October 29, 2025 • 36 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Divinity by William Morrison. Bradley had one fear in his life.
He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was
willing to take any chance, coward though he was, even
if it meant that he had to become a god.
Bradley seemed to have escaped regeneration now he only had
(00:24):
death to worry about. Ten minutes before, he'd been tumbling
through the air head over heels, helpless and despairing. And
before that, he remembered how his heart had been in
his mouth as he crept down the corridor of the
speeding ship. He could hear Malevsky's voice coming faintly through
one of the walls, and he had been tempted to
run back, fearful of being shot down on the spot
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if he were caught. He had fought back the temptation
and kept on. No one had seen him as he
crept into the lifeboat. This is your one chance, he
told himself. You have to take it. If they get
you back to port, you're finished. Luck had been with him.
They were broadcasting the results of the Mars earth matches
(01:07):
at the time, and most of the crew were grouped
around the visors. He had picked the moment when news
came of a sensational upset, and for a minute or
two after the lifeboat blasted off, no one realized what
had happened. When the truth did penetrate, they had a
hard time swinging the ship around, and by then the lifeboat.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Was out of radar range. He was free.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
He had exulted wildly for the moment, until it struck
him that freedom and space might be a doubtful gift.
He would have to get to some civilized port, commence
the port authorities that he had been shipwrecked and somehow
separated from other crew members, and then lose himself quickly
in the crowd of people that he hoped would fill
the place. There would be risks, but he would take them.
(01:52):
It would be better than running out of air and
food in space. It had been the best possible plan,
and it had gone wrong, all wrong. He had been
caught before he knew it, in the gravity of a
planet he had overlooked. The lifeboat had torn apart under
the combined stresses of its forward momentum and its side
rockets blasting full force, and he had been hurled free
(02:14):
in a spacesuit, falling slowly at first then faster, faster, faster.
The automatic parachutes had suddenly sprung into operation when he
reached a critical speed, and he had slowed down and
stopped tumbling. He fell more gently, feet first, and when
he landed it was with a shock that jarred but
did no real damage. Slowly he picked himself up and
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fumbled at the air valve. Something in the intake tubes
had jammed under the shock of landing, and the air
was no longer circulating properly filled with the moisture of
his own breath had felt hot and clammy and clouded
the viewplates. If he had kept all his wits about him,
he would have tried to remember before he took a
chance whether the planet had an oxygen atmosphere, and whether
(02:59):
the the oxygen was of sufficient concentration to support human life.
Not that he had had any real choice, but it
would have been good to know as it was. He
turned the air valve automatically and listened nervously as the
stale air hissed out and the fresh air hissed in.
He took a deep breath. It didn't kill him. Instead,
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it sent his blood racing around with new energy. Slowly,
the moisture evaporated from his viewplates. Slowly he began to see.
He perceived that he was not alone. A group of
people stood in front of him, respectful, their own eyes
full of fear and wonder. Some one uttered a hoarse
cry and pointed at his helmet. The unclouding of the
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viewplates must have stricken them with awe. The air was
wonderful to breathe. He would have liked to remove his
helmet and fill his lungs with it unhampered, exposed his
face to its soft caress, expand his chest with the
constriction of the suit. But these people, they must have
seen him tumble down from the sky and land unhurt.
(04:04):
They carried food and flowers, and now they were kneeling
down to him as to a Suddenly he realized to
them he was a god. The thought of it made
him weak. To Malevsky and the ship's crew, he was
a criminal, a cheap chiseler and pickpocket, almost a murderer,
(04:25):
escaping credit for that crime only by grace of his
own good luck and his victim's thick skull. They had
felt such contempt for him that they hadn't even bothered
to guard him too carefully. They had thought him a
complete coward, without the courage to risk an escape, without
the intelligence to find the opportunities that might be offered
to him. They hadn't realized how terrified he was of
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the thing with which they threatened him. Regeneration, the giving
up of his old identity, not for him. They hadn't
realized that he preferred the risks of a dangerous escape
to the certainty of that. And here he was a god.
He lifted his hand without thinking, to wipe away the
perspiration that covered his forehead. But before the hand touched
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his helmet, he realized what he was doing and let
the hand drop again. To the people watching him, the
gesture must have seen one of double significance. It was
at once a sign of accepting their food and flowers
and their offer of good will, and at the same time,
in order to withdraw, they bowed and moved backwards away
from him. Behind him, they left their gifts. They seemed human,
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human enough for the features on the men's faces to
impress him as strong and resourceful, for him to recognize
that the women were attractive, and if they were human,
the food must be fit for human beings, whether it
was or wasn't. However, again he had no choice. He
waited until they were out of sight, and then stiffly
he removed his helmet and ate. The food tasted good,
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and with his helmet off, with the wind in his
face and the woods around him whispering in his ears,
it was a meal fit for the being they thought
him to be.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
He was a god. Possibly it was.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
The space suit which made him one, especially the gogglied helmet.
He could take no chance of becoming an ordinary mortal,
and that would mean he would have to wear the
space suit continually, or at least the helmet. That he
decided was what he would do that would leave his
body reasonably free and at the same time impressed them
with the fact that he was different from them. By
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manipulating the air valve, he would be able to make
the viewplates cloud and uncloud at will, thus giving dramatic
expression to his feelings. It would be a pleasant game
to play until he had learned something of their language.
It would be safer than trying to make things clear
to them with speech and gestures that they could not understand.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He wondered how long it would be before Malevski would
find the shattered lifeboat drifting in space, and then trace
its course and decide where he had landed. That would
be the end of his divinity. Meanwhile, until then, until then,
he was a god, unregenerated, permanently unregenerated. Holding his helmet,
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he threw back his head and laughed loud and long,
and wondered what his mother would have thought. For a
while he was being left alone. They were afraid of him,
of course, fearful of intruding with their merely mortal affairs
upon the meditations of so divine a being. Later, however,
curiosity and perhaps a desire to show him off to newcomers,
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might draw them back. In the interval, it would be
well to find out what sort of place this was
in which he had landed. He looked around him. There
were trees with sharp green branches, sharp green twigs, sharp
red leaves. He shuddered as he thought what would have
happened to him if he had fallen on the point
of a branch. The trees seemed rigid and unbending in
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the wind that caressed his face. There were no birds,
so that he could see small black objects bounded from
one branch to another, as if engaged in complicated games
of tag. He wondered if the games were as serious
as the one he had been playing with Malevsky with
himself as it there were no ground animals in sight.
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If any showed up later, they couldn't be too dangerous,
not with the natives living here in such apparent peace
and contentment. There probably wouldn't be anything that his pocket gun,
which he had taken the precaution to remove from the
lifeboat before that shattered, wouldn't be able to handle. Near
him was a strange spring or little river, or whatever
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you might call it. It broke from the ground, ran
along the hard, rocky surface for a dozen feet, and
then plunged underground again. There were other springs of a
similar nature scattered here and there, and now he realized
that their combined murmuring was the noise he'd mistaken on
first removing his helmet for the rustle of the wind
in the woods. He would have enough to drink, The
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natives would bring him food. What else could any reasonable
man want? It wasn't the kind of life he had
dreamed of. No Martian whiskey, no drugs, no night spots,
no big time gamblers, slapping him on the back and
calling him pal no brassy blonds, giving him the eye. Still,
it was better than the life he actually lived. Much
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better it would do, he would have to do. From
what he had seen of the natives. He liked them
and feared them. For all their mistaken faith in him.
They seemed to be no fools. How many times before
had men from some supposedly superior civilization dropped in upon
the people of a new world and made that first
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impression of divinity, only to have the original attitude of
worship by the natives give way to dissolution and contempt.
Who was that fellow they told about in the history books?
He had read as a kid Cortes way back on Earth,
when that planet itself had offered unexplored territory, and later
on it had happened on one of the moons of Jupiter,
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and on several planets outside the system. The explorers had
been gods until they had been found out. Then they
had been savage, murderers, plunderers, devils. It would be too
bad if you were found out. He was one against
them all. He would never be able to fight off
so many enemies more than that. He was a stranger here.
He needed friends. No, he mustn't be found out. Better,
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put on your helmet, dope, he told himself savagely. They'll
be coming back soon, and if they find you without it.
He put on his helmet, still muttering to himself. It
wouldn't make any difference if you were overheard. They didn't
know Earth language and would take his words for oracular utterances.
He could talk to himself all he wanted, and from
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the looks of things, there would be no one to
understand him. He hoped he didn't grow crazy and eccentric,
like those hermits who had been lost alone in space
for too many years. The helmet was the first nuisance.
There would be others too. He couldn't even talk, and
would have become his new natural manner, with a wine
in every word, a wine that came from being treated
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with contempt by police and fellow criminals alike. A god
had to speak with slow gravity, with dignity. A god
had to walk like a god. A god had endless
responsibilities here, it seemed. He thought again of his mother.
Ever since he could remember, it had been Georgie, wipe
your nose, and Georgie keep your fingers out of the cake,
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and Georgie, do this and don't do that. A fine
way to speak to a god. Even after he had
grown up, his mother had continued to treat him like
a baby. She had never got over examining his face
and ears and his fingernails to make sure that he
had cleaned them properly. He couldn't so much as comb
his hair to suit her. All through his aboardive attempt
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at college and later at a job, she had done
it for him, But she had been a lioness in
his defense later on, when he had given way to
that first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the
tail and get away with what he thought would be unnoticed,
petty cash. It had been her fault that the thing
had happened. Of course, she could have given him a
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decent amount of spending money instead of doling it out
to him from his own wages, as if she were
giving money for candy to a schoolboy. She could have
treated him more like the man he was supposed to be. Still,
he couldn't complain. She had stuck to him all the
way through whatever the charges against him. When that lug
of a traveling salesman had accused her Georgie of picking
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his pockets, and that female refugee from a TV studio
had charged poor, harmless Georgie was slugging her. It was
his mother who had stood up in court and denounced them,
and solemnly told judge and jury what a sweet, kind,
helplessly innocent lamb her Georgie was. It wasn't her fault
if no one had quite believed her. Now he was
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on his own, without any possibility of help from her,
and in what the ads called a responsible position that
she had never so much as dreamed he could fill. Unfortunately,
now that he had reached so exalt at a level,
there seemed to be few possibilities of promotion. There appeared
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only the chance, on the one hand, that the natives
would find him out and slaughter him, and on the
other that Malevsky would track him down and bring him
back to Earth for the punishment.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
He dreaded.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It was a good thing he had put on his helmet.
Not far away, a group of the natives was approaching,
laden with more food and flowers. It was larger than
the previous group. Evidently, as he had anticipated, they were
showing him off to newcomers. He came to a stately
hall and waited for them to approach. He could see
the surprise on their faces as they noted his change
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of costume, and he watched nervously as they stopped to
whisper among themselves. It would be too bad for him
if they didn't like it, but they didn't seem to mind.
One of them, a very impressive old man with green
hair flecked with red, stepped in in front of the
others and made a speech, A melodious speech full of
liquid sounds that were neither quite vowels nor consonants. He
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didn't have the slightest idea of what the individual words meant,
but the significance of the speech as a whole was
clear enough. As it came to an end, they presented
him with more food and flowers. Bradley cleared his throat,
and then, with as deep and impressive a voice as
he could manage, she said, ladies and gentlemen, it gives
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me great pleasure to accept your nomination. I promise you that,
if elected, I shall keep none of my promises. It
was his first speech to them, and he enjoyed making
it so much that every time he saw them. During
the next few days, they settled down to coming twice
a day morning. At night, he made it again, with variations,
listing the wonderful things he would do for them if
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elected to office. After a while, as he began to
enjoy the ceremony for its own sake, he didn't mind
at all putting the helmet on for two short periods
every day. Having so little contact with him, he could
learn their language only very slowly. He could distinguish the
words for flowers from that for food, although he himself
could pronounce neither. He knew the names of a few plants,
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a few parts of the body, and he learned a
few names of people. The red, green haired old man
was as close as he could make. The sounds yan you.
He took the trouble to notice the prettiest girl was
oh Ya. At first, everything had been exceedingly peaceful, But
about a week after his arrival he couldn't be exactly
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sure how many days had passed because he hadn't kept count.
He learned of some of the dangers they faced. It
was while they were holding the morning ceremony that the
thing came out of the forest At first, he thought
that a tree had moved. It was green, with reddish blotches,
like clusters of needle leaves, and it seemed to ooze
forward toward them from among the trees. Ah Ya noticed
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it first and pointed and screamed. It was the size
of a tiger, thought Bradley, and might even be more dangerous.
He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the rapidly moving
creature through the goggles of his helmet. He was aware
of gleaming eyes, of two rows, of dull green teeth,
and of muscles that rippled under the green fur. Several
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of the men had little blowpipes through which they released
a shower of darts, but the darts bounced off the fur,
and the thing came on. Bradley fumbled for his gun
and almost dropped it in his excitement. When he finally
brought it up to aiming position, his hand was trembling
and his finger could hardly catch the trigger. The thing
leaped into the air at the old man Yanu. Just
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as the gun went off, the body vaporized first, leaving
for a fraction of a second the fierce head and
the powerful legs, apparently supporting themselves in the air. Then
part of the head went and the rest fell to
the ground, but sheer momentum carried the green, smoky vaporns
that had surrounded the old man. Then several of the girls,
and after them Bradley himself. They were all yelling, all
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but Bradley, who put away his gun and muttered to
himself in relief. And then the wind began to dissipate
the vapor, and on the ground there was left only
part of a head and six torn legs. They were
bowing to him and raising their voices high in thanks.
It was easy, thought Bradley. Really it was a cinch
to be a god. The beasts that were such great
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dangers to them were mere trifles to him. To him
with a gun loaded with a thousand thermal charges, each
of which was capable of blasting armor plate, the thing
wouldn't even have come close if he himself hadn't been
such a timid, cowardly fool. Put Malevsky in his place,
and the detective would have gotten the creature as it
came out of the trees. He wasn't Malevsky. It was
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a good thing for him that they couldn't know that.
Now his position was completely secure. Now he could relax
and enjoy his divine life. He didn't realize that a
much greater danger was yet to come. He found that
out after the evening ceremony. The group that came to
see him this time was bigger than ever. Evidently to
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honor him, they had dropped all other work. Yenu seemed
to have constituted himself Bradley's priest. He made a tremendously
long and rhapsodic sounding speech, but at the end there
was no donation of the usual food and flowers. Instead,
Yanyu backed away, all the others doing the same and
looking at Bradley as if expecting him to follow them.
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He followed in this manner, with his worshippers, walking respectfully backwards.
They arrived at what seemed to Bradley to be an
ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took
for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of
the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became
accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner.
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It was a weird looking head, also of wood. Then
it struck him the log of wood been the old god,
good enough to worship until he had come along and
showed them what a god could really do. Now it
had been contemptuously deposed and decapitated, the hut was a shrine.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It was all his.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
He had been promoted after all. The thought didn't please
him in the least. Suppose he failed them too, and
that was very possible, for he had no idea of
what miracles they expected of him. Then he would be deposed,
and he gagged at the thought, But he knew that
he had to finish it decapitated. But for the moment
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there was no thought of deposing him. The gifts they
offered were more lavish than ever, and in addition to
the food and flowers, there was something new, a jug
filled with a warm Swedish smelling liquid. He could get
the odor faintly through the intake valve of his helmet.
Later on, when his worshippers were gone and he had
its helmet off, he realized that it smelled up the
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entire hut. Couldn't be harmful. Nothing that they had offered
him so far was harmful. He took a sip and
sighed with content. This was one of the few things
he had been lacking. There was alcohol, and there were
flavors and essences that reminded him of the drinks he
had encountered on a dozen planets. But this was first
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class stuff, not diluted or adulterated with one thousand and
one synthetics that were put in to stretch a good
thing as far as it could go. Without realizing the danger,
he downed the entire contents of the jug.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
He felt good.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
He hadn't felt so good in years, not since his
mother had made him a special cake for his birthday
when he was let me see now, was it eight
or nine? No matter, it had been many years ago,
and the occasion had been notable for the fact that
she had let him drink some of the older people's punch,
maybe with a tiny bit of some alcoholic drink. He
felt very good. He picked up his helmet and put
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it on his head and stuck the stem of a
green flower rakishly through the exit valve of the helmet,
so that the flower seemed to dance every time he
exhaled and staggered out of his hut. He was fortunate
that it was dark. I'm drunk, he told himself. Never
been so drunk in my life, never felt so good. Mother,
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never felt so good. Malevski never felt so good. He
passed his shadowy figure in the dark and said, Hi,
a friend and worshiper. Ever see a god drunk before?
The figure bowed and kept its head lowered until he
had moved on. Drunk or sober, I'm still divine, he
said proudly, and he began to sing loudly and impressively,
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his voice orchestral in his own ears, within the confines
of his own helmet, all lives high, and she used
to be, and which she used to be. The words
came easily, and as it seemed naturally, to his lips.
After a while, however, he tired of them. After a while,
he found that his legs had tired of them. He
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sat down with a thump under a spiky tree and said, solemnly,
never felt so good in my life, never felt so happy.
It's a lie. I don't feel good. He didn't, not anymore.
He felt sick to his stomach. A touch of sober
thought had corroded the happiness of his intoxication, and he
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was sick and afraid. Today their god was a hero.
Today they would forgive him everything.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
But did they.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Actually prefer a drunken God. No drunkenness made a god human,
all too human. A drunken god was a weak god,
and his hold on his worshippers was their belief in
his strength. As he valued his life. He must get
drunk no more. He ain't gonna get drunk no more.
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He sang sadly and solemnly to himself, and finally he
fell asleep. He awoke with a hangover and a memory.
He was not one of those men who, when sober,
for get all they have done. When drunk, he remembered everything,
and he knew that he must put drunkenness away from him.
That morning they brought him only food and flowers, But
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in the evening ceremony they presented him once more with
a jug of liquor as an additional reward for his
destruction of the deadly beast. For the first time, Bradley
took an active part in the ceremony. He held up
the jug and set in grave tones, in the name
of Carrie Nation, I renounce THEE and all thy works.
Then he poured out the liquor and smashed the jug
(23:31):
on the ground. After that, the smashing of the jug
was part of the ceremony worshiping him. It left him
unhappy at first, but sober. After a while, the unhappiness disappeared,
but the soberness remained. From now on, he would act
as a god should act. The natives were not stupid.
He saw that very clearly. The first jugs they had
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offered him had been beautiful objects of excellent workmanship, But
when they perceived that the only use he had for
them was to break them, the quality deteriorated rapidly. Now
the jugs they brought him were crude things, indeed made
for the sole purpose of being smashed. He wondered how
many other tribes had tricked their god similarly. No, they
were not at all stupid. It struck him that with
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such advantages of civilization as he himself had it enjoyed,
they would have gone much further than he did. Two
weeks or so after he had come down from the
sky to be their god, he saw that they had
learned from him. One of the young men appeared during
the day wearing a wooden helmet. It was a helmet
obviously patterned after his own, although it had no glass
or plastic, and the openings in front of the eyes
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were left blank. The mythical earth hero Prometheus had brought
fire down from the skies. He had brought the helmet.
He was Bradley, the helmet Bringer. Even at that, he
had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought at first that
the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. He
learned better one day when a swarm of creatures like
flying lizards swept down out of a group of trees
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in a fierce attack. He had not known that such
creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he
realized how fortunate it was that they were not more numerous.
They had sharp teeth and sharper claws, and they tore
at his head with a ferocity that struck fear into
his heart. His gun was of less use than usual
against them. He could catch one or two, but the
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others moved too swiftly for him to aim. By this time,
others of the natives were wooden helmets, and he could
see how the sharp claws ripped splinter after splinter from them.
But the birds or lizards or whatever they were didn't
go unscathed. From a sort of skin bellow, several of
the natives blew a gray mist at them, and where
the mist made contact with the leather skin, the flying
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creatures seemed to be paralyzed in mid flight, and they
fell to the ground, where they were easily crushed to death.
By the time they had given up the fight and fled,
half a dozen of them were lying dead. They were
evidently useless for food because of the poison they contained.
He was surprised to see, however, that the natives still
had a use for them. They dragged the dead creatures
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into a field of growing crops and left them there
to rot into fertilize her But such incidents as this,
he found, were.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
To be rare.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
For the most part, the life here was peaceful, and
he found himself liking it more and more. Now without laughter,
He wondered again what his mother would have thought of him.
She would have been proud, he realized now that she
had done her best for him, and when everyone else
had given up hope for him, she had not. Perhaps
she had protected him too much, but she had early
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learned the need for protection. He could look at her
now in a new light. Her own father had died
early in life, and then her husband soon after. Her
son had been born. She had faced a tough fight
and had thought to spare him what she herself had
gone through too bad. She hadn't realized exactly what she
was doing. She was bringing him up with the ability,
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as the old epigram had it, to resist everything but temptation,
the temptation to steal that petty cash, to put his
hands into a drunk zone pocket and lift the man's wallet,
to lie to a pretty girl, to slug a helpless victim.
He had resisted none of them. He had resisted nothing
until that day. He poured the jugful of liquor on
the ground and smashed the jug itself. But could he
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blame his mother for all that? It had all been
his own fault, And it would be his own fault
if he failed to resist the new temptation that now
reared its pretty head.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Aoh ya.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
She had taken the coming to his hut shrine for
a private little ceremony of her own. You might almost
have thought that she had fallen in love with him
as an individual. He wondered whether she had been impressed
by his helmet. Did she take that to be his
actual head? No, of course not. They had made helmets
for themselves. Therefore, they knew that the thing he wore
was also a helmet. Perhaps they knew more about him
(27:47):
than he thought. But they continued to worship him, that
was the main thing, And aou Ya brought him every
day little presents, special flowers and food delicacies that argued
a personal affection. This was a danger that he recognized
from the beginning. Perhaps a god might fall in love
with a mortal without losing his godliness. Perhaps it had
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happened before. But however, the rest of the tribe might
react to the idea. Bradley had noticed one young man
who liked to stay near the girl, and he knew
that his rival wouldn't take kindly to it at all.
He might resent the god's behavior. And what happened when
these people didn't like the way a god behaved, Why
they struck his head off. The god might act first,
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of course, the young man wouldn't stand a chance against
him if he used his gun. In fact, Bradley could
blast the other man unobserved, make him disappear into vapor
without leaving any traces of how he died. That was murder.
But if a god couldn't get away with murder, what
sort of a.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
God was he? Pretty poor, cheap sort.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Indeed, yes, he could make his own rules, and he
could go on maintaining his godhood by little murders of
that sort and other deadly miracles until they hated him
more than they loved him. That would follow inevitably, And
then when they all hated him, not even his gun
would save him. Then you're a liar, he told himself fiercely.
(29:11):
That isn't the thing you're afraid of. Your weakness is
that you don't have a murderous nature. You could kill
one or two of them and get away with it,
and you'd be able to control yourself and kill no more.
That time you hit the man over the head. You
didn't intend to kill him either. You were more frightened
at first, anyway, by the thought that you might have
killed him than by the danger of being caught. You're
(29:31):
overjoyed when he lived. You hate to kill. That's your trouble.
You had a sense of responsibility all along, but it
never had a chance to develop. Now it's developed. You
feel responsible for these people, for oo Yah and the
rest of them. That's why you can't take advantage of them.
You've been posing as a rebel all your life, and
you're just a respectable, law abiding citizen at heart. He
(29:52):
winced at the thought his own society had never accepted
him at his own valuation. This one took him for
a much greater being than he took himself, and there
seemed to be nothing to do but to live up
to what he was expected to be. All the same,
ou Yah continued to be attempting Morsel, and sooner or
later he feared he would not be able to resist her.
And then the planet itself provided a diversion. They had
(30:16):
never seen such a thing and had no idea of
what it presaged. But he knew he had heard of
it on Earth and on Venus, and he had seen
it on other planets where the rock formations had not
yet settled down. A little hollow appeared first in the ground,
and then the hollow was pushed out and suddenly blown
into the air. Steam whistled through the newly made vent,
a shower of steam and hot dust and red hot
(30:38):
fragments of rock. Slowly the vent grew until the cloud
from the terrifying guys Are darkened the sky and spread
panic through the tribe. He knew what would happen next.
They were running around in terror, but not for one
moment was he himself in doubt. He donned his complete
spacesuit in order to impress.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Them the more.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Then stalked into the middle of them and said, pick
up all your possessions and follow me. They stared at him,
and he showed them what he meant by picking up
the belongings of one household in his gloved hands and
handing them to a waiting woman. Then, when they grasped
the idea and they were gathering all they owned, he
led them toward the safety of the trees. Five minutes
(31:19):
after they had set off, the lava began to flow
from the newborn volcano, scorching the ground for one hundred
yards around sparks, smoking and smoldering in the tree tops.
The head start he had given them was enough to
help them escape the resultant forest fire. All that day
they traveled until finally they came to a forest which
couldn't burn. And here they rested, and here they settled
(31:41):
down to build their lives anew. It must have been
a comfort to know that a god had led them
to safety and was helping them make the new start
and even more with his slightly superior knowledge, He showed
them how to fashion tools from stone, and how to
use these to build better huts. He taught them how
to make swords and other weapons, so that henceforth they
(32:02):
wouldn't be forced to rely for defense on poison alone.
He was the most industrious god since Vulcan, and in
helping them, he found that he had no time for
aou Ya. Came the day when the new village settled
down to its changed routine of life. The morning ceremony
before his new shrine had just been completed, but Bradley
(32:24):
was not satisfied. Something was wrong Yanyu's demeanor aoya's. With
a shock, Bradley realized what it was. From old Yanyu
down the line. None of the natives seemed to have
their original fear of him. There was respect, there was affection, certainly,
but the respect and affection were those to an older
brother rather than a god. And he was not displeased.
(32:48):
Being a god had been a wearying business. Being a
friend might be a great deal more pleasant. Yes, the
change was something to be happy about, but he had
little time to be happy for. That same morning, there
came what he had so long dreaded out of a clear,
shipless sky. Malevsky appeared strolling toward him as casually as
(33:09):
if he had been there all along, and said, nice
little ceremony you have here, Hello, Malevsky. Don't give me
the credit. They thought it up ingenius. Almost as ingenious
is the way they've used the help he gave them.
We had this tribe listed long ago as a very
capable one, far behind the rest of its system in development,
(33:31):
It's true, but only because it had started laid up
the evolutionary ladder. It had been doing very nicely on
its own, and we didn't want to interfere unless we
could give it some real help. I'll admit that I
had a few qualms at first when we trace you
down here and learned that you had landed among them.
But we've been observing you for the past day and
a half. Our spaceship landed beyond that burned out stretch
of ground, not too close to that volcano, and I'll
(33:53):
have to admit that, judging from your past record, I
didn't think you had it in you. I suppose that's
over with now, said Bradley. Yes, you're finished with being
a god. We don't believe in kidding the natives Bradley.
Bradley nodded ruefully. They don't seem to believe in it either.
I guess they found out I wasn't a god before
I did, but it didn't seem to matter to them.
(34:16):
He sighed and turned toward the new village. Do you
mind if I sort of well hold a farewell ceremony
before we go. They won't understand, but they'll feel better
than if I just go off. Malevsky shook his head firmly. No,
no time for that. I'll have to get out a
full report, and we're in a hurry to get off.
Any word you'd like to have sent out to your mother,
(34:36):
Bradley before we blast? Bradley looked back again, and his
shoulders came up more firmly. He'd taught his people here
and led them, but he'd learned a few things himself,
and he'd found he could take what was necessary. He'd
found that the easiest way wasn't always the best, that
getting drunk was no way out, and that real friendship
and respect meant more than the words big shots. Maybe
(34:59):
he'd learned and enough to be able to take regeneration
he managed to grin a little lopsidedly at Malevsky. Yeah,
you might send her a message. Tell her I'm fine,
and I've learned to wipe my own nose. I think
she'll be glad to hear that. She will, Levsky told him,
when she hears that your provisional governor of this planet,
she'll even believe it. Provisional Governor. Bradley stood with his
(35:23):
mouth open, staring. He shook his head. But what about regeneration,
Malevsky laughed. You're appointed on the basis of my first
report about what you're doing here, Bradley, he answered, As
to regeneration, well, you think about it while we bring
in the supplies we're supposed to leave for you before
we blast out of here. He went off chuckling towards
(35:44):
the ship, leaving Bradley to puzzle over it. Then, just
as Malevsky disappeared, he understood, damn it, they tricked him.
They'd left him here where he had to be a
god and assumed the responsibilities of a god, and through
that he'd been regenerated, complet lately, thoroughly regenerated. Suddenly he
was chuckling as hard as Malevsky, as he swung around
(36:06):
and went back to face his former worshippers, and they
were coming forward to meet him, their friendly smiles matching
his own. And of Divinity by William Morrison
Divinity by William Morrison. Bradley had one fear in his life.
He had to escape regeneration. To do that, he was
willing to take any chance, coward though he was, even
if it meant that he had to become a god.
Bradley seemed to have escaped regeneration now he only had
(00:24):
death to worry about. Ten minutes before, he'd been tumbling
through the air head over heels, helpless and despairing. And
before that, he remembered how his heart had been in
his mouth as he crept down the corridor of the
speeding ship. He could hear Malevsky's voice coming faintly through
one of the walls, and he had been tempted to
run back, fearful of being shot down on the spot
(00:47):
if he were caught. He had fought back the temptation
and kept on. No one had seen him as he
crept into the lifeboat. This is your one chance, he
told himself. You have to take it. If they get
you back to port, you're finished. Luck had been with him.
They were broadcasting the results of the Mars earth matches
(01:07):
at the time, and most of the crew were grouped
around the visors. He had picked the moment when news
came of a sensational upset, and for a minute or
two after the lifeboat blasted off, no one realized what
had happened. When the truth did penetrate, they had a
hard time swinging the ship around, and by then the lifeboat.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Was out of radar range. He was free.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
He had exulted wildly for the moment, until it struck
him that freedom and space might be a doubtful gift.
He would have to get to some civilized port, commence
the port authorities that he had been shipwrecked and somehow
separated from other crew members, and then lose himself quickly
in the crowd of people that he hoped would fill
the place. There would be risks, but he would take them.
(01:52):
It would be better than running out of air and
food in space. It had been the best possible plan,
and it had gone wrong, all wrong. He had been
caught before he knew it, in the gravity of a
planet he had overlooked. The lifeboat had torn apart under
the combined stresses of its forward momentum and its side
rockets blasting full force, and he had been hurled free
(02:14):
in a spacesuit, falling slowly at first then faster, faster, faster.
The automatic parachutes had suddenly sprung into operation when he
reached a critical speed, and he had slowed down and
stopped tumbling. He fell more gently, feet first, and when
he landed it was with a shock that jarred but
did no real damage. Slowly he picked himself up and
(02:38):
fumbled at the air valve. Something in the intake tubes
had jammed under the shock of landing, and the air
was no longer circulating properly filled with the moisture of
his own breath had felt hot and clammy and clouded
the viewplates. If he had kept all his wits about him,
he would have tried to remember before he took a
chance whether the planet had an oxygen atmosphere, and whether
(02:59):
the the oxygen was of sufficient concentration to support human life.
Not that he had had any real choice, but it
would have been good to know as it was. He
turned the air valve automatically and listened nervously as the
stale air hissed out and the fresh air hissed in.
He took a deep breath. It didn't kill him. Instead,
(03:20):
it sent his blood racing around with new energy. Slowly,
the moisture evaporated from his viewplates. Slowly he began to see.
He perceived that he was not alone. A group of
people stood in front of him, respectful, their own eyes
full of fear and wonder. Some one uttered a hoarse
cry and pointed at his helmet. The unclouding of the
(03:43):
viewplates must have stricken them with awe. The air was
wonderful to breathe. He would have liked to remove his
helmet and fill his lungs with it unhampered, exposed his
face to its soft caress, expand his chest with the
constriction of the suit. But these people, they must have
seen him tumble down from the sky and land unhurt.
(04:04):
They carried food and flowers, and now they were kneeling
down to him as to a Suddenly he realized to
them he was a god. The thought of it made
him weak. To Malevsky and the ship's crew, he was
a criminal, a cheap chiseler and pickpocket, almost a murderer,
(04:25):
escaping credit for that crime only by grace of his
own good luck and his victim's thick skull. They had
felt such contempt for him that they hadn't even bothered
to guard him too carefully. They had thought him a
complete coward, without the courage to risk an escape, without
the intelligence to find the opportunities that might be offered
to him. They hadn't realized how terrified he was of
(04:47):
the thing with which they threatened him. Regeneration, the giving
up of his old identity, not for him. They hadn't
realized that he preferred the risks of a dangerous escape
to the certainty of that. And here he was a god.
He lifted his hand without thinking, to wipe away the
perspiration that covered his forehead. But before the hand touched
(05:10):
his helmet, he realized what he was doing and let
the hand drop again. To the people watching him, the
gesture must have seen one of double significance. It was
at once a sign of accepting their food and flowers
and their offer of good will, and at the same time,
in order to withdraw, they bowed and moved backwards away
from him. Behind him, they left their gifts. They seemed human,
(05:35):
human enough for the features on the men's faces to
impress him as strong and resourceful, for him to recognize
that the women were attractive, and if they were human,
the food must be fit for human beings, whether it
was or wasn't. However, again he had no choice. He
waited until they were out of sight, and then stiffly
he removed his helmet and ate. The food tasted good,
(05:58):
and with his helmet off, with the wind in his
face and the woods around him whispering in his ears,
it was a meal fit for the being they thought
him to be.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
He was a god. Possibly it was.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
The space suit which made him one, especially the gogglied helmet.
He could take no chance of becoming an ordinary mortal,
and that would mean he would have to wear the
space suit continually, or at least the helmet. That he
decided was what he would do that would leave his
body reasonably free and at the same time impressed them
with the fact that he was different from them. By
(06:33):
manipulating the air valve, he would be able to make
the viewplates cloud and uncloud at will, thus giving dramatic
expression to his feelings. It would be a pleasant game
to play until he had learned something of their language.
It would be safer than trying to make things clear
to them with speech and gestures that they could not understand.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He wondered how long it would be before Malevski would
find the shattered lifeboat drifting in space, and then trace
its course and decide where he had landed. That would
be the end of his divinity. Meanwhile, until then, until then,
he was a god, unregenerated, permanently unregenerated. Holding his helmet,
(07:11):
he threw back his head and laughed loud and long,
and wondered what his mother would have thought. For a
while he was being left alone. They were afraid of him,
of course, fearful of intruding with their merely mortal affairs
upon the meditations of so divine a being. Later, however,
curiosity and perhaps a desire to show him off to newcomers,
(07:32):
might draw them back. In the interval, it would be
well to find out what sort of place this was
in which he had landed. He looked around him. There
were trees with sharp green branches, sharp green twigs, sharp
red leaves. He shuddered as he thought what would have
happened to him if he had fallen on the point
of a branch. The trees seemed rigid and unbending in
(07:53):
the wind that caressed his face. There were no birds,
so that he could see small black objects bounded from
one branch to another, as if engaged in complicated games
of tag. He wondered if the games were as serious
as the one he had been playing with Malevsky with
himself as it there were no ground animals in sight.
(08:14):
If any showed up later, they couldn't be too dangerous,
not with the natives living here in such apparent peace
and contentment. There probably wouldn't be anything that his pocket gun,
which he had taken the precaution to remove from the
lifeboat before that shattered, wouldn't be able to handle. Near
him was a strange spring or little river, or whatever
(08:35):
you might call it. It broke from the ground, ran
along the hard, rocky surface for a dozen feet, and
then plunged underground again. There were other springs of a
similar nature scattered here and there, and now he realized
that their combined murmuring was the noise he'd mistaken on
first removing his helmet for the rustle of the wind
in the woods. He would have enough to drink, The
(08:56):
natives would bring him food. What else could any reasonable
man want? It wasn't the kind of life he had
dreamed of. No Martian whiskey, no drugs, no night spots,
no big time gamblers, slapping him on the back and
calling him pal no brassy blonds, giving him the eye. Still,
it was better than the life he actually lived. Much
(09:18):
better it would do, he would have to do. From
what he had seen of the natives. He liked them
and feared them. For all their mistaken faith in him.
They seemed to be no fools. How many times before
had men from some supposedly superior civilization dropped in upon
the people of a new world and made that first
(09:39):
impression of divinity, only to have the original attitude of
worship by the natives give way to dissolution and contempt.
Who was that fellow they told about in the history books?
He had read as a kid Cortes way back on Earth,
when that planet itself had offered unexplored territory, and later
on it had happened on one of the moons of Jupiter,
(10:00):
and on several planets outside the system. The explorers had
been gods until they had been found out. Then they
had been savage, murderers, plunderers, devils. It would be too
bad if you were found out. He was one against
them all. He would never be able to fight off
so many enemies more than that. He was a stranger here.
He needed friends. No, he mustn't be found out. Better,
(10:23):
put on your helmet, dope, he told himself savagely. They'll
be coming back soon, and if they find you without it.
He put on his helmet, still muttering to himself. It
wouldn't make any difference if you were overheard. They didn't
know Earth language and would take his words for oracular utterances.
He could talk to himself all he wanted, and from
(10:43):
the looks of things, there would be no one to
understand him. He hoped he didn't grow crazy and eccentric,
like those hermits who had been lost alone in space
for too many years. The helmet was the first nuisance.
There would be others too. He couldn't even talk, and
would have become his new natural manner, with a wine
in every word, a wine that came from being treated
(11:04):
with contempt by police and fellow criminals alike. A god
had to speak with slow gravity, with dignity. A god
had to walk like a god. A god had endless
responsibilities here, it seemed. He thought again of his mother.
Ever since he could remember, it had been Georgie, wipe
your nose, and Georgie keep your fingers out of the cake,
(11:26):
and Georgie, do this and don't do that. A fine
way to speak to a god. Even after he had
grown up, his mother had continued to treat him like
a baby. She had never got over examining his face
and ears and his fingernails to make sure that he
had cleaned them properly. He couldn't so much as comb
his hair to suit her. All through his aboardive attempt
(11:46):
at college and later at a job, she had done
it for him, But she had been a lioness in
his defense later on, when he had given way to
that first irresistible impulse to dip his fingers in the
tail and get away with what he thought would be unnoticed,
petty cash. It had been her fault that the thing
had happened. Of course, she could have given him a
(12:06):
decent amount of spending money instead of doling it out
to him from his own wages, as if she were
giving money for candy to a schoolboy. She could have
treated him more like the man he was supposed to be. Still,
he couldn't complain. She had stuck to him all the
way through whatever the charges against him. When that lug
of a traveling salesman had accused her Georgie of picking
(12:29):
his pockets, and that female refugee from a TV studio
had charged poor, harmless Georgie was slugging her. It was
his mother who had stood up in court and denounced them,
and solemnly told judge and jury what a sweet, kind,
helplessly innocent lamb her Georgie was. It wasn't her fault
if no one had quite believed her. Now he was
(12:50):
on his own, without any possibility of help from her,
and in what the ads called a responsible position that
she had never so much as dreamed he could fill. Unfortunately,
now that he had reached so exalt at a level,
there seemed to be few possibilities of promotion. There appeared
(13:11):
only the chance, on the one hand, that the natives
would find him out and slaughter him, and on the
other that Malevsky would track him down and bring him
back to Earth for the punishment.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
He dreaded.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It was a good thing he had put on his helmet.
Not far away, a group of the natives was approaching,
laden with more food and flowers. It was larger than
the previous group. Evidently, as he had anticipated, they were
showing him off to newcomers. He came to a stately
hall and waited for them to approach. He could see
the surprise on their faces as they noted his change
(13:44):
of costume, and he watched nervously as they stopped to
whisper among themselves. It would be too bad for him
if they didn't like it, but they didn't seem to mind.
One of them, a very impressive old man with green
hair flecked with red, stepped in in front of the
others and made a speech, A melodious speech full of
liquid sounds that were neither quite vowels nor consonants. He
(14:07):
didn't have the slightest idea of what the individual words meant,
but the significance of the speech as a whole was
clear enough. As it came to an end, they presented
him with more food and flowers. Bradley cleared his throat,
and then, with as deep and impressive a voice as
he could manage, she said, ladies and gentlemen, it gives
(14:29):
me great pleasure to accept your nomination. I promise you that,
if elected, I shall keep none of my promises. It
was his first speech to them, and he enjoyed making
it so much that every time he saw them. During
the next few days, they settled down to coming twice
a day morning. At night, he made it again, with variations,
listing the wonderful things he would do for them if
(14:51):
elected to office. After a while, as he began to
enjoy the ceremony for its own sake, he didn't mind
at all putting the helmet on for two short periods
every day. Having so little contact with him, he could
learn their language only very slowly. He could distinguish the
words for flowers from that for food, although he himself
could pronounce neither. He knew the names of a few plants,
(15:15):
a few parts of the body, and he learned a
few names of people. The red, green haired old man
was as close as he could make. The sounds yan you.
He took the trouble to notice the prettiest girl was
oh Ya. At first, everything had been exceedingly peaceful, But
about a week after his arrival he couldn't be exactly
(15:37):
sure how many days had passed because he hadn't kept count.
He learned of some of the dangers they faced. It
was while they were holding the morning ceremony that the
thing came out of the forest At first, he thought
that a tree had moved. It was green, with reddish blotches,
like clusters of needle leaves, and it seemed to ooze
forward toward them from among the trees. Ah Ya noticed
(15:59):
it first and pointed and screamed. It was the size
of a tiger, thought Bradley, and might even be more dangerous.
He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the rapidly moving
creature through the goggles of his helmet. He was aware
of gleaming eyes, of two rows, of dull green teeth,
and of muscles that rippled under the green fur. Several
(16:20):
of the men had little blowpipes through which they released
a shower of darts, but the darts bounced off the fur,
and the thing came on. Bradley fumbled for his gun
and almost dropped it in his excitement. When he finally
brought it up to aiming position, his hand was trembling
and his finger could hardly catch the trigger. The thing
leaped into the air at the old man Yanu. Just
(16:42):
as the gun went off, the body vaporized first, leaving
for a fraction of a second the fierce head and
the powerful legs, apparently supporting themselves in the air. Then
part of the head went and the rest fell to
the ground, but sheer momentum carried the green, smoky vaporns
that had surrounded the old man. Then several of the girls,
and after them Bradley himself. They were all yelling, all
(17:03):
but Bradley, who put away his gun and muttered to
himself in relief. And then the wind began to dissipate
the vapor, and on the ground there was left only
part of a head and six torn legs. They were
bowing to him and raising their voices high in thanks.
It was easy, thought Bradley. Really it was a cinch
to be a god. The beasts that were such great
(17:24):
dangers to them were mere trifles to him. To him
with a gun loaded with a thousand thermal charges, each
of which was capable of blasting armor plate, the thing
wouldn't even have come close if he himself hadn't been
such a timid, cowardly fool. Put Malevsky in his place,
and the detective would have gotten the creature as it
came out of the trees. He wasn't Malevsky. It was
(17:47):
a good thing for him that they couldn't know that.
Now his position was completely secure. Now he could relax
and enjoy his divine life. He didn't realize that a
much greater danger was yet to come. He found that
out after the evening ceremony. The group that came to
see him this time was bigger than ever. Evidently to
(18:10):
honor him, they had dropped all other work. Yenu seemed
to have constituted himself Bradley's priest. He made a tremendously
long and rhapsodic sounding speech, but at the end there
was no donation of the usual food and flowers. Instead,
Yanyu backed away, all the others doing the same and
looking at Bradley as if expecting him to follow them.
(18:32):
He followed in this manner, with his worshippers, walking respectfully backwards.
They arrived at what seemed to Bradley to be an
ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took
for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of
the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became
accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner.
(18:52):
It was a weird looking head, also of wood. Then
it struck him the log of wood been the old god,
good enough to worship until he had come along and
showed them what a god could really do. Now it
had been contemptuously deposed and decapitated, the hut was a shrine.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It was all his.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
He had been promoted after all. The thought didn't please
him in the least. Suppose he failed them too, and
that was very possible, for he had no idea of
what miracles they expected of him. Then he would be deposed,
and he gagged at the thought, But he knew that
he had to finish it decapitated. But for the moment
(19:35):
there was no thought of deposing him. The gifts they
offered were more lavish than ever, and in addition to
the food and flowers, there was something new, a jug
filled with a warm Swedish smelling liquid. He could get
the odor faintly through the intake valve of his helmet.
Later on, when his worshippers were gone and he had
its helmet off, he realized that it smelled up the
(19:56):
entire hut. Couldn't be harmful. Nothing that they had offered
him so far was harmful. He took a sip and
sighed with content. This was one of the few things
he had been lacking. There was alcohol, and there were
flavors and essences that reminded him of the drinks he
had encountered on a dozen planets. But this was first
(20:17):
class stuff, not diluted or adulterated with one thousand and
one synthetics that were put in to stretch a good
thing as far as it could go. Without realizing the danger,
he downed the entire contents of the jug.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
He felt good.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
He hadn't felt so good in years, not since his
mother had made him a special cake for his birthday
when he was let me see now, was it eight
or nine? No matter, it had been many years ago,
and the occasion had been notable for the fact that
she had let him drink some of the older people's punch,
maybe with a tiny bit of some alcoholic drink. He
felt very good. He picked up his helmet and put
(20:53):
it on his head and stuck the stem of a
green flower rakishly through the exit valve of the helmet,
so that the flower seemed to dance every time he
exhaled and staggered out of his hut. He was fortunate
that it was dark. I'm drunk, he told himself. Never
been so drunk in my life, never felt so good. Mother,
(21:14):
never felt so good. Malevski never felt so good. He
passed his shadowy figure in the dark and said, Hi,
a friend and worshiper. Ever see a god drunk before?
The figure bowed and kept its head lowered until he
had moved on. Drunk or sober, I'm still divine, he
said proudly, and he began to sing loudly and impressively,
(21:38):
his voice orchestral in his own ears, within the confines
of his own helmet, all lives high, and she used
to be, and which she used to be. The words
came easily, and as it seemed naturally, to his lips.
After a while, however, he tired of them. After a while,
he found that his legs had tired of them. He
(22:00):
sat down with a thump under a spiky tree and said, solemnly,
never felt so good in my life, never felt so happy.
It's a lie. I don't feel good. He didn't, not anymore.
He felt sick to his stomach. A touch of sober
thought had corroded the happiness of his intoxication, and he
(22:20):
was sick and afraid. Today their god was a hero.
Today they would forgive him everything.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
But did they.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Actually prefer a drunken God. No drunkenness made a god human,
all too human. A drunken god was a weak god,
and his hold on his worshippers was their belief in
his strength. As he valued his life. He must get
drunk no more. He ain't gonna get drunk no more.
(22:48):
He sang sadly and solemnly to himself, and finally he
fell asleep. He awoke with a hangover and a memory.
He was not one of those men who, when sober,
for get all they have done. When drunk, he remembered everything,
and he knew that he must put drunkenness away from him.
That morning they brought him only food and flowers, But
(23:09):
in the evening ceremony they presented him once more with
a jug of liquor as an additional reward for his
destruction of the deadly beast. For the first time, Bradley
took an active part in the ceremony. He held up
the jug and set in grave tones, in the name
of Carrie Nation, I renounce THEE and all thy works.
Then he poured out the liquor and smashed the jug
(23:31):
on the ground. After that, the smashing of the jug
was part of the ceremony worshiping him. It left him
unhappy at first, but sober. After a while, the unhappiness disappeared,
but the soberness remained. From now on, he would act
as a god should act. The natives were not stupid.
He saw that very clearly. The first jugs they had
(23:53):
offered him had been beautiful objects of excellent workmanship, But
when they perceived that the only use he had for
them was to break them, the quality deteriorated rapidly. Now
the jugs they brought him were crude things, indeed made
for the sole purpose of being smashed. He wondered how
many other tribes had tricked their god similarly. No, they
were not at all stupid. It struck him that with
(24:14):
such advantages of civilization as he himself had it enjoyed,
they would have gone much further than he did. Two
weeks or so after he had come down from the
sky to be their god, he saw that they had
learned from him. One of the young men appeared during
the day wearing a wooden helmet. It was a helmet
obviously patterned after his own, although it had no glass
or plastic, and the openings in front of the eyes
(24:35):
were left blank. The mythical earth hero Prometheus had brought
fire down from the skies. He had brought the helmet.
He was Bradley, the helmet Bringer. Even at that, he
had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought at first that
the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. He
learned better one day when a swarm of creatures like
flying lizards swept down out of a group of trees
(24:57):
in a fierce attack. He had not known that such
creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he
realized how fortunate it was that they were not more numerous.
They had sharp teeth and sharper claws, and they tore
at his head with a ferocity that struck fear into
his heart. His gun was of less use than usual
against them. He could catch one or two, but the
(25:18):
others moved too swiftly for him to aim. By this time,
others of the natives were wooden helmets, and he could
see how the sharp claws ripped splinter after splinter from them.
But the birds or lizards or whatever they were didn't
go unscathed. From a sort of skin bellow, several of
the natives blew a gray mist at them, and where
the mist made contact with the leather skin, the flying
(25:39):
creatures seemed to be paralyzed in mid flight, and they
fell to the ground, where they were easily crushed to death.
By the time they had given up the fight and fled,
half a dozen of them were lying dead. They were
evidently useless for food because of the poison they contained.
He was surprised to see, however, that the natives still
had a use for them. They dragged the dead creatures
(26:00):
into a field of growing crops and left them there
to rot into fertilize her But such incidents as this,
he found, were.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
To be rare.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
For the most part, the life here was peaceful, and
he found himself liking it more and more. Now without laughter,
He wondered again what his mother would have thought of him.
She would have been proud, he realized now that she
had done her best for him, and when everyone else
had given up hope for him, she had not. Perhaps
she had protected him too much, but she had early
(26:30):
learned the need for protection. He could look at her
now in a new light. Her own father had died
early in life, and then her husband soon after. Her
son had been born. She had faced a tough fight
and had thought to spare him what she herself had
gone through too bad. She hadn't realized exactly what she
was doing. She was bringing him up with the ability,
(26:51):
as the old epigram had it, to resist everything but temptation,
the temptation to steal that petty cash, to put his
hands into a drunk zone pocket and lift the man's wallet,
to lie to a pretty girl, to slug a helpless victim.
He had resisted none of them. He had resisted nothing
until that day. He poured the jugful of liquor on
the ground and smashed the jug itself. But could he
(27:14):
blame his mother for all that? It had all been
his own fault, And it would be his own fault
if he failed to resist the new temptation that now
reared its pretty head.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Aoh ya.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
She had taken the coming to his hut shrine for
a private little ceremony of her own. You might almost
have thought that she had fallen in love with him
as an individual. He wondered whether she had been impressed
by his helmet. Did she take that to be his
actual head? No, of course not. They had made helmets
for themselves. Therefore, they knew that the thing he wore
was also a helmet. Perhaps they knew more about him
(27:47):
than he thought. But they continued to worship him, that
was the main thing, And aou Ya brought him every
day little presents, special flowers and food delicacies that argued
a personal affection. This was a danger that he recognized
from the beginning. Perhaps a god might fall in love
with a mortal without losing his godliness. Perhaps it had
(28:10):
happened before. But however, the rest of the tribe might
react to the idea. Bradley had noticed one young man
who liked to stay near the girl, and he knew
that his rival wouldn't take kindly to it at all.
He might resent the god's behavior. And what happened when
these people didn't like the way a god behaved, Why
they struck his head off. The god might act first,
(28:31):
of course, the young man wouldn't stand a chance against
him if he used his gun. In fact, Bradley could
blast the other man unobserved, make him disappear into vapor
without leaving any traces of how he died. That was murder.
But if a god couldn't get away with murder, what
sort of a.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
God was he? Pretty poor, cheap sort.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Indeed, yes, he could make his own rules, and he
could go on maintaining his godhood by little murders of
that sort and other deadly miracles until they hated him
more than they loved him. That would follow inevitably, And
then when they all hated him, not even his gun
would save him. Then you're a liar, he told himself fiercely.
(29:11):
That isn't the thing you're afraid of. Your weakness is
that you don't have a murderous nature. You could kill
one or two of them and get away with it,
and you'd be able to control yourself and kill no more.
That time you hit the man over the head. You
didn't intend to kill him either. You were more frightened
at first, anyway, by the thought that you might have
killed him than by the danger of being caught. You're
(29:31):
overjoyed when he lived. You hate to kill. That's your trouble.
You had a sense of responsibility all along, but it
never had a chance to develop. Now it's developed. You
feel responsible for these people, for oo Yah and the
rest of them. That's why you can't take advantage of them.
You've been posing as a rebel all your life, and
you're just a respectable, law abiding citizen at heart. He
(29:52):
winced at the thought his own society had never accepted
him at his own valuation. This one took him for
a much greater being than he took himself, and there
seemed to be nothing to do but to live up
to what he was expected to be. All the same,
ou Yah continued to be attempting Morsel, and sooner or
later he feared he would not be able to resist her.
And then the planet itself provided a diversion. They had
(30:16):
never seen such a thing and had no idea of
what it presaged. But he knew he had heard of
it on Earth and on Venus, and he had seen
it on other planets where the rock formations had not
yet settled down. A little hollow appeared first in the ground,
and then the hollow was pushed out and suddenly blown
into the air. Steam whistled through the newly made vent,
a shower of steam and hot dust and red hot
(30:38):
fragments of rock. Slowly the vent grew until the cloud
from the terrifying guys Are darkened the sky and spread
panic through the tribe. He knew what would happen next.
They were running around in terror, but not for one
moment was he himself in doubt. He donned his complete
spacesuit in order to impress.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Them the more.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Then stalked into the middle of them and said, pick
up all your possessions and follow me. They stared at him,
and he showed them what he meant by picking up
the belongings of one household in his gloved hands and
handing them to a waiting woman. Then, when they grasped
the idea and they were gathering all they owned, he
led them toward the safety of the trees. Five minutes
(31:19):
after they had set off, the lava began to flow
from the newborn volcano, scorching the ground for one hundred
yards around sparks, smoking and smoldering in the tree tops.
The head start he had given them was enough to
help them escape the resultant forest fire. All that day
they traveled until finally they came to a forest which
couldn't burn. And here they rested, and here they settled
(31:41):
down to build their lives anew. It must have been
a comfort to know that a god had led them
to safety and was helping them make the new start
and even more with his slightly superior knowledge, He showed
them how to fashion tools from stone, and how to
use these to build better huts. He taught them how
to make swords and other weapons, so that henceforth they
(32:02):
wouldn't be forced to rely for defense on poison alone.
He was the most industrious god since Vulcan, and in
helping them, he found that he had no time for
aou Ya. Came the day when the new village settled
down to its changed routine of life. The morning ceremony
before his new shrine had just been completed, but Bradley
(32:24):
was not satisfied. Something was wrong Yanyu's demeanor aoya's. With
a shock, Bradley realized what it was. From old Yanyu
down the line. None of the natives seemed to have
their original fear of him. There was respect, there was affection, certainly,
but the respect and affection were those to an older
brother rather than a god. And he was not displeased.
(32:48):
Being a god had been a wearying business. Being a
friend might be a great deal more pleasant. Yes, the
change was something to be happy about, but he had
little time to be happy for. That same morning, there
came what he had so long dreaded out of a clear,
shipless sky. Malevsky appeared strolling toward him as casually as
(33:09):
if he had been there all along, and said, nice
little ceremony you have here, Hello, Malevsky. Don't give me
the credit. They thought it up ingenius. Almost as ingenious
is the way they've used the help he gave them.
We had this tribe listed long ago as a very
capable one, far behind the rest of its system in development,
(33:31):
It's true, but only because it had started laid up
the evolutionary ladder. It had been doing very nicely on
its own, and we didn't want to interfere unless we
could give it some real help. I'll admit that I
had a few qualms at first when we trace you
down here and learned that you had landed among them.
But we've been observing you for the past day and
a half. Our spaceship landed beyond that burned out stretch
of ground, not too close to that volcano, and I'll
(33:53):
have to admit that, judging from your past record, I
didn't think you had it in you. I suppose that's
over with now, said Bradley. Yes, you're finished with being
a god. We don't believe in kidding the natives Bradley.
Bradley nodded ruefully. They don't seem to believe in it either.
I guess they found out I wasn't a god before
I did, but it didn't seem to matter to them.
(34:16):
He sighed and turned toward the new village. Do you
mind if I sort of well hold a farewell ceremony
before we go. They won't understand, but they'll feel better
than if I just go off. Malevsky shook his head firmly. No,
no time for that. I'll have to get out a
full report, and we're in a hurry to get off.
Any word you'd like to have sent out to your mother,
(34:36):
Bradley before we blast? Bradley looked back again, and his
shoulders came up more firmly. He'd taught his people here
and led them, but he'd learned a few things himself,
and he'd found he could take what was necessary. He'd
found that the easiest way wasn't always the best, that
getting drunk was no way out, and that real friendship
and respect meant more than the words big shots. Maybe
(34:59):
he'd learned and enough to be able to take regeneration
he managed to grin a little lopsidedly at Malevsky. Yeah,
you might send her a message. Tell her I'm fine,
and I've learned to wipe my own nose. I think
she'll be glad to hear that. She will, Levsky told him,
when she hears that your provisional governor of this planet,
she'll even believe it. Provisional Governor. Bradley stood with his
(35:23):
mouth open, staring. He shook his head. But what about regeneration,
Malevsky laughed. You're appointed on the basis of my first
report about what you're doing here, Bradley, he answered, As
to regeneration, well, you think about it while we bring
in the supplies we're supposed to leave for you before
we blast out of here. He went off chuckling towards
(35:44):
the ship, leaving Bradley to puzzle over it. Then, just
as Malevsky disappeared, he understood, damn it, they tricked him.
They'd left him here where he had to be a
god and assumed the responsibilities of a god, and through
that he'd been regenerated, complet lately, thoroughly regenerated. Suddenly he
was chuckling as hard as Malevsky, as he swung around
(36:06):
and went back to face his former worshippers, and they
were coming forward to meet him, their friendly smiles matching
his own. And of Divinity by William Morrison
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