Collected Short Fiction, page 721
‘What are we finding out?’ Fighting his dread of the dive, Max came back to that monstrous riddle. ‘What is Atlas?’
‘Ask the orbiter.’ Komatsu nodded toward the dark sky. ‘All we do is report the instrument readings, which never make much sense, if you want to believe the seismographs, there’s half a mile of ice or rock or radioactive dust spread over a thin shell of something else, maybe matter in some new state, with nothing underneath.’
Komatsu waved at a yellow wind-sock.
‘Just watch that, kid. We get the worst weather in the Universe. Hot winds off the desert. Blizzards off the ice. Tornados two hundred miles tall. When the big winds hit, better hang on. Enson didn’t.’
He said no more about the dive. On watch with him, Max hammered pitons into the ice to anchor the ropes to a new seismic station. On watch with Marutiak, he put on heavy radiation armour and strung new rope across the desert to reach and test a low cone of grey-glowing dust. Atlas still kept its big secret.
Suddenly, now, Max was breathing again. The bellow of the twisting winds had died, long ago. He knew he had been unconscious, and he wondered where the storm had dropped him. He felt surprised to be alive.
The stiff shelter fabric was still rolled around him, but not quite so tightly. Cramped and numb at first, he squirmed and wriggled, twisted and crawled, until he could look out. What he saw jolted him cruelly.
The tornado hadn’t dropped him anywhere. It had left him high; he was afraid to guess how high. The mountain ridge had become a fine dark line far beneath, dividing rust-red desert and dull blue ice. He was alone in the eerie sky of Atlas.
‘Spaceman . . .’ Only a hoarse whisper came when he tried to speak into the voice-pack. He shut his eyes against the terrible emptiness under him, and tried again. ‘Spaceman Mayfield to Orbiter.’
‘Orbiter recording.’ Dr Krim’s duplicated voice boomed instantly into that high silence, human and anxious. ‘We had lost contact. Please report.’
‘You won’t believe it. A tornado has thrown me into the sky’.
‘Atlas is always surprising. Just tell us what you see.’
‘Not much. The ice—flat and dark and endless. The desert—just as endless. And there—the storm!’
The funnel was a thick reddish snake writhing out of a boiling cloud, dragging across the red-and-grey desert. Still watching it, he began to feel cold air rushing up around him. He looked for the fabric scrap the wind had wrapped about him and found it high above, already left behind.
‘I . . . I’m falling!’ Terror gripped his throat. ‘A hundred miles . . . it’s a hundred miles down!’
‘We’re very lucky, if you can see anything from that elevation.’ The copied voice turned happy. ‘Evidently the storm has lifted the clouds. You have a rare chance to see what Atlas is.’
The wind of his fall felt colder on his face, and fear of it froze him. His teeth chattered. But he tried to remember his training, tried to remember Komatsu’s polite brown grin, tried to fight that terror.
Moving hands and arms against the rush of air, he learned to guide himself. A naked human aircraft, he tipped himself into a slow spiral above the bare flatness of ice and ash-like dust. At last, as the storm moved on, he found something it had hidden.
‘A city!’ he shouted into the voice-pack. ‘The ridge where we camped leads into it like a road. Wait 11 think it is a road—two miles wide! The buildings—they must have been as high as I am now. Great queer shapes. All ruined. Broken. Falling. Black with fire—or maybe time. Because the city’s old. Old . . . old and dead!’
He stopped to stare at its desolate wonder.
‘Go on! Describe what you see.’
But that blackened, shattered city was too huge and old and strange for any words of his. Dr Krim’s bearded face had come into his shaken mind, and now he recalled the human linguist reciting Robert Frost. Two haunting lines came back:
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
Atlas, he thought, had somehow ended in both.
‘Mayfield!’ the pack kept booming. ‘Tell what else you see.’
‘Nothing.’ His first excitement had begun to die. ‘I’m too far off, and the clouds are sinking again. The tower-tops are already hazy. Sorry I can’t see more.’
The pack went dead, thumped on again.
‘Mayfield, what you’ve seen may be the final clue we needed.’ The copied voice had a sudden human heartiness. ‘Congratulations! The survey director says your report confirms his best theory. Atlas is an artificial object, designed and built by high intelligence.’
‘Who could build a world . . .?’ The notion jarred him. ‘A world the size of Atlas?’
‘We don’t know yet.’ The voice drummed fast. ‘But natural planets are not efficient as dwellings for life They catch too little sunlight. They expose too little surface for unit of mass. The director thinks that Atlas is the matter from a system of planets, rebuilt into a hollow shell, maybe only a mile or so thick. The job took engineering know-how we can barely begin to imagine. But it gave the builders a million times more living space.’
‘They aren’t living now.’ Max looked at the dull clouds rolling back to cover that lost, gigantic city. ‘I think . . . I know they’re dead.’
‘The director believes their energy ran out. The ice you see covers most of Atlas. The ash-like stuff is probably waste from the old nuclear power plants. We can’t be sure, till we make more landings.’
The pack thumped off and on.
‘The shuttle will be returning at once, to rescue survivors. If you’re at the camp, you’ll be picked up.’
‘I’ll be there—if I can find the camp.’
The voice from the disk was still Dr Krim’s, but somehow not quite human. ‘If you fail. Spaceman Mayfield, the director wants you to know that you have earned our gratitude.’
The pack went off again, and he banked his shivering body into a slow circle above dark ice and dull dust. He couldn’t find the camp. When he looked again for that dead city, it was gone. The rising wind grew colder. His face felt leather-stiff, and tears began to blur his vision. His spread arms grew numb and clumsy. He had trouble controlling his glide.
Yet one spark of triumph glowed in his mind. Even if he died here, Atlas hadn’t really been too tough to crack. Even its huge size had turned out to be a sham. It was hollow, just a sort of cosmic bubble.
He nursed that warming thought, to keep himself alive. The glide down took a long time. Shreds of cloud began to form beneath him, hiding ice and dust. His last hopes began to freeze. He wanted to quit trying . . .
But then, beside that endless ridge that once had been a road, he saw a small, bright glint. He dived toward it, into the freezing wind that came off the ice. The ancient road grew wider, wider, until at last he made out the web of yellow ropes—and two tiny spider-figures, waving at him.
From a hundred miles up, he dived into the clear blue pool. To his numb skin, it felt almost warm. He paddled stiffly to the edge, hauled at the guide-rope with both clumsy hands, slid up it toward the camp.
The pack thumped on again. The tornado had caught Komatsu and Marutiak out on the ice, Krim’s voice said. With the guide-ropes blown away, they’d had trouble getting back. But they were safe now, and the shuttle would be picking all three of them up.
‘Nice dive, kid!’ Komatsu was waiting with Marutiak at the top, and their happy hands helped him over the rim. ‘You’re OK.’
The Machines That Ate Too Much
The final, and the most exciting, novelet about Blacklantern, who here joins the Galactic agents known as Benefactors. Jack Williamson’s most recent book is The Early Williamson (see this month’s Books).
1.
He had been dozing through a long seminar on culture clash and cosmopolites when the signal ring stung his finger. The three quick tingles meant “Report to Benefactor Thornwall—now!”
Outside, he paused in the cool green hexangle to shake himself awake. Lean and straight and black, he stood there a moment, enjoying the clean bright plant scents of Xyr, until a needle of unease pierced his pleasure.
The last time, old Thornwall had called him violence prone. Too savage to become a Benefactor. What would it be today?
With a supple shrug he breathed deep and hurried on. The blind tly of time stung men at random. With Nggonggan fatalism he was ready for whatever came.
“To you, Blacklantern!” In the high tower office Thornwall surprised him with the two-fingered ritual salute of the Benefactors. “You are now a lunar fellow.”
“But, sir—”
Unbelief checked his voice. He wanted to be a Benefactor—wanted it so hard his blood was pounding now. But the semester wasn’t over. His training wasn’t done. He couldn’t help suspecting some ugly trick of circumstance.
“Come.” In the control alcove, from which he directed agents of the Fellowship on a hundred scattered planets, Thornwall waved him into a seat and bent gravely to siphon hot black liquid into two ruby cups that were inlaid with the golden sunburst of a stellar fellow. “Stonevine tea,” he murmured. “From my own home world. Let’s drink to your mission.”
“Where?” Blacklantern peered at the red-robed Benefactor, not quite daring to hope. “To Old Earth?”
“Not yet.” Smiling soberly, Thornwall tossed back his long silver hair. “When you ask for that adventure, you’ll have to be at least a planetary fellow. But all that’s still far-off. Our station ship hasn’t yet arrived in Earth orbit. You’re needed now on Nggongga.”
He had learned to love the stem old man, but a restless impatience gnawed at him now while Thornwall moved with a ceremonial deliberation to seal the siphon and savor the tea.
“Needed to deal with something strange,” Thornwall told him at last. “A report of something hard to believe. Big metal worms, eating up the planet!”
He was about to grin, but the Benefactor’s face reflected no amusement.
“I think you know our resident agent there. A planetary fellow named Snowfire.”
“Dzanya Dzu?” He breathed the sounds of her name in her own native tongue. “I loved her once,” he said. “Till I found that the meaning of love is not the same in our two cultures.” Alarm struck him. “Has anything happened to her?”
“We don’t know.” The old man shrugged. “She’s our only fellow there. She called last night, Xyr time. She was on her way to find the native who encountered the planet-eating worms. A clan chief named—” He leaned to touch a computer terminal, glanced at the flicker of green symbols. “—Flintbreaker. Elder Huntsman of the Game clan.”
“Old Tlongga Tlong.” Blacklantern nodded. “I’ve seen him. He keeps his own striker tly and he used to visit the arena. His clan claims half the planet—the waterless highlands in the dry hemisphere. Beyond the reach of progress. They still hunt nearmen. Sometimes men. Do they—” His breath caught. “Do they have Snowfire?”
“I hope not.” Thornwall sipped his scalding tea. “No word today—her ensign is dead. I talked just now to a native office clerk. He’s incoherent. Afraid of something. That’s all we really know. You’re to replace Snowfire and clear up the situation.”
“I can’t replace her.” He sat for a moment staring at his own image of Snowfire’s lean yellow loveliness. “She’s too—different. From a world unlike Nggongga. One where the old starmen never slid back into darkness the way we did. I could never understand her. She’s delicate, sensitive—everything I’m not.”
“That’s why you’re to skip the graduation ceremonies.” Thornwall told him. “I suspect that she’s in trouble precisely because she’s too high cultured to cope with the primitive. You aren’t.”
“Must I go alone?”
“We nearly always work alone. We’re too few. Needed too much on too many planets.”
“I wish—” The complex duties of a Benefactor seemed suddenly appalling. “I wish you were coming too, sir.”
“Nonsense!” Thornwall lifted the crystal cup as if to toast him. “You’re a fellow, now. Perhaps, before you go, I should remind you what we are.”
Silently, he bent to listen.
“We aren’t a government. Galactic man has outgrown government. We’re volunteers, with no authority not freely given us. We maintain ourselves, without demanding taxes. We aid and advise, but we cannot coerce. When our agents get into trouble, it’s commonly because people aren’t ready for us.”
“I’m afraid Nggongga isn’t—” The console chimed softly, calling for Thornwall’s attention, but he touched a key to quiet it and swung in his chair to open a safe.
“Your ensign.” As formally as if they stood before the graduating class, the old man rose and bowed to present the small oval plaque. “On worlds where we are recognized, it will sometimes get you aid. Anywhere within range of a portal relay, it is your link with us here.” At the touch of his thumb the symbol of his lunar fellowship glowed within its gleaming blackness—a tiny golden crescent inside a galactic spiral of silver frost. He held it silently, trembling a little before all it stood for.
“It is sensitized to your fingers and your voice and your call word,” Thornwall added. “For this mission, the word will be wildworm.”
He had to hush the impatient console.
“On arrival you must register with the Nggonggamba police, but I’m afraid you can’t expect much help from them. As otherworlders, we’re suspect. Until you find Snowfire, you’ll be our resident agent.”
With a quick salute, as if to end the meeting, he turned toward the red-flashing console.
“Sir!” A painful uncertainty shook Blacklantern’s voice. “Can’t you tell me—tell me what to expect?”
“Trouble.” Smiling bleakly, the old man paused. “I’m afraid your black brothers never really liked us. They accuse us now of destroying their ancient culture. Even of importing those metal worms!”
“You think the worms do exist?”
“That’s your problem.” Thornwall shrugged. “Snowfire found facts hard to get, and she has been too busy for long reports. Now go along.”
Blacklantern went along, elated to be a Benefactor and haunted with Snowfire’s smiling image: the red-gold hair and pale-gold skin, the green-gold eyes that reflected every puzzling mood. That afternoon, as he packed and stored what he wanted to keep, he twice found himself standing motionless, whispering the syllables of her untranslated name. They had been in love—until his discovered how much their cultures clashed. That was too painful to remember; yet he couldn’t forget.
“You want to possess me.” She had raised one long yellow finger in her odd little gesture of negation. “Among my people, nobody is owned.”
When he tried to explain what she meant to him, she refused to understand. Laughing at him, she told him to change his ways if he wanted her. In his hurt bewilderment he told her that she would never see him again. Now, with that old pain awake again, he wasn’t certain what he wanted.
The things he kept were few. The dagger and the binding rope from his last adventure in the tly arena. A few books and spools of tape. The formal crimson robe, woven with the golden crescent of his lunar fellowship, that now he would not be wearing at graduation.
Along with those few articles, he felt that he was storing his youth and all his years of training in the locker. Three friends walked with him across the hexangle to the glideway. He left them, with his new two-fingered salute, and rode to the portal. His doubts began to fade before a growing eagerness. He was a lunar fellow now.
A traffic officer beside the ticket vendor warned him that tourists were advised to avoid Nggongga because of a cosmopolitical crisis. One flash of his ensign changed the protest into affable aid. The officer waved him on into the dome.
The glideway swept him into the enormous midnight pupil of the staring eye and out again instantly. He almost felt that he was still on Xyr, until he began inhaling the muskweed pungence that awakened all his recollections of his native world.
Near the exit, he found a police officer.
“No good.” The squat black inspector squinted at his ensign and stared blankly back at him. “The city elders want no more Benefactors.”
“But we have an office here. I’m to be the new agent—”
“Your office has been closed. The elders have withdrawn their recognition. Xyr is being informed.”
“Why?” He studied the flat black face. “What’s wrong?”
“I think some of the elders don’t like the way you Benefactors claim to be above our laws.” The officer frowned at his face. “You look native. You should understand.”
“I’m a Benefactor now. But we don’t ask favors. We got our rights here in a fair exchange. In return for what we brought. We never defied your laws.”
“Then you have nothing to fear.” Impassively, the officer pushed his ensign back across the desk. “With this for a passport, you may enter Nggongga. But only as a private tourist. If you break our law, you are subject to our justice.”
A thick black hand waved him on.
“One more question.” He stood where he was, searching that dark stolid face. “Our former agent here is missing. Benefactor Snowfire—”
“That has been reported.” The officer shrugged. “A hundred people disappear in Nggonggamba every day. Commonly for reasons of their own. They are seldom traced. If we do find this woman, Xyr will be informed.”
“But—please!” He tried not to show a jolt of anger. “I want your help to find her. She came here as a Benefactor. Under the treaty of entry you have obligations to aid and protect—”
“The elders have revoked those obligations,” the black man growled. “Wherever she is, her special rights are gone. Like you, she is subject to the justice of Nggongga.”
The black man waved again, as if to brush a fly away. He picked up his dishonored ensign and walked outside. On Xyr, it had been sunset. Here, he emerged into the scorching noon of Nggongga’s thirty-hour day. Under the “white night” of the traditional siesta the whole city slept.
