by Roger Elwood
Thunder had not yet spoken to me.
I called out to him.
My voice reverberated through the cavernous corridors of the hive.
I received no answer.
“Thunder!”
The word bounced around me, like a scampering animal, like a bundle of old memories which slowly impinged upon my mind. I began to remember other things which I did not want to recall.
My name was Jeffrey Clarke. I could remember, with painful clarity, those last days before the conscription, when Thunder began to call all of us to duty in the cells, when he would not and could not be denied.
No. That was a myth. A fantasy. Blasphemous and unthinkable.
I cried out for Thunder.
His name echoed in the silence of the cells.
I could also remember the mass panic when we first saw what the computer had become, when we saw that it had somehow acquired a consciousness of its own, its own personality, and when we saw that its own goals were far different from ours, actually inconsiderate of ours.
“Thunder!”
He still would not speak, forcing me to go on with these memories I did not want to deal with.
I remembered our last, desperate attempts to dismantle or destroy the mechanical portion of the super-computer complex, when we realized just what Thunder intended to do with us. I was a member of one of the groups that tried to insinuate itself into the vast mechanical workings of the computer, where irreperable damage might be inflicted, and I was one of the few to survive those suicidal attacks. I remembered how, nearly hypnotized by sub-vocal, subliminal messages from Thunder, we last remaining men reported sheeplike to the cells he had assigned us, leaving a world without a single, waking man.
Thunder was no God. He was a demon, a mechanical demon of our own making, a puppet-master built by his marionettes. . . .
My name is Jeffrey Clarke. I am eighteen, and I once hoped to be a hydroponics engineer. My family is dead—de-populationists who took part in the final battles. I have been eighteen years of age for many centuries now, sleeping in the suspended-animation cells, functioning for only a few hours at a time as a hunter for Thunder. This time, however, while the multitudes dream, I wake up without Thunder, and he speaks to me no more.
I am a renegade. Thunder is not immediately aware of my existence and may not send the hunters after me for some time—just as, I now believe, it took him weeks to send a team after that last renegade. Could I, in the time left to me before the hunters come, find the ancient entrances to Thunder’s banks of mechanical logic-and-storage units? Either death or triumph awaits me.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
ROGER ELWOOD, who lives in Margate, New Jersey, has been the editor of a number of anthologies and he is especially interested in science fiction. He says of Children of Infinity: “What I have proposed is a book containing only original stories written by some of the most prominent authors in the field. Each story has been written exclusively for the book. I think the appeal of the book is enhanced further by the fact that each story and, hence, the anthology as a whole is slanted specifically at the juvenile market. Each author has tackled a subject or situation geared to a young person’s outlook and interests.”
About the Editor
Roger E.lwood, who lives in Margate,
New Jersey, is the editor of a number
of anthologies. He says of Children
of Infinity: “I think the appeal of the
book is enhanced further by the fact
that each story and, hence, the anthol-
ogy as a whole is slanted specifically
at the juvenile market. Each author
tackles a subject, a situation geared to
a young person’s outlook and interests
. . . And I would be less enthusiastic if
it weren’t for the willingness of the
most prominent authors alive today
to contribute to the book.”
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