Adventure stories; Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction
He touched the wall near her head and she heard a shifting, a grinding
of heavy stones. Part of the wall swung slowly to one side, revealing
a dark recess, a niche with walls that did not glow. Matlin thrust his
hands within the niche and took out a large, heavy book with a black,
unmarked cover. When he got it clear of the niche, he looked at it a
moment in the glowing cavern light and his eyes grew big and round and
the book dropped from his hands to the floor of the cavern. He stood
there, clutching his head with his hands and Haazahri cried:
"What is it? What happened, Matlin?"
The pain of returning memory thrust at him like a sharp knife, but was
not intolerable. He remembered! He remembered!
"Rhodes," he said in a dream. "My name is Rhodes. Phil Rhodes, and
I'm an Earthman. They took me and they tortured me and I was going to
break. I must have known it, subconsciously. So I welcomed amnesia, as
the one way I could not reveal where I had hidden this. I had revealed
once the fact that I'd found it, to Gawroi, before I told the Earth
authorities. The Earth authorities still don't know, but when they do
know, when they see what has been found...."
"But what is it?" Haazahri asked him.
* * * * *
He stooped, picking up the book. "Earth doesn't want to dictate to your
people, understand that. You are a sovereign people. But if in your
sovereignty a small percentage of you have used lies and fabrications
to enslave fifty generations of your people, and if Earth decides to do
something about that...."
"But what is it?"
With both hands, Rhodes held the big book over his head. His face shone
with triumph and he said softly, his voice almost a whisper, "_The Book
of the Dead_, Haazahri."
She looked at it, and at him. Then abruptly she fell to her knees and
touched the floor with her face. "_The Book_," she said. "_The Book?_
You mean that?"
"Haazahri, listen. You're important. You're very important. I knew it
would be dangerous coming here. Maybe, instinctively, that's why I let
you come with me. Because you're so important. You're a Kedaki, don't
you see? With a Kedaki's reactions. I know about this _Book_. It's
sacred. It's had five thousand years in hiding to become sacred. Even
your rulers today probably didn't know where it was. Excerpts only,
key passages out of context, remained from the days the book had been
hidden, remained to keep most of the Kedaki enslaved, chained to the
lies of metempsychosis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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