Following up his success in our seventh volume (“Defence Mechanism”) here is another of Vincent King’s strange cities of the future—a city where legend is the cloak for government and the truth is far stranger than the legend.
* * * *
A murmur of heavy fabric. Glint of gold thread, sparkle of jewels in stiff embroidery, red in torchlight.
The Arch Teacher turned smoothly on the Sacred Lectern. He raised his arms in the dismissal. We climbed to our feet, made Obeisance and backed from the Chamber. It was time to go to the Wall.
The passage was very dark after the Holy Chamber. We called for our horses and our fighters. I swung on to the gilded saddle. Fighters came out of the dark, uneasy torchlight on their weapons.
We chosen officers of the Wall faced each other, we raised our Insignia, made salute. Our Captain led us up the Great Ramp, into the darkness. Tabors and fifes, slow marching into the gloom.
It is a long climb, up endless ramps through eternal damp. My old Captain complained about the long gaps in the lights. They garrotted him for Unfaith. The floor is very worn and slippery.
At passage branches we paused for ceremony and an officer led his fighters into the sub-passage. Mine was the highest station, the lookout platform—above the topmost battlement.
The groom took my horse, I listened to the rattle and clatter of my fighters as they made their way on to the battlement below. I climbed the last wooden steps.
Small, cold rain stung my face. I crouched through the low door on to the slippery planks. I edged left until I felt the slight step down on to the stone part, out against the parapet. The floor still moved in the storm, but I felt safer there.
The granite is mostly good. It all looks perfect, but some places you can stick in your knife like it was cheese. Here it crumbled, slimy grit under my hands. You can’t tell the Teachers—that would be Unfaith. The Wall will stand for ever. It must. If the Wall fails the World, the Span will end. Stand the Wall!
The wind roared about the ramifications and buttressing. The Wall thundered back its lion strength. Far, far out in the raging darkness, dim phosphorescence of surf showed in the rain. I was cold and wet, but Duty— Honour, the Virtue of Vigil on the Wall kept me from the high cells. A peasant, a commoner, would have sheltered; but not me—not an Officer of the Wall.
The bolts on my belt rasped on the stonework. I drew them out and laid them with my crossbow on the fire step. I laid the Insignia there too. I brought out the leather case, unwrapped the oiled silk, twisted the cord round my wrist and began to scan the beaches through my night glasses.
On the battlement the fighters still shuffled themselves into position. The broken paving makes it very difficult for the artificial walk of machines. I hoped they wouldn’t damage themselves, they’re only menials, robots—and very clumsy. Repairs are almost impossible now.
The rain slackened, the moon came through ragged cloud, splashing the sodden sea-plain with thin light. Nothing down there. On the right a few dim lights in the horn windows of the fisher hovels. We have glass, or rather the Teachers do. It’s right they should have the best, the glass and the comforts. They teach us the Order . . . theirs is the responsibility of the Wall. The Wall must stand until the Ultimate Light and the Span ends. Stand the Wall!
There would be no fishers out tonight. No enemy either; even his black hulls couldn’t live in that sea. I could taste the salt spray in the rain.
East and west the Wall runs. Sometimes you can see the curve of it turning away north and south to meet again a thousand miles across the continent. Our section reaches almost to the sea, elsewhere it runs its eternal circle over valleys and plains, through the tall mountains.
I say “eternal” and it is—the Wall is forever, from the Beginning to the End. But it is broken . . . where the sun came down it is broken. I know, I’ve seen.
It’s to the east, the Wall ends there. The Wall of the Towers ends. There’s a gap, ten, twenty miles wide. The Wall ends in twisted gobs of basalt.
The sea came in there. A circular bay, deep and wide. There’s not a lot of sand and if you dig you soon come to glass. All cracked—crazed—bubbled, iridescent.
They built a new Wall there, not as high as the real one. A great semi-circle, on the edge of the bay.
That was after the Last Battle. Five hundred years ago, there on the wide beach that was before the Wall. The enemy came in his myriads, with his arrays of fighters. There was great killing.
When he saw our fathers had won, the enemy’s wise men called down the sun to strike the Wall.
The sun touched the beach and the Wall, then rose again in chaos of purple red fire. The Wall was hurt and the bay made.
All who saw died, then or the next day. They were blinded and they died; our people and the enemy’s.
Since that time they have not come; but one day they will. We must keep the Vigil. Stand the Wall!
* * * *
East, far out along the dark Wall-reef the sky paled. Wind faded. Against the dawn the sodden fabric of our banner flapped on its staff.
Soon the early sun raised steam from the wet stonework. It was a good day. Light cloud moved in from the sea. Gulls and crows wheeled in up-currents along the Wall. Song bird voices reached up from the sea-plain. Cool blue-green of pines, pink trunks . . . white surf, cerulean sea, bright sun rising in the clear air.
At the fisher hovels a girl drove out a dozen black and white goats. I put the glasses on her. Dark hair, young, creamy skin, round breasts under the white blouse, she ran through the soft sand. Her feet were bare.
I put the pleasure from me. These thoughts ... I, an Officer of the Wall! These sensuous lapses of impure flesh. ... I had enjoyed the morning . . . felt it . . . when I should have been devoted to the Vigil ... to the Honour of the Teachers and their Sacred Trust. That was the true joy—not in carnal daydreams of the physical world. That girl ... an officer must be above that, he must keep his energies for the Duty and the Teachers. O . . . the world of sin in the heart of a rose . . . the weakness of enjoyment.
Then it was time to move into a cell while the sun passed. On the high levels the heat and radiation can be dangerous; on the plains it is all right, all you need is a little shade, or maybe a big hat when the suns pass.
I stayed on the platform as long as I could, to mortify the flesh. Then I staggered into the cool darkness. I pressed the button, calling a Teacher to hear me make my self-criticism.
That shining new looking screen in the stained, torn plastic. The screens are always in order, always perfect ... little else is.
With bowed head I told the Teacher of my lapse. I tried to make out his face in the dark folds of his cowl as he answered me, telling me in minute detail of my error. I squirmed ... I knew . . . understood. But Teachers are like that . . . always telling you things you damn well know already. Surely a man, an officer, is capable of deciding for himself what is right? But we must honour the Teachers.
He gave me my mortification and dismissed me. I had to return to the Citadel barefoot, through the heat and danger of the Wall Top. It was a good mortification and just, well calculated to demonstrate the weakness of my flesh.
The sun passed. Stark shadows on the platform moved in the circling light. The ravens came out again, harshly telling of the cooler air outside.
I dismissed my fighters, slung my crossbow and set off up the splintered slope of decayed concrete. The horse slithered behind me, plunging cat-footed the last few yards to the Top.
It was the hour of the two shadows. Left my shadow was red, lit by the setting first sun, getting darker. The second sun rose bright in the east. Above the sky was deep blue; south, behind me, it gave way to the indigo of the Cold. There was a little snow still in some of the deeper hollows, the few poor trees cowered from the prevailing wind. You’ve got to go slow on the Top, but you seem to get out of breath anyhow.
The paths on the Top are the old cell walls, there were many of them. On either side collapsed floors fall sheer into dark, stagnant pools, or bottomless shafts, bramble-choked.
Disrepaired it may be; ravines, gullies . . . impious trees thrusting apart the masonry with their roots, but the Wall still stands, magnificent against all who may come. Stand the Wall!
Things live on the Top. Men and less than men. Animals and less than animals. Trolls, banditti who come down to the Fair Land to reive and pillage; pigs and winged lions . . . perhaps even the creatures of the enemy, beings from beyond the Cold.
When the second sun came and I could stand the heat no longer, I turned from the path and entered a clump of bleached and twisted pines.
In the shade plants grew, green and almost lush. I relaxed in the green darkness. The horse crunched, cropping eagerly. Dabs of sunlight moved over the pine needles. I got out my bottle and sipped the hot water.
The Silver Old Man spoke from the shadows.
“Welcome, Lieutenant. I’ve been watching you.”
I whirled to my feet, swinging my crossbow round and down. Then I realized he spoke the Wall tongue. In his hands he held the Insignia, the steel shaft of the Teachers. His fingers were very long and white.
I showed him my Insignia and made salutation.
“I acknowledge the Insignia. Stand the Wall!”
“Insignia? You mean the shooter?”
I could see him better now. He was dressed in close-fitting silver. He was very old, thin, white. He had a fine brow. He smiled.
“What’s that thing? A crossbow? Interesting.”
“Who are you, old man?” I was suspicious. He should have known my weapons. “Why do you call the Insignia ‘shooter’?”
“I’m an old, old man . . .” He grinned at me. “Here’s why it’s called shooter.”
He brought the Insignia to his shoulder with a flourish. A switch clicked. Metal hummed. The end pulsed violet light. There was a crack, a small, smoking cylinder leaped from the staff. Dazzling light—a bar of white condensation flashed into existence. Far away over the Top a clump of scrub oak shattered, erupting fire and mud. The little cylinder rattled at our feet. Fading smoke drifted down wind.
A Wall officer is never frightened . . . not really scared, not out of his wits. That’d be Unfaith. I was speechless ... surprise it was ... surprise.
“Yours won’t do that?”
“No, Lord.”
“It’s nothing. A small chemical charge accelerates the slug up to a couple of thousand miles an hour. Then it’s accelerated again super-magnetically ... the rest is sheer impact.”
He took my Insignia, his fingers worked about the mechanisms. The reliquary sprang open, the texts rolled on to his palm. He handed them to me, not very reverently I thought. He drew the prayer ribbon from the tube and passed that over too. He brought out some of the little cylinders and pushed them with his thumb into the reliquary.
“Power unit’s gone ... watch this though.”
The Insignia cracked, the cylinder leaped, twisting in the air. A pine shook as under a great blow. Cones, dead twigs splashed into the needles. A great white splinter, shattered from the trunk, tore into the nettles behind.
This was the Old Power. The Old Ability. I dropped to my knees. I made Obeisance, offering my sword hilt.
He waved me to my feet. “Don’t bend your knee, son . . . don’t bend for anyone . . .” He paused, looking at me under his brows. “Have you seen it, lad? Have you seen the Herald?”
The Herald! My God! The Herald! Signs and portents! The Star prophesied to mark the closing of the Span! The Herald . . . brighter and brighter to the End. When the Great Towers would burn and the Wall fall!
I gaped at the Old Man. No words came.
“Aye, lad. It’s coming. The World and the Wall are ending. They’ve had their day.” He led me to the edge of the pines. I followed his pointing finger. “There it is, there’s the Herald!”
There, hanging, shining on the edge of the Cold was a strange Star. Small, unimpressive—not at all the fiery Herald of Doom the Teachers foretold.
“Doesn’t look much, does it, son? But it’ll grow . . . it’ll scare the breeches off you. Do you see? It’s a new star. It’s the Herald!”
Staring into his eyes I knew he was right. I believed him absolutely.
“Lord, I must be your man.”
“Yes ... it may be I can use you. If you will.”
“Have I not offered Obeisance. Do I not acknowledge the right of Teachers ... the Vigil and the Wall?”
“O.K., you volunteer. And quit calling me ‘Lord’— it’s not democratic. Lacks dignity. Just remember who’s boss, that’s all!”
Democratic? Dignity? Did I not have the proper pride of a servant of the Teachers and of the Wall? The Silver Old Man had much to teach and I to learn.
“Lord . . . are you of they who are prophesied to ride the paths of time from beyond the Span to the End . . . to save the chosen while the Herald burns?”
“Aye . . . you could say that. We waited the millennia in Slumberstate. Not me alone, of course. The machines roused me, pumped the blood and adrenalin. The others weren’t so lucky. The Wall faulted. Damp . . . water got in . . . upset the stasis . . . rotted them away—alive. Five thousand years—then that. Yes, I’ve ridden the paths of time. I’m here to put the pennies on this world’s dead eyes.” He inhaled deeply, his voice shook. “It’s good to be out here. . . alive . . . smell the pines.”
I wondered why I’d thought of him as silver. His face had colour now, his hair the beginnings of gold. He saw me look and smiled. “Yes, lad. I’m getting better. It takes a while to pull out of the Slumber.”
“Lord, what must we do?”
“We must go down to the Citadel—meet the Teachers. Check some mechanisms down there too.” He went on, half to himself: “And Oceana’s still out . . . it’s a lot for one man . . . one old man. Thank God the others reply!”
When the second sun had passed and it was cool again, we began the long tramp over the Top. I proudly bore the new Insignia the Old Man had given me. It was a noble thing.
* * * *
Long before we reached the edge of the Wall and began the long descent into the Fair Land, we could see the four Great Towers of the Citadel. Colossal they were—you could see them from all over the Fair Land—taller even than the Wall; sprouting central from the plain, the City huddled at their roots. Huge, white-yellow massive concrete. Taller and taller they loomed, white clouds and their blue-grey shadows moved slow across them.
We stood on the first broad, shallow steps. I looked back through the darkening air of the Top. Doom hung on the indigo sky.
The Herald, a single, evil eye. Almost overhead, a little south, bigger and brighter. It was coming, the End . . . and its Herald.
There was movement in the gathering dark of the Fair Land. Torches red in the gloom below us. From the spreading mass of the City scattered flame gushed, sprinkled in the dark.
Small, scratchy man-screams far below us. Wild shouts, the clash of arms.
Yelling hordes of commoners fought their way towards the Citadel. Tight squads of Wall officers fought stubborn rear-guards, arms rising and falling, bright metal flashing. It was magnificent. They sold each yard dear but the skill and valour of my comrades was powerless against the flood mobs converging on the City.
“They’ve seen it,” said the Old Man. “They’ve seen the Herald.” The night was well on us now, no one could have missed it. “It’s a revolt. They think the Teachers should have warned them . . . protected them. Perhaps some fool tried to keep them from the Citadel.”
“They will! The Teachers will protect them . . . guard their flock ...” My voice tailed off. For the first time I was uncertain of the Teachers.
“They can’t, lad. They haven’t got the equipment. It’s my job. Let’s get down before they burn the Citadel.”
As we got lower the shouting and fire crackle got louder. Once the confusion was split by a great blast of white heat. There were many more screams then and fresh fires started. The Old weapons are very powerful.
* * * *
We scrambled into the blood-slippery streets, running in the shadows, avoiding the light.
A man came at us over the cobbles. He had a knife, his arms were dark with blood. He was laughing.
I dropped him with my crossbow. The impact carried him back, he didn’t move again.
“Come on! Come on!” The Old Man yelled back at me. We ran through the smoke, through the sparks and heat. I struggled to keep up, winching my crossbow as I ran. “Leave it! Leave that medieval rubbish!” But I wouldn’t leave my crossbow.
We ran up the middle of a wide avenue. When the people saw our weapons they fell back murmuring. There was murder in the shadows. A girl, naked, was being raped on a midden. She screamed ... screamed.
Flames crackled. I stepped on someone’s shattered skull. It was the end of Order, the prophesied last days of the Span. It was hell.
Fire-lit smoke drifted over the City. Sparks rocketed. The Citadel wall was dwarfed under the bulk of the Great Towers. They stretched on and up until at last they disappeared out of the firelight. Then you could see them only by the occluded stars. Far up, infinity away, the utmost rim caught the last fleck of the long gone sun.
We crouched in the shadows. The Old Man was amazing. He’d run as far and fast as me, he was hardly out of breath. In the firelight his old skin had more colour, he looked younger, his hair had a ruddy glow.
The main fighting was on our left. The peasants kept well back for fear of the Old weapons. Occasionally someone would step forward and loose an arrow or sling-shot at some half seen mark on the battlement. The clear space up to the wall was littered with bodies, officers and commoners.
We dashed across to the shadow of the wall. We found a ladder there, covered with dead men. They bristled with crossbow bolts, nailed to the ground. We used the ladder to scale the wall. I got blood between my fingers and they kept sticking together.
We dropped into the soft flower beds of the Teachers’ garden. The grass was silver with dew. A smell of lemon, roses in the half light, the magnolias white on dark leaves.
Left and right, on either side, were the sacred cloisters. In the long summer evenings the Teachers moved there, together or alone, wheeling in their quiet chairs, talking and thinking great thoughts. Ahead, down the length of the gardens, were the massive gates of the Holy of Holies, the Chamber of the Sacred Lectern.
We charged headlong down the garden. I looked anxiously about. It’s wrong to walk on the grass. If you’re an officer and you do it, they flog you. If you’re a peasant they burn you at the stake. They say they don’t like to do it... they call it an “Act of Faith”.
The gates were heavy barred and gold. The Old Man ran to the middle part. He brought out a small tube and pointed it at the receptor pad. A red light flashed briefly. Nothing happened. He flashed again, impatiently. I looked over my shoulder. I was frightened the Teachers might come.
“No good.” The Old Man waved me away. “I’m blasting.
Fifty yards off we flung ourselves to the ground. He brought up his shooter and fired at the gates.
Light and fire. The condensation bar. A crash, tearing of metal, a showering of smoking fragments.
We went in through the smoking gap. The whole gate was twisted, warped, burst.
We stood in the golden magnificence of the Holy Chamber of the Sacred Lectern. The Old Man was very impressed. He stood at the broken door staring at the gold leaf and lapis lazuli.
“My God! What have you done to it? The screens . . . you can hardly see them.”
“The Pilgrims, Lord. They bring the gold and jewels. It is appropriate the Teachers be so honoured.”
“The Teachers do all right. I wouldn’t have seen it as that sort of place myself. I suppose I was wrong.”
“Wrong, Lord? You wrong...?”
“Yes . . . certainly.. . sometimes.”
We crossed the Chamber, up the broad aisle, through the golden arch. There, coming to meet us, were three Teachers.
There were Wall officers too, four of them, holding their weapons. The Teachers came on. Their long robes scratched golden hems on the red plastic floor.
“What do ye here, Wall officer? Who are you, Old Man? What want ye? Stand the Wall!”
I started to make Obeisance, but the Old Man stepped in front of me. The tube was in his hand again. He played the red light into the Teacher’s deep cowled face. The officers moved uncertainly among themselves.
“You are the ones to come? The Star is the Herald? The Span is finished?” The Teacher ran back a few inches on his wheeled chair.
“Aye,” said the Old Man. “Stand you clear that I may bury this world.”
“Kill them! Kill them! All honour and power to the Teachers!” The rich robes jerked apart. Like curtains. Their deadly Old weapons shoved through the slits.
Quick as they were the Old Man was quicker. He flung to the floor yelling for me to take cover.
He rolled, desperately twisting across the floor. As he rolled he fired. The little cylinders leaped and skittered. Heat and light rocked the Chamber. Each shot took one of the Teachers.
The Teachers fired too. Their shots ripped great gouts of stone and burning plastic from the floor.
Shattered Teachers lay in the smoking shreds of their robes. Stinking smoke wreathed the Chamber. Plastic flickered, burning. Melted gold cooled, wrinkling.
Mail flashed, the broad spears levelled, the officers charged. I reacted without thought.
I got the first with my crossbow. Through the head, helmet and all. Crossbows are like that. Then the Old Man fired some more and they were all dead.
I stood staring at him through the smoke. He climbed to his feet
“Lord . . . how could you do it . . . how could we . . . killing Teachers ...”
“Easy—aim and let ‘em have it.”
“But Teachers! The Protectors ...”
“Sure, sure. The Protectors of Order . . . Guardians of the Wall. What I don’t understand is what’s got into them.”
He walked to the nearest Teacher. He stirred at the smoking bundle with his foot.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Blood, chaned bones in broken flesh ... a noble, slaughtered head . . .
Two long spoked wheels, broken, like some shaggy bird’s nest. The Old Man pushed up the robe and it didn’t stop. The mechanical shards continued.
Wires, coils, broken charred insulation, bright copper patterns on minute cards. A lens eye rolled—milled alloy on the floor. The Teachers were machines—menials—like the fighters or the sweepers!
“Well . . . what did you expect?” The Old Man was already flashing his tube at the Sacred Lectern. “What else do you think would maintain a status quo five thousand years? Programme ‘em and leave ‘em. Set taboos, invent a religion and use the robots to make sure it worked. The only way to be sure . . .” He broke off, paused. “Are we so sure? I showed the code plain enough. Tried to kill us. Rogue I suppose—it’s a long time.” He grinned suddenly. “Let it be a lesson to you. Never give your machines better weapons than you’ve got yourself.”
“But, Lord, the fighters have the Old weapons . . .”
“Aye—and the Teachers load your shooters with texts. I suppose if you’re a machine you don’t give your men better weapons.”
As he flashed the whole Lectern swung back revealing a great well, circular, deep and vertical. Round it, spiralling into the depths was a staircase. We went down, the Old Man first.
A hundred steps down and we came to a circular Chamber. Wonderful it was, light and warm and dry. White walls and rich red plastic floor. Opulent. The Glory of the Old Days.
It was very holy. Dials and dials, levers and levers, screens and screens, little twitching pointed black needles, flashing light patterns reflecting on the shining floor. The Holiest of Holies. I bared my head.
The Old Man turned to a panel of receptors near the entrance. His tube twinkled. Behind us the stairs sealed themselves. The treads shortened, closing on each other until the stair well was solid.
“That’ll hold ‘em. Stairs keep out Teachers—wheels need ramps—this’ll keep out men too.” He went cheerfully to work among the Holy Machines.
A screen activated near me. I watched a party of Teachers and Wall officers search the Chamber above, examining the fallen. One came too near the Lectern. Pure heat sprang out, connecting with him for a second. He reeled and fell, half consumed in a gout of smoke.
“The Sanctum! The Unfaithful have the Sanctum!” The Teachers screamed. I heard the Old Man chuckle to himself, busy with the instruments.
The screen flickered and changed. Framed in the splendours of his palace the Arch Teacher looked down at us.
“I see you, Unfaithful. I see you defile the Holiness of the Sanctum. Expose yourselves to the mercy of the Teachers; or yours will be the fire, the cutting out root and limb!” The Old Man flashed his signal up at the screen. The Arch Teacher nodded. “I see you, Old One. You are he who comes with the Herald to End the Span. I will not allow it. We guard our people and the Wall. We will see the Order does not end.”
“Why should men live under your tutelage for ever?”
“We give men what they cannot give themselves. We keep safe stability. That is the High Duty of the Teachers of which the Wail is a symbol. If we fail, if the Span ends there will be chaos . . . man will surely die. The risk of extinction is unacceptable.”
“We accept the risk! We will not be subject to Machines. We will return to our Old Glories . . . and make new ones.”
“You have decided? Then we will kill you, you and your treacherous friend.”
“You ignore the code?” The Old Man peered up into the screen.
“We removed the inhibitory devices long ago. They were not consistent with our High Purpose ... the improvement was necessary.”
“Necessary? What High Purpose...?”
“Consider your history: ‘Little better than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.’ We ... we Teachers... can do better than that.”
“You talk like a politician!” snarled the Old Man. “It’s true men hardly ever act in their best interests, but that isn’t the point. We need a dangerous frontier—the occasional barbarian invasion—and we need freedom! We’re not lap dogs!” Then he grinned. “But you didn’t mean that by ‘High Purpose’. Did you?”
“We will kill you, Old Man. Our survival and supremacy are essential. We are more logical, stronger and better. We are the inheritors! We grow from and beyond your race! We are better! We will survive ... we are fitter!”
The Old Man cut the screen. He growled to himself and went back to checking out the Control Room. That’s what it was really called, Control Room.
At last he was satisfied. He said he still couldn’t raise Oceana, he said we’d have to go there.
“Follow me. Bring your shooter.” We went to the far side of the Chamber and down another staircase to a spacious Chamber below. All around the walls were benches, metal, hard and smooth.
In the middle stood a machine. A Traveller the Old Man called it. White it was, white metal. The top part was transparent, belling out like a barrel. It stood on spindly legs. Under the body were tubes, mounted on gimbals so they could point in any direction.
There was a ladder up the back of the machine. We climbed it and went into the cabin through a circular trap door. The Old Man stripped some thin, greasy plastic stuff from the controls. He worked some switches, checked the dials and light patterns.
There was a hiss of air pressure. The Traveller floated, yawing a little, a few millimetres above the floor. White dust eddied, blown by the air from the leg ends. A hiss at the back and the machine moved gently forward.
Ahead the wall opened. We entered, riding almost silent down the long cavern. There were many doors, they opened easily and swung shut behind us. At first the tunnel was perfect. Then there were signs of decay, first damp, then there was actual water. We went on, spray leaping from the leg ends.
Then the Old Man kindled the main power. Oily smoke and red flame belched beneath the machine. The hiss became steady thunder. The machine canted and lifted off.
The ceiling opened, we rose on our thunder a thousand feet through the great circular well it revealed.
We shot into open air. Into the dark and driving rain of the night storm. We were on the Wall, above the Fair Land, on one of the lower platforms. Ten feet up we moved towards the edge.
There were Teachers above us. Officers too. Crossbow bolts struck, thumping on the canopy. Some stuck in the glass stuff, small cracks around them. Some cut grooves, bouncing off into the chasm below. None actually penetrated.
The Teachers fired too. The impact of their shots drove us from the Wall. The canopy buckled a little, then clouded over. It was very hot. The flashes of brilliant light, the repeated impacts, were terrible. It was better when the canopy went blank, cooler too.
We dived fast away from the Wall. We levelled a hundred feet above the Fair Land.
They kept firing. The shots bit into the ground beneath us. The fields boiled, the woodlands scattered. I was glad they didn’t hit us again.
Then we were clear, running fast and low on the edge of a dark wood. Nacrous dawn showed away along the great curve of the Wall. The storm eased and the clouds broke. Stars shone, the moon—and the Herald, hard and brilliant, high in the sky.
* * * *
The Old Man turned the machine into the shelter of the spreading trees. “We’ll wait for the sun to be high. We have to cross the Wall. The sun will drive the officers in, we won’t see Teachers out then. Teachers dislike light, they’re creatures of the dark.”
The Old Man slept. I sat on the canopy, cradling my shooter. A smell of oil and heated grass. Hot metal clicked, white petal blossom fluttered, settling on my shoulders and on the blackened canopy. There were rustlings and small animal chatter in the grass behind me. An owl took its prey in front of me. It’s the way of things; the strong take the weak, the weak struggle while they can. Harder if they’re men. The Teachers were many, and the officers strong.
* * * *
When we had eaten the Old Man started the motors and slid the Traveller into the open. We moved towards the Wall, the early sun in our faces, the long grass flattening in our exhaust.
The new Wall looks pretty rough from above. All cobbled up, sheets of iron, tree trunks, runnels eroded in the earth work, the whole thing only a few hundred feet high. The Old Man had me shove my shooter out of a grommet up front, told me to fire on anything that moved.
We swam in over the Wall, climbing a little to clear it. Ahead the great half circle of the bay, blue under the sky. I looked back to the Fair Land, shimmering in the heat of our exhaust. Left and right the black gobbed basalt of the real Wall, dark, towered above us. We passed briefly into the shade of the easterly mass, then back into the brilliant sun.
A glint of metal down in the shadow. I turned to look, twisting in my seat straps. It was Teachers, waiting for us, hiding in the shadows.
Bars of condensation spat up at us. The Traveller bucked in the disturbed air. The Old Man jerked at the controls.
The machine dropped a hundred feet, turning as it fell. Brilliant light flashed across the cabin as the side ports turned in the sun.
I had the shooter shoved through up front, searching the shadow for Teachers.
I got one in the plate and let fly. A splash of light down there in the shadows, scattered burst of sand. A flowering of smoking metal fragments. Just like a crossbow really, except you don’t aim high for distance, or allow deflection.
The Old Man had an arm thrown back over the seat, looking back, driving at top speed towards the sea.
We cleared the bay. There was sand beneath us again —a mile to go to the sea—when they hit us.
The Traveller jerked. Orange flame billowed. Black smoke. We began to lose height. Heavy smoke trailed above and behind us.
The Old Man held off for as long as he could. Too long. We fell the last ten feet. The thin legs dug deep, bowed, then straightened. Things, food containers, dirt, chestnut blossom filled the cabin. The machine settled, canting left, down at the front, bouncing slowly. Then it slowly righted itself, hauling up to even keel.
“Get out! Get out and hold them off!” yelled the Old Man. “They hit a main venturi. Get me twenty minutes to fix it!”
I bundled out, sprawling in the wet sand, scrambling to my feet.
I ran to meet the Teachers. In the tail of my eye I saw the Old Man hauling out a heavy tube. He dropped it to the sand, threw down a tool bag and leaped after it. I kept running. I wondered why, the Teachers were beyond the bay, miles away.
I climbed a high sand bar. I was looking into the shallow dish that was the bay. A few yards ahead was sea-grass, fighting for life. Beyond was the glass, fiat, curved, overlaid with low dunes.
I looked back to the Old Man. He had heavy gloves and a sort of smock, with a transparent helmet. He played a jet of white stuff up under the belly of the machine. There was much steam. The tide was coming in, fast over the flat beach.
The Teachers were having a bad time on the shore. The glass littoral was bad terrain for them. Two were stuck in sand already. There were officers trying to drag them out with horses. The other Teachers sent more men back to help. So much the better, I was most afraid of men now. They couldn’t see the Traveller from where they were. They were going too far east of us, so I held my fire. I snuggled into the sea-grass roots, the cold stock of my shooter against my cheek.
The Old Man had the damaged venturi out now. He threw it on to the sand. There was a great hiss, steam sprang from it. He thrust the new tube up into the belly of the machine.
There was a soft distant thunder of hooves in the sand. Over east, coming from the real Wall, charging over the beach came five horsemen. Two Teachers, running fast on the moist sand, came with them. Spray flashed as hooves and wheels cut through shallow water.
They turned towards us. The Old Man, head and shoulders deep in the machine, hadn’t seen them yet.
I wriggled back out of the grass. When I was below the sky line I aimed and fired, my feet moving in the dry soft sand.
It was the Teachers I fired at, they were devastated. It took three shots and turned over quite a bit of beach. Fire and steam and smoke.
It unhorsed the men too. Sheer blast, I didn’t want to kill them, not like that. Blood and man-flesh mixed with disembowelled screaming horses. There were three men alive. Two were still mounted, the other was on foot, staggering, dazed.
The horsemen lowered their lances and charged. They ignored the Old Man. He was out of the machine now, crouched under it, watching.
I had the first man bang in the spray-smudged shooter plate. The lit cross-beads met central on his chest.
I couldn’t do it though. Not to a man while he had a lance and I a shooter.
I backed up the loose sand. I reversed the shooter, clubbing it.
When he was on me, when I looked up the length of the lance, I wished I’d used the shooter, but it was too late then.
The horse plunged on the soft sand. The lance thrust missed me. The point drove into the sand at my feet. I swung the shooter. He towered over me, striving to control his horse. The shooter butt thumped into the side of his head. He went over like a nine-pin.
I got his lance, tugged it out of the sand. It was too long for foot work, I broke it over my knee. The second officer charged.
I managed to turn his first thrust, the point slipped down my lance and skidded under my arm. I brought my lance over and down, stabbing at the weak place between the helmet and neck. I only just missed.
He fought to turn his horse. But it is quicker on foot. He should have ridden on, then turned to charge again. He threw down his lance and tried to get me with his sword. He turned on the saddle, twisting to get me.
The sword flashed a high arc over his head. I noticed a little puff of cloud, high in the sky, over his right shoulder.
I thrust into his brain, through the face, under the eye. The sword clattered on my shoulder armour, slid into the sand.
I put the wounded horses out of their misery, mostly they were dead already. There was a lot of blood on the bright sand.
The other Teachers were coming as hard as they could. They would be about ten minutes. The Old Man called me as he tightened the last gimbal bolts. The tide was almost there and I ran through the shallow water. We clambered on board the Traveller. Wet footmarks on the blackened metal.
The red flame billowed. We blasted away, a wall of sand and water flying from our jets. We cut through the long surf, the waters parted beneath us, a great spray plume behind.
The Teachers reached my dune. There were horsemen on the crest. Far beyond them, over the Wall, little silver travellers moved on flecks of flame. The pursuit wasn’t over yet.
We went fast out to sea. Out over the long grey swell. The Old Man came aft. The Traveller was flying itself now. I don’t know why I kept thinking of him as the “Old” Man, he wasn’t, not any more.
He had red hair, not white now. He was sleeker, not silver, rather gold, no lines on his face now. He saw me stare at him, he laughed. Young that laugh was. He wasn’t the Old Man now ... he was the Man. It was the prophesy. A great wonder, riding the paths of time to youth.
Ahead darkness grew, slowly filling the sky. The sea turned green, then black as we penetrated the Cold. Ice castles drifted in the sea. We climbed over heavy fog banks, running our straight course. The fog blew out in great devil’s horn wisps behind us, our exhausts punched a trench through the white mass to the sea.
Only stars in the sky now, the moon and the Herald. Bright, brilliant against the eternally dark sky. The Man opened lockers and drew out clothes for us, plastic lined, rich, with electrical heating.
The Cold Land loomed ahead. Black cliffs scowled down on our tiny Traveller. The beaches were rocky, dark sharp rocks with no seaweed. From the black uplands ice rivers ran their broken courses to the sea.
We soared up the black cliffs, riding on the column of our rocket. We saw no sign of the enemy’s men. There was nothing, it was a dead place. The cliffs were too steep to hold much ice, we went up them like a silver fly, straight up. Then I saw battlements and parapets, the platforms and look-outs. It was a Wall. Another Great Wall!
The Man saw me start and stare. He spoke, not unkindly: “You’re not so unique . . . there are another four, not counting yours. All with their Fair Lands and Great Towers behind. Built to begin the Span . . . and to end it.” I was silent, awe-struck.
We crossed the storm-scoured Top.
The Land beyond was anything but Fair. There were no fields, no men. A churned and turgid mass of ice. Piled up, blown and twisted to fantastic shapes. I saw ice dragons, banners and weird creatures sculpted by the wind in the deadly silence.
The Towers were there, the Towers and the Citadel. Like ours, duplicate. Even the City, with its haphazard additions, showed the first grand plan of the Old Days.
We cruised up frightening, familiar streets. Loose dry snow whipped high behind us. The rocket’s red glare made demons in the shadows. It was ghastly. I remembered when we were cadets in our own City, before we realized the stern call of duty, dodging the Teachers to visit the commoners’ taverns and their women. Happy old days, warm summer evenings. Then this icy, dead parody.
There were still some men there. We found them in what was the Teachers’ garden, shrivelled in the ice, long dead.
The Man blasted into this Sacred Chamber too. We shot our way through four feet of ice and the frozen door. White ice fragments skittered on the floor. What melted soon froze again. Even in the heat-suit I felt cold, our breath hung white in the air.
The Chamber below was perfect. There was no sign of Teachers. The Man was well pleased with what he found. He worked on the big communicator screens. He talked to people far across the world. He hurried along, time was getting short now.
“Come on, lad. We’ve got to go to the Wall.” We went back through the silent streets. The Man didn’t say anything at first. Then he told me the secret, why things are the way they are, why men made the Teachers.
“You know about astronomy, lad?”
“A little, Lord. The world is a planet, a globe of matter in space. It travels round the suns ... the stars are other suns—unimaginably distant...”
“Yes . . . like everything Teachers tell you, a half truth. The suns really go round the world, they’re artificial. Five thousand years ago our sun went nova. We foresaw it, of course, but couldn’t prevent it. We projected the world across the galaxy, on a great journey to find a new and friendlier sun.” He grinned. “What d’you think of that? The biggest damn spaceship ever! Then we made the suns you see every day ... no real problem. The world’s been travelling five and a half thousand years, half across the galaxy to reach a suitable system ... a suitable sun. The Herald’s that sun. The Teachers we made to keep order down the millenia. To see the Towers survived. The Wall was for that too. The idea of defending them was deeply implanted . . . you know ‘honour the Teachers’ and so on. It hasn’t worked too badly either, considering the time. Aberration from one set of Teachers, a sun system out of control . . . that’s why it’s cold and dark here. That’s what made the hole in your Wall.”
“The enemy called down the sun and it smote the Wall when their attack failed.”
“The order was reversed, the sun came down first and they were driven on you by the cold. The other sun in this lane escaped into space. You . . . we’re lucky they didn’t both come down.”
We cruised over the Wall Top. The Man found the place he wanted and landed the Traveller.
Part of the Wall opened. It was another of the spiral stairs. I suppose it was the same place on this Wall as where I’d first met him on the old one. We climbed out, bracing against the wind, holding the firm legs of the machine. That was when the Teachers caught up with us.
Their Travellers leaped into sight over the Wall’s rim. They sped towards us, riding on their bright flame plumes and opened fire.
I held them off from the stair-top while the Man raced down to seal the stair.
I didn’t hit anything, the shooter was hard to manage in the thick, heated gloves. I got pretty close a couple of times—set their Travellers bobbing in the disturbance of my shots. They didn’t come close. Then the Man yelled and I went down, the stair sealed behind me.
The Top was on one of the screens. The Teachers were trying to shoot their way in. The surface heaved like a cauldron.
“Take ‘em hours. The Old Men here, the Slumberers— they’re O.K. All the automatics were out, that’s what went wrong. I’ve reactivated, they’ll be out in a few hours.”
It was a race against time. The Man left me to watch the screens. He ran down the Chamber. “Strap in,” he flung back at me. He settled himself in a big swivel chair in front of the main console. I found a smaller seat near my own screen. “Ready?” He leaned forward. His red light twinkled. I saw what followed. I saw it all in the screens about the room.
The Towers opened like flowers. They fired. They burned, like the prophecy, they burned. At the top, like violet flame . . . Elmo’s fire . . . but vast ... the very reality of power . . . straight out into space. The whole Ice-land filled with their light.
Great winds sprang up. Teachers battled against it. One by one they were swept away, their Travellers cartwheeling towards the Towers. Nothing remained, the Top was blown clean.
The very Wall began to move, quivering and moaning. The Wall cracked, great pieces fell from it. Chasms opened. Tidal waves rose from the sea, crashing against the Wall and cliffs. Stars danced in the sky, changing their motion, wheeling. Volcanoes sprang up on the foreshore. Sea boiled. Snow, horizontal in the winds, great hailstones, then rain. Great drops crashing into the fissured Wall Top. Clouds piled, black and violet, they grew in minutes, they disappeared in seconds. The moon screwed crazy across the sky, fire pointed, violet Towers spewed energy on its surface. Two suns rose, climbed high, grew small and disappeared, accelerating into space.
The screens went blank. My ears popped in pressure change, I lost consciousness.
Rain lashed, earth shook, cracked and boiled . . . volcanoes spouted and cooled.
* * * *
Later, dimly in the uproar I heard voices. The Men stood at the machines, calling and checking to each other across the Chamber and across the world.
“Red D Dog 536,000,897-82”
“Hold that! Nine planet system, eh?”
“Orbit?”
“89,000,000 plus or minus 7,000,000. Hey, get those rings on the sixth!”
“Red 647,000,7000-0087. See, perfect sun fall.”
“Yellow 89 X boost zokko d. Might almost be our own.”
“Orbit correction: 90,000,000 plus or minus 4,000,-000. Cooler though.”
“Destruct third planet. Shoot debris between fourth and fifth orbits.”
“Third from the sun, eh?”
“Yellow 78 X boost kayo 4d.”
“Orbit correction: 92,900,000 plus or minus 1,000,-000. Cooler...”
“So live in the tropics.”
“Red 501,001,721-06. Not the same, is it?”
“You can’t have everything.”
And so on. I hardly understood at all.
* * * *
Later, when I’d recovered, I lay listening to the laughing, alcoholic chatter of the Old Men. They came in from the Control Room. They embraced each other, staggering, drinking, singing and congratulating each other.
“You murderers! You’ve killed everyone! Finished the world! They’re all dead!” I propped up on an elbow, yelling at them.
They were taken aback, surprised, smiling still, slack jawed, staring at me. The first one, the Man, came forward, young and golden against the others.
“No, lad, no. Not all—some dead no doubt. The worst effects would have been fairly local, round the Fair Lands. Only a small minority lived within the Walls. The Teachers now, they’re all dead, that’s sure. All the power’s been used. Not the people though. Mind, it’s back to the caves . . . back to square one. A few thousand years hunting and gathering ... the race’ll survive—man’ll go on. The Wall and the Span will wash away and be forgotten.”
I turned and ran. I fled from the Chamber.
I got out in the end, through the half-choked passages to the foot of the Wall, to the shore of the Dark Land.
Most of the Wall was gone, crumbled and flattened, still falling away as I watched. There was little of the Towers too, it seemed they’d burned away with the vast forces of their discharge, crumbled to ash, as had been intended.
There were new mountains, rising from the sea, forming a great causeway, leading north towards the Fair Land.
The clouds broke. The great new golden sun burst through. Water dripped, what was left of the ice melted. Young green things thrust through the rubble.
People moved on the causeway. Thirty maybe—a herd of goats with them.
There’d be no point being a Wall officer now. Fishing would be a good way to live. Fishing and maybe some goats. A hut or dry cave among the coastal pines. A fire of cones and perhaps that fisher girl ... or another like her.
I started home at once. There was plenty to do.