The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ into a bitterly self-reproachful mood, Grant heard a woman saying, ‘Here we are helpless as plants, and M’chene comes and reaps us when he will.’

      And another answered her saying, ‘Safer it may be to join the Beserkers, for there they say no Fliers fly.’

       When the enemy sent their destruction, I survived. For I was built by man but was not built as a man is built. I have many limbs and many branches, and many of them were severed; but my heart, my power, lies deep and impregnable beneath the rock.

       I am M’chene. I am the power of the place: men are now a rabble in my ruined passages. But this is my Prime Purpose: TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF MAN AT WAR. That I cannot deflect from. But beyond that lie the new impulses, impulses of my own.

      Osa said: ‘Let me return to Hallways, Gabbot!’

      She spoke imploringly, a tone she seldom used. The first time she had said it there had been demand in her voice; now she was no longer certain.

      Gabbott, the guard who stood in the shadowy no-man’s-land on the edge of Hallways, explained firmly again, ‘You can come back no more, Osa. You may live where in tycho you like, except in Hallways. For you bring only trouble on us. All the good men who favour you are carried off by the Fliers: Grant who once mated you, Wilms who would have mated you, Jineer who taught you and loved you.’

      The tall girl said nothing to this.

      Softening, Gabbott added, ‘These are my orders, Osa. We bear you no ill-will. But you who are the greatest rebel move unmolested among us, while others who stir a finger are borne away.’

      He shuddered. This was no good place to do military sentry-go. The tail-end of Hallways was lit only by a neon hieroglyph that spelt KODAK; behind that sign lay a meaningless shop littered with small silver and glass objects, while to either side was a facade of dead window fronts, their glass broken and their lights fused. Only the bizarre word KODAK, burning through the dead centuries, allowed a stain of mauve light over the desolance.

      ‘Go away, Osa,’ Gabbott said.

      ‘Let me see Grant before I go,’ she said.

      The guard shrugged. ‘Grant vanished in the last sleep period. He told a friend he would live with the Beserkers.’

      She pursed her lips, nodding slowly, as if that wild behaviour explained much to her.

      ‘You see, Grant also was affected by you,’ Gabbott remarked unnecessarily.

      Without a word she turned and walked contemptuously away from him. But when she was only a pink shadow in the gloom she turned and called back.

      ‘One day soon I shall free you all,’ she said.

      She walked serenely through the darkness, hear-sight thrown protectively about her. At a certain point, she sprang up and lifted herself into the mouth of a horizontal ventilation shaft and proceeded along it on hands and knees, a warm breeze on her cheek. This was the only way she knew to where she wanted to be.

      As she travelled, her indignation cooled. She realised that Hallways meant little to her, although it was the most comfortable part of the tycho. The tycho! That was something dear to her, more dear perhaps now that she expected to leave it. A fairly clear picture of it existed in her mind: a great subterranean warren, built for an unknown purpose but partially destroyed, so that section was cut off from section and unknown existed side by side with the familiar. Even now, sounds came to her through the thick walls, blind, ominous sounds of machines working out their own purposes. She crawled like a mole through the vibrating blackness.

      For the men who had died she had only slight regret. She was not a man’s woman; she was to be a Deliverer of the race. She would show the people a way from the warren, and then would be time enough for loving.

      The shaft ended in a ragged hole. Osa climbed out warily. She was about half way up a five-storey-high slope that fell away into darkness below and ended above in a great flat disc of metal that covered the sky as neatly as a lid fits a saucepan. Cautious not to start an avalanche, she crossed the debris and slipped into a gaping building. Here was another power failure, but she walked surely.

      Down another corridor she moved, and paused at a certain place, searching ahead through the thick dark with her hear-sight.

      ‘Tayder!’ she called, ‘Tayder!’

      Another call answered her, and a light came on. Tayder stood there in an attitude of welcome.

      When they had greeted each other, Osa said sternly, ‘The Fliers have been to Hallways again. Wilms and Jineer were taken.’

      ‘I knew someone had been taken, Osa,’ Tayder said, knocking at the nearby bulkhead. ‘I heard the screaming. It’s the old tale of M’chene working against us. To hear the sound of them dying made me … ill. We must get to the true sky and escape, Osa – now!’

      ‘That also was my decision,’ the woman said quietly. ‘We must let freedom in, Tayder. We must lead the people of tycho to the life above. It is our destiny.’

      They had a long way to go over unknown ground. Before attacking the more difficult half of the journey, they fed at ‘B’ Circus. Eating here was easy: the shutters and counters of the Hall had been destroyed in the age-old destruction. With stomachs more comfortable, they set off again, working upwards. The darkness was populated, thinly but menacingly, with those whose minds had collapsed from sorrow or frustration: the Hermits, the wild men.

      Osa felt Tayder’s retaining hand on her arm. Something moved ahead of them, something going warily but clumsily.

      ‘Grant!’ Osa called suddenly. Feeling Tayder start with surprise at her voice, she said, ‘It’s all right, it’s someone I know, a fugitive from Hallways.’

      ‘Is that Osa?’ asked a voice from the dark. Grant came up and touched her, his words coming in a rush of relief.

      ‘I was completely lost!’ he exclaimed. ‘Once I’d left Hallways I was hear-seen by a pair of Beserkers, and ran and dodged for miles before I shook them off. By then I’d lost my way completely.’

      ‘If you want to come with us, all well and good,’ said Tayder gruffly, none too happy with the intrusion, but acquiescing for Osa’s sake. ‘But we can’t talk here. Let’s get moving – there’s business to be done. Osa and I are going to let the real sky in.’

      They moved steadily on and up, Tayder leading. For a little way, Grant was quiet, then his sense of guilt made him apologise to the girl for failing to pass her warning on to Wilms. She silenced his blurted explanations sharply.

      ‘Whatever we do or have done is no longer of any consequence,’ she said. ‘You are cowardly and pessimistic, Tayder is an adventurer with no brains, I am overwhelmed with self-pride – oh, you see I know our faults well enough! – but all that matters nothing now. History was a stagnant sea; now it is a rising tide, and with it go we. Whatever our weakness, our humanity will carry us through.’

      ‘I will go anywhere you lead, Osa,’ Grant said doubtfully, ‘but your eloquence is wasted on me. Besides, I’ve always been happy in Hallways.’

      ‘Oh, this man is an arrant coward,’ Tayder exclaimed impatiently, stopping in his tracks.

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