by J. T. Wilson
“It wasn’t just the soldiers,” Bedford said. “I could understand that. But after we blew up the big guns at the gate…”
“You did what?” Grant demanded, suddenly alert. “You destroyed the two guns guarding the gate? What happened next; tell me everything.”
Bedford did so, with a few additional details provided by Folkard and Phillips. Annabelle remained silent throughout, studying her uncle carefully.
“Well, that explains it,” Grant said when they finished. “The Drobates can be savage if aroused, but they generally do not much bestir themselves. But the guns… Those guns are more than simply lighting cannons capable of destroying a vessel at over a mile range; they are also the spiritual guardians of the city. Think of them as the carved gargoyles on a cathedral, or those enormous spirit animals found at the gates of Chinese temples. That is why the populace turned out en masse, and why they attacked with such unbridled ferocity. In a sense you destroyed two of their gods, although lesser ones.”
That hardly seemed plausible to Nathanial, and yet the violence of the attack, and the manner in which it was driven home—without apparent concern for losses—required some extraordinary explanation, for it was certainly an extraordinary event. “You mean to say they worship machines?” he asked.
“No, not precisely; they worship science, but over the generations, and as their understanding of scientific methodology deteriorated, their reverence for science itself was supplanted by worship of the physical artefacts and symbols of science, a sort of idolatry if you will. Their theologians will tell you the objects are merely symbols for the knowledge which lies behind them, but to the common man or woman the distinction is meaningless. Of course, at the centre of their belief system is the Heart. I learned that a part of the Heart was located in their most sacred of temples—or rather the temple was built around that part of the Heart. I even saw it. It is, however, dead.”
“Dead?” Folkard exclaimed. “How can that be? If all of the separate parts are of the whole, does that mean the Heart itself has died? Surely not, for I still feel its vibrations, even here.”
There was a desperation to Folkard’s words which surprised Nathanial. He spoke of the possible death of the Heart with genuine anguish, as he would have about a loved one.
“Calm yourself, Captain,” Grant said. “The Heart is not dead, but the part the Drobates worshipped is certainly dead. How can a part be dead and the whole still live? Rather like my niece Annabelle still lives, while obviously one of her limbs has died and been replaced with that rather odd peg… Wherever did you find that, my dear?”
“A friend carved it from the bough of a Martian blackwood tree. I did not think you had noticed my injury, Uncle.”
“Of course I did. A scientist lives by his powers of observation. I also note you have found a Drobate prosthesis. An adequate design although hardly inspired, given the technology available to them. I suspect Nathanial will be able to make something of it.”
“You know a great deal about them, Doctor,” Folkard said. “How did you escape?”
“I follow the Shining Path,” Grant said, smiling. “Naporrow Bing was assigned to study me. Having established a telepathic connection with him, I entered into an arrangement with Bing, whereby I would show him and his people the secrets they were seeking in exchange for my freedom. They are now fugitives, of a sort: former science priests.”
“And what does that make you?” asked Folkard.
“Me?” Grant smiled beatifically. “I suppose you would say I am a prophet.”
2.
NATHANIAL FOUND the Drobate tea acidic to the taste and soupy in texture, but it warmed him and he found it strangely satisfying. Once the tea was poured out to everyone, Grant settled back and looked at them over the rim of his mug, steam for a moment shrouding his face. The image disturbed Nathanial.
“I realise, of course, what you are thinking. A man who allows himself to be branded a prophet is liable to be branded a heretic. Yet it was absolutely necessary in order to facilitate my escape, surely you see this. Who among you would not take on a lie about themselves in order to evade death?” At this last, there were some uncomfortable glances among the group. “I thought as much. Now, Bing is a rather perceptive character and was able to facilitate my exit by explaining to the prison wardens that, rather than being put to work in menial physical labour, I might be of some use to the Science Priests and help them with their experiments. The Drobate lives in fear of the scientists, as you may imagine, and permitted the group to take me. All that prevents the scientists from ruling outright are the schisms in their faith: electricity, chemistry, biology, and one which purports to draw energy directly from the building blocks of matter, but hasn’t actually done so for more generations than anyone can remember—a lot of flummery if you ask me, but it may have been based on something real at one time. The point is, these factions are jealous of each other, and their division allows the civil governors and councillors to retain control.
“Little do they know, however, that an alliance of some of the younger priests of the biological sciences and the electromagnetic cult have made common cause and work against them. They plan to take the Drobate city from under their noses! To this effect, we work on the research we have engaged in here.”
“This will be the ghastly spectacle we witnessed in the other rooms, no doubt?” asked Nathanial, looking with sympathy at Annabelle, who listened to her uncle with scarcely-concealed disgust.
“Much of that is the work of the biologists, of course, and some of it has produced a better grade of prosthetic, for which my niece should be at least a little more grateful than I perceive she is.” Grant looked at Annabelle pointedly, then continued. “Beyond that, they have made some remarkable advances in enhanced performance with mechanical replacements. You curl your lip, Captain Folkard, but surely you must appreciate the potential military advantage of hybridized men, able to run faster and longer, carry heavier loads, hear better, perhaps someday even be modified to see better? The battlefield would benefit in countless ways from the knowledge of which we stand on the precipice!”
“You sound like another doctor of which I’m familiar; I believe Shelley documented his tales,” noted Nathanial wryly.
“Perhaps. My men may be conducting experiments which you consider ghastly; so too did all radical scientists. It will no doubt confirm your view if I tell you some of the work in those labs was my own.”
“Your own?” Annabelle cried out. “How could you debase yourself thus, Uncle? You who dreamt of a real city of light and science, not one of superstition and torture and…and abomination.”
“Call it what you will,” he answered with a dismissive wave of his hand, and Nathanial was again struck by Grant’s apparent lack of emotional attachment to his former friends and family. “My assistants and I have made rigorous examinations of every large form of lunar life known to us, and there are similarities in all of these life forms—subtle to be sure, and sometimes detectable only on the most basic biochemical level—which suggest they have all sprouted from a single tree of life. All bear these similarities save only one: the Drobates.”
Nathanial felt a flush of excitement and sat forward. For the first time he found himself genuinely interested in Grant’s work, rather than simply morbidly fascinated. “You mean to say the Drobates are not native to Luna? But where then? They do not seem capable of navigating the aether, or even aware of its existence.”
“Nonetheless, my point is this: the City of Light and Science is some way from its original purpose. Its inhabitants provide neither science nor illumination. The city is thousands of years older than any city on Earth, and its inhabitants merely a shadow of their former glory. The Heart, in its infinite wisdom, tells me this.”
“Mere observation can tell you that much, Doctor,” Nathanial pointed out. “When next the Heart chooses to whisper in your ear, pray ask it where the Drobates originate. We have seen no evidence of anything like them on an
y of the inner worlds.”
“Precisely,” Grant agreed. “So their secret must lie beyond the inner worlds.”
Something was niggling away in the back of Nathanial’s mind. A remembrance of… Ah! “Wait! Remember when we last met? You agreed with me that the glow which intermittently emanates from the Gorge is the Heart, attempting to communicate with… The place from where the Drobates originate? Is that possible, Doctor?”
Grant’s eyes lit up. “Brilliant deduction, Professor! Yes, yes, I think very possible.”
For a few moments there was silence, as the small party took in this new revelation. No doubt Bedford and Folkard were considering the military implications, and Annabelle simply looked on her uncle with pity, but Nathanial understood the real implications. Life beyond the asteroids. Secrets thus far beyond anything humanity had ever dreamed.
“But there is a more immediate goal for my Drobate allies,” Grant began once more. “Though we work in secret and in exile, it is our goal to restore the city to its former glory and to repair the machines that lie in rusting heaps beside their roads. Perhaps at that stage, the Empires of Great Britain and the Drobates might collaborate for their mutual benefit.”
He paused there, and not without reason. The look of affront on Folkard’s face mirrored that of Bedford’s. Nathanial, however, could see the benefit of such an alliance.
“You will surely now agree that the work done by the Drobates under my supervision is not the evil that you consider that it might be?” Grant asked. “I certainly warrant that you may have lost a number of men at the hands of the Drobates and you might even have suffered personal indignities at their hands, but I beseech you, do not judge an entire orchard by the failings of one or two bad apples. Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.”
“Who said that?” Annabelle asked.
“I did, just then. Really, you must learn to listen, Annabelle,” replied her uncle, finishing his tea. “You seem shocked that I suggest an alliance with the Drobates, Annabelle. You may remember that you reacted in a similar way when you first saw the Selenites. They quickly became our allies, did they not?”
“And what about now? It looks as though you have neglected the Selenites entirely in favour of these creatures,” she answered.
“Annabelle, the Selenites are loyal enough and perfectly amiable, in the same way that cattle on a ranch are perfectly loyal and amiable.”
“Cattle?” said Annabelle, aghast.
“Even you must admit that for a group whose leaders are called Retainers of Knowledge, they are curiously ignorant. They retain knowledge, yet they know nothing of how to use it. They cannot possibly be regarded as intellectual equals. Stone, have you encountered a Selenite tool that has left you foxed? Captain Folkard, would you consider K’chuk a captain of equal wit and cunning to the mighty Jacob Folkard, master and commander of HMAS Sovereign? I think not. The Selenites are little more than savages and they worship the Heart with no more understanding of their reasons than the Incas worshipping the Sun. They worship the Heart, yet they do not question it. They could, should they wish, gain enough information to make tools, weapons, clothing even, yet they choose not to. They act as if they are slaves to the Heart. Now, Professor Stone, you who are so diligent at drawing conclusions—why do you think that might be?”
“Why, they fear the Heart,” Nathanial replied. “They are not as intelligent as the Heart and this daunts them. They treat it with respect and with awe. This is hardly a revelation, Doctor. The Selenites are only acting in the same way that an infant might approach its mother.”
“An ironic comparison!” cried Grant. “For you see, the Heart is their mother. The entire species, created from nothing by the Heart, using only the influence of the hive insect colonies that once infested Luna…”
“Doctor,” Folkard said, “we already know all this. We discovered this on our last mission here, do you not recall?”
Grant looked at the captain blankly. It seemed to Nathanial that the old man was losing his mind in more ways than one.
“You know nothing!” Grant waved about him. “The Selenites are but the youth of the species. That is why they carry on so idiotically. But the Drobates,” he continued, becoming more excited and animated as he spoke, “here is a species that goes back for millennia. Here is a species that offers real promise of intellectual merit. Favouring the Drobates over the Selenites is nothing more than an intellectual choice; a choice of the Mona Lisa over the cave painting.”
“Whether or not the Selenites were created by the Heart,” said Annabelle, clearly tiring of Grant’s dismissive attitude, “you’ll surely concede that they are wily fighters, Uncle. Without them, we might never have taken Otterbein Base or rescued you from the machinations of Tereshkov. K’chuk saved our lives against the Drobate soldiers in the City of Light and Science.”
“Ah, K’chuk,” Grant said, and for a moment there was a nostalgia in his voice. “Where is he now?”
Annabelle looked at her uncle with ice in her eyes. “Dead.”
If this revelation had any emotional impact on Grant, Nathanial saw no evidence of it. Instead he simply rose to his feet. “Well, we hardly have time for such pleasant chats. You may be aware that there are a number of enemies seeking the Heart. Some seek its knowledge, and would do evil with it. Others seek to harm the Heart, and as we now know the Heart, or parts of it, can die. The Russians have a hand in this, and one of our old rivals has assembled his own army and intends to reach the Heart. Two days past we sent word to the City for an armed party of our friends to join us to defend the Living Heart. We have heard nothing and have to assume the messenger was taken and made to talk. That means there may be a detachment of Drobate soldiers from the City on its way as well. Naporrow Bing and his assistants and I had little hope of acting on our own, but your party is numerous enough to make a difference, particularly if we can get the Selenites to accompany us. The Russians, of course, will have to be dispatched.”
“Killed?” Annabelle asked.
“Of course. It is only logical, as we cannot leave a guard and we cannot release them.”
“No,” Folkard said. “They are adversaries, but they are also men and have not raised their hands against us.”
“Very well, have it your way. There is no time to argue. We can leave them in a side chamber, outside the laboratory complex, with a supply of food. But now we must, absolutely must, proceed with the utmost dispatch to the Heart and ensure its safety. This is no time for dallying. For the sake of the Empire—no, the sake of the future!—we must get to the Heart and ensure its safety.” With that, Grant turned on his heel and marched towards the doorway at the back of the room, urging the group on with an impatient wave of his hand.
“If it is to be a fight, you had better show us how these two electric rifles work,” Folkard said. “Which section of the Heart do we seek?”
“The one beneath Otterbein Base,” Grant said. “The one originally familiar to all of us. The Heart will only respond to questions, unless it suits it otherwise. My quest for the part of the Heart here in the City was in vain, but because of my studies since then I now know the questions which need asking.”
Chapter Twelve
“To the Heart”
1.
“I HAVE only been with the Drobates for a short while, of course, yet I feel that I am on the cusp of a great discovery,” Grant said, apparently for his own benefit rather than anyone else’s. Folkard kept up with him, but Grant had lapsed into one incoherent mumble too many for his liking.
They walked along a passageway shown them by Naporrow Bing, one clearly excavated rather than a product of natural forces, but one faintly lit by glowing moss on the ceiling, perhaps deliberately introduced as no other means of lighting was in evidence. The passageway ran long and straight with no branches, or at least none they had come to yet. Folkard had heard from Bedford the warning K’chuk had given all those months ago: Drobates inhabit walls. Between their co
ncealed passages and their submersibles, the Drobates led a secretive life indeed.
The passageway was only wide enough for them to proceed two-by-two, with Bing and Grant leading the group, and Stone bringing up the rear of the humans to lead the Selenites. Honestly, Folkard had no idea what use the Selenites would be without a Retainer of Knowledge to order them into battle. They seemed willing enough to follow Stone, but their confusion and exhaustion accounted for much of that, and neither of those traits would stand them well in a fight.
“This is familiar—too familiar,” said Stevenson. “I was dragged along a similar corridor when I was seized by the Drobates.”
“Most likely,” said Grant, matter-of-factly. “Quite probable it was this very passageway. Hopefully we encounter no further Drobates in this journey: the route is too narrow for both groups and I would hate to engage in a skirmish and compromise our position.”
“None of us would be overjoyed at the prospect of a battle, Grant,” said Folkard. “As much as anything, we are short on ammunition. What about these Drobates: what do they fight each other with?”
“Curiously the matter has not come up while I’ve been with them,” said Grant, fascinated by the question. “There are other settlements of Drobates, more primitive ones which live by fishing the River of Life and cultivating edible fungus, but with no scientific pretensions. How well they get along among each other I have no idea. Perhaps we shall have the opportunity to find out.”
From this point forth, Folkard kept his own counsel. So too did the rest of the group.
He had always thought that he was singularly lacking in any tendency towards the psychic, but his experiences here had forced him to re-evaluate that judgment. He could swear to feeling an odd sensation: akin to nervous trepidation, and perhaps it was nothing more than that. At the same time, however, hints of knowledge from the darkest ages, pre-dating human experience, played at the fringes of his consciousness.