, but the Elder Sesom beat him to the punch. "I say it should be the Elder Ghevin."
Lokness' mouth stayed open for a moment, then snapped shut as he darted his eyes around the Council.
"Ghevin," agreed Brajjyd.
"Ghevin," repeated Yorgen.
"Ghevin," said the Elder Vyless, who had been the chief candidate for the post before Nibro's sudden propulsion into the Council.
When it was over, nine were definitely arrayed on Nibro's side. The Elder Dmorno attempted feebly to place Lokness in the running, but nothing came of it, and when no second was forthcoming he switched to Ghevin. After that, it was a landslide.
Shattered, Lokness sank back in his seat. Fourteen votes had been cast.
"Your vote, Elder Lokness?"
For a moment Lokness said nothing. Then, softly, he spoke—one word.
"Ghevin."
The fifteen Elders turned, then, and looked at the new Elder Grandfather Nibro peSyg Sesom Ghevin, Elder Leader of the Council of Nidor at the age of thirty-three.
Nibro looked well satisfied with himself. "Very well," he said. "Let us proceed with the business at hand. I mean, of course, the Temple."
The Temple must be rebuilt. Must be. Nibro peSyg had known that ever since he had been old enough to realize what the trouble was with Nidor.
Nidor was a single small continent surrounded by an endless sea. A layer of clouds cloaked the planet without break, hiding the bright sun and providing only the warm glow known and worshiped as the Great Light.
Ever since the legendary Cataclysm of four thousand years before, the people of Nidor had lived together peacefully, quietly, in utter stability, governed by the Law and the Way of the Ancestors.
Until the Earthmen came.
With the coming of the Earthmen, a hundred thirty-three years before, Nidor had entered into an era of unrest and trouble, of doubt and ambivalence.
The Earthmen had been accepted as emissaries of the Great Light by the priesthood that ruled Nidor; they had founded a school, the Bel-rogas School of Divine Law, and for a century had taught Nidor's finest minds at their school. And with them had come the Plague of the Hugl, the economic failure of the Edris-makers, a curious crumbling of Nidor's most hallowed traditions, and then the Great Panic caused by the overproduction of peych-beans, Nidor's staple crop. Like a series of body blows to the Nidorian civilization, each had left its bruising mark.
And then, after a hundred years of their interference, the Earthmen 'had been driven off Nidor by an army led by the Great Martyr, Kris peKym Yorgen, who had shown the Earthmen up as the demons they were.
Kris peKym had not lasted long as Director; he had been struck down by an assassin's bullet not long after taking control of Nidor away from the Council. But his successor, Ganz peDel Vyless, had taken over smoothly, and begun rebuilding. For the first twenty-five years, he had done well, but his evident grief over the death of his Secretary, Norvis peKrin Dmorno, had reduced him to a useless nonentity five years before.
Now, reasoned Nibro, it was time the Council of Elders reasserted their age-old prerogative and took control of the government away from the Directorate.
The time of troubles was over; it was time to return to the Way and the Law.
After all, the Directorate could not function without the Council, could it? No law or edict was legal until it had been passed by the Council of Elders.
For thirty years, however; the Council had been packed with yes-men for the Directorate. But now that the Directorate was useless, that was no longer so. The Council could—and would—rule Nidor without its aid.
And the first thing to do in reasserting the power of the priesthood...
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