Against the Fall of Night (8 page)

“Come down—we won’t hurt you!” called Theon, rubbing a bruise on his chest.

Something spoke: not the passionless, crystal-clear voice of a machine, but the quavering speech of a very old and very tired man.

“Who are you? What are you doing in Shalmirane?”

“My name is Theon, and this is my friend, Alvin of Loronei. We’re exploring Southern Lys.”

There was a brief pause. When the machine spoke again its voice held an unmistakable note of petulance and annoyance.

“Why can’t you leave me in peace? You know how often I’ve asked to be left alone!”

Theon, usually good-natured, bristled visibly.

“We’re from Airlee, and we don’t know anything about Shalmirane.”

“Besides,” Alvin added reproachfully, “we saw your light and thought you might be signalling for help.”

It was strange to hear so human a sigh from the coldly impersonal machine.

“A million times I must have signalled now, and all I have ever done is to draw the inquisitive from Lys. But I see you meant no harm. Follow me.”

The machine floated slowly away over the broken stones, coming to rest before a dark opening in the ruined wall of the amphitheater. In the shadow of the cave something moved, and a human figure stepped into the sunlight. He was the first physically old man Alvin had ever seen. His head was completely bald, but a thick growth of pure white hair covered all the lower part of his face. A cloak of woven glass was thrown carelessly over his shoulders, and on either side of him floated two more of the strange, many-eyed machines.

There was a brief silence while each side regarded the other. Then the old man spoke—and the three machines echoed his voice for a moment until something switched them off.

“So you are from the North, and your people have already forgotten Shalmirane.”

“Oh, no!” said Theon quickly, “we’ve not forgotten. But we weren’t sure that anyone still lived here, and we certainly didn’t know that you wished to be left alone.”

The old man did not reply. Moving with a slowness that was painful to watch, he hobbled through the doorway and disappeared, the three machines floating silently after him. Alvin and Theon looked at each other in surprise: they did not like to follow, but their dismissal—if dismissal it was—had certainly been brusque. They were starting to argue the matter when one of the machines suddenly reappeared.

“What are you waiting for? Come along!” it ordered. Then it vanished again.

Alvin shrugged his shoulders.

“We appear to be invited. I think our host’s a little eccentric, but he seems friendly.”

From the opening in the wall a wide spiral stairway led downwards for a score of feet. It ended in a small circular room from which several corridors radiated. However, there was no possibility of confusion, for all the passages save one were blocked with debris.

Alvin and Theon had walked only a few yards when they found themselves in a large and incredibly untidy room cluttered up with a bewildering variety of objects. One end of the chamber was occupied by domestic machines—synthesizers, destructors, cleaning equipment and the like—which one normally expected to be concealed from sight in the walls and floors. Around these were piled cases of thought records and transcribers, forming pyramids that reached almost to the ceiling. The whole room was uncomfortably hot owing to the presence of a dozen perpetual fires scattered about the floor. Attracted by the radiation, Krif flew towards the nearest of the metal spheres, stretched his wings luxuriously before it, and fell instantly asleep.

It was a little while before the boys noticed the old man and his three machines waiting for them in a small open space which reminded Alvin of a clearing in the jungle. There was a certain amount of furniture here—a table and three comfortable couches. One of these was old and shabby, but the others were so conspicuously new that Alvin was certain they had been created in the last few minutes. Even as he watched, the familiar warning glow of the synthesizer field flickered over the table and their host waved silently towards it. They thanked him formally and began to sample the food and drink that had suddenly appeared. Alvin realized that he had grown a little tired of the unvarying output from Theon’s portable synthesizer and the change was very welcome.

They ate in silence for a while, stealing a glance now and then at the old man. He seemed sunk in his own thoughts and appeared to have forgotten them completely—but as soon as they had finished he looked up and began to question them. When Alvin explained that he was a native not of Lys but of Diaspar, the old fellow showed no particular surprise. Theon did his best to deal with the queries: for one who disliked visitors, their host seemed very anxious to have news of the outer world. Alvin quickly decided that his earlier attitude must have been a pose.

Presently he fell silent again. The two boys waited with what patience they could: he had told them nothing of himself or what he was doing in Shalmirane. The light-signal that had drawn them there was still as great a mystery as ever, yet they did not care to ask outright for an explanation. So they sat in an uncomfortable silence, their eyes wandering round that amazing room, finding something new and unexpected at every moment. At last Alvin broke into the old man’s reverie.

“We must leave soon,” he remarked.

It was not a statement so much as a hint. The wrinkled face turned towards him but the eyes were still very far away. Then the tired, infinitely ancient voice began to speak. It was so quiet and low that at first they could scarcely hear: after a while the old man must have noticed their difficulty, for of a sudden the three machines began once more to echo his words.

Much that he told them they could never understand. Sometimes he used words which were unknown to them: at other times he spoke as if repeating sentences or whole speeches that others must have written long ago. But the main outlines of the story were clear, and they took Alvin’s thoughts back to the ages of which he had dreamed since his childhood.

The tale began, like so many others, amid the chaos of the Transition Centuries, when the Invaders had gone but the world was still recovering from its wounds. At that time there appeared in Lys the man who later became known as the Master. He was accompanied by three strange machines—the very ones that were watching them now—which acted as his servants and also possessed definite intelligences of their own. His origin was a secret he never disclosed, and eventually it was assumed that he had come from space, somehow penetrating the blockade of the Invaders. Far away among the stars there might still be islands of humanity which the tide of war had not yet engulfed.

The Master and his machines possessed powers which the world had lost, and around him he gathered a group of men to whom he taught much wisdom. His personality must have been a very striking one, and Alvin could understand dimly the magnetism that had drawn so many to him. From the dying cities, men had come to Lys in their thousands, seeking rest and peace of mind after the years of confusion. Here among the forests and mountains, listening to the Master’s words, they found that peace at last.

At the close of his long life the Master had asked his friends to carry him out into the open so that he could watch the stars. He had waited, his strength waning, until the culmination of the Seven Suns. As he died the resolution with which he had kept his secret so long seemed to weaken, and he babbled many things of which countless books were to be written in future ages. Again and again he spoke of the “Great Ones” who had now left the world but who would surely one day return, and he charged his followers to remain to greet them when they came. Those were his last rational words. He was never again conscious of his surroundings, but just before the end he uttered one phrase that revealed part at least of his secret and had come down the ages to haunt the minds of all who heard it:
“It is lovely to watch the colored shadows on the planets of eternal light.”
Then he died.

So arose the religion of the Great Ones, for a religion it now became. At the Master’s death many of his followers broke away, but others remained faithful to his teachings, which they slowly elaborated through the ages. At first they believed that the Great Ones, whoever they were, would soon return to Earth, but that hope faded with the passing centuries. Yet the brotherhood continued, gathering new members from the lands around, and slowly its strength and power increased until it dominated the whole of Southern Lys.

It was very hard for Alvin to follow the old man’s narrative. The words were used so strangely that he could not tell what was truth and what legend—if, indeed, the story held any truth at all. He had only a confused picture of generations of fanatical men, waiting for some great event which they did not understand to take place at some unknown future date.

The Great Ones never returned. Slowly the power of the movement failed, and the people of Lys drove it into the mountains until it took refuge in Shalmirane. Even then the watchers did not lose their faith, but swore that however long the wait they would be ready when the Great Ones came. Long ago men had learned one way of defying Time, and the knowledge had survived when so much else had been lost. Leaving only a few of their number to watch over Shalmirane, the rest went into the dreamless sleep of suspended animation.

Their numbers slowly falling as sleepers were awakened to replace those who died, the watchers kept faith with the Master. From his dying words it seemed certain that the Great Ones lived on the planets of the Seven Suns, and in later years attempts were made to send signals into space. Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, and now the story was nearing its end. In a very little while only the three machines would be left in Shalmirane, watching over the bones of the men who had come here so long ago in a cause that they alone could understand.

The thin voice died away, and Alvin’s thoughts returned to the world he knew. More than ever before the extent of his ignorance overwhelmed him. A tiny fragment of the past had been illuminated for a little while, but now the darkness had closed over it again.

The world’s history was a mass of such disconnected threads, and none could say which were important and which were trivial. This fantastic tale of the Master and the Great Ones might be no more than another of the countless legends that had somehow survived from the civilizations of the Dawn. Yet the three machines were unlike any that Alvin had ever seen. He could not dismiss the whole story, as he had been tempted to do, as a fable built of self-delusion upon a foundation of madness.

“These machines,” he said abruptly, “surely they’ve been questioned? If they came to Earth with the Master, they must still know his secrets.”

The old man smiled wearily.

“They know,” he said, “but they will never speak. The Master saw to that before he handed over the control. We have tried times without number, but it is useless.”

Alvin understood. He thought of the Associator in Diaspar, and the seals that Alaine had set upon its knowledge. Even those seals, he now believed, could be broken in time, and the Master Associator must be infinitely more complex than these little robot slaves. He wondered if Rorden, so skilled in unravelling the secrets of the past, would be able to wrest the machines’ hidden knowledge from them. But Rorden was far away and would never leave Diaspar.

Quite suddenly the plan came fully fledged into his mind. Only a very young person could ever have thought of it, and it taxed even Alvin’s self-confidence to the utmost. Yet once the decision had been made, he moved with determination and much cunning to his goal.

He pointed towards the three machines.

“Are they identical?” he asked. “I mean, can each one do everything, or are they specialized in any way?

The old man looked a little puzzled.

“I’ve never thought about it,” he said. “When I need anything, I ask whichever is most convenient. I don’t think there is any difference between them.”

“There can’t be a great deal of work for them to do now,” Alvin continued innocently. Theon looked a little startled, but Alvin carefully avoided his friend’s eye. The old man answered guilelessly.

“No,” he replied sadly, “Shalmirane is very different now.”

Alvin paused in sympathy: then, very quickly, he began to talk. At first the old man did not seem to grasp his proposal: later, when comprehension came, Alvin gave him no time to interrupt. He spoke of the great storehouses of knowledge in Diaspar, and the skill with which the Keeper of the Records could use them. Although the Master’s machines had withstood all other enquirers, they might yield their secrets to Rorden’s probing. It would be a tragedy if the chance were missed, for it would never come again.

Flushed with the heat of his own oratory, Alvin ended his appeal:

“Lend me one of the machines—you do not need them all. Order it to obey my controls and I will take it to Diaspar. I promise to return it whether the experiment succeeds or not.”

Even Theon looked shocked and an expression of horror came across the old man’s face.

“I couldn’t do that!” he gasped.

“But why not? Think what we might learn!”

The other shook his head firmly.

“It would be against the Master’s wishes.”

Alvin was disappointed—disappointed and annoyed. But he was young, and his opponent was old and tired. He began again to go through the argument, shifting his attack and pressing home each advantage. And now for the first time Theon saw an Alvin he had never suspected before—a personality, indeed, that was surprising Alvin himself. The men of the Dawn Ages had never let obstacles bar their way for long, and the will-power and determination that had been their heritage had not yet passed from Earth. Even as a child Alvin had withstood the forces seeking to mould him to the pattern of Diaspar. He was older now, and against him was not the greatest city of the world but only an aged man who sought nothing but rest, and would surely find that soon.