Jack Williamson, page 27
“The captain’s office,” Lo told us. “The door says he is in.”
It slid open. We followed them into what might almost have been the reception room of an office on old Earth, furnished with seats along the walls and a wide desk facing us, all made of something that looked like pale green plastic. The only other color was a glitter of diamond beads on the rim of a long golden bowl on a little table. It must have held an ornamental plant. Dead earth filled it now, and dead leaves littered the table.
Lo and Sandor explored the room, shook their heads, opened an inside door. The room beyond held four empty chairs, behind four empty desks. I saw no books or papers I could recognize, no office machines or files, but a big black globe hung over each desk. One of them glowed when Lo looked into it. Peering past her, I looked into another office room, where another empty chair sat behind another empty desk.
Pepe reached to touch the globe, and his hand went through it.
“A holographic contact device,” Lo told us. “Still connected to an office down in Akyar. Nobody there.”
Sandor opened another door and stopped to stare. Pressing after him, we stopped and retreated. A dozen people had been seated around a long conference table, though not at any business meeting. The table was covered with dishes, empty cups and glasses, odd-shaped forks and spoons, gem-bright bottles, bowls filled with dusty fragments of what must have been food.
“Una fiesta!” Pepe murmured. “I think they died muy contento.”
“Whatever hit them,” Sandor said, “it must have been sudden.”
Men and women, they had belonged to his fine-boned and graceful race, but they were not handsome now. They had dried to mummies, the flesh brown and shriveled, black empty sockets in empty skulls staring blindly across the table at the other empty skulls. I felt grateful for my helmet. The odor must have been overwhelming.
“Los pobres!” Pepe crossed himself. “I hope they got to heaven.”
37
Mona called from Earth.
“She and Casey have reached Akyar,” Sandor told us. “On the way, they flew north over the cities along the American coast and south again over Europe and the Mediterranean. Plants and animals seemed abundant, but the cities—” Lips set hard, he seemed to shrink into himself. “All tumbled into rubble and grown over with forest. They heard no radio, saw no open roads, no lights at night, nothing in motion.”
Silent for a moment, he shrugged and went on.
“They’ve landed in an open park near the Crown. That’s the Nexus building. There’s life there, Mona says, monkeys in the trees and birds overhead. Most of the city fell into ruin long ago, but she says the Crown building appears to be intact, with no damage visible. They are leaving the pod. She wants to get inside if she can. They’ll be out of touch till they get back to the radio in the pod. We’ll wait here till she calls again.”
We waited forever.
With Earth seeming stationary under us, time seemed to stop. We had no days or nights. Sandor and Lo spent endless time aboard the satellite, searching for clues they never seemed to find. Once I went back aboard with them, but all their talk was silent and I made nothing of anything I saw. I felt shut in, depressed by the strangeness and darkness of the station, the presence of too much death.
I preferred the stars, the illusion that we were floating free in open space, and Pepe’s familiar company. Life in the pod was easy enough, so long as we could forget the dark riddles around us. There was food in the lockers, little brown cubes that water expanded into something I learned to eat. The seats reclined when we wanted to sleep.
Empty time on our hands, we watched the Moon’s deliberate creep around the Earth, the sun’s faster passage across the face of Earth. Though Tycho and the station were too far to see, I found myself grieving for Tanya and the others we had left there, alive and well when we left them but surely dead centuries ago. Or had they all been cloned again, and us with them, when the computer saw that Earth was dead?
We watched the monsoon clouds clear over Africa and waited for whatever Lo and Sandor might discover. Though they seldom slept, they came back to the pod now and then to eat and rest and try again to reach Mona. She never answered. Pepe urged Sandor to follow them to Akyar, to help if they were in trouble.
“They expected trouble.” Frowning, Sandor shook his head. “That’s why we separated. To double our chances. And we still have work to do here. We’re confirming a date for the disaster. Whatever happened, it was a bit over two hundred forty Earth years ago.
“It certainly was not the Sagittarian pathogen, which was spread by interstellar travel and killed all organic life. We’ve read the records in the operations section here. Interstellar craft and Earth shuttles were still arriving and departing in a very normal way till that last moment.”
His elfish face twisted as if with pain.
“We entered the room of an operations clerk who had just returned from a vacation on Earth. She had bought gifts for her friends. A neat little model of the prehistoric rocket craft from Tycho Station. A toy elephant still able to spread its ears, trumpet, and charge across a tabletop. Holo cubes of life in motion around the restored Taj Mahal and the Parthenon. All still wrapped and labeled with names, but never delivered.”
With no time of our own, we counted days by the sunlight that marched and marched again over motionless Africa beneath us. Thirteen had passed before Sandor got a call from Earth.
“They’re safe.” His thin-chinned face had lit. “Back in their own pod. Ready to tell us what kept them so long.”
Gliding down to Africa, we found Kilimanjaro grown taller since the great impact, a new caldera at the summit filled with snow. A chain of narrow lakes filled the long valley of the Great Rift, stretched deeper now as the continent was torn apart. Akyar stood east of the Rift, on the high plain that sloped toward the Indian Ocean. Seen from the air, the city made a target pattern, a bull’s-eye surrounded by circular streets cut into blocks by wide radiant boulevards.
“Akyar.” Sandor gestured at the bull’s-eye as we slid past it. “That’s the Nexus building at the center. Called the Crown for its shape.”
It was magnificent. White columns that looked tall as the Washington Monument supported a vast golden dome topped by a needle spire that flashed with lances of rainbow color like a single enormous diamond. Gigantic animal figures marched around the base of the dome. A tyrannosaur, a mammoth, a saber-tooth tiger. Ahead of them a horse and a camel, a lion and a llama, a gorilla and a man.
“The lords of the universe!” From Pepe, a bitterly ironic laugh.
“At least the center of civilization.” Peering down at the spire’s prismatic splendor, Sandor shook his sleek-furred head. “That’s our riddle. In a world that that spanned so many planets, so free from trouble or any hint of trouble, what could go so terribly wrong?
“I hope Mona has the answer.”
He took us low over the diamond needle and turned in his seat to point at the silver gleam of Mona’s slider pod, landed in a little park beside a broad avenue that ran west from the Crown. We landed near it. Looking around us through the transparent hull, we saw nothing of her or Casey, but Sandor opened the door. We tumbled out.
I heard a high-pitched bark. The grass around us was scattered with ring-shaped mounds of bare brown earth. A small brown animal stood upright on the nearest mound, barked again, and vanished down a hole in the middle of it.
“A cunning little creature,” Lo murmured. “Mona would love it.”
“A prairie dog,” Pepe said. “My father used to see their towns in Texas when he was a kid. Dr. DeFort was trying to preserve what he called biodiversity. He tried to save tissue specimens from all the creatures—”
“Amigos!” Casey’s shout stopped him. “Qué pasa?”
He and Mona were climbing out of their pod. They amazed me. Holding hands, they wore bright green loincloths and garlands of huge scarlet flowers, and nothing else. His broad black face shone with a happiness I had never seen on it, though he turned a little sheepish when she dropped his hand and ran to hug Lo and Sandor.
“Pep, Dunk, I’m glad you got here.”
He shook our hands and looked back at Mona. She stood with her arms around Lo and Sandor. They were laughing, absorbed with one another. He stood a long moment watching them before he turned back to us.
“I never expected—” He checked his eager voice as if abashed by his own emotion. “Never expected this.”
Near us was a very solid table, made of what looked like green-veined jade, with seats on either side. He gestured for us to sit. Still heavy under Earth gravity, Pepe and I were glad to comply. After another fond glance at Mona, Casey joined us. We asked what they had found.
“Not a clue. Nothing I could understand.”
Seeming untroubled by that failure, or even the death of Earth, he let his gaze drift back to Mona. She waved, with a smile that seemed to enchant him, and escorted Lo and Sandor into her pod. Casey sat staring dreamily after them till Pepe touched his arm.
“Sorry.” He blinked as if he had forgotten us. “I was thinking.”
“We got inside the satellite,” Pepe told him, though he hardly seemed to care. “All we found was dried-up bodies, with nothing to show what killed them.” He gestured at the towering Crown. “You’ve been in there?”
His answer was only a nod.
“Tell us about it.”
“It’s too big.” Yet he shrugged as if its vastness hardly mattered. “We didn’t see a tenth of it.”
“Anything alive?”
“Nothing.” At last he gave his attention back to us. “Though there is a staff of robot caretakers and janitors still active. If people died there, their bodies must have been removed.”
We sat there, craning our heads to look up at the diamond spire and the animals marching around the great golden dome till Pepe pressed him to tell us more.
“It was really something wonderful.” Awe slowed his voice. “It had a computer system linked to all the microbots everywhere. That made it a sort of super-mind, Mona says, in contact with similar centers on all the settled worlds. The mind of all humankind.”
“Is it still alive?” Pepe asked. “Does it know what hit the people?”
He shook his head. “The robots keep the computer running. All the old data is still there, but Mona says nothing has been added since the blackout.”
Another prairie dog had popped up to bark at us again.
“I’m glad something is alive.” He grinned as if it cheered him. “No matter what struck us, evolution can happen again.”
Pepe asked if they were going back to the building.
“No point.” The grin gone, he shook his head. “Too much death! It wore on my nerves. I was glad to get out.”
“Won’t Sandor want to see it?”
“I guess there’s plenty to see.” He seemed to shrink from its towering mass. “Half of it is underground, level after level. Mazes of corridors go on and on forever. We got lost once, and had to find a robot to show us back to anything we recognized. The robots try to follow orders, but they never tell you anything. You won’t see them outside, though they keep up the building.”
He paused, something like dread in his eyes.
“It’s too much! Too much of everything. Embassies from all the settled planets, with holo exhibits to tell all about them, all tied in to the main computer. Libraries, museums, laboratories, businesses, tourist and information offices, art galleries, theaters, facilities for sports I never heard of. Even a sort of luxury hotel, with a robot staff ready to put us up.”
Grinning again, he touched his floral necklace as if in apology for it.
“And Mona!” He intoned the name almost with worship, and leaned very earnestly toward us. “You know I’ve dreamed we’d somehow be together, but I never thought it would really happen.”
He drew a long breath.
“It did.” His dark face shone. “You’ve seen her. She loves me. We’ve been together in paradise!”
Mona had stepped out of the other pod, carrying a basket. He darted to take it from her and set it on the table. She opened it, spread a cloth and began laying out dishes and glasses, bowls of food, a flagon of amber wine.
“The robots packed it for us,” Casey said. “They do remember what they were.”
Lo and Sandor came to join us at the table. Mona was pouring the wine. Casey handed out round golden fruits.
“They’re different from anything we ever had on the Moon. I don’t know a name for them, but just try them.”
“Peaches.” Sandor bit into one. “From cell specimens I found at the lunar dig. I had them in my orchard at the memorial.”
Mona split another and shared it with Casey. Mine was delightful. There were cups of soup, cakes, nuts, jellies. Some I didn’t like at first, but the amber wine enhanced the flavors till I relished everything. Lo and Sandor glanced at each other when we had finished, and stepped away from the table.
“Excuse us, please. We have things to think about.”
Mona caught Casey’s hand and led him after them. The four stood for a little time gazing up at the dome, then put their heads together, lost in silent talk. There was enough, I thought, for them to think about.
“Dos locos!” Pepe shook his head at Casey, a shadow on his face. “I was wrong to think they’d never get together. They’ve forgotten the world is dead.”
38
The four stood together in silent contact, until Lo and Sandor abruptly broke away and walked fast toward Sandor’s slider pod. Without a word, Mona dropped Casey’s hand and followed them. He stood frozen, staring after her with fear etched on his face.
“Mona?” A breathless, voiceless whisper. “Why?”
“There’s no time.” She darted back to touch his gaping lips with a kiss. “No time at all.”
She slipped away before he could embrace her, and ran after Lo and Sandor into the pod. The door snapped shut behind her. He turned to look at us, empty hands spread in mute appeal. I felt his shock but had no help for him.
“Demonios!” Pepe muttered. “Fantasmas de los muertos!”
Ghosts of the dead.
Darkness was thickening around us, the prairie dogs fallen silent. The spire on the Crown glowed softly, lighting the dome and throwing long black shadows across the trees and rubble mounds around us. Far off in the forest, I heard a strange, quavering scream. Only some night thing, I thought, calling for a mate, yet I felt the hair bristle on the back of my neck.
The pod simply sat there.
“Why?” Casey stood staring at it, stricken and dumbfounded. “Why did she leave me?”
“Dios sabe.” Pepe shuddered. “God knows. Or has Satan claimed the world?”
We stood there a long time, shivering in the night wind, waiting for them to come out of the pod, for it to lift, for anything. The pod lay silent and motionless, a mirror-shelled mystery, gleaming faintly in the glow of the spire. Casey shouted at it once, begging hoarsely for Mona to open the door. It didn’t open.
Tired of standing, Pepe and I went back to the table. A handful of biscuits were left in Mona’s basket, along with a little wine in the flagon. Sitting there hunched against the wind, we called Casey to join us. He stood deaf to us, fists clenched, shaking his head at the slider, while we finished the biscuits and wine.
The door of the other pod was still open. To escape the wind, Pepe and I crept inside. I reclined a seat and lay there a long time, staring out through the glass-clear hull at Casey and the motionless pod, watching the slow Moon climb past the shining spire. Pepe kept muttering Spanish profanities in his uneasy dreams. Thanks to the wine, at last I slept.
Casey was inside with us when I woke. He lay snoring on the floor, hollow-eyed and haggard, black stubble on his chin. The prairie dogs greeted me with a chorus of barks when I climbed out. Sandor’s pod still lay where it had been, a mirror-bright enigma under the morning sun. Pepe rummaged though a locker and found hard dry slabs of something that tasted like burnt oatmeal. We ate a little of that. Casey went out to listen at the other pod, his ear against the mirror hull, and came back dismally silent.
“Qué le hace?” Pepe frowned at it. “We can’t wait here forever.”
“I dreamed.” Casey was moodily grim. “I dreamed they were dead.”
“If they are.” Pepe shuddered and crossed himself. “We ought to see.”
He walked away toward the street and came back with a heavy chunk of broken pavement and lifted it with both hands to smash at the side of the pod.
“Don’t!” Casey called to stop him. “There was more of the dream. I was trying to get inside. I heard Mona calling words I remember. ‘Gold eight, red six, black four.’ The door came open. That’s when I saw they were dead.”
Pepe dropped his rock and bent closer, staring at the side of the pod.
“Mira!” he whispered. “La cerradura!”
He had found three colored dots on the mirror shell. Gold, red, and black. He tapped them carefully one by one, counting the taps aloud. The door yawned suddenly wide. We followed him inside.
They lay in the seats, lying flat and still. Mona’s eyes were open, glazed and blindly staring, her beauty distorted into a frozen grimace. Her arm was cold and hard when I touched it, set in rigor mortis. Casey dropped to his knees beside her. We went out and left him there.
“Cabrón!” Pepe muttered. “Madre de cabrones! How can God allow such things?”
Or was there any God at all? What sort of power would murder innocent and unsuspecting planets without warning or cause? I had no answer.
Casey staggered out of the pod at last. He looked pale and shattered, as if life had bled out of him, yet he was fighting to recover himself, his hollowed eyes dry, his jaw set hard.
“What killed them?” Pepe asked.
He shrugged and shook his head.
“I think Mona knew, when she came back to kiss me good-bye. I think she wanted to tell me, but it gave her no time to say.”
