The City of the Sun

by Stableford, Brian

  In the end, we had to rely on touch in order to stay together. I put my hand on Sorokin’s shoulder and held Karen by the hand. We moved slowly and carefully away from the ship, heading north and keeping the glow of the city lights to our right. We couldn’t keep anything like a straight line because of the clumps of pulpy, yellow-flowered plants that strewed the hillside. In order to be as quiet as possible we had to take the route of least resistance, which wasn’t easy to locate, although Sorokin did as well as anyone could have.

  Soon we were going uphill, and I judged that we’d come too far over to the right—from the top of the hill we’d be able to see the city and the river. We were still heading in the right direction but I’d have preferred to keep on up our minor valley, with a nice big hill between the city’s lands and ourselves. I whispered something to this effect, but Sorokin ignored it. I presumed that he knew what he was doing.

  We’d gone just about three-quarters of a mile when they hit us. They came from all sides—we must have walked straight into their ambush.

  I had one hand on Sorokin’s shoulder and the other gripping Karen’s hand. I wasn’t exactly in a position to mount a valiant defense. A heavy body hit me somewhere around the middle and I was bowled over. I ended up on my back, pinned down. Karen, however, was in a better position. She’d had one hand free and she had obviously thought that it was free to be used. I’d have been carrying a flashlight in readiness for the moment that it was deemed safe to light up our way, but she had a mind that worked along different lines. She was holding a flashgun—a pistol with a parabolic reflector and a flare-bulb instead of a barrel. When fired it made one hell of a noise and a flash so bright as to temporarily blind an attacker, whether human or animal. It was a very useful defense, though it had one terrible defect—if your friends weren’t expecting the flash it had just as much effect on them as it did on the enemy.

  She fired it now without any warning. I tried to shut my eyes against the flare but my reflexes were too slow. The darkness was replaced by painful coruscations and an odd kind of sizzling sensation in my optic nerves. But I, at least, knew what had happened. It had happened to me before. The man pinning me down didn’t and hadn’t. He howled as if he’d been burned, and he jumped back. I staggered to my feet, made clumsy by the weight of the pack on my back. I didn’t know which way to run—I couldn’t even remember which way we’d come. I felt a hand grab at my shoulder, and lashed out with my fist. I felt it connect, and heard an anguished curse.

  “It’s me, you cretin!” hissed Karen.

  The whisper was as much a mistake as the blow. I was promptly charged down again, and I heard the thud of flailing arms connecting with naked bodies as Karen tried to defend herself. Even blinded, the archers were determined to do their job. They’d recovered from the surprise.

  In daylight, Karen’s eyes might have been a big advantage, but it’s only in daylight that the one-eyed man can lord it over the kingdom of the blind. By night, having your optic nerves shocked into submission really doesn’t achieve very much.

  In short, despite the spirited defense, we still lost the fight. We ended up pinned down again, and then there was a long wait. I heard noises, but had no idea what was going on.

  Then Karen said: “Can you see, Alex?”

  “Are you kidding?” I replied, bitterly.

  “They can. One of them just lit a candle. They recover bloody quickly.”

  I sighed. “It’ll come back to me,” I said. “In time. They probably have help in recuperating.”

  I felt myself lifted to my feet, and hustled off up the hill.

  “Karen?” I asked.

  “Right here beside you,” she replied.

  “What about Sorokin?”

  “They got him too. He hasn’t said a word. He didn’t put up much resistance. But then, he’s blind too...for the time being.”

  I didn’t pursue the point. It wasn’t the time to try deciding whether Sorokin was everything he claimed to be and had just been unlucky, or whether he was the Judas goat. Either way, we were on our way to the city. To the dungeons, if they had dungeons.

  I felt a touch on my plastic-sheathed arm—the arm that wasn’t on the side where Karen’s voice had come from. The voice that followed up the touch was high and musical.

  “I am sorry that it had to be this way,” it said. “But there was no other.”

  I wasn’t absolutely sure, but it seemed likely that the man who spoke was the Servant who’d guided me to the relic of the ship.

  “Sure,” I said. “God moves in mysterious ways, and if a little bit of stealth and violence seems called for....”

  “You should not mock God.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No,” he said. “It is not a threat.”

  We staggered on.

  “What now?” whispered Karen, in a conspiratorial tone. I guessed that the Servant had retired slightly.

  “Oh,” I said, airily. “You know the drill. With one bound Jack was free. Beat them all up a bit, run up the flag, and proclaim that henceforth Arcadia shall be a democratic republic. No trouble. Being blinded makes it a bit more difficult, of course, but no self-respecting hero lets a little thing like that bother him.”

  “It’s a great plan,” she agreed.

  “True,” I admitted.

  Gradually, my sight came back. I even began to see the gleam of their lantern. By the time we reached the city’s outermost wall I could see them. There were about ten archers—without their archery equipment—plus the dark-skinned servant. It seemed to me to be a sample of neurotic overkill. Half that number could probably have done the job.

  We didn’t climb all of the hill on which the city was built. Somewhere in the fourth circle we took a side-turning, and then went through a couple of doors into the hillside itself. It wasn’t by any means a labyrinth—just a straight corridor to a big room set off from which were a number of cells. The heavy mob bundled each of us into a different cell. They bolted the doors on the outside.

  The cells weren’t as bad as some I’d seen. There was a toilet in the corner, and there was a table with candles and a tray. There was a chair, and a bed with a straw mattress. It was probably very cold, being so far underground, but I couldn’t feel that, thanks to my insulation. The door had a square panel cut out of it a couple of feet square, with wooden bars. They didn’t look like very effective bars to me. It wouldn’t have taken the power of a superman to break them in two. In my experience the strength of a jail tends to vary directly in connection with the number of attempted breakouts. Obviously not many people tried to get out of this one. I peered through the bars into the big room outside. It had a big table and some wooden benches. There were none of the cushions that were strewn about so liberally in the pyramidal building where the Ego lived. I wasn’t unduly surprised.

  The archers and the Servant had all withdrawn. “Are you all right?” I called to Karen.

  “As well as can be expected,” she replied. I couldn’t see her because her cell was flush with mine, but she was right next door.

  “Sorokin!” I called.

  There was no answer.

  “Are you all right?” I added.

  Still no reply. I knew he was there because I’d seen them bundle him in and shut the door. But he wasn’t in a communicative mood.

  “What happens now?” asked Karen.

  “You’re a great one for anticipating, aren’t you?” I replied. “Always rushing to get to the next stage. Relax and enjoy the present...the future never comes, you know.”

  “Thanks,” she answered.

  “How the hell do I know what now?” I said. “I’m just thankful they haven’t got a rack out there. If I really had to guess I’d say that we might be introduced to something small and black that will grow on us. But I don’t have to guess, so I’ll face that problem when I come to it.”

  It was a hypocritical little speech. I was facing the problem all right.... I was almost wishing that I
could be blind to it.

  After a while, the Servant returned. This time there were no archers with him—just three more Servants and the Ego. They all went straight to Sorokin’s cell. I heard the bolts slide back, and all of the black-shrouded figures passed from my field of vision. Then I didn’t hear anything else for a long, long time.

  I gave up listening after ten minutes, and went to the bed. I lay down on the mattress. It wasn’t overly comfortable but it was clean. And I was tired. Deliberately, I shut my eyes. The last thing I expected to be able to do was sleep—my intention was to shut out the world and all the nightmares that were looming up there. But sleep, strangely enough, came quickly to consume me. I guess when there are nightmares walking the shores of reality immersion in sleep can only be a release...or at least a strategic withdrawal, or whatever other euphemism you use to describe a full-scale retreat.

  I was jerked awake by some small noise, which came accompanied by a strong sensation that something was about to happen.

  I had no idea how much time had passed.

  I was no longer alone—standing over me was the man who called himself the Ego. When my eyes opened he sat down on the chair at the table beside the head of the bed. I sat up. If we were going to converse we might at least be on the same level.

  He rested one of his elbows on the table, and the black cloth of his tunic rustled.

  “I am sorry for the way in which we brought you here,” he said. “It was unfortunate, but necessary. We would not have resorted to deception had we not felt that the situation offered little alternative.”

  “Deception?” I queried.

  “Come with me,” he said, standing. “I will show you something. You should know the truth.”

  He went to the door, then paused, waiting for me to follow. I did so, a little sluggishly. He didn’t take me far—just half a dozen paces to the next cell but one. As we passed Karen’s door I glanced in. She was sitting on the bed, but when she saw me she bounced to her feet and came over. I raised my hand, half in salute, half to tell her to stay calm. I went to see what the Ego wanted to show me, in Sorokin’s cell.

  Sorokin wasn’t there any more. In fact, he didn’t exist any more.

  They’d pulled the bed out from the wall, so that there was space on either side of it for two Servants to kneel. Together with the man on the bed they formed a kind of circle, all holding hands, all in some kind of trance. Their parasites were joined, too—and the circle was sealed because the black flesh had crawled across the back of what had once been Sorokin, and was ramifying gradually over the surface of his body. His hair had all fallen out. If it hadn’t been for the Ego’s mention of deception I might have seen it as a normal introduction procedure—the gathering of a new sheep into the flock. But I realized that what I was seeing was the reversal of a metamorphosis that had already taken place.

  They had created Sorokin. The Self had invented him. The external ramifications of the parasite had been removed by absorption. Super-stimulation of hormonal and physiological processes had grown his hair. And his mind had been literally molded. He hadn’t been pretending.... He had actually become a new person. He had been good enough to convince even Mariel.

  “I never suspected that you could do something like that,” I murmured.

  “Nor did we,” replied the Ego. “Until the necessity arose. We are only beginning to realize what we might do...and what we might be. Progress arises from the discovery of new problems. We have hardly begun.”

  “It was a very plausible story,” I said. “Even though I’d failed to find the slightest evidence of others...I was ready to believe it.”

  “We were sure that you would,” said the Ego. “When we realized what it was that you were searching for so earnestly at the ship.”

  “So you decoyed a couple of us out of the ship. It won’t do you any good. You won’t be able to decoy the rest out. No matter how convincing you are there’ll always be two left behind. That’s the one unbreakable rule.”

  “We do not need to bring any more of your people out. We only have to send one of you back in.”

  I watched the silent ceremony that was recreating one of the Nation’s citizens out of what had been something very different—a programmed creature, an almost-perfect imitation of what he pretended to be.

  “It won’t work,” I told him. “You have time on your hands and a good story that they still believe back at the Daedalus. But there’s a radio in one of those packs you took from us, and we’re expected to report in. When we don’t they’ll become suspicious. Given time, maybe you could program me as you programmed him—induct me into the Nation, destroy my individuality, set me up as you set him up, as a Judas goat. But you won’t get me into the ship. Mariel knows me far too well—and she can read minds. You fooled her with an imaginary person, but you couldn’t fool her with something pretending to be me...or Karen. You’ve wasted your time. You’re no nearer to capturing the ship now than you ever were.”

  “That is not necessarily our goal,” said the man in black. “Indeed, it would be a measure of desperation if we were to attempt any such thing.”

  “So what do you intend to do?”

  “We do not yet know. It depends very much on what we learn concerning the nature of the situation. What we must do will depend very much on what your people intend to do.”

  That news didn’t exactly fill me with hope. I knew what Nathan intended to do, and I couldn’t suppose for one moment that the measures the Nation would take in return could be anything but desperate.

  “You could have held me when we came back from the north,” I said. “You didn’t have to let me tell the others what I found out. Why snatch me now it’s too late?”

  “Perhaps it was a mistake to try to deceive you in the beginning,” said the Ego. “But we undertook the deception with the most innocent of motives. We sought to protect you from your own fears and prejudices. Our aim then was to reassure you before welcoming you into the Nation in union with the Self. We have since seen fit to question the naivety of both the strategy and the ambition. Offering you time to study us also gave us the opportunity to study you. What we found changed our attitude somewhat. There was never any intention to use force, or to harm you. Such action was considered and rejected. The Servant had no option but to confirm and carry through that decision in the wilderness. He allowed you to return to the ship while he returned here to inform the Self of the new situation. In the meantime, we also discovered that you had obtained a specimen of what you call the parasite, in defiance of the agreement. You did not come out of the ship again, and we became concerned. It seemed possible that you might never come out—that you might stay within working on a means to destroy the so-called parasite. We feared that you might discover such a means. It therefore became necessary to lure out one or more of your number, so that we could find out what you intended to do, and how, and whether there is anything that we can do even at this stage to reach a reconciliation.”

  Considering it objectively, it sounded like a policy that made some kind of sense. But I was far from sure that it was the truth.

  “It seems,” said the Ego, turning away from the open cell-door, “that we have all behaved a little foolishly. We have been too narrow-minded in our approach. The Self was narrow-minded in its assumption that your absorption into the Nation was the only appropriate aim. You have been narrow-minded in your assumption that the Self is implicitly evil. The Self, we assure you, has become wiser through contact with you. You must remember that you are the first individual minds that the Self has encountered. When there were still individual minds on Arcadia the Self was at such a stage in its development that it was hardly aware of them. The story that Sorokin told you was, of course, untrue...but not so far from the truth. There were no immunes, but we believe the progress of the Self’s growth in the colony was as described. The parasite, as you call it, came first, infecting everyone. Only when it was well-established did the possibility of linking br
ains materialize, and the first happening was certainly an accident. But once a link is forged...the cells that make up our companions are not intelligent, but they are highly active. They experiment, blindly, and let natural selection choose the effective results. When the colonists realized that the mind-to-mind link was possible, they may have done everything in their power to encourage it. They would have seen it then as something subject to individual control, a new faculty. The Self was generated by degrees. It has developed with astonishing rapidity, once given the chance to develop, but its origins are clouded even from itself. So are most of its potentials. I think that you may have assumed that the Self is something stable, something settled. That illusion was fostered, no doubt, by the fashion in which we have built our city. But in fact the Self is still in the process of evolving, and evolving very rapidly. This city was the product of its earliest burst of awareness and productivity. It is, we think now, a childish work. We believe that we will soon outgrow such infancy. It is our home, and we will live in it for many years yet, but the reasons which prompted us to build it are no longer so meaningful to us. When the Self began its first thought was to be itself. It did not imagine itself as something in the process of change. It imagined itself to be complete...and perfect. The flamboyant Utopian design of the city reflects this feeling. But the truth is that the Self knows not what it is or what it will become. It is changing and must continue to change, as every discovery it makes leads on to more and more. But you must not judge us even on the basis of what we seem to be, let alone on the basis of what you fear that we might be. Your minds are too narrow. You cannot know. Nor can we. Only God can know.”

  The rush of words stopped without having slowed down. I had been holding my breath, for no good reason. I let it go now, and inhaled deeply. I was completely at a loss. I didn’t know where I was up to.