Divinity - William Morrison

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Episode Transcript

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

(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 was out of radar range. He was free. He

(01:30):
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. It

(01:52):
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 in

(02:14):
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. He was a god. Possibly it was
the space suit which made him one, especially the gogglied helmet.
He could take no chance of becoming an ordinary mortal,

(06:18):
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
manipulating the air valve, he would be able to make
the viewplates cloud and uncloud at will, thus giving dramatic

(06:39):
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. Anyway.
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

(06:59):
be the end of his divinity. Meanwhile, until then, until then,
he was a god, unregenerated, permanently unregenerated. Holding his helmet,
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,

(07:20):
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,
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

(07:41):
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
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

(08:03):
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.
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,

(08:24):
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 a little river, or
whatever 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

(08:47):
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 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,

(09:07):
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 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.

(09:28):
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
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?

(09:50):
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,
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

(10:11):
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,
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

(10:33):
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
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.

(10:56):
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
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

(11:16):
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,
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

(11:38):
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
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

(11:58):
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
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,

(12:19):
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
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,

(12:39):
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
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,

(13:04):
now that he had reached so exalt at a level,
there seemed to be few possibilities of promotion. There appeared
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 he dreaded. It was
a good thing he had put on his helmet. Not

(13:24):
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 of costume,

(13:45):
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 didn't have the slightest idea

(14:09):
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 me great pleasure to accept

(14:31):
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 elected to office. After

(14:54):
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, a few parts of

(15:15):
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 sure how many days

(15:37):
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 it first

(16:00):
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 of the men

(16:21):
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 as the gun

(16:42):
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 but Bradley,

(17:04):
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 dangers to them were

(17:25):
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.

(17:45):
He wasn't Malevsky. It was 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

(18:06):
that came to see him this time was bigger than ever.
Evidently to 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

(18:28):
looking at Bradley as if expecting him to follow them.
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

(18:49):
accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner.
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

(19:11):
a shrine. It was all his. 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 there was no

(19:36):
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 entire hut. Couldn't be harmful.

(20:00):
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 class stuff, not diluted or adulterated

(20:20):
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. He felt good. 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

(20:41):
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 it on his head
and stuck the stem of a green flower rakishly through
the exit valve of the helmet, so that the flowers
seemed to dance every time he exhaled and staggered out

(21:03):
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, never felt so good.
Malevski never felt so good. He passed his shadowy figure
in the dark and said, Hi, a friend and worshiper.

(21:23):
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, his voice orchestral in
his own ears, within the confines of his own helmet,
all lives high, and she used to be, and which

(21:47):
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 sat down with
a thump under a spiky tree and said, solemnly, never
felt so good in my life, never felt so happy.

(22:08):
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
was sick and afraid. Today their god was a hero.
Today they would forgive him everything. But did they actually
prefer a drunken god. No drunkenness made a god human,

(22:32):
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.
He sang sadly and solemnly to himself, and finally he
fell asleep. He awoke with a hangover and a memory.

(22:57):
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
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

(23:18):
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
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,

(23:43):
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
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, quality deteriorated rapidly. Now the
jugs they brought him were crude things, indeed made for

(24:05):
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 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

(24:27):
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 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.

(24:48):
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 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

(25:10):
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 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.

(25:32):
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 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.

(25:55):
He was surprised to see, however, that the natives still
had a use for them. They dragged the dead creatures
into a field of growing crops and left them there
to rot in too fertilize her. But such incidents as this,
he found, were to be rare. For the most part,
the life here was peaceful, and he found himself liking
it more and more. Now without laughter. He wondered again

(26:16):
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 learned the
need for protection. He could look at her now in
a new light. Her own father had died early in life,

(26:37):
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, as the old epigram
had it, to resist everything but temptation, the temptation to
steal that petty cash, to put his hands into a

(26:59):
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 blame
his mother for all that? It had all been his
own fault, And it would be his own fault if

(27:20):
he failed to resist the new temptation that now reared
its pretty head. Aoh ya. 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.

(27:41):
They had made helmets for themselves. Therefore, they knew that
the thing he wore was also a helmet. Perhaps they
knew more about him 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

(28:04):
might fall in love with a mortal without losing his godliness.
Perhaps it had 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

(28:26):
god behaved, Why they struck his head off. The god
might act first, 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 god was he? Pretty poor,

(28:49):
cheap sort. 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

(29:09):
himself fiercely. 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

(29:30):
being caught. You're 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 oh 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.

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He 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 them the more. Then stalked
into the middle of them and said, pick up all

(31:00):
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 after
they had set off, the lava began to flow from

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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 down to

(31:42):
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 wouldn't be

(32:03):
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 was not satisfied.

(32:25):
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. Being

(32:48):
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.

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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