A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

Still the girl said nothing, and Vaughn looked at her in puzzlement. But he went on valiantly:

  “Who’s in authority around here now? I’ve got to see someone, you know! And what the devil’s happened to the city? It seems all crumbling ruins!”

  When the girl still didn’t answer, Vaughn thought he understood.

  “Oh, I’ll bet the language has died. I didn’t think it would so soon! I guess you don’t speak English. English? Understand?”

  THEN the girl spoke, and Ralph Vaughn felt like a simpleton.

  “My dear sir,” she said, “what you mean by ‘English’ I don’t know, but I assure you I speak your language very well. Quite a bit better than you do! You have the queerest accent!”

  Vaughn felt his face turning red, and he tried to speak but couldn’t. Finally he blustered:

  “Well I’ll be damned! Say, what’s the idea? Why didn’t you answer me when I spoke to you, if you were going to answer at all?”

  “I was simply too enthralled to answer,” Chyana said. “Your accent, I mean. It’s funny, but it’s fascinating!”

  He stared at her, and she stared right back; then suddenly they both laughed, simultaneously. And with that laughter both felt that they’d known each other for years.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Vaughn asked.

  “Chyana.”

  “Chyana what? Is that all?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Just Chyana,” Vaughn said musingly, lingering over the name. “Well, Chyana, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Ralph Vaughn.” He extended his hand.

  She took the hand puzzledly. “Ral Vahn,” she repeated quickly, almost running the words together.

  “And you think my language is funny!” Ralph exclaimed. “What kind of talk is that? It’s Ralph Vaughn, not Ral Vahn!” Chyana nodded. “Ral Vahn,” she repeated very seriously.

  “Oh, all right, have it your way. Well, Chyana, now that we’re friends—we are, aren’t we?—would you mind enlightening me on a few points? Is this really 3000 A.D. or therabouts?”

  Chyana was puzzeld. “I—don’t really know,” she said. “It’s supposed to be the twenty-sixth century—I think.”

  “You mean you don’t even know?”

  “Oh, I don’t belong here,” Chyana said quickly. “I think I’d better tell you my story first, then you can tell me yours. It’s probably much more interesting.” When Chyana told of the Council’s decision, she said hesitantly: “Of course they were right. I—I was so different than anyone, both in thought and appearance. That world was so cold, unfeeling. They—they called me atavistic. They insisted I obey their dictates and shear my hair, because it’s yellow and unsightly. No one else had hair, but I sort of—loved mine . . .”

  Ral Vahn was aghast. “Yellow, unsightly!” he exclaimed. “It’s nothing of the sort. It’s golden, and it’s—well, lovely. In fact,” he said feelingly, “it’s so bright and alive it seems two shades of gold instead of one—”

  Chyana blushed and to hide her confusion went on quickly with her story. When she had finished Vahn nodded and said: “Then you are very probably right, and this is the twenty-sixth century. I was supposed to stay in that glass tomb until 3000-and-something, but you released me prematurely, for which I thank you most heartily! And now for my story.

  “Tahor the Third, as you heard me shout awhile ago, was a tyrant. And to say that he and I didn’t get along well together is a masterpiece of understatement. He came into power directly after the Ninth Great War. All of Europe and Asia was by then a shambles, and the Americas were all that remained of civilization. But it might just as well not have been. The Americas went the way of the other hemisphere—not by bombers and poison gas, but under the relentless, tyrannical thumb of Tahor Third. He was a madman and an egomaniac, of that I was always sure. Gradually I came to know that he had one growing obsession. This was the determination to be remembered as the most powerful ruler in all history.

  “Through my initiative a group of thinkers rose in revolt. But just as we were about to strike for the freedom of the people, we were betrayed by a spy among us. The others were all executed, but I was saved until the last. Tahor wanted to attend to my punishment in person.

  “Instead of execution, he decreed I should be placed under a newly discovered method of suspended-animation. After a thousand years the gas in my glass tomb would be automatically released and I would awake into a world where the name Tahor was resounding in history, if not still in power. It was better than I had hoped for. At least it was life. It seems, though that Tahor’s name is already forgotten.

  “Everything I knew seems to be forgotten. I wonder if anyone else is alive to remember?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Mech”

  RAL VAHN ended on this note of puzzled interrogation, but Chyana shook her head.

  “You know as much about it now as I do,” she said. “It seems to me your city has crumbled with the ages.”

  “In such a short time? Nonsense! It’s crumbled, all right, but it took something more than time to bring things to this state. Anyone else about?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone or anything. Except,” she added in sudden remembrance, “my tile-layer who seems to have adopted me, and that awful beast of yours!”

  “Beast of mine? What the devil do you mean?”

  “He led me here! He came in here. Didn’t you see him?”

  “You couldn’t mean Pete! My dog? I could have sworn I heard Pete bark, and something jumped at me, but it certainly wasn’t him!”

  But at the word “Pete” they heard the bark again, and the robot-dog came out of the gloom into the sunlight. Pointed metal ears were alert, and his metal tail wagged joyfully as he looked up at his master. He barked again, a sharp puzzled bark.

  Vahn looked down at the fantastic thing in amazement. “That’s Pete’s bark!” he exclaimed. “I’d know it anywhere! Hello, Pete, is it really you? You recognize me, do you, after five hundred years? But I don’t recognize you, Pete!”

  Again the thing barked, joyously this time at the friendliness in his master’s voice.

  “This is Tahor’s work!” Vahn said venomously. His face was dark as he bent down and touched the robot’s head. From the increased motion of Pete’s tail it seemed that he liked this, though it was doubtful if he felt the-touch; probably only the gesture was familiar.

  “He was a beautiful animal,” Vahn told Chyana, “and the best friend I had. When Tahor told me my fate, I hated the thought of leaving Pete behind, and I begged Tahor to send him along with me. He said he would, but he smiled peculiarly when he promised it; now I know the meaning of that. He’s done this deliberately. He’s encased the dog’s brain in this metal body—for his brain is surely here, if nothing else of him. Tahor always had a diabolic sense of humor.”

  Vahn bent again and touched the robot-dog. “I can’t say I like you this way. Well, Chyana changed my name, so I guess I’ll have to change yours. Somehow ‘Pete’ doesn’t fit you now. Guess I’ll call you ‘Mech’—short for Mechano. Understand?”

  Mech dropped the rusty rivet he was chewing upon, and barked.

  CHYANA had watched this tableau in wonderment, but there was something like understanding in her eyes. Now she said:

  “Is the other one yours too?”

  “The other one? What other one?”

  “Watch,” Chyana said. She walked out to where the tilelayer was waiting, a short distance away. She walked unconcernedly past it, but it turned and followed, quickly laying a tile on the fifth step.

  “See?” Chyana said amusedly, coming back.

  “No,” Vahn exclaimed in amazement, and with the utmost finality, “the thing is certainly not mine! But it seems to like you!”

  Chyana explained how she’d dislodged it in the ruin and then couldn’t get rid of it. Vahn examined it but there was no clue except the serial number and the HEX—R.

  “I don’t remember having seen anything like this,” he said, “so the thing pro
bably dates after my time.”

  “But why does it follow me around? You don’t think it has a—a brain, like your Mech?”

  “I doubt that very much. If it does, it’s a very crude one.” Vahn walked around it, walked beyond it, trying to get it to follow him as it had Chyana, but the absurd thing wouldn’t budge. Chyana laughed delightedly.

  They examined the inside of the building. The walls seemed in fairly good condition, and most of the roof was still there, so Vahn said:

  “Suppose we make this our—say our headquarters. Seems safe and fairly comfortable here. I’ve been wandering about what you said—no one else around. We’ve got to explore! And what about food? Are you hungry?” Vahn’s practical mind had leaped into action.

  “I think I will be before long,” Chyana said. “I’ve been too excited to think about it.”

  Vahn nodded. “Probably no food stuffs left, not even canned goods. Looks like we’ll have to get out of here and back to nature. We can find growing things there, enough for the present. Most of all I want to find out what caused all this premature ruin. It’s got me worried.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Blue Torment

  AS THEY talked they had scarcely noticed the sun, now almost below the western horizon. Only a few red streaks were left across the sky, then even they were gone and it was suddenly dusk. Then, close upon the vanishing of the last streak of light in the west, there dawned a startling phenomenon.

  At first it was barely discernible, a faint bluish tinge that sprang up seemingly a few miles away toward the edge of the city. It grew and the hue deepened, spreading all along the horizon. It came nearer and nearer to them as they stood watching in amazed silence. They became aware of a slight intoxication which increased as the electrical pulsations became stronger. It was quite dark now and the air was crisp and crackly. The blueness flashed in intermittent jerky waves, like continuous lightning. Their intoxication increased until they staggered under it. But it was more than that, for mingled with it now was a malignancy almost frightening; a searing, mental torture from within!

  In Ral Vahn’s ears was a vast singing, and the earth seemed to sway beneath his feet. Through the darkness everywhere the livid blue hell pulsed incessantly. He clutched at his head. His brain was a writhing thing of fire. He reached out blindly for Chyana beside him, but no one was there. He thought he opened his mouth and screamed something, but he heard no words. An anguished white face flashed momentarily before him, and then the figure was fleeing blindly away with golden hair streaming. He staggered after it, stumbled and fell, arose and ran wildly and fell again. Innumerable tiny hot fingers were trying to tear his brain apart fiber by fiber.

  Afterwards he did not know how long he had run or where. He had lost all sense of direction. He dimly remembered crashing many times through tangled creepers and ruins, to lie exhausted, then to stagger blindly on, anywhere, anywhere to escape the pulsing, all-pervading torture in his brain from which there was no escape.

  He only knew that when he awoke the sun was shining painfully into his eyes and something was tugging insistently at his sleeve. He turned his head and saw Mech, who cried woefully. He stood up and saw that the sun was in the east. It was morning. His clothes were torn, he was scratched and bruised and his head ached fiercely. Chyana was gone, nowhere to be seen.

  CHYANA awoke somewhere, battered and bruised. It seemed like a horrible nightmare, the headlong flight to escape the blue horror that had attacked their brains so suddenly. One moment she and Ral had been laughing together, and the next moment the horror had come. It was gone now, and the sun was bright in the east.

  She stood up, and saw HEX—R a short distance away, who took a step toward her and laid a tile. Only a few hundred yards away she could see what seemed to be the edge of the city, and it seemed to end abruptly, strangely.

  She walked toward it and found herself standing at the edge of a precipice a few hundred feet high. She shuddered to think how close she had come to it in her insane flight. Below, stretching to the horizon in all directions, was a vast black plain. It was convoluted and ugly, seemingly nothing but black dust. She could see little swirls of it as a slight breeze blew.

  She looked timidly down the perpendicular cliff at her feet, and saw that it was covered with a smooth, crystalline substance. But it was criss-crossed with millions of tiny cracks, and in a few places patches of it had fallen off, leaving the bare earth exposed beneath. She reached over the cliff-edge at her feet and touched a small patch of what seemed the barren earth. It crumbled beneath her fingers into a fine, black dust! Apprehensively she looked far out upon the black desert again, then at this cliff with its glassy protective substance. But that substance was beginning to crumble!

  Chyana was unaccountably disturbed. For some reason, a reason she could not quite grasp, all this phenomena seemed foreboding and frightening to her. And it seemed somehow familiar! Where, and when, had she seen or dreamed of this scene? Had she indeed dreamed it, or had she—

  Chyana gasped. With a sudden flash of realization she remembered. She had not dreamed of this scene at all. She had read about it! In a book! It was a book which the Council had called a preposterous fable, and which she herself had called a historical romance. There had been much more in that book, but now she could not quite remember. She was confused and apprehensive and a little frightened. With a pang of foreboding she remembered Ral Vahn. She must return quickly to that ruined building which they had called their headquarters.

  About an hour later she found it, and saw Ral Vahn and Mech coming from far away in the opposite direction. She called, and he hurried toward her. Impulsively she went onto his arms and he held her closely for a moment. No word was spoken or needed. He released her and his face was stem.

  “Thank God you’re safe!” he said. “We’ve got to act quickly, for there may be another of those things tonight, and every night following—and we can’t stand many more of-them. I know what it is.

  I should have guessed before! We’ve got to find the source of it and destroy it before it destroys us!”

  Chyana’s panic-fear had ended with the strange new experience she had found in Ral Vahn’s arms. Quickly she told him of her discovery. They went back to that line of cliffs overlooking the black desert waste.

  Vahn surveyed the scene grimly, and looked along the line of crystalline-covered cliffs extending several miles in each direction.

  “Yes, it all fits in,” he said bitterly. “More of Tahor’s work. But it wasn’t deliberate this time—simply a creation that got out of control and has-been running rampant ever since. Just before Tailor sent me here, there were rumors about a vast army rising out of the shambles of the other hemisphere. This army was supposed to be preparing for a mass attack upon the Americas.

  “Tahor’s councilors were panic-stricken, for they knew he had no army of any size. But Tahor merely smiled, and a little later made it known that he had a new weapon of war that would destroy any possible invasion. There was wild speculation as to what this weapon might be. It was rumored that it received its potent power from stored solar energy, but this was no more than rumor.

  “Now I know it must have been true, for we’ve had a manifestation of it! This thing we felt must be Tahor’s weapon! It gathers its solar energy by day and releases it at night in those brain-destroying waves!”

  GONE now were all thoughts of food.

  Uppermost in both their minds was a horror of that brain-destroying blue force, and a doubt that they could withstand another such assault. And they knew it must come again at dusk.

  But they searched that line of cliffs in vain. They knew the ray had sprung up from somewhere at this edge of the city, for they’d seen it the night before. But wherever the source, it must have been well hidden.

  HEX—R plodded steadily behind Chyana, laying its tiles regularly, and Mech wandered at random. They searched the edge of the cliff in both directions until it petered down into little rocky ravines
leading onto that black desert waste. They worked back toward the city, searching through the endless streets of ruins. Several times they brought tottering walls crumbling down dangerously about them. They stumbled with exhaustion, but they plodded on, scarcely daring to rest for more than a few minutes at a time. Meanwhile the sun was climbing relentlessly toward the zenith; after that it would make its steady descent to the west, and Ral knew too well what would come again once the sun was gone . . . Their despair grew at the fruitlessness of their search.

  Chyana stumbled along uncomplainingly, searching the ruins when Ral searched, resting when he rested—but somehow she did not reach his point of despair. She was perturbed, but more than that she was—puzzled. This all seemed so familiar to her, but in a vague, distant, disassociated way. She felt all this had something to do with that book she had read. That book had been romance; this was romance too, but somehow—distorted. She needed but one little clue, one little remembrance, to connect this present with that far-away book in a very vital way. But in vain she racked her brain for that clue, and the book she had read remained only an historical romance, dimly remembered.

  At last, hesitantly, she mentioned it to Ral. But in his despair he only half listened, and pronounced the book a fable in the same manner the Council of Scientists had. Chyana’s brows knit into a puzzled frown . . .

  THE sun was now well past the zenith, and Ral Vahn sank down exhausted. Chyana sat beside him, and Ral turned despairingly to her. He placed his hands on Chyana’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. His voice was tense as he spoke:

  “Chyana . . . do you really know what tins means? It’s not merely your life, or mine. Everything—the entire future—hangs upon a thread at this moment; and you and I are that thread! The last remaining—But I wonder if you do quite realize . . .

  “Yes, Ral Vahn,” she said, and her tone was so vibrant it startled him. “Yes, I realized, even before you. We’re the last ones. And I know it will not be easy.”