The Covenant by Anderson, Asimov, Sheckley, Leinster, Bloch

Book Details

“Time,” she said.

And so begins The Covenant, a virtuoso collaboration written by five masters of Science Fiction.

Five famous science-fiction authors pool their talents in this “round-robin” novelette that stretches man almost to the breaking point on the rack of Time and Space. Here is a rare pyrotechnic display of science fiction writing skills and styles.

From Norman Lobsenz, Editorial Director of Fantastic: In planning this event, we tried to choose five top s-f authors whose styles both of plotting and of writing are widely different. Then we commissioned artist Leo Summers to design a cover that had no seeming connection with anything. Then we tossed the cover to our writers and sounded the starting gun.

The result is more than an exciting and original story. It is a revelation into the way the minds of the writers tick. Poul Anderson, creating his bravura characters and situations; Isaac Asimov, grounding the conflict in a framework of theory-in-action; then Bob Sheckley ripping the fabric by going to the ends of the galaxy for complications; penultimately, Murray Leinster beginning the fusion of story strands with ideational adeptness; and finally Bob Bloch taking the wildly disheveled story and tying it up in a brilliant job of plot-resolution, down to the patly ironic last sentence.

The Covenant was published in the July, 1960 issue of Fantastic Science Fiction Stories. Part 1 was written by Poul Anderson (1926-2001) Part 2 was written by Isaac Asimov (d. 1992) Part 3 was written by Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) Part 4 was written by Murray Leinster (1896-1975) Part 5 was written by Robert Bloch (1917-1994)

The Covenant contains 5 illustrations.

Files:

1. covenant.epub

Excerpt: The Covenant

Part One

By Poul Anderson

“TIME,” she said. Ban stirred, uneasy in this dim and rustling air. From outside, he would not have thought The Oracles wide enough to hold as many rooms as now appeared to stretch, doorway beyond arched doorway, further than he could see. Or was this a single great many-vaulted chamber? He didn’t know. It was too dark to tell. Too many wings moved under the invisible ceiling. He wondered where the light came from, what little there was of it.

“I beg your pardon, prophetess?” His voice sounded strange in the bones of his head. “I don’t quite understand.”

“It is as well,” said the one who sat across the black table. Her face was not veiled, and he should have been able to see what she looked like. But somehow he had only a blurred impression — eyes which caught more light than they should, so that they became blind luminous ellipses —perhaps, he guessed confusedly, more than somewhat afraid, it was because he could not stop watching her hands. They lay palms down on the table, relaxed, but with strength in every line. They had less taper than a woman’s hands commonly do, but he thought he had never seen any so beautiful.

“If you understood,” she said, “you might not dare to act.”

That touched his pride. He sat up straight, clenching his gun, and answered: “Prophetess, the Cloud People killed friends of mine. Also, I am the son of the Warden—I have duties—” He faltered beneath her gaze. Something scuttered across the dusky stone floor. Pompousness drained from him. Almost wryly, he finished, “If the Cloud People take the City itself, what Wardenship will there be for me to succeed to?”

Did she nod? “Yes,” her low tones replied, “there will be nothing then but the Heaths … a few lonely huts where men huddle and mutter, forgetting they ever raised a City . . .” After a pause: “Time is the strength of the Cloud People, even as Space is the strength of man. What you must overcome is Time itself.”

BAN sat in twilight, and the rustlings and whisperings seemed to go around and around his head, but he could only see the hands of the prophetess. He fumbled for comprehension: “A man may walk or ride or fly in Space— from here to there—but no man can swim Time’s river. Unless you—What is an Oracle? One who has mastered Time, ever so little perhaps, but not altogether helpless before it?”

She made no answer. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am surely wrong. I didn’t mean you were merely human, prophetess.”

“There was an age once, which may come again if the last men flee out onto the Heaths, when lightning destroyed where it would,” she told him. “Now, a hundred times a year, the highest towers of the dry are crowned with lightning, and unhurt. That is one force which men have come to understand a little; and so they are not its pawns. There are others. Once, it may be, there were many others. But the world is very old, and much has been forgotten.”

Then the silence lengthened so unendurably that he got the courage, or the desperation, to remind her: “Prophetess, I came to ask on behalf of the City—of all mankind, maybe —how the Cloud People can be overcome. For none of our weapons has served. You have not replied to my question.”

“Not yet,” she said. “Not ever, in full. For there is no destiny. Time is not a single river, sweeping from the birth of the stars to their last cinders. It is more akin to a huge many-branched delta.”

She sighed. “Armies have been broken. So by now, Captain Ban, you should know the uselessness of armies. One man alone, though—”

Her words were like fingers closing on his heart. But he found the strength to say, “Myself.”

“I can tell you nothing.” The shakenness in her voice was the most unnerving thing of all. “I can promise you nothing. I can only say, go secretly and alone to the island. Remember that Time is the strength of the Cloud People, but Space is the strength of man, and remember that in the end Time and Space are the same. More than that, I cannot say. It is too dark.”

The beautiful hands rose to cover the face he had never quite seen. “It has always been too dark,” she screamed. “Go!”

Ban rose. He didn’t even stop to make obeisance. He almost ran, stumbling over his feet and his gun. For a moment the room echoed with his noise, then he lost awareness of the echoes because his own heartbeat grew so loud.”

Excerpt From: “The Covenant.”