The Buttoned Sky Part 1

The b.u.t.toned Sky.

by Geoff St. Reynard.

Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness.

But this was the future, ruled by G.o.d-globes, as men gazed fearfully at--THE b.u.t.tONED SKY

CHAPTER I

The squire he sat in Dolfya Town, He swilled the blood-dark wine: "O who can blight my happiness, Or face the power that's mine?"

Then up there spoke his daughter fair: "The priest can end your joy; The globe can sap your might away, And the Mink can you destroy!"

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

The day that Revel killed a G.o.d, he woke early. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and a pain in his ear where somebody'd hit him during a shebeen brawl the night before. He rolled over on his back. The bed was a hollowed place in the earth floor, filled with leaves and dried gra.s.s and spread with yellow-brown mink skins sewn into a big blanket; he'd slept on it every night of his twenty-eight years, but this morning it felt hard and uncomfortable.

The water gourd was empty. In the cold gray mists of dawn he groped his way sleepily to the well behind the hut, and drew up the bucket.

"d.a.m.n the gentry!" he burst out. The bucket, an ancient thing made of oak slats pegged together with wooden dowels, was half filled with dirt and rotten brush. "Curse their lousy carca.s.ses to h.e.l.l!" he yelled, and, suddenly scared, looked around to see if perhaps a G.o.d was floating somewhere near him. But no yellow glimmering showed in the mists.

Laboriously he cleaned out the well, dropping the bucket time after time and dragging up loads of trash. Some roving band of gentry had fouled the water for sport. Anything that hurt the ruck, made them more work or injured them in any way, was sport for the squirarchy.

At last he got a bucket of cold and almost clean water, filled the big gourd and carried it back to the one-room hut. The morning that had begun badly was getting worse; his mother's limp was painful to see; she must have had a hard night. Bent and gray and as juiceless as the gra.s.s of their beds, she slept more lightly and fretfully with every pa.s.sing month. Many years before a squire had ridden her down in the lanes of Dolfya Town, as she scurried out of the path of his great stallion, and her broken leg had mended crookedly. A few hours on the mink-covered bed crippled her up so that moving was an agony.

With the impious brain at the center of his skull--Revel had long before decided that he had a number of brains, one obedient, one rebellious, one dull, one keen and inquisitive, and so on--with the impious brain he now cursed the G.o.ds and the gentry and the priests, and everyone above the ruck who preyed on them and made their lives so stinking awful. If he had thought then of killing a G.o.d, the idea would have seemed pleasant indeed. But quite impossible, of course, for a man of the ruck did not touch a G.o.d, much less slay one.

He did not think of such a thing, but cursed the G.o.ds briefly and then turned off his impious brain and began to wolf down his food. He paid no attention to what he ate--it was the same old bread of wild barley seeds, the same old boiled rabbit.

When he finished, he glanced at his mother, feeling sorry for her, wishing that she would go to the shebeens with him and have at least a little happiness before she died. He wondered if she had ever known any joy, any hope such as he had in drunken flashes now and then of belief that life might some day be better for the ruck. He shook his head, grabbed his miner's pick, booted his brother in the ribs to waken him, and left the miserable hut to walk to the mine for his day's work.

The day was brightening, and above him in concentric circles to the horizon and beyond hovered the eternal red and blue b.u.t.tons. He looked up grimly. Always there, in all the spoken history of man, stretched above the world to keep watch on every action of the ruck. The b.u.t.tons were full of G.o.ds, omnipotent, omnipresent.

The mine was a mile from his hut, which lay on the outskirts of Dolfya.

It was halfway down a long valley, a gut between hills pitted with many other mines. There coal was dug for the gentry and the priests. He walked up to the entrance, gave his name telepathically to the G.o.d-guard at the top of the shaft, and went down the ladders until he'd reached his level. Another G.o.d pa.s.sed him there, its aura of energy just touching his skin and tingling it into small b.u.mps.

Shutting off the thoughts of his various brains from any probing mind that might be eavesdropping, he said to himself, Always, always they're near a man! You go out of your hut and there's a G.o.d, a big golden globe hanging in the air shoving its tentacles at you and reading your mind.

You come down the mine shaft and every hundred feet or so you see the yellow luminosity. Why can't they leave us alone! Why can't they stick to their temples, and exact their worship on Orbsday, instead of all week long, all day long, every day in the year!

He came to his work place, a dead-end tunnel. Jerran was there before him, as usual. Revel grinned at him. Jerran was a runty wisp of a man, with a face the color of old straw, and he had been Revel's friend since the day he came to the mine from distant Hakes Town by the sea. A wonderful drinking companion, Jerran, but he wouldn't brawl ... strange!

He was forever pulling Revel out of fights and trying to teach him serenity.

As Revel greeted him, he involuntarily glanced at the end of the tunnel.

There, behind a carefully casual erection of boulders, lay their secret cave. They'd broken into it the morning before, and after no more than a hasty glimpse of unknown wonders, and a check to see that no globes were in sight, they'd walled up the opening and begun to dig along the shaft's sides. Revel wasn't quite sure why he had followed Jerran's lead in keeping it secret, but the brain which had decided to do it must be the rebellious one. All secrets were taboo to the ruck, who were required to report all finds to the gentry or the G.o.d-guards.

Now a globe came drifting down the corridor, and Revel got quickly to work, prying coal from a vein with his pick. The thing pa.s.sed him, flicking his mind lightly with its own, and went on to the end of the tunnel. He watched it from the tail of his eye. Its glow brightened with interest; it shifted back and forth before the rampart of rocks.

They hadn't kept a tight enough check on their excitement yesterday! The globes could sense emotions long after the man who'd had them left a spot, and if the emotion were anger or grief or strong excitement, the globes could detect their residue as much as forty-eight hours later.

The thing floated back to them, briskly now, and ordered Revel telepathically to pull down some of the rocks at the end.

He eyed it coolly, his various brains walled with the protective screen that he had learned to erect between his thoughts and the outside world.

This screen was made of shallow ideas, humdrum speculations on prosaic things--the last woman he'd had, the good feeling he got from working this rich vein of coal after some days of poor luck, even (to make the G.o.d think it was hearing secret desires) a wish that he might taste the wine that the gentry drank. He could throw up the screen and forget it, using his core of brains for serious plans.

A dozen rocks displaced, he thought, and we're doomed. For not telling the G.o.ds about the cave, he and Jerran would be given to the squires for the next big hunt.

So, without much hope of living through the next minute, but believing it was the only thing he could do now, he shoved Jerran to one side, raised his pick and slammed it with all his might into the center of the small, gold, eight-tentacled sphere.

And Revel had killed a G.o.d!

The feel of the pick slashing through it told him that: it was like hitting an overripe melon. The globe recoiled, dragged itself off the pick, and sank toward the floor, wobbling and dripping yellow ooze, with its aura of energy fading quickly into air. Jerran said quietly, "No others in sight. We're lucky!" and began to make a hole in a pile of discarded rocks. "Help me hide it, Revel."

"You can't hide it," he said dully. "They're telepathic, after all. It must have signaled its consorts."

"They can't hear or send messages through rock," said Jerran, working away. Revel automatically started to help him.

"How do you know?"

"We've proved it."

Revel heard the phrase, wondered who "we" might be; but so much had happened in the last seconds that he did not question Jerran. He couldn't absorb all the shattering facts. A man could not only touch a G.o.d, he could murder it! The G.o.ds were not all-powerful, for they could not perform telepathy if rock were in the way. Truly it was a morning of wonders. The world was falling around him.

He stared at the limp corpse of the globe. The tentacles were already shriveling up, the emanation of energy that surrounded the living orbs was gone. He bent, sniffed; no odor. He peered at it keenly, in the soft blue light of the mine's lanterns, then straightened.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

He spun on one heel, the pick arcing round to gut whoever was behind him. He had a glimpse of a short red beard and a popping walleye, and stopped his whirl by an instantaneous checking of his whole muscular system. The pick's point, still splattered with G.o.d's gore, was nudging his brother's belly.

"n.o.body could have halted such a swing but you, Revel," said Rack absently. His good eye, ice blue and sharp as a bone needle, was fixed on the dead globe. "What happened?"

"An accident," said Jerran. "The G.o.d interposed itself between your brother's pick and the coal."

"That's right," said Revel. He had been lying to his brother for years, but he never grew reconciled to it; still, Rack was a man with but one brain, and that one servile and obedient to every whim of the gentry, the priests, the G.o.ds. So he had to be lied to.

Rack brought his gaze to Revel's tense face. "I got in the way of your pick," he said heavily. "You have the keenest nerves, the strongest body in the mines. This was no accident."

Revel began to grow cold in the head and the bowels. If Rack was convinced that he'd slain the G.o.d on purpose, then he'd report him. The religion that held the world so tightly was greater than any family bonds. He looked up at Rack. The man was a giant towering four inches over Revel's six feet one, and sixty pounds heavier. Rack's eyes were blue and white, Revel's l.u.s.trous brown; the elder's hair and beard were flame-colored, the younger had a sleek chocolate-brown thatch with a hint of rich black in its sheen, and was clean-shaven.

I'd hate to kill you, big man, thought Revel, but if I must, to save my neck, I will.

Jerran thrust his pick under the flaccid corpse and tossed it with one quick motion into the hole. He piled rocks on it, as Revel stamped the yellow ichor out thin and stringy, spread rock dust and jetty coal fragments over it till no sign of the murder remained.