“She has healed my leg,” he said, “in a way that these creatures know.”
Wyndham said the next day that his ankle was much better, imagination and courage assisting diagnosis of that which as not really a bad sprain. To support this assertion, he hobbled about. Better it might be. She would not dispute that which they both wished to believe, but it was evident that it was not well.
Clearly, they must be parted again, with whatever reluctance it might be faced. They had no fear of the dogs now. Rather she thought of them as likely to give warning of hostile approach, or even protection, to a wounded man.
The danger, vague, imponderable, but no less formidable menace for that, was on Vinetta, and appeared to them a darker cloud as more immediate troubles became less. But they would be without means of life almost at once, if they should both remain in the caves. Even water must be fetched from the spring. And there were many things, priceless to them, which were now scattered at the mercy of sun and rain, and of the gulls, which had risen, a screaming crowd, when Vinetta had returned last night to the scene of that rushed and scrambled salvage beneath the rain.
She went alone, as she must, putting a brave front on her fear, and coaxing the two dogs to be her companions, to which they consented gladly at first, but withdrew at about the same place, and in the same order as before, when they had found that she was resolved on a downward path. Returning with a can of the water they needed, she set out again, to be joined and then abandoned in the same way.
It was clear that the dogs had a dread of descending to the lower levels which was shared by smaller creatures. For, from when the cave was a few minutes’ walk behind, she saw no lizards upon the path, no conies scuttling among the rocks.
So the next week went. Vinetta experienced the indignities of toil and of hardening hands, for there was much to salve, and the burdened upward journeys were long and hard.
The dogs persisted in their refusal to follow her even to the lower hills, except on one occasion, when the female appeared to forget her terror for a time, until, at a sudden memory, or more probable scent, she stopped dead, stood for one shivering second as though paralysed by fear, and then rushed back, whining, and with her tail abjectly between her legs.
Vinetta stood for some moments after this, in doubt whether she should continue downward. Was the animal’s instinctive terror a warning which, if it were heeded, might save the life of one whose senses were more obtuse.
So it might be. But the scene continued peaceful and quiet. She reflected that she might never find courage to venture down again, if she should turn back now from a shadow she could not see. She bared Wyndham’s sword, which he had insisted on her wearing when she was out alone, and went on with a resolute front, and a shaking heart.
Nothing happened at all. Talking it over at night, they agreed that the shadow of fear was upon all the creatures who had escaped the general massacre which the automata had perpetrated over so large a part of the earth’s surface. It was a shadow, they supposed, that would slowly lift. Yard by yard life would spread down the hillsides again. New generations would be born in whom there would be less and less of the inbred fear. The gospel of regnant death had destroyed itself, and the better gospel of life would resume obedience to the divine command.
But if Vinetta had fear in the daylight hours, and must toil when muscles were tired, and become familiar with the degradation of dirt, and if Wyndham must spend long hours of fretful anxiety as to whether she would return, and of anger at his own incapacity, yet there were compensations for both, beyond the experience or imagination of anyone of the five millions who had preceded them on the deathward path which all men in turn must tread.
To Vinetta there was the twice-daily pleasure of her loaded return; the reunions which had a poignancy only possible to two who are alone in an empty world; the sharp hunger which gave a pleasure to the taking of food—as the tired muscles found pleasure in rest—beyond anything which she had conceived as possible in the painless life which was now so utterly, so unregretfully, gone. And after that there was the satisfaction of security in the sheltered cave behind the lair of the watchful dogs, and the joy of comradeship.
To Wyndham also there was a sufficient, though somewhat different, pleasure in sorting and cleaning the articles of a permanent nature which Vinetta brought, and in arranging or storing them away in the recesses of the man-made caves. It gave to both of them a joy of possession, of wealth, which also had been outside the experiences of their previous lives. He had by this time thoroughly explored the caves, and knew the extent and potential strength of this dwelling of ancient priests. It was in the course of that exploration that he came nearly to a worse accident than that which had lamed him already. Indeed, it may be said that the earlier fall saved him from what would have been the more serious injury.
There was a hole in the inner wall through which he could look down into a further chamber, a round pit, having a depth of fifteen or twenty feet, such as might have been used in ancient days for the storage of treasure, or perhaps grain. There was no approach through that hole, but farther to the right there was a winding stair. The stone steps, steeply cut, twisted spirally to the left, the light falling upon the right-hand wall, and in such a way that the steps were partly in darkness.
Wyndham descended five of these, very slowly, their steepness being difficult to one who had a stiff and painful ankle on which he was reluctant to throw his weight. To that slowness, and a warning whimper from one of the dogs, who had been watching him in an obvious disquiet, he owed his life, or the chance of a broken limb which, in that place, might have been the same thing.
For the sixth and seventh steps had been most cunningly cut away, not entirely, but so that there was no more remaining than about nine inches from the wall, and on these fragments there fell a light, which was faint, but sufficient to give assurance and guidance to steps which were not there. Wyndham, stretching out a tentative foot, saved himself; but with great difficulty, even so, where there was nothing at which to clutch.
Waiting till his eyes became more used to the gloom, he saw a pit beneath him, narrow and very deep, from which, had he fallen, it would have been very difficult to escape, even had his limbs remained whole, which would have been improbable after such a drop.
He saw that they who hollowed out these store-chambers from solid rock had had a thought of thieves, and had prepared for them a dreadful trap. But for those who knew, there was sufficient width of step on which they could tread, perhaps with the aid of a friend’s hand above or below.
For himself, lamed as he was, he resolved that the store-pits should remain unused, at least to a further day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
On the eighth day Wyndham, who had relieved Vinetta by fetching water on the previous afternoon, resolved that he would be equal to making the journey with her. There was still much to bring up, for what two people can throw out in fifteen minutes may be much more than one can carry in fifteen journeys up a mountainside. He silenced Vinetta’s protest that it would be too great an exertion for a leg that was still of doubtful soundness, with the easy promise that if he found the first journey hard, she should go the second alone.
The wild storms of the first day had been succeeded by light northerly winds and clear skies. The nights were still chilly, but the days were cloudless and very warm.
The shadow of Pilwin’s threat had become less menacing, more remote, as the days had passed without any sinister incident, and it became an increasingly reasonable conclusion that the danger had been successfully avoided by the speed with which they had taken to the air, or that they had foiled it by changing the direction in which they flew. They even discussed the probability of Pilwin having spoken a baseless threat, in a final effort to persuade Vinetta to the end which he saw her otherwise likely to miss. That might be no more than a poor guess, but they felt that, whatever the explanation might be, the shadow of death withdrew.
So it was in pleas
ant accord with themselves and the earth which had become so entirely theirs that they went down the track which was now well-marked, even as it descended the higher cliffs. They caught inland glimpses of vineyards and citron-groves, and agreed that the exploration of what must soon be a main source of food-supply as their stores declined should not be long deferred, even for the urgency of their immediate project.
“In the normal course,” Wyndham remarked, “the automata would, I suppose, have been here before now, as the winter mists had been clearing away. So I thought it would be for this year, but Pilwin told me that it was most difficult, even for him, with all his engineering knowledge, to forecast exactly what would occur. Much of the minor machinery will, I understood be likely to go out of action almost at once; but some of it may continue to operate even for years, if the condition of its work be unaffected by other defaults or by climatic changes. In the end there is no doubt that it must go mad, and wreck itself, or just stop and stand about in an imbecile attitude till it rots to dust.”
He spoke as one who regards a matter of natural interest which is outside his own immediate concern, but Vinetta answered in a less impersonal tone, “I hope, while I live, I may never see one again. It was through them that the ruin came. Machines and mankind cannot dwell together. They must destroy us, or we them, which we lacked the courage to do.”
Wyndham understood how she felt, but considered it in a cooler and more logical mind. “Would you say the same of every tool that we have?”
“They are worked by the power of our own hands.”
“But men used other creatures to bear them about, and to draw their ploughs, in most ancient days.”
“They were creatures of living blood.”
“Men also used the powers of water and wind.”
“They were forces already here. They did not bore into the entrails of earth, establishing dead power to replace that of life.”
Wyndham did not deny that. He wondered whether men might not have made machinery to obey their wills, and still taken a fairer road to a nobler end. But he could see no certain answer.
What they had done was plain enough, and had come to a most absolute end, unless they two could re-people an emptied world.
“Well,” he concluded, “I will say with you, I do not want to see them again. We will look for a greener earth.”
“It is of no use saying that. They are coming now.”
Her voice had become sharp with fear. Wyndham followed her eyes, and saw that her words were true.
They had come to the point where, as they rounded the mountain-side, they could see far down, far of, in the clear air, the whole line of the causeway that crossed the narrow Messina Straits. On it black dots moved. Vinetta gazed at them and the blood left her cheeks.
“So they may be,” Wyndham allowed. “But I cannot see certainly. They are too far off.”
“But I can. I can see just what they are.”
As she said this there was relief in her voice, and her face resumed its natural colour.
“I knew,” Wyndham said, “that I allowed that you had wonderful sight, but to see what are there!”
Vinetta’s sight had always been a cause of wonder among companions whose powers of vision were normally good, but it seemed impossible that she could distinguish clearly those moving specks. But she had looked with the eyes of fear.
“There are about two hundred of the agriculturists,” she said, “and one control, and two killers.”
“Killers?” he asked, in so sharp a tone as to show the unspoken dread which had been in both their minds.
“No,” she answered, not to what he asked, but what she knew him to mean. “Just the ordinary kind. What they use for insects within the ground.”
There was a great relief in her voice, showing the depth of her secret fear. For the first time they spoke freely of that which had been a suppressed dread in the minds of both.
“It wasn’t ever,” he said, “a reasonable thing to have feared.”
“No. I told myself that it wasn’t as though there had been any trail to follow. Not when we came through the air. It would have been different at Mount Ida. They may have relied on our going there.”
“There wouldn’t have been any trail there.”
“Not exactly. But they might have used some of my clothes. I’ve always had a doubt that a robe went from the gymnasium. You can see how that might happen without my being sure. That is why I changed into Swartz-02A’s cloak.”
Yes. He could see that. But they had not gone to Mount Ida. And there was no menace in the automata which were approaching now. “All the same,” he said, “we don’t want them here. I’ve grown to loathe them since I came out of the influence of the drugs that we used to take. I hope someday we shall be able to stop them coming over that mole. That is, if they don’t end themselves, as I hope they may.”
“You’d need machinery to do that!”
They laughed easily at the paradox of the idea. It had become easy to laugh, with the knowledge that the approaching regiment held no menace to them. But their hatred did not lessen for that.
“A storm,” he said, “such as we had last week, would sweep them away, if it come at the right time.”
So it might be. But now the skies were clear, and the wind still, as the automata came over that broad causeway, moving two abreast, with the control behind them, and the two killers closing the rear.
They were a weird sight, but less so than might have been witnessed almost anywhere on the earth’s surface half a millennium earlier. For as the automata had developed in the range and complexity of their undertakings, there had been a tendency to produce them in the closest possible imitation of men. This had been particularly the case with the domestic automata, of which the more expensive designs had approximated so closely to the human form in appearance and action that it might be unsuspected by a casual guest that the demure parlour-maid who waited upon him was not compact of living flesh.
But as these automata became commonplace (and class after class of the community had been urged to cease breeding under the threat that their children would starve in a world which would no longer pay wages to chauffeurs, field labourers, or domestic servants who could be so inexpensively replaced), to manufacture them in human likeness became an outmoded fashion. The truly modern woman did not desire that she should be considered sentimental enough to employ a fallible human housemaid, who might be ill at inopportune times, and would not consent to be broken up quietly when the time should come for her to be replaced by a newer specimen.
Only the Major Killers had still been cunningly fashioned in human forms, with the reasonable purpose that the hunted beasts might continue to rear mankind, thinking that they were human hunters on whom their teeth broke in vain, and who were forever upon their tracks.
The two hundred agricultural automata which now advanced over the causeway, moving on caterpillar belts at about six miles an hour, bore a superficial resemblance to the smaller pattern of battle-tank which was designed by the barbarians of Wyndham’s own century, the blundering progress of which had often been more fatal to the occupants of its own entrails than those against whom it fought.
They would operate upon broad, straight, concrete paths, between double rows of the vines or orange trees which it was their duty to tend, reaching out long, flexible arms on either side, which were adapted for stirring the soil, pruning the branches, or gathering the fruit, as they might be directed from the control automaton, shaped like a squat, round pot, which had them in charge, and which was itself controlled by the governing automata at Budapest, that being the central station at which all food-producing activities were organized and directed.
The two killers were of a different appearance. In form they resembled rather elongated black swine, having six legs, and a flexible proboscis which they could project to a length of two or three feet or withdraw until it was no more than the upper lip of a strong-toothed snout, with which they would
crunch their prey. They had a capacity for scenting living flesh, in all except human form, which was so keen that it would follow the smallest worm or insect beneath the ground, pushing after it until its flight—if it had been alarmed—ended in inevitable capture. Their normal duty was to follow the work of the agriculturists on the cultivated levels, but they might at any time be drawn aside if they should encounter the scent of a quadruped, the keenness and pertinacity of their pursuit being in proportion to the strength of the scent, which was itself regulated by the size of the animal upon whose traces they came.
As the cultivated lands had become increasingly barren of anything on which they could feed, they had been more easily drawn aside, and become more persistent in following any creature of the higher rocks of whose existence they might become aware, so that the terror of the dogs lest they might leave a scent which would bring these creatures upon their trails, in pursuits which would never tire till they were exhausted and caught, is easy to understand.
Having learned what they were, Wyndham and Vinetta went on, with the same assurance that they were too far off for them to see anything more of them for that day, and with the confidence that they would meet with no interference if they should keep out of the way of the invaders, as it should be easy to do.
“After all,” Wyndham said, “they will be working for us, cultivating the fruit on which we must learn to live when our stores of better food are consumed.”
“But we must not let them gather the fruit and send it away.”
“No. We can be before them in that.”
“What will they be likely to do when they find that the fruit is gone?”
“I suppose, nothing at all. It would be as though the crop had failed. But, in fact, the question will not arise. The quantity we shall need, or have time to pick, will make no difference to them. And they can do what they will with the rest. They can collect it for the manufacture of food for men who are all dead. It will be nothing to us.”
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