Conforden gave him a wry smile. “Well, Rayner, one doesn’t need to be a telepath to tell that you are not happy here on Dorrin.”
“Does that surprise you?” Jerome refused to return the smile. “Why should I be anything other than outraged?”
“We saved your life.”
“From one of your own kind. I’m not impressed.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re impressed or not,” Zednik put in, speaking with the kind of mildness often used by those who enjoy the exercise of authority. “The fact is that you’re here and you’ll just have to adapt—like everybody else.”
“No, Rayner made a legitimate point.” Conforden said. “The circumstances of his transfer were far from normal, and I—on behalf of the people of Dorrin—have to apologize. Prince Belzor is a renegade and has been disowned by all Dorrinians, but we still have a certain amount of responsibility for his actions.”
“And that’s another thing! I’m sick of all this gobbledegook, all the verbal white noise.” Jerome could hear his voice rising, but he felt no obligation to keep himself in check. “What the hell is going on here? You sit around and condemn this Belzor character, but what right have any of you to interfere with people’s lives on Earth? Who told you you could butt in?”
“We’re not alien beings,” Conforden said quietly. “You can see that for yourself. We’re from common stock. Nobody can say why our joint ancestors chose to put a colony on a world as uninhabitable as Dorrin. Perhaps in the beginning it was only a scientific research team—it was all too long ago for the evidence to have survived—but they did it. The peoples of Earth and Dorrin are brothers, and are mutually obligated to each other.”
Jerome sighed. “Perhaps I’m still under the influence of your drugs, but was that meant to be an explanation of why Belzor is roaming around my world murdering people?”
“I think you should show a little more respect,” Zednik said to Jerome, his tones no longer light. “You’ll have to learn to…
Conforden silenced him by raising a hand. “It’s all right, Mel—Rayner has been under a great deal of stress.” He returned his attention to Jerome. “You know that Dorrinians are bound by a very strict code of ethics?”
“That’s what Pitman kept telling me.”
“After a successful transfer takes place the Dorrinian improves the health of the Terran body by direct mental control of its biological processes. That is a simple procedure for us, and it allows the Dorrinian to get many useful years out of the body. Physical ageing has to continue, however, and inevitably there comes a time when the Terran body weakens and begins to die. At that stage, with the resources of our mind science available to him, and working at close range, the Dorrinian could easily force a transfer with another Terran who was young and healthy. The temptation must be considerable. Any Dorrinian who transfers to Earth has effective immortality within his grasp—but our ethic forbids any further transfers. The Dorrinian always dies with the host body.”
Not always,” Jerome said, almost to himself, as a curtain rolled back in his mind.
“As you say.” Conforden sounded like a man who had been personally shamed. “Prince Belzor has been living on Earth for more than two thousand of your years. He has committed many crimes against your people.”
Jerome was silent for a moment, “I was afraid of him.”
“You had every right to be. Over the centuries the Prince has developed his powers to an unprecedented level. Even the strongest Dorrinians dare not go against him alone.”
“In that case the smart thing would be to stay out of his way.”
Conforden lowered his gaze. “That is what we have always done. It was a cowardly policy, and a mistaken one, because in the beginning the Prince could have been quickly overcome by a determined effort on our part. But we were few in number and there was always so much work to be done. It was always easier to let the Prince go his own way…unmolested…through all his successive incarnations…
And now, to use one of your Terran metaphors, the chickens are coming home to roost. The Prince has begun seeking us out.”
“Why?” Jerome sensed he was nearing the edge of yet another conceptual precipice. “Why does he do that?”
Conforden raised his head, and his eyes locked with Jerome’s. “Because he fears his reign is coming to an end. When we arrive on Earth in force, thousands of us in a single migration, the Prince will be required to answer for all his crimes.”
The silence which descended on the room lasted perhaps twenty seconds, but for Jerome it seemed to go on a long time. He became aware of the muted breathing of the air supply system.
“May I presume,” he said, holding his voice steady, “that you’re going to expand on that?”
Conforden nodded. “We have no secrets here, Rayner. I can tell you that shortly before the Days of the Comet our ancestors had realized that extreme measures would be necessary to preserve the vital core of the Dorrinian culture. It was apparent that a huge proportion of the race was about to perish; therefore the ancients assembled four thousand of their most gifted individuals and devised a survival plan. The kalds of the Four Thousand were translated into an imperishable crystal matrix.
“I am a Dorrinian, but even I cannot fully comprehend the mind–matter interactions that were involved, so I can guess how difficult this concept must be for you. Telepathy is partly a physical process, involving the mental apportation of energies. Perhaps you can accept that if a personality can be impressed upon the molecular structure of a target brain, it can also be impressed on any other suitably complex structure. Let us say, for simplicity’s sake, that the kald of each of the Four Thousand was transmogrified to become a unique giant molecule.
“It was, of course, necessary for the Four Thousand to abandon their biological forms in the process—but they did not die. On the contrary, their kalds have been safely preserved for more than three millennia and are merely awaiting reincarnation.”
Conforden paused and looked solemnly at Jerome. “Are you with me thus far?”
“I think I may be moving ahead of you,” Jerome replied. The excessive heat of the room was unable to combat the coldness which had been growing in him since he had made the intuitive leap and had begun to understand why, since Biblical times, strangers had walked in secret amid the peoples of Earth.
“Possibly you are, but I’m obliged to make the historical facts clear to you,” Conforden said. “The Dorrinian word for the repository of the kalds of the Four Thousand is Thabbren, and that is how I shall refer to it. No Terran word could come near to expressing what the Thabbren means to Dorrinians. It is numinous beyond words, the ultimate sacred object, the soul of our race, the embodiment of our past and future. Any Dorrinian would unhesitatingly give his life to protect it—indeed the greatest honour to which a member of my race can aspire is that of becoming a Guardian. That is how we refer to them, simply as Guardians, because all else in our existence is subordinate to their single task.”
“Are you a Guardian?” Jerome said.
“I have that honour.”
“But there’s more to the job than just keeping guard over the Thabbren, isn’t there?” Jerome glanced at the other Terrans as he spoke. “There wouldn’t be much point in preserving it for ever in this petrified warren. Correct?”
“Perfectly correct,” Conforden said. “The Guardians were charged with the additional responsibility of getting the Thabbren to Earth.”
“Quite a responsibility.”
“As you say.” Conforden seemed unaware of the irony Jerome had employed. “Our lack of resources made it impossible for us to develop our own means of transporting the Thabbren across space. Instead, we began working undercover on Earth, placing Dorrinians in key positions, at first guiding Earth’s racial consciousness towards astronomy and the idea of exploring space, then helping steer your science and technology in the appropriate direction. We were working towards one all-important event—the dispatch of a manned ship to Mercury.”