New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology]
Page 19
We cruised up frightening, familiar streets. Loose dry snow whipped high behind us. The rocket’s red glare made demons in the shadows. It was ghastly. I remembered when we were cadets in our own City, before we realized the stern call of duty, dodging the Teachers to visit the commoners’ taverns and their women. Happy old days, warm summer evenings. Then this icy, dead parody.
There were still some men there. We found them in what was the Teachers’ garden, shrivelled in the ice, long dead.
The Man blasted into this Sacred Chamber too. We shot our way through four feet of ice and the frozen door. White ice fragments skittered on the floor. What melted soon froze again. Even in the heat-suit I felt cold, our breath hung white in the air.
The Chamber below was perfect. There was no sign of Teachers. The Man was well pleased with what he found. He worked on the big communicator screens. He talked to people far across the world. He hurried along, time was getting short now.
“Come on, lad. We’ve got to go to the Wall.” We went back through the silent streets. The Man didn’t say anything at first. Then he told me the secret, why things are the way they are, why men made the Teachers.
“You know about astronomy, lad?”
“A little, Lord. The world is a planet, a globe of matter in space. It travels round the suns ... the stars are other suns—unimaginably distant...”
“Yes . . . like everything Teachers tell you, a half truth. The suns really go round the world, they’re artificial. Five thousand years ago our sun went nova. We foresaw it, of course, but couldn’t prevent it. We projected the world across the galaxy, on a great journey to find a new and friendlier sun.” He grinned. “What d’you think of that? The biggest damn spaceship ever! Then we made the suns you see every day ... no real problem. The world’s been travelling five and a half thousand years, half across the galaxy to reach a suitable system ... a suitable sun. The Herald’s that sun. The Teachers we made to keep order down the millenia. To see the Towers survived. The Wall was for that too. The idea of defending them was deeply implanted . . . you know ‘honour the Teachers’ and so on. It hasn’t worked too badly either, considering the time. Aberration from one set of Teachers, a sun system out of control . . . that’s why it’s cold and dark here. That’s what made the hole in your Wall.”
“The enemy called down the sun and it smote the Wall when their attack failed.”
“The order was reversed, the sun came down first and they were driven on you by the cold. The other sun in this lane escaped into space. You . . . we’re lucky they didn’t both come down.”
We cruised over the Wall Top. The Man found the place he wanted and landed the Traveller.
Part of the Wall opened. It was another of the spiral stairs. I suppose it was the same place on this Wall as where I’d first met him on the old one. We climbed out, bracing against the wind, holding the firm legs of the machine. That was when the Teachers caught up with us.
Their Travellers leaped into sight over the Wall’s rim. They sped towards us, riding on their bright flame plumes and opened fire.
I held them off from the stair-top while the Man raced down to seal the stair.
I didn’t hit anything, the shooter was hard to manage in the thick, heated gloves. I got pretty close a couple of times—set their Travellers bobbing in the disturbance of my shots. They didn’t come close. Then the Man yelled and I went down, the stair sealed behind me.
The Top was on one of the screens. The Teachers were trying to shoot their way in. The surface heaved like a cauldron.
“Take ‘em hours. The Old Men here, the Slumberers— they’re O.K. All the automatics were out, that’s what went wrong. I’ve reactivated, they’ll be out in a few hours.”
It was a race against time. The Man left me to watch the screens. He ran down the Chamber. “Strap in,” he flung back at me. He settled himself in a big swivel chair in front of the main console. I found a smaller seat near my own screen. “Ready?” He leaned forward. His red light twinkled. I saw what followed. I saw it all in the screens about the room.
The Towers opened like flowers. They fired. They burned, like the prophecy, they burned. At the top, like violet flame . . . Elmo’s fire . . . but vast ... the very reality of power . . . straight out into space. The whole Ice-land filled with their light.
Great winds sprang up. Teachers battled against it. One by one they were swept away, their Travellers cartwheeling towards the Towers. Nothing remained, the Top was blown clean.
The very Wall began to move, quivering and moaning. The Wall cracked, great pieces fell from it. Chasms opened. Tidal waves rose from the sea, crashing against the Wall and cliffs. Stars danced in the sky, changing their motion, wheeling. Volcanoes sprang up on the foreshore. Sea boiled. Snow, horizontal in the winds, great hailstones, then rain. Great drops crashing into the fissured Wall Top. Clouds piled, black and violet, they grew in minutes, they disappeared in seconds. The moon screwed crazy across the sky, fire pointed, violet Towers spewed energy on its surface. Two suns rose, climbed high, grew small and disappeared, accelerating into space.
The screens went blank. My ears popped in pressure change, I lost consciousness.
Rain lashed, earth shook, cracked and boiled . . . volcanoes spouted and cooled.
* * * *
Later, dimly in the uproar I heard voices. The Men stood at the machines, calling and checking to each other across the Chamber and across the world.
“Red D Dog 536,000,897-82”
“Hold that! Nine planet system, eh?”
“Orbit?”
“89,000,000 plus or minus 7,000,000. Hey, get those rings on the sixth!”
“Red 647,000,7000-0087. See, perfect sun fall.”
“Yellow 89 X boost zokko d. Might almost be our own.”
“Orbit correction: 90,000,000 plus or minus 4,000,-000. Cooler though.”
“Destruct third planet. Shoot debris between fourth and fifth orbits.”
“Third from the sun, eh?”
“Yellow 78 X boost kayo 4d.”
“Orbit correction: 92,900,000 plus or minus 1,000,-000. Cooler...”
“So live in the tropics.”
“Red 501,001,721-06. Not the same, is it?”
“You can’t have everything.”
And so on. I hardly understood at all.
* * * *
Later, when I’d recovered, I lay listening to the laughing, alcoholic chatter of the Old Men. They came in from the Control Room. They embraced each other, staggering, drinking, singing and congratulating each other.
“You murderers! You’ve killed everyone! Finished the world! They’re all dead!” I propped up on an elbow, yelling at them.
They were taken aback, surprised, smiling still, slack jawed, staring at me. The first one, the Man, came forward, young and golden against the others.
“No, lad, no. Not all—some dead no doubt. The worst effects would have been fairly local, round the Fair Lands. Only a small minority lived within the Walls. The Teachers now, they’re all dead, that’s sure. All the power’s been used. Not the people though. Mind, it’s back to the caves . . . back to square one. A few thousand years hunting and gathering ... the race’ll survive—man’ll go on. The Wall and the Span will wash away and be forgotten.”
I turned and ran. I fled from the Chamber.
I got out in the end, through the half-choked passages to the foot of the Wall, to the shore of the Dark Land.
Most of the Wall was gone, crumbled and flattened, still falling away as I watched. There was little of the Towers too, it seemed they’d burned away with the vast forces of their discharge, crumbled to ash, as had been intended.
There were new mountains, rising from the sea, forming a great causeway, leading north towards the Fair Land.
The clouds broke. The great new golden sun burst through. Water dripped, what was left of the ice melted. Young green things thrust through the rubble.
People moved on the causeway. Thirty maybe—a
herd of goats with them.
There’d be no point being a Wall officer now. Fishing would be a good way to live. Fishing and maybe some goats. A hut or dry cave among the coastal pines. A fire of cones and perhaps that fisher girl ... or another like her.
I started home at once. There was plenty to do.
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