Lee Harding
In the far distant future the City roamed the face of Earth, its memory banks conjuring fantasies from the minds of the unhumans stored within its vitals. Almost omnipotent, it was yet growing old and senile, and slow to meet the threat of the new life stirring upon the face of the world.
* * * *
They tumbled blindly through the endless twilight of the tunnel under The World, pallid little creatures with faces like polished pebbles washed smooth by time, and pursued by a growing sense of guilt.
Malo wondered if it was because they were leaving the City, and if their sudden exodus could be construed as a gross betrayal.
But the Poet had said: “Your responsibility is to yourselves—not to a machine. And least of all to the City.”
And this much they believed, this much they had come to accept: that the City was no master but a servile mechanism corrupted by a strange megalomania, and that their destinies had been founded ages ago upon individual human liberty and not upon integration with a non-organic entity.
Wild, impossible heresies—yet they had come to know them as the truth.
But the ties of centuries were not easily broken, and that explained her uneasiness. It seemed likely now that the Poet had, by the very stealth of his movements, offended the great City and aroused the antagonism she could sense in the dank air about them. Even the gloomy walls of the tunnel exuded a faint, drawn-out sigh as they flashed by and quiet weeping pursued the vacuum of their passage.
The City did not wish them to go.
And why not? she asked herself. We are the last to leave. When we are gone it will be alone and without purpose...
Why shouldn’t it resent their departure ?
* * * *
There were five of them, a straggling line of limbless ovoids spun out like a necklace behind the Poet, moving swiftly down the ancient passageways towards an unimaginable destination far removed from the false fabrications the City had thrust into their weak and willing minds.
Malo watched him moving ahead of them, marvelling at the way his great golden legs pushed down against, but never quite touched, the dark floor of the tunnel. Like two impatient pistons driving them forward, when in all sanity they should have perished long ago at the time they had been so rudely ripped from their comfortable wombs.
Ah, how strange, she thought. How very, very strange Life had become since the arrival of the Poet...
* * * *
Existence had been a simple matter, unencumbered by the need for decisions. Her function, as the City’s biological memory, was supreme above all others. All that mankind had ever been lay buried in the rich darkness of her racial memory, and while the City nursed and nurtured her frail little body her mind dwelt for ever in a cycloramic past which somehow provided sustenance for the vast machine, for without Malo’s gift there would have been ... no Purpose. It would lie abandoned and lifeless like so many of its kind.
Once, long ago, the City had been a nomad, wandering the empty face of the Earth looking for some small trace of the race that had deserted it ages before. That had been a lonely time, moving slowly and with great patience over the rich green crust of the land until each small inch was engraved for ever upon massive memory banks and there was not one small quarter of the empty globe that remained unfamiliar.
Had it not been wise beyond the capabilities of those other desolated machines it, too, might have sundered and collapsed under a burden of No Purpose, but some savage quest kept it alive and functioning—and growing. That was the most important facet of its existence. When others had crumbled into ruin it had refined and extended its functions until it was possible for the inorganic mind of the City to extrapolate and perform feats far in advance of any machine previously conceived by man.
When it could move the quest was taken farther—to the very ends of the deserted Earth. Lonely and pressed beyond all abilities ever endowed upon metal and plastic, it finally tired of its senseless task and returned to the land. Its mighty mass fastened once more to the ageless breast of the world, it waited for the ages to pass and for true consciousness to generate within hungry cybernetic cells. And then, one day, it began to Dream.
* * * *
Not all of the people had left. For some time it had been aware of a few faint candles of organic life flickering pitifully in forgotten corners of the incredibly complex machine. They had been beyond the reach of the City but now, rested and secure at last, it began the long process of activating every cell of its structure into full awareness. Ages passed. Many centuries, perhaps, before this was accomplished and the City throbbed throughout its massive bulk with a vibrant awareness in excess of any it had previously known. Only then was the location of the Dreamers made possible.
They slept in their cells like pale, moist little moths, their minds made weak and flimsy by centuries of dwelling and drifting through the bright lands of their fashioning: relics of a race who had forgotten their existence and would hardly have cared if they had not, for the Dreamers were the Dead. The ones who had traded a rich and full life for the tempting fantasies of their own subconscious—and this but one of the many cul-de-sacs from which the race had fled.
And the Dreamers, the immortal slumberers, slept on through the ages.
At first the City probed warily about its discovery. Before it could actively engage the guttering minds of these creatures it would have to create new techniques and new tools for the impossible task it had set itself. In the meantime it could only strengthen and maintain the conditions necessary for the continued survival of the Dreamers, so that this precious cargo might not be lost before the necessary techniques were perfected.
It did not take long. Seemingly unsurmountable problems fell one after the other beneath the battering ram of the City’s remorseless logic, and when, for the first time, it entered the world of the Dreamers it was as a gently moving breeze that fails to disturb even the most frail of grasses.
In many minds it found only madness and corruption. Cells deteriorated beyond any possible hope of repair (there were still some things beyond the control of a machine) and there were others whose minds existed only as pale, greyish clouds in the awful stillness of their tombs. From these it withdrew and, loath to destroy even flesh as senile as this, closed heavy shutters around the useless creatures and nursed and nurtured them for the far future—when even protoplasm without a mind might have some use.
But there was eventual reward.
From the moment it first crept into the rich darkness of Malo’s thoughts it knew that here was something beyond even its wildest imaginings—a mind that was not only whole and undamaged by the centuries spent Dreaming, but one capable of recalling the entire history of a race. The concept was staggering—and the implications equally endless.
What it had been until then had been taught by man.
What it had once thought of as a beginning now became but a clumsy splice in history.
All of this unrolled like a timeless film inside the creature’s soft skull, stretching back towards the dim infinity of mankind’s emergence on the land and the beginning of the long evolutionary journey. Those distant times were vague and ill-defined, but the City knew that with time and patience even those dim images would be made as real and as vital as those of the recent past.
And it was from this vast tapestry the City forged a plan of development it would have once thought impossible. With the help of this and other minds it had found it hoped to end some way of bridging the gap between organic life and its own.
In the beginning there was much confusion and much pain. A machine has no use for emotions. A machine has no soul. And a machine cannot Dream. Yet it coveted these things that it found in the mind of Malo. The race had deserted it without bestowing the ultimate gift of Life upon their creation—now it would finish a clumsy effort by uniting itself with flesh and mind and soul.
Before the awakening it spun a subtle and cruel web to ensnare the captive minds. One by one it roused them and fastened their thoughts to its snare, so that although they had left their own dreams behind they now shared a new one created for them by the City. And who was to cry: devil? They had never been alive—it had merely traded them one Dream for another, only in this case it was a Dream with a Purpose—the City’s. And so it crept into their minds, and enslaved them, and sucked at the rich juice of their thoughts, and became a parasite.
* * * *
Malo never knew the meaning of loneliness. She had many companions-in-mind. There was Bael who bred for the City and Antar who slept, ate and excreted in the manner of his ancestors and to the satisfaction of the City, and there were others whose functions were not quite important. Through Anita the eager machine could enjoy the delight of the human bloodstream and by entering the feeble mind of Primo could explore the fascinating world of insanity—the concept of not-sane being of particular interest to the City. By integrating these helpless little human relics into its cybernetic heart it imagined itself something better than the machines which had preceded it. Something that was not quite a complex structure of metals and electricity—and something not quite human, either. It was, simply, the City. Only ... different.
Sometimes they were even allowed the Dream—but for the City’s enlightenment—and even in Dreaming Malo was supreme above all others. Not for her the muddled, incoherent pictures of the others but vivid, grand illusions such as the City had never believed possible. Oh, the wildest, most fanciful things cropped into her mind! And she could make her master laugh and cry and puzzled in turn by the impossible absurdity of her Dreaming—and many were the shades of mood and emotion that suffused the delicate stuff of her sleeping mind and remained beyond the City’s comprehension, so that it would sometimes fall again to brooding and to contemplating The Gulf that sternly insisted to be.
* * * *
She had been Dreaming when the Poet arrived. Building a sparkling phantasm of slender creatures moving indolently through a darkened deep, now phosphorescent with life forms rich and strange from the bottomless ragbag of her racial memory.
An unwanted turbulence had disturbed the delicate substance of her Dream, sent fish and foliage flying willy-nilly about her. Bewildered, she sought explanation from the City and watched with alarm a milky translucence begin to spread throughout her mind, swallowing the dark wonder of her thoughts and leaving her head full of no-thoughts. ’
And then she felt something grotesque move into her mind. Something with the form and sense of a man and yet—not quite so.
A giant!
Large and gross of feature—like something from the primeval past.
She moved suddenly away from the intruder and studied him curiously. Her mind insisted that this was, beyond question, a bipedal man of the dim past. Gross folds of flesh covered a naked body disfigured by deformed extremities— and it stood upright on two incredibly long legs, unsupported in any way she could determine.
And all this ascertained in the fraction of an instant Malo found necessary, a moment poised clumsily between the assimilation of fresh knowledge and effective action.
Too long.
The giant was upon her in a single movement, had taken possession of her faltering mind and was about to perform some violent action outside of her world ...
He stretched out a hand and with his fingertips gently pierced her silver shell of comfort...
... and a great darkness crashed down upon her and washed out her thoughts. She plunged into an oblivion more complete and final than she would have ever thought possible.
Tumbled forward, a deafened and blinded and insensible ovoid.
And the giant caught her in his arms and smiled down upon her. “Come with me, little one,” he said, “and I will teach you to walk.”
The first words to sunder the dreadful darkness that had overtaken her.
* * * *
The pain was momentary and minimal. The darkness became a comfort and not a terror, and, once her mind had been readied, a brilliant sea of images.
She had prized her remarkable memory—but she now found that there was much she had yet to learn. What she had thought of as an awareness was now only a half-way thing. She had lived a lie set upon her consciousness by the great machine and now all that was gone.
It was like waking from a long and unpleasant Dream to find the Truth waiting patiently to be grasped by her unsteady mind. But with the Poet to guide her she found that she could live a hundred lifetimes in an instant of the City’s lime, and in that moment she found that she could see quite clearly how they had been deprived of their birthright and robbed of their gifts. She had thought that within her mind rested all that mankind had ever been—because the City had told her so. But now she saw how the City had bled her memories and fed back only those which it thought necessary for its purposes and that the accumulated information of millenia had become outdated in this one blinding instant of real awareness.
How long? she wondered. How long has this been so? How long had they been held captive by the City, chastened and embalmed like moths in one monstrous lump of cankerous amber?
She felt as if she was being made over again, her tiny body tingling with unfamiliar sensations and her eager mind buzzing with extraordinary impatience. Then the images faded and the darkness returned. With the return to stasis came the first command, “Open your eyes, Malo.”
And a question. Hers: what were eyes? And how were they ... opened?
Her own lightning swift recall anticipated the Poet’s prompting and she remembered what she had to do. But her regenerating flesh was still inadequate for the task involved. It was left for the friendly giant to find the energy necessary to accomplish even this small function.
Her eyes but two narrow clefts marring the smooth contour of her bald skull, where lashless lids stammered, made hesitant movements above the inanimate flesh of her soft face. A determined effort by passive nerves and muscle to perform the necessary function.
Malo opened her eyes.
Focus came gradually and then she saw the grotesque shape looming over her. She beheld the Poet outside her World. So huge, so terrifying.
Her fear was erased before it had time to build into terror. She felt only warmth and friendliness from the stranger who had opened her mind and she saw how the raw mental wound left by her abrupt severance from the City had quickly healed and left her young mind sane and whole. Now she was ready for the steady flow of words the giant dropped tenderly into her head to accompany the fresh rush of pictures.
Wordswordswordswordswords. Tumbling about in her mind like squirming fishes. Thought processes once limited by the designs of the City now struggled to master a forgotten method of oral communication: human speech. The dry dust of words that had always laid at the very bottommost level of her racial memory.
“I have come to take you away from here,” the Poet said. “Away from the City, to where you and your people were meant to live. I’m taking you home, Malo.”
Even now that word had very special connotations.
And as he spoke her eyes followed the movements of his lips, while her mind followed the motion of his thoughts. She tried to emulate their movements and was dismayed by the babble that escaped from her own lipless mouth.
The giant smiled. “Have patience, little one. One cannot undo the work of eons in the space of a moment. There is no need to force yourself. Words are the great gift of Man —but there are times when they may be dispensed with to advantage. So relax—and listen to what I have to say. The rest will come in good time.”
* * * *
To facilitate her comprehension still farther there remained one final adjustment and while her brain fumbled to absorb the concept involved the process of interpenetration was begun and completed. She felt a soft, warm splinter of the Poet slide smoothly into her mind and when this was done she hung frail and helpless on the gigantic loom of the giant’s psyche. The brightness and the sense of power was breathtaking—and now there was no longer any difficulty in communication.
“I will show you freedom,” he whispered.
A vast plain filled her being, stretched as far away as her eyes could see. Sunlight scorched the green land and a soft, hazy line of mountains limned the far horizon. Before her, in the very foreground of her vision, a small group of the golden giants. And among them, a smaller, and hauntingly familiar figure. He smiled, and waved to her an affectionate greeting. “Hullo, Malo. Remember me?”
Remember him ?
He was obviously not of the giants. His body was pale and undernourished compared to theirs and his limbs were spindly and clumsy, unlike those of the Poet.
Remember him ?
But of course. Didn’t she have the finest memory in all the City?
This was Pelar and although she could see how the rudimentary arms and legs had grown and strengthened and the familiar features of ancient Man had begun to transform the once smooth flesh of his face—she knew without question that this was indeed her friend. So long since they had Dreamed together across space and time.
“I sent them back, Malo,” he explained. “To save you— and the others. They know how to—and you must trust them, believe in them. Especially the Poet. He will guide you outside where we were meant to live. Help him to find the others, Malo. Do not be afraid. There is so much they can do for us. So much!”
He took two shambling, unsteady steps towards her and stood with his skinny legs braced wide apart and his arms raised almost in supplication towards the great arc of blue overhead.
“See how I walk, Malo! See how I live! Under an open sky!”
The great empty spaces of earth spun dizzily about her and she was once more alone in the resting-place of the Poet’s mind. She shivered then, and huddled down against the warmth of his arms. “Oh, but I am so afraid ...”
He chided her. “There is no need to be.”
But at that moment she sensed the gloomy walls of her cell begin to move restlessly. Her eyes flew open and stared at the Poet wonderingly. An unpleasant disturbance seemed to have travelled through the great organs of the City.
“It knows you are here,” she whispered.
The Poet shook his head. “Not exactly. It has detected a wrongness, but that is only to be expected. It has lost one of its people, Malo. It will be upset and will probably try to find you. But that will take some time and by then we shall all be well clear of the City. We are random factors, beyond the ability of this machine to predict. And besides —it is very slow.”
He lifted her up against his massive golden chest. “And now we must seek out your friends.”
Malo felt her breath momentarily leave her in a sudden rush. A blur of swift movement swallowed her world and then she was being borne out of her cell and through the depths of the City with her time-sense radically altered to correspond to her new environment.
* * * *
Once there had been streets—but that had been ages ago when human beings maintained the use of their lower limbs for locomotion and had also traversed the City in their many ingenious little machines. But the highways had been gradually swallowed by the encroaching structures which made up the metropolis and the bald sky had been dutifully robbed of its delicate tracery of freeways and passovers. Gradually, the ages accumulated and there was no longer a need for costly and cumbersome and archaic means of transport. The City coalesced and became a vast honeycomb of tunnels and tubes and passageways where the inhabitants could move more conveniently between various points.
It was down one of those great tunnels they now sped. Locked in the Poet’s arms Malo wondered how they moved when the walls would be blind to their unpredicted passage and so would be unable to provide the necessary thrust. By acknowledging their presence in the shaft then they would also provide the City with their precise location. Perhaps ...
She squirmed around so that she could study the unsmiling face of the giant. Then she sighed and relaxed, for she knew that it was he who was moving them independently of the tunnel’s mechanisms.
They entered Antar’s chamber first and penetrated that gloomy womb until they found him dreamily hammocked by the City, floating pale and weak inside his translucent sphere. The Poet plucked him free like a lifeless fruit and, after a moment that was a small eternity in her companion’s mind while he learned all that she had learned of the Truth, released his pale body so that it drifted lightly beside her own. They spent an idle moment studying each other, sharing this new and terrifying experience, before the Poet moved out of the chamber. They felt a gentle tug, as from an unseen thread, and they were whisked off after him and trailed his flying body at a respectable distance as they fled farther into the complex maze of the City’s interior.
Almost as they departed, an uneasy susurrus trembled the empty silence of the chamber.
* * * *
Bael’s cell was much larger than theirs had been. So huge that the walls faced away into murky gloom. In the very centre of the unpleasant room was a great vat and behind the transparent plastic something vaguely human Dreamed on.
The Poet left them by the doorway and he alone approached the strange vat. He could see that something clearly moved within, something huge and monstrous that might have once been human undulated unaware.
How many, many tons of flesh held the guttering spark of consciousness he could only just detect? And for how long had this creature suffered such abuse?
Only then did the monstrous design of the City become clear to Malo. She thought of Bael as the City had pictured-her—and then stared again at the sickening sight in the vat. There could be no greater treachery than this.
“She feels ... no pain,” the Poet explained, perhaps because he had sensed their grief. “We must see what we ... what we can do for her.”
Only then did they sense his defeat.
The task was hopeless from the very beginning. As each successive layer of flesh was probed to find the faint spark of intelligence he knew was there, there came only an increasing desperation. For there were some things still beyond the power to heal. Bael had been conditioned as a breeding mechanism and the City had seen that sufficient consciousness remained to keep the mountain of flesh alive —but nothing beyond that. This was a mind beyond salvation. Nothing more than the most primitive accumulation of nerves and muscles necessary. A billion-candle-power brain reduced to the merest flicker. There was nothing that could be done.
So he withdrew and wondered in what dark chamber rested the monstrous miscarriages of this dark union. Had the City ought to perpetuate the race—or something more sinister than that ?
Reluctantly, he stepped back. And seemed to wait, hesitantly, for a moment.
Do you see this ?
But it was not to them that his mind cried out.
There was a mutter in the air between them and a golden shimmer as a shadow moved towards the Poet. Only then did Malo realize that their giant was not alone in the City.
The air vibrated eerily with their communication. The golden shimmer moved towards the vat.
And the walls of the chamber bulged and screamed like a beast.
The Poet and the shadow froze.
It must be done.
Again, the thought that was not for them.
The Poet spun around and what happened next was much too swift for Malo to follow, but when the breathlessness had passed they were elsewhere, and burrowing down, down, down into the bowels of the City in search of more of her companions.
And all in that blurred instant of time the golden shimmer remained behind in the chamber and moved over and into the terrible vat and did that which was necessary. Then it also fled to another part of the City to continue the urgent work.
The dim light of consciousness sputtered and winked out within the great mountain of flesh.
Death had returned to the City.
* * * *
Within the vast metropolis there was movement where once there had been only unbroken stasis. There was activity where before there had been only a pervading emptiness and flickering shadows flitting furtively through the multi-cellular structure of the City.
As a machine it had only an indirect knowledge of the nature of pain and deprived of emotions there was no way of registering grief. But a loss could be felt. A certain indignation could be generated when it sensed a violation of its being. Any direct damage to any one of its parts, however small, could provoke an anger comparable to that most terrible of human emotions.
At first there was only a sudden shock at the abrupt removal of one of its vital organic components. Now only a raw and ragged emptiness existed where once had glowed the bright and brilliant mind of the one called Malo. Only a dreadful pang of loss inexplicably explained.
For too long had the City dreamed. Its movements were sluggish, its reactions incredibly slothful. As it fought to shrug off the blanket of lethargy from its feeble mind it could feel the bright segments of its newly found consciousness slowly winking out, one after another, so that gradually it was returning to its original state, a machine of metal and plastic shot through with the pseudo-life of electricity and fusion power and becoming less and less of the grand and noble creature it had envisioned, a cybernetic mind bound irrevocably to the tissue of human energy. The Dream was ending.
A fierce rage welled up within the City—and the struggle began. There were dangerous creatures loose within the tunnels, moving through the City’s system like savage little bacteria and robbing the chambers of their little humans. They must be stopped. They must be ... must be ...
But already the magnificent intelligence was fading. Deprived of Malo’s biological memory it was forced to fall back upon old and disused circuits in its own mind, so that it might devise a means of expelling the creatures from its system.
All this took time, the time necessary for a lethargic machine to think and devise a successful method of retaliation—all the time hampered and obsessed by the growing darkness of its intellect. The parts were old and ancient and the mind not altogether sane.
It was like an animal trying to isolate and identify a dangerous organism circulating through its own bloodstream. This the animal was capable of doing, except that ... it had forgotten how to. And remembering ... remembering was such a slow process for a mind that had overslept by several centuries.
Gradually, as it felt the passage of those tiny creatures through its substance, the mind grew progressively dimmer. Only a few wan lights illuminated the tragic dissolution of its Dream. Already the pleasures of flesh and organic mind had faded and the remorseless crush of steel was returning to the City. Only dimly was it aware of the information proferred—finally—by its scattered sensory apparatus.
The invaders were men!
Men? Within the City?
The weary mind wrestled with this impossible equation. There were no men. Not any more. Only those ... those it held. Those who ... Dreamed.
Ah, but the lights were fading, fading, fading.
They were gone.
* * * *
Now the vast bulk of the City lay above them. With dizzying speed the Poet whisked his slender cargo along through the very bottommost levels of the City’s tunnel system.
And from all quarters came the warm glow: mission accomplished.
The last of the captives had been liberated. Now there was only the matter of breaking free of the machine. Almost, they could relax.
The plan had been simple: to penetrate and discover and rescue the few humans held in bondage by the crazed City. The Engineers had outlined the reflex capabilities of the machine, how it had Dreamed a Dream for so long that most, if not all, of its original functions had atrophied.
But they had not anticipated the almost human agony of the City. Even now its despair flew after them, leapt from every fresh turn in the twisting passageways.
You do not understand, it cried. I am like you. Like ... you...
Then the voice had faded away and died, so that only this dreadful susurrus travelled through the walls, following them as they probed deeper, and darker, and closer to The World, until the last spark of humanity guttered and died within the dark mind of the machine and only an aching and intolerable hatred remained. At that precise moment the City tottered and slid over the edge of an ancient precipice ...
* * * *
In her mind Malo could feel the warm exultation of the Poet. They were nearing the end of the tunnel. They would soon be outside.
But then they felt rather than heard the agony slice through the City. The scream of shattered atoms as the City collapsed its vast mass and fused its malleable, timeless substance into one great block of palpitating matter.
The walls of the tunnel lurched and crushed in upon them.
Help me !
The Poet’s cry, savaging the psychotic movement of the insane City. From elsewhere, another cry, and another, sped outwards towards the waiting world.
For Malo and her companions there was not even time for terror. One moment the scream of the violated machine and the sudden sweep of the closing tunnel, and the next...
The figure of the Poet became lost behind a sudden blaze of golden glory, so bright that they were blinded and their world was made up of this tremendous energy. Slowly, their eyes adjusted, and Malo saw through the growing ball of light the faint shape of the Poet pulsating strangely and spreading with the light, his golden body stretched out grotesquely across the tunnel so that he now seemed a giant among giants.
The scream did not die, but the walls receded and they were pulled forward with dazzling speed. Behind them, almost touching them with a scorching breath, the tunnel clamped down upon their passage. Ahead of them, burning fiercely, the Poet forged an exit through the collapsed matter.
Only then did she realize that the City had sought to destroy them. It would rather have killed than have lost. The Poet was right—the City was insane and it had been a parasite.
But now they were Outside.
The World burst open with incredible splendour. The great blue sky held a promise of boundless infinity— already she could sense a tingling excitement through the stubs of her rudimentary limbs.
They sped over the rich carpet of green and the mad cry of the City became only a faint annoyance in the background of colour that invaded her senses.
It was even more beautiful than the Poet had promised.
Of course!
His blazing aura was gone, she saw, and he now found time to turn around and smile reassuringly. By carefully understating the real World he had left the wonder for herself to unravel.
They swung up the gentle slope of a small knoll where a small group of the giants stood waiting. With a gentle puff they were dropped to the ground and the sweet smell of grass captured the air.
She looked back the way they had come. There were other convoys of giants and their charges making towards the hill, she saw, and it was incredible how much the City had kept from her. Why, there must have been many, many more people imprisoned than she had thought...
She had had contact with five others. The number the City had imposed upon her, the number of her system. No doubt it had devised other systems for each inmate.
But all that was over and it was strange to see the City from the outside.
It lay huddled against the land like a monstrous scab. Several miles high and groping out greedily towards the near horizons, a vast wedge of tumbling matter. Once there had been fine spires and towering zigguts scraping at the sky but ... no more. The passage of time had forced a terrible pattern upon the once noble machine and in its dazed and crippled mind there was now only darkness, darkness everywhere and of hope no sign at all. Raging impotence swirling like an acrid fluid throughout its vast and lonely structure.
The Poet called them. “Come, little ones. We must go.”
Now she saw the great golden sphere shimmering impatiently atop the hill. They were raised in that warm and gentle way they were accustomed to and as they were whisked towards an open portal there came a terrifying sound which tore savagely at the World. Malo cried out, but the Poet said, reassuringly. “It is nothing. Nothing to fear,” and this was so. But the sound ...
It was the anguished cry of the City that leapt after them. It seemed it would last for all eternity as a mark of their passing. The ground beneath the wild machine began to shake and the grass around the sphere writhed like an animal in pain. Silently, they turned and watched the agony of the City.,
It rose very slowly into the sky and hovered, uncertain, senses wildly gyrating. Only one thought was dominant: it had slumbered too long at the benevolent breast of the earth. It had dreamed a Dream and now that Dream had ended. There would always be existence, but now it would once more be without Purpose.
For several long moments it seemed undecided and then, the terrible cry still clawing at the sunlight, it surged many hundreds of feet into the air and wheeled blindly around and careered away towards the far horizon. Long after it had faded to a dim smudge against the blue of the sky its doleful cry lingered like a scar upon the day.
But that was not for Malo’s thoughts. The great ship lifted and flung them at the stars, where they might scatter like jewels once they had been made over as men again and would have a universe for their playground. Already she had sloughed off the useless carapace of her old and senseless life and could feel her mind, like her growing limbs, bursting with fresh growth rich and strange, while far below and beyond the range of discarded care, the City fled blindly over a dark and lonely ocean in search of tomorrow, crooning its mournful loss like some stricken animal. Wallowing on until the dreadful arms of night swept down and everything was dark and only the uncaring stars looked down and the Earth turned again ... and again ... and again ... and was unchanging and forsaken and for ever young.