The Sinners of Erspia

Then, through the viewscreen, he saw men drop their weapons and fall to their knees. Their hands were clasped together, their faces raised, their mouths working in anguished prayer.

He was seeing human beings turn from evil to good by the application of a piece of technology.

It would be easy to be cynical. Maybe Klystar was right.

He wondered how Histrina was getting on.

Father Gromund had raped her, had urinated all over her, had hit her full in the face with his fist, and now was selecting an instrument with which, just as an hors d'oeuvre , to cut off her right breast.

He let her see the knife, turning it so that the filtered sunlight gleamed on the blade, singing to it in a soft crooning voice, enjoying the look of stark terror on her bruised and bloody face.

Then the beam hit. His mind became full of confusion. The knife fell from his fingers and rang on the floor.

Histrina felt it too. It was like a pure white light shining through her brain, washing away every wicked thought, bringing back the innocence of her childhood. Her upbringing came back to her in full flood.

Feelings of benevolence filled her. Looking at the triumph of evil that surrounded her, she felt even greater horror, suffused with pity.

Father Gromund, too, was looking about him in stupefaction. His eyes boggled in disbelief as he beheld the mutilated corpse of poor Questra, realizing that he himself had been the jubilant perpetrator of her gruesome death. He threw himself at Histrina's bonds, freeing her and helping her to her feet.

He fell to his knees.

“My child, my child! What have I done? Oh, Ormazd!"

Snatching up the knife, he offered it to her handle first.

“Take your revenge on me! Plunge the knife into my heart!"

Histrina took it from him, but flung it aside. She too fell to her knees. “What have I done, Father? I have killed people! I have soiled my virtue! And I don't know why!"

Sobbing together, clutching one another, they both called piteously on Ormazd for forgiveness.

Histrina wore a simple white dress reaching to her ankles. A white flower was in her hair. On her face was a permanent look of sorrow.

She was looking down on Erspia-1 through the viewscreen. At first, when Laedo came for her, she had wanted to stay in Courhart. True, most of the people she had grown up with were dead, including her immediate family, but it was her home.

Laedo had dissuaded her. He felt it his duty to take her to Harkio, for treatment from his personal mentalist. Besides, she had been through enough, and life was going to be uncertain on Erspia-1 from now on.

He had done the best he could. He had taken the station up into space, choosing a midway elevation where the effects of the Ormazd beam would still be somewhat stronger than from its original height, and he had criss-crossed the planetoid, just as he had the village of Courhart, making sure that its influence would reach everywhere.

Then, when he judged the Ahrimanic influence had been counterbalanced, he had switched the beam off for good. The people of Erspia-1 were now free from artificial mental influence. They could work out their own attitudes, find their own consciences.

If there was such a thing as conscience.

Even then, it would take some time.

When he made his report to the authorities, they would feel it their duty to send help to the twelve Erspia worlds. That would present problems, quite apart from the considerable expense. He did not know, for instance how assistance could be rendered to the genetically altered fairies and gnomes of the split planetoid.

But there would be a pay-back, in the acquisition of Klystar technology, particularly the thought beams.

Which could, of course, be used for either good or ill, but mostly for ill. Perhaps the technique would be banned, buried, deemed too dangerous to human freedom.

“Are we going to Harkio now?” Histrina asked.

Laedo shook his heed. “Not straight away. I don't trust this heap of cobbled-together junk to get us there. We're going back to my cargo ship. I'm going to see if I can make a transductor."

Good and bad. That was the difference.

Laedo took his eyes off the human nest that was the Erspian worldlet. He thought of the great swirling Milky Way galaxy, fermenting with life.

“Ants,” he muttered. “He called us ants."

Ants. But there was a difference, after all. Klystar had drawn on human religious ideas in designing the two thought projectors. But he himself had no preference between the two, either for Ormazd or for Ahriman. No choice between good and evil—for him, neither existed. He was pure intellect, pure curiosity, an ethical nullity, oblivious of the impact his actions had on others.

Which in human terms, was one way of defining a psychopath.

An entire cosmic generation of sentient beings had arisen blind to the drama of Ormazd and Ahriman.