Yngve, AR - Darc Ages

by Darc Ages (lit)

  Darc thought it was an enchanting sight. Compared to the somber isolation of Castilia this was a paradise of life and openness, albeit within very strict limits. Around the teeming bay and harbor stretched two very high, sloping fortress walls down into the sea, and seemed to continue into the depths of the ocean.

  And in the distance, the behemoth hill of the Old City loomed over the harbor like a visitor from space. Spires and towers glittered above its sloping walls - a fantasy palace, just out of reach. The walls of the Old City were dotted with narrow slits, from where rows of gun turrets guaranteed law and order.

  Strangely enough, nobody in the harbor seemed to mind about being threatened with cannons. All political power emanates from the barrel of a gun, thought Darc. Now who said that again?

  Just past noon, the expedition party gathered for food and rest under the tent roof of their boat. There was literally no space to sit anywhere else in the harbor.

  "I couldn't find the components on my list," Darc complained. "I must have them, or the radio signals cannot reach across the world! Then it's hopeless - my message can't be spread by paper only, it would take forever."

  Lucijja spread her arms helplessly. "Perhaps we could try another harbor later," she suggested. "Or..."

  "Or what?" Faluti prodded.

  "No, forget it. Too dangerous."

  Darc grinned at Lucijja, and said: "Now, don't tell me you were going to say: 'Let Darc ask the robots from the Old City if they have what he's looking for.' I'm not that crazy!"

  They ate in silence, and time seemed to slow down from the sheer air pressure. The monsoon was imminent, which might make any extra sailing trips impossible for a long period. Darc thought on it, slowly.

  The heat hammered on his brain until he wanted to dive screaming into the sea. And he gave in.

  "Okay!" he said. "I'll give it a try."

  "I'll go with you," Lucijja said quickly.

  I must be mad, Darc thought, as he walked up to the exchange plaza at the edge of the Old City.

  The plaza was a wide amphitheater lined with remote-controlled laser turrets on steel columns, and a central area where the robot servants of the Old City traded with outsiders. On the wall above the great portals of the Old City hung a gigantic electronic signtable, made up of hundreds of lamps.

  The signtable flashed an unending stream of messages:

  ...TODAY WE SELL BATTERIES AT REDUCED PRICES... 1 LIGHT STRIP FOR 30 UNITS SEAFOOD... NO LEPER ACTIVITY IN THE PROVINCE... THE GODDESS WATCHES OVER AND LOVES YOU... THIRTY MINUTES PAST THIRTEEN... PREPARE FOR THE RAIN PERIOD... FEVER PILL PRICES UP 1/10...

  Human hands passed on sacks of grain and vegetables, baskets of fish, bars of metal, and left them to be weighed on wide scales, operated by vaguely humanoid metal robots. The goods were examined - no barter accepted - and metal hands paid the humans with electronic trinkets, machine components, and bottled chemicals.

  The robots loaded their purchases onto electric carriages, which rolled in through slots in the portals and disappeared into the Old City. Everyone involved worked swiftly and deftly, repeating a centuries-old ritual.

  Darc watched the busy procedure from a corner. He tried to get a closer look at the electronic goods that the Old City produced and sold at high prices.

  Could he pay with the supplies they had on the boat - some fish and Mechao's own medicines, or would they have to buy a larger offer of goods in the harbor? The robots seemed to ignore any shipments smaller than half a ton.

  While making up his mind, some commotion occurred; Darc and Lucijja looked to one end of the plaza, where a shouting man was causing tension in the crowd.

  It was a desperate lone merchant, resembling a black-skinned Bedouin, who tried pleading to the machines: "This is all I have, you must take it! Please! My family needs that medicine!"

  An expressionless robot, wearing some kind of official insignia on its forehead, answered blankly: "Your offer is below the trading limit. You have fifteen seconds to leave the exchange."

  The man seemed too needy to listen, too despairing to notice that the other customers scattered away from him - and suddenly, without warning, several laser pulses from above struck him down. His charred corpse was dead before it hit the sand. People screamed - Lucijja muttered a curse under her breath. Then someone dragged away the smoldering corpse, and the commerce resumed as if nothing had happened.

  Darc could not believe the cruelty he had just witnessed; he covered his mouth to avoid puking or shouting. " Jesus Christ! Does this happen every day?" he asked his guide.

  "No," Lucijja replied bitterly, "but sometimes there are riots, when the crops are sparse and the Old City refuses to pay more. And they always end that way."

  She spat on the sand, and urged Darc closer. They had to stand in line for quite a while, until a robot official could deal with them. These ones had wheeled feet, were more slender than the heavy work-robots, and wore wide, shiny hats covered with gleaming tinfoil - as if the heat bothered their electronic brains.

  "Selling or buying?" the robot asked.

  "Buying," Lucijja said quickly.

  "State the items you wish to buy. You have fifteen seconds."

  With a confirming glance at Darc, she stated loudly and clearly: "Large electronic components. They are described in detail on this list."

  She held out a bundle of sheets with a trembling hand. The robot official took the list, scanned it, and showed signs of confusion.

  "Wait... wait... wait here, until I have consulted my superiors."

  The machine rolled away into the shadows, and what felt like bucketloads of sweat ran down Darc's neck.

  "What if we run?" he whispered to Lucijja, who stood stiffly looking forward.

  Without moving an inch, she hissed back: "Keep still, or we both die. If we act harmless, nothing will happen. The law protects us here, unless we are violent or threatening."

  Darc stood as still as he could, given the heat and the jitters in his legs, and cursed himself. His own brazen curiosity had got him into trouble again - what was it his old biology teacher used to say? "One'o these days, Archibald, your nosiness is going to make you one head shorter!"

  Unseen to outsiders, eyes and ears constantly surveyed the harbor from inside the Old City. A minority of them were human. And they noticed the peculiarities of Darc: his appearance, his accent, his behavior - and his speech. Darc was cursing in a dead language. The robots of the Old City were given new orders.

  After twenty agonizing minutes of waiting, during which the others standing in line scattered, the robot official appeared again. It was not carrying the list any longer.

  Still as formal as before, the robot pointed a steel finger at Darc: "You are hereby invited into the Old City, where the city lord wishes to discuss your proposed business arrangement. If you accept, follow me. If you refuse the invitation, you and your company must leave Dakchaor before sundown. You have fifteen seconds to reply."

  Darc stared at the emotionless machine, then at Lucijja.

  Without thinking, he cut off the objection she was about to make: "Just go back to the harbor and wait for me. If I'm not back before nightfall, leave me here. Tell them that he knows what to do."

  He winked at her, and patted her shoulder. Lucijja blinked incredulously at him for a moment, then turned on the spot and walked off. When she was safely outside the plaza, she started to run toward the harbor.

  Darc followed the robot official inside. Once again, he found that his home planet had become an alien world.

  Chapter 40

  A series of thick steel doors rolled shut behind Darc as he entered a large airlock. He walked into what seemed the anteroom of Old Dakchaor: a clean, cool, undecorated machine hall populated by noisy automatons.

  Dozens of machines - most of them moving on rails - were loading, irradiating and processing the incoming goods. Two larger robots seized Darc's arms; panic hit him like a punch in the gut.

  "Let go of me!" he shoute
d. "I demand to see your superiors!"

  The two sturdy work robots resolutely dragged him toward a wide vat of boiling liquid... and past it. Darc saw where they were heading: into a corridor resembling - a 20th-century car wash.

  The robot official explained: "Please take off your clothes and leave any fragile objects here. Then stand on the conveyor belt, keep your eyes and mouth closed, and let the conveyor belt take you through the tunnel. You will be disinfected and scanned there, before you may meet the city lord."

  Arguing was pointless. On shaky legs, Darc undressed and entered the tunnel. He shut his eyes hard, and played the Popeye tune in his head.

  He felt acrid fluids spraying him, and numerous warm, soft brushes scrub him; he heard the clicking and humming of scanning machines; he felt the uncomfortable radiation of heat-lamps; and finally, minutes later, cold air streamed against his dry, shivering body.

  Darc opened one eye, and saw that the conveyor belt had stopped at the other end of the tunnel. A robot servant clanked up to him - a sleek, polished model, decorated with intricate patterns - and offered him a set of fresh new clothes. He put them on.

  Sandals, baggy white pants, a long white shirt, and a white fez - all a perfect fit. Darc found a tall mirror, and cursed. The black dye had been washed off, and his hair and eyebrows matched his dress perfectly in whiteness.

  "When in Rome..." Darc said to his mirror image, and let the servant guide him to another entrance.

  What Darc found beyond the next airlock seemed disturbingly unreal. He recalled the palace described in Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan : an architectural fever dream, devoid of dirt - or any inhabitants to justify its existence.

  From here, inside the Old City, the surrounding great wall oppressed the senses; it was at least twice as high as the wall surrounding Bor Damon's city-state. Though the sunlight reached across, the wall was far too high to show anything of the spectacular view of the bay outside.

  What Darc could discern of the Old City made a disappointing impression. The gleaming spires were there all right, towering up into the blue sky - but now he saw clearly that they shot straight up from the ground.

  He realized, at last: these were not castle spires or minarets - but airshafts and smokestacks. The city's ground floor consisted of a circular gravel plaza, roughly the size of a soccer field - completely lifeless.

  This was the roof of a bunker.

  There had to be an underground level, where the city-dwellers were hiding... then why did they make themselves the trouble to invite him?

  The answer came within a short while. At the foot of a nearby metal tower, a hatch opened. In the glass-covered opening a pale human shape appeared, waving him closer. Darc paced up to the window and gazed through it. The figure behind the window was reclining in an armchair-like contraption, a meter or so above Darc's head.

  Darc beheld - the living dead. The figure was deathly pale, its skin so thin that blue veins and capillaries showed; it resembled an overgrown fetus. The yellow hair on its head grew extremely long, but it ran stripy and lackluster, draping the bony shoulders of the figure like a shroud.

  The human creature squinted at the daylight and shielded its eyes, though that did not help much - the pupils of its eyes showed through the paper-thin eyelids.

  It attempted a smile - and showed its perfect white teeth in a horrid death-grin, the likes of a dried-up mummy.

  Zombie! was the only word Darc's horrified mind could think of. He tried to speak, but words failed him. If this was a remnant of the past world he thought gone and forgotten, then he had seen enough.

  In his imagination, he could picture thousands of similar mole-men below his feet, still waiting for the right time to rise and reclaim the planet - an alien species, armed with the weapons of past wars.

  Darc turned and ran to the exit, too frightened to be embarrassed by his own primitive reaction. He could not hear the figure's faint pleas, nor see its despair.

  The city lord of Dakchaor gave up and let the visitor escape. The mysterious white-haired stranger had awakened a great deal of excitement and hope; Darc might have been holding the vital news that would release the city lord.

  But he doubted it. It had always been too late for his kind: the ones who had stayed underground for much too long. All the city lord could do was to offer a small gesture of support.

  In a century or two, he thought, only this glorious city shall remain - still maintained and cleaned by the machines - and its last citizen will finally disappear.

  Two robots literally pushed Darc out of the Old City and past the exchange plaza, before the astonished eyes of merchants and beggars.

  He was so dazed by his experience, he hardly saw the crates being dumped at his feet, or heard the robot official's terse farewell.

  "Leave Dakchaor before sunset. Goodbye."

  Darc noticed the strange looks he was receiving from the crowd - and his gaze fell on the crates that reached up to his chin. It could be - it had to be -

  "Yes!" he laughed out loud.

  He began looking for someone to help him carry the heavy load back to the boat. Before he could reach out and ask, a band of roving thieves came to his aid. They surrounded him in a second, flashing their sticks and knives.

  "What you got in there, paleface?" a filthy, large man asked anxiously. "You share with us, huh?"

  Darc's eyes darted around but found no help in sight; he had left his weapons in the Old City. With several knives pointed at him, he began to bend open the smallest crate - and stopped.

  "I am a messenger from the Old City," he told the largest bandit in a dark tone. "If you so much as touch me, those lasers will burn you to ashes where you stand!" Darc pointed up at the wall of the Old City to emphasize his threat.

  The bluff worked instantly - several bandits turned and fled like scared rats. Only two wide-eyed thieves hesitated long enough to hear him out. "Do you know the secret of the Old City? I was inside and talked to the city lord! Do you know what he gave me?" The thieves trembled where they stood. "I'll show you," he said ominously and stepped back to open the tallest crate.

  That was enough for the two thugs - they disappeared behind a corner, before the city militia could spot them. Curious onlookers began to move in on Darc and his crates - then, just in time, Lucijja and Faluti found him and pushed their way through the crowd to him. They were accompanied by several other, armed crew-women.

  "What happened?" Faluti asked, staring at his white clothes.

  "Not here, not now," he replied. "Quick! Get a transport, and take this load to the boat."

  They rented a passing horse-cart, then switched to a wagon with electric power, and reached the harbor in less than thirty minutes. A growing stream of people was now following their party, and the militia was alerted to the recent events.

  Loading the crates onto the catamaran seemed to take forever, though the harbor personnel was paid off to work at double speed. Darc easily persuaded the captain to sail out immediately.

  Rifles ready, the crew cast off and moved out to sea. It was already late afternoon, and scores of boats were heading home to their ports of call. As the harbor area emptied out, only a desolate few clusters of clay-and-brick houses stood out in the open space. Where thousands of tents had been erected only hours before, the wind now played with abandoned heaps of debris.

  Had the sight in the Old City been real or imagined? Darc asked himself. The crates were real enough. And the items, when examined, fit his specifications quite well. His radio transmitter could be completed after all; he allowed himself to relax.

  During the trip back home, the women aboard demanded to hear what he had seen in the forbidden city. All he could answer, each time they asked, was: "Zombie."

  Soon, the crew stopped asking. They understood enough.

  Chapter 41

  The monsoon rains began.

  On the day of the trade expedition's return, after a journey several days longer with bad winds and feigned routes
to confuse any followers, thunder and lightning shook the air around the islands.

  Curtains of water fell on the sea and the Kap Verita archipelago, and whipped all naked ground into foam. The islanders opened their water cisterns, and put out all available buckets and cups to gather precious freshwater.

  Hundreds of farmers went to work in the downpour to repair the walls that surrounded their terraced fields, to save fertile topsoil from being washed downhill. Still it was a time for rejoicing, for planting the next harvest; they sang as they worked the fields.

  After the first rainfall, the fertilized landscape bloomed an intense green. Dohan and Meijji were forced to spend the days indoors, and found new pastimes. Together with her younger siblings, Meijji played cards and board games with Dohan for hours on end - and she won most of the time. Dohan, in turn, tried to learn Meijji and her siblings the basics of self-defense and combat - just in case, and he wanted to impress Meijji. Not only she was impressed; her sisters were as well. Dohan failed to notice this; he only had eyes for one girl.

  Darc forced himself into the ancient basics of electronics. Fortunately, Mechao's huge library turned out to include a few old volumes on the subject. The mathematics was the worst part of it - in his former life, numbers had been David Archibald's secret Achilles heel. However, one of Meijji's elder brothers was a mathematical genius, and proved immensely helpful.

  Two weeks after the journey to Dakchaor, Darc had completed a blueprint for a powerful radio transmitter - plus a simple, illustrated step-by-step description of how to build and operate one's own radio receiver, all written in Castilian. Shara helped him out with the language, correcting his gravest misspellings and grammatical errors.

  Finally, Darc handed the finished manual to Amada. If she could be convinced his scheme might work, the islanders would give him the support he needed.

  "So anyone can build this little machine?" she asked with friendly skepticism.

  "Anyone who's eager to learn, can," Darc assured her. "The components can be tailored after what means you have. Now I need to print as many copies of the manual as possible."