The City of the Sun

by Stableford, Brian

  “Shouldn’t we build a fire?” I asked.

  “There is not time,” came the reply. “And fire is not so frightening by day.”

  He didn’t sound in the least fearful. I sat down again, and inspected my leg carefully. It would be no problem, but I had to sit still for a while to allow the blood to clot. Time dragged by, and the stillness seemed pregnant with menace. The tableau of man and beast seemed frozen now—there was no movement of the black threads now they were joined. Cells were moving, probably inside the outer tegument, but there was no gross movement of the whole structure. There was no way to guess how long the recovery would take because there was no way to guess how extensively the parasite had developed inside the large host body.

  I began to feel thirsty.

  Then I heard the baying of the pack and knew that they were on their way.

  I was overcome by a sensation of helplessness. I had no weapon—not the slightest means of self-defense. There was no contribution I could make to the coming battle, if battle there was to be. I wanted to get on my mount and ride away, but the mount that had been mine was on its way to a merciful death.

  The carnivores approached quickly, but stealthily. They were close before I saw one scuttling from the shelter of one tattered bush to another. It looked more like a hyena than a wolf, with skin dappled ochreous yellow and muddy grey, and a rounded head with squat muzzle and round ears. There was no way I could count them—there might have been four or forty.

  They didn’t charge in all at once. They spread out to surround us, and circled, taking a good long look at us from a range of fifty or sixty yards, ducking from cover to cover, poking their heads up every few moments.

  The archers had arrows notched to their bowstrings, but they waited patiently, quite relaxed. The range was too long and they had no chance yet to get a reasonable sight of the enemy. As the beasts circled us, so the bowmen spread out, forming four points of a square, with myself, the Servant and the injured ox in the middle. The other oxen also spread out, and began to move back and forth along the lines of the hypothetical square. I was fascinated by the purposeful nature of their movements. They were neither frightened nor restless. They were under control.

  What effect does contact with a supermind have on an animal? I wondered. It can’t become intelligent—the brain hasn’t the carrying capacity. But contact with the Self might allow it to make the most efficient possible use of what it has...most efficient, perhaps, in terms of the Self’s priorities.

  Their horns weren’t built for stabbing, but rather for butting and tossing. I could have wished that they were better equipped, but I had the feeling that in a hard fight they’d be no mean allies.

  The predators showed themselves more frequently as they crept ever closer, and I was able to get an increasingly better estimate of their strength. I formed the impression that there were between fifteen and twenty-five.

  If I was right, they had sufficient numbers to do us a lot of damage—if they followed their present cautious tactics until they were close enough for a quick dash, and then all charged simultaneously.

  But that wasn’t their way.

  One dog, bolder than the rest, finally broke cover for too long and tried to run diagonally for a clump of stiff-stemmed plants only twenty feet away. One of the archers let fly and the arrow caught the beast just behind the shoulder. It rolled over and made a terrible mewling sound. It lay on its back, kicking. The bolt hadn’t killed it outright, but it had sealed its fate.

  Meanwhile, the others ducked and dodged. But the example of what had happened to their unfortunate comrade didn’t deter them. If anything, it seemed to excite them. There was more blood smell in the air now, and the blood of their own kind was apparently just as much a stimulus as the blood of a natural victim.

  Another archer released an arrow, striking a wolf in the leg—again the wound wasn’t fatal, but again it stopped the predator, which turned to limp away, the arrow catching in the grass as it ran.

  Then the rest came, in groups of two or three, the runs not timed at all. Three were taken out by arrows, then a fourth...then the rest were at the perimeter of the defensive square...and the yak-deer went into action, heads down and hooves plunging.

  Suddenly, everything was chaos, with the archers unable to get in a clear shot. They retreated inward, arrows notched so that they could let fly at point-blank range if a wolf came close enough for a final leap. And the wolves were leaping, jaws agape, at their natural prey, the oxen. Their strategy—attacking in small groups—was geared to pulling down herbivores cut out from a herd. They could stand being tossed and bruised, and while one occupied the horned head the others would dive for the legs or jump at the neck. But the head wasn’t the only weapon the oxen had, and their forelegs lashed out to bowl the marauders over.

  Another arrow thumped into flesh, and another. The archers didn’t miss now. Despite the confusion they were picking their targets—wolves that had been knocked aside and were rolling on the ground, showing their pale underbellies and momentarily vulnerable.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the dogs make an absolutely prodigious leap at the shoulder of one of the mounts, its jaws clutching at the shaggy mane. As the long canines closed on a mouthful of fur the ox wheeled and bucked. One horn caught the wolf in the flank and turned the mighty leap into a soaring acrobatic arc. Thrown sideways, the wolf came plunging down into the center of our defensive circle...to land squarely on top of me.

  I got my arms up to shield my face, but I was knocked flat by the weight of the descending body. The wolf was as surprised as I was, and he was falling sideways, so the jaws—still trailing long brown hairs—snapped shut on the empty air. I tried desperately to thrust the thing away, just to get rid of its presence, but all I did in rolling its body off mine was to turn it over and give its feet a chance to meet the earth and right its body. I was flat on my back by this time and in the worst position possible for self-defense. All I could do was grab a handful of the skin about its throat and push up, trying to force those dreadful teeth away from me. There wasn’t much skin to spare but I managed to shove the head up anyhow. The creature jerked free and stabbed with its head, but it had lost coordination, and it didn’t manage to get in a bite. Saliva flecked the plastic of my no-longer-protective suit, and the great yellow rows of teeth opened up again like a gin-trap.

  There was nothing more that I could do.

  And then an arrow, driven with tremendous force, went deep into its right eye and penetrated its brain. Its head went up as if someone had cracked its spine like a whip, and one single convulsion was all the life left in it. Then it was stone dead, and it fell across my chest like a great wet sandbag. It knocked the breath out of me, and I had to fight for air, cursing the awkward filters which seemed to be strangling me as tears squeezed into my eyes and there was a moment of pain in my lungs. Then the breath came back, and I sucked the air gratefully. I felt as if I’d just been beaten up, but I also felt an intoxicating lightness of mind—the relief of being alive.

  I managed to heave the corpse of the wolf aside, and sat up.

  The battle was over. The enemy was in full retreat. I counted six corpses, including the one beside me, and the first casualty of all was still where it had fallen, still thrashing around in the hopeless attempt to dislodge the arrow from its shoulder.

  I didn’t know which of the archers had fired the arrow which saved my life. I said “Thanks” loudly, for all of them. I couldn’t help tempering my gratitude by wondering whether it had been a shot fired purely by reflex. Maybe if they had had a chance to think about it they would have considered it safer to let the beast kill me. It was a sour thought, but I was still feeling very sour.

  The Servant didn’t seem to have moved a muscle. He might have been totally oblivious of the whole thing. The oxen, too, were very calm now. They had done their job, neatly and effectively.

  I felt bruised, but not any more bruised than I had been b
efore the wolf fell on me. No doubt I was bruised after the crashing fall I’d had. But otherwise I was fine. It was going to be an uncomfortable ride home—always assuming that I didn’t have to walk—but I could stand that.

  The Servant came out of his trance, and I saw that the black network was no longer visible on the ox’s neck beneath the shaggy fur. All gone, into the big black spider web under the silvery tunic. The Servant didn’t look any bigger, but as he came to his feet he looked distinctly tired. He was probably near to exhaustion. All the energy to absorb the companion from the injured beast had been provided by his system. The parasite had no reserves of its own.

  I looked down at the ox.

  It was perfectly still. Dead.

  Euthanasia without a bullet—the last merciful gift of the departing companion.

  I looked into the drawn face of the Servant, and said, yet again: “I’m sorry.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They gave me one of the other mounts, while two of the bowmen doubled up. This time, I didn’t make any attempt to bring myself up abreast of the Servant. I didn’t have to. This time, he wanted to talk to me, and it was he who dropped back.

  “It was not intended that you should see what you saw today,” he said. Now it was his turn to make provocative statements. He wanted to know just how much I had inferred from the knowledge that the parasite communities could link up.

  “And I was almost killed because of it,” I retorted.

  “The arrow was not released,” he pointed out. “And another arrow saved your, life a few moments later.”

  “Do you intend to let me return to the ship?” I asked bluntly.

  “You are free,” the Servant informed me. “I have to act as I believe that the Self would decide. If I am wrong...then I will be punished. But I cannot force you to come to the city while a decision is made.”

  “What constitutes punishment?” I asked.

  “That is not important,” he replied. I disagreed. If making the wrong decisions was punishable, that implied a degree of independence of the individual from the Self. The nature of the punishment might tell me something about the incidence of the misdemeanor. But if he didn’t intend talking about it there was no future in pressing the point.

  “Why did you try to keep secret the fact that the dendrites were all part of the same super-individual?” I asked instead.

  He knew what I meant, despite the improvised term. “Because we knew that the idea would frighten you even more than what you had already seen,” he said. “We knew that to you we seemed alien, that our companions seemed to you to be ugly parasites feeding on our substance, interfering with our bodies and our minds. We knew that even if your ship did not have the power to destroy the Self, Earth did. It was—and is—desperately necessary that we should persuade you that what has happened to us on this world is not evil—that, in fact, it brings us closer to God. While you saw the companions as individuals there seemed a good chance that you might see them as symbiotes, and that you might find the courage to risk one or two of your number to test the notion. We feared that if you knew the whole truth...that there is only one companion, which is companion to us all...you would see the situation differently, and consider the companion much more dangerous. At the individual level, you saw the dendrites as something that could be handled. But now that you see one vast creature, awesome in its proportions, you may no longer see it as something that you can cope with, if necessary. Your fear has increased...and the chances of your submitting to the terms laid down in our agreement are much less. That is true, is it not?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “It’s true. I might have been prepared to let a parasite grow on me...but I won’t surrender myself to the power of tens of thousands of other minds, physically linked to mine. I’d stand to lose everything that I am. There’s no way I’m going to put my identity into a circuit like that.”

  “You are wrong,” he said. “You cannot understand. Without experience, there is no way you can know...not simply the truth about us...but also the greater truth.”

  “Have you ever considered that your God might be something black, with a million tentacles reaching into your minds, manipulating you to its own advantage...deluding you?” It was a bitchy question, but I figured that the time was right for asking it.

  “You do not understand,” he repeated.

  He was right. Not merely in the sense that his statement was true, but in the sense that he had the commitment of total faith. He was absolutely sure of his own rightness, and any attack upon it, any questioning of it, just bounced off. It was impervious to doubt. His world view was a closed, self-supporting system. Most religious systems are. They make themselves invulnerable to reason by discounting it even as a method of thought. Faith is what is necessary...reason is just a way of cheating yourself. Even when the data defy your very senses, there’s always a way out.

  God moves in mysterious ways.

  All gods do. It’s the only way they can work.

  Their religiousness was probably inevitable. Belief in God is an elementary form of selflessness—the acknowledgment of responsibility toward a hypothetical Other. In this case the process had worked the other way.... When selflessness and responsibility to a real Other become facts of life, so does God. It is no longer necessary to invent him. He exists.

  “You say that you came here to learn about us,” said the dark man. “All that we ask is that you do that—in the only possible way. You must open yourself to knowledge of the Self, you must join with the Self. Then you will learn. Then you will understand. Your thoughts now are governed by your nightmares. If you cannot control those nightmares, then we are all heading for disaster. You cannot go on thinking with your narrow prejudices. You must learn to understand.”

  The whole routine just went in one ear and out the other. I’d heard it all before. It was a sales pitch that had been running throughout history. Believe as we do and you will be saved. Continue as you are and suffer eternal damnation. Join us...or there will be strife, and war, and catastrophe. It was a call that never altered, the plea of faith to the doubter.

  The only trouble was that there almost always was strife, and war, and catastrophe. And right now I could see the situation here on Arcadia heading for a grade-A disaster. Daedalus versus the City of the Sun. The genetic engineers versus the almighty parasite.

  The last time I’d heard a pitch like the one the Servant had just thrown at me it had been thrown on behalf of the neo-Christian revival, by a boy named Peter, who was my son. As soon as the pitch was made we were lost. Strife followed, as easily and as naturally as night follows day. Now, he and I were virtually strangers. It had happened almost overnight. The only way that even such a tiny disaster as that could have been averted would have been total capitulation on my part. I hadn’t been able to do that. I hadn’t been able to close my world and accept faith as a substitute for reason. Much less could I capitulate with what the Servant was asking me in his capacity of missionary for the Self. There was no way, no way at all, that I was going to put my mind at risk, let it dissolve into some corporate mass.

  And that being so, what chance could there be to avoid disaster?

  They obviously still had hope. The arrow had not been released. Another had saved my life. I was free to return to the ship, carrying both the bad news and the urgent plea. But it’s always the faithful whose hope lasts longest. Because they know they’re right, and in their heart of hearts they believe that everyone else must see that they’re right too. Persistent denial comes to seem, in the end, like simple perversity, which they are duty bound to punish...with the clearest of clear consciences.

  I looked desperately for a hope to match the Servant’s.

  But I, poor doubter, couldn’t find it.

  It just didn’t seem to be there.

  I got back to the Daedalus in the late evening, just as it was getting dark. I stripped off my torn suit in th
e lock and dutifully underwent the full—and rather uncomfortable—decontamination procedure. Then I put on a new suit. I was certain that it wasn’t necessary, but for the sake of taking not even the slightest chance, and for the peace of mind of the others, it seemed the best thing to do.

  There wasn’t exactly a welcoming committee waiting for me. Only three people were in the main cabin—Nathan and Mariel, who were sitting with a pile of paperwork, and Pete Rolving, who was sipping coffee. They did, however, stop what they were doing when I limped in.

  “Hello, Alex,” said Nathan. “Have a good trip?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Did you find anything out at the ship?”

  “Not a thing.” I sat down.

  “What’s the matter with your leg?” asked Mariel.

  “I fell off my trusty steed...right over the horns. It’s nothing. Just stinging a bit from decontamination.”

  Her eyes gazed into mine, looking straight through me. She pushed her papers aside.

  “I’ll get the others,” she said.

  The tone of her voice told Nathan that this was not the time for listening with half an ear. He put his pen down and began to shuffle up the papers into a tidy pile.

  “Get me some coffee, will you, Pete?” I said. “In a tube. I don’t feel like sucking too hard.... I’d rather squirt it through.”

  He got me a tube. Mariel brought Conrad and Linda out of the lab. They looked as if they’d been working hard for a long time. Karen appeared out of the control room.

  I gave them the story quickly, without bothering with any frills. The central fact was what was important. They could draw out the implications as well as I could. They’d be the same implications that had occurred to me in the morning. I was no longer so sure they were the right implications, but they were clear enough.

  “They were fools to think they could hide this from us,” said Nathan, when I finished.