Awake in the Night Land (11 page)

The Great Redoubt rises seven miles above the cratered landscape, motionless waters, smoking pits and dull fumes of the Night Land, and the Tower of Observation a full mile beyond that. The Night Land is not utterly dark, for strange flares of light, burning torches hanging in the gloom, or foetid burnings from smoke-holes will illume one thing or another, and there are candles in the windows of an Empty City to the Northeast. From the embrasures of the Great Redoubt, as from a mountainside, what little there is to be seen, can be seen.

Haemon, my betrothed, stands near to me. He is beautiful, with great dark eyes and long lashes, but broad of shoulder and narrow of waist, with strong hands and a ready smile. I wish he were not so young. I wish I could love him as I ought, enough to blot out other loves from my heart.

The embrasure is open to the night air, and I can smell the sulfur fume from some lingering volcano miles away to the east, and can hear the soft calls of voices from beneath the Deadly Lake, or the scrapes and grunts of behemoths digging at the foundations of the Pyramid. In the middle distance, between my view and the Pit of the Red Glow, a tall shadow passes. At that distance, the being would need to be a third of a mile high to be visible, and it was probably a Manifestation, rather than something made of matter as we understand it.

At first I turn the spy glass down. Below and to the east is a line of low hills, which geologists say to be the slag and tailings of the Diggings of the Giants beyond, although the hills block my view of the digs. Nonetheless, I can hear the noise of their labor, the thudding of machines, and see the vapor rising from the warm caverns they excavate. Mathematicians argue about the volume of the hills, or how large is the tunnel they are mining. The work has been going on for perhaps two thousand years, and the estimate is that in another four thousand, they will have opened a vent far enough down the buried sides of the pyramid that the influence of the Electric Circle will not dismay them. If they reach deep enough, they will contact the armored surface sheathing our buried country of farms. Some savants aver the Giants have no art nor tool that can scratch or scar our armored walls; others are doubtful. The less doubtful place faith in those prophecies or reports dreamers of future times confirm, that it will be four million years, not a mere four thousand, before the Outer Beings break in to our mighty home and slay us all.

A squadron of Dun Giants, the same race as those who dig, are encamped before our gates. They squat in low, round, windowless huts made of broken slabs, which, in previous ages, fell from upper balconies, or were thrown down to repel assault. Our instruments from time to time detect the mutter of machines beneath, which perhaps supply the crude huts with heat or wholesome air. When some noise from our windows attracts them, the Dun Giants take up their mattocks and truncheons, and come stand as nigh the Electric Circle as they dare, hooting and bellowing, and making massive gestures with their arms.

Three of the Dun Giants, seventy-one years ago, fell motionless, and stand upright, neither alive nor dead, very near the lower gate. Measurements taken over the last forty years show they are growing about half an inch every ten years. In four hundred thousand years they will be the size of the Fixed Giants old records say were once grouped around the Lesser Redoubt before its Fall. Their eyes glitter as they watch us, and no other part of them can move. Already their lower trunks and legs are swollen and coated with a dark crust.

The sensitive instruments of the Monstruwacans report that there are strange energies building up in them, as the years pass, and their psychometric range passes farther and ever farther from the norm of biological life. About once a decade, the one on the left utters a great, slow roar of terror and woe, as if the monster regrets what departs from it.

I pause to check the fit of the skull-cusps. A dial shows the protective flow of Earth-Current is steady. Then I bring the glass up to the middle focus, and look left and right at sights more dangerous to view.

Here is the Northwest Watching Thing, a motionless mountain of something that lives, though it is not flesh and blood, nor anything we understand. It is the darkest and most mysterious of the Watching Things, for there is no light nearby to it, and it is also said to be the most deadly, for the land before it is flat and clear for many miles, with few places to hide. Once, a million years ago, it loomed in the light from the Red Pit, and the Monstruwacans of those ages could gaze upon its great, grim face hanging outside our windows like the legendary moon of elder times. An inch per century, glacier-like, it circumnavigated the Pit, and now is in the shadows to one side of the Pit, and so will be for another half million years. Mathematicians predict that in five hundred thousand years, it will move forward so that the light from the Pit will be behind it, and our remote descendents will be able to examine its silhouette clearly.

From time to time, if ground-lightning discharges near the mountain-slopes that form its legs and paws, the reflection will show the great monstrous head tilted forward at an angle, a terrible great nod, and our stories say that it moved its head to this position when two brave fools from an earlier time ventured forth and came too near to it.

If the men of the eldest days of the world had seen the moon turn its huge, gray, sterile globe when ancient astronauts drew nigh, so that mountains and seas never before seen, drawn into view from the hidden, farther side of the moon, would now be visible rising and setting over all the lands of men, their astonishment could not have been more than ours, to know the Watching Thing inclined its head at an angle different from what uncounted hundreds of thousand of years had known.

Many miles from it, looms its brother, the Watching Thing of the Northeast. It is also called The Crowned Watcher, for a dull halo of blue light hangs ever above it, and throws its face and hunched shoulders into shadow. No features can be seen in that shadow, and it is not even certain whether the being has eyes. But one enormous bell-like ear is spread out from the side of a skull larger than a hillside, and very ancient reports hint that the ear sometimes can be seen to quiver, when the noise of voice and music from the Last Redoubt, or human laughter, or the rush of wind from our great air-cycling machines, or the lap of water from our indoor fountains and lakes, steals across the icy air. Whether it can pick out individual voices from the pyramid, or hears our individual footsteps and heartbeats, is a matter of speculation and debate.

The long furrows or discolorations that streak its elbow and arm, some say are evidence that a race of servile beings once raised towers and aqueducts along the creature’s lower slopes, perhaps to render it medical aid. Others say the discolorations are a sign of a rotting skin disease, and what look like the foundations of ruined towers are merely pockmarks. Since there is no light on its mask or chest, it cannot be said whether the discoloration continues to other parts of its skin or not. No person has ever ventured near enough the Watching Thing of the Northeast to settle the dispute.

I can center the view along the imaginary line joining the crowns of the two monsters, and track left to pan across the dark gloom between the two Watching Things. Here, on a low hill a few miles north, shine the unwinking lights of the House of Silence, and I see the outline of its roof and eaves. In all the millions of years our histories record, those lights have never wavered, never blinked, nor has any one of them gone out, nor any new one joined their number. The great main doors of the House of Silence stand wide open, and our long-range telescopes can glimpse the passageway beyond, sloping downward. Since eternity, those doors have never been shut.

A hooded figure stands half-hidden at the doorpost of the entrance, facing inward. Philosophers who study such things opine that there might be a second hooded shape, standing at the opposite doorpost, facing the first; but the open leaf of the Silent Door blocks any view from the Last Redoubt.

Once, three hundred thousand years ago, Aetius the Unwise, viewing from the Tower of Observation through the Great Spy Glass, claimed to have seen the hooded figure nod, as a man might nod to another in a conversation; and he entered this in the Great Log of the Monstruwacans. From this basis, Aetius wrote a monograph claiming that there must be a second hooded one, positioned opposite in the shadow of the never-closed great doors, and facing the first. However, the entry in the log is surrounded with doubt and controversy, for Aetius’ watch officer, the man on duty to record and confirm the sighting, had also been staring for too long at the lights of the House of Silence, and went mad, and slew himself by putting his head beneath the geared wheels of the Great Spy Glass as the engines were turning it. The name of the watch officer is not recorded in our archives. Since the testimony of Aetius is unsupported, the Monstruwacans note his sighting as “unendorsed” and leave the topic of the Second Hooded figure as an open question.

The name of the particular branch of science devoted to speculations about the doors of the House of Silence is called Ostiumology: the two competing theories, whether there is one figure or two, are called Monoianitorianism and Bianitorianism.

I know this because the sad, wild thought ever occurs to me that Polynices, from his position, as he died, saw what is hidden behind the second valve of the doors to the House of Silence, the doors that never in eternity have closed, and he could have settled the disputes of the academics for once and all.

One more adjustment of the dial, and I can drop my view in a straight line. Less than eight miles from the House of Silence, in the middle of an otherwise unnamed and unremarkable landscape of scattered firepits and sickly moss-bushes, I can find the smoke-hole where my brother fell.

Sometimes the smoke is thick, blocking all view. Sometimes the smoke is agitated, flying in a quick stream straight upward, and the fire below is active, so that enough light spills from it that I can glimpse his form.

I have watched every waking-period for the last nine months, waiting. Perhaps I was waiting for the return of the mist-man, whose insubstantial body shined with light, or perhaps an eruption of volcano or ground-lighting, to cast a glare across the body that would be cleaner and clearer to my sight than the fitful flickers of the smoke-hole.

I can adjust the dials of the spyglass so that Polynices seems to be almost in my arms. He seems a short way off, and could I but reach out my hand, I should touch him.

He is not a short way off. And whenever the image in the spyglass grows misty with tears, and whenever I forget myself, I do reach out my hand, and my hand is too short to reach him, my brother who lies unburied and unmourned so many miles away.

“You have watched your brother’s corpse for nine months.” Haemon spoke with cautious delicacy, as one who is unwilling to argue, but unwilling not to argue.

I said, “There is still no sign of deterioration.”

He sighed. “For seven months you have sent out hour-slips, asking if any man among the millions is bold enough to venture forth, and recover your brother’s body. My father the Castellan will forbid you to ask again: later this watch he will make the announcement.”

I looked at him sidelong. “How do you know?”

He smiled his easy smile, but did not answer. Handsome as he is, there are many among the High Court who would have welcomed his friendship, even were he not of penultimate rank, the most elite of the most elite phylum. He had no need to seek out courtiers to spy for him.

“Hear this, “ I said, “The Castellan may rule the civic business of the Great Redoubt, but he does not rule me.”

His charming smile vanished. “But, darling, my father rules the comings and goings from the Great Lower Gate, which have not been opened in one hundred years, except for your brother’s expedition. The time when men venture forth from the pyramid and walk the lands of night and death are passed.”

“There are lesser gates no records betray. My brother used one to go Out and feed his monsters. I know the word to open it.”

“You contemplate mere madness, my beloved. The Castellan has placed your brother’s name on the interdicted list, and decreed that no songs should be sung of him, and no eulogy pronounced. Published obituaries are ordered to consist of his birth-hour, his father’s name, his hour of elevation, matriculation, and communion, and a list of his criminal charges, and no more.”

I said nothing, but my knuckles were white on the dials of the spy glass.

Haemon continued speaking, his voice was soft, tactful, the very soul of reason: “The escutcheon of your father’s branch of the family will be blotted with an image of a mutilated crone; your house paean will be replaced with the cry of the Night-Hound, and these humiliations are to linger until such time as monsters rend and despoil that man’s body, nameless hereafter, who lays face-down in the crater of black salt, near the fume of the smoke-pit.”

I speak without taking my eye from the eyepiece of the glass: “Then the blot will never be removed, for my brother’s body will be recovered. His name is Polynices.”

“No man will venture forth for you.”

“Will you go?”

The lovely smile returned. “Gladly will I die for you, beloved, but should I, even for you, allow my soul to be Destroyed by the Slowly Turning Wheel which still haunts the area where your brother fell?”

“Then I will go.”

“Madness! Ancient laws forbid that women venture forth.”

“My brother shall live again. He is not dead.”

There are one thousand cities, some empty of life and light, others green with wintergardens and gold with incandescent lamps, each metropolis smaller and higher than the one beneath, all protected under the sloping walls of our seven-mile-high pyramid where the last of the human race are besieged. Polynices, once the dreams started to afflict him, told me there was a time before our records reach, when men walked and built upon the surface beyond these mighty walls.