The Psychological RegulatorKornbluth, C. M. (Cyril M.)
Science
The Psychological Regulator
Kornbluth, C. M. (Cyril M.)
Psychological fiction; Science fiction
"No," said the doctor. "We'll just turn the stuff on and see what
happens. It's as strong as they come--you wouldn't understand it; I've
studied ancient history, so it's a little clearer to me."
"Well," said Markett, uncertainly, as the doctor turned off the lights
and started the projector. She settled herself in a comfortable double
seat, and the doctor joined her, while Experimental Reel Seven, Full
Power, went clicking through the camera and onto the screen. But they,
being otherwise absorbed, paid little or no attention to it.
The patient--sixty-six-twenty-five--whimpered and tried to scrape off
the copper bus-bars that confined him. Then his eyes drifted to the
screen, and he beheld a marvelously real landscape, not frozen in paint
on canvas but quivering with life. A rabbit started, and the patient,
who had never seen a rabbit, recognized the little creature, and worked
his jaws. There was an unfamiliar taste in his mouth, as though he
were champing something tough-fibred, like a woven cloth or bit of soft
wood. He had never eaten meat, so to the still-dominant presence of his
ego there was no connotation.
As though he were slowly turning he saw the landscape move, and a
walled city came into view. What a walled city was he couldn't say,
but the words were in his brain; and quivering with rage, he wanted
to tear down the massive bastions with his own hands, and rend the
mailed men who were pacing the ramparts. He clenched his right fist,
and felt the hilt of Al Azaaf, his scimitar. Slowly Roald stood up from
the grass and settled his greaves about his thighs. "Rouse up, sons
of Yggdrasil," he hissed fiercely, and his men--his terrible Norse,
scourge of the coast--appeared from bushes and brakes, drawing axes
from belts and fitting pikes to shafts.
"Seventy-and-nine of us there be," growled Roald without preamble,
"and of them an hundred and eighty or more. Who complains?" There was
silence on the moor, save for the clank of metal as when dirk touched
against breastplate.
Roald grinned savagely and swept aside his long red beard to spit. "The
less men the more booty," he snarled. "Eh? And women--?" He laughed
tremendously. Then, whirling his sword he roared, "By the hammer of
Thor--_Come on_!" Roaring wildly Roald and his red-bearded band made
across the common at a dead run.
There were screams from the city, and much blowing of horns. Arrows
began to smack into the clayey soil about them, and Roald raised
his buckler. He saw the gates of the city swinging shut; yelling
inarticulately he tore a blazing torch from the fist of a companion and
hurled it into the knot of porters and marketmen that was struggling
with the heavy bar and hinges; they scattered in terror, only a second
before the red demons were within the gates, slashing and clubbing
with keen swords and murderous axes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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