King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  There was an air of defeat in the dome.

  “Don’t they realize what time it is?” asked Adam.

  “They only have two minutes left,” said Sally.

  “It’s not enough.”

  The Rainbow Room displayed a peaceful scene: a large number of people sitting quietly in a grassy meadow beside a deep, slow river. Behind them, a fairy-tale castle rose into the clouds. Before them sat a pretty girl with black hair, an older woman with a face of unearthly perfection, and a man, red-haired and rugged.

  “What are they doing?” asked Gentle Jim for the tenth time in the last hour.

  “You can see what they’re doing,” snapped Matthew, his nerves ragged. “They’re listening to Nyneve. You remember Nyneve, don’t you, you stupid bugger?”

  “Of course I remember Nyneve, Matthew. Nyneve has disincorporated her mind and entered the dream, together with her friends Morgan and Arthur. But how can they be listening if she is not talking?”

  “She was talking a little while ago.”

  “But now she’s projecting images directly into the dreamers’ minds!” cried Sally triumphantly. “Just like when she told the chivalry stories!”

  The Tin Mother was silent for a while. “That is not in the best interests of the human race,” it said eventually.

  “Twenty-one. Twenty. Nineteen,” said Marc, watching the clock.

  “Oh, God,” said Sally.

  “How do you know it’s not in our best interests, if you can’t hear what she’s saying?” asked Matthew.

  “We rely on you to monitor the dreams, Matthew, because you possess human judgment. If Nyneve is speaking directly into people’s minds, you cannot monitor. Neither can we. We are faced with a dream within a dream—one that we know nothing about, and one in which anything could go wrong. She could be portraying scenes of dreadful violence.”

  “It’s only a dream.”

  “I would rather see them walking around and doing things. This passive imagining is not good.”

  “The whole of Dream Earth is passive imagining, you fool!”

  “Gentle Jim has a sneaky look,” said Sally.

  “One. Zero. Now. Oh, God. Now. Now. I don’t hear anything.”

  “The wall of the dome is thick.”

  Nyneve sat with her eyes closed. The dreamers were lying down now. One of them moved, kicking a leg.

  “Everything would be gone if the power was off. The Rainbow Room would be empty of images. The lights would be out.”

  “So they haven’t fired off the converter.”

  Sally asked the Tin Mother, “Why haven’t they fired off the converter?”

  The robot did not reply. Its eyes flickered.

  “We’ll go and see for ourselves!” shouted Marc, running to the door.

  They hurried down the corridor and crowded into the air lock. The door hissed shut behind them. “Just supposing the power goes out now?” said Sally. “Right at this moment?”

  “Shut up.”

  The outside door opened and sunlight flooded in. They stood at the catwalk rail.

  “The Rock’s still there.”

  “So’s the converter. It’s glowing—look!”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “There’s somebody coming. It’s a gnome. It looks like the Miggot!”

  The tiny figure came scurrying over the breast of the moor and raced for the dome. “I’ll fetch him,” said Adam. He clattered down the steps and ran to meet the Miggot, ignoring the outstretched arm of a nearby Tin Mother.

  They saw him scoop the Miggot up and carry him back. By the time he reached the catwalk again, Adam was too winded to speak. The Miggot, however, had recovered his breath.

  “Fang and the Princess!” he shouted. “They’re in terrible danger!”

  “Calm down, Miggot,” said Marc. “They’re well clear of the danger zone.”

  “They’re not! They’re not! They’re sitting right on top of the Rock!”

  “What!”

  “It was the only way we could stop the Mothers from firing off the converter!”

  “Well …” Adam thought for a moment, panting, while the Miggot pranced around his feet in impatience. “Perhaps they should stay there until Nyneve and Morgan have finished with the dreamers.”

  “No, they can’t.” The Miggot glanced over his shoulder. Satisfied that no electronic creatures were present, he said quietly, “The Tin Mothers wanted to demolish the rock in spite of Fang and the Princess. They said the death of two obsolete gnomes was a small price to pay for the safety of Afah, their true master. But Fang pointed out that without the Sharan, he and the Princess are the only kikihuahua breeding stock on Earth.” He chuckled despite himself. “Only Fang would think of that.”

  “Good. So as long as they stay up there, everything’s all right.”

  “No, because it didn’t take the Tin Mothers long to realize there’s plenty of kikihuahua breeding stock in the ship.”

  “So what did you say to that?”

  “We said, ‘What ship?’ but they knew there had to be some kind of ship, and they said they’d start their radio telescopes searching right away. The bat’s not far away, and too slow to escape. The Mothers could start building a ship today and still have time to catch up to it before it leaves the solar system. My guess is, they’re searching space with their instruments right now! And as soon as they detect the bat, they’ll blast the Rock, and Fang and the Princess with it!”

  “What can we do?” said Adam. “I don’t know how long Nyneve intends to stay in Dream Earth.”

  “You’ll have to get her out of there right away, because Fang won’t come down from the Rock until you do! He seems to feel some weird kind of loyalty to Nyneve.”

  Adam said, “And Nyneve knows it. That’s why she’s still in there. She must have predicted what Fang would do.”

  “Get her out!” cried the Miggot.

  “But what about the dreamers? We can’t just let them die.”

  “They’ll die in any case, when the Mothers blast the Rock! At least let’s save our own people. We’ve lost, you silly buggers! Can’t you get that into your thick heads?”

  Adam made a quick decision. “Matthew! Take us to Nyneve’s body, quickly!”

  They ran down endless corridors. Eventually they reached the storage regions where a door opened onto a catwalk. Involuntarily they stopped dead.

  The room was so vast that they could not see the ceiling; neither could they see the floor. All they could see were people, thousands upon thousands of them, lying naked on soft transparent shelves in endless rows and endless tiers. A misty rain fell, bathing them constantly. Each human being was connected by colored wires to a box on each shelf. Cables, tubes, and catwalks were strung around the whole area in an infinite three-dimensional web. A deep hum throbbed almost below the level of human hearing, and the humid air held a thick stink of body wastes and antiseptic. It was an awesome, horrifying sight.

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Sally.

  “Your people are across there and down two tiers,” said Matthew, pointing. “The transporter will be here in a few minutes.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” said Adam. “Can we get there on foot?”

  “Yes.” Matthew ran out across the catwalk. The others hurried behind. The catwalk swayed and clattered. They passed pale, naked bodies, one after another. Tubes hung from above, feeding the bodies, and tubes hung below, draining them. Sally gulped as she ran, fearful she might be sick. Averting her eyes from the bodies beside the catwalk, she saw bodies through the transparent shelves above, their buttocks flattened. Sex had never meant so little. Bodies stretched into the distance, as far as the eye could see. In Sally’s mind they became meat, no different from slaughtered and skinned deer. She wondered if they were worth saving.

  They reached the row where Nyneve, Morgan, and Arthur lay. Matthew turned left and the others followed, clattering along the catwalk. Some of the shelves were swinging slightly. I
n the distance stood a figure, bending forward as though inspecting something. It was a Tin Mother.

  Sally’s eyes were not human eyes. The genes of a sea eagle were in her, and she could see details the others could not. Far away, the Tin Mother raised a knife above a clothed body on a shelf.

  “Stop!” screamed Sally. “I command you to stop!”

  The runners halted, misunderstanding.

  “That Mother’s got a knife!” she cried. “It’s going to kill Nyneve!”

  The Mother was too far away; they could never reach it in time. It paused, however, turning toward the sound of Sally’s shout. It felt the need to explain. “This is necessary for the benefit of the kikihuahuas!” it roared across the vastness. “Two humans must die so that the kikihuahuas may live on in peace and gentleness!”

  “You can’t do this!” Matthew shouted back. “Are you in communication with the Rainbow? The Rainbow would never allow this!”

  “There are times when a small unit in possession of all the facts is a more appropriate decision maker than the greatest of computers,” boomed the Tin Mother.

  So saying, it plunged the knife down.

  When two knights collided, the dreamers could feel the earth shake beneath them; and when they bled, the blood was warm and salty. It was a rough and violent world Nyneve was showing them, yet more fun, somehow, than any of their own dream worlds.

  It had an indefinable glory.

  The world was simple and there was no need to explain why the Britons were good and the Saxons bad; those facts alone were enough. The code of chivalry existed only among the Britons. The Saxons, Morgan’s contribution, were blackguards to a man, and so were the Picts and the Celts. Arthur defeated these forces again and again, defending all of England against his attackers until he was betrayed from within.

  The rumor swept across Dream Earth: Something exciting and different was happening at Camelot. More dreamers arrived, deserting their dull old haunts for a world constructed by people who knew how. Forlorn inventions were left behind: bartenders, waiters, ships, and unicorns; all purpose gone, gradually fading away.

  Nyneve told her story as never before, assisted by Morgan, who proved an able replacement for Merlin. Arthur sat watching the openmouthed dreamers, smiling, awaiting the time when he would play his part.

  Finally Nyneve secured England’s borders against the marauders and turned her attention to internal matters; to feasts and tournaments, loving and living. The dreamers settled back, entranced, relaxing. The period of danger was over. This fine new world was safely established. It hadn’t mysteriously disappeared, like so many of their other more stimulating inventions. Nyneve soothed their minds with scenes of domesticity, a little excitement here and there, a few quests, a damsel rescued from a fearful fate. All was well with Camelot. It was a bright and perfect world, perfect and good, and astonishingly realistic.

  Morgan took her cue.

  Mordred crept away from Camelot, evil surrounding him in a palpable cloud, and set a course for destruction. The dreamers shifted nervously.

  Mordred did not go to the Saxons, or to the Picts or the Celts. Helped by a spell cast by Morgan le Fay, he rode into the future on a coal-black horse in search of his ally: the worst enemy Mankind would ever know. He lived through the frenzied era when fossil fuel ran out and Earth was shaken by the Consumer Wars. He shivered through the Great Ice Age, which caused most of Mankind to retreat to the domes. He searched through that peculiar era when Earth’s magnetic field reversed and mutants were everywhere—but even in that strange time he could not find the perfect enemy for Arthur, his hated father. He watched the Age of Resurgence begin. The starships left Earth and distributed Mankind into a thousand different worlds—and then, when it seemed that humans were too strong ever to have a serious enemy, he found what he wanted. …

  Timing the plan to perfection, Morgan le Fay finished her story.

  Ten thousand dreamers took over for themselves, rapidly building on Nyneve’s world. Camelot became massive and beautiful, spread over a hundred acres. Men clad themselves in armor and created themselves horses and weapons; women generated fine clothes and filled the castle halls with beautiful furniture and tapestries. Battles were fought and enemies were vanquished in a hail of arrows. Camelot’s boundaries were extended. Arthur took his place as a leader of armies.

  Across the great plain lumbered the Tin Mothers, led by Mordred. They regarded Camelot with dull, mechanical revulsion. A tournament was in progress. A lance lifted a knight from his horse and dumped him bleeding to the ground. The dreamers cheered. The Tin Mothers strode onto the sward.

  “You’ll hurt themselves!” they boomed.

  Annoyed, the humans shouted back, “Get out of the way!”

  “We cannot allow you to endanger yourselves like this!”

  “We are not endangered. Nothing is real!”

  “Your minds are endangered. You are becoming dehumanized by exposure to violent sights. You are beginning to regard them as commonplace. As a result, you will become violent and antisocial yourselves! If you don’t stop, we shall be forced to destroy this scenario!”

  Now Nyneve took Arthur’s thoughts and gave them voice, and projected them into the scene.

  “The scenario is not yours to destroy,” he told the Tin Mothers. “And perhaps you should consider this: You were brought here by Mordred, who is possibly the most evil person on Earth. He’s using you for his own ends. He wants the world of chivalry destroyed because there’s no place in it for himself!”

  Nyneve smiled as she relayed Arthur’s words. Somehow he could not fail but do and say the right thing. In any other man that would have been a remarkably dull attribute, but in Arthur it was fitting.

  The Tin Mother said, “Evil is not a significant factor in our considerations. It is a human concept unrelated to what is, or is not, expedient. It is expedient for us to destroy this scenario to save you from yourselves, and this we will do!”

  So saying, the Tin Mother snatched the sword from the hand of a knight and broke it over his knee.

  Another knight, riding past, caught the Tin Mother full in the chest with his lance, and the robot fell backward, torn open, circuits melting and dripping. A second Tin Mother stepped forward, seized the knight by the foot, and swung him to the ground. The Tin Mother knelt over him. The few dreamers who still had memories of the real world expected it to tend to the injured man.

  It took him into its arms and broke his neck.

  A howl of rage arose. “What are you doing?” shouted a dreamer in the guise of Uther Pendragon. “Who do you think you are?”

  “That was not a man. That was an image,” said the Tin Mother. “I committed no crime. I am here to serve you. Now stand back while we destroy the rest of this perverted scenario. Wish yourselves elsewhere.”

  Arthur stood tall on a grassy knoll. “They are the forces of evil!” he roared. Drawing Excalibur, he dragged a struggling figure from behind a tree. “This is Mordred, my bastard son. He leads the Tin Mothers against us!” Mordred, dark and saturnine, glared at the dreamers with fierce and cunning eyes. “Look at him! He is evil incarnate!”

  “Mordred …” The name passed among the dreamers. “Kill him, Arthur!” shouted somebody.

  “He is my son,” said Arthur. “I cannot kill him.” He flung Mordred aside and plunged Excalibur into the nearest Tin Mother. It sank to the ground, hissing. “Help me rid the world of these villains,” Arthur shouted. “They would reduce us to a race of weaklings unfit to live in the real world!”

  The Tin Mothers, guided by Morgan, had begun to destroy Camelot. With fearsome strength they were pulling the chiseled rocks apart and throwing them to the ground. In minutes they were undoing the work of ten thousand dreamers’ wishes. Yelling their outrage, a vast crowd of dreamers attacked with swords, crossbows, and spears.

  Nyneve and Morgan withdrew to a distant hilltop.

  “Don’t make it too easy for Arthur,” said Nyneve.

&
nbsp; “Too easy? Hell, I have a vested interest in Mordred,” replied Morgan, grinning.

  They watched the most unusual battle Dream Earth had ever known, when Britons fought robots. Led by King Arthur; inspired by the visions of chivalry and glory Nyneve had planted in their minds; cheered on by a multitude of queens, ladies, damsels, and wenches—a thousand knights flung themselves at the Tin Mothers.

  Mordred climbed to the topmost tower of Camelot and screeched orders to his forces from there; Arthur, however, fought in the thick of the battle, Excalibur flashing like fire. The Tin Mothers fell back, driven into the ruins of a keep.

  “Hold your line!” screamed Mordred. “You’ll be trapped, you fools!”

  Strangely, he seemed to have gained some measure of support from the dreamers. “We love you, Mordred!” called a group of damsels.

  On her hilltop, Nyneve asked, “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s a good sign,” said Morgan. “They’re beginning to appreciate the importance of evil.”

  “I suppose so. But Mordred … ?”

  “One of my finer creations. I’ll be sorry to see him go.”

  Nyneve thought for a moment. “Perhaps we should keep him around, after all. Just as a symbol, you understand. No big thing. Just to give people something to get worked up about from time to time.”

  Morgan grinned. “Keeps them on their toes.”

  Now the Tin Mothers were surrounded, and one by one they fell. The knights moved into close quarters, slashing and thrusting, and the acrid stink of burning insulation wafted across the plain. With a great cry of despair Mordred conceded defeat, swung apelike down the ruins of his tower, leapt astride his black horse, and galloped from sight. The battle was over and the field of Camelot was littered with crumpled Tin Mothers. The victors began to converge on the castle gate.

  A lone figure appeared on the ramparts, blood seeping from many cuts, brandishing a sword that flashed like no other.

  “My noble knights!” shouted Arthur. “My friends! To all of you I give my thanks. This day we have fought long and hard against the forces of evil, and we have triumphed. And yet my joy is mingled with sadness, for it was my own son, Mordred, who assembled the evil machines and sent them against us. Machines that pretend to be on the side of the righteous, with their sly words, with their appearance of caring—while slowly they turn the human race into a world of effete dreamers frightened to face reality.