From time to time, if ground-lightning discharges near the mountain-slopes that form its legs and paws, the reflection will show the great monstrous head tilted forward at an angle, a terrible great nod, and our stories say that it moved its head to this position when two brave fools from an earlier time ventured forth and came too near to it.
If the men of the eldest days of the world had seen the moon turn its huge, gray, sterile globe when ancient astronauts drew nigh, so that mountains and seas never before seen, drawn into view from the hidden, farther side of the moon, would now be visible rising and setting over all the lands of men, their astonishment could not have been more than ours, to know the Watching Thing inclined its head at an angle different from what uncounted hundreds of thousand of years had known.
Many miles from it, looms its brother, the Watching Thing of the Northeast. It is also called The Crowned Watcher, for a dull halo of blue light hangs ever above it, and throws its face and hunched shoulders into shadow. No features can be seen in that shadow, and it is not even certain whether the being has eyes. But one enormous bell-like ear is spread out from the side of a skull larger than a hillside, and very ancient reports hint that the ear sometimes can be seen to quiver, when the noise of voice and music from the Last Redoubt, or human laughter, or the rush of wind from our great air-cycling machines, or the lap of water from our indoor fountains and lakes, steals across the icy air. Whether it can pick out individual voices from the pyramid, or hears our individual footsteps and heartbeats, is a matter of speculation and debate.
The long furrows or discolorations that streak its elbow and arm, some say are evidence that a race of servile beings once raised towers and aqueducts along the creature’s lower slopes, perhaps to render it medical aid. Others say the discolorations are a sign of a rotting skin disease, and what look like the foundations of ruined towers are merely pockmarks. Since there is no light on its mask or chest, it cannot be said whether the discoloration continues to other parts of its skin or not. No person has ever ventured near enough the Watching Thing of the Northeast to settle the dispute.
I can center the view along the imaginary line joining the crowns of the two monsters, and track left to pan across the dark gloom between the two Watching Things. Here, on a low hill a few miles north, shine the unwinking lights of the House of Silence, and I see the outline of its roof and eaves. In all the millions of years our histories record, those lights have never wavered, never blinked, nor has any one of them gone out, nor any new one joined their number. The great main doors of the House of Silence stand wide open, and our long-range telescopes can glimpse the passageway beyond, sloping downward. Since eternity, those doors have never been shut.
A hooded figure stands half-hidden at the doorpost of the entrance, facing inward. Philosophers who study such things opine that there might be a second hooded shape, standing at the opposite doorpost, facing the first; but the open leaf of the Silent Door blocks any view from the Last Redoubt.
Once, three hundred thousand years ago, Aetius the Unwise, viewing from the Tower of Observation through the Great Spy Glass, claimed to have seen the hooded figure nod, as a man might nod to another in a conversation; and he entered this in the Great Log of the Monstruwacans. From this basis, Aetius wrote a monograph claiming that there must be a second hooded one, positioned opposite in the shadow of the never-closed great doors, and facing the first. However, the entry in the log is surrounded with doubt and controversy, for Aetius’ watch officer, the man on duty to record and confirm the sighting, had also been staring for too long at the lights of the House of Silence, and went mad, and slew himself by putting his head beneath the geared wheels of the Great Spy Glass as the engines were turning it. The name of the watch officer is not recorded in our archives. Since the testimony of Aetius is unsupported, the Monstruwacans note his sighting as “unendorsed” and leave the topic of the Second Hooded figure as an open question.
The name of the particular branch of science devoted to speculations about the doors of the House of Silence is called Ostiumology: the two competing theories, whether there is one figure or two, are called Monoianitorianism and Bianitorianism.
I know this because the sad, wild thought ever occurs to me that Polynices, from his position, as he died, saw what is hidden behind the second valve of the doors to the House of Silence, the doors that never in eternity have closed, and he could have settled the disputes of the academics for once and all.
One more adjustment of the dial, and I can drop my view in a straight line. Less than eight miles from the House of Silence, in the middle of an otherwise unnamed and unremarkable landscape of scattered firepits and sickly moss-bushes, I can find the smoke-hole where my brother fell.
Sometimes the smoke is thick, blocking all view. Sometimes the smoke is agitated, flying in a quick stream straight upward, and the fire below is active, so that enough light spills from it that I can glimpse his form.
I have watched every waking-period for the last nine months, waiting. Perhaps I was waiting for the return of the mist-man, whose insubstantial body shined with light, or perhaps an eruption of volcano or ground-lighting, to cast a glare across the body that would be cleaner and clearer to my sight than the fitful flickers of the smoke-hole.
I can adjust the dials of the spyglass so that Polynices seems to be almost in my arms. He seems a short way off, and could I but reach out my hand, I should touch him.
He is not a short way off. And whenever the image in the spyglass grows misty with tears, and whenever I forget myself, I do reach out my hand, and my hand is too short to reach him, my brother who lies unburied and unmourned so many miles away.
36.
“You have watched your brother’s corpse for nine months.” Haemon spoke with cautious delicacy, as one who is unwilling to argue, but unwilling not to argue.
I said, “There is still no sign of deterioration.”
He sighed. “For seven months you have sent out hour-slips, asking if any man among the millions is bold enough to venture forth, and recover your brother’s body. My father the Castellan will forbid you to ask again: later this watch he will make the announcement.”
I looked at him sidelong. “How do you know?”
He smiled his easy smile, but did not answer. Handsome as he is, there are many among the High Court who would have welcomed his friendship, even were he not of penultimate rank, the most elite of the most elite phylum. He had no need to seek out courtiers to spy for him.
“Hear this, “ I said, “The Castellan may rule the civic business of the Great Redoubt, but he does not rule me.”
His charming smile vanished. “But, darling, my father rules the comings and goings from the Great Lower Gate, which have not been opened in one hundred years, except for your brother’s expedition. The time when men venture forth from the pyramid and walk the lands of night and death are passed.”
“There are lesser gates no records betray. My brother used one to go Out and feed his monsters. I know the word to open it.”
“You contemplate mere madness, my beloved. The Castellan has placed your brother’s name on the interdicted list, and decreed that no songs should be sung of him, and no eulogy pronounced. Published obituaries are ordered to consist of his birth-hour, his father’s name, his hour of elevation, matriculation, and communion, and a list of his criminal charges, and no more.”
I said nothing, but my knuckles were white on the dials of the spy glass.
Haemon continued speaking, his voice was soft, tactful, the very soul of reason: “The escutcheon of your father’s branch of the family will be blotted with an image of a mutilated crone; your house paean will be replaced with the cry of the Night-Hound, and these humiliations are to linger until such time as monsters rend and despoil that man’s body, nameless hereafter, who lays face-down in the crater of black salt, near the fume of the smoke-pit.”
I speak without taking my eye from the eyepiece of the glass: “Then the blot will never b
e removed, for my brother’s body will be recovered. His name is Polynices.”
“No man will venture forth for you.”
“Will you go?”
The lovely smile returned. “Gladly will I die for you, beloved, but should I, even for you, allow my soul to be Destroyed by the Slowly Turning Wheel which still haunts the area where your brother fell?”
“Then I will go.”
“Madness! Ancient laws forbid that women venture forth.”
“My brother shall live again. He is not dead.”
37.
There are one thousand cities, some empty of life and light, others green with wintergardens and gold with incandescent lamps, each metropolis smaller and higher than the one beneath, all protected under the sloping walls of our seven-mile-high pyramid where the last of the human race are besieged. Polynices, once the dreams started to afflict him, told me there was a time before our records reach, when men walked and built upon the surface beyond these mighty walls.
I remember it was a twelvemonth before my Naming Day, when he first spoke of this to me; for I was in my older sister’s room, seated before her looking glass, wearing her dancing uniform and pinning up my hair. The uniform was a white tunic and bright red pantaloons whose leggings were wider than a skirt. I was curious to see what I might look like this time next year, once I could wear my hair up, as a grown woman can, to show the line of my neck. I had the glass viewpoint adjusted to show me from behind, so I could only see Polynices from the back, and I was looking over his shoulder at first one coiffeur of mine, then the next.
I said to him lightly: “Impossible that men once walked abroad! The Night-Hounds would have eaten them. And can men live in eternal gloom, with only scattered firepits for light, and only moss-bush and sand to eat? You cannot tell me they drank from the waters of the Cold Venom Sea.”
“I mean,” he said patiently, “Our ancestors once walked abroad, in a time when things were not as now.”
“Your ancestors and mine? Of course! We know there was a second race of humanity living elsewhere. In the Lesser Redoubt. Nine hundred thousand years ago it fell, but here is the proof that it once reared a tower above a land of endless darkness.” I plucked a hair from my head and waved it, giggling.
“Beautiful hair, mistress,” murmured the indentured girl helping me brush and comb. She was older than I was, but I don’t recall her name. I think she was from a city somewhere in the four hundreds. The air pressure there is different, because of a failure of the machines in ages past, and her folk are said to have acuter hearing than those of us who live on highest decks.
Polynices was not impressed. His hair was as dark as mine, his cheek as high, his eyes as slanted. “No,” said he, “I mean the ancestors of all the men of all the cities of the Great Redoubt. We walked abroad, and farmed, and rode. All men. I saw it.”
I said, “You no doubt recovered a dream from a braver day than this, if all the men tested their boldness by venturing into the Dark! Perhaps the numbers of mankind were fewer, or the sources of metal more, to equip every jack and squire with arms and armor, and Earth-Current flowing without meter or without rationing, to charge the weapons and weave the broad gray cloaks that keep the deadly chill of Everlasting Night away. Ah! You must have seen a wondrous time indeed!”
I remembered being delighted with the fancy, speculating what men must have been like, in that long-lost era, when folk still ventured from the Pyramid; men like Andros.
I said sadly: “Weren’t the gates sealed and fused shut years ago?”
38.
Now I stand on the balcony and study the creatures guarding my brother’s body. When atmospheric conditions are right, long range microphones can pick out the noise of their cries. Usually it is but one, rather than both; and they go away for weeks at a time. But always they come back, barking and wagging their poisonous tails, as if expecting him to rise again, and feed them from his hand. When he does not rise, they throw back their heads and utter their mournful cry.
There is a noise like that in my heart, a whining howl that goes on and on.
I should not envy them. And yet they stand within a few yards of him. They can see his features, his brave face, which the angle of his fall hides from me.
How foolish the brutes are. He will never rise again. Not for them.
If only I could stand where they stand.
39.
The men of my father’s generation were too timid to venture Out.
The encampment of Dun Giants did not exist in ages past. Some power feeds an unnatural life in them, so that they need not scatter in search of the unwholesome moss or fungi and deadly meats that sustain them in the dark. Well fed, they are able to maintain an unceasing watch against our doors, and rise up in many numbers should any of us emerge from our armored fastness.
My grandfather Laius once told me the tale of Cyrus and Darius venturing forth. He said it happened in his youth that the pair went forth together. One year when subterranean vapors sent the Dun Giants into a stupor, they found an opportunity to slip the leaguer. They meant to gather aetheric photographs of the black aura surrounding the Great Northwest Watching Thing, and perhaps creep close enough to the Blue Shining Plain to measure what the shining substance was, or discover why it was so deadly.
The two adventurers entered the Blue Plain, and were lost from sight for many weeks, and thought dead, for no person had ever entered that place and lived. But then, beyond all hope, long-range spy glasses detected two figures emerging from the silent blue fires on the far side of the plain. They were spotted once and twice again, dark silhouettes crossing patches of white ice, heading north and west.
Then, in the fiftieth hour after they had been seen to emerge, an unexpected eruption of a volcano spread a red and beating light, and revealed their position. The Great Northwest Watching Thing had not moved in perhaps a million years, but it tilted its head toward the two adventurers, who stood, still as posts in the sudden glare, in the midst of a flat and open place.
At once all the Night Land was filled with voices, and the Land Whence Comes Great Laughter began to yammer and shout. Beasts climbed from their pits and holes that dot the dark plain between the Place Where the Silent Ones Are Not and the diseased plateau above which burn the Seven Unwinking Torches.
The two men dashed away from the volcano-firelight and entered the Broken Land, a place of pits and escarpments. Hours turned into weeks as the monsters prowled and hunted the two adventurers, and millions watched from the balconies of the Great Redoubt for some sign of them.
One was eaten by a Night-Hound. Grandfather said the Night-Hound dragged the body very near to our gates, and sat on its haunches and playing with the corpse, dandling the body from its paws and ripping it, while harquebusiers shot ineffective lances of fire at the monster from lower windows.
The other adventurer was making his cautious way back toward the pyramid. Grandfather told me that schoolboys and matrons returned every waking-period to the Viewing Table chambers for their cities, to see if the Great Spy Glass or any lesser glasses had caught a glimpse of the surviving adventurer in his gray armor sneaking from moss-bush to moss-bush, or darting across the baked mud of exposed ground.
Eventually the report came that he was seen, pale in the gloom, running naked toward the House of Silence, his head hanging oddly as he ran, his armor and weapons gone. He entered the Doors that have never closed since the beginning of Eternity.
Some observers stared at the House for many hours and days afterwards, hoping to catch perhaps a glimpse of the lost man through the uncased windows of that place, and these observers had to be sedated later, for they saw the beckoning dreams and heard the soft voices that those who stare for too long at the House sometimes see and hear, and it was clear their mind-training had not been sufficient to defend them.
I don’t remember which one, Darius or Cyrus, was slain by the Night-Hound and which one was called into the House of Silence and Destroyed.
I remember Polynices’ answer, that time when we spoke in my sister’s chambers. He said, “The gates are not fast shut. A man could walk out into the Land our ancestors walked freely, every one of them.”
My brother’s words inspired me. I tried to imagine a time when every man was as brave as Andros. Surely in such an age, every woman would have been as fair as Mirdath, or so I concluded in my girlish certainty.
“Such bold men!” I said again, “To tempt death so gallantly.”
“All men and women too. I do not mean each man ventured forth on one brief mission as a test of strength. I mean we walked the Land and it was our own. Many folk lived in houses and cities not far from the Great Pyramid, each one surrounded by its own Electric Circle of protective energy, its own sheath of Air-Clog to dispel the voices and beguilements and stench. So much light was shed by the lower balconies in those days, that green gardens grew in the open air, along the long angles of light from the lower windows.”
“Foolish! No woman has ever trod the poisoned black grit of the Night Land, save Mirdath the Beautiful. Our laws forbid it.”
“This is a time before that law, before the Siege of Man.”
“Some dreams are merely figments: impressions from our daily toil and pleasure, combined and recombined in our fancy when our waking nature retires.” Since my brother was older than me, I enjoyed correcting him.
He shook his head slowly. “I sleep beneath a dreaming glass. The glass showed the images had a time-depth of over five million years. I saw a flock of pigeons fly out from the windows of one great balcony, their wings supported by the thick, warm air of those lost ages, and fly back into others. The birds carried trinkets and letters or stamps of perfume from lover to beloved, loves forbidden by the eugeneticists or stricter parents of those aeons. That image was from a previous life, long before the Seven Hundred Year famine, when all megafauna of our underground parks were hunted to extinction, long before the Time of the Weakening, before when any pets or livestock above the insect level of organization began to be sensitive to influences from the Nine Iron Towers, and had to be slain.”
Awake in the Night Land Page 9