Doomsday Eve, Robert Moore Williams [hot novels to read .TXT] 📗

have other, and more important things, to do," John answered. His words were lofty but his tone was kind.

Zen heard the words but he filed mental reservations about accepting their meaning. Silently he wondered if these kids had all their marbles. Apparently they had not even learned about the birds and the bees.

"Anything else I can tell you?" John asked.

"You've already told me too much," Zen answered. "I'm afraid to ask you any more questions."

The toilet had no flush plumbing. After use, press the button, a sign above it said. Zen did just that. No sound of running water followed but the colonel had the dim impression that intensely bright light had flared for a moment. He did not have the courage to look and see what had happened.

In some ways, this toilet which disposed of its contents in a flash of light was more significant and possibly more productive of concern than Cuso's blooper or Cuso's lieutenant had been. If the new people found it convenient to disintegrate their sewage, rather than dispose of it by the conventional method, what else could they do?

Zen shook his head to indicate to himself how amazed he was. John thought he wanted more information and started to ask a question, which the colonel hastily interrupted. "Don't tell me any more. There are limits to what my liver and lights will stand."

"What have your liver and lights to do with this?"

"Nothing at all. That was only a figure of speech."

As they returned through the gallery, he saw that the bronze girl was still going through her rhythmic dance in time to the slow music. The sight of that perfectly formed nude body slowly swaying in the small room sent such a surge of excitement through Kurt Zen that he hastily turned his eyes away. If he was going to live in this place very long, they would have to make some new rules. How could any human being stay in bed alone when that beautiful bronze creature was going through her swaying dance?

"What is she doing, learning to be a strip-tease dancer?" he asked.

"Perfect muscular control. This is one of the exercises we all learn," John answered. "What's a strip-tease dancer?"

"Nothing you ever heard of," Zen answered. "But while she is developing her muscular control, what is she doing to the endocrinal system of every male in the place?"

"Not a thing," John said, astonished again.

Zen had grave doubts that the tall youth knew what he was talking about.

John selected a single book from the top of the double-decker bed, and anxiously inquired if there was anything more he could do to make the colonel comfortable for the night. Upon being told there was not, he departed with the book. Zen thought of the book benignly. If the tall youth was going to spend the night with Nedra, at least there would be a book between them.

He slid off his heavy pack and set the lieutenant's sub-machine gun where he could reach it readily. His counter told him there was no radioactivity present.

Books were in a niche in the stone wall behind the bed. The author of one caught his eye: Jal Jonner.

The name was enough to hold his attention. Jonner was known to have written books, but few had survived. Even the Library of Congress did not have them, but there was no Library of Congress in any sense of the word any more. When Washington had left the planet, the Library had gone with it.

Glancing at the introduction, Zen forgot all about his fatigue and where he was. One glance at the words and he knew he was in contact with the living waters of life itself.

INTRODUCTION

In the beginning, I am going to make an inaccurate statement. I am going to say that the reading of this book may open a new life for you. Now let me explain why this statement is inaccurate.

In the first place, it is inaccurate because this is not the start of your life. That took place millions of years ago—more millions of years than I care to mention here.

So your life did not start with the reading of these words.—Now as to the use of the word "new." This, also is inaccurate. To you, the ideas expressed here may seem novel and new. But they are not new in the sense that they have just been created, or even that I have created them. They were implicit in the formation of the first molecule of protoplasm that came into existence on this planet. They are, therefore, as old as life.

The pattern which you may, or may not follow, was laid down in the first molecule of protoplasm which appeared on this planet, as the Law of Growth.

However, there is no law which requires that one species on this planet, or even all combined species, the total life spectrum here, shall survive to grow to full stature. The possibility of growth is implicit in every form of life; it is latent, and capable of development, in every species. However, the species that fails to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered, if it fails to develop its potential, must inevitably give earth room to the species which is developing. In their day, the dinosaurs ruled the planet. They had their chance, but they failed to develop.

Where, now, are the dinosaurs?

The Law is—Grow or Die. THIS LAW ALSO APPLIES TO MAN.

This book may be regarded as a primer, a starting point of your adventure into the coming development of man. It is the first text book that you will receive. It is the beginning of the way.

How much progress you make upon the way, how well you master the law of growth, is, in large measure, up to you. You will receive assistance, sometimes without your knowledge, but it will not be the kind of assistance that will retard or weaken your development. The new people will not be helped—too much! Strength is required of them and strength is only achieved by overcoming obstacles.

The next upward step that the race takes—if it survives its own self-destructive impulses—will be of such a nature as to require the utmost in strength and courage from those who participate in it.

This step, it is fair to state, is in the direction of a higher development of consciousness.

Good luck—and God go with you.

Jal Jonner
The Big Sur
July 1971

Written in 1971, the book was now 49 years old, Zen decided after a rapid calculation. The war had started in 2009. The time was now 2020.

Eagerly, he turned to the first chapter. It seemed to him that his life was just beginning, that everything that had ever happened to him and all that he had ever done was in preparation for this moment, when life would begin.

After reading two pages, he reached the conclusion that, if this was a primer, the text that was to follow must be difficult indeed. The book started with mathematics that was twice as difficult as calculus. Trying to concentrate, he found the symbols blurring before his eyes. Then, as fatigue finally overwhelmed him, the whole page blurred and was gone. He was asleep.

But he wasn't really asleep. The body slept. But he was not the body. He was the consciousness that animated the body. This never slept.

He awakened at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

IX

Coming back to conscious awareness, Kurt Zen simultaneously realized that something which he had been experiencing, and which had been very important, faded out of his memory like a gray ghost sliding silently away into a pearl-colored mist.

Nedra was shaking him by the shoulder and was smiling down at him. "Wake up, sleepy head. You've been snoozing for eighteen hours. That ought to be enough even for a growing boy like you."

Her face was radiant and alive. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a cold shower and had rubbed her beautiful body with a rough towel to bring the blood close to the surface of the skin.

"You look wonderful," Zen muttered, remembering what John had hinted. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"

"A couple of hours."

"No more than that?"

"I needed no more."

"Mm?" Zen said. He started to add another word, "Alone?" but managed to catch the question before it was out of his mouth. He examined her thoughtfully. "You look very contented," he said, without adding that in his experience women who looked so contented had only one reason for it.

"Why shouldn't I look contented? After spending so much time in the wilderness, I'm back on the stairway to heaven."

"What's the wilderness?"

"The world down below." She swept her hand in a gesture that included the unseen ranges and the plains below.

"Ah, yes," he yawned himself to wakefulness. "I was reading the most fascinating book before I dropped off to sleep. Here. I'll show you."

The book was not on his blanket. It was not in the wall niche. Nor was it behind the bed. "Hey, it's gone," he said. His eyes went around the room. He discovered other things that were missing. "The lieutenant's gun! And my pack!"

"Perhaps you just dreamed you had been reading a book."

"I didn't dream the gun and the pack. I carried both of them in here."

"I can explain about them. They were taken."

"Hunh? Why?"

"Weapons are not permitted here. Your gun and your pack were both taken for this reason."

"Hunh?" A growl came unbidden into his voice. He put these items out of his mind with the resolve to speak to someone about them at a later time. Something more important had happened. What was it? A memory of his dream flicked through his mind but was gone before he could grasp it. A frown on his face, he said, "I know—" As he tried to speak, what he had intended to say slid out of his mind.

"You know what?" Nedra asked.

"Everything."

Her face showed surprise. "This is a great deal for one man to know. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Positive?"

"Hell, yes!"

An emotion that was like a curtain opening and closing slipped across her face. "Well, in that case, tell me things."

"I would, except I can't remember 'em."

Doubt came into the violet eyes. "What you need is some breakfast. Your blood sugar levels are too low. Breakfast will take care of that." Her voice was firm and sure.

"That's one thing I need," Zen said, his voice equally firm. "But there is one thing I don't need—an examination by a head shrinker."

"A what?"

"A psycho," he explained. "I call 'em head shrinkers because that is what they do. Oh, maybe I need such an examination but I have no intention of submitting to it."

Breakfast consisted of cornmeal mush, fried to a golden brown, and served with butter and honey. There was no coffee but he had long since learned to do without it. He ate ravenously. "I'm hungry right down to the marrow of my bones," he said. "Where does all this grub come from?"

"We get it," Nedra answered evasively.

"What do you do, raid the low country for supplies, like Cuso's men?"

"No, colonel, hardly that. We are not thieves." Her face showed displeasure.

"Well, where do you get it? I don't know how many of you are here, but if you have as many as a hundred, keeping this place supplied calls for some doing." He was fishing for information on the number of people hidden in this old mine.

"Actually, very little food is needed."

"How come, don't they eat?"

"Are you reading my mind?" the girl demanded. "If so, you might as well learn right now that this is not considered good manners here!" Momentarily, she was angry. "And besides, if you do it again, I'll close off my thoughts to you."

Zen, with a forkful of mush halfway to his mouth, was so surprised that he tried to speak and to swallow the mush at the same time, with the result that he choked. The inference back of her words opened up wide horizons of speculative thought. Was mind reading actually commonplace here?

"I'm sorry you choked," Nedra said. She pounded him on the back.

"Why don't you put me over your shoulder and burp me?" Zen complained. "Lay off with that pounding."

"Do you feel you really need burping?"

"Aw, shut up," Zen answered. If she thought he had read her mind, did this mean that she was actually capable of reading his thoughts? Could all of these people read his mind? Had the nude bronze girl going through the rhythmic exercises known what he was thinking about her. Zen felt himself coloring. It was one thing to have the normal libidinous impulses of the male but it was quite another thing to have every woman know what he was thinking about her.

"Colonel, I do believe you are blushing," Nedra said,