Against the Fall of Night

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Then this ‘emergency system,’ whatever it is, leads to them?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Alvin meditated for a while.

  “So you think that even if we do find the system, it will only lead to a lot of ruined cities?”

  “I doubt if it will even do that,” replied Rorden. “When they were abandoned, the machines were closed down and the desert will have covered them by now.”

  Alvin refused to be discouraged.

  “But Alaine must have known that!” he protested. Rorden shrugged his shoulders.

  “We’re only guessing,” he said, “and the Associator hasn’t any information at the moment. It may take several hours, but with such a restricted subject we should have all the recorded facts before the end of the day. We’ll follow your advice after all.”

  The screens of the city were down and the sun was shining fiercely, though its rays would have felt strangely weak to a man of the Dawn Ages. Alvin had made this journey a hundred times before, yet now it seemed almost a new adventure. When they came to the end of the moving way, he bent down and examined the surface that had carried them through the city. For the first time in his life, he began to realize something of its wonder. Here it was motionless, yet a hundred yards away it was rushing directly towards him faster than a man could run.

  Rorden was watching him, but he misunderstood the boy’s curiosity.

  “When the park was built,” he said, “I suppose they had to remove the last section of the way. I doubt if you’ll learn anything from it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” said Alvin. “I was wondering how the moving ways work.”

  Rorden looked astonished, for the thought had never occurred to him. Ever since men had lived in cities, they had accepted without thinking the multitudinous services that lay beneath their feet. And when the cities had become completely automatic, they had ceased even to notice that they were there.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I can show you a thousand greater puzzles. Tell me how my Recorders get their information, for example.”

  So, without a second thought, Rorden dismissed the moving ways—one of the greatest triumphs of human engineering. The long ages of research that had gone to the making of anisotropic matter meant nothing to him. Had he been told that a substance could have the properties of a solid in one dimension and of a liquid in the other two, he would not even have registered surprise.

  The Park was almost three miles across, and since every pathway was a curve of some kind all distances were considerably exaggerated. When he had been younger Alvin had spent a great deal of time among the trees and plants of this largest of the city’s open spaces. He had explored the whole of it at one time or another, but in later years much of its charm had vanished. Now he understood why: he had seen the ancient records and knew that the Park was only a pale shadow of a beauty that had vanished from the world.

  They met many people as they walked through the avenues of ageless trees and over the dwarf, perennial grass that never needed trimming. After a while they grew tired of acknowledging greetings, for everyone knew Alvin and almost everyone knew the Keeper of the Records. So they left the paths and wandered through quiet byways almost overshadowed by trees. Sometimes the trunks crowded so closely round them that the great towers of the city were hidden from sight, and for a little while Alvin could imagine he was in the ancient world of which he had so often dreamed.

  The Tomb of Yarlan Zey was the only building in the Park. An avenue of the eternal trees led up the low hill on which it stood, its rose-pink columns gleaming in the sunlight. The roof was open to the sky, and the single chamber was paved with great slabs of apparently natural stone. But for geological ages human feet had crossed and recrossed that floor and left no trace upon its inconceivably stubborn material. Alvin and Rorden walked slowly into the chamber, until they came face to face with the statue of Yarlan Zey.

  The creator of the great park sat with slightly downcast eyes, as if examining the plans spread across his knees. His face wore that curiously elusive expression that had baffled the world for so many generations. Some had dismissed it as no more than a whim of the artist’s, but to others it seemed that Yarlan Zey was smiling at some secret jest. Now Alvin knew that they had been correct.

  Rorden was standing motionless before the statue, as if seeing it for the first time in his life. Presently he walked back a few yards and began to examine the great flagstones.

  “What are you doing?” asked Alvin.

  “Employing a little logic and a great deal of intuition,” replied Rorden. He refused to say any more, and Alvin resumed his examination of the statue. He was still doing this when a faint sound behind him attracted his attention. Rorden, his face wreathed in smiles, was slowly sinking into the floor. He began to laugh at the boy’s expression.

  “I think I know how to reverse this,” he said as he disappeared. “If I don’t come up immediately, you’ll have to pull me out with a gravity polarizer. But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

  The last words were muffled, and, rushing to the edge of the rectangular pit, Alvin saw that his friend was already many feet below the surface. Even as he watched, the shaft deepened swiftly until Rorden had dwindled to a speck no longer recognizable as a human being. Then, to Alvin’s relief, the far-off rectangle of light began to expand and the pit shortened until Rorden was standing beside him once more.

  For a moment there was a profound silence. Then Rorden smiled and began to speak.

  “Logic,” he said, “can do wonders if it has something to work upon. This building is so simple that it couldn’t conceal anything, and the only possible secret exit must be through the floor. I argued that it would be marked in some way, so I searched until I found a slab that differed from all the rest.”

  Alvin bent down and examined the floor.

  “But it’s just the same as all the others!” he protested.

  Rorden put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and turned him round until he was looking towards the statue. For a moment Alvin stared at it intently. Then he slowly nodded his head.

  “I see,” he whispered. “So that is the secret of Yarlan Zey!”

  The eyes of the statue were fixed upon the floor at his feet. There was no mistake. Alvin moved to the next slab, and found that Yarlan Zey was no longer looking towards him.

  “Not one person in a thousand would ever notice that unless they were looking for it,” said Rorden, “and even then, it would mean nothing to them. At first I felt rather foolish myself, standing on that slab and going through different combinations of control thoughts. Luckily the circuits must be fairly tolerant, and the code-thought turned out to be “Alaine of Lyndar.” I tried “Yarlan Zey” at first, but it wouldn’t work, as I might have guessed. Too many people would have operated the machine by accident if that trigger thought had been used.”

  “It sounds very simple,” admitted Alvin, “but I don’t think I would have found it in a thousand years. Is that how the Associators work?”

  Rorden laughed.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I sometimes reach the answer before they do, but they always reach it.” He paused for a moment.

  “We’ll have to leave the shaft open: no one is likely to fall down it.”

  As they sank smoothly into the earth, the rectangle of sky dwindled until it seemed very small and far away. The shaft was lit by a phosphorescence that was part of the walls, and seemed to be at least a thousand feet deep. The walls were perfectly smooth and gave no indication of the machinery that had lowered them.

  The doorway at the bottom of the shaft opened automatically as they stepped towards it. A few paces took them through the short corridor—and then they were standing, overawed by its immensity, in a great circular cavern whose walls came together in a graceful, sweeping curve three hundred feet above their heads. The column against which they were standing seemed too slender to support the hundreds of feet of rock abov
e it. Then Alvin noticed that it did not seem an integral part of the chamber at all, but was clearly of much later construction. Rorden had come to the same conclusion.

  “This column,” he said, “was built simply to house the shaft down which we came. We were right about the moving ways—they all lead into this place.”

  Alvin had noticed, without realizing what they were, the great tunnels that pierced the circumference of the chamber. He could see that they sloped gently upwards, and now he recognized the familiar grey surface of the moving ways. Here, far beneath the heart of the city, converged the wonderful transport system that carried all the traffic of Diaspar. But these were only the severed stumps of the great roadways: the strange material that gave them life was now frozen into immobility.

  Alvin began to walk towards the nearest of the tunnels. He had gone only a few paces when he realized that something was happening to the ground beneath his feet. It was becoming transparent. A few more yards, and he seemed to be standing in mid-air without any visible support. He stopped and stared down into the void beneath.

  “Rorden!” he called. “Come and look at this!”

  The other joined him, and together they gazed at the marvel beneath their feet. Faintly visible, at an indefinite depth, lay an enormous map—a great network of lines converging towards a spot beneath the central shaft. At first it seemed a confused maze, but after a while Alvin was able to grasp its main outlines. As usual, he had scarcely begun his own analysis before Rorden finished his.

  “The whole of this floor must have been transparent once,” said the Keeper of the Records. “When this chamber was sealed and the shaft built, the engineers must have done something to make the center opaque. Do you understand what it is, Alvin?”

  “I think so,” replied the boy. “It’s a map of the transport system, and those little circles must be the other cities of Earth. I can just see names beside them, but they’re too faint to read.”

  “There must have been some form of internal illumination once,” said Rorden absently. He was looking towards the walls of the chamber.

  “I thought so!” he exclaimed. “Do you see how all these radiating lines lead towards the small tunnels?”

  Alvin had noticed that besides the great arches of the moving ways there were innumerable smaller tunnels leading out of the chamber—tunnels that sloped downwards instead of up.

  Rorden continued without waiting for a reply.

  “It was a magnificent system. People would come down the moving ways, select the place they wished to visit, and then follow the appropriate line on the map.”

  “And what happens then?” said Alvin.

  As usual, Rorden refused to speculate.

  “I haven’t enough information,” he answered. “I wish we could read the names of those cities!” he complained, changing the subject abruptly.

  Alvin had wandered away and was circumnavigating the central pillar. Presently his voice came to Rorden, slightly muffled and overlaid with echoes from the walls of the chamber.

  “What is it?” called Rorden, not wishing to move as he had nearly deciphered one of the dimly visible groups of characters. But Alvin’s voice was insistent, so he went to join him.

  Far beneath was the other half of the great map, its faint web-work radiating towards the points of the compass. But this time not all of it was too dim to be clearly seen, for one of the lines, and one only, was brilliantly illuminated. It seemed to have no connection with the rest of the system, and pointed like a gleaming arrow to one of the downward-sloping tunnels. Near its end the line transfixed a circle of golden light, and against that circle was the single word “LYS.” That was all.

  For a long time Alvin and Rorden stood gazing down at that silent symbol. To Rorden it was no more than another question for his machines, but to Alvin its promise was boundless. He tried to imagine this great chamber as it had been in the ancient days, when air transport had come to an end but the cities of Earth still had commerce one with the other. He thought of the countless millions of years that had passed with the traffic steadily dwindling and the lights on the great map dying one by one, until at last only this single line remained. He wondered how long it had gleamed there among its darkened companions, waiting to guide the steps that never came, until at last Yarlan Zey had sealed the moving ways and closed Diaspar against the world.

  That had been hundreds of millions of years ago. Even then, Lys must have lost touch with Diaspar. It seemed impossible that it could have survived: perhaps, after all, the map meant nothing now.

  Rorden broke into his reverie at last. He seemed a little nervous and ill at ease.

  “It’s time we went back,” he said. “I don’t think we should go any further now.”

  Alvin recognized the undertones in his friend’s voice, and did not argue with him. He was eager to go forward, but realized that it might not be wise without further preparation. Reluctantly he turned again toward the central pillar. As he walked to the opening of the shaft, the floor beneath him gradually clouded into opacity, and the gleaming enigma far below slowly faded from sight.

  Four

  The Way Beneath

  Now that the way lay open at last before him, Alvin felt a strange reluctance to leave the familiar world of Diaspar. He began to discover that he himself was not immune from the fears he had so often derided in others.

  Once or twice Rorden had tried to dissuade him, but the attempt had been half-hearted. It would have seemed strange to a man of the Dawn Ages that neither Alvin nor Rorden saw any danger in what they were doing. For millions of years the world had held nothing that could threaten man, and even Alvin could not imagine types of human beings greatly different from those he knew in Dispar. That he might be detained against his will was a thought wholly inconceivable to him. At the worst, he could only fail to discover anything.

  Three days later, they stood once more in the deserted chamber of the moving ways. Beneath their feet the arrow of light still pointed to Lys—and now they were ready to follow it.

  As they stepped into the tunnel, they felt the familiar tug of the peristaltic field and in a moment were being swept effortlessly into the depths. The journey lasted scarcely a minute: when it ended they were standing at one end of a long, narrow chamber in the form of a half-cylinder. At the far end, two dimly lit tunnels stretched away towards infinity.

  Men of almost every civilization that had existed since the Dawn would have found their surroundings completely familiar: yet to Alvin and Rorden they were a glimpse of another world. The purpose of the long, streamlined machine that lay aimed like a projectile at the far tunnel was obvious, but that made it none the less novel. Its upper portion was transparent, and looking through the walls Alvin could see rows of luxuriously appointed seats. There was no sign of any entrance, and the whole machine was floating about a foot above a single metal rod that stretched away into the distance, disappearing in one of the tunnels. A few yards away another rod led to the second tunnel, but no machine floated above it. Alvin knew, as surely as if he had been told, that somewhere beneath unknown, far-off Lys, that second machine was waiting in another such chamber as this.

  “Well,” said Rorden, rather lamely, “Are you ready?”

  Alvin nodded.

  “I wish you’d come,” he said—and at once regretted it when he saw the disquiet on the other’s face. Rorden was the closest friend he had ever possessed, but he could never break through the barriers that surrounded all his race.

  “I’ll be back within six hours,” Alvin promised, speaking with difficulty for there was a mysterious tightness in his throat. “Don’t bother to wait for me. If I get back early I’ll call you—there must be some communicators around here.”

  It was all very casual and matter-of-fact, Alvin told himself. Yet he could not help jumping when the walls of the machine faded and the beautifully designed interior lay open before his eyes.

  Rorden was speaking, rather quickly and jerkily.


  “You’ll have no difficulty in controlling the machine,” he said. “Did you see how it obeyed that thought of mine? I should get inside quickly in case the time delay is fixed.”

  Alvin stepped aboard, placing his belongings on the nearest seat. He turned to face Rorden, who was standing in the barely visible frame of the doorway. For a moment there was a strained silence while each waited for the other to speak.

  The decision was made for them. There was a faint flicker of translucence, and the walls of the machine had closed again. Even as Rorden began to wave farewell, the long cylinder started to ease itself forward. Before it had entered the tunnel, it was already moving faster than a man could run.

  Slowly Rorden made his way back to the chamber of the moving ways with its great central pillar. Sunlight was streaming down the open shaft as he rose to the surface. When he emerged again into the Tomb of Yarlan Zey, he was disconcerted, though not surprised, to find a group of curious on-lookers gathered around him.

  “There’s no need to be alarmed,” he said gravely. “Someone has to do this every few thousand years, though it hardly seems necessary. The foundations of the city are perfectly stable—they haven’t shifted a micron since the Park was built.”

  He walked briskly away, and as he left the tomb a quick backward glance showed him that the spectators were already dispersing. Rorden knew his fellow citizens well enough to be sure that they would think no more about the incident.

  Alvin settled back among the upholstery and let his eyes wander round the interior of the machine. For the first time he noticed the indicator board that formed part of the forward wall. It carried the simple message:—

  LYS

  35 MINUTES

  Even as he watched, the number changed to “34.” That at least was useful information, though as he had no idea of the machine’s speed it told him nothing about the length of the journey. The walls of the tunnel were one continual blur of grey, and the only sensation of movement was a very slight vibration he would never have noticed had he not been expecting it.