‘You’ll be sorreeee!’
‘Talk,’ suggested Marco.
‘I PLEAD.’
‘Who runs the disc? Where are they? How may we contact them? We shall require adequate directions and a detailed assessment of probable risks.’
Kin stepped forward and smiled reassuringly at the tethered giant. ‘Where did you come from, Sphandor?’ she said.
‘I HAVE ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD THAT A DOG WITH STOMACH GRIPES PAUSED NEAR A LOG AND THE SUN HATCHED ME OUT, LADY. DO NOT LET HIM NEAR ME! I CAN SEE HIS THOUGHTS AND—’
‘I won’t let him hurt you—’
‘Oh yes? Just how?’ Marco began angrily. Two of his hands were heavily bandaged.
‘There is an island at the hub of the disc,’ said Kin sweetly, ignoring the interruption. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘GREAT LADY, GREAT BEASTS ROAM THERE OR SO IT IS SAID. NONE OF US MAY GO THERE ON PAIN OF – OF—’
‘Of what?’
‘AGONY, LADY. PAIN. THE WORLD DISAPPEARS, AND THEN ONE IS IN A NEW PLACE AND THERE IS AGONY.’
‘But you have attempted to go there?’
‘THERE IS NOTHING THERE BUT BLACK SAND, LADY, AND THE BONES OF SHIPS, AND IN THE CENTRE A DOME OF COPPER, AND TERRIBLE ENGINES! THEY CANNOT BE TRICKED!’
Kin kept trying for another ten minutes, then gave up.
‘I believe him,’ she said, joining the others and dialling for coffee.
‘He’s manifestly a product of complex technology,’ said Marco.
‘Yah, but he thinks he’s a demon. What am I supposed to do? Argue?’
‘If I chopped a foot off perhaps he would think differently?’ said Marco, reaching for a knife.
‘No,’ said Silver, drumming her fingers on the dumbwaiter’s dome. ‘No. I think not. Marco, we must assume that the disc builders tend to think like human beings, and humans set great store by mercy and fair play, at least when it does not conflict with their interests. Let us therefore set the creature free, thus demonstrating our moral superiority. The action will declare us to be merciful and civilized. In any case,’ she added, and they instinctively looked up for ravens as she lowered her voice, ‘I fail to see any further use in him.’
Kin nodded. Silver walked and pulled at the knots in the cable and let it fall away. Sphandor stood up, looked at them solemnly, and walked out into the light.
He raised a cloud of dust as he took off, jerking upwards like a man heron, and hovered fifteen metres up.
‘ZAIGONEN TRYON (TFGKI) BERIGO HURSHIM!’
‘So much for gratitude,’ said Silver.
‘You understand the language?’ said Kin.
‘No, but I think I got the drift of that.’
‘ASFALAGO TEGERAM! NEMA! DWOLAH NARMA! WHERE ARE YOU, SOIGNATORIE, USORE, DILAPI-DATOR – NOOOOOOOO—’
For an instant the demon was a black cloud that filled the sky, a fog of flickering, fuzzy images – each one staring in terror. Then he was gone. There was a thump of inrushing air.
They flew higher and fast over forests flattened by the falling ship. The smoke column was thinning, but now they were within miles of it the sky was all smoke.
Marco aimed directly at it, daring it to contain enemies. Ahead of Kin, his suit glittered like a silver spark against the darkness.
Once inside, Kin was surprised that she could still see. It might have been better if she could not. Between billows was the landscape of hell.
After five minutes inside the smoke Marco spoke.
‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘There’s no radiation. There shouldn’t be. But there’s far too much damage. Silver?’
Below them a drunken forest burned. Before the shand answered the ground below them disappeared abruptly, as if there had been a cliff.
‘I can see nothing in this gloom,’ said Silver. ‘Can you?’
Marco could. Kung eyes had better night vision. He swore, and slowed his suit. The others did the same, drifting together so that the suits bobbed as in trio in the smoke. Marco was still staring down.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s go down.’
‘I’m flying blind,’ complained Silver. ‘You must direct me so that I don’t hit the ground.’
‘You won’t,’ said Marco.
Kin let herself drop, tensing herself for the crash until she came out of the smoke into moonlight.
Shining upwards.
Vertigo gripped like a wrench. She could take space, because everywhere was down and direction lost its meaning. Skimming over a landscape was fine, it was no different than driving an aircar.
But not this. Not hanging legs down over a hole in the world.
The moon was directly below, hovering near infinity at the bottom of a tunnel that went down and down and down …
‘Five miles deep, wouldn’t you agree, Silver?’ said Marco in the distance. ‘And at least two wide. Are you all right, Kin?’
‘Hunh?’
‘You’re still descending.’
She fumbled dizzily for the suit controls. On a level with her eyes, a quarter mile away, was the lip of the hole, striated with bands of rock. Lower – she forced her eyes to move slowly. More bands, then a line of something metallic.
And a pipe, gushing water. Kin started to laugh hysterically.
‘We’re fine!’ she giggled. ‘We don’t need to go any further, all we have to do is wait for the repairmen! You know what it’s like with plumbers, when you want one they’re never—’
‘Cease gibbering. Silver, see to her,’ snapped Marco. Kin saw his hand poised over his chest panel. Then he dropped, fast. Her eyes started to follow him down before Silver’s gloved paw jerked her round. She felt motion, and realized dimly that she was being steered away from the hole.
After a while she heard Marco say, ‘There’s a pipe thirty metres across. Guess what? The water’s pooling about two miles down – on air. That’s why we’re not in the middle of a descending hurricane, there’s some kind of a gravity base down there. There’s going to be one hell of a lake there soon.
‘I’ve gone down forty metres. It looks like an explosion in a power station. There’s sheared – cables, I guess, multicored, and what could be waveguide tubes or access tunnels or something. Silver?’
‘I hear you. I suggest the ship impacted on top of one of the disc environmental machines, which blew up,’ said the shand.
‘It looks like it. There’s a lot of fused stuff and – scrub that. Here’s a tunnel, a real tunnel. Can you hear me? I’m hovering in front of a semicircular tunnel, it’s even got rails in it! The whole of the interior of the disc is one big machine! You should see this hole, it’s big enough for a spaceship. There’s, uh, eighteen rails across the floor. Access for machinery repairs. I assume, but it’s half choked with rubble.’
‘The ship impacted five days ago,’ said Silver sombrely. ‘They have had five days in which to effect repairs. The disc builders are dead, Marco. There can be no other explanation.’
‘I can see no signs of repair,’ came the voice from the pit.
‘Quite so. Something has gone wrong somewhere, just as the seas are erratic and the heavenly bodies misbehave. Which way does the tunnel run? Is there a continuation on the further side of the pit?’
There was a pause.
‘Yes, I can see the other mouth of the tunnel. It runs direct from the rim to hub,’ said Marco. ‘I had considered suggesting we continue our flight along the tunnel but—’
‘—it would be better to face any dangers in the open sky. Precisely.’
Kin opened her eyes. She was hovering over blessed earth – scorched, maybe, baked and half molten, but solid.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Stupid, wasn’t it? My forebears used to hang from trees by their knees.’
‘No shame,’ said Silver. ‘I do not like darkness. We all have our phobias. Kin? You look a little pale …’
Kin didn’t try to speak. She knew she couldn’t. She managed a strangled grunt, and
pointed.
Something was rising out of the pit, with difficulty. That difficulty arose because it was almost too big. All she could think of was the Mt Tryggvason Memorial.
It was one of the Valhallian tourist attractions. Someone had carved the high-relief heads of Presidents Halfdan, Thorbjorn, Weasel Moccasin and Teuhtlile out of solid rock a few hundred feet high in the side of the mountain.
That was what was rising out of the pit – a Mt Tryggvason with one head missing, a three-headed Thing. Only the head facing them was human. The others could have been a monstrous toad and some sort of insect, giant faces merging sickeningly into an impossible head, and atop the head were three crowns big enough for houses. Below the heads a cluster of spider legs dangled, each one a hundred metres long.
The effect was slightly marred by the fact that the far side of the pit could be seen through the image.
‘Marco,’ said Silver.
‘I don’t think there’s any more to be learned down—’
‘Did anything pass you on the way up?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look up, Marco.’
‘Holy shit!’
Kin choked.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said Silver reassuringly.
‘Afraid of that?’ said Kin. ‘That monstrosity? I’m just good and angry, Silver. Know what that thing is? A comic scarecrow, an image sent out to scare away anyone who might look into the pit and find out about the disc.
‘If we get back I won’t care who built the disc, I’ll see that they’re broken. Busted. Bankrupted. They’ve built a world people sail off the edge of, and get chased by demons and are superstitious because that’s how they survive! I’m beginning to hate it!’
Marco rose like a rocket in the centre of the image, became a glitter in the eye of Saitan, a spark in the brain of God.
‘Intangible,’ he reported. ‘A mere image.’
The great human face, kingly and cold, twisted. The mouth opened and the pit echoed to a great sad sigh. And a lightning bolt struck out of the smoking sky and melted the dumbwaiter so thoroughly that droplets of hot metal spilled towards the bright obversical sky.
Hail drummed off Kin’s suit. They were flying now against a deadline.
In fifty hours, or less, Silver would go mad and attempt suicide. Kung and men could go for a long time without food. Shandi could not.
The storm raged all round them, but sank away as Marco led them upwards. They burst out of the clouds into a disc sunset.
It was far behind them, red and angry and barred with cloud. Judging from the sky the whole of the disc was having bad weather, and bad wasn’t really the word. Some of those cloud shapes were mad.
Marco broke the silence. ‘We have a thousand miles to cover,’ he said.
‘That gives us an average speed of twenty miles an hour,’ said Kin. ‘We could easily reach the hub, even with a few rest stops.’
‘So we reach the hub. Do we find a dumbwaiter there?’
‘Anyone capable of building the disc could build a dumbwaiter.’
‘Why didn’t they repair the hole, then? Eirick, Lothar – they are descendants of your disc builders, reverted to savagery. Or the disc builders are dead.’
‘Okay, have you got any better ideas?’
Marco snorted.
Silver was trailing half a mile behind them, a dot against the livid sky. She rumbled politely to show that she was in circuit.
‘There is a possibility we may find a ’waiter,’ she said, ‘if the disc was built by the Company. Don’t groan, Kin. In many ways the idea of the disc would fit in with the Policy.
‘By the way, there is a raven flying half a mile behind me.’
Kin stared at the rushing clouds below. Policy. Perhaps the disc was Policy …
The Great Spindle Kings, Wheelers, paleotechs, ChThones – people of the universe. The universe was people.
Once upon a time astrohistorians had thought in terms of a vast, empty starry stage, a blank canvas waiting for the brush of life. In fact it was now understood that Life of a kind had appeared within three micro-seconds of the monobloc’s explosion. If it hadn’t, the universe would now be randomized matter. It was Life which had directed its growth. Life had once resided in the vast spinning dust clouds that became stars – every star was the skeleton of one of the great dust-accreting dinosaurs of the universe’s Jurassic.
Later lifeforms had been smaller, brighter. Some, like the Wheelers, had been evolutionary dead ends. Some, notably the Great Spindle Kings and the shameleons, had been successful in the only way that evolution measured success – they survived longer. But even star-striding races died. The universe was tombs upon graves upon mausoleums. The comet that brightened the pagan skies was the abraded corpse of a scientist, three eons ago.
The Policy of the Company was simple. It was: make Man immortal.
It would take a while, and had only just started. But if Man could be spread thinly on many different planets, so that he became many types of Man, perhaps he would survive. The Spindles had died because they were so alike. Now, upon dozens of worlds, men were being changed by different forces, maddened by different moons, bent by different gravities.
Since the universe could not be said to have a natural ending, because the universe was not natural but only the sum of the lives that had shaped it, Men intended to live for ever. Why not?
Preserve meme pools, preserve ideas, that was the secret. If you had a hundred planets there was room for different sciences, curious beliefs, new techniques, old religions to flourish in quiet corners. Earth had been one united civilization and had nearly perished once because of it. Diversify enough, and somewhere you’ll always find someone capable of catching anything the future throws at you.
People on a disc guarded by demons and ringed with a waterfall, what memes would they contribute to the genetics of civilization? She tried to explain to Marco.
‘What are memes?’ said Marco.
‘Memes are – ideas, attitudes, concepts, techniques,’ said Kin. ‘Mental genes. Trouble is, all the memes likely to develop on the disc are host-destructive. Anthropocentricity is one.’
A pale red moon rose above the curdled clouds. Now they flew a mile apart, flew high and fast to make the hours count. Kin kept an eye on the speck that was Silver, and worried.
Quite wrong, of course, to project human thought patterns on an alien, but a man in Silver’s position would live in hope that sooner or later food would be forthcoming. Men were optimists.
You couldn’t expect a shand to think like a man. It was so easy to think of your friends as humans in a skin, and for good and noble reasons people were encouraged to think of aliens as funny-shaped men. Just because they learned to play poker or read Latin didn’t make them human.
In short, Kin wondered when Silver would attempt suicide. She signalled Marco and told him.
‘We can do nothing,’ he said. ‘I have already decided to eat no food until we reach the hub, as a gesture of solidarity. We could take disc proteins, if the ’waiter’s analysis was right,’ he added.
‘Will that make her feel better?’
‘It may make us feel better. However, there is another problem that has recently forced itself on my attention. I hesitate to mention it—’
‘Mention it, mention it.’
‘Look at the panel on your left wrist. There’s an orange fluorescent line against a green strip. See it?’
Kin squinted down in the flickering light.
‘I see it. Only it’s an orange dot.’
‘Quite, but it should be a line. We really are running out of gas, Kin.’
They flew in silence for a while. Then Kin asked, ‘How long?’
‘About six hours for you and me. Perhaps an hour less for Silver. That will solve one problem. She’ll come to earth miles behind us.’
‘Except that we will of course stay with her,’ said Kin flatly. Marco appeared not to have heard.
‘If we still had the ’waiter the problem would not have been insurmountable. The hub is not too far. We could have terrorized disc people into transporting us. A hundred suggestions leap to the mind. It might have been quite enjoyable, and good experience.’
‘Experience for what?’
‘Hobnobbing with the disc folk on a superior basis. I had planned, should the hub hold nothing of interest, to set up an empire. Surely the idea had occurred to you?’
It had, in passing. Kin thought for a while of Genghis Marco, Marco Caesar, Prester Marco. He could do it, at that. A four-armed god king.
‘How long would you say it would take the disc to get onto a space-going footing?’ he asked. ‘If that was made a goal, I mean? We have the knowledge.’
‘No, we don’t. We think we do, but all we know is how to operate machines. Of course, you could get a spaceship built inside a decade.’
‘That soon? Then we could—’
‘No we couldn’t.’ Kin had been thinking about this, too. ‘What could be built is a primitive capsule powered by solid-fuel rockets with enough oomph to ram the outer dome. You could launch it by dropping it over the waterfall.’
‘First we’d have to unify the disc,’ said Marco thoughtfully. ‘Not difficult. Give me five hundred Norsemen and—’
‘There’s Silver,’ said Kin. ‘And, anyway, I have great hopes for the hub.’
Even so …
She had been doing a lot of thinking, before they lost the ’waiter. With the ’waiter they might have conquered the disc, filling the void left by the presumably departed disc creators. Without it, the best they could hope for was a comfortable life. In a strange way it wouldn’t be so bad for the other two. They would be aliens, marooned on a strange world. She would be marooned among people. It was possible that she had more in common with Silver and Marco than she did with the barbarians down there. It was a dreadful possibility.
‘These belts are supposed to be able to fly you half-way across a system and land you on a planet,’ she complained.
‘They were not expected to carry people thousands of miles against gravity, including many changes of altitude,’ said Marco. ‘It is most vexing.’
‘Vexing!’
‘If you feel so strongly, I suggest you make a complaint to the manufacturers.’
Strata Page 14
