Mutants

by Robert Silverberg

  “Now we’re in,” he said softly to Kreech, and they turned to survey the vaults. Behind them more of the line danced through the gates, slowed and finally stopped like Sooleyrah and Kreech, panting, staring around them at the vaults.

  “Which one?” Kreech asked. “You been here three, four times in a row now, so which one we go into?”

  Sooleyrah’s eyes narrowed as he studied the vaults. They crowned the entire hilltop, vaults of many sizes and shapes, some tall, like obelisks, others domelike, still others jointed with odd angles and designs. Sooleyrah had always been afraid of the vaults—for their size alone, even if they hadn’t been so dangerous. They towered into the sky above; and when the robbers entered those doorways the arches stretched far overhead to encompass echoing empty darkness.

  “Starboxes are kept in the vaults for us, no other reason, yeah?” he said to Kreech. “And samesongs, and tools; some toys maybe too, lots of shapes, yeah? Plug ’em into the starboxes and yeah, they work, they work. Now why unless they’re for us? Who else, Kreech, who else?”

  “Nobody,” Kreech said. “Nobody but us to take ’em.”

  “Yeah, yeah, nobody,” Sooleyrah said, turning slowly in the night, in the poised silence of the hilltop and the looming vaults. He looked back down the hill and saw the rest of the Hne coming through the gates, and the gates themselves now seemed to lead out, to lead downward, back to the brightness of the groundstars. He saw Lasten come panting and shuffling through, and suddenly he grinned.

  “Hey, fat boy Lasten can pick us a vault. Almost-thinker says they’re all empty, hell he knows. Remember what the rest said? Rest of the thinkers? Said they could remember which vaults were used up, remember how many vaults there were, and all empty now. You remember? Yeah? Damn dumb thinkers been fooling us for hey long time. Send us up here instead of them, make us take the chances, oh yeah, they just tell us which vaults to go to. Oh sure, oh yeah, smart old thinkers, and every one dead now, about time.”

  Kreech kicked over a loosely planted stone; underneath it were faintly glowing crawling things that scurried in small circles and quickly burrowed into the ground, hiding.

  “Yeah, always hated the thinkers,” Kreech said. “Always knew they were liars—well, didn’t all of us? Hey yeah, good, get Lasten up here and make him pick out our vault tonight.”

  “Yeah okay, pass the word back,” Sooleyrah said, then turned his back to the line and stared again at the vaults. But almost immediately he had another thought; he said to Kreech, “Lasten picks our vault, and he’s first one to go in tonight. First one. Place of honor, yeah?” He laughed, “First one in gets killed if the approach wasn’t good,” Kreech said. “Oh yeah, place of honor.”

  “Fat boy needs it,” Sooleyrah said. “Bring him here.”

  Lasten’s fear sharpened when they came for him. Why did they want him now, when they were through the gates and at the portals of the vaults themselves? Surely they wouldn’t kill him now, up here on the silent hilltop. What reason, what reason? (Unless they were going back to human sacrifice in front of the vaults. No,)

  But the flickering impressions that reached him from Sooleyrah’s mind, when he was brought to the leader, had nothing of murder in them. There was hatred, yes, and the soft spongy feel of gloating. But not murder, no, nothing overt.

  “Hey Lasten, you almost a thinker, yeah?” Sooleyrah said, and his voice was so quiet, almost friendly. But not his mind.

  “I wasn’t entered,” Lasten said cautiously.

  “Yeah, we know. Okay, but you know a lot of stuff, yeah? Know a lot about vaults, which ones are dangerous, which ones maybe empty, we hear. Now, not all of ’em empty, Lasten, not all of ’em. You almost a thinker, you not dumb, yeah?”

  “The thinkers told you they were all empty,” Lasten said, “so you killed the thinkers. Now if I still say that, you’ll kill me/9

  Sooleyrah smiled widely, glancing at Kreech. “No, no, Lasten, you not dumb. Okay, now what vault we go to tonight?”

  A chill scurried up Lasten’s back, touching the nape of his neck spider-softly.

  “You want me to pick the vault?” he asked. “Why me? Why, Sooleyrah?”

  Sooleyrah laughed, enjoying himself. “Hell damn I know what vault to pick. Thinkers always do that, always. So no more thinkers, but we got you, Lasten. So you pick.”

  So I pick—and if the vault is empty, it’s my fault, not Sooleyrah’s. Sooleyrah maybe not so sure about the vaults after all, eh?

  “You scared to pick one yourself, Sooleyrah? Scared you can’t find a vault with your pretty things? Yeah, you’re scared, scared.”

  But he shouldn’t have sail that. Sooleyrah leaped forward and grasped Lasten’s arm, painfully squeezing the soft flesh, twisting the arm behind him. Lasten cried out in pain, and bent over trying to escape the pressure. Sooleyral jammed his arm up against his shoulder blades.

  “Not scared, fat boy; not sc ared, just smart. Thinkers knew about vaults, they taught you, yeal? Sure, Lasten, sure, we know. Then thinkers said all vaults empty no use making raids any more, yeah? Yeah? Well, maybe thinkers,;of something up here they don’t want found, eh? Robbers not so d imb, Lasten, and Sooleyrah not dumb either. You pick vault, you, an I it better not be empty!”

  Or they’ll stone me right . lere, Lasten thought, seeing that as a bright certainty in Sooleyrah’s mind. Only way Sooleyrah could make up for leading a failure raid. Yeah, and the robbers would love another stoning, especially up here where the magic is. Magic and death, oh yeah, they’ll love it.

  “And you go into vault firs, Lasten,” Kreech told him with happy malice. “Sure, you, Lasten, pte:e of honor for you.”

  Place of death, Lasten th )ught. Oh, you dumb damn robbers, lousy murdering superstitious- •

  “Which one, Lasten?” So< leyrah said, applying pressure to his arm. “Which one?”

  And Lasten, the almost-thir ker, suddenly laughed.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, an I giggled again, a giggle just like Sooleyrah’s or Kreech’s, only higl er pitched, thinner. “Okay, yeah, okay, okay …”

  Sooleyrah let go of his ar n, stepped back. “You take us to an empty vault, you won’t be lau£ biing,” he warned.

  “Yeah, oh yeah, I know,” Lasten said, managing to stop his giggling. It wasn’t that funny, af er all; in fact, probably it wasn’t funny at all.

  “That one,” he said, poin ing to the vault nearest to them. “We go there.”

  Sooleyrah and Kreech both stared. “That one? Fat boy, you crazy? Nothing in that vault, nothing there since before you or me born!”

  “Hey, yeah,” Kreech said. “First vault ever emptied was that one, that one right there, don’t you know that?”

  “Sure, I know, sure. But that’s the one we go to tonight. And you look close, robber leader and watcher, you look close and you’ll see vault’s not empty. You want more pretty stuff stored in vaults, you just look close tonight!”

  He began to walk confidently toward the nearest vault, while behind him Sooleyrah and Kreech looked angry, then uneasy, and finally they turned and motioned the rest of the party to follow them as they moved after Lasten.

  Sure, damn robbers emptied this vault first thing, Lasten was thinking. Been in this one so often you can’t count, clearing it out, every piece they could find, everything the Immortals stored here. Only that just means it’s a safe vault, all the defenses used up or burned out so long ago. Nothing here to blind me, burn me, kill me. Safe vault, yeah… but maybe not so empty as they think.

  The door to the vault gaped open, leading into blackness. Lasten called for torches, and two of the robbers came forward and lighted them. “Okay, now we go in,” Lasten said, and sullenly the torch-bearers followed him through the wide doorway, Sooleyrah and Kreech right behind them.

  Inside was a high-ceilinged room littered with dust and stones and broken pieces of once-complete artifacts; one wall of the room was dark and misshapen, its plastoid seared by some long-forgotten fire-explosio
n. A hole in the ceiling, so far above them it was barely discernible in the flickering torchlight, showed where once there had been lighting fixtures, long since ripped out by the robbers. The sounds of footsteps were flat and harsh in the bare room, and the faint smell of old torch-smoke seemed to come from the shadows. Sooleyrah moved closer to Lasten, saying with dangerous softness, “Don’t see nothing in here, thinker.”

  Lasten nodded, looking carefully around the vault.

  “You see anything in here, Kreech? Looks empty to me, just empty as damn, yeah?”

  Kreech grinned. “Oh no, not empty. Can’t be; fat thinker brought us here. That right, fat thinker? Something hidden in here?”

  Lasten got down on hands and knees in the middle of the floor, picking through the rubble. Her* and there he brushed aside dust and stones to look closely at the floor

  “Yeah hey, he got something hidden all right,” Sooleyrah said. “Hey, move in with the torches i here, move closer.” The torchbearers edged suspiciously forward; Sioleyrah grabbed one, swung him around and placed him where lie wanted him, standing right over Lasten. “You too,” he told the )ther man, and that one too held his torch close over the fat boy.

  Lasten giggled.

  “You find it, hey?” Sooleyral said. “What is it, fat boy? Better be good, and you know it, don’t you } What is it?”

  Lasten knew Sooleyrah and 1 le others were more frightened than they acted. The robbers had al /ays been afraid of these vaults, no matter how often they’d pillag d them, and despite the lower and lower frequency of maimings or killings by the defense systems. Robbers think this is all demon-stuff’. something like thai. Hell, no demons, not even lousy magic. Just stuff > e forgot, even the thinkers forgot.

  But yeah, I know one mor » thing about vaults that Sooleyrah don’t know.

  Lasten rose to his feet, puffin;, then looked around and picked out the south wall. In the center of t was a metal plaque with writing on it—devil marks, the robbers calle i it: another kind of magic to fear.

  Lasten couldn’t read it, but h 5 knew what it must be. He motioned Sooleyrah over to him and po ited at the plaque. “Take it off the wall,” he said.

  Sooleyrah stared at him; so lid Kreech, and so did the rest, the torchbearers and the ones crowd jd around the doorway.

  “Take it off the wall!” Laste said sharply, a little shrilly. “Pry it, use your knives—but be careful.1

  Sooleyrah hesitated only a moment more; then he turned and picked out one of the men ii the doorway. “Takker—you. Bring your knife, do what thinker say . Rest of you, you keep door blocked so thinker can’t run out.”

  Takker came into the vault eluctandy, drawing his knife. It was crude but strong; once it had be n just a slim bar of metal, but Takker had filed it sharp. He worked he edge under the plaque and pried; the plaque began to loosen.

  “Secret place in there?” Soo eyrah asked, and Lasten didn’t have to feel the suppressed fear from his mind; it was apparent in his voice.

  “Yeah, secret place/’ he said.”Surprise for you,”

  The plaque came off and dropped to the floor with a sharp metallic ring. Lasten stepped forward, motioned for the light and looked into the small hole opened in the wall.

  There was a round dial, with markings and writing—the short writing they’d used for numbers. A time-lock, set for sometime in the future, after the wars. But the time could be changed, no reason it couldn’t be changed.

  Lasten twisted the dial, heard its faint scraping clearly in the suddenly silent vault. Turn, turn, and seasons flowed by, more and more time was marked off. Years, years. He kept turning the dial, waiting for the time-lock to release. (Maybe he was turning it the wrong direction? But no; it wouldn’t turn at all the other way.)

  All around him he tasted fear. He stood in semidarkness as the torchbearers edged away; shadows sprang up to claim more of the vault. Even Sooleyrah and Kreech had moved away, toward the door.

  Then the floor of the vault began to rise.

  There was a section of the flooring, twice as long as the height of a man and half as wide, that was separate from the rest; Lasten had searched for and found the edges of that section when he’d been on hands and knees earlier. Now the section was rising out of the floor, accompanied by a low subterranean hum of machinery. It was a block of heavy plastoid, and as Lasten and the others stared in wonder and terror, it raised itself steadily to a height almost up to their shoulders.

  It was a compartment, transparent-sided; inside it lay the body of an Immortal—or a demon, a god, a monster. He was huge, twice the size of Lasten or Sooleyrah or any of the rest of them; they could see that even while he was lying down, in the moving shadows of torchlight.

  The mechanisms of the compartment were whirring to life; Lasten saw the top of the case lifting off, smelled stale air as it was released from the case, saw a needle-thin marker on the side of the compartment leap to the end of its dial, and at the same time the giant’s body convulsed, back arching, muscles quivering. It settled back, but again the dial-marker leaped, and the huge body with it.

  This time there came a moan, low and weak, and the monster’s head rolled onto its side. Its mouth was open, slack; the eyes fluttered; the hands shook and moved.

  Needles and tubes withdrew from the body, sinking back into their seats within the case. The dials settled to rest.

  The Immortal’s eyes opened a id stared emptily at them.

  Hell hell hell hell hell big rr onstrous inhuman devil hell hell kill us all kill us no no!

  The eyes opened wider, anc the creature moaned again, louder now. It was a deep growl, half ch 3ked, and it echoed from the walls.

  Hate us hate us all kill us kill i te me me me no!

  And the giant tried to sit up.

  Its hands scratched at the si< ’es of the case, lacking coordination, lacking strength. The creature grunted and fell back; it breathed in pain-racked gobbets of air, mal ing harsh gasping sounds deep in its throat.

  Kreech screamed. He threw timself at the men standing frozen in the doorway and fought his w ty through them, still screaming. He sent others reeling backward i s he burst through, and several followed him, adding their screar is to his. Sooleyrah yelled after him, started to run too but hesitated.

  Lasten stood rooted in frig!, his whole being filled with terror, both from himself and from th flood of panic in the minds around him. Red, bursting fear, splas ing white-hot into his stomach, his chest… .

  Kill me kill me kill me me me ne kill—

  The giant sat up, and it was nonstrous. Twice the height of a man, it swayed and moaned above th m in the dark vault. Its fingers scrabbled spasmodically; it slipped I tck onto one elbow; its eyes rolled as it stared down at them. And it sj )ke.

  “God… oh God … what tre you? What are you?”

  A weak, thin voice. Frighten* i.

  “Help me… please, help…”

  Suddenly it tumbled over, f ling off the side of its mount, headfirst onto the floor at Lasten’: feet. It crashed heavily and noisily, sending Lasten staggering bacl in fright. The monster writhed there on the floor, hands clutching z r, legs jerking, spittle falling from its mouth. And then it slumped, and sobbed weakly, hopelessly. “Oh God, please… .”

  Kill me kill me me me kill:ill and Lasten suddenly had a large stone in his hands and he ran orward and brought it down with all his strength on the monster’s i tee. It smashed in one eye, a side of the head, and thin red bloof spurted. The giant thrashed about wildly, arms flung up and feet deking spasmodically, and faint little sobs came from its gaping moi h. Lasten hit it again, and again, and again, and he was screaming now, screaming to drown out the cries of the monster, and he hit it again, and again, and harder. …

  And at last there were only his screams in the vault. The monster, the Immortal, the inhuman giant lay silent and destroyed at his feet. Sooleyrah and the rest had fled. Lasten choked off his cries and dropped the slippery red stone. He fell against the case,
hardly noticing the blood that covered his legs and hands.

  I’m alive Ym alive, alive … I’m alive, * .

  It was more than an hour later when Sooleyrah and Kreech crept back up to the vault. There had been silence for all that time, and the monster had not come out after them.

  Kreech carried a torch; he thrust it before him through the doorway. He saw the demon-monster, and he recoiled; but then he realized that it lay completely still and there was blood all around its smashed head.

  Sooleyrah pushed past him and entered the vault. He saw Lasten standing beside the monster’s case, a dark stone in his hands. Lasten brought the stone down once, twice, and the molding broke; pieces showered to his blood-caked feet. He reached into the recesses of the case, yanked, and brought forth a handful of wires, red, yellow, blue, green.

  He looked up and saw Sooleyrah, and smiled.

  Ami giggled.

  And said, “Come on, Sooleyrah. Come on, little dancer leader. No demon left to hurt you now, oh no, no demon, no monster. Devil scared you? But I killed him—me. Don’t be scared, dancer, don’t be scared; come inside. Plenty of stuff here, oh plenty. And in other vaults too.”

  He held up the fistful of many-colored wires.

  “Pretty?”

  The Man Who Never Forgot

  Robet Silverberg

  When Tom Miles’s genetic st ucture was determined, it varied from the human norm only in on* respect. Most of us have minds like sieves, through which our re ollections of the past constantly leak away; but Tom came into the world incapable of forgetting anything. Such a miraculous memory is $ irely a blessed gift… or is it?

  He saw the girl waiting in line Dutside a big Los Angeles movie house, on a mildly foggy Tuesday n 3rning. She was slim and pale, barely five-three, with stringy flaxen 1 air, and she was alone. He remembered her, of course.

  He knew it would be a mi take, but he crossed the street anyway and walked up along the theate line to where she stood.