Transported

by Tim Jones

  The city was no place for a blind man, real or pretend, and eventually Borren gave in to Rosie's pleas to stay underground while she went above. She would return with little trinkets or tidbits of extra food, but she was vague about where she got them. In his worst moments, Borren imagined her buying them with her body, screwing some soldier against the wall of a bombed-out alley.

  If only he dared to read! But it was too risky. There were always people about, though they kept their distance from the grumpy old blind man on his bed. Sometimes he explored the corridors, tapping along with his cane until he came up against a locked door or a guard who gently turned him around.

  A week into these explorations, he found a closed but unlocked door that led into a meeting room, and beyond it a kitchen. If he turned on the lights in the kitchen, opened the serving hatch, and sat at the far end of the darkened meeting room, the light was dim enough for him to read. That was a big improvement. He worked his way through the few books they had brought with them, and then asked Rosie to get him whatever she could; magazines, propaganda about the UCM, an old paperback with the spine torn off. And twice he brought her there and made love to her on the floor, stifling her moans with his hand in case they were discovered.

  At night, Rosie slept soundly, but Borren tossed and turned, stray flashes of light stimulating his visual cortex. He had trained himself to be nocturnal, to sleep when the stars were no longer visible, and as the nights wore on he missed the seeing more and more. One night, there was a disturbance at the far end of the room: voices raised, a knife pulled. Guards rushed from everywhere to deal with it. Rosie opened one eye, looked around blearily, then settled back to sleep.

  Borren got out of bed. Muttering something about the toilet, he tapped his way past the scuffle and through the exit door. Throwing off his caution, he ran down the corridor and past the empty guard station. He was free, and soon he was outside. He found a street where an enemy bomb had taken out the lights, climbed to the top of a pile of rubble, and removed his glasses.

  The air was clear and calm, and the jewels of the Milky Way stood out in all their glory. He wanted to look, to marvel, and to forget. Off to the west was the Virgo Cluster, fifty million light years away, the new limit of his vision. Inwards he came, past galaxies, nebulae, stars, all in vivid colour. Then Mars: the polar caps, the volcanoes, the deep cut of the Valles Marineris. He knew there were still robots running around down there, sampling and building, reporting back; but was anyone still listening? Inwards to the moon — but he could no longer look at the moon, for enough sunlight reflected off it to fill his new eyes with pain.

  He had meant to spend no more than half an hour outside, then shuffle back, making some excuse to the corridor guard. It would not have been difficult to appear old, blind, and confused. But he forgot himself, and stayed out for almost two hours.

  Rosie woke early, couldn't find Borren, and asked a guard for help. When Borren could not be found in the tunnels, she realised where he must have gone, but by then the search had acquired its own momentum. The soldier who found him saw him standing atop his pile of rubble, then the cane, lying unused at the base of the pile. Hearing his name called, Borren could not prevent himself from looking around.

  For a while, they held him under guard in one of the abandoned meeting rooms. Rosie was allowed in to see him for a moment. Her stricken face told him all he needed to know, but he forced himself to smile at her. 'I'll be all right,' he said as she was taken away.

  Then Major Jimenez came in, and the threats began.

  —We kill spies.

  —I'm not a spy.

  —You're working for the UCM.

  —I'm not working for the UCM.

  They seemed disinclined to torture him, and he was disinclined to answer their questions. After a while, Major Jimenez went away. Major Davis came in, and shone a bright light in his face. That was agonising, but it didn't make him want to talk. Major Davis gave up after half an hour.

  Two hours later, when the pain behind his eyes had almost gone away, Captain Lenihan and Sergeant Paterson arrived. Captain Lenihan brought food and coffee. Sergeant Paterson settled across the table and glared at him. This was so transparent that Borren almost laughed. Nevertheless, after half an hour of Lenihan's tentative kindness and Paterson's threats, he was ready to tell Lenihan everything. He blinked extravagantly, and saw them start as the silver membranes swept down and up again over the huge pupils of his eyes. 'Ask away,' he said.

  'What happened to your eyes?' asked Lenihan.

  'I replaced them with better ones.'

  'Better in what way?'

  'Better for seeing the heavens. These are stargazers' eyes, Captain Lenihan, the eyes I had installed in Santa Fe.'

  'So you were never blind?'

  'I was for the first week after the operation — it takes that long for the nerve endings to bed in. After that, given the situation, it seemed like the best cover. No sense getting murdered by a UCM zealot for violating some commandment or other.'

  'How do they work?'

  'My eyes are designed especially for stargazing. They've got a larger lens — well, you can see that — eight times standard transmittance, retinal images fifty times brighter — everything I could wish for.'

  'Any disadvantages?'

  'My eyes bulge. Everything looks green in the daytime. I need to wear very dark glasses from dawn to dusk. It's nothing I can't handle.'

  'Who paid for them?' asked Sergeant Paterson.

  'The clinic. I'd kept in touch with Dr Summers from my NASA days. He offered me the chance to be a guinea pig. If things had worked out, my face would have started appearing in their ads in about three months' time.'

  'Why you?'

  'Dr Borren used to be an astronaut, Sergeant.' Lenihan glanced at his notes. 'The International Space Station, and then the second Mars mission, correct?'

  'Yeah, then I was short-listed for the first mission to Europa. Do you know what happened to that?'

  Lenihan shook his head.

  'Six months before the launch date, with the ship almost completed in Earth orbit, Congress pulled the plug. Decided there were better things to do on Earth, like award their districts some more big defence contracts. The ship's still in orbit.'

  'How do you know?'

  'It passes over my house sometimes. If I could, I'd fly up there and take off for Jupiter tomorrow.'

  'What about your wife?'

  'I'd take her with me,' said Borren. 'Where is she?'

  'She's fine,' said Lenihan. 'Now, Dr Borren, I have a proposition that may appeal to you. Would you like to return to your house and assist the war effort?'

  'How?'

  'Without our satellite information, and with our planes hidden away, we're effectively blind. What we need is someone to stand on that mountaintop and tell us where the UCM are and what they're up to.'

  'The alternative is prison,' added Sergeant Paterson. 'They leave the lights on all night there.'

  They set out later that day. Rosie wanted to go with Borren, but Lenihan refused, and threatened her with arrest if she persisted. She would have to stay in the shelter. Borren felt lost without her. He remembered the black days after his first wife left him, days when he took the gun from the desk drawer and played with it, putting it to his temple and pulling the trigger, only half sure there was no bullet in the chamber.

  Rosie was a refugee from what was left of Havana. He met her one night in Gainesville, and since then she had stayed with him. He didn't know whether she loved him, and no longer greatly cared, so long as she was by his side. 'We'll be together soon,' he told her as he was led away.

  They arrived back at the house in the late afternoon. It was in surprisingly good condition, although the bomb crater six metres from the back door did nothing for the resale value. 'Get some rest,' said Lenihan. 'You'll be on duty tonight.' Borren cleared military gear off the couch and lay down.

  Three hours later, accompanied by an uncommunicative g
uard, he toiled up the path to the hilltop.

  It was cold up there, and the next day the soldiers erected a little shelter for Borren and the guard. The fall stars were magnificent, but the guard would not let Borren stare at them for long.

  Three nights later, Borren reported figures moving on a razorback ridge some twenty miles away. 'We'll deal with them,' said Lenihan. Borren waited. The figures clambered along the slope. He saw the brief flash of a torch, the glimmer of a cigarette. Near dawn, they dropped down the far side of the ridge, and the guard accompanied Borren back to the house.

  'Well done,' Lenihan told him when he woke up late that afternoon. 'We hit them in the foothills. One survivor. They're talking to him now.'

  'That's good, then. Are they going to come this way?'

  'Sooner or later, yes.'

  'Can we stop them?'

  'I hope so,' said Lenihan. 'Why were you so keen to get your new eyes, Dr Borren?'

  'I wanted to look at the stars. Just as I do now, when I get the chance. Look at the stars, and forget. I was getting a telescope built especially for me — ordinary ones are no use with these eyes, there's too much distortion and the field of view's too small — and then I would have been my own observatory. I had an observing programme all mapped out. But the telescope builder was also in Santa Fe, and he told me when we visited he wasn't planning to let the UCM scare him away. That kind of bravery can be terminal.'

  'Are the stars so much better than the Earth?'

  Borren smiled wearily. 'Ask yourself, Captain. What would you rather do, fight a war over the scraps of these United States or roam through the heavens?'

  'I have my duty,' Lenihan told him. 'So do you.'

  From that night on, though, the guard eased off Lenihan a little, and he was able to get some observing done.

  Five nights later, the UCM made their move. There was no need for Borren to give an early warning: the waves of jets that roared overhead to bomb the city were warning enough. He couldn't look at the explosions, but none of them seemed to be nuclear. The cleansing fire of God evidently had its limits.

  Rosie, he thought, I hope you got out; but he pictured her lying in the ruins, hands cupped across her belly.

  The vanguard of the Army of God came into view around the base of the razorback ridge. It was huge. Lenihan had told him to watch out for the command units, whose members could be distinguished by the glittering crosses on their arms. Borren gave Lenihan their coordinates, and Lenihan decided which missile to fire at them.

  It was quite something, to stand on this mountaintop and call down death on his enemies. One moment, he was watching the little figures march forward. The next, there was a flash, and when he could look back, there would be a crater, a cluster of broken bodies, and confusion in the enemy's ranks.

  It couldn't last, of course. There were only so many good vantage points, and the bomb crater showed that one of their pilots had already noticed this one. There was a flash at his back, a roar, and a shock that knocked him down. They had hit the house. He tried the radio a couple of times, but there was no answer. He had rather liked Lenihan, who had always been courteous to him.

  There wasn't much to do after that. It was a still night, and the seeing was good. With his new pupils fully dilated, he drank in the photons that had travelled so far to reach him from the fields of glory overhead. Occasionally, smoke obscured the view, and he looked away for a time until it cleared. He was retracing the spiral arms of great Andromeda when he felt Rosie's hand touch his. He squeezed it gently. Together, they stared out across the great desert of stars.

  AFTER THE WAR

  When Takan neared the crest of the ridge, he turned and looked back. The sun was westering, and the air was filled with haze, through which he could make out the silver of the river. Somewhere below him, the army he had so recently deserted was being exterminated by the vengeful men of the west.

  Well, let them die. They had staked everything on the invincibility of the Master, and lost. He had obeyed the Master, too: he had no choice. But, unlike his former comrades, he had considered what would happen if the Master failed.

  It would have been simpler and safer to travel underground — the enemy was sure to have patrols venturing into these hills before long — but the catastrophe that had overtaken the Master had also destroyed many of the tunnels. His wounds stung in the harsh sunlight, but he pressed on.

  He paused just below the ridgeline, reluctant to take the final few steps that would show him the plain beyond. When the Master's presence withdrew from his mind, and then vanished altogether, Takan had almost gone mad; many of his comrades had lost their minds completely, slaying themselves or each other.

  He had hated the Master all his adult life, but the fact of him was inescapable, a dark and remorseless Father whose will was life and death. Now Takan was free, but he was also alone. He straightened as far as he was able, then strode to the top of the ridge.

  The transformation was complete. What had this morning been a vast, mountain-encircled plain, crawling with the Master's armies and dominated by the Mountain and the Tower, was now a wasteland. The Tower had gone; in its place was a great pit half-filled with lava from the Mountain, which still belched fire and choking ash. On the plain, tiny figures ran hither and yon, despairing.

  The sight confirmed what he already knew. The Master was dead. There lay in ruins the force that had dominated his life, had shaped it from the moment he awoke, blind and mewling, in the foetid darkness of the spawning-pool. Whatever hopes or desires he once had for himself had been swept away by the iron will of the Master, a will that drove the orcs to fight each other, to quarrel with their neighbours, to slay all who would not submit.

  Some of his fellows had been fanatical followers of the Master, but most of the orcs had simply looked upon Him as a force of nature, to be endured and obeyed. They would whisper together, when they thought themselves safe from his spies, of what they would do after the War: set up somewhere by themselves, with no men or devils to tell them what to do, and slaves and food always close at hand. They would whisper, and hope, but they would never plan.

  Now he was scrambling down the hillside towards the smoking plain, using his long arms for balance. He would need to make his move at night, and soon, before the patrols of the enemy dared to venture this far. But it would not be easy.

  He found the entranceway he was seeking and ducked inside. This tunnel was broader than those on the other side, and though rubble had fallen in places, it was never entirely blocked. He made his way into the heart of the rock by the dim light of torches set in the wall that were now burning down, untended by the slaves who had spent their lives in keeping these tunnels lighted. He should have been challenged by guards long ago, but they had fled like all the rest.

  Here it was, the path to the forbidden place. By entering it, he would break one of the most fundamental taboos of his people. Takan hesitated, then drove himself on. Was he a slave, to be turned aside by custom or instinct?

  The great space he entered was not lit. There was movement in the darkness, and a voice.

  'It is not your time. Why are you here?'

  'The Master is dead.'

  'I know. Where are the slaves?'

  'Fled or died.'

  'Then Death comes for us all.'

  'That is why I have come to you, Mother. Our enemies have triumphed. Soon they will enter these hills. Not all of them are blind in the darkness. They will find you.'

  'I cannot leave this place. Go now.'

  'I wish to, Mother. I wish to find new lands where our people may thrive. But there is no point in making such a journey without a female.'

  'There are no females here. Has the Master not said that such Mysteries are sacred?'

  'Great Mother, the Master is dead. His commands no longer bind us. He made such laws that we should not slip from his grasp. Now he is dead, and most of us with him. I wish to live. Although it is not my time, that time will come, and then, wit
h a female, I can begin the task of rebuilding the People.'

  'There are no females. How can there be? I am the Mother here.'

  'That is so, but once I was told of the change that can come upon the hatchlings when a Mother dies . . .'

  He waited nervously in the dark and the silence. When she spoke again, her voice was softer.

  'You have profaned the Mysteries. For that, the penalty has long been death. Yet I see that there is some cause for hope in what has happened, and that many laws must now be set aside. I shall think on this. I am hungry. Bring me food.'

  Takan was not accustomed to being commanded like a slave, and preparing a meal was an ignoble task for a warrior. But the stores were still full of food, brought there by the labour of many slaves from the wide lands he hoped to reach. He made a makeshift sled from sacks, piled it high with meat and black bread, and towed it back to the Mother's pool.

  'Bring light,' she ordered.

  He took a torch from the wall, and saw his mother for the first time. He had been blind when taken from the pool; she had been old even then. Now she squatted in water filled with drifting eggs and small, darting creatures. She was huge, black, and bent, one side of her body twisted towards the water which rose to her armoured belly. She raised her great head and bared her teeth.

  'The meat. Bring it to me.'

  He stepped into the pool, then stopped, confused, as he felt small teeth close on his leg.

  'They're biting you, are they? They bite me also, but their teeth are too small to harm me. They live off the eggs, and each other. When I die, they'll live off me for a time, and grow strong, and a few will become females. It won't be long now.'