Collected fiction, p.370
Collected Fiction, page 370
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 to grow to gargantuan size, hovering above him, folding down in a canopy of blindness.
Smothering, an embrace so all-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 SEVENTEEN
“The Light-Wearer Must Die!”
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 walls. And the Alien, 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 tinkling into ruins. A babble 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. The 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 through 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 from 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 cries 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 supercedes 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 candle-flame, 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 nor god now. Fie 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 thunder 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 cities of flame, where monstrous citadels floated upon lakes like fire. Beings like the Alien went flashing through their streets, beings 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.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Heirs of the Shattered Citadel
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 shining 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 Alien 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 so far as human senses could perceive.
But the Alien went flashing through it along a prescribed course it knew well. Past the memorials of its nameless race that had come and ruled and died. Perhaps past the sepulchres of those who had come after it to earth, and died before its waking. In that one bright journey—in sorrow and loneliness and defeat—it reviewed the history that mankind will never know, and bade goodbye to the glories of its mighty kinsmen and its mighty race.
And there in the heart of the citadel which no man will ever enter, the Alien in its own strange way ceased . . .
“Wake up, laddie!” the burred voice urged. Familiar, from ages ago.
Alan opened his eyes. Glowing walls about him, fiery sun blazing before his face. But there was no shadow upon its surface now. His thoughts paused there, searching back for Flande.
Flande was gone. He had dreamed everything, his shaken mind told him. He must have dreamed it. He looked up to the familiar, ruddy face of the old Scotsman for assurance.
Sir Colin smiled. “We’ve won, laddie,” he said in a thickened voice. “We’ve done it, somehow! Though for a moment, I thought—Well, no matter now. I saw it go. Och—” His voice softened. “I saw the miracle of it going. But I couldna tell ye how.”
A thin, musical crashing behind him made Alan look over his shoulder. What he saw framed in the tunnel mouth astonished him more than anything that had gone before. Yet it was a simple thing, something he had seen already. It was Flande’s tower.
The structure was falling. In the little time while it toppled, then, all this had happened.
He watched it tilt over and down, majestically bowing out above the city. Very slowly it broke in the center and collapsed with a ringing series of crashes as its fragments struck Carcasilla’s shining floor very far beneath. Bit by bit the spiral steps fell after it.
The noise of its fall went echoing through the city, the vibrations making the delicate suburbs tremble. Here and there, far and near, soaring avenues trembled too much and broke with a singing, vibrant chord like music, and came tinkling and showering down to rouse more echoes, and bring more buildings to lovely, musical ruin.
For the first time since its conception, sound had entered Carcasilla, and sound spelled Carcasilla’s doom.
Alan stood listening to the delicate, ringing chords of the collapsing buildings. He was thinking of Evaya. He knew that he had won now, and that somewhere along the Way of the Gods, perhaps coming nearer and nearer with every passing moment, the real Evaya would be moving. Evaya with life glowing again like a lighted lamp behind her features as exquisite as carved ivory. Her hair lifting and floating upon the darkened air.
Evaya, coming back to ruined Carcasilla.
Yes, he had won. And he had lost. Mankind was reprieved now. The Source of the fountain that made Carcasilla immortal would go out to Venus in the waiting ship, and Sir Colin would go with if! Sir Colin, and Karen, and the Terasi. There would be a green world again, fragrant and sweet, shining with dew and rain.
But he would never see it. He would wait here for Evaya, who could not go. He would wait with her, here in shattered Carcasilla, while immortality ran low in the dying, fountain and darkness closed in forever upon Earth.
* * *
SIR COLIN nibbled thoughtfully at his fantastically feathered pen. Then he dipped the quill into ink crushed from berries that never sprang from the sod of earth, and wrote on.
“—so we left them there,” he wrote. “And because the journey was so long, and I growing old, I misdoubt I shall ever know their fate. But I know Alan Drake, and I know what happened to him. At least, in part I know—in his long fight with the Alien that lasted only while I fired five shots as fast as I could pull the trigger. He told me what he could of it. He told me about Flande, opening bright doors in his brain to the light of that burning sun.
“Such a light made Flande a demi-god. Alan Drake had none so much of it, but a little taste he had. And I believe that taste was enough. I believe, as sure as there was once a Scotland, that mankind still lives upon Old Earth.
“If any man could keep it alive, the man is Alan Drake. I make this record for the new generation of Terasi to remember, and for their children and grandchildren.
“Some day, somehow, I swear to you—your cousins from Old Earth will make their voices heard on Venus. And they will speak the name of Drake.
“The things we left for them should be a legend by the time your generation reads this record. You will have heard of the shining room we took our Power-Source from, and how the stones glowed on after it was gone. It had poured out energy so long into those walls that energy still lived in them, and I think must live on—long enough.
“Long enough to power the machines they’ll need—those fragile-seeming Carcasillians who were built on a tougher framework than one knew unless—as Alan knew—one had occasion to find out! He would never have spoken to me of the steelly, resilient strength of Evaya’s body when he held her in his arms, had he not known how important that knowledge would be to the future of mankind on Old Earth.
“So we know the Carcasillians were strong. And we know they had a limited source of power to set their machines going in the caverns the Terasi left behind. And we know too, something we were too blind to think of at the time. There is one power-source upon Old Earth still living and strong in her extreme age. The great tides that thunder around the planet, following the moon, carving a mighty gorge in the earth as they race on. If the Carcasillians with their machines and their resilient strength can harness that tide—who knows, Old Earth may yet shine green again in the heavens!
