Awake in the Night Land

by John C. Wright

  “You are saying that the Chronomancer sent me out into the darkness, not to prevail, but to fail? My mission is parricide?”

  The notion was so horrible, so alien to the norms of sanity, I sent the Master-Word once more into his soul, to confirm that father had not gone mad during the hours while I slept.

  He answered with the Word, but also asked softly: "What was in his account of the Death of Mankind which is not from any prophecy or report we have ever heard erenow, even from those who venture too close to the screaming that comes from the end of time?”

  I said, “He said the ghosts of all the dead would linger in the Great Redoubt for years and centuries after the death in all their flesh of all the last generation.”

  “And then what?”

  I did not answer him. The Chronomancer foretold Destruction for all the memories of all the race. Everyone who was safely dead and beyond their reach, every hero brave enough to take the capsule between his teeth and slay himself quickly before the Destruction of his human essence, would no longer be preserved and safe. Even the dead would be tormented and corrupted, their souls consumed with exquisite malice thought by thought.

  I asked, “Is there some other place the lordly dead might be preserved?”

  “After the Earth Current fails? Do not be foolish. At one time, in the youth of our race, these matters were the stuff of dreams and riddles; there were men who knew nothing of the psychic sciences, or did not comprehend how every finer mental substance must have a material substrate. But for countless ages we have known the truth, and I can confirm the guesses of the necromancers, who have studied the cycles of reincarnation for many millions of years.”

  “Confirm what, father?”

  “Learn now the lore of the dead: even spirits must pass away. There is no life past the universal night.”

  “But we have studied the art of reincarnation, and know its secrets!”

  “My son, the mighty Earth Current has the power to restore, even after many tens of thousands or millions of years, those who die within its aura, if their love is pure. Such heroes can be imprinted into the gene-plasm of the unborn. But the might of the Earth Current must fail in time. Know that there were once aurenetic fields alike to this surrounding the husk of our dead sun, and, at one time, surrounding the core of our dead galaxy. But the enemy, star by star, has disturbed the natural balance of aetheric and magnetic fields in heaven: and likewise disturbed the aether all the way to the core of the earth, and leached away the virtue of the Earth Current which sustains our life on this darkened world. It is a slow process. In early eons, men could be reborn on other worlds, on Arcturus, where the great sun Branchspell sheds light not meant for human eyes, in hues unknown to us, jale and ulfire. Again, men were born beneath the Green Star in the constellation of the bull, or in the unique rosette of planets captured by the star Omos in the Globular Cluster NGC 7006 in Delpinus: but as the darkness grew, fewer and fewer pneumo-astromagnetic fields survived able to act as a medium between distances. Soon men were confined only to reincarnate within the magnetic aura of the Earth-Current, both here and at the undiscovered Third Redoubt occupying the opposite pole of the planet. When that Redoubt betrayed itself and created the abhumans, the cycle was broken, and for many millennia life has been using up a stored energy that can never be revived. Nothing is promised in this new technology, this science of preserving dead memories like mine, nothing save that we will outlive the healthy and living phase of mortal life, and dwell for a time as shadows, as echoes, as recordings, and all the sacrifice we made to deny the enemy shall be in vain.”

  I said, “This is the future we have avoided! The Chronomancer's sacrifice was to prevent this same you decry.”

  “No. He reached the only time when man was perfect enough to see the difficult choice, and yet primitive enough in impulse to know the right thing to do. You alone of all our race recall the first wellsprings of life. The heroes of forgotten years, those grim and iron-hearted men of stoic temper: they still live in you. You alone of the Seventeenth Humanity are bold enough to venture out of the Last Redoubt; they are too refined and perfected to know what must be done. Slay me, and tell the Last Redoubt that attempts to preserve the race beyond our allotted span will prove as unwise as ever a novice proved who hesitated to bite the Capsule, hoping some star of light would save him, and this hope snared him to his destruction, whence his soul-remnants do not escape forever. There are some things it is better to die than to endure: and this is truth for races as for single men.”

  “How can we live utterly without hope?”

  “Where is hope to be found? As men in coffins, so entrapped is all our race by remorseless entropy, and a little time remains until the air runs out. It may be an hour or a minute. What shall you do, what shall we all do, in the span of time remaining? Claw at the lid as beasts might do? There is a certain low bravery in that, but it will only bring the earth down atop us. Write a sonnet on the inside of the lid? Perhaps. None will ever see it, but it will be a thing of beauty that was not there before, a defiance to an uncaring cosmos. You recall the span of human life all the way to the earliest one-celled organism. What is the right of things?”

  I had to remove my gauntlet to wipe my eyes. “I will not slay my father. You taught me everything.”

  “I am but his shadow.”

  “We could imprint you into an unborn child!”

  “As population falls, this would lead to many souls within each one man.”

  “And yet the Mind Song could coordinate all the disparate elements!”

  “And preserve us until the Great South Watcher smites the gate. Preserve us for that creature! The doors of the House of Silence stand open even now to receive us. Will you see me preserved until I am lured to that place, from whence no sound, no voice, no song, no scream, ever is allowed to escape?”

  “Is there no weapon against these horrors, my father? Will these creatures of light who, from time to time have manifested to preserve one lost man or another, can they do nothing to preserve the race?”

  “Of what is unknown, nothing can be said. Will you pin your hopes on the Good Powers, if they are good indeed? Even though one held me in suspension for lo these many years, I still cannot tell what it was, or if it will come again. Slay me now, and let my essence spill into nothingness, so that I will not come intact and self-aware into the power of the enemy. That is my wish. You are my son.”

  With words of lead, I said, “Father, I cannot. All the ancient life-force in me cries against it. Will I be the name of impiety forever? No son can slay his father.”

  “You are confused and weak. When you return to the energized sheathe of air surrounding the pyramid, the Mind Song will balance your humors, and you will see straight again.”

  So it was that with the slowest and most reluctant steps I returned through the infinite terror and danger of the Night Lands. Of that walking I will give a complete report to the Monstruwacans: here I will say only a little of what I saw. I slew a manlike shape covered with spines and bristles twice the height of a man, in a pit of smooth sand near a smoke-hole. This was a great monster, and the slaver of its jaws was nasty and beastlike.

  In another place I came across a coven of Silent Ones who stood without motion along the crest of a barren hill, their hoods tilted toward each other, almost in the attitude men would take, who talked and consulted. I buried myself beneath the moss bush. These great and unearthly spirits passed near by to me, but I was not slain.

  I saw a regiment of Night-Hounds standing in order before a creature that seemed an insect thing, all claws and crooked legs, yet made of mist that my eye could see through him. The hound-things were greater than a dray-horse of the ancient world. I have never heard report of intellect among the Night-Hounds, nor that they moved and drilled as armed men, in file and rank: and surely this was a great wonder, and I did not understand it. There was no wind, and they did not scent me: otherwise I surely would not have saved myself alive. />
  In another place I found a ruin that indicated that human beings indeed once had dwellings, smaller strongholds, out in the darkness away from the Great Redoubt: yet I saw the little bones they left, and my father told me these people slew their children and ate them, in order that they be accepted among the abhumans.

  Elsewhere I saw the stones stir uneasily, and I felt in my spirit the powerful malice radiating from the ground, and I realized I walked among the eggs of some form of life made of a substance harder than rock, and it was by the mere unwatchfulness of the guardians there that I escaped.

  In another time I heard music in the darkness, calling, and it was only through the intervention of my father's ghost that my life and sanity were preserved, for he said the Master Word to me, and I was reminded of human things, food and lamplight, clean water and the laughter of children, and by this means I resisted the pull. I feared for him, because to put his power out from the ghost-cell and touch me, he exposed himself naked in spirit to the miasma of the Night Land, if only for a moment. Yet he seemed to take no hurt.

  When I passed through the gray dunes, I lost sight of the Great Redoubt, and was lost. I thought I was in some deep valley, whose tall walls no doubt blocked my vision of the mighty Hill of Life. Yet I followed the needle, and it pointed toward the source of the Earth Current, but I did not see the Last Redoubt before me, and neither did I find any wall or cloud blocking my sight. I felt the power of many human souls in my mind, so I knew I was near, and I saw the weird fires of the Country of Blue Fire to the North, and so I knew I was not blind.

  Not until I came to the very place of the Great Redoubt, did I see that the upper stories, many of the cities and towers of the upper balconies, were dark. I did not know the terror that the Redoubt had fallen, because I still sensed the pulse of human life within, but I was filled with doubt and awe.

  Closer I crept. I could smell the burning in the air, and I knew from the disturbances in the aether that a mighty battle had taken place here, and much of the Earth-Current had been expended to ward off an invisible pressure from the House of Silence. Of the corpses of Night-Hounds and slugs as vast as hills, there was beyond number heaped up in mounds before the Southeast Gate and the Southwest. I walked many hours to the North, till I came around the side of the pyramid: for the first time in all my life, the sight of the Northeast Watching Thing, that monster called Crowned Watcher, was lost, since a great pall of smoke hung over the Night Land in that direction, and, for once, the piercing horror of the many eyes watching us was blind. This great smoke was due to the discharges of weapons of an antique type. They had not been fired in perhaps three quarters of a million years, but the ancient and honorable guild of the Matrosses kept them in order.

  There were scavenger-creatures among the many corpses gathered around, but they fled from the roar and flash of my Diskos. Once and twice abhumans spotted me, and threw stones, holding away from me and hooting for their comrades to come and slay: for they were wise enough not to come at me one at a time. But I pursued the first and killed it, and, not long after when another pelted me I gave chase, but he escaped with a wound to his leg, for he fell down a slope into a rushing creek of slime, and I dared not follow. Both times the creature-men were far from their bands, and walking alone.

  I came upon two figures outlined against the dim and sacred glow of the electric circle so suddenly that I turned upon them with my weapon: but my Diskos, being wiser than I, could not strike, for these were men. The Master Word beat solemnly in the dark air.

  “Here is one whose name I cannot say," said the first, “And I am Belphanes of the Savants. My order is that which oversees the oaths of men: if you have vowed to spare your father, I release you from that vow, and absolve you.”

  I could see the Mind Song in their eyes. To me the Song was still silent. They were on one side of the tiny line of light which defines the Air Clog, and I was on the other.

  “I will not kill my father," I said. “Where is justice in this? We are perfect men of a perfect age: we will resist the temptation to preserve our dead. They will perish with us, and escape the final dread. But to extinguish their memory before that time is madness. Where is the harm in it?”

  The one unnamed to me said, “Friend, you have been alone, and your mind has wandered down strange paths. You know that there is one race of mankind who will come after us, fully human, a flourish for a few years, a brief and final golden age, before the abhumans learn the Master Word and come to occupy our beloved homes. Our children will not be able to resist the temptation.”

  “That is not proved!” I shouted, the first time one human voice had been raised in anger against another in perhaps twenty thousand years or more.

  That one said, “You may prove it. You are as our ancestors were, and as our descendents will one day be. Resist the temptation to cling to life when life endangers soul and sanity. Put the cylinder at your feet. To spare you, I am come, and I promise to shatter the casing with one blow, and with my weapon tuned so that no part of your father will escape and be tainted by the Night.”

  I knew why he had not been introduced to me. It is not fitting that one whose duty it is to slay your loved ones be known to you.

  Belphanes of the Savants shook his head toward that unnamed man. “Spare no words with him: his soul is isolated. As soon as he steps across the white circle, he will be in communion with us, and what must be done will be clear.”

  Such was my grief and anger that I turned away. Perhaps I meant merely to run into the darkness, blindly, without goal. Or perhaps I thought the shattered strongholds filled with bones could be restored to energy and light, and I could live out my days alone, companioned only by my father's lifeless voice.

  But whatever it was I thought, I saw, remote in the distance, where the great clouds of smoke had parted, merely the suggestion of a shadow within a shadow. One shadow was a low hill set with standing stones; the other was the outline of the House of Silence, and I saw the motionless little lights in the windows: and I saw its doors were open, as if inviting me to come inside. The allure of the doors was very great. I remember thinking that it would be a heroic deed to go there, since all the members of my race feared it, and I would see what they feared to look upon, the nameless and unsleeping power that dwelt inside that place.

  The two men spoke the Master Word, but I did not hear it: and they dared not step over the electric circle, for at that moment it was grown terrifically bright, and I heard the groaning of engines buried beneath the great Redoubt, bringing up Earth-Current to the task.

  The aetheric disturbance could have blown my soul into nothingness, as a puff of breathe blows out a candle: but the purpose of the House of Silence is ever to take, never to kill. And I stepped one step away from the electric circle, which now blazed like lightning on the ground.

  My father spoke the Master Word to me, and his spirit seemed to reach up from the lantern-shaped cell I held and touch my face. This broke the spell. I stepped back across the circle, and, at that same moment of time, sanity and moral sense returned to me.

  I saw from the dials on the casing that all my debate and hesitation had been for nothing. My father was rapidly dehumanizing. He had exposed himself to the full brunt of the silence of the Night Land to save me. Before the process could complete itself, before he was trapped for eternity in an agony such that no fleshly organism can imagine, I shattered the casing of the ghost-cell down at my feet: there was a flare of light where it broke against the lightning of the electric circle. That clean and pure electric essence of the Earth Current may have swept the stain away: his individuality and memory were gone. Not even an echo of the beloved soul remained.

  “Why?” I called out in grief. “Why is this dark world as it is? Are all the promises of hope in vain?”

  I felt the pressure of the silence, the soul-destroying emptiness, that issued from the House of Silence, creaking against the laboring barrier that protected us.

  There was no o
ther noise from the Night Lands to answer me, except, perhaps, the mocking echo of unearthly scorn from the Country Whence Comes Great Laughter.

  The Last of All Suns

  Circa AD TEN DECILLION VIGINTILLION

  (The End of Eternity)

  121. We Are Lost

  We are lost in endless and titanic halls of windowless metal. Some of the things pursuing us are so large that, to them, even these halls are cramped, and the miters of the crawling sphinxes scrape flakes of debris from the expanse of black plate above.

  I say we are aboard a ship. The other men resurrected from the Archive disagree. Some think we are in hell, or in a fairy-mound, or suffering the hallucinations imposed by the thinking-machines of futuristic science.

  Of all of us, the man from the latest period of humanity was from AD 29,000,000, some twenty-nine million years after my death. He came from an age long after the sun had died, a terror-haunted world of eternal darkness. His home was a titanic fortress called the Last Redoubt, a structure hulled against the infinite cold of a sunless sky, nursing its life on the last few embers of dying geothermal and geomagnetic heat. His name is Ydmos of Utter-Tower. Ydmos thinks this vessel is a redoubt like his, one long ago captured by the enemy, and that we are all buried far underground.

  Even his era is uncountable years lost, compared to this present one. Earth was murdered more than fifteen billion years ago; the Milky Way, star by star, was consumed by darkness five billion years ago, and the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds as well. The great galaxy in Andromeda, her satellite galaxies M32 and M110, and Triagulum Galaxy in M33, are also gone: the spiral galaxies in Ursa Minor, Sculptor, Draco, Carina, Fornax: over the slow millennia, all are destroyed and vanished.