Destiny times three

By FRITZ LEIBER, Jr.
Illustrated by Orban
The ash Yggdrasil great evil suffers,
Far more than men do know;
The hart bites its top, its trunk is rotting,
And Nidhogg gnaws beneath.
Elder Edda.
In ghostly, shivering streamers of green and blue, like northern lights, the closing hues of the fourth Hoderson symchromy, called the Yggdrasil, shuddered down toward visual silence. Once more the ancient myth, antedating even the Dawn Civilization, had been told—of the tree of life with its roots in heaven and hell and the land of the frost giants, and serpents gnawing at those roots and the gods fighting to preserve it. Transmuted into significant color by Hoderson's genius, interpreted by the world's greatest color instrumentalists, the primeval legend of cosmic dread and rottenness and mystery, of wheels within cosmic wheels, had once more enthralled its beholders.
In the grip of an unearthly excitement, Thorn crouched forward, one hand jammed against the grassy earth beyond his outspread cloak. The lean wrist shook. It burst upon him, as never before, how the Yggdrasil legend paralleled the hypothesis which Clawly and he were going to present later this night to the World Executive Committee.
More roots of reality than one, all right, and worse than serpents gnawing, if that hypothesis were true.
And no gods to oppose them—only two fumbling, overmatched men.
Thorn stole a glance at the audience scattered across the hillside. The upturned faces of utopia's sane, healthy citizenry seemed bloodless and cruel and infinitely alien. Like masks. Thorn shuddered.