The Second IF Reader of Science Fiction Read online

  The people were rising to their feet. From them came an open-throated murmur that became a cry of savage joy—of unbearable tension finding release.

  “Who are they?” he asked the woman as he sat up and felt his body stretch with power cramped too long, as he squared back his shoulders and peered through the twilight in the court of monsters.

  “Your worshippers, David Greaves,” she said, standing beside him among the many arms of his couch. “The people whose last hope you are.” She added softly: “My name, though you did not ask, is Adelie.” She paused. “I, too, am one of your worshippers. Wherever there are human beings, throughout the Universe, you are worshipped.”

  He looked at her more closely. There was a lift to one black-winged eyebrow that was less reverent than a god might like, though a man could have no quarrel with it. She stood gracefully on sandaled feet, dressed in a single white garment girdled around her waist by a belt made of the same metal in which the monsters were cast He saw that the clasp was shaped into a profile of his own face. And he saw from the wear that it showed that it was old—older than she could be, older perhaps than this court This . . . shrine? He wondered how many priestesses had worn that belt

  How many of his priestesses.

  He frowned and got down, feeling the touch of the day-warmed stone on his bare feet He was dressed, he saw, in a black kilt and nothing else. He returned his glance to the worshippers and saw that the men were dressed similarly, and that the women wore flowing, calf-length, translucently light robes like Adelie’s.

  There was motion at one comer of his eye, and he turned his head sharply to see the arms of the couch sweeping down, folding and bending against its sides. Now he saw that he had been cradled in the arms of a great black metal beast. It crouched atop the dais. Its head was bent supplicatingly, bright oily metal barely visible at the joinings of its mechanical body.

  He glanced quickly up at the monsters atop their columns. “Are they all like that?” he asked Adelie.

  An old man’s gruff voice answered him from the other side of the beast-couch. “They won’t spring down to devour you—you needn’t be afraid of that.” Two men came into view, one old, one young and very slim. The old one rapped the couch with his knuckles. “This tended you in your sleep. It is made in the shape of the most ferocious race that ever rivaled Man. It is now extinct—as are all those others up there, for the same reason.”

  The thin young man—very pale, very long of limb-stretched his broad, tight mouth into a smile that covered half his face without mirth. “Not the most ferocious Vigil.”

  “Your kind will learn about that,” the old man snapped.

  “Not from you and yours,” the slim man said lightly. Greaves turned to Adelie, who waited, poised, while old Vigil and the young man quarreled. “Tell me the situation,” Greaves said.

  Adelie’s lips parted. But the old man interrupted.

  “The situation is that you have been awakened needlessly and would best go back to sleep at once. My daughter and these fanatical sheep”—he waved an angry arm at the standing worshippers—“have forced me to permit this. But in fact Humanity neither needs you nor wants you awake.”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” the young man said. “Humanity needs its gods very badly at this hour. But you are only a man, not so?”

  Greaves looked from one to the other—the leather-skinned old man with his mop of ringleted white hair, the young one who was human in appearance but somehow claimed some other status. “Who are you two?”

  “I am Vigil, your guardian, and this is—”

  “I am Mayron of The Shadows,” the young man said, and he held himself as carelessly as before, but his face looked directly into Greaves’. “See my eyes.”

  There was nothing there. Only darkness speckled by pinpoints of light; thick, sooty darkness like oil smoke, and sharp lights that burned through it without illuminating it.

  “Mayron that was First of Men,” Vigil said bitterly. “Mayron that is First of Shadows,” the empty-skinned thing replied proudly, and began to weep great, black tears that soon emptied it, so that the skin drooped down into a huddle on the pave and a black cloud in the shape of a man stood sparkling in the dusk before Greaves. “Mayron that will again be First of Men, when all men are shadows. Mayron that is already First of many men. And which of us is a god, David Greaves?”

  Adelie’s face glowed with excitement. Her red lips were parted breathlessly. The crowd on the tiers had loosed a great, wailing moan, which hung over the court of conquered monsters as the first stars became visible on the far horizon.

  Greaves took a deep breath. He could feel his body tensing itself, the muscles rippling, as though his hide needed comfort “Which of us is a god, man?” Mayron repeated softly, his voice coming from the entire cloud. “What is it you can do against me, you whose entire virtue rests on doing nothing?”

  “That would depend on what was expected of me at this moment,” Greaves said.

  “This moment?” Mayron chuckled. “At this moment, nothing.”

  “In that case, get out of my court and come back when there’s something to do.”

  Mayron laughed, throwing his head back, the laughter high and insolent. “How like a god! How very like the real thing.”

  Greaves frowned. “If you were a man, once, you might remember how that feels.” But the laugh had bothered him.

  “Oh, I remember, I remember. And tomorrow we fight, man.” Laughing, Mayron bent and picked up the skin he had discarded. He crumpled it by the waist in one fist, and brandished it negligently at the worshippers. They shrank back with a moan of horror as he strode toward the far wall. At the wall, he flipped the white, fluttering thing over, and as a cloud passed through the stone. Perhaps on the other side he put on his human form again. Greaves could not tell. The sun was down, and only a little light glowed on the far horizon. The torches guttered in the court of monsters, and the worshippers were hurrying up the steps, out through the temple and away.

  III

  Greaves, Adelie and Vigil stood beside the beast-couch. “All right,” Greaves said. “Now there are things I want to know, and I want no quarrels, Vigil.”

  “And by what right do you order me around?” the old man growled. “You may be a god to some, but you are not my god.”

  “You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn’t. You kept me asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you owe me.”

  The old man grunted. “You’re brave with Mayron and brave with me. But all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods.”

  “But you have one.”

  Adelie touched his arm. “You have lived from the beginning of human history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You were braver than any man, and for your bravery, you could not die. While other heros conquered the stars and, in their time, died, you lived on. While enemy after enemy was beaten by Man, and the victorious men died, you lived on. The stars and all worlds became ours. Men loved and begat, and men died, but you lived on. It seemed to us that as long as you lived, all men would have something to remember—how great Man is; what the reward of courage can be. It seemed only fitting that we should bring you the trophies of our achievements. It seemed only right to believe that you had survived to some purpose—that a day would come when Man would need his greatest hero.”

  “Precisely,” Vigil snorted. “Man worships nothing but himself. You were a convenient symbol. It did no harm. It may have done some good. Of course, the chuckleheads took it all literally. And so—thanks to Man’s stupid persistence in breeding idiots as well as men with some brains, you, whoever you are, whatever kind of filibustering bravo you actually were, have become the focus of a cult populated by the credulous, the neurotic and those who profit by them. I hope you are grateful for your legacy!”

  Greaves looked up at the stars. There were some constellations that might ha
ve been the ones he knew, distorted by his transit to another viewpoint . . . or by time. He was no astronomer.

  I’ve come a long way, he thought, and I wonder what the end of it will be. “Those who profit from the credulous, hmm?” he said to Vigil. “I am your guardian and I guarded you. As many others have done before me, from various motives. This is not your first court, nor your tenth. The ritual around you is compounded from thousands of years of hogwash, as witness my worshipful daughter who inherits a post from some time when every venturing hero had to have a leman patiently awaiting his return. My duties no doubt were originally medical. But the couch has been attending to that—with some exceptions—for centuries. And you may be assured, Man’s history has not been one unbroken triumph, nor his civilization any steady upward climb. But we built while you slumbered. I had thought to prevent your besmirching Man’s greatness with your cheap legend.”

  “Or perhaps he was afraid of the god he denies,” Adelie murmured, her eyes glowing warmly.

  Greaves looked from her to her father. “So she believes in me and you do not,” he said to Vigil. “But it may be you’re not entirely sure—and from the looks she gives me, it may be she isn’t, either.” He grinned crookedly. “Man may have climbed, but I assure you he hasn’t changed.”

  He smiled at the looks on both their faces. Divinity was new to him, but humanity was not. If these two had thought perhaps they had some dull-witted barbarian here—the one for his faith in his faithlessness, the other for her pleasures—it had been time their error was corrected.

  “Old man, god or not I have been called out . . . whether it pleases you or not. And I won’t willingly lay me down to sleep again until I think it’s time. So you had better tell me what all this is about, or I will blunder around and perhaps break something you’re fond of.”

  Adelie laughed.

  Vigil swung his arm sharply toward her. “This—this would-be courtesan was once Mayron’s great love, when he was First of us all. Because he could find’ nothing to conquer for her in all the Universe, he began dabbling beyond it for a worthy prize. And he found it. Oh, he found it, didn’t he, my child?”

  “Be careful, Father,” Adelie spat. “The worshippers follow me now that I’ve wakened him as promised, and you—”

  “Quiet,” Greaves said mildly. “He was telling me something.”

  “That I was,” Vigil said angrily, while his daughters look at Greaves was the least sure it had ever been, “and for all the need you have of it, I might as well not.”

  But if I may say it once and get it said, I can then go to my meal and the two of you will be free to amuse yourselves. Mayron discovered the Shadows, when his machines touched some continuum beyond this one, and the Shadows ate him. But like the fox that lost his tail in the trap and then cozened other foxes with the lie that it was better so and fashionable besides, Mayron made a virtue of his slavery. Those who give themselves up to the Shadows never rest and never hunger. They know no barrier. And no love. No true joy. No noble sorrow. An untailed fox is safe from catching by the tail. A Shadow has no spirit, no humanity, no—soul. But there are always dunderheads. Mayron has them, and down in the city of his down there”—the old man waved a hand at the horizon, but all Greaves could see from where he stood were the glowing tops of what he took to be three fitfully active volcanoes—“he has a city full of dunderheaded Shadows who go to some temple he has built and enter the Shadow chamber to be changed. The admission is easily gained; the price of freedom from human care is humanity.”

  “And up here,” Greaves said, “other dunderheads come to gain what in exchange for what?”

  “Gain at least some sort of affirmation at the cost of remaining men!” the old man growled. “If they are simple, at least they are human! And even an intelligent man can see the value in what is embodied here.”

  “As witness yourself. Yes.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you! We know enough so you could have been awakened centuries ago. But to what purpose? To turn another hooligan loose to upset civilization, and lose the symbol of that precious thing? When Man himself can rescue himself? But, no, this one, this superstition-ridden tramp I wish I’d strangled in her cradle—she stirred the worshippers up, she arranged the combat between yourself and Mayron, she—”

  “When and wherever.”

  “What?”

  “This fight Mayron and you have both spoken of.”

  “Tomorrow at noon. In the city. But there’s no need for it Tomorrow Mayron dies, and the other Shadows die. You can watch or not—as long as you stay out of the way.”

  Greaves looked at Adelie. “Your daughter, Vigil, does not look much impressed.”

  “Impressed! Impressed!” The old man was very nearly dancing with rage. “I’ll show you! Come with me.” Vigil turned without looking back and pattered rapidly down the steps of the dais, his calloused feet slapping indignantly on the time-buffed stones.

  Greaves frowned after him. Then he jerked his head to Adelie. “Come on,” he said, and they, too, walked quickly down the length of the court of the conquered monsters. And for the first time since their creation the pillared gargoyles did not have to bear the sight of Man.

  The scent of Adelie’s fragrance was in Greaves’ nostrils again as they followed the old man through the temple, past the altar where the eternal flame burned bright enough to sting. He said nothing to her. She volunteered no words of her own. But she walked close enough to brush his thigh with hers. Greaves smiled appreciatively.

  Vigil led them to a small chamber in one wing of the temple. He flung open the door with a clatter of bolts in a concealed lock, and pointed inside. “Look—the two of you. It’s not just Mayron who can dabble with machines. For every clever man, there is another just as clever.”

  A-gun of green metal was mounted on a pedestal in the center of the chamber. Slim and graceful as a wading bird with one extended leg, it poised atop its mount and sang quietly of power and intent to kill. The friezed walls of the chamber hummed in harmonic response to the idle melody of the gun. Greaves felt his hackles rising unreasonably, and he very nearly growled with outrage at the sight of it.

  “Tomorrow at noon,” Vigil said in a high, triumphant voice, “the weapon will be swung to point through that window and down upon Mayron’s city. And when it is done, there will not be a single Shadow alive down there.”

  Greaves walked to the window in the chamber’s far wall and looked down. But it was dark below; nothing to mark the outlines of a city as cities had been in the time he remembered. The temple apparently stood atop a high hill, with the city in a great valley at its foot, but again all Greaves could see were three glowing mountaintops across the way, and, beyond them, the night sky.

  Then suddenly one of the volcanoes flared for an instant, and the few overhead clouds reflected redly down into the valley.

  Greaves caught his breath. The city had emerged black and immense, extending for miles, its lightless towers like the spine-bones of a beast half-eaten and rotting in a tidal pool. Then the light was gone, and once again there was nothing visible down there—if the undead beast had chosen to bestir itself and stealthily move on some errand of the night, no one standing here could have known until it was too late.

  “So that’s the city of the Shadows,” Greaves said.

  “The city that was once the First City of Man,” Vigil said bitterly. “That Mayron has made into an outpost of

  Hell. Where no man dares live; where they say that those with Shadows, once they were in sufficient number, dragged women and children into the Chamber of Shadows so that their men, heartbroken, joined them when their Shadow-children returned to plead with them.”

  “And this gun of yours is going to do what to them?” he asked.

  “Kill them.”

  T know that How?” Greaves stared at the old man through narrowing eyes.

  “A beam of power, made of the stuff that spins within all things—the pure force of this continuum
.”

  “You mean this thing is some kind of particle emitter—an electron or photon gun?”

  “Our science need not concern itself with crudities like names, barbarian. This gun was made as a song or a poem is made—in the mind of a man who dreams weapons where another man might dream bridges . . . and when the gun finds it fruition, tomorrow when Mayron expects no mightier enemy than you, then the beam will sweep that city, and when it stops Mayron’s city will be a tomb for empty skins. And Man will build another First City, and those who fled shall have a place again, and—”

  “Who built—who dreamed—this piece of ironmongery?” Greaves growled. “Who was the poet—you?”

  “Yes I Why not? Do you think because I am an old man—”

  “A heedlessly spiteful one who hasn’t stopped to think.”

  “Stopped to think! Look!” Vigil seized the torch at the doorway and lifted it high. “Did you think I wasn’t sure? That the weapon has not been tested?”

  Now Greaves could see why the gun sang rather than rested in quiet patience. A Shadow hung against the far wall, supported by its outstretched arms, its hands sunken wrist-deep in the stone. And though it jerked its legs and struggled feebly to be free, the hands remained trapped. Under the sound of the idling gun, he could distinguish a quiet, thin, whimpering.

  Adelie laughed softly to herself.

  Vigil crowed: “He cannot move—what little strength remains to him is needed for bare existence . . . if I were to touch that control—

  “The weapon is at its lowest setting—it has incomparably more power than that; it has the power of all the Universe in it—and look what it can do when it is barely tapped in to its source of power!”

  Greaves rumbled in his throat. Suddenly the gun’s song was more than he could stand. He barely seemed to move, but Vigil had time to shout, the outraged cry beginning to echo in the chamber when suddenly there came the snap of rending metal, and a choked stammer from the gun. And then Greaves had the gun in his hands, completely tom from its pedestal. He threw it out into the night in a bright flash of fire that bathed them all in a thunderclap of light. Greaves stared after it, his teeth bared, the horrid sound of his hatred still rumbling within him. When that had dwindled, leaving him with his heavy chest heaving for air, the trapped Shadow had vanished, no doubt to tell Mayron that Humanity’s godling had gone insane.