New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  The world basked peacefully under the benevolent sun and there was no sign of man upon the face of the land, or none that he could see. Then a soft voice was borne to him upon the shoulders of the breeze and he heard sounds of splashing, such as a child might make with white palms slapping against water. The song seemed more like humming, a tuneful ululation to the newly-risen sun.

  He began walking down towards the creek and as he approached the source of the sound the voice became louder and assumed a familiar quality. He stood for a moment and listened intently but could make out no words, only a soft, gentle crooning.

  She came towards him from out of the shadows of some tall, benign willows and moved slowly downstream, her golden body wet and glistening in the sunlight, the cool water sucking at her calves, her breasts swaying gently in time with the movements of her arms as she essayed what could have been an ancient and simple dance movement plucked unknowingly from the rich confusion of her memories. Her eyes were soft and dreamy with the wisdom of a child and when she saw him her song died. They looked at each other and no words passed between them. Then she smiled and bent over to slap the water gently with her open hands.

  “Selena,” he said. Some threadbare memory cast her name upon his lips. “Selena...”

  She did not answer, but instead pressed her cupped hands to her lips. Captured water trickled through her fingers. Her eyes dipped and followed the dazzle of sunlight dappling the surface of the creek and saw how it was swallowed by the wide shadows further on and how it reappeared again a little way ahead. She moved off downstream taking her workless song with her.

  Pietro turned slowly like a man in a dream and looked back the way he had come. He remembered the rumpled bed where they—not just he—had slept, how their naked bodies had rested secure in the airskiff and had been protected by the strong field of force, how...

  How they had forgotten.

  Now he could see the tiny smudge the stimulator made behind her ear and he remembered the growing, glassy look in her eyes and how he had feared for this day. She bent again to the water and he turned away, anguish burning what was left of his feelings.

  He walked along the bank in search of her discarded skirt but even as he looked his concentration wavered and his feet took him off at a tangent to the creek and he wandered uphill and past the skiff, the bright glitter of its controls lost to him while his eyes fixed intently upon the mountains ahead. His mind was responding to the urgent pulsations of current the stimulator fed, but it was a mindless little machine and it only instilled in him the importance of his mission and placed any other thoughts on the periphery of his activities. So he forgot Selena, as she had forgotten him, and the stubborn spark of awareness that remained was firmly fixed upon his goal.

  The blood began to surge quickly through his body and this in turn assisted the stimulator in its work and cleared his mind even more. He felt the bracing sting of the air and saw the sun strike brilliant shards of light from the topmost peaks ahead of him. He heard the sound of his own eager breath and felt the firm pressure of his bare feet upon the grass and, regularly, at ten-minute intervals, the subtle but insistent little stab of current from the stimulator enter his mind and shake loose the important memories.

  Remember—he must remember!

  His name was Pietro and ahead of him, beyond the mountains or nearer than that, was the Great Engine of the world. And he would find it. Now. At last. And for Dominus and for all mankind. If it existed. If it was there.

  He kept thinking this for a very long time. It drowned the search for other memories, for Selena, for the reason he walked on foot when he could have taken the skiff, for the madness of his quest. It pushed aside the pain of his bloodied feet as he blundered his way up the narrow mountain pathway towards he knew not what, and when his weary body finally protested and collapsed and the weight of his exertions sundered his determination, the thought of his name and of his mission kept alive that priceless thing called sanity when everything else that had been important to him became lost and all churned together amidst the wreckage of his memories.

  The Keeper stepped forward. “But that was yesterday. There is more ...”

  And indeed there was. Pietro’s fingers found no small cube behind his ear but instead many cables and wires attached to his skull, but they did not frighten him. They were, he realized, an improvement upon the original stimulator and as such had been responsible for his recovery.

  He remembered now that he had not always been alone and that there had been others before Selena. Many seekers had shared his quest but he had long since forgotten their names and these could not be brought back. Their task had been to locate the Great Engine of the world, and quickly, because . . .

  “We are dying,” Dominus had said. “Not today, not tomorrow, but perhaps the generation after this—if there is another.” There was a malaise, a sickness, so insidious that it could not be isolated, analysed and acted upon. It had something to do with the mind, with the soul, whatever it was, but its effect was upon the genes of mankind. “We are forgetting. We are losing the ability to concentrate because there is nothing that needs concentrating upon.” It was hereditary and had already passed down through many generations. There had been no children in Landomar for decades. People had not so much lost the will to live but the urge to procreate and the birth-rate no longer existed. Instead their eyes glazed over in comfort and their senses atrophied and were forgotten. They lived but that was all. They became homeostats.

  “We are in stasis,” Dominus cried, “and unless we find a cure for this sickness we will die. The human race will cease to exist.”

  But the sickness was somewhere in the mind where the machines could not advise and the ability to communicate with their metal guardians was another of the skills forgotten by mankind. They made use of their cities and their skiffs and the countless machines that served them, but they no longer knew how or why such things worked and no longer cared.

  Except for Dominus. He had been the last of the great Thinkers and he it was who devised a means of circumventing the sickness. He utilized his guttering knowledge of the mind to fashion the tiny cubes and contained within them the minute electrical charges and used them to bring a handful of people from out of their pleasurable torpor, and thrust the urgency of their unused memories upon them.

  Pietro had been one of the few. “And this is only temporary,” Dominus explained. “The stimulators will help you to think efficiently, they will assist your recall and discourage slothful thoughts, but they are not a cure. For that we must seek elsewhere. We must find the Great Engine.”

  The Great Engine?

  A thing of legend, surely? Or so insisted Pietro’s revitalized memories. But Dominus insisted, logically, that such an Engine must exist, otherwise the world would collapse into chaos. The Planners had been men and would have planned for such an eventuality as this. Somewhere there must be an Ultimate machine responsible for All. If they could find it and present the problem of the malaise then perhaps all would be well. The cure was beyond the faltering minds of men and the guardians the Planners had built—but if there was a Great Engine then surely it would possess the ultimate knowledge and the solution to their plight?

  This was his hope, his fervent wish, his only answer. And he sent them forth to find it.

  * * * *

  Pietro could remember the first thrill of being abroad in the world. Travelling from one small hamlet to another he recaptured some of the feeling of the First Travellers and his keen observations underlined the urgency of Dominus’s warning. The human race had fragmented and wandered off along individual byways. People had closed down their minds and blissfully followed whatever whim possessed their simple thoughts. Intercourse, both social and sexual, no longer existed. Communication had become bankrupt and had been discarded for the balm of abundance. Some sought the open spaces of the land and settled down comfortably wherever they chose. The world cared for them for that was the function of the
world.

  Others preferred the comfort of townships and some, like Pietro and his companions, chose to wander, but their eyes were lack-lustre and a smile was the limit of their indulgence and he found them dull company. The bountiful world looked after them and surely there was no further motivation for their existence?

  Sometimes he travelled alone, sometimes with a friend, for their unfamiliarity of the terrain was such that their paths frequently crossed. They had no aids other than their own perceptions. Maps no longer existed and a villager’s knowledge of the rest of the world hardly extended beyond his own small area of ground or the dull thoughts within his own head.

  So they wandered and wound about the face of the earth, their paths ever crossing with no plan, no skilled application to their search. And as they wandered their ranks diminished.

  “I cannot say how long the devices will remain effective,” Dominus had said. “Once you are abroad there is no way of knowing how your minds will react to the insistent pulses. Perhaps they will . . . adapt. And if they do then you are doomed like your fellow men. That is why haste is important. Before ...”

  Before they too succumbed to the sickness.

  Pietro rolled restlessly upon the pallet. He had forgotten so much that even the powerful stimulus provided by the Manse could not revive. The names of his friends, the towns, the lands he had visited and the people he had forced conversation upon. How long had it been since Dominus had farewelled them and sent them forth upon their quest?

  Time . . . time was an invention of the Thinker and his clever little cubes. They had resurrected an awareness of a progression of space beyond the limitations of night and day and provided a fresh burden for their weary minds.

  “But you found the Manse,” the Keeper pointed out.

  “Yes.” He had, and he smiled, and remembered.

  In the last town they had visited they had found another Thinker. Frail and lonely he sat in his eyrie high above the city and told them of the Manse of the Keepers. “But I have heard of no ‘Great Engine’,” he said. “Although I see no reason to doubt that the Planners created such an organism.” He nodded his head sagaciously. “Yes, such a concept is . . . tenable. As a ... as a youth I heard tell of this place beyond the mountains—or was it actually in the mountains?—where the Keepers look after the running of the world. Of course, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the tale, but...”

  “We have been chasing phantoms such as this for many years,” Selena had whispered, and with the memory of her words came her face and the anguish of her loss. Pain twisted Pietro’s face into a grimace but he could not hold back the tumbling cascade of recent memories.

  “One is much the same as another,” she added. “Tell me, great Thinker, how might we reach these high and lofty mountains?”

  The Thinker had regarded her strangely. His lips moved uncertainly and his eyes shifted sideways towards Pietro. “Why . . . why . . . however did you come here then, my child?”

  Her eyelids fluttered and then a dim spark lit up her eyes. “By ... we came by skiff.” Of course, she had forgotten.

  They both looked upon her in silence. Pietro saw the deadly film already settling in her eyes and felt the weight of the great inertia coming down upon them both. There wasn’t much time left.

  They left immediately. It was late afternoon and the quiet city soon lay far behind them and their fragile little craft crawled steadily towards the mountains to the north.

  It had been many eons since man had hurried and his machines had likewise adapted to his needs. But Pietro had always been impatient for the slow speed of his craft and had often champed impatiently as it drifted inadequately at a handful of miles per hour. Had the pulse of life slowed so much?

  By dusk the ramparts reached hesitantly above the horizon and the skiff adjusted itself slightly to accommodate the rising foothills. When night fell it carried them to the ground where they slept until the morning returned them to the world.

  Pietro had awakened slowly and cautiously and achieved identity but the malignant something had finally claimed Selena in her sleep and he had lost her. His memories blurred and ran together now, a mad jumble of running, walking and falling, of bleeding feet and aching muscles and the final, sad blackout of all things.

  “But I remember more!” he protested, trying weakly to rise from the ordeal of his memories. He was filled with the loss of Selena and the loss of man in general.

  The Keeper stepped forward and gently pushed him back. “Of course you can, but such memories are private, personal, and of no use to the Manse. Now you must rest.”

  Before he closed his eyes Pietro said, “But I do not remember ... I do not remember how I came here.”

  “The Manse was aware of your progress and sent an emissary to bring you here. That was after you fell. After you exhausted yourself.”

  “And not before?”

  “The Manse was not . . . not aware of your condition prior to that. Now you must rest while the Manse digests your information.”

  Pietro smiled, and relaxed. “Then I have found the Great Engine?”

  The Keeper smiled enigmatically. “The world itself is a Great Engine, child. You have found the driver.”

  Happily, Pietro submitted himself to sleep.

  The Keeper looked down upon him. A simulacra of the Manse, it had become unfamiliar with true flesh and, remembering, reached out a synthetic hand to stroke the smooth young face before him.

  “Rest,” it said softly, “and when you awake all will be well.” And then, after a moment of silent contemplation, it turned away and made the empty halls ring hollowly to its footsteps as it made its way unhurriedly to the Master Room. There it stood and watched the many wheels spin and the lights twitter while the great man-machine that was the central computer wrestled anxiously with the problem brought by the man called Pietro.

  There were times when the entity that was the Manse suspected that once, very long ago, a part of it had been human. What part it had never been able to ascertain for the Planners had made contemplative thought almost impossible in that so much responsibility for the organization and efficient running of the vast engine of the world had been placed, metaphorically, in its hands. Over the ages and a little at a time the Manse had added to itself considerably and there was the possibility that eventually it would be able to shunt a part, a tiny part of itself, aside for purely contemplative thoughts, and when that time came it envisioned the unravelling of many mysteries, the answers to which would benefit both man and machine.

  If such ability had been immediately available the crisis that Pietro’s coming brought might never have happened. The fault of the Planners had been in considering that man and machine could be successfully separated. Only an intelligent integration of the two would ensure the survival of both, and perhaps one day the Manse would solve the riddle of its existence and the name, the name of its previous incarnation. The part that had once been a man.

  Some of its reactions were almost embarrassingly human —like the amused perversity of existing in four dimensions and being able, in the simulated form of the Keeper, to investigate inside, as well as outside, the range of its normal perceptors. But such amusements were hastily put aside in order that the problem at hand might be dealt with effectively and with a minimum of wasted effort.

  The Keeper froze into immobility while the Manse mused upon its answer.

  It was a day later when Pietro was awakened. His body now thoroughly refreshed and his mind no longer under stress, he sat up and took notice of what the Keeper said.

  “You will return to Dominus and inform him that the Manse had studied the problem and is ready to instigate effective measures.”

  Pietro stood up. “And what are these ‘effective measures’?”

  The Keeper turned aside. “I am not at liberty to say.” It ushered Pietro through the doorway and down a towering hallway. “It is much too early to correctly ascertain the nature of the remedy, but be assured tha
t the Manse will hasten for the need is dire.”

  A great door opened before them and the suddenly chill air of the mountains drifted in. Pietro shivered. He was suddenly conscious of the lack of a small grey cube behind his ear and his fingers explored the area uncertainly.

  The Keeper smiled and lightly patted his shoulder. “You will have no further need for that, child. The Manse has taken it for study and you will not miss it.” From the voluminous folds of its robe it took a small flask and handed this to Pietro. “But you will need this. It will provide sustenance until you reach your destination.”

  Pietro looked around him but found no skiff, no conveyance of any sort. The Keeper judged correctly the nature of his thoughts and added, “The Manse deems it necessary that you proceed as you are. The sandals you have will protect your feet indefinitely, they will not wear out for many centuries. Now go and make haste.”