Nightwings

by Robert Silverberg

  The eyes were pearl-gray spheres, smaller than real eyes and broken by transverse slits. What mechanism was within I do not know, but from their rear projected tiny golden connections to fasten to the nerves. The Prince slept through the early part of the task, while I stood guard and Bordo assisted the Surgeon. Then it was necessary to awaken him. His face convulsed in pain, but it was so quickly mastered that Bordo muttered a prayer at this display of determination.

  “Some light here,” said the Surgeon.

  Bordo nudged a drifting globe closer. The Prince said, “Yes, yes, I see the difference.”

  “We must test. We must adjust,” the Surgeon said.

  Bordo went outside. I followed. The man was trembling, and his face was green with fear.

  “Will you kill us now?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “I recognized—”

  “You recognized a poor Pilgrim,” I said, “who has suffered a terrible misfortune while on his journey. No more. Nothing else.”

  I examined Bordo’s stock awhile. Then the Surgeon and his patient emerged. The Prince now bore the pearly spheres in his sockets, with a meniscus of false flesh about them to insure a tight fit. He looked more machine than man, with those dead things beneath his brows, and as he moved his head the slits widened, narrowed, widened again, silently, stealthily. “Look,” he said, and walked across the room, indicating objects, even naming them. I knew that he saw as though through a thick veil, but at least he saw, in a fashion. He masked himself again and by nightfall we were gone from Dijon.

  The Prince seemed almost buoyant. But what he had in his skull was a poor substitute for what Gormon had ripped from him, and soon enough he knew it. That night, as we slept on stale cots in a Pilgrim’s hostelry, the Prince cried out in wordless sounds of fury, and by the shifting light of the true moon and the two false ones I saw his arms rise, his fingers curl, his nails strike at an imagined enemy, and strike again, and again.

  2

  IT was summer’s end when we finally reached Perris. We came into the city from the south, walking a broad, resilient highway bordered by ancient trees, amid a fine shower of rain. Gusts of wind blew shriveled leaves about us. That night of terror on which we both had fled conquered Roum now seemed almost a dream; we were toughened by a spring and summer of walking, and the gray towers of Perris seemed to hold out promise of new beginnings. I suspected that we deceived ourselves, for what did the world hold for a shattered Prince who saw only shadows, and a Watcher long past his proper years?

  This was a darker city than Roum. Even in late winter, Roum had had clear skies and bright sunlight. Perris seemed perpetually clouded over, buildings and environment both somber. Even the city walls were ash-gray, and they had no sheen. The gate stood wide. Beside it there lounged a small, sullen man in the garb of the guild of Sentinels, who made no move to challenge us as we approached. I looked at him questioningly. He shook his head.

  “Go in, Watcher.”

  “Without a check?”

  “You haven’t heard? All cities were declared free six nights ago. Order of the invaders. Gates are never closed now. Half the Sentinels have no work.”

  “I thought the invaders were searching for enemies,” I said. “The former nobility.”

  “They have their checkpoints elsewhere, and no Sentinels are used. The city is free. Go in. Go in.”

  As we went in, I said, “Then why are you here?”

  “It was my post for forty years,” the Sentinel said. “Where should I go?”

  I made the sign that told him I shared his sorrow, and the Prince and I entered Perris.

  “Five times I came to Perris by the southern gate,” said the Prince. “Always by chariot, with my Changelings walking before me and making music in their throats. We proceeded to the river, past the ancient buildings and monuments, on to the palace of the Comt of Perris. And by night we danced on gravity plates high above the city, and there were ballets of Fliers, and from the Tower of Perris there was performed an aurora for us. And the wine, the red wine of Perris, the women in their saucy gowns, the red-tipped breasts, the sweet thighs! We bathed in wine, Watcher.” He pointed vaguely. “Is that the Tower of Perris?”

  “I think it is the ruin of this city’s weather machine,” I said.

  “A weather machine would be a vertical column. What I see rises from a wide base to a slender summit, as does the Tower of Perris.”

  “What I see,” I said gently, “is a vertical column, at least thirty men high, ending in a rough break. The Tower would not be this close to the southern gate, would it?”

  “No,” said the Prince, and muttered a foulness. “The weather machine it is, then. These eyes of Bordo’s don’t see so clearly for me, eh? I deceive myself, Watcher. I deceive myself. Find a thinking cap and see if the Comt has fled.”

  I stared a moment longer at the truncated pillar of the weather machine, that fantastic device which had brought such grief upon the world in the Second Cycle. I tried to penetrate its sleek, almost oily marble sides, to see the coiling intestines of mysterious devices that had been capable of sinking whole continents, that long ago had transformed my homeland in the west from a mountainous country to a chain of islands. Then I turned away, donned a public cap, asked for the Comt, got the answer I expected, and demanded to know the locations of places where we might find lodging.

  The Prince said, “Well?”

  “The Comt of Perris was slain during the conquest along with all his sons. His dynasty is extinguished, his title is abolished, his palace has been transformed into a museum by the invaders. The rest of the Perrisian nobility is dead or has taken flight. I’ll find a place for you at the lodge of Pilgrims.”

  “No. Take me with you to the Rememberers.”

  “Is that the guild you seek now?”

  He gestured impatiently. “No, fool! But how can I stay alone in a strange city, with all my friends gone? What would I say to true Pilgrims in their hostelry? I’ll stay with you. The Rememberers can hardly turn away a blind Pilgrim.”

  He gave me no choice. And so he accompanied me to the Hall of Rememberers.

  We had to cross half the city, and it took us nearly the whole day. Perris seemed to me to be in disarray. The coming of the invaders had upset the structure of our society, liberating from their tasks great blocs of people, in some cases whole guilds. I saw dozens of my fellow Watchers in the streets, some still dragging about with them their cases of instruments, others, like me, freed of that burden and scarcely knowing what to do with their hands. My guildmates looked glum and hollow; many of them were dull-eyed with carousing, now that all discipline was shattered. Then there were Sentinels, aimless and dispirited because they had nothing to guard, and Defenders, cowed and dazed at the ending of defense. I saw no Masters and of course no Dominators, but many unemployed Clowns, Musicians, Scribes, and other court functionaries drifted randomly. Also there were hordes of dull neuters, their nearly mindless bodies slumped from unfamiliar disuse. Only Vendors and Somnambulists seemed to be carrying on business as usual.

  The invaders were very much in evidence. In twos and threes they strolled on every street, long-limbed beings whose hands dangled nearly to their knees; their eyelids were heavy, their nostrils were hidden in filtration pouches, their lips were full and, when not apart, joined almost seamlessly. Most of them were dressed in identical robes of a deep, rich green, perhaps a uniform of military occupation; a few carried weapons of an oddly primitive kind, great heavy things slung across their backs, probably more for display than for self-defense. They seemed generally relaxed as they moved among us—genial conquerors, self-confident and proud, fearing no molestation from the defeated populace. Yet the fact that they never walked alone argued that they felt an inner wariness. I could not find it in me to resent their presence, nor even the implied arrogance of their possessive glances at the ancient monuments of Perris; yet the Prince of Roum, to whom all figures were merely upright bars of dark
gray against a field of light gray, instinctively sensed their nearness to him and reacted with quick hostile intakes of breath.

  Also there were many more outworld visitors than usual, star-beings of a hundred kinds, some able to breathe our air, others going about in hermetic globes or little pyramid-shaped breathing-boxes or contour suits. It was nothing new to see such strangers on Earth, of course, but the sheer quantity of them was astonishing. They were everywhere, prowling into the houses of Earth’s old religions, buying shining models of the Tower of Perris from Vendors at street corners, clambering precariously into the upper levels of the walkways, peering into occupied dwellings, snapping images, exchanging currency with furtive hucksters, flirting with Fliers and Somnambulists, risking their lives at our restaurants, moving in shepherded groups from sight to sight. It was as though our invaders had passed the word through the galaxies: SEE OLD EARTH NOW. UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.

  At least our beggars were flourishing. The outworld ones fared poorly at the hands of the alien almsgivers, but those who were Earthborn did well, except for the Changelings, who could not be recognized as native stock. I saw several of these mutants, disgruntled at being refused, turn on other beggars who had had better luck and beat them to the ground, while image-snappers recorded the scene for the delight of galactic stay-at-homes.

  We came in time to the Hall of Rememberers.

  It was an imposing building, as well it might be, housing as it did all of our planet’s past. It rose to an enormous height on the southern bank of the Senn, just opposite the equally massive palace of the Comt. But the dwelling of the deposed Comt was an ancient building, truly ancient, of the First Cycle even, a long, involuted structure of gray stone with a green metal roof in the traditional Perrisian style, while the Hall of Rememberers was a shaft of polished whiteness, its surface unbroken by windows, about which there coiled from summit to base a golden helix of burnished metal that bore inscribed on it the history of mankind. The upper coils of the helix were blank. At a distance I could read nothing, and I wondered whether the Rememberers had taken the trouble to inscribe upon their building the tale of Earth’s final defeat. Later I learned that they had not—that the story, in fact, terminated at the end of the Second Cycle, leaving untold much for which little pleasure was felt.

  Night was falling now. And Perris, which had looked so dreary in the clouded and drizzly day, came to beauty like a dowager returning from Jorslem with her youth and voluptuousness restored. The city’s lights cast a soft but dazzling radiance that magically illuminated the old gray buildings, turning angles hazy, hiding antiquity’s grime, blurring ugliness into poetry. The Comt’s palace was transformed from a heavy thing of sprawling bulk into an airy fable. The Tower of Perris, spotlighted against the dusk, loomed above us to the east like a giant gaunt spider, but a spider of grace and charm. The whiteness of the Hall of Rememberers now was intolerably beautiful, and the helical coil of history no longer seemed to wind to the summit, but plunged directly into one’s heart. The Fliers of Perris were abroad at this hour, taking their ease above us in a graceful ballet, their filmy wings spread wide to catch the light from below, their slender bodies trailing at an angle to the horizon. How they soared, these genetically altered children of Earth, these fortunate members of a guild that demands only that its members find pleasure in life! They shed beauty upon the groundlings like little moons. They were joined in their airborne dance by invaders, flying in some method unknown to me, their lengthy limbs drawn close to their bodies. I noticed that the Fliers showed no distaste for those who had come to share their sport, but rather appeared to welcome the outworlders, allowing them places in the dance.

  Higher, on the backdrop of the sky itself, whirled the two false moons, blank and burnished, skimming from west to east; and blobs of disciplined light swirled in mid-atmosphere in what I supposed was a customary Perrisian diversion; and speakers floating beneath the clouds showered us with sparkling music. I heard the laughter of girls from somewhere; I scented bubbling wine. If this is Perris conquered, I wondered, what must Perris free have been like?

  “Are we at the Hall of Rememberers?” asked Prince Enric testily.

  “This is it, yes,” I replied. “A tower of white.”

  “I know what it looks like, idiot! But now—I see less well after dark—that building, there?”

  “You point to the palace of the Comt, Majesty.”

  “There, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why have we not gone in?”

  “I am seeing Perris,” I said. “I have never known such beauty. Roum is attractive too, in a different way. Roum is an emperor; Perris is a courtesan.”

  “You talk poetry, you shriveled old man!”

  “I feel my age dropping away. I could dance in the streets now. This city sings to me.”

  “Go in. Go in. We are here to see the Rememberers. Let it sing to you later.”

  I sighed and guided him toward the entrance to the great hall. We passed up a walkway of some black glossy stone, while beams of light played down on us, scanning us and recording us. A monstrous ebon door, five men wide and ten men high, proved to be only a projected illusion, for as we neared it I sensed the depth of it, saw its vaulted interior, and knew it for a deception. I felt a vague warmth and tasted a strange perfume as we passed through it.

  Within was a mammoth antechamber nearly as awesome as the grand inner space of the palace of the Prince of Roum. All was white, the stone glowing with an inner radiance that bathed everything in brilliance. To right and left, heavy doorways led to inner wings. Although night had come, many individuals were clustered about access banks mounted on the rear wall of the antechamber, where screens and caps gave them contact with the master files of the guild of Rememberers. I noticed with interest that many of those who had come here with questions about mankind’s past were invaders.

  Our footsteps crackled on the tiled floor as we crossed it.

  I saw no actual Rememberers, and so I went to an access bank, put on a thinking cap, and notified the embalmed brain to which it was connected that I sought the Rememberer Basil, he whom I had met briefly in Roum.

  “What is your business with him?”

  “I bring with me his shawl, which he left in my care when he fled Roum.”

  “The Rememberer Basil has returned to Roum to complete his research, by permission of the conqueror. I will send to you another member of the guild to receive the shawl.”

  We did not have long to wait. We stood together near the rear of the antechamber, and I contemplated the spectacle of the invaders who had so much to learn, and in moments there came to us a thick-set, dour-faced man some years younger than myself, but yet not young, who wore about his broad shoulders the ceremonial shawl of his guild.

  “I am the Rememberer Elegro,” he announced portentously.

  “I bring you Basil’s shawl.”

  “Come. Follow.”

  He had emerged from an imperceptible place in the wall where a sliding block turned on pivots. Now he slid it once more and rapidly went down a passageway. I called out to him that my companion was blind and could not match his pace, and the Rememberer Elegro halted, looking visibly impatient. His downcurving mouth twitched, and he buried his short fingers in the deep black curls of his beard. When we had caught up with him he moved on less swiftly. We pursued an infinity of passageways and ended in Elegro’s domicile, somewhere high in the tower.

  The room was dark but amply furnished with screens, caps, scribing equipment, voice-boxes, and other aids to scholarship. The walls were hung with a purple-black fabric, evidently alive, for its marginal folds rippled in pulsating rhythms. Three drifting globes gave less than ample light.

  “The shawl,” he said.

  I produced it from my pouch. It had amused me to wear it for a while in those first confused days of the conquest—after all, Basil had left it in my hands when he fled down the street, and I had not meant to wrest it from him, but he obviously h
ad cared little for its loss—but shortly I had put it away, since it bred confusion for a man in Watcher’s garb to wear a Rememberer’s shawl. Elegro took it from me curtly and unfolded it, scrutinizing it as though looking for lice.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Basil and I encountered one another in the street during the actual moment of the invasion. He was highly agitated. I attempted to restrain him and he ran past me, leaving me still grasping his shawl.”

  “He told a different story.”

  “I regret it if I have compromised him,” I said.

  “At any rate, you have returned his shawl. I’ll communicate the news to Roum tonight. Are you expecting a reward for delivering it?”

  “Yes.”

  Displeased, Elegro said, “Which is?”

  “To be allowed to come among the Rememberers as an apprentice.”

  He looked startled. “You have a guild!”

  “To be a Watcher in these days is to be guildless. For what should I watch? I am released from my vows.”

  “Perhaps. But you are old to be trying a new guild.”

  “Not too old.”

  “Ours is a difficult one.”

  “I am willing to work hard. I desire to learn. In my old age curiosity is born in me.”

  “Become a Pilgrim like your friend here. See the world.”

  “I have seen the world. Now I wish to join the Rememberers and learn of the past.”

  “You can dial an information below. Our access banks are open to you, Watcher.”

  “It is not the same. Enroll me.”

  “Apprentice yourself to the Indexers,” Elegro suggested. “The work is similar, but not so demanding.”

  “I claim apprenticeship here.”