The Walking Shadow
Page 25
“There’s no need to be afraid,” he said, uselessly.
“I’ve spent all my life following you through time. The only thing that made it possible was knowing that I might eventually catch up with you. That’s all that saved me from dying, or from being devoured by the dream. I’ve no strength left. I can’t do it any more.”
“I can’t stay here, Rebecca. Not like this.”
“Why not?” Her voice rose in anger again. “Why isn’t it enough? It’s everything. There isn’t any more! Why can’t you just be happy!”
He tried to pull her into his arms, but she wouldn’t relax. Terror was holding her muscles rigid again—real terror, and nothing less. He’d held back the question so long, and she’d known that he was holding back, and now that the long-anticipated moment had come her fear had simply broken its bounds.
She shook off the grip of his hand, and buried her face in her palms.
“It’s over,” she whispered. “It’s all gone. There’s nothing more. We can’t ever go back. I don’t know how I came through it once. Now I know...I couldn’t. Whatever you do, I can’t. I’m at the end, and I can’t move from here. It’s no good. There’s nothing I can do. I won’t let you go. You mustn’t leave me. You can’t.”
Now she did try to seize him, to cling to him as if by so doing she could anchor him in time, forever. She was trying to trap him in her arms.
He let her enfold him, but he could not respond. She was crying, the tears no longer under control but flooding forth.
“It isn’t enough,” he said, helplessly.
“What we have now all that there is,” she insisted. “It’s all that any human being has ever had. Can’t you see that?”
“If I could see it now,” he said, “I’d have been able to see it in the very beginning. I’d never have begun. When I started to move time, even though I didn’t know that that was what I was doing, there was something I was seeking, something that I was chasing...something I can’t even put into words, but something. I can’t settle for less...not after a billion years. Paul Scapelhorn found something else; so did Joe Herdman, and Adam Wishart, a long, long time ago, but I can’t. I just can’t. There’s something inside me—something alien and strange that just won’t let me stop. I feel it in the dream, and I feel it here. I’ve always felt it. I felt it on that stage in 1992, the very first time...it wasn’t just an accident that singled me out. There was something in me—and there still is. I can’t let go.”
“If you go on,” she said, in a low, urgent voice, “you’ll be alone. You’ll be alone until you die. You’ll never see another human being, hear another human voice, see any more human handwriting. There’ll only be the machine. He’ll be your whole world then—everything that surrounds you. If you go, I’ll kill myself.”
He pulled her hand away from his shoulder in order to make her look him in the face.
“Yesterday...,” he said.
“Yesterday,” she said, “you loved me. And the day before. You always loved me, even when you didn’t know it yet. But not any more, if you leave me now. I want now, and I want now to last forever. No more time—just days, and nights, and you, and me—and you loving me. It’s all that’s left of the world. I won’t let you go.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. It was true.
“He said it would be like this,” she whispered.
He felt a muscle in his jaw flex convulsively. “Herdman?”
She didn’t answer, but she could only have meant Herdman.
“Yes,” he said, softly. “He would say that. He wouldn’t be able to resist saying that, so that when the moment came you’d remember his name.”
“Please,” she said. “You have to listen to me.”
He shook his head, but not to deny her assertion. It was a tired, empty gesture that came out of utter confusion. He bent his head to look at his hands, scanning them back and forth as if he were searching for something: the marks of fervent laceration...the angry scars that weren’t there, that never had been there.
“I don’t know...,” he whispered.
“You love me,” she said. “You do. You have to.”
He didn’t know what to say, but he kept staring and staring at his hands as if he expected them to crack and let the blood flow....
And then there was a sound, which grew and grew until it seemed to fill the dome: the sound of a screeching siren, and a wordless shout; as if something had struck a mortal blow to the very heart of the great machine.
When he looked up, the sky was already beginning to crack, and to fall apart.
Gaea had finally begun to destroy the last enclave of the Ancient Earth, to make her dominion complete.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Seconds passed while the birds rose from the woodland, startled into panic by a sound greater than any they had ever heard. A flock of sparrows wheeled in the air above their heads. Gaea’s flying things were already flooding through the great rent in the dome, fluttering down to meet the helpless birds like green butterflies, spreading like a cloud of poisonous gas.
There was no response from the machine. The loudspeaker that had released the shriek was trying to form words, now—shouted instructions to the two human beings who stood looking up at the cascade in the sky—but the words would not form. Somehow, Gaea had destroyed essential circuitry.
There was nothing, in any case, that Paul and Rebecca could do; there was no time to run to another dome, or to reach some enclosed hideaway. There was only one way that they might be able to avoid the consequences of the slowly settling cloud of Gaea’s ambassadors. They both knew that, although seconds still passed while they watched and could not respond.
“They’ll drink our flesh like nectar!” whispered Paul. “Our very souls....”
The million mothlike mouths of Gaea settled on the trees and on the ground, and plucked the birds out of the air as they flew.
Where Paul and Rebecca had stood, however, Gaea’s components fell on silver statues that were utterly impervious to their vampiric power.
That did not bother Gaea in the least, because she was blind and stupid, and she was nothing if not patient.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The wind screamed.
It screamed its triumph, its ultimate victory, while the cobra-head towered in the sky above them, its hood a dome that blotted out the sun while fringes of cloud were whipped by the storm into a boiling frenzy.
Lightning bolts hurled themselves at the time-lost mountains and the great mouth gaped wide, the hinged jaw distending until it seemed certain that the snake could swallow the world.
The great forked tongue licked the scaly lips and the fangs spat out their poison—and Paul, who held Rebecca in his arms, knew that, at last, it was the end, and that there was only one response...one possible refuge....
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The robot felt nothing, although his plastic face was dissolving as he ran, and the artificial flesh upon its metal bones was in the process of being consumed. Gaea’s fingers were plucking at his body, but they could not reach the complex web of electronic components that was his true being.
The robot was doomed, but that mattered little enough to the machine, provided that he could reach Paul, and that his red-lensed eyes could confirm that he had escaped into time. Four domes, in all, had been breached, but the machine knew that he could fight back, extirpating all life for a thousand kilometers around, if need be, in order to reclaim those few square meters where Paul and Rebecca stood...so that, at their next awakening, they could be removed from harm’s way, taken into orbit...and, if necessary, to the stars.
The robot reached up to pluck the mothlike entities from his face, to clear their green wings away from his eyes.
He saw Paul and Rebecca vanish into the reflective lesions, safe from anything and everything.
And then he saw them disappear, as the lesions closed with a clap of thunder that reverberated through the dome.
The air rushe
d in to fill the vacuum, whirling the green butterflies with it, breaking their leaf-wings from their soft coenocytic bodies. The robot stood still, allowing Gaea’s servants to cluster unrestrained, blotting out the visual image.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The poison that streamed from the fangs of the great snake splashed harmlessly from the incorruptible surface, and when the snake struck there was nothing for it to grip with its cavernous mouth.
There was a clap of thunder as the air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and the stinging sand met no resistance.
There was nothing there at all.
Perhaps the pilgrims had crossed the threshold, at last.
Had he been able to believe anything, in the moments before the thunderclap, Paul Heisenberg would have believed that he could and would, because, true or not, that would have been a necessary belief.
Had Rebecca been able to believe in anything, she would have believed in Paul, because, whether he was worthy or not of that pledge, there was nothing else in which she could believe.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
In all the eons that followed, Gaea never ceased changing. Neither did the machine, although it never became a god.
The descendants of Joseph Herdman’s colonists became extinct, after a long time, save for their own pilgrims of Promethean progress, and no human life then remained in the universe comprised by spacetime.
Meanwhile....
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Stableford was born in Yorkshire in 1948. He taught at the University of Reading for several years, but is now a full-time writer. He has written many science-fiction and fantasy novels, including The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London, Year Zero, The Curse of the Coral Bride, The Stones of Camelot, and Prelude to Eternity. Collections of his short stories include a long series of Tales of the Biotech Revolution, and such idiosyncratic items as Sheena and Other Gothic Tales and The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels. He has written numerous nonfiction books, including Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950; Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence; Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia; and The Devil’s Party: A Brief History of Satanic Abuse. He has contributed hundreds of biographical and critical articles to reference books, and has also translated numerous novels from the French language, including books by Paul Féval, Albert Robida, Maurice Renard, and J. H. Rosny the Elder.
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY BRIAN STABLEFORD
Alien Abduction: The Wiltshire Revelations
Asgard’s Conquerors (Asgard #2)
Asgard’s Heart (Asgard #3)
Asgard’s Secret (Asgard #1)
Balance of Power (Daedalus Mission #5)
The Best of Both Worlds and Other Ambiguous Tales
Beyond the Colors of Darkness and Other Exotica
Changelings and Other Metaphoric Tales
The City of the Sun (Daedalus Mission #4)
Complications and Other Science Fiction Stories
The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies Critical Threshold (Daedalus Mission #2)
The Cthulhu Encryption: A Romance of Piracy
The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Dragon Man: A Novel of the Future
The Eleventh Hour
The Fenris Device (Hooded Swan #5)
Firefly: A Novel of the Far Future
Les Fleurs du Mal: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
The Florians (Daedalus Mission #1)
The Gardens of Tantalus and Other Delusions
The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel
The Golden Fleece and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Great Chain of Being and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
Halycon Drift (Hooded Swan #1)
The Haunted Bookshop and Other Apparitions
In the Flesh and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels
Journey to the Core of Creation: A Romance of Evolution
Kiss the Goat: A Twenty-First-Century Ghost Story
The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
Luscinia: A Romance of Nightingales and Roses
The Mad Trist: A Romance of Bibliomania
The Mind-Riders: A Science Fiction Novel
The Moment of Truth: A Novel of the Future
Nature’s Shift: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
An Oasis of Horror: Decadent Tales and Contes Cruels
The Paradise Game (Hooded Swan #4)
The Paradox of the Sets (Daedalus Mission #6)
The Plurality of Worlds: A Sixteenth-Century Space Opera
Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine
Promised Land (Hooded Swan #3)
The Quintessence of August: A Romance of Possession
The Return of the Djinn and Other Black Melodramas
Rhapsody in Black (Hooded Swan #2)
Salome and Other Decadent Fantasies
Streaking: A Novel of Probability
Swan Song (Hooded Swan #6)
The Tree of Life and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Undead: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
Valdemar’s Daughter: A Romance of Mesmerism
War Games: A Science Fiction Novel
Wildeblood’s Empire (Daedalus Mission #3)
The World Beyond: A Sequel to S. Fowler Wright’s The World Below
Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction
Xeno’s Paradox: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
Year Zero
Yesterday Never Dies: A Romance of Metempsychosis
Zombies Don’t Cry: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution