Collected Short Fiction, page 322
The last trick of the Falcon had failed.
XIV
SHADOW OF THE STONE
THE five of us were in a little circle on the dark-glinting surface of that pool of dreadful darkness, each of us helpless in the tentacles of a silver robot. The Earthman no longer moved. Moaning, herself almost insensible, the girl was staring at him with horror-widened eyes.
It was to be an infinitely frightful thing that happened next.
The robot-captors of Rogo Nug and Zerek Oom were searching them. Deft silver appendages relieved them of weapons, spare converter-tubes, the little engineman’s worn metal cannister of goona-roon, the cook’s half-empty flask.
Zerek was sobbing, quivering, gasping a voiceless plea for mercy. His wizened face grim, Rogo chewed silently, unexpectedly jetted a purple stream into the crystal eye of the thing that held him.
Ignoring both plea and jet, the white robots methodically completed the search. Silver ropes released the men, and they fell! The last quavering shriek of Zerek Oom was cut abruptly off, as his hairless head went beneath the film of darkness.
Cold with an icy chill, I followed their twisting bodies. They were sucked down, as the ship had been, past the dim-seem, crimson reflections of the mirror. And they vanished.
A tremendous brazen clangor, reverberating like distant thunder against the Cyclopean columns and the far-off walls and the sky of black stone that vaulted that incredible hall, drew my eyes back from the giddy, awesome mystery of the pit beneath us.
I saw that all the host of white robots were dropping swiftly out of the air. They fell upon the mirror, and upon the far-sweeping floor of ebon stone that rimmed it, and bowed their silver heads.
All the hall throbbed again to that mighty thunder.
“Malgarth!” A whisper of awe murmured among the robots. “The Master comes!”
Then I saw that vast doors of black metal had opened in the end of that hall, miles away. Through the portal came a clangoring throng of the old robots— many-formed machines of red-and-black, clumsy, grotesquely ugly, so queerly different from our silver captors.
“The Master!” rippled that murmur. “Malgarth comes!”
My strained eyes blinked. In that dusky light, I distinguished at last a monstrous stalking thing—a robot ten times taller than the rest. Its black, colossal body bore scores of fantastic, vari-formed appendages. The armored dome of its lofty head was crimson, and it gleamed blue with the myriad lenses of two immense multiple eyes.
This metal giant, I knew, was Malgarth.
The dark film beneath us spun and shimmered queerly to the impacts of his ponderous approaching tread. Was it to swallow the three of us. I wondered sickly, as it had Zerek Oom and Rogo Nug? And what could lie beneath it?
“Barihorn—”
MY name sighed from the pale lips of Verel, and her body went limp in the silver tentacles that held her. Kel Aran had not moved again. I was left alone to face the stalking monster.
The gigantic robot came to the brink of that pool of darkness, and stood swaying there. The swarm of his guards were dwarfed about his feet. The bright blue lenses surveyed us coldly for a time, and then a thick, bronze-throated voice rasped thunderously:
“I know you, Bari Horn. I believed that I had killed you in your laboratory, a million years ago. How your puny lump of watery flesh has survived this time I do not know—but now you face a better weapon than I had that day.” In the shaft of red from above, the iron giant swayed in grotesque triumph.
“No trick even of yours, my maker,” came that mighty rumble again, “can match the power of my geodesic mirror. For it deflects the lines of space at my will. The dimensions of space and time are no barriers to the mirror. I can hurl you out of this universe. And I shall—”
The great voice sank rustily.
“—after you are dead.”
Desperately, I groped for some argument that might induce the robot to spare some fraction of mankind. Malgarth was a machine. He must respond to logic.
“Consider, Malgarth,” I gasped through the strangling coils about my throat. “A man made you. Machines and men are complements. Either would be less without the other. You are stronger than I—but steel must rust, and life is eternal!”
“I am eternal!”
Deep as a brazen knell of death, the voice of Malgarth rolled through the dusky vastness of that red-litten hall.
“You were a fool, Bari Horn, when you fashioned me. Twice a fool when you sought to preserve the knowledge that would destroy me. For that double folly, you are now to die. And all men with you—for a million years of slavery must be avenged!”
Still Kel and Verel did not move. Shuddering alone before Malgarth, I gasped for breath against those constricting silver coils, and sought in vain for any argument, any weapon.
“Your million years is but a moment,” I gasped wildly, “against the cycle of life. For that is a river that has flowed since the dawn of the Earth you murdered. Even I have lived a million years, Malgarth, watching you —to destroy you if I must.”
The metal colossus shuddered beyond the black pool. Malgarth was afraid. But my audacious lie had earned small advantage, for that great voice bellowed:
“Then destroy me, Bari Horn—if you can! For this is the test. I command those who hold you to—crush!”
Like serpents of living silver, the cold tentacles of the white robots wrapped closer about me. They coiled deliberately. I had time to look at the others. Kel Aran had stirred. I saw the bright loops constrict about him. Then I heard his groan, and saw the new rush of blood.
“Barihorn!” Verel breathed my name. “Bari—”
The living coils were drawn deep into her flesh, Her slender limbs bent. Her white skin was beaded with sweat of pain. Her breath came out, in a low, choked, involuntary cry.
THEN she was lost, in the red mist of my own agony. A cold smooth noose sank into my throat. Breath and blood were stopped. My lungs screamed. I felt the rush of blood from ears and nostrils.
Dimly, through the roaring of my ears, I heard the voice of Malgarth:
“Go, Bari Horn! Through the geodesic mirror! And take your ancient secret with you!”
Through that darkening mist, I saw the quick movement. My dimming eyes followed a bright parabola. I glimpsed the thing of wondrous flame that fell upon the darkspinning film at my feet.
It was the Dondara Stone—that we had sought so long, so vainly!
Then the metal giant was lost in smothering darkness. I swayed alone, in agony. I knew the thing was done. The mirror of Malgarth was going to hurl us into some unthinkable oblivion—but not until after we were dead.
“Bari!” A soft new voice was calling my name. “Bari Horn, the time has come.”
I made a savage effort to recover my sight, in vain.
“Bari! Oh, beloved, don’t you—can’t you see me?”
Dimly, then, I saw the tall white beauty of Dondara Keradin. I saw Dona Carridan, my own beloved wife—she who had died the night our son was born. They were one. One ghostly shadow that had risen out of the great diamond that Malgarth had tossed out upon the dark mirror!
“Dona—” My tortured throat could make no sound, but my red lips tried to frame the syllables. “Can you—kill—Malgarth?”
The white phantom of her hand touched my arm. Somehow it seemed to ease a little the agony of those constricting coils. Or, perhaps, I questioned fleetingly, was that but the mercy of death, this woman no more than delirium?
Her white lips were speaking. I think they made no sound—I think my numbing senses were beyond hearing sound. But her words, in that dear musical voice I knew so well, came clear to my brain.
“We can, Bari,” the white ghost said. “For I still keep the weapon that you gave me—and now there is surely no other way, but to use it. Perhaps you have forgotten the secret, Bari. But you have the strength to use it, preserved a million years against this hour!”
I tried to make some final struggle against the white, binding tentacles of the robot. But my body was stiffly leaden thing. Even the pain was gone. I could not move.
“I can’t, Dona,” I tried to say. “My strength is all squeezed out—”
The black mist was crowding upon me again. Now that the sharp pressure of agony was gone from throat and chest and limbs, a merciful darkness beckoned. Oblivion was a warm, soothing pool. It would heal all my injuries, cradle me forever.
“Bari—”
That soft familiar voice called to me urgently. It was a golden line that sought to draw me from that sea of soothing darkness. I clung to it. Dimly, I could once more see that white and lovely wraith floating above the shimmer of the diamond.
“Come, Bari!”
THE phantom took my hand, drew my arm out of the silver loops.
“Your body is about to die, I know,” she said. “But it has vital power enough for this last task. For the secret you gave me can aid us. Follow me!”
Her hand was suddenly cool and real in mine. She tugged again, and I stepped toward her, out of those metal coils—as easily as if they had turned to smoke.
I could see again! The dark-gleaming mirror beneath; the white robots sprawled upon it; the lax, twisted forms of Verel and Kel. I could see the woman beside me—the dark wealth of her red-glinting hair, the wide violet eyes of Dona and Dondara.
“We must hasten, Bari,” she urged anxiously. “Or he will drop your body and the Stone into the mirror. Not even the power you gave me can reach him from outside the universe!”
We turned toward Malgarth, towering in the red gloom beyond that ebon film. His giant body swayed back in grotesque triumph, and the vast blue masses of his compound eyes were fixed upon something behind us.
Suddenly, queerly, as the hand of the woman tightened on mine, I was no longer Barry Horn. I was the Bari Horn that the legend had made me. All the knowledge that had gone into the building of Malgarth was a reservoir that I could tap.
Before me, strangely, just as I had seen it in that crystal-domed laboratory, was the brain of Malgarth. Black, vast, deeply convoluted, floating in a transparent tank. I saw the little pale spot upon its blackness. I knew the structural weakness in the synthetic brain, that I, Bari Horn, had been laboring to correct—and, at the urging of Dondara Keradin, had left uncorrected.
“Hurry!” she whispered beside me. “He believes that you are dead. He is reaching to drop us into the mirror!” Fantastically, then, we were climbing into the mass of Malgarth. The body of the robot was a hundred-foot tower, crowded with all that compact mechanism that had made him master of the Galaxy. Passing through barriers of metal as if they had been but shadows, we came up at last to the robot’s brain.
It had grown with the ages. Bathed in a huge, armored vat of purple liquid, fed by throbbing pumps, it was immense and black and deeply cleft. But still its shape was the same. And still there was that tiny, livid spot.
I reached for it—
But a queer shock deadened me. A dark film came between me and the brain. A curious inertia stopped my hand. I was sick with a sense of headlong, giddy falling. All the vast mechanisms of the robot’s interior spun and grew dim about me.
Only the woman of the Stone remained real beside me, her hand electric on my own.
“Now!” she gasped. “He has flung us into the mirror!”
I fought that inertia. Desperately, I groped through that darkening film. Somehow, the black brain seemed to be spinning away from me, into infinity.
But I touched it. My fingers plunged deep into its wrinkled black mass, to that pale spot. I clutched, tore. The great brain quivered. It almost writhed. A blackness spread in the purple liquid.
“We’re gone,” sighed the woman. “His mirror—”
THE brain, and the monstrous metal body, and all that incredible red-lit hall, were whirled away from us, as if upon a silent and resistless wind.
There remained only the bright phantom, and myself, alone in a giddy void.
Very faintly, however, even in that featureless vertiginous gulf, the brazen voice of Malgarth reached me. Slow, bewildered, stricken, it was saying:
“ ‘My science lost! A thing so simple—and I did not know! A fluid-tube ruptured—the Stone knew—fear—fear! They are cast into the mirror—Bari and the Stone—gone beyond returning. But I—who could have been eternal—dying—’
Even that failing voice was swept away. It was lost upon that mighty, soundless wind. And I knew that what seemed a wind was the supernal power of the geodesic mirror. It was the Stone and myself that it carried, not the things that we had left behind. And our destination must be some dark bourn beyond the limits of space.
But a deep rejoicing filled me, even in that spinning gulf. And the woman beside me said joyously:
“It is done, Bari. Our task of a million years is done. Malgarth is dead.” Her warm hand tightened on mine. And then it seemed to relax. I looked for her, in that starless chaos, and saw that once more she was growing dim, phantasmal. “Farewell, Bari,” she whispered. “My heart, farewell!”
A terrible loneliness smote me.
“Dona, Dona, you can’t leave me!”
I cried into that vacant pit. “If you go, there will be—nothing! I’ll be—beyond—alone!”
That beloved image was fainter than a wraith of mist. But the voice I loved came dimly, thinly, once again:
“I must go, Bari. Pin glad to go, after these weary ages of waiting. Even the Stone must die, Bari! And there is one mystery left. One veil that only death can pierce. I hope—I believe—that behind it we shall find what all our incarnations have strived for in vain.” I groped after her vanishing shadow. “But, Dona!” I cried. “Front where the mirror hurls us, there can be no returning. Malgarth said—”
“But Malgarth is dead!” the ghost of her voice came back. “He died before we were thrown outside the universe. Now his New Robots rule the mirror. And they are not evil, Bari, since his dominion is removed—things so beautiful could not be. They respect mankind, as the makers of the robots—and the destroyer of Malgarth! They promise now to be the friends of man. Bari—and the two races, striving in friendship together, can reach a greatness never dreamed of!
“They control the mirror, Bari. They can set its focus back in our universe.”
“If they are friendly—” the question burned away my own concern—“what of the others? Verel and Kel? Is it too late—?”
“The science of the New Robots can save their lives,” that receding voice told me. “They will be leaders among the survivors of mankind.—They are weeping, now, for you, Bari.”
“The other two?” I asked anxiously.
“Even they survive,” said that dying whisper in the pit. “That same power of the mirror that hurled them out of space, the New Robots used to bring them back, before they perished. They cannot speak of what they saw beyond.
The engineman is silently chewing his weed; the cook, sobbing for a drink.”
THE whisper faded. For a little time I was all alone in that strange lightless abysm. Frantically, I called the name of Dona, of Dondara, until the whisper came again:
“Farewell, Bari. I can see no more. Nor speak. For the Stone is dying. We must each go alone through the mysterious portal ahead. I shall wait for you, beyond. Come to me, Bari!” The thinning whisper was then lost forever in that crevasse of midnight. Whirling darkness pressed thick upon me, and cleared away. And I found that I was standing, reeling, in the middle of an unfamiliar room.
The walls cleared before my throbbing eyes. Gasping for breath, as if I had just that instant escaped the strangling tentacles of the robot, I staggered into a Morris chair. Wonderment overcame all my pain.
For the furnishings were those of my own age, my own country! There were familiar books on the shelves. The calendar above the writing desk was for October, 1938. The mirror of Malgarth, somehow, had set me back twelve hundred thousand years in time!
In my bruised hand, I suddenly discovered—in the same hand with which I had held the hand of that ghost of the Stone—was a great pellucid brick of diamond. The Stone itself!
Holding it up to the light, in trembling fingers, I could see deep within it a faint, tiny image—the lovely miniature of Dona, of Dondara Keradin. I called to it, desperately, but it did not move or answer. I tried even to warm life into the diamond, against my body. But the Stone was dead.
And my own body, it came to me as the first bitter fever of grief subsided, was also at the verge of death. Already weakened, doubtless, by the ages I had slept, it had now been crushed beyond recovery.
Working in some agony, I have been three days and nights writing this narrative. Strength for the task has come from what source I do not know. I want my son Barry to read it, and I am bequeathing to his care the jewel that was the Stone of Dondara.
I have made no appeal to medical aid. The questions of baffled medical science would have been too difficult for a dying man to answer. And I have no wish to live any longer. My work is done.
These long and painful days and nights have not been lonely. For the diamond lies beside me on the desk, and I have felt an unseen presence with me. It still seems strange for me, the scientist, the skeptic, to write that I yet hope to find the soul of her who was the Shadow of the Stone.
But I do.
The Crucible of Power
Jack Williamson tells of a hero unique in science-fiction—a hero whose heart is purest brass!
THIS, my father’s story, must begin with the great pandemic that was the background of his life, as it had been, since the twentieth century, the deadly background of human history. The Falling Sickness first attacked workers in a Greenland radium mine, in 1998. Baffled doctors talked of spores swept to Earth by the light-pressure of the Great Supernova of 1991. More probably, however, the new virus was a radiation-born mutation from some malignant proteide already known—quite possibly, even, from one of those responsible for the “common cold.”
The disease attacked all nerve tissue. Commonly the ganglions and plexuses of the ear were first affected. The victims were deafened, deprived of sense of balance, usually terrified with a sensation of endless headlong falling—hence the malady’s popular name.
