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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Violence breeds violence. A chain reaction. An ever widening circle of inevitable cause and effect. As an observer, in one of the small communities in a desert of ash left by a new wave of volcanic disturbance, Boyd Lassen could condemn it. But events pushed him into accepting the attitudes of mind that are its root cause. He is condemned and left for dead. He makes a fantastic journey in a resurrected earth-moving machine. Finally, he sets out with the nucleus of a new community to found his own colony. Leadership brings out the violence which is latent in himself.

eBook Publisher: Golden Apple, Wallasey, Published: UK, 1968
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2004

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [200 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [198 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [171 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [599 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [195 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [252 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [219 KB] , hiebook (KML) [449 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [238 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [160 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [199 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [238 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [257 KB]
Words: 59190
Reading time: 169-236 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

With a sour nod, Kelud Lassen settled back in his massive chair and thereafter looked straight down the centre of his crowded hall. At the far end of its thirty metres of trestle tables, benches and paraphernalia of the simple life, double leaf doors were folded back and he could see over a short hump-backed bridge to an empty roadway and a line of white painted cottages that flanked its farther side.

The curt signal triggered off an explosion of force out of his line of vision; but he ignored it, as if, by not seeing, he could disclaim responsibility.

Paul Santorin, a zealot for this chore, swung down his heavy whip on the bare back handily strung up to receive it. The massively-built owner of the broad spread of freckled flesh surprised himself and the three hundred odd witnesses of the execution by crying out once as the first blow fell.

It was a cry of anger. Involuntary release of pent-up stress after the bewildering day, when so many things had combined to confuse and disillusion him. Cry of a man who finds himself unexpectedly alone, without a grid of reference in the social scene.

Pain was explosive and bit down into his nerves; but it was also a release, a conferrer of freedom. It cancelled out his bond to this rule of law and any debt he might owe to the society which was, in this way, rejecting him. It was a traumatic moment of clarity and decision, a revelation of what he would do. Though this last was more theoretical than real, since whether there would be a future for him or not began to be a very moot point.

Santorin went eagerly to work and the crowd watched in silence as the giant, blond body slumped against its holding thongs and Boyd Lassen ceased to be an interested party to the wake.

Silence masked a variety of attitudes. For the average man, it was a clear case of someone being too clever for his own good. Although there had been almost religious awe at the extent of his knowledge and the progress of his reconstruction work, there was also the feeling that such power was over-facing. The ordinary-clever felt mediocre, diminished. There was a certain malicious satisfaction in seeing him overreach himself. A few friends were truly sorry, but even they felt bitter; because they were powerless to help and blamed themselves for not making a sacrificial try.

At the thirtieth stroke, Santorin stopped. Oil torches had been lit as the late September twilight was almost gone. Light shone in silvery streaks on his sweating forehead and glinted from black hair on his chest. He said nothing and looked at the high table. Outside, the far end of the bridge was in shadow. Kelud Lassen still avoided any direct look at his brother. He said, harshly, "Cut him down. Put him a kilometre outside the limit."

The voice was nasal, matter of fact. Kelud had disliked his brother for as long as he could remember. For him too, this was the pay-off in a long chain reaction of cause and effect. Nobody finds it easy to live with a genius. Not everyone has the power to put one to death; but where there is that power, allied to dislike, and the genius has no tact, he should watch his step.

For Kelud, it was irrelevant that the occasion for final settlement had involved the woman at his side. Since he had engineered it, knowing the clan law to be absolute on the point. It was not an infidelity. He did not even reflect that it could have been. She might well look white and sick now; but that was fear for her own skin. It would do her good to be frightened. He watched sombrely as Santorin threw down his whip and summoned other guards to help him.

Four men carried Boyd Lassen out. Subdued conversation started up. People left the walls to take prescribed places at the tables; two long arms running like the supports of a dolmen to the raised, high platform that filled the top of the room. Family by family, the man then his sons, then the wife then the daughters, in rank and precedence by well-established protocol. Only on the high table itself was the pattern broken, there Kelud Lassen had his wife beside him on his left and his son on his right. Next to his son, four members of the guard, picked men, his personal escort, balanced by four more on the other wing.

By sure instinct, society had organised itself in the knowledge that ritual was important for its own sake. Learned habits could be lost again as they had been lost once over all the world. Now, precedence rated high. Even precise patterns of speech which had been relearned from the old books. A rigid sex code; to ensure that energies were canalised in ways that would aid survival and not dissipated in a chaotic free-for-all.