The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sons of Japheth, by Richard Wilson

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Title: The Sons of Japheth

Author: Richard Wilson

Release Date: June 13, 2022 [eBook #68305]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONS OF JAPHETH ***





                          THE SONS OF JAPHETH

                           By RICHARD WILSON

                         Illustrated by ENGLE

             _His duty was clear and simple: strafe Noah's
              ark and kill every human on it. The tricky
               part was making sure the animals lived!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Infinity, December 1956.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan happened to be spaceborne when the Earth
exploded. In that way he escaped the annihilation along with one other
man, revered old Dr. Garfield Gar, who was in the space station.

Roy had backed well off in preparation for a mach ten dive on Kabul,
which the enemy had lately taken over. He had one small omnibomb left
in his racks and Kabul had seemed to be about the right size. But then
the destruction of Earth changed his plans.

He watched, expressionless, as the planet exploded. He shrugged. There
was nothing to do now but go see Dr. Gar.

Roy's foescope clamored insistently and he tensed, thinking a
spaceborne enemy was on him, but it was only a piece of exploding Earth
stumbling by.

Dr. Gar was alone in the space station because all able-bodied men had
been called to fight World War V. The governments of Earth, in a rare
moment of conscience during the Short Truce, had agreed that Dr. Gar,
as the embodiment of all Earthly knowledge, should be protected from
harm.

Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan didn't receive as warm a reception from old
Dr. Gar as he might have, considering that they were the only two
people left. The old man was combing his white beard with his fingers
and didn't offer to shake hands.

"Well," said Roy as he defused his bomb and secured his single-seater
in the spacelock, "I guess it's all over."

"Scarcely a historic statement," Dr. Gar said, "but it describes the
situation."

"If you don't have anything for me to do I'd just as soon have a drink.
They usually let me have a stiff one after I complete a mission."

Dr. Gar examined the hard young pilot from under shaggy white eyebrows.
"I do have another mission for you but you can have a drink first.
Peach brandy is all that's left."

"That'll be fine," Roy said. "I was never particular."

"Then you're my man," Dr. Gar said, giving him a deep look, "because I
want you to go back in time and destroy humanity."

"Whatever you say." Roy's training showed. "But if I may comment,
wouldn't that be superfluous? Except for you and me the human race is
finished. We've achieved our objective." He spoke without irony.

"Never _my_ objective."

"I'm not a scholar and I mean no offense," Roy said, "but I believe it
was the co-ordinated spatial theory you announced back in '06 that made
it possible."

"Misapplication," Dr. Gar said wearily, not wanting to go into it
further for such an audience. Though, he thought, he'd never have
another. "Come into my study and have your brandy."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I still don't understand," Roy said later. He reached tentatively for
the bottle. When the old man made no objection he poured a second stiff
one.

"You want me to go back in time and wipe out all human life," Roy said.
"I assume you'll tell me when and where. All right. That would destroy
our ancestors and so we'd cease to exist, too. Wouldn't it be simpler
to kill ourselves now? That is, if you see no point to our further
existence."

Old Dr. Gar watched the other remnant of Earthly life twirl the brandy
in the goblet. He looked at the viewscreen. It showed a panorama of
rock dust and steam where Earth had been.

"You forget that we have annihilated everything," Dr. Gar said, gazing
pensively at the screen. "Mankind, the animals, plant life and the tiny
things that creep the earth or swim the waters. Your mission will be
more selective."

"Selective? How?"

"You'll destroy man, but the rest will live. They may evolve into
something better."

"If you say so, Doctor." Roy's devotion to duty was a well-worn path.
"Assuming you have the machine and I can operate it."

"The machine is merely an attachment. It will plug into the instrument
panel of your spacecraft. It operates automatically."

"Good enough. You always were a whiz at these things. How far back do I
go? And who do I kill?"

"I want you to strafe the Ark, exercising care not to hurt any of the
animals," said old Dr. Garfield Gar.

"Noah's Ark?" Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan asked. "You mean during the
Flood?"

"Yes, I've computed it exactly. You won't have to worry about getting
there at the wrong time."

"You mean after the forty days' rain, so I'll have good visibility.
Good-o." He agreed readily and he'd do as the doctor said, of course,
but he permitted a trace of skepticism in his inflection and a
searching look into his goblet.

"No, not the fortieth day," Dr. Gar said, "but in what we are told was
the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of
the month. The animals need dry land. I have it all figured out."

"I hope so. I mean I'm sure you have. You're the doctor, of course, but
wasn't there some doubt about the accuracy of the old Book? I didn't
know you were a fundamentalist."

"Am I not the repository of all human knowledge?" Dr. Gar asked. He was
not a bit angry with Roy Vanjan. "Am I not the last best hope? Has not
all else failed us?"

"Well, sure--"

"Did not the Noahic Covenant, under which human government was
established, fail? Has not Japhetic science been our undoing?"

Roy looked lost. "I'm no scholar, Doctor."

"Agreed. But perhaps you'll grant that I am?" He looked with supreme
calm at the young pilot. "I'm your new intelligence officer and you're
merely my striking arm. Help yourself to another brandy, son."

"Maybe I'd better not. I don't want to goof the mission."

"There's time. You'll want some sleep first."

"All right. I suppose I'll need a steady hand to murder Noah and the
rest."

"And Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife," said Dr. Gar, "and
the three wives of his sons with them, as it was written. Especially
Japheth. But not the animals, remember."

"I understand that. If you think the Ten Commandments don't apply.
Whichever one of them it was."

"They were an element of the Mosaic Covenant. It, too, failed. Perhaps
the Garic Covenant, if I may be so vain, will endure."

       *       *       *       *       *

The waters covered the Earth.

A moment ago, before he activated the attachment, Pilot Officer Roy
Vanjan's spacecraft had been plunging towards the vortex of a ragged
ball of dust and vapor, the destroyed Earth of World War V. Now, in the
Adamic Year 601 (or was it the Edenic?--he couldn't remember, though
Dr. Gar had let him study the Book), the waters stretched everywhere.
Ahead the sun glinted in reflection from something rising above the
surface. Ararat?

He made out the twin peaks. He throttled back to scarcely more than
mach one and flew over them, high. His second pass took him back along
his own vapor trail. This time he spotted the tiny surface craft making
for the solitary bit of land. He had to hand it to Dr. Gar. The old
boy's space-time grid had hit it right on the button.

Roy was too high to distinguish details but he imagined that Noah and
his family would be on deck, full of the wonder of Mount Ararat rising,
as promised, from the sea.

But there was another wonder--the vapor trails that stretched for miles
across the upper air. Did they, down there on the Ark, think them a
sign of the Lord? Roy smiled ironically. They were a sign of the lord
Gar and of his servant, Pilot Officer Vanjan, come to blast them into
eternity and change the future, to give the animals a chance.

Who would chronicle his role as the re-arranging angel, the unheavenly
host about to gather up in violence the drifting souls below? Who,
he wondered. Some simian scribe? Some unborn elephant prophet? An
insectate scholar destined to evolve from among the creeping things
that would inherit the Earth?

Or perhaps the written word would die unborn under the fiery hail of
his guns.

No matter. These questions and more had been anticipated by Dr. Gar.
Soon now, at the end of Roy's strafing run, it would be up to History
to begin assembling the answers.

He slowed to mach minus and sent out wings. He would have to dip close
to see if the entire Ark's complement was on deck. The job had to be
done right or Earth was kaput. Nothing personal, Noah, old boy.

There they were, on the starboard side of the top deck, well out from
under the pitch of the roof, craning their necks for a look at this
miracle in the sky where they had expected to see only a returning dove.

"Behold!" Roy cried out. "I bring you tidings! But not the tidings of
the dove. I am your lost raven returned--the raven of death! My tidings
are of the new future which your descendants will not know and so will
not doom."

The frightened upturned faces were far behind and he was talking to
himself.

"Hear me, Noah, for I am come to destroy you, and with you your seeds
of self-destruction. These are the tidings I bring from the future that
has ceased to exist because you existed--the future that will exist
once more when you cease to."

He heeled the spacecraft over and back. No more speeches, he told
himself, though he had studied the Book in fascination. He was a
killer, not a philosopher.

He would have to make his strafing run low. If he dived on the target
his bullets would go into the holds and kill the animals. He roared at
the Ark a few feet above the waves.

They were all together in a clump, the eight of them.

Farewell, Noah! he thought as his thumbs pressed on the death-dealing
button. Farewell, Noah and Noah's wife!

Farewell, Ham, and Ham's wife and unborn sons--farewell, Canaan, and
Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut!

Farewell, Shem! And unborn Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and
Aram!

And farewell, Japheth, father of sons of science! Farewell, Gomer, and
Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras!

Farewell, all tribes. Make way for the animal kingdom in the Garic
Covenant.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had made three passes and now he zoomed into the sky. He had
destroyed humanity and changed the future.

Or had he? He'd be dead, too, if he had, gone like the snap of a finger
with the last gasp from the Ark. He had killed his ancestors. He had
killed everybody's ancestors, but _he_ existed still. Where was the
paradox that Dr. Gar had overlooked?

The Ark had drifted closer to the shore. He circled it and counted the
lifeless bodies lying in red stains on the gopher wood of the deck.
Eight.

Then he noticed the change. The backs of his hands were hairier. His
shoes were binding him. When he kicked them off his agile toes curled
comfortably around the control pedals. He had a glimpse of a hairy,
flat-nosed face reflected in the instrument panel. It laughed and the
sound came out a simian yap.

But for all that he was still a sentient being. His control of the
spacecraft was as expert as before.

It hadn't worked.

_Do you hear, Dr. Gar?_ he thought. _It's a flop. I goofed the mission.
We're all dead, no matter what._

_I give you a new commandment, man who would be God: Thou shalt not
tamper with time._

He had changed the future and in the future he himself had been
changed, but not enough. Somewhere below in the hold of the Ark were
his ancestors who had evolved along a new path in the new future. The
evolution had been slower, perhaps, but it had been as sure, external
appearances notwithstanding. Somewhere in the far new future, he was
sure, there was a simian Dr. Gar looking down in solitude on the
remains of Earth.

The Ark had touched the land. The animals--his fellow creatures--were
beginning to go forth, two by two, onto the shore of Ararat.

His foescope set up a clamor. There in the sky was a new thing,
a spacecraft like his, yet unlike it. It looked deadlier, more
purposeful. Ignoring him, it was diving out of the unknowable future
to destroy its own past.

He watched in professional admiration as his fellow pilot screamed
unerringly for the Ark in sacrificial completion of the mission he
himself had failed to accomplish. Death to the animals, too--from an
animal pilot.

He knew then that Earth would not die. It might circle lifeless for
eons, waiting to welcome the foot--or paw, or tentacle--of others from
outside. But it would be there, intact and serene.

Even as the mountain-shattering explosion came and he himself ceased to
exist, he knew.

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