New Writings in SF 5 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  Remember him ?

  He was obviously not of the giants. His body was pale and undernourished compared to theirs and his limbs were spindly and clumsy, unlike those of the Poet.

  Remember him ?

  But of course. Didn’t she have the finest memory in all the City?

  This was Pelar and although she could see how the rudimentary arms and legs had grown and strengthened and the familiar features of ancient Man had begun to transform the once smooth flesh of his face—she knew without question that this was indeed her friend. So long since they had Dreamed together across space and time.

  “I sent them back, Malo,” he explained. “To save you— and the others. They know how to—and you must trust them, believe in them. Especially the Poet. He will guide you outside where we were meant to live. Help him to find the others, Malo. Do not be afraid. There is so much they can do for us. So much!”

  He took two shambling, unsteady steps towards her and stood with his skinny legs braced wide apart and his arms raised almost in supplication towards the great arc of blue overhead.

  “See how I walk, Malo! See how I live! Under an open sky!”

  The great empty spaces of earth spun dizzily about her and she was once more alone in the resting-place of the Poet’s mind. She shivered then, and huddled down against the warmth of his arms. “Oh, but I am so afraid ...”

  He chided her. “There is no need to be.”

  But at that moment she sensed the gloomy walls of her cell begin to move restlessly. Her eyes flew open and stared at the Poet wonderingly. An unpleasant disturbance seemed to have travelled through the great organs of the City.

  “It knows you are here,” she whispered.

  The Poet shook his head. “Not exactly. It has detected a wrongness, but that is only to be expected. It has lost one of its people, Malo. It will be upset and will probably try to find you. But that will take some time and by then we shall all be well clear of the City. We are random factors, beyond the ability of this machine to predict. And besides —it is very slow.”

  He lifted her up against his massive golden chest. “And now we must seek out your friends.”

  Malo felt her breath momentarily leave her in a sudden rush. A blur of swift movement swallowed her world and then she was being borne out of her cell and through the depths of the City with her time-sense radically altered to correspond to her new environment.

  * * * *

  Once there had been streets—but that had been ages ago when human beings maintained the use of their lower limbs for locomotion and had also traversed the City in their many ingenious little machines. But the highways had been gradually swallowed by the encroaching structures which made up the metropolis and the bald sky had been dutifully robbed of its delicate tracery of freeways and passovers. Gradually, the ages accumulated and there was no longer a need for costly and cumbersome and archaic means of transport. The City coalesced and became a vast honeycomb of tunnels and tubes and passageways where the inhabitants could move more conveniently between various points.

  It was down one of those great tunnels they now sped. Locked in the Poet’s arms Malo wondered how they moved when the walls would be blind to their unpredicted passage and so would be unable to provide the necessary thrust. By acknowledging their presence in the shaft then they would also provide the City with their precise location. Perhaps ...

  She squirmed around so that she could study the unsmiling face of the giant. Then she sighed and relaxed, for she knew that it was he who was moving them independently of the tunnel’s mechanisms.

  They entered Antar’s chamber first and penetrated that gloomy womb until they found him dreamily hammocked by the City, floating pale and weak inside his translucent sphere. The Poet plucked him free like a lifeless fruit and, after a moment that was a small eternity in her companion’s mind while he learned all that she had learned of the Truth, released his pale body so that it drifted lightly beside her own. They spent an idle moment studying each other, sharing this new and terrifying experience, before the Poet moved out of the chamber. They felt a gentle tug, as from an unseen thread, and they were whisked off after him and trailed his flying body at a respectable distance as they fled farther into the complex maze of the City’s interior.

  Almost as they departed, an uneasy susurrus trembled the empty silence of the chamber.

  * * * *

  Bael’s cell was much larger than theirs had been. So huge that the walls faced away into murky gloom. In the very centre of the unpleasant room was a great vat and behind the transparent plastic something vaguely human Dreamed on.

  The Poet left them by the doorway and he alone approached the strange vat. He could see that something clearly moved within, something huge and monstrous that might have once been human undulated unaware.

  How many, many tons of flesh held the guttering spark of consciousness he could only just detect? And for how long had this creature suffered such abuse?

  Only then did the monstrous design of the City become clear to Malo. She thought of Bael as the City had pictured-her—and then stared again at the sickening sight in the vat. There could be no greater treachery than this.

  “She feels ... no pain,” the Poet explained, perhaps because he had sensed their grief. “We must see what we ... what we can do for her.”

  Only then did they sense his defeat.

  The task was hopeless from the very beginning. As each successive layer of flesh was probed to find the faint spark of intelligence he knew was there, there came only an increasing desperation. For there were some things still beyond the power to heal. Bael had been conditioned as a breeding mechanism and the City had seen that sufficient consciousness remained to keep the mountain of flesh alive —but nothing beyond that. This was a mind beyond salvation. Nothing more than the most primitive accumulation of nerves and muscles necessary. A billion-candle-power brain reduced to the merest flicker. There was nothing that could be done.

  So he withdrew and wondered in what dark chamber rested the monstrous miscarriages of this dark union. Had the City ought to perpetuate the race—or something more sinister than that ?

  Reluctantly, he stepped back. And seemed to wait, hesitantly, for a moment.

  Do you see this ?

  But it was not to them that his mind cried out.

  There was a mutter in the air between them and a golden shimmer as a shadow moved towards the Poet. Only then did Malo realize that their giant was not alone in the City.

  The air vibrated eerily with their communication. The golden shimmer moved towards the vat.

  And the walls of the chamber bulged and screamed like a beast.

  The Poet and the shadow froze.

  It must be done.

  Again, the thought that was not for them.

  The Poet spun around and what happened next was much too swift for Malo to follow, but when the breathlessness had passed they were elsewhere, and burrowing down, down, down into the bowels of the City in search of more of her companions.

  And all in that blurred instant of time the golden shimmer remained behind in the chamber and moved over and into the terrible vat and did that which was necessary. Then it also fled to another part of the City to continue the urgent work.

  The dim light of consciousness sputtered and winked out within the great mountain of flesh.

  Death had returned to the City.

  * * * *

  Within the vast metropolis there was movement where once there had been only unbroken stasis. There was activity where before there had been only a pervading emptiness and flickering shadows flitting furtively through the multi-cellular structure of the City.

  As a machine it had only an indirect knowledge of the nature of pain and deprived of emotions there was no way of registering grief. But a loss could be felt. A certain indignation could be generated when it sensed a violation of its being. Any direct damage to any one of its parts, however small, could provoke an anger comparable to that most terrib
le of human emotions.

  At first there was only a sudden shock at the abrupt removal of one of its vital organic components. Now only a raw and ragged emptiness existed where once had glowed the bright and brilliant mind of the one called Malo. Only a dreadful pang of loss inexplicably explained.

  For too long had the City dreamed. Its movements were sluggish, its reactions incredibly slothful. As it fought to shrug off the blanket of lethargy from its feeble mind it could feel the bright segments of its newly found consciousness slowly winking out, one after another, so that gradually it was returning to its original state, a machine of metal and plastic shot through with the pseudo-life of electricity and fusion power and becoming less and less of the grand and noble creature it had envisioned, a cybernetic mind bound irrevocably to the tissue of human energy. The Dream was ending.

  A fierce rage welled up within the City—and the struggle began. There were dangerous creatures loose within the tunnels, moving through the City’s system like savage little bacteria and robbing the chambers of their little humans. They must be stopped. They must be ... must be ...

  But already the magnificent intelligence was fading. Deprived of Malo’s biological memory it was forced to fall back upon old and disused circuits in its own mind, so that it might devise a means of expelling the creatures from its system.

  All this took time, the time necessary for a lethargic machine to think and devise a successful method of retaliation—all the time hampered and obsessed by the growing darkness of its intellect. The parts were old and ancient and the mind not altogether sane.

  It was like an animal trying to isolate and identify a dangerous organism circulating through its own bloodstream. This the animal was capable of doing, except that ... it had forgotten how to. And remembering ... remembering was such a slow process for a mind that had overslept by several centuries.

  Gradually, as it felt the passage of those tiny creatures through its substance, the mind grew progressively dimmer. Only a few wan lights illuminated the tragic dissolution of its Dream. Already the pleasures of flesh and organic mind had faded and the remorseless crush of steel was returning to the City. Only dimly was it aware of the information proferred—finally—by its scattered sensory apparatus.

  The invaders were men!

  Men? Within the City?

  The weary mind wrestled with this impossible equation. There were no men. Not any more. Only those ... those it held. Those who ... Dreamed.

  Ah, but the lights were fading, fading, fading.

  They were gone.

  * * * *

  Now the vast bulk of the City lay above them. With dizzying speed the Poet whisked his slender cargo along through the very bottommost levels of the City’s tunnel system.

  And from all quarters came the warm glow: mission accomplished.

  The last of the captives had been liberated. Now there was only the matter of breaking free of the machine. Almost, they could relax.

  The plan had been simple: to penetrate and discover and rescue the few humans held in bondage by the crazed City. The Engineers had outlined the reflex capabilities of the machine, how it had Dreamed a Dream for so long that most, if not all, of its original functions had atrophied.

  But they had not anticipated the almost human agony of the City. Even now its despair flew after them, leapt from every fresh turn in the twisting passageways.

  You do not understand, it cried. I am like you. Like ... you...

  Then the voice had faded away and died, so that only this dreadful susurrus travelled through the walls, following them as they probed deeper, and darker, and closer to The World, until the last spark of humanity guttered and died within the dark mind of the machine and only an aching and intolerable hatred remained. At that precise moment the City tottered and slid over the edge of an ancient precipice ...

  * * * *

  In her mind Malo could feel the warm exultation of the Poet. They were nearing the end of the tunnel. They would soon be outside.

  But then they felt rather than heard the agony slice through the City. The scream of shattered atoms as the City collapsed its vast mass and fused its malleable, timeless substance into one great block of palpitating matter.

  The walls of the tunnel lurched and crushed in upon them.

  Help me !

  The Poet’s cry, savaging the psychotic movement of the insane City. From elsewhere, another cry, and another, sped outwards towards the waiting world.

  For Malo and her companions there was not even time for terror. One moment the scream of the violated machine and the sudden sweep of the closing tunnel, and the next...

  The figure of the Poet became lost behind a sudden blaze of golden glory, so bright that they were blinded and their world was made up of this tremendous energy. Slowly, their eyes adjusted, and Malo saw through the growing ball of light the faint shape of the Poet pulsating strangely and spreading with the light, his golden body stretched out grotesquely across the tunnel so that he now seemed a giant among giants.

  The scream did not die, but the walls receded and they were pulled forward with dazzling speed. Behind them, almost touching them with a scorching breath, the tunnel clamped down upon their passage. Ahead of them, burning fiercely, the Poet forged an exit through the collapsed matter.

  Only then did she realize that the City had sought to destroy them. It would rather have killed than have lost. The Poet was right—the City was insane and it had been a parasite.

  But now they were Outside.

  The World burst open with incredible splendour. The great blue sky held a promise of boundless infinity— already she could sense a tingling excitement through the stubs of her rudimentary limbs.

  They sped over the rich carpet of green and the mad cry of the City became only a faint annoyance in the background of colour that invaded her senses.

  It was even more beautiful than the Poet had promised.

  Of course!

  His blazing aura was gone, she saw, and he now found time to turn around and smile reassuringly. By carefully understating the real World he had left the wonder for herself to unravel.

  They swung up the gentle slope of a small knoll where a small group of the giants stood waiting. With a gentle puff they were dropped to the ground and the sweet smell of grass captured the air.

  She looked back the way they had come. There were other convoys of giants and their charges making towards the hill, she saw, and it was incredible how much the City had kept from her. Why, there must have been many, many more people imprisoned than she had thought...

  She had had contact with five others. The number the City had imposed upon her, the number of her system. No doubt it had devised other systems for each inmate.

  But all that was over and it was strange to see the City from the outside.

  It lay huddled against the land like a monstrous scab. Several miles high and groping out greedily towards the near horizons, a vast wedge of tumbling matter. Once there had been fine spires and towering zigguts scraping at the sky but ... no more. The passage of time had forced a terrible pattern upon the once noble machine and in its dazed and crippled mind there was now only darkness, darkness everywhere and of hope no sign at all. Raging impotence swirling like an acrid fluid throughout its vast and lonely structure.

  The Poet called them. “Come, little ones. We must go.”

  Now she saw the great golden sphere shimmering impatiently atop the hill. They were raised in that warm and gentle way they were accustomed to and as they were whisked towards an open portal there came a terrifying sound which tore savagely at the World. Malo cried out, but the Poet said, reassuringly. “It is nothing. Nothing to fear,” and this was so. But the sound ...

  It was the anguished cry of the City that leapt after them. It seemed it would last for all eternity as a mark of their passing. The ground beneath the wild machine began to shake and the grass around the sphere writhed like an animal in pain. Silently, they turned and watched the agony of
the City.,

  It rose very slowly into the sky and hovered, uncertain, senses wildly gyrating. Only one thought was dominant: it had slumbered too long at the benevolent breast of the earth. It had dreamed a Dream and now that Dream had ended. There would always be existence, but now it would once more be without Purpose.

  For several long moments it seemed undecided and then, the terrible cry still clawing at the sunlight, it surged many hundreds of feet into the air and wheeled blindly around and careered away towards the far horizon. Long after it had faded to a dim smudge against the blue of the sky its doleful cry lingered like a scar upon the day.

  But that was not for Malo’s thoughts. The great ship lifted and flung them at the stars, where they might scatter like jewels once they had been made over as men again and would have a universe for their playground. Already she had sloughed off the useless carapace of her old and senseless life and could feel her mind, like her growing limbs, bursting with fresh growth rich and strange, while far below and beyond the range of discarded care, the City fled blindly over a dark and lonely ocean in search of tomorrow, crooning its mournful loss like some stricken animal. Wallowing on until the dreadful arms of night swept down and everything was dark and only the uncaring stars looked down and the Earth turned again ... and again ... and again ... and was unchanging and forsaken and for ever young.