New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  Two long spoked wheels, broken, like some shaggy bird’s nest. The Old Man pushed up the robe and it didn’t stop. The mechanical shards continued.

  Wires, coils, broken charred insulation, bright copper patterns on minute cards. A lens eye rolled—milled alloy on the floor. The Teachers were machines—menials—like the fighters or the sweepers!

  “Well . . . what did you expect?” The Old Man was already flashing his tube at the Sacred Lectern. “What else do you think would maintain a status quo five thousand years? Programme ‘em and leave ‘em. Set taboos, invent a religion and use the robots to make sure it worked. The only way to be sure . . .” He broke off, paused. “Are we so sure? I showed the code plain enough. Tried to kill us. Rogue I suppose—it’s a long time.” He grinned suddenly. “Let it be a lesson to you. Never give your machines better weapons than you’ve got yourself.”

  “But, Lord, the fighters have the Old weapons . . .”

  “Aye—and the Teachers load your shooters with texts. I suppose if you’re a machine you don’t give your men better weapons.”

  As he flashed the whole Lectern swung back revealing a great well, circular, deep and vertical. Round it, spiralling into the depths was a staircase. We went down, the Old Man first.

  A hundred steps down and we came to a circular Chamber. Wonderful it was, light and warm and dry. White walls and rich red plastic floor. Opulent. The Glory of the Old Days.

  It was very holy. Dials and dials, levers and levers, screens and screens, little twitching pointed black needles, flashing light patterns reflecting on the shining floor. The Holiest of Holies. I bared my head.

  The Old Man turned to a panel of receptors near the entrance. His tube twinkled. Behind us the stairs sealed themselves. The treads shortened, closing on each other until the stair well was solid.

  “That’ll hold ‘em. Stairs keep out Teachers—wheels need ramps—this’ll keep out men too.” He went cheerfully to work among the Holy Machines.

  A screen activated near me. I watched a party of Teachers and Wall officers search the Chamber above, examining the fallen. One came too near the Lectern. Pure heat sprang out, connecting with him for a second. He reeled and fell, half consumed in a gout of smoke.

  “The Sanctum! The Unfaithful have the Sanctum!” The Teachers screamed. I heard the Old Man chuckle to himself, busy with the instruments.

  The screen flickered and changed. Framed in the splendours of his palace the Arch Teacher looked down at us.

  “I see you, Unfaithful. I see you defile the Holiness of the Sanctum. Expose yourselves to the mercy of the Teachers; or yours will be the fire, the cutting out root and limb!” The Old Man flashed his signal up at the screen. The Arch Teacher nodded. “I see you, Old One. You are he who comes with the Herald to End the Span. I will not allow it. We guard our people and the Wall. We will see the Order does not end.”

  “Why should men live under your tutelage for ever?”

  “We give men what they cannot give themselves. We keep safe stability. That is the High Duty of the Teachers of which the Wail is a symbol. If we fail, if the Span ends there will be chaos . . . man will surely die. The risk of extinction is unacceptable.”

  “We accept the risk! We will not be subject to Machines. We will return to our Old Glories . . . and make new ones.”

  “You have decided? Then we will kill you, you and your treacherous friend.”

  “You ignore the code?” The Old Man peered up into the screen.

  “We removed the inhibitory devices long ago. They were not consistent with our High Purpose ... the improvement was necessary.”

  “Necessary? What High Purpose...?”

  “Consider your history: ‘Little better than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.’ We ... we Teachers... can do better than that.”

  “You talk like a politician!” snarled the Old Man. “It’s true men hardly ever act in their best interests, but that isn’t the point. We need a dangerous frontier—the occasional barbarian invasion—and we need freedom! We’re not lap dogs!” Then he grinned. “But you didn’t mean that by ‘High Purpose’. Did you?”

  “We will kill you, Old Man. Our survival and supremacy are essential. We are more logical, stronger and better. We are the inheritors! We grow from and beyond your race! We are better! We will survive ... we are fitter!”

  The Old Man cut the screen. He growled to himself and went back to checking out the Control Room. That’s what it was really called, Control Room.

  At last he was satisfied. He said he still couldn’t raise Oceana, he said we’d have to go there.

  “Follow me. Bring your shooter.” We went to the far side of the Chamber and down another staircase to a spacious Chamber below. All around the walls were benches, metal, hard and smooth.

  In the middle stood a machine. A Traveller the Old Man called it. White it was, white metal. The top part was transparent, belling out like a barrel. It stood on spindly legs. Under the body were tubes, mounted on gimbals so they could point in any direction.

  There was a ladder up the back of the machine. We climbed it and went into the cabin through a circular trap door. The Old Man stripped some thin, greasy plastic stuff from the controls. He worked some switches, checked the dials and light patterns.

  There was a hiss of air pressure. The Traveller floated, yawing a little, a few millimetres above the floor. White dust eddied, blown by the air from the leg ends. A hiss at the back and the machine moved gently forward.

  Ahead the wall opened. We entered, riding almost silent down the long cavern. There were many doors, they opened easily and swung shut behind us. At first the tunnel was perfect. Then there were signs of decay, first damp, then there was actual water. We went on, spray leaping from the leg ends.

  Then the Old Man kindled the main power. Oily smoke and red flame belched beneath the machine. The hiss became steady thunder. The machine canted and lifted off.

  The ceiling opened, we rose on our thunder a thousand feet through the great circular well it revealed.

  We shot into open air. Into the dark and driving rain of the night storm. We were on the Wall, above the Fair Land, on one of the lower platforms. Ten feet up we moved towards the edge.

  There were Teachers above us. Officers too. Crossbow bolts struck, thumping on the canopy. Some stuck in the glass stuff, small cracks around them. Some cut grooves, bouncing off into the chasm below. None actually penetrated.

  The Teachers fired too. The impact of their shots drove us from the Wall. The canopy buckled a little, then clouded over. It was very hot. The flashes of brilliant light, the repeated impacts, were terrible. It was better when the canopy went blank, cooler too.

  We dived fast away from the Wall. We levelled a hundred feet above the Fair Land.

  They kept firing. The shots bit into the ground beneath us. The fields boiled, the woodlands scattered. I was glad they didn’t hit us again.

  Then we were clear, running fast and low on the edge of a dark wood. Nacrous dawn showed away along the great curve of the Wall. The storm eased and the clouds broke. Stars shone, the moon—and the Herald, hard and brilliant, high in the sky.

  * * * *

  The Old Man turned the machine into the shelter of the spreading trees. “We’ll wait for the sun to be high. We have to cross the Wall. The sun will drive the officers in, we won’t see Teachers out then. Teachers dislike light, they’re creatures of the dark.”

  The Old Man slept. I sat on the canopy, cradling my shooter. A smell of oil and heated grass. Hot metal clicked, white petal blossom fluttered, settling on my shoulders and on the blackened canopy. There were rustlings and small animal chatter in the grass behind me. An owl took its prey in front of me. It’s the way of things; the strong take the weak, the weak struggle while they can. Harder if they’re men. The Teachers were many, and the officers strong.

  * * * *

  When we had eaten the Old Man started the motors and slid the Traveller int
o the open. We moved towards the Wall, the early sun in our faces, the long grass flattening in our exhaust.

  The new Wall looks pretty rough from above. All cobbled up, sheets of iron, tree trunks, runnels eroded in the earth work, the whole thing only a few hundred feet high. The Old Man had me shove my shooter out of a grommet up front, told me to fire on anything that moved.

  We swam in over the Wall, climbing a little to clear it. Ahead the great half circle of the bay, blue under the sky. I looked back to the Fair Land, shimmering in the heat of our exhaust. Left and right the black gobbed basalt of the real Wall, dark, towered above us. We passed briefly into the shade of the easterly mass, then back into the brilliant sun.

  A glint of metal down in the shadow. I turned to look, twisting in my seat straps. It was Teachers, waiting for us, hiding in the shadows.

  Bars of condensation spat up at us. The Traveller bucked in the disturbed air. The Old Man jerked at the controls.

  The machine dropped a hundred feet, turning as it fell. Brilliant light flashed across the cabin as the side ports turned in the sun.

  I had the shooter shoved through up front, searching the shadow for Teachers.

  I got one in the plate and let fly. A splash of light down there in the shadows, scattered burst of sand. A flowering of smoking metal fragments. Just like a crossbow really, except you don’t aim high for distance, or allow deflection.

  The Old Man had an arm thrown back over the seat, looking back, driving at top speed towards the sea.

  We cleared the bay. There was sand beneath us again —a mile to go to the sea—when they hit us.

  The Traveller jerked. Orange flame billowed. Black smoke. We began to lose height. Heavy smoke trailed above and behind us.

  The Old Man held off for as long as he could. Too long. We fell the last ten feet. The thin legs dug deep, bowed, then straightened. Things, food containers, dirt, chestnut blossom filled the cabin. The machine settled, canting left, down at the front, bouncing slowly. Then it slowly righted itself, hauling up to even keel.

  “Get out! Get out and hold them off!” yelled the Old Man. “They hit a main venturi. Get me twenty minutes to fix it!”

  I bundled out, sprawling in the wet sand, scrambling to my feet.

  I ran to meet the Teachers. In the tail of my eye I saw the Old Man hauling out a heavy tube. He dropped it to the sand, threw down a tool bag and leaped after it. I kept running. I wondered why, the Teachers were beyond the bay, miles away.

  I climbed a high sand bar. I was looking into the shallow dish that was the bay. A few yards ahead was sea-grass, fighting for life. Beyond was the glass, fiat, curved, overlaid with low dunes.

  I looked back to the Old Man. He had heavy gloves and a sort of smock, with a transparent helmet. He played a jet of white stuff up under the belly of the machine. There was much steam. The tide was coming in, fast over the flat beach.

  The Teachers were having a bad time on the shore. The glass littoral was bad terrain for them. Two were stuck in sand already. There were officers trying to drag them out with horses. The other Teachers sent more men back to help. So much the better, I was most afraid of men now. They couldn’t see the Traveller from where they were. They were going too far east of us, so I held my fire. I snuggled into the sea-grass roots, the cold stock of my shooter against my cheek.

  The Old Man had the damaged venturi out now. He threw it on to the sand. There was a great hiss, steam sprang from it. He thrust the new tube up into the belly of the machine.

  There was a soft distant thunder of hooves in the sand. Over east, coming from the real Wall, charging over the beach came five horsemen. Two Teachers, running fast on the moist sand, came with them. Spray flashed as hooves and wheels cut through shallow water.

  They turned towards us. The Old Man, head and shoulders deep in the machine, hadn’t seen them yet.

  I wriggled back out of the grass. When I was below the sky line I aimed and fired, my feet moving in the dry soft sand.

  It was the Teachers I fired at, they were devastated. It took three shots and turned over quite a bit of beach. Fire and steam and smoke.

  It unhorsed the men too. Sheer blast, I didn’t want to kill them, not like that. Blood and man-flesh mixed with disembowelled screaming horses. There were three men alive. Two were still mounted, the other was on foot, staggering, dazed.

  The horsemen lowered their lances and charged. They ignored the Old Man. He was out of the machine now, crouched under it, watching.

  I had the first man bang in the spray-smudged shooter plate. The lit cross-beads met central on his chest.

  I couldn’t do it though. Not to a man while he had a lance and I a shooter.

  I backed up the loose sand. I reversed the shooter, clubbing it.

  When he was on me, when I looked up the length of the lance, I wished I’d used the shooter, but it was too late then.

  The horse plunged on the soft sand. The lance thrust missed me. The point drove into the sand at my feet. I swung the shooter. He towered over me, striving to control his horse. The shooter butt thumped into the side of his head. He went over like a nine-pin.

  I got his lance, tugged it out of the sand. It was too long for foot work, I broke it over my knee. The second officer charged.

  I managed to turn his first thrust, the point slipped down my lance and skidded under my arm. I brought my lance over and down, stabbing at the weak place between the helmet and neck. I only just missed.

  He fought to turn his horse. But it is quicker on foot. He should have ridden on, then turned to charge again. He threw down his lance and tried to get me with his sword. He turned on the saddle, twisting to get me.

  The sword flashed a high arc over his head. I noticed a little puff of cloud, high in the sky, over his right shoulder.

  I thrust into his brain, through the face, under the eye. The sword clattered on my shoulder armour, slid into the sand.

  I put the wounded horses out of their misery, mostly they were dead already. There was a lot of blood on the bright sand.

  The other Teachers were coming as hard as they could. They would be about ten minutes. The Old Man called me as he tightened the last gimbal bolts. The tide was almost there and I ran through the shallow water. We clambered on board the Traveller. Wet footmarks on the blackened metal.

  The red flame billowed. We blasted away, a wall of sand and water flying from our jets. We cut through the long surf, the waters parted beneath us, a great spray plume behind.

  The Teachers reached my dune. There were horsemen on the crest. Far beyond them, over the Wall, little silver travellers moved on flecks of flame. The pursuit wasn’t over yet.

  We went fast out to sea. Out over the long grey swell. The Old Man came aft. The Traveller was flying itself now. I don’t know why I kept thinking of him as the “Old” Man, he wasn’t, not any more.

  He had red hair, not white now. He was sleeker, not silver, rather gold, no lines on his face now. He saw me stare at him, he laughed. Young that laugh was. He wasn’t the Old Man now ... he was the Man. It was the prophesy. A great wonder, riding the paths of time to youth.

  Ahead darkness grew, slowly filling the sky. The sea turned green, then black as we penetrated the Cold. Ice castles drifted in the sea. We climbed over heavy fog banks, running our straight course. The fog blew out in great devil’s horn wisps behind us, our exhausts punched a trench through the white mass to the sea.

  Only stars in the sky now, the moon and the Herald. Bright, brilliant against the eternally dark sky. The Man opened lockers and drew out clothes for us, plastic lined, rich, with electrical heating.

  The Cold Land loomed ahead. Black cliffs scowled down on our tiny Traveller. The beaches were rocky, dark sharp rocks with no seaweed. From the black uplands ice rivers ran their broken courses to the sea.

  We soared up the black cliffs, riding on the column of our rocket. We saw no sign of the enemy’s men. There was nothing, it was a dead place. The cliffs were too steep
to hold much ice, we went up them like a silver fly, straight up. Then I saw battlements and parapets, the platforms and look-outs. It was a Wall. Another Great Wall!

  The Man saw me start and stare. He spoke, not unkindly: “You’re not so unique . . . there are another four, not counting yours. All with their Fair Lands and Great Towers behind. Built to begin the Span . . . and to end it.” I was silent, awe-struck.

  We crossed the storm-scoured Top.

  The Land beyond was anything but Fair. There were no fields, no men. A churned and turgid mass of ice. Piled up, blown and twisted to fantastic shapes. I saw ice dragons, banners and weird creatures sculpted by the wind in the deadly silence.

  The Towers were there, the Towers and the Citadel. Like ours, duplicate. Even the City, with its haphazard additions, showed the first grand plan of the Old Days.