Collected Fiction, page 715
And Alan stood alone in the golden cavern . . .
SIR COLIN’S heavy footsteps hurrying down the ramp broke the trance a little and Alan turned an unseeing face toward him. His mind was still too stunned to accept what had just happened. He stood in dumb incredulity, seeing the blaze burn on, radiant and powerful.
“God!” breathed Sir Colin softly. His face was drained of color. He must have seen enough to understand what had happened.
Then something flickered beyond Sir Colin’s head, and Alan stirred a little in his daze. He could look up the length of the tunnel from here, seeing a circle of Carcasilla framed in the opening, Flande’s tower shining in its center. And he could see something else—something that shimmered and swirled like blindness at the tunnel’s threshold.
“Sir Colin,” he said, in a voice that did not sound like his own. “Sir Colin! The—the Alien’s come!”
The Scotsman’s eyes shifted blankly from the Source’s blaze to meet Alan’s look. The bony shoulders moved in a shiver, and Sir Colin drew a long, shaken breath.
“Ah-h,” he said, and his voice was strange, too. “The Alien. And we canna run any farther now. Mike may ha’ been luckier than we.” He turned. “Aye, I see it. But look, laddie! It isna’ cornin’ in! I wonder—”
Alan looked, steeling himself to face the sight of that robed and terrible shape. It stood hesitating in the tunnel mouth, moving forward a little, then moving back, almost as if it were afraid.
“Could it be the Source it fears?” Sir Colin wondered aloud. “I doubt it. The Aliens themselves must ha’ brought the Source here. I’d say it’s much more dangerous to us than to—It. Poor Mike—”
“Forget about Mike now,” Alan said shortly. “Later we can think about that. Now—”
“Ye’re right, laddie.” Sir Colin’s shoulders squared. His voice was coming alive again, now that he had a problem to solve—and solve quickly. “There must be a reason it’s hesitating—there must! But I canna think it’s the Source. Och, if I only had more time! That Source! With it, I think we could defy even the Alien, there. But we’ll need shields and tools. That thing in the fire’s too much for the like of us, barehanded. There’s a core of something in that basin. God, if we had the time! But that thing out there—”
“It’s coming,” Alan told him in a level voice, looking up. The tall shimmer of blindness was stooping down the passage toward them now. Hesitating, peering at them without eyes, retreating a pace or two—then coming on with that terrible, unearthly grace to devour them.
“It’s afraid,” Sir Colin said behind him in a quiet voice. “Something about us worries it. Now what? What?”
There was something in that calm question that made Alan rally even in this moment of hopelessness. How great a man this was, who could speak so coolly while death marched down upon him! Sir Colin, knowing himself the helpless prey of a being that had already wiped earth nearly clean of human life, could reason quietly as he watched death come stooping down the tunnel toward him.
“It’s weakened, you know,” Sir Colin murmured, squinting up at the shimmer in the tunnel. “It’s starving. Perhaps it’s weaker than we think. It’s growing more desperate—and yet warier, at the same time. Now what—why—”
“Got it!” said Alan, and sudden hope made his voice shake. “The gun! The noise! Don’t you remember?”
“It’s afraid of sound, aye. But what good will—”
“This cavern isn’t so big. Fire a gun here and—you think it can reason that well? Does it know what echoes gunfire would raise? I know how it drew back and vibrated and waited when you fired at it by the gateway.”
Sir Colin’s eyes were squinted under the tufted red brows. “I’m getting it. The Alien’s a thing of energy, a matrix of electronic forces, perhaps, held in a certain rigid balance. Vibration upsets the balance. Aye—the concussion of gunfire might hurt the thing enough. But it’ll only run back and wait for us at the tunnel mouth, where the echoes wouldn’t be so loud.”
“You think the concussion might actually disable it, if we could hold it here in the tunnel?”
“There’s a chance, laddie. The thing’s afraid of something. It may be that. But we canna hold it. I’ve thought of everything under the sun—” He laughed. “I’ve even thought of bathing in the corona back there and turning demigod like Flande. But Flande was domned afraid o’ the Alien, too, ye’ll remember. So that’s no help, except—” He looked down at his gun.
“I can hold the Alien,” Alan said. He spoke so softly that he had to repeat it before Sir Colin heard. Then the keen little eyes under the red brows pierced at him like needles. The Scotsman shook his head slowly, lips compressed. “Ye canna mean that, laddie. The Source and the fire are a better choice than that. Or—” He glance down again at his gun.
“It’s a chance,” Alan said stubbornly. “It’s worth the risk. We can’t lose more than our lives. I’d rather burn like Mike and Flande, if there were no hope. But there is! Listen now. The thing out there’s dying of hunger. Give a starving man food and he’ll hang onto it even if you use a whip on him. I saw that done once, in the Sahara, by Bedouins. And—well, this time I’m the entree. The whole damned course. But the Alien will have to pay for what he gets!”
“No, laddie. No!”
“Don’t forget, the Alien’s been in my mind before. I fought him off, with your help. Maybe we can do it again. Don’t argue. Get your gun out!” He spun toward the passage where that shape of terror burned white and black, wavering toward them in its blindness. “This is it!” Alan said. “I’ll be right back. Get ready!”
He ran up the tunnel with long, easy paces—not giving himself time to think. Feeling was frozen in him now and must remain frozen until—until the Alien was destroyed.
The thing towering up the tunnel before him stooped, suddenly, in his direction, a shape of blindness he could not focus upon. Blinding light and blinding dark, breathing out hunger in monstrous, tangible waves. It moved one long stride forward, its robes of light and darkness swirling against its limbs.
Alan did not even see it move as it cleared the space between them. One second it was stooping toward him, tall against the outlines of Carcasilla. Then in an avid leap it seemed grow to gargantuan size, hovering above him, folding down in a canopy of blindness.
Smothering, in an embrace so engulfing that he could not see nor feel nor think, there was awareness of those terrible gutting fingers that thrust down into his mind and soul, shaking with eagerness in their ravenous need.
And he knew in that moment that he was lost.
CHAPTER VI
HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED CITADEL
SUCH power swirled and slavered around Alan as he had never dreamed existed. The Alien had not exerted its full strength in their meeting by the gateway. It was a strength as great in its way as the sun-blaze of the fountain’s source, and he could not hope to match it with any power he possessed. This was a being from beyond the stars, a being whose race had swept man like vermin from the earth. Fighting it was like defying the lightning.
He could not do it. He had misjudged himself and his adversary, and he was lost. Sir Colin was lost, and the Terasi, and all mankind. The consuming blaze of the Source would have been an easier way to die. Or Sir Colin’s gun.
Crashing thunder bellowed all around him. Gunfire doubled and redoubled in echoes that rolled along the wails. And the Allen, shaken by the impact, relaxed its thrusting fingers for an instant. Briefly, sight returned to Alan. He felt a shudder go rippling through the force that held him. For a timeless moment as he felt it withdraw, he watched emotionlessly the course of Sir Colin’s bullet. A soaring bridge crashed tingling into ruins. A bubble dome flew into rainbow fragments. And he saw the stairway spiraling upward toward Flande’s tower spring into sudden vibration that shook the whole precarious structure until it blurred. Distant sound of It rang thinly in his ears. He saw the spiral shatter as slowly as a dream, saw the great streaming tower begin to topple.
Blindness closed down on him again, in one monstrous swooping rush. And there was anger in the violence now—a cold, iron anger as inhuman as the stars, as if the Alien understood what had happened, and why.
Hopelessly Alan stiffened against the force of the ravenous desire that whirled to a focus upon him again, boring down into his consciousness with irresistible fingers. In the one corner of his mind that was still his own, he remembered that he must somehow drag this cyclone of terrible power back down the tunnel. A man dragging a typhoon would be no less impossible. Even if that man had the full power of his own will—and Alan’s will was going.
He could feel it falter. And dimly, from a source without, as if he were two awarenesses at once, he could feel curiously strengthened. It was as if a hollow within him had begun to fill.
Rage shook him—a curious, icy, inhuman rage, its cold flame turned upon the little human creatures who were fighting to deny their meaningless lives that had no purpose except to fill his need. His need. His burning, insatiable desire. He must hurry quickly, quickly out of this tunnel where that agonizing vibration could shake him to the heart. But agony or no, he would not give up now. Not with consummation so close in his embrace.
Blinding rainbows of pain shot out around him, through him, like widening circles of fire. There was noise, concussion. Unbearable weakness for a moment loosened every synapse in his being.
Through dark veils Alan saw the tunnel sloping down toward that corona of brilliance. Sir Colin, dark against it, leaned peering forward, gun poised, face contorted painfully with strain and terror. For one instant their eyes met. For one instant Alan was himself. He heard the echoes of the gunfire go rolling along the corridor, heard a faraway, musical tinkling and knew it for the destruction of Carcasilla. With a sudden, intolerable vividness he remembered Evaya, and he knew that he had lost.
They dare! They dare to threaten me, of the mighty race of—The name had no meaning even in Alan’s altered mind. He had not known until that unspeakable name sounded there that the Alien had taken possession again. But it didn’t matter now. He had lost, and he knew it, and the luxury, the bliss of surrender, was creeping warmly along his limbs. Not to fight any longer. Give up the hopeless struggle and let this strange beauty go flooding throughout his brain. This exquisite joy was too great for any human creature to sustain. This passion of hunger must be sated. A thousand years of hunger to be fed in one monstrous draught.
Time stood still, paused, and poised for that draught.
And then—thunder again, and the rainbows of colored agony went raying out around him, colors never seen on earth, spreading circles of pain that loosened the brain in his skull. The veils of darkness withdrew again as the Alien shuddered and retreated. Alan was aware very dimly that the golden tunnel lay before him.
But he did not see it. He hung submissive in the Alien’s grasp. He knew that Sir Colin was staring up the slope at him, gun lifted, eyes seeking his eyes. He knew when the look of shaken horror dawned upon the old man’s face—not horror at defeat, but a deeper revulsion at what Sir Colin saw . . .
He did not care. He no longer had any capacity to care for anything. He waited for the Alien’s return.
And then something stirred far back in his mind, in that corner of the brain which had been the last awareness to go, and now was the first to return.
“Kill It. Kill it. Kill it.” Mike Smith was saying, over, and over, in his unmistakable voice.
Alan knew that he was mad. It didn’t matter. He did not heed the voices even when Flande’s familiar, weary tones spoke above Mike’s monotonous chant.
“Yes, you must kill it,” said Flande, calmly and sounded far away, though he spoke in the center of Alan’s brain. “You must kill it, or I shall never know peace from this savage that is crying for revenge.”
A VAGUE point of curiosity quivered in Alan’s relaxed mind. He knew they were dead. He had watched them die, long ago and far away.
“What does it matter?” he asked them voicelessly. “Who cares now?”
“I care!” Mike Smith’s cry shook the silence.
And Flande said, “For myself, I would not care. I would not lift a finger to help if it meant the lives of all mankind. It does mean that. But I have passed too far beyond to care. If it were not for this—this thing bound up with me, because we were transmuted together, I would never speak again. But in this one question he is stronger than I.”
“How?” Alan asked incuriously. It didn’t matter. He waited only for the Alien to return.
“He was transmuted with one strong desire in his mind,” Flande said wearily. “So strong it supersedes all else. The Light-Wearer must die or he will never be still and I shall never know the peace I need. I can crush him out like a candleflame, swallow him up in my own glory, once his desire is sated. But until then—”
Darkness and silence closed down about Alan in one monstrous swoop, a silently roaring vortex of hunger. Anger shook in the depths of it, and scorn. For a moment it stilled the voices in his brain. But then, far back, a point of light began to struggle through the darkness. A sun-circle of light ringed by a corona, and against its burning heart, a double shadow flickering.
Flande said, “Fight it now. Fight it, do you hear! I will help you because I must.” Below his words and running through them Mike’s voice cried without inflection, “Kill it. Kill it. Kill it, Drake. Kill it.” On and on.
Slowly, reluctantly, Alan felt strength flow back into his stilled mind. He did not want it. He fought against its coming. But Flande was Inexorable. And Flande had a power drawn from some inexhaustible source. He was neither man or god now. He flamed in Alan’s mind—a stellar nova, a newborn sun. Alan felt strength pouring irresistibly through his brain. He felt closed doors fly open before that shining flood.
Gunfire thundered all around him, its echoes rolling and redoubling until the world shook with sound. But this time it was not pain. The Alien no longer dwelt in the heart and center of his being. When it withdrew now, shaken and shuddering with the concussion, he blinked unseeing eyes that did not care what they looked upon. But the eyes and the brain behind them were his own again.
This time he was outside the Alien; he would be a stubborn, motionless core about which that vortex would beat in vain when it returned. He knew that passionlessly, not caring.
And the Alien knew it, too. It came back with a suddenness like a tornado’s swoop, howling soundlessly with its rage and its ravenous starvation. It was not beaten yet. It fought a double foe, but it had weapons still to fight with . . . weapons tempered for this new, shining enemy filling his victim with its strength.
Alan felt the universe whirl around him. The tunnel was no longer here. The world fell away beneath him. Vertigo more terrible than earthbound man has ever known shook him sickeningly as the ground beneath his feet failed him, and the swimming, impersonal depths of interstellar space spun past his watching eyes, streaked with whirling stars.
Flande shrank a little from the sight. A little. Not enough to matter. Flande had powers to tap now that made earth unnecessary. The Alien raved again with his iron-cold anger, and the deeps of space fell away.
Now they were spinning through the cities of flame, where monstrous citadels floated upon lakes like fire. Beings like the Alien went flashing through their streets, being unrobed in the light that had veiled them from human gaze.
Alan could not see them. By a strong exertion of his will he would not see them. But Flande saw and flinched. Flande still hung on. And the fight went raging on with Alan its voiceless center, the vessel for Flande’s dogged strength.
Gunfire again. The Alien gathered itself, shivering, and withdrew. Alan was blind to the tunnel now. He could see nothing but that great corona of light with Flande’s image blazoned black upon its surface.
When the Alien came spinning and roaring back, Alan sensed somewhere within its vortex the violence of dawning despair. A subtle weakening of its purpose. But a determination, too, as it dredged up the last terrible power from the bottomless hunger of its being. And the battle took up once more around him.
He did not see the sights that Flande must look upon as the Alien dragged them both reeling through the corridors of its memory. They were sights perceptible only to senses no human owns. That alone saved Alan. If he had seen what Flande saw . . . But he hung motionless in the heart of the vortex, waiting. Waiting through another burst of gunfire that shook the Alien to its depths.
When it collapsed, the collapse came suddenly. Alan was shocked out of his inertia by the indescribable feeling of surrender in the great tornado that still enveloped him. That terrible, inhuman cyclone had drained itself dry at last. It was running. It was beaten.
SO THE first of its great race to land upon earth, and the last of that race to live upon earth, knew that it had come to its defeat, its glorious, star-born destiny unfulfilled. And a terrible sorrow shook through the blindness that gripped Alan. He shared the inhuman grieving of this last of the mighty race whose name mankind would never know—a race with power too vast for man to conceive, with beauty too blinding for man to look upon, with evil grace that struck terror to man’s very soul whenever he was obliged to confront it.
In its dying, it fled flashing and shinning under-earth, back to the citadel its great kinsmen had reared upon this alien planet. Alan saw it go. He saw the citadel lifting mighty symmetries against the alien moon, doorless, enigmatic, drinking in the pale light of earth.
The citadel had no entrance. But the Allen entered it, and briefly—for the flash of a remembrance—Alan entered, too.
Long ago he had wondered what great halls and mighty, vaulted corridors lay within. He knew now. It had no halls. It had no rooms. The citadel was a solid mass from wall to wall as far as human senses could perceive.
