The Essential Leigh Brackett by Leigh Brackett

Author:Leigh Brackett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library & Archives Canada

Her burning crest drooped as she shivered. "Scraps of our universe were hurled right through the walls of vibration that separate us from other space-time continua. Only a very little bit of ours survived.

"The bit of our universe in yours, vibrating at a different basic rate, makes a sort of bridge between us, by altering atomic speeds. Son has changed almost completely. Only a few of his atoms now vibrate in phase with your universe."

Ransome nodded. "And that alien vibration is destroying us. Can't you take it back?"

Aona shook her glowing head. "We could not possibly generate enough energy to draw it back." Her silvery, tilted eyes went to Son, and the terror in them stabbed him.

"I hear you," said Ransome softly. "Then there is a way."

Aona. whispered, "Yes."

All Son's being went out to her. And yet, some tiny scrap of his mind clung to Ransome's, as though to something he must not lose.

"I don't understand," he said slowly. "Years, age, time — they mean nothing."

"No." Ransome's grim dark head strained back in his helmet. His face was veined and glistening with sweat. "Think of it this way. You love Aona. She's beautiful — I can hear that in your mind. Suppose that now, while you looked at her, she were to wither and crumple and die — "

He broke off, as though fighting for strength. Not the pulsing strength of his mind, but the power of his body. When his thought came again, it was a whole lot weaker. "Look at your own body, Son. Think of it, now, growing weak and ugly and bent — "

He staggered up suddenly, his eyes like the last embers of a dying sun, fixed on nothingness.

"You're mankind's only hope, Son. Son. Remember the people who called you that. They were human. Remember. Son — of humanity."

Ransome's suit collapsed with a rush. Son shut his eyes.

"Son," he whispered. "His thought said I — " He couldn't phrase it clearly, but it meant coming from something, being a part of it, as he, already, was part of Aona.

And Aona whispered, "I feel it growing in your mind. Oh, Son — "

He could see the flowers around her feet now, the distant fires of some great sun. A strange tremor shook his body, a shifting and changing.

The Veil was thinner.

"Son, they're not your people any longer. You couldn't even understand."

"No. No, but I could feel." He turned abruptly. "There's something I have to do. Quickly."

He plunged off, rushing through the dissolving matter of his universe. Up, and into the ship he thought of as his, though he had left it long ago. He hated it, down here away from the sun.

Aona followed him, her feet like little white stars in the grass.

Things grew dimmer, more vague. Son had only to wait, to put off thinking until it was too late. But something drove him on. Presently he stood in the cabin of his ship, looking down at the still effigies. The people who had called him Son not so long ago.

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