The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  The star was immense; it had only partly emerged as yet from the horizon, but the edge of its circumference was already high in the sky. Once risen, it seemed to occupy about a quarter of the whole celestial expanse, but because of its vast surface area and its relative proximity, its illumination was equal to that of the sun. On considering the star very attentively, I perceived a number of large dark patches on the surface, and other greenish ones, bulges, and then, a little farther away, snowy peaks, and finally, an entire coastline and a huge shiny surface. It reminded me of a geographical map, and I immediately understood. It was the Earth, our Earth, rising in the sky of Anthea.

  It did not require long reflection to grasp the reasons for all those phenomena. I knew that Anthea rotated on its axis in an hour. Thus, for half an hour it was the sun that illuminated me, and during the following half hour it was the Earth, which, entirely sunlit, was sending me a large quantity of light. When it was dark in South America, it was also dark over the entire surface of Anthea, since its rotatory movement was then accomplished in the Earth’s conical shadow.

  I resumed exploring the little planet. It was evident that in the wake of a terrible catastrophe—some contact with a sun—molten rocks or unknown gases had caused a total mineralization of Anthea. Trees, plants and flowers had existed there, but had there had ever been animals on its surface, or even humans?

  I could not see any trace of them, and I thought that the asteroid had only ever known the vegetal realm. Even the vegetables had not belonged to any definite and known family. Insofar as could be judged after their petrifaction, they had had a radial structure reminiscent of that of an octopus. They possessed a globular body slightly larger than a human head, and from which departed relatively thin branches, abundantly supplied with leaves, cilia and thorns. The great central vesicle also bore spurs or rigid spines, which were planted in the ground. I could not determine anything with regard to their roots.

  There were evidently several species of the vegetables in question, for I saw petrifactions that were very different from one another, either in size or in general morphology, but the basic form, with the central globule, was always retained.

  When evening came—the true evening of the Earth—and our immense globe only reappeared over my horizon after sunset as a large pale azure star, I experienced an indescribable anguish. I walked slowly through the rocks, which seemed to take on strange and hostile attitudes in the shadow. At the feet of blocks of pink porphyry, basaltic prisms and trachyte obelisks, diamonds sparkle like the eyes of animals lying in ambush. Further away, large cliffs, painted in fresco fashion as if they were made of Australian opal, displayed their dream landscape beneath the unfamiliar sky. Everywhere, I trod on rubies, topazes and garnets, which rolled under my footsteps and shattered on the marble with sharp sounds like bursts of satanic laughter.

  The magnificent evening exhaled an unknown sadness. The virginal air arrived from the confines of space, and instead of intoxicating me, weighed upon my chest. I was on a dead world, an earth buried forever beneath its garment of stone. I would never know what prodigious beings had lived there. There was nothing more for me to do but go away.

  I spent the night aboard my nacelle. Exhausted by fatigue, I slept heavily and dreamlessly.

  When I woke up, it was daylight.

  During the final moments of my sleep I had seemed to hear soft music, like that of a distant choir of child-like voices. I rubbed my eyes and stood up in the nacelle.

  I could no longer hear anything, but at the moment that I put my hands on the bulwark in order to jump down to the ground, the distant concert resumed. Yes, that was definitely what I had heard, and probably what had woken me up. It was a slow chant comparable to the one crickets produce on beautiful summer evenings, but in what I could hear there were more nuances, more harmony, more notes—more artistry, in a word.

  It lasted for a few seconds, and then ceased completely.

  I immediately thought of some chemical, physical or electrical phenomenon, and, my repose having restored my energy and my audacity, I resolved to elucidate the problem—and, in any case, to explore the dead planet as scientifically as possible. I equipped myself with a mineral box, a revolver, a sturdy knife and enough food for two days, and set out across the strangely colored rocks of Anthea.

  The bizarre music did not make itself heard again. Only my footsteps resounded in that bleak and lifeless world. I walked rapidly, with a view to reaching as quickly as possible a line of large rocks that I had perceived on the horizon the day before, like a crenellated wall. I recalled that my star, small as it was, nevertheless had a circumference of a hundred kilometers, and that it would require a certain time to study it thoroughly. On the other hand, I only had food for a week; I therefore had to hurry, for it was scarcely probable that other people would ever attempt to repeat my perilous voyage.

  On the way I admired once again the splendor of the rocks. There were malachites, cinnabars, agates, onyxes, marbles and varicolored sandstones. In places, stones assembled in circles formed vast amphitheaters whose arenas were covered in fine soft sand where brilliant flecks of gold abounded.

  Elsewhere, crenellated, excavated and sculpted, I was presented with the aspect of an old fortified city that had fallen into ruins thousands of years ago. Church steeples, towers, ramparts, houses and palaces were aggregated there. Magnificent porticos in pink tourmaline opened in smooth walls of Sarrancolin marble. Further away, minarets embroidered beryl lacework in the sky. Everywhere, streets and corridors zigzagged through the ruins. Spacious avenues were bordered by basalt steles, and here and there, the figures of sphinxes and monsters, winged chimeras and satyrs’ faces were perceptible in the infinite heaps of rocks.

  Apart from those fantastic cities, the surface of Anthea was as smooth as glass or rippled, like an abruptly frozen sea. I had not heard the distant music again, nor seen anything that might explain it.

  In the middle of the day I was wandering in one of those mysterious deserted cities of feldspar and chrysoprase, in which several winding and intersecting corridors always brought me back to the center of the city. Weary and enervated, I renounced following my route for the moment and sat down in the shade of a large cornaline obelisk. I started eating lunch.

  While I was thus occupied, I heard something like a feeble flutter of wings, which was almost immediately followed by a slight sound similar to the scraping of a cicada, which only lasted for a fraction of a second. All that seemed to come from the top of the pillar in the shade of which I was sitting. I looked up swiftly.

  About twenty meters above me, at the summit of the red stele, a monstrous plant was looking at me….

  I do mean a plant. It had a green body, a little larger than a human head, and from that globe protruded flexible leafy or flowery branches, with spikes, suckers, hair and moving tendrils, at the ends of which eyes were shining: veritable human eyes, which were staring at me.

  Gripped with horror, I thought that I was about to be changed into stone in my turn, like all the living beings on the asteroid. But that reflection brought me back to a sentiment of reality: there were, in fact, living organisms that had survived the terrible cataclysm of old. I was about to enter into contact with them, and I understood that the interesting phase of my voyage had begun.

  The vegetal creature was posed on three spines, and moving its eye-bearing tendrils very slowly, as if to modify the aspect and the angle from which it was able to look at me. I didn’t move an inch, telling myself that if it suddenly extended its supple branches, equipped with claws analogous to those of ivy, I would surely be at its mercy. Better to play dead.

  I was lucky, for after a few moments, after its tendrils had twisted considerably, a few of them stretched out horizontally, their leaves, which were conspicuously digitate, started striking the air like the feet of aquatic birds on the water; the being rose up, hovered momentarily around the obelisk, and finally disappeared behind a dome of viridian sandstone. />
  I was no longer hungry. My forehead was covered in sweat. After a brief hesitation, however, the scientific instinct got the upper hand over fear and I hastened to climb a kind of pyramid nearby, in the hope of following the flight of the strange being.

  From up there, in fact, I perceived it again. It descended slowly to the ground and, having reached the bottom of a steep cliff, suddenly disappeared into a fissure that I had not seen at first, which seemed to be the entrance to a cavern.

  Then, from that gaping dark hole, the same music emerged that had surprised me when I awoke. One might have thought it a chorus of crystalline cicadas. It was an exceedingly delicate symphony, very diversely modulated, and subtly nuanced.

  There were evidently numerous performers, and it was their thin and various voices that were producing the singular sounds. That was soon confirmed for me; about ten plants immediately emerged from the cavern; they were all similar to the one on the obelisk, except for their flowers, which were various in color: reds, yellows and blues.

  The creatures flew toward me; their eyes were wide open at the end of extended stems, and their spines were aimed in my direction. I wanted to run away but I didn’t have time. They surrounded me; their crampons seized me; I was lifted up and carried away into the air….

  I could scarcely struggle. In any case, if I had succeeded in freeing myself, I would have fallen onto the rocks from a height of several meters. I therefore waited for a propitious moment.

  Soon, the flying vegetables descended. They settled, without letting go of me, on a flat surface covered with sand. Then I started struggling. I succeeded in getting my knife out of my pocket, and with one hand free, I slashed at the supple tendrils that were gripping me.

  Moans emerged from the green globes; spines, which were two or three meters long and very sharp, were thrust toward me. I saw that they were about to transpierce me like a fly beneath a pin. With a desperate effort I seized my revolver and started firing at the monsters’ globular bodies.

  That saved me. The grip of the claws relaxed; I finished freeing myself with the aid of my knife, bounded out of the stone circle and ran like a madman into a long avenue.

  I darted glances in all directions looking for a refuge. It took a long time to find one, and I expected at every moment to hear the quivering of propulsive leaves behind me, but I finally glimpsed a narrow fissure in the rocks, behind which a dark space appeared to me to suggest the existence of a little grotto.

  I headed for it; indeed, beyond the fissure, the rock hollowed out into a kind of rounded pocket. It seemed like a useful shelter to me; it had no other opening than the one through which I could scarcely slide; the bodies of the vegetables could not, therefore, get through. Lying on the sand that covered the floor of the small cavern, I looked outside.

  A few of the monsters had followed me. They were there, posed on their spurs. Their eye-bearing stalks were lowered, creeping along the ground, advancing as far as the corners of the fissure. Then they became still, staring at me. I was, in consequence, a prisoner, but probably safe so long as I remained in my hole. I recovered my composure and consoled myself slightly with the thought that I had food for two days and that in the meantime, I would doubtless find a means of getting rid of my singular jailers.

  I considered them curiously.

  They were creatures without any possible name. Simultaneously vegetables, by virtue of their leaves, flowers, coloring and general appearance, and animals by virtue of their eyes, their mobility and their voices, they must be part of an intermediate realm that had only developed on Anthea.

  I thought about the petrified forests that had attracted my attention when I arrived. The forms immobilized by the mineralization of their tissues recalled those of the living beings that were watching me at present. Undoubtedly, these, better organized and not rooted, had been able to escape the cataclysmic petrifaction by taking shelter in deep caverns, but there was certainly an analogy between the two kinds.

  I soon observed, joyfully, that the creatures were not attempting to get into my refuge. Although their globular bodies could not get through the entrance, I had feared that their spines or their long tendrils fitted with crampons might seek me there.

  There was doubtless a mysterious reason for that reluctance on their part. Perhaps they were afraid of my knife. In any case, assuming a defensive stance, I used a few solid blocks of stone that I had found in my cave to wall up the entrance a little more securely.

  I kept my revolver and my knife in hand until dusk. I hoped that the approach of night might incite my guards to relax their surveillance, and perhaps even to abandon it, but nothing of the sort. As soon as the sun had completed the last of its twelve daily journeys through the Anthean sky, vivid phosphorescences lit up on the creatures’ ocular peduncles. In combination, those gleams illuminated the nearby rocks clearly, and I saw that my jailers had become more numerous.

  They were greatly agitated. They were conferring with one another, talking—there is no other way to describe the modulated sounds that they were emitting. Thus, I saw two of them that were detached from the principal group, and obviously conversing with one another: responses followed questions and were spoken in a humble and evidently subaltern tone.

  From time to time the eye-bearing branches rose up and came to apply their pupils to the gap that I had left in my defensive wall, the phosphorescent dots projecting a bright light into my grotto—and when the eyes had perceived me, they withdrew in order to settle on the sand again or some ledge in the rock.

  From that moment on I judged that I was doomed. My cavern had no other exit. If, therefore, I was surrounded there for four or five days, I was certain to die of hunger. Could I attempt a sortie? Undoubtedly, before launching myself outside, I had a good chance of putting down several of the denizens of Anthea’s hors de combat with revolver shots, but what about afterwards? Without ammunition, how would I get away from the others?

  I shall not give an account here of the sufferings and tortures I endured during my long imprisonment in that narrow cavern. When hunger and thirst had weakened me, horrible hallucinations came to add to the anguish of the real…and always, through the fissure that gave me a little light and air, those eyes surrounded by leaves were spying on me.

  During the early hours, I tried to allay my terror and egotistical cares by devoting myself to disinterested investigations: I observed the forms, the organs and the mores of the inhabitants of Anthea.

  The Antheans were not ugly, but they defied comparison with any living creature known on the Earth. Cephalopods, corals, starfish, trees, butterflies, birds: they were all of those in one, and they were even human as well; it was impossible to be mistaken about the signs of intelligence, reflection and decision that they displayed. The sounds they emitted were, I believe, produced by small taut membranes at certain points in their spherical bodies. The same organ might have served their sense of hearing, which was evidently very keen, for as soon as I stirred in my hiding place, several eyes turned in my direction.

  At any rate, they conversed between themselves by means of sounds they emitted at will. I saw them depart, stop, act and pause in response to modulations produced by others, doubtless their leaders.

  I made all those observations during the first days, but when I had exhausted my food supplies, I no longer had the courage to study the curious beings. At the end of the fifth day, I was lying drowsily on the floor of the little grotto. I thought that death would be a long time coming, and I could not think of anything to do except to make use of my revolver to cut short my suffering.

  I was still there when, in the evening, I was surprised to feel myself lightly stirred, as if the ground on which I was lying had shifted. I thought I was the victim of one of the frightful dreams that were haunting me, but a few seconds later, the same phenomenon was reproduced. At the same time a long muffled rumor seemed to come from the entrails of the little planet.

  That died down, but then, a few moment
s later, the tremors and subterranean noises resumed, more loudly, It was definitely an earthquake. Finally, a shock more powerful than the preceding ones flipped me over like an omelet, and at the same time, a block of stone, detached from the vault, blocked the opening completely.

  Thus, I was imprisoned alive. Nevertheless, I felt my strength returning as a new idea occurred to me. I had seen that block seal the entrance to the cave; it was therefore possible that a fissure had opened up somewhere in the walls, which might communicate with other caverns. In addition, a moment before, I had felt warm breath on my face, like that of an animal; I had an intuition that a shaft descending very deeply into the central core had opened up not far away from me.

  I started crawling, very cautiously and with great difficulty, around the perimeter of my cavern. After a short while, I did indeed find a tunnel that descended almost vertically. I followed it.

  It descended, and then rose up again. Over its course orifices opened, from which hot air was exhaled. It went through chambers of whose dimensions I had no indication, except for the distant echoes of my footfalls…but I always found an exit. I leapt over obstacles and gaping shafts with the precision of a somnambulist. It seemed to me that I was acting in a dream.

  I don’t know how long that terrible flight through the darkness went on. Instinct alone, the old animal instinct of self-preservation, kept driving me forward in the scarcely lucid hope of finding a way out.

  Finally, I reached a terminus. There was no exit; it was a cul-de-sac.

  Well, it was all over. It ended there. My adventure, my life—it was all finished. There was nothing more to do. No possibility remained to me. I would never be able to find my way back to the first cave through the maze of subterranean tunnels, and even if I did manage to return to that first grotto, it would be impossible for me to move the rock that had obstructed its entrance. In any case, what evidence did I have that the terrible Antheans were not still at their post back there?