The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

“If I couldn’t move, I could talk. I said, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I spoke loud enough to wake Howardine up, but she didn’t stir during the whole parley. I figure she had been drugged, too, but worse man me.

“The stranger spoke in a deep voice, answering me in English.

” ‘I don’t have much time, so I won’t go into much detail. My name doesn’t matter. In any event, I couldn’t tell you because they might find you and unreel your memory.’

“I wondered what that meant, unreeling my memory. The whole business was beginning to look bizarre. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I wished I was.

‘ “If they should, they’ll know everything that is said and done here,’ the hombre said. ‘It’s like taking a movie of your mind. They can clip out what they don’t want you to remember, and you won’t. But if they should do that,I’ll talk to you again.’

“‘Who’s they?’ I said.

” ‘The people who restructured this planet and who resurrected you,’ he said. ‘Now, listen, and don’t talk until I’m finished.’

“You know me, Kid. I don’t take crap off nobody. But this guy spoke as if the whole world was a ranch he owned and I was just one of the hands. Anyway, what could I do?

” ‘They,’ he said, ‘live in the tower set in the middle of the north polar sea. You may have heard rumors about this. Some men actually did get through the mountains that surround the sea.’

“Right there I would have asked him if he was the one who left that long rope so they could get up the cliff and bored that tunnel for them. But I didn’t know about that story then.

“He continued, ‘But they did not get into the tower. One of their party, however, died when he fell off a mountain into the sea. He was allowed to be translated back into the Valley.’ ”

Tom paused. “He must have had some way of knowing this.

“The stranger continued, ‘But the others were not. They … never mind.’

“So,” Tom said, grinning, “he did not know everything about the Egyptians. What he didn’t know was that one of them escaped. Or, if he did, he wasn’t telling me, for some reason. I don’t think, however, he found out about it. Otherwise, he’d have never let him get away. Still. . . maybe he did.

“Anyway, the stranger said, ‘The swiftness of verbal communi­cation in the Valley is amazing I believe you call it the grapevine. The man who fell off the mountain told his story after he was translated, and it has spread throughout the Valley. You may speak. Have you heard the story?’

” ‘Not until now,’ I said.

” ‘Well, you will doubtless hear it in the future. You’ll be going up-River and will surely encounter it in one distorted form or another. Its essence is true.

” ‘Doubtless, you have wondered why you were raised from the dead and placed here?’

“I nodded, and he said, ‘My people, the Ethicals, have done this purely as a scientific experiment. They have put all of you here, mixed the races and nations from different times, solely to study your reactions. To record them and to classify them.

” ‘Then!’-and here his voice rose to a pitch of great indigna­tion-‘after they have subjected you to this experiment, after they have filled you with hope for an eternal life, they will close the project! You will die, forever! There will be no more resurrections for you! You will go down into dust, be dust forever!’

” ‘That seems almighty cruel,’ I said, forgetting he’d not given me permission to speak.

‘ “It is inhumanly cruel,’ he said. ‘They have the power to give you life everlasting! At least, it would last as long as your sun lasted. Longer even, since you could always be transported to another planet with a living sun.

‘ “But no! They won’t do that! They say that you do not deserve immortality!’

” “That’s downright unethical,’ I said. ‘In which case, how come they call themselves the Ethicals?’

‘ “That seemed to stop him for a moment. Then he said, ‘Because they think it would be unethical to permit such a miserable, unde­serving species to live forever.’