Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (14 page)

 
          
 
"I see. Can you tell if she is watching
my mind now?"

 
          
 
Theon looked worried, but his protest answered
the question.

 
          
 
"I shouldn't tell you that!"

 
          
 
"But you will, won't you?"

 
          
 
The two boys looked silently at each other for
many seconds. Then Theon smiled.

 
          
 
"You can't bully me, you know. Whatever
you're planning—and / can't read your mind—as soon as you tried to put it into
action Mother would take over. She won't let you out of her sight until
everything has been settled."

 
          
 
"I know that," said
Alvin
, "but is she looking into my mind at
this moment?"

 
          
 
The other hesitated.

 
          
 
"No, she isn't," he said at last.
"I think she's deliberately leaving you alone, so that her thoughts won't
influence you."

 
          
 
That was all he needed to know. For the first
time
Alvin
dared to turn his mind upon the only plan
that offered any hope. He was far too stubborn to accept either of the
alternatives Seranis had offered him, and even if there had been nothing at
stake he would have bitterly resisted any attempt to override his will.

 
          
 
In a little while Seranis would return. He
could do nothing until they were in the open again, and even then Seranis would
be able to control his actions if he attempted to run away. And apart from
that, he was sure that many of the villagers could intercept him long before he
reached safety.

 
          
 
Very carefully, checking every detail, he traced
out the only road that could lead him back to Diaspar on the terms he wished.

 
          
 
Theon warned him when Seranis was near, and he
quickly turned his thoughts into harmless channels. It had never been easy for
her to understand his mind, and now it seemed to Seranis as if she were far out
in space, looking down upon a world veiled with impenetrable clouds. Sometimes
there would be a rift in the covering, and for an instant she could catch a
glimpse of what lay beneath. She wondered what
Alvin
was trying to hide from her. For a moment
she dipped into her son's mind, but Theon knew nothing of the other's plans.
She thought again of the precautions she had taken: as a man may flex his
muscles before some great exertion, she ran through the compulsion patterns she
might have to use. But there was no trace of her preoccupation as she smiled at
Alvin
from the doorway.

 
          
 
"Well," she asked, "have you
made up your mind?"

 
          
 
Alvin
's reply seemed frank enough.

 
          
 
"Yes," he said. "I will return
to Diaspar."

 
          
 
"I'm sorry, and I know that Theon will
miss you. But perhaps it's best: this is not your world and you must think of
your own people."

 
          
 
With a gesture of supreme confidence, she
stood aside to let
Alvin
pass through the door.

 
          
 
"The men who can obliterate your memory
of
Lys
are waiting for you: we expected this
decision."

 
          
 
Alvin
was glad to see that Seranis was leading
him in the direction he wished to go. She did not look back to see if he was
following. Her every movement told him: "Try and run away if you like—my
mind is more powerful than yours." And he knew that it was perfectly true.

 
          
 
They were clear of the houses when he stopped
and turned to his friend.

 
          
 
"Good-bye, Theon," he said, holding
out his hands. "Thank you for all you've done. One day I'll be back."

 
          
 
Seranis had stopped and was watching him
intently. He smiled at her even while he measured the tu^enty feet of ground
between them.

 
          
 
"I know that you're doing this against
your will," he said, "and I don't blame you for it. I don't like what
I'm doing, either." (That was not true, he thought. Already he was
beginning to enjoy himself.) He glanced quickly around: no one was approaching
and Seranis had not moved. She was still watching him, probably trying to probe
into his mind. He talked quickly to prevent even the outlines of his plan from
shaping among his thoughts.

 
          
 
"I do not believe you are right," he
said, so unconscious of his intellectual arrogance that Seranis could not
resist a smile. "It's wrong for
Lys
and
Diaspar to remain apart forever: one day they may need each other desperately.
So I am going home with all that I have learned— and I do not think that you
can stop me. "

 
          
 
He waited no longer, and it was just as well.
Seranis never moved, but instantly he felt his body slipping from his control.
The power that had brushed aside his own will was even greater than he had
expected, and he realized that many hidden minds must be aiding Seranis.
Helplessly he began to walk back toward the center of the village, and for an
awful moment he thought his plans had failed.

 
          
 
Then there came a flash of steel and crystal,
and the metal arms closed swiftly around him. His body fought against them, as
he had known it must do, but his struggles were useless. The ground fell away
beneath him and he caught a glimpse of Theon, frozen by surprise with a foolish
smile upon his face.

 
          
 
The robot was carrying him a dozen feet above
the ground, much faster than a man could run. It took Seranis only a moment to
understand his ruse, and his struggles died away as she relaxed her control.
But she was not defeated yet, and presently there happened that which
Alvin
had feared and done his best to counteract.

 
          
 
There were now two separate entities fighting
inside his mind, and one of them was pleading with the robot, begging it to set
him down again. The real
Alvin
waited, breathlessly, resisting only a little against forces he knew he
could not hope to fight. He had gambled: there was no way of telling beforehand
if the machine could understand orders as complex as those he had given it.
Under no circumstances, he had told the robot, must it obey any further
commands of his until he was safely inside Diaspar. Those were the orders. If
they were obeyed,
Alvin
had placed his fate beyond the reach of human interference.

 
          
 
Never hesitating, the machine raced on along
the path he had so carefully mapped out for it. A part of him was still
pleading angrily to be released, but he knew now that he was safe. And
presently Seranis understood that too, for the forces inside his brain ceased
to war with one another. Once more he was at peace, as ages ago an earlier
wanderer had been when, lashed to the mast of his ship, he had heard the song
of the Sirens die away across the wine-dark sea.

 
          
 
"So you see," concluded
Alvin
, "it will carry out any orders I give,
no matter how complicated they are. But as soon as I ask questions about its
origin, it simply freezes like that."

 
          
 
The machine was hanging motionless above the
Master Associa-tor, its crystal lenses glittering in the silver light like a
cluster of jewels. Of all the robots which Rorden had ever met, this was by far
the most baffling: he was now almost sure that it had been built by no human
civilization. With such eternal servants it was not surprising that the
Master's personality had survived the ages.

 
          
 
Alvin
's return had raised so many problems that
Rorden was almost afraid to think of them. He himself had not found it easy to
accept the existence of
Lys
, with
all its implications, and he wondered how Diaspar would react to the new
knowledge. Probably the city's immense inertia would cushion the shock: it
might well be years before all of its inhabitants fully appreciated the fact
that they were no longer alone on Earth.

 
          
 
But if
Alvin
had his way, things would move much more
quickly than that. There were times when Rorden regretted the failure of
Seranis' plans—everything would have been so much simpler. The problem was
immense, and for the second occasion in his life Rorden could not decide what
course of action was correct. He wondered how many more times
Alvin
would present him with such dilemmas, and
smiled a little wryly at the thought. For it would make no difference either
way:
Alvin
would do exactly as he pleased.

 
          
 
As yet, not more than a dozen people outside
Alvin
's own family knew the truth. His parents,
with whom he now had so little in common and often did not see for weeks, still
seemed to think that he had merely been to some outlying part of the city.
Jeserac had been the only person to react strongly: once the initial shock had
worn off he had engaged in a violent quarrel with Rorden, and the two were no
longer on speaking terms. Alvin, who had seen this coming for some time, could
guess the details but to his disappointment neither of the protagonists would
talk about the matter.

 
          
 
Later, there would be time enough to see that
Diaspar realized the truth: for the moment
Alvin
was too interested in the robot to worry
about much else. He felt, and his belief was now shared by Rorden, that the
tale he had heard in Shalmirane was only a fragment of some far greater story.
At first Rorden had been skeptical, and he still believed the "Great
Ones" to be no more than another of the world's countless religious myths.
Only the robot knew the truth, and it had defied a million centuries of
questioning as it was defying them now.

 
          
 
"The trouble is," said Rorden,
"that there are no longer any engineers left in the world."

 
          
 
Alvin
looked puzzled: although contact with the
Keeper of the Records had greatly enlarged his vocabulary, there were thousands
of archaic words he did not understand.

 
          
 
"An engineer," explained
Rorden,
"was a man who designed and built machines.
It's impossible for us to imagine an age without robots—but every machine in
the world had to be invented at one time or other, and until the Master Robots
were built they needed men to look after them. Once the machines could care for
themselves, human engineers were no longer required. I think that's a fairly
accurate account, though of course it's mostly guesswork. Every machine we
possess existed at the beginning of our history, and many had disappeared long
before it started."