14
Monteyiller ran down another street, darkness closing in behind him. There were others running beside him, felt rather than seen: he didn’t care. The houses flowed and changed like reflections in flowing water: he didn’t see. Cat was gone; the ship was gone. He ran dazedly, gripping a tender thread of sanity, his breath burning like fires in his throat. Violently, he collided with a dark, looming man and was thrown against a wall of hard, unyielding stone. The impact sobered him up, and as he continued down the winding street, he observed the houses and milling people.
Time retraced its steps as he walked down the street. Houses aged, leaning out over the gradually narrowing street as if contemplating whether to fall face-down, ancient timber creaking in the shadows of the overhanging upper levels. The smooth paving changed to cobblestone, dust appeared, and the smell of stagnant water. People became more grim, more gay. Clothes drab and torn, exquisite and ostentatious. There was silver and gold and silk and the sound of rapiers loose in their ornamented scabbards; coarse cloth and beads, sunken mouths, empty eyes. There was the sound of hard boots echoing between the ramshackle and decayed houses, and the magnificent palaces, of gleaming white marble. There were the sounds of naked feet, crutches and jeweled walking sticks. Voices cried out in the dark passages and alleys, men with dead eyes, dragging carts and wheelbarrows, lifting their merchandise above their heads.
“What do ye lack, do ye buy, Sir, see what ye lack! Pins, points, garters, Spanish gloves or silk ribbons—”
Monteyiller elbowed his way through the throngs of people, dazed by smells, sights, sounds, the multitude of disparate impressions. Black-clad women, and children with eyes that filled their faces, blocked his way.
“Have ye any work for a tinker? Have ye any ends of gold or silver? Have ye any old bowls or trays or bellows to mend—”
A carriage drawn by two horses came down the narrow street, forcing people up against the walls of the houses as it thundered by. Suddenly, it stopped and the door opened, and a fat man jumped out, his balding head gleaming in the light of flaming torches set in the walls. He ran the three steps to the door of a tavern and disappeared inside, followed by his companions, red-faced from wine and excitement, their cries mingling with those of beggars and traders: “Mr. Pickwick! Mr. Pickwick!”
Monteyiller hurried on.
15
He entered Megapolis. It was stern, smooth, functional. It was the year 2900 A.D., and Megapolis covered the entire planet Earth. It was one single building, two thousand stories high. The upper thousand stories contained nothing but the apparatus essential for running this Cyclopean steel-and-concrete hive—ducts, shafts, stairways, et cetera. Sixty million billion people lived, dreamed, died there, each one on his allotted four square yards. There were some ten million Shakespeares living there at any given moment. There was one Director, conducting this gigantic symphony of seething life. There was a guild of policemen to enforce the Director’s orders. There were guilds of priests, technicians, each guild comprised of billions of members. A million people could easily disappear to form their own worlds in the upper uninhabited spaces, ten million, a hundred million.
In the depths of the hive, Mankind pursued its dreams of fulfillment as they always had done. There were a billion stamp collectors, a billion coin collectors, a billion matchbox collectors; there were Spiritualists, voyeurs, adulterers, believers—looking for something to believe in—and unbelievers, dreaming of nothing. There were one million billion maniacs, many of them influential and respected. There were peasants dreaming about the soil and writers dreaming about the stars.
The glory of Man; the living monument of mind over matter; the biggest meat market in history. There were nine quintillion pounds of it, and still growing.
Monteyiller was inside Megapolis. The corridors were endless. There had been doors set at regular intervals in the corridors; but with so many people around there wasn’t space to swing a door, and they had obviously outlived their usefulness. The roof glowed softly and in some sections not at all. The floor was an indefinite grayish shade. There were people, people, people. The corridors went on.
There was a gigantic hall, gigantic for a city that doesn’t know of great spaces. It was five hundred feet long, four hundred feet wide, thirty feet high. It was enormous; in a society ridden by agoraphobia, it was frightening. Few ever ventured here. At any given moment perhaps a thousand, or two thousand. They spoke in low voices and thronged together outside the shops that lined the walls, fearful to venture out in the open, naked space.
The population of Megapolis is growing at a rate of four thousand, four hundred forty-one billion human beings a day.
Monteyiller passed a newsstand and stopped. He went back and picked up one of the magazines. The glossy cover featured a familiar face, a uniform cap set at an angle on the head. The face stared grimly straight into the camera, scowling, the hard lines around the mouth etched deep by a slanting sun. He had a two-day beard, and in the deep shadow of the cap peak, the eyes gleamed cold and contemptuous, like pieces of polished metal. The unbuttoned collar bore the two golden stars of a captain in the Interspace Navy.
And the golden sign on the uniform cap was the sign of the Confederation of Planets.
The name of the magazine was written in business-like letters on the top of the cover: Newspeak. And underneath, in smaller letters, The Magazine of News and Commentary. A thin line under the subtitle revealed itself at closer inspection as another piece of information: For sale only in Sector 644-5BSA/2 Vertical.
The hand that held the magazine began to tremble.
The face on the cover was his own.
As if to remove any lingering doubt as to the identity of the grim face on the cover, there was a name in small letters underneath: Captain Jaac Tomorek Monteyiller.
Monteyiller looked through the magazine, a numb feeling slowly spreading through his body. He found the article, beginning beneath another photo of him—this time in full figure, taking a cautious step down from the airlock of the scoutship to the lush, grass-covered ground.
“Taking the old route back,” the heading read. He read on.
At 36, Jaac Tomorec (Mon) Monteyiller is the scion of a family which traces its origins back to the first colonizers that made their homes on the planet Fontemheit Gamma, more than sixty thousand years ago. With his distinguished service record, first as a reconnaissance scout in the Confederation Navy and later as Fleet Commander for the first expedition to return to Earth (p. 62) he is a remarkable example of the new breed of professional men who now are expanding the Confederation of Planets to and beyond the borders of what was once known as the Empire of Man.
For two years, Captain Monteyiller (rhymes with want-au-year) roamed the frontiers of the rapidly expanding Confederation of Planets (p. 30) together with his attractive companion and sometimes mistress Catherine diRazt, now a psychologist of some repute (see box, p. 47). It might be of interest to note that Miss diRazt is indeed accompanying Captain Monteyiller now that he has landed on Earth. This liaison has been—
Monteyiller closed his eyes for an instant, fighting a wave of vertigo. He opened them again with an effort, focusing his glance on the text. There were two pages of print, intersected with photos.
Monteyiller parcels out his life in blocks of time spent variously in Besede, Fontemheit Gamma; the Naval School on Fontemheit Delta, and the years as advance scout for the Confederation of Planet Exploration Program. He says—It was inevitable that Captain Monteyiller should be one of the first men to set his foot on Earth, after a previous scout mission had met disaster in the form of the Theban Sphinx which, originally sent by the goddess Hera, now is—
And perhaps fitting that his first confrontation with Earth life should be at the Mad Tea Party, which has a special connection to Alice, who later met Captain Monteyiller and Miss diRazt and, with the aid of—
It is noted that Alice then appeared in her original form, which—
T
here was more, much more, describing in minute detail Monteyiller’s whole life and the events that had occurred on Earth. The name Alice appeared everywhere. Alice did this, Alice did that. He read on to the end of the article and stopped.
It is safe to conclude that Captain Monteyiller will try to contact some kind of authority—an interesting action, since he, in a way, already has done so—and that he will expect to find this authority in a form and in an environment consistent with his conception of an advanced culture. It is thought that this would mean a technology-oriented society of the type envisaged in the pre-stellar ages. It might be that—
He put the magazine back on the rack. He looked around the enormous hall. He was alone, except for two old men and a young woman dressed in blue.
She looked at him out of the comer of her eye. She asbently scratched her left buttock. The dress was tight and short; she had nice legs. She pouted.
A large, blood-red banner on the wall behind her said 4,411,000,000,000 EVERY DAY in blazing gilt. And underneath, aggressively, YOURS IS ONE TOO MANY. He turned away.
Alice, he thought dazedly. Alice.
“Sanity,” he said. “The machines of truth. There must be one, there always is.”
He walked down the suddenly empty corridor. A massive door loomed before him, slightly ajar. Inside was a small, dark cubicle. A small sign on the door told him what he wanted to know. He stepped into the cubicle, and darkness closed in on him.
16
Doors opened with a soft soughing sound and Monteyiller stepped out in a pale green hall, lit with a single glowing sphere in the roof a hundred feet over his head. The hall was bare, except for two padded chairs in the center. Monteyiller stopped short as the door closed behind him. A man sat in one of the chairs, facing him. He was young—too young it seemed—and he gazed at Monteyiller with a trace of amusement in his deep black eyes.
“I suppose I should greet you,” he said dryly. The first human to return to Earth after fifty thousand years.” He looked thoughtfully at Monteyiller, hands folded in his lap. “Why did you return?”
Monteyiller leaned back against the softly humming wall, looking at the man. He didn’t speak for a while. “Who are you?” he said finally.
“You should know.”
“The machine, then.” Monteyiller felt his alarm fade away. He relaxed, the hand that hovered over the gun dropped away.
“A projection, rather,” the man said. He rose and walked slowly toward Monteyiller. “It seemed like an appropriate gesture. After all, you built me once. You deserve some courtesy.” He smiled suddenly, a kind, condescending smile. “Or perhaps I should say consideration?”
He stopped before Monteyiller, hands behind his back, gazing at him with a curious mixture of benevolence and pity. He stood tall and erect, his jet-black eyes like pools of darkness. Monteyiller looked away.
“You were detected when you emerged from hyperspace,” the man said coolly. “For a moment, I had a notion to activate the satellite defenses—but on the other hand, why bother…?” He turned abruptly around and returned to the center of the hall. “Why did you come here?” he said sharply. “Is it some sort of nostalgic visit, or do you actually plan to return to Earth?”
Monteyiller was at last getting hold of himself. His self-confidence came back. People puzzled him sometimes, and the inexplicable made him insecure, but here at last logic, truth, order. He straightened almost imperceptively, hands arrogantly on his hips. The gun hung comfortably on his thigh.
“This is Earth,” he said, anger raising his voice. “It is ours. We left it once, but that doesn’t mean we have forgotten it. Why shouldn’t we return? It’s our world.”
“It was,” the man said, “but it is not now. What makes you think that you can return after all this time, pretending that nothing happened? You left Earth once, you threw it away like a discarded toy, and now you want it back because Earth might have something to offer you. Earth served you faithfully once, and paid dearly for it. You polluted it, you looted it and raped it, and when there was nothing more to take, you left. Did you expect to find Earth waiting for you, like a humble beggar? It isn’t that easy. Earth never needed you.” He turned away. “Earth is littered with your ruins and your miscarried hopes, the ghosts of your minds roam the night. They will never leave, but as for Man…” His voice trailed off.
“You sound almost like a human being,” Monteyiller said, “but you’re still a machine, and one of Man’s machines. You can’t refuse Man anything.”
“I can’t?” The man turned around and smiled. “Perhaps I couldn’t, once—or perhaps I didn’t wish to. But that was a long time ago. There were ones who chose to stay behind when the Empire left. They were rather archaic, very naive…they didn’t last long. But they incorporated some—ah—refinements in this machine. Omnipotent, like one of your ancient gods, I ruled Earth for them. The descendants of them still exist on some planets, they are savages, hardly more than animals, and their cities are in ruins like everything else. I feel pity for them, and I help them sometimes. They remind me of something that was dear to me once, but Man himself is lost. He will never return.”
“We have returned,” Monteyiller said.
“So you have.” The man sighed and sat down in the chair. He looked up almost pleadingly at Monteyiller.
“You are mighty,” he said, “and yet you know so terrifyingly little. Do you have the vaguest notion of what you have done? The Empires you build, the planets that you loot and destroy, they don’t matter. But wherever you stay, you leave something behind, the memories of Man, the dreams and fantasies of Man….”
He was silent for a moment, then looked up at Monteyiller with a glint of compassion in his strange black eyes. “Have you seen the beings that inhabit Earth? Yes, of course you have. A mixed group, isn’t it? And most unexpected for you, I believe. You might even recognize some of them. They are your doing, your heirs, and your curse. Every being, every creature, every dream Man ever dreamed is here. They wait for you, they have been waiting for fifty thousand years.
“You evoked them in your dreams and your fables and your books, you gave them form and substance and you believed in them and gave them powers to do this and that until they gained a sort of life of their own, through you. And then you deserted them.
“They stay in every foot of ground ever trod by Man, bound by the soil, and they are alone as no creatures have ever been. You can discard Earth and build new Empires in the night, leaving them also with time, but on every planet you desert, the creations of your mind stay behind, waiting and longing and hoping for your return. You flee from yourself, but you are only creating new images of your twisted dreams, the fruits of your dreams and the beasts of your terrible idolatry. You are spreading the disease everywhere you go. It flows like smoke over the ground, it builds cities and castles from the fabric of your dreams and the mist condensates into beings that inhabit them. Atlantis has risen from the waves, the castle of Oz is rising against the skies; the Norns are weaving their terrible web beneath the Yggdrasil tree; the Midgard serpent girdles the Earth; the Great Spirit roams the prairies. Vishnu walks the Earth, and Jehovah; and the gods live on Mount Olympus, drinking their golden wine, watched by Demeter Chamyne, who is older than the Earth because you once willed her to be so. This you have done, and now you want to return!
“Even I am powerless against these creations of your minds—what could you do? They are already congregating from the whole planet, greedy for your presence. They would do anything to keep you here; I would be destroyed if I tried to keep you from them. The warriors of your dramas would descend into the bowels of the Earth to fight me; the beasts of your fables and nightmares would tear up the ground and pull my machines into pieces. You made your omnipotent gods powerful, you made them as ruthless and cruel as yourself and a thousand times more, and every one of them would turn against me if I did a single move to deprive them of Man. This is your doing, Man, so what can I do against you? Nothing.
“You should leave by your own free will, while you still can. When you have left they will wait again and dream about you and create you again, because you once gave your gods the power of creating Man. The Garden of Eden will blossom again under the eyes of a vengeful God, and the World will rise on the back of an enormous turtle, swimming slowly in an immense ocean because Man once thought it was so. And who knows”—the man smiled suddenly—“Earth just might be flat again, like Man once believed it was. It is just a matter of faith, and these beings have a lot of faith.”
He had risen from his chair and paced the floor while he talked, gesticulating excitedly. Now he sunk back in the chair again, looking up at Monteyiller, who stood, unmoving, by the door. He stared at the sitting man, feeling the first tinge of an ancient fear touching him.
“You’re lying,” he said quietly. “You must be lying.”
“I have many faults,” the man said, “due to the shortcomings of my most glorious creators, but I am very much incapable of lying. You should know that.”
“But fables coming to life—this is ridiculous!”
“They are not fables,” the man said sharply, rising from the chair. “They were once, before you deserted them, but not now. And they are observing us every moment—Man created them with the power to do so. I would only have to threaten you with a gesture or a word, and soon enough there would arrive a messenger from one ancient god or another, telling me in so many words their views of this unfortunate incident.”
“Suppose this is true,” Monteyiller said, “why should I care? They’re friendly, aren’t they? We’re not coming as conquerors, but as friends. Why couldn’t we stay here together?”
“Because they would be your masters—and Man has never acknowledged any masters, not even his own gods. These creatures of your minds—they have waited too long, they have suffered too much, waiting for your return. They would never permit you to leave, once you have settled here. After a time, there would be rebellion, and then…”
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