Awake in the Night Land

by John C. Wright

  The tower was open in all directions, the view broken only by great pillars to hold up the cupola. The outer surfaces of these pillars did not go to waste, for lesser spyglasses had been built in the hollow areas of their capitals, and lesser versions of those same famous machines that forever watch the foe and guard against surprise.

  Microphones and ultraphones as long as the horns of behemoths leaned out from the crowded machicolations; and here were aetherometers in their delicate crystal shells, so sensitive to taint that only technicians vowed to celibacy and temperance could approach them. Magentometers and infravisuals peered from ledges in various directions. Long range thermometers registered the flux both from the body heat of the Great South Watching Thing and the Deliberately Moving Ice. Geometers and hypergeometers detected the trace changes to local disturbances in the plenum of time and space, their needles quaking whenever one of the Doors from the distant Country of Doors That Open made a void of nothingness in mid-darkness. Momosometers tracked the clamor from the Land of the Great Laughter; pneumographs traced the changes in the spirit-pressure; volcanometers registered the changes to underground electrothermal flows, perhaps a sign that the Ungainly Buried Thing was slowly clawing its way to the surface; thanatometers clicked to themselves, measuring the unseen radiations from the Blue Shining Place. The machines are made of black and dull gray metals, as if better to hide their purposes, and their lights and cylinders are dim and muted.

  It was the quiet of the place that surprised me. I saw at least five hundred men at their stations. Many were Monstruwacans, but others were technicians and machine-tenders, fulgrators, spiritualists, psychometricians and other experts in the sciences. The Captain of the Watch was here, in full battle armor, with his tall disk-axe in his gauntlet, standing next to the speaking bells, in case messages must be sent at once to the Corps or the Gate. Fuglemen in gray and black stood by the switches and plungers which operated the machinery of the Home Call and the Set Speech, so that, by blasts of sound or floods of light patterns, messages could be sent abroad to any adventurers. Yet of all these gathered here, and more who were resting between their duties in this place, every voice was hushed, every motion was quiet and controlled.

  When I stepped from the readying chamber into the Tower of Observation itself, I could see why all talk was hushed in this place.

  The five faces of the Great Watching Things that surround our mighty home could all be seen at once from this vantage. The left eye of the Southwest Watcher hung in the shadows of it ungainly silhouette, clearly visible; the proud and impassive gaze of the terrible Great South Watcher; the bell-like ear of the Crowned Watcher; the dark unlit shape of the Northwest Watching Thing, its head still nodded in surprise at the footstep of men from two generations ago; the tall form of the Southeast Watcher, dimly visible by the glare of those strange lights we call the Silver Torches. The Thing That Nods, for the last ten thousand years, had been crouched on a cold hillside not far from the Steaming Vent, and, when my father was young, volcanic action made slender gray-white lights appear in the depth of the Vent, and by that reflected glare, a light caught the edge of the cheek of the Thing That Nods, and the muscles of its muzzle were bunched so that it seemed to be smiling at the Last Redoubt.

  To my relief, I saw that my interview with the Master Monstruwacan was not to be held in this vast and silent chamber, watched by the huge and inhuman faces below us in the eternal gloom. With a polite bow, a clerk took me past where two aureneticists in earphones were noting the voice-pattern oscillations in the threats shouted out by the Lesser Upright Speaking Object. The clerk opened a hatch in what I thought was the energy-pile for a long-range thought-gathering instrument. But no, the chamber within was mostly empty space, and the gathering mechanism was dull, all its dials blank. Here the Monstruwacan had set up a presence chamber far more spartan and austere than my uncle’s opulent reception hall: merely a few chairs of insulated metal next to a large glass table. There was a thought-scribing box with caps on extending arms held above the table, for scribes to make notes of what they viewed. No images were projected on the table at the moment, or perhaps it was focused on a part of the Night Land illumined by no smoke holes.

  I am afraid my manners, bad as they are, were even worse then, for I was disoriented. My first words were: “That voice! It said my name as I walked by. I wanted to hear—surely such a terrible thing will not come to pass! It was about to say… what was it about to say? Buried alive?”

  The Master Monstruwacan was a solidly built man, whose face was so harsh it could have been chipped from an iron block. His hair was cropped so close to his skull, that its iron-gray hue was lost against his flesh tone, which was darker than normal, as if a life of exposure to strange radiations had leeched the color from his flesh. His eyes were the color of a Diskos-weapon, dull and iron-gray.

  “That was the nearer and higher-pitched of the two identified sources from the Mountain of the Voice That Speaks. I am sorry you were exposed. You should have a mnemonicist remove the memory when you leave here: otherwise it will give you nightmares. You have studied the dream-defensive arts? Or are noble-born girls excused from that practice these days?”

  The condescension in his voice sobered me. I straightened up, and opened my mouth to make some haughty reply, but, as good fortune would have it, his manners were no better than my own, so he interrupted me before I could speak, nodding to a nearby chair, and saying: “Sit! I have little time for this business, but I am required to hear your request for an appeal.”

  “You sound like you’ve made up your mind, Master Monstruwacan.”

  “Long ago, Castellan’s daughter; but I am giving you these few minutes to change it, if you can.”

  “You know the tale of Andros and Mirdath, how she experienced anabiosis when he exposed her body—only apparently dead—to an afflatus from the Earth-Current….”

  He held up his broad, thick hand. “I know many tales. You seek to persuade me? I am a man of the night science. Speak to me of facts first, and then give interpretation, theory and persuasive urging after.”

  I passed him the plates I had taken from the spyglass.

  “Here is an image from nine months ago; here one from nine days ago. This is my brother’s Diskos where it lies on the black sand near his body. Note the chip in the blade of the weapon: in the first image it is near the base of the forks, perhaps at seven o’clock. In the second image it is near the apex of the weapon, at twelve-o’clock. Such is the fact. The interpretation is as clear. Nothing but the life-energy of the wielder can make the Diskos spin. Here it is turning, albeit slowly. The conclusion is that my brother is alive.”

  He pushed the plates back toward me. “Not so. The conclusion is merely that some residual of the life-force is draining slowly from the cells of his dead body. The fingernails and hair of a corpse grow after the body dies: this is known to science. Perhaps we are merely seeing such a residuum here. The long-range biometers have been trained on him many periods over the last nine months, and have detected not even the smallest trace of life.”

  “Nine months, with no trace of decay….”

  “The smokes and fumes of the Night Land some times betray strange preservative properties, and we know of invisible radiations that slay the animalcules which cause natural corruption.”

  “But I also have readings here showing warmth still in the body…”

  “Perhaps this is heat from the nearby volcanic smokehole.”

  “Spectrochemical analysis shows the oxygen to carbon dioxide content changes in the air near that hole. It is consistent with a long period of shallow breathing.”

  “It is also consistent with what might be expected near a fire source.”

  “We do not know for certain that he is not alive, comatose, but…”

  “We know for certain no man should risk his life to bring back another who has fallen in the Night Land! We know from records both ancient and recent that the monsters sometimes allow a corpse
to linger unmolested in plain sight, in hopes of luring some child of man forth from our mighty home.”

  “Sir! Each bit of evidence alone admits of some second explanation, but the weight of them together indicates a vital force may yet be present. But if there is any chance my brother is merely in a swoon, or clenched by a time-distortion…”

  He slapped the surface of the glass table with his palm, a shockingly loud noise in that quiet, enclosed place.

  “My judgment was overruled, first, when I advised against your brother venturing forth to seek the Country of Refuge beyond the Place of the Abhumans, which is no more than a silly tale for children; second, when he brought a brace of monsters into the Pyramid, something clean against our most ancient laws, a violation of our quarantines, an abomination. I demanded that your brother bite his Capsule, as was my right to ask. Both times your father overrode me. The irony of that cannot be lost on you. Why is your father dead, mistress? Whose negligence murdered him? Now the Adamantine Key has passed into the hands of a man devoted to restoring civility and propriety to our government, not the unsteady whims of a blind man. No. Let your brother be robbed of name and fame and all. Let his corpse sit in the view of the northern windows for an eternity, a warning to the generations yet to be. I will not be overruled this time.”

  There was more argument, of course.

  The Monstruwacan did not know he was arguing in favor of my venturing Out.

  62.

  I walk the halls of the Great Redoubt without an escort.

  Whispers follow me, just loud enough for me to hear: There goes Antigone, a child of Naäni. Wasn’t the Lesser Redoubt destroyed, lo, these many ages ago, because the race of Naäni opened their gates and allowed the monsters within? Hasn’t her brother done the same?

  One last time I go to the place where I spent so many weary hours in watch.

  There she goes to stare at him again …

  I am known to be in disfavor with Creon, the new Castellan. When I seek the great windows, and need someone to carry my stool, even my ladies and body servants hide, or report giggling to the infirmary with strange diseases and discomforts that do not otherwise appear. I have seen such things befall others in court: like a Night-Hound scenting blood, courtiers and serviles know I will not be in power long enough to avenge any petty insult done me, and so they slack their work.

  Surely there is a taint in the blood, a restlessness, a madness. The founders of the Lesser Redoubt were restless, mad, ungovernable.

  I can order them whipped, and the lector politely takes down the order, but somehow the names are lost from the correction list, and the burly thugs of the goal yard mumble and grin and speak of delays, and no one is ever punished for disobeying me.

  A taint. How else could they force themselves to rulership above us, except that they scorn the rules we follow…?

  The weight of the stool is not great, not at first, but the shape is awkward. The burghers and matrons on the Great Lifts eye my courtly dress and my ungainly load, as we sink the miles on wefts of magnetic force to the middle decks. All the while younger maids half my rank hide their smiles behind their fans, for even the humblest of them has a strapping footman to carry her parcels. They know what it means when a high-born bears her own burdens.

  They have ruled us for generations, the House of Andros, and brought our ways of life to corruption. The Gate Crew let the horrors in, and betrayed a million years of oath. The Watch did not stop the brother when he slew his father. The men of the past were not so craven.

  My uncle had engaged and supervised most of the personal staff appointments during my father’s life: they were his, not mine. I am sure he never said a word. Merely by a frown, by a tilt of his head, he could instruct the staff to keep me isolated.

  Our age is corrupt. The Pneumatic House says the negative energy build up will soon reach the critical reaction threshold, and smite us all.

  Parties, balls, receptions, I can have none, if my servants will not prepare them: and there are men to whom I could very well turn for my protection, whom the memory of honor, if nothing else, would require them to hear my pleas in full: but they are elite in rank and dignity, and to invite them to a barren meal of mash or gruel would be to offer an insult.

  I heard from a bootblack that knows her handmaiden that he forced her, his own sister to couple with the he-monster.

  And so I carry a stool on my shoulder. Eventually, I reach a wide corridor, dim and empty of all. Here is the spyglass: I place the stool before the eyepiece and climb up.

  Even among girls, I am short, and so I must step on the stool to reach the dials that control the focus and elevation, or to reach the skull-cusps that protect and focus the thought-energy that follows the visual beam of the glass.

  But this time, I am not here to examine the monsters, or to keep watch on my brother.

  I turn the spyglass down, and study the slopes and windows and miles of buttresses forming the skirt and base of our great pyramid, that place I once was proud to call my home.

  Carefully, I note the details, and I measure the distances between various points, selecting the safest route to descend.

  63.

  All persons, men and women both, are trained in the use of the Diskos. It is a weapon that never in our history, not for ten millions of years, has been used by one human being against another. In all the ages our histories record, no woman has ever ventured into the Night Lands, save only Mirdath the Beautiful. So why must we drill with the weapon as well?

  To handle the weapon, when it is charged, improves the strength not just of the arm, but of the spirit, for not all the energies that live within the haft and blade are native to this our three-dimensional universe. A woman who can swing the heavy weapon through its paces and its strokes learns of her own inner strength, and can hear the Master Word that hides in her soul.

  When the Power and Forces of the Land bend their malice upon the Last Redoubt, and all our dreams are troubled, or when the hopes and human feeling of the Millions reach across the darkened air to some stranded adventurer who crouches in the freezing Night Lands, waiting for unseen Death to strike, then are all the souls of all the living knitted together, and the aether rings as loudly with our paeans as a Home Call rings in the ear.

  Beware, beware! Return, Lost Traveler, follow my Call, and return!

  No woman who had not drilled with her weapon, and known its bright fire, its courage, tingling in the weapon haft, will have the valor, the strong spirit, needed to add her voice or her spirit to the Millions in time of need.

  The weapons are kept in charging lockers in every twentieth house along each corridor; though, among the strange folk who live near the windows of the lower mile of the Pyramid, are some who follow the older tradition, and keep them in a charging rack that hangs before their windows, so that the monsters in the darkness outside can see the shivering light of the blade as it turns, and hear its low and potent growl.

  It should have been simple to go to the arsenal, practice with the blade (as ancient law says all must do, both low and high, once a fortnight, save only the elderly, the infirm, and matrons bearing child) and then take it lightly away with me, so that I would be armed when I ventured forth.

  Haemon was waiting for me in the practice chamber. He barred the exit when I tried to leave.

  64.

  “Step from my path, Haemon,” I said, craning my neck to look up at him.

  He spread his arms and clutched the door posts of the practice chamber, one in either hand. I cannot tell you how foolish he looked when he tried to scowl sternly. His face was made for gaiety, his features for sculptors to worship. His eyes were as vacant and troubled as a child’s.

  But he said, “Return your blade to the charging rack. You have no need to walk the corridors with it.” He said this in a pleading tone.

  “You know where I am bound.”

  He shook his handsome head. “Never. I would kill you before I would let you come alive into t
he Night Lands. If the monsters in the Breeding Pits take you, they will produce a new strain of abhuman, one who knows the Master Word, and all our gates will open for them. If the Wandering Dry Tree takes you, or the Doors That Open From Nowhere to Nowhere engulf you, then your soul will be Destroyed, and we will never meet in another life, not ever, for there will be nothing left of you.”

  “Kill me then,” I said, “For I cannot live without my brother.”

  He shook his head stubbornly, his lower lip pushed out.

  “Then stand aside, or I’ll chop off your arm!” I said, flourishing my blade and raising it high. The wheel turned, and the terrible, low hum came forth like the growl of a beast.

  He spoke the Master Word, and the spirit in the blade recognized a human soul, and the weapon trembled in my hand, unable to strike.

  Foolishly, I tried to push past him, but he is not short and slight, as I am.

  More foolishly, he tried to wrest the weapon from my hand, and he put his un-gauntleted hand on the haft, even though the weapon was live. A Diskos is only ever attuned to one wielder, and it is bad luck for one who is not its owner to touch the weapon, even by the hilts. There was a flash of light that left a purple dazzle in my eyes. Haemon pulled the weapon from my hands, but when I blinked the dazzle clear, he was lying on his back, groaning, and my weapon lay beside him, hissing.

  Were I the heroine I thought I was, I would have picked up the Diskos and walked away and left him. But he groaned so miserably, that I knelt down beside him, and wiped his brow with the headcloth I had used to tie back my hair during practice.

  He whispered.

  “What?” I said.

  His voice was weak. “Come dance with me.”