Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (18 page)

 
          
 
"What do you mean?" he asked
anxiously. For the first time he noticed that only one of the robots was with
them on the parapet. "Where's the second machine?"

 
          
 
Slowly
Alvin
raised his arm and pointed out across the
desert, towards the broken hills and the long line of sand dunes, crisscrossed
like frozen waves. Far away, Rorden could see the unmistakable gleam of
sunlight upon metal.

 
          
 
"We've been waiting for you," said
Alvin
quietly. "As soon as I left the
Council, I went straight to the robots. Whatever happened, I was going to make
sure that no one took them away before I'd learned all they could teach me. It
didn't take long, for they're not very intelligent and knew less than I'd
hoped. But I have found the secret of the Master.
" He
paused for a moment, then pointed again at the almost invisible robot. "
Watch!"

 
          
 
The glistening speck soared away from the
desert and came to rest perhaps a thousand feet above the ground. At first, not
knowing what to expect, Rorden could see no other change. Then, scarcely
believing his eyes, he saw that a cloud of dust was slowly rising from the
desert.

 
          
 
Nothing is more terrible than movement where
no movement should ever be again, but Rorden was beyond surprise or fear when
the great sand dunes began to slide apart. Beneath the desert something was
stirring like a giant awaking from its sleep, and presently there came to
Rorden's ears the rumble of falling earth and the shriek of rock split asunder
by irresistible force. Then, suddenly, a great geyser of sand erupted hundreds
of feet into the air and the ground was hidden from sight.

 
          
 
Slowly the dust began to settle back into the
jagged wound torn across the face of the desert. But Rorden and Alvin still
kept their eyes fixed steadfastly upon the open sky, which a little while ago
had held only the waiting robot. What
Alvin
was thinking, Rorden could scarcely
imagine. At last he knew what the boy had meant when he had said that nothing
else was very important now. The great city behind them and the greater desert
before, the timidity of the Council and the pride of
Lys
—all these seemed trivial matters now.

 
          
 
The covering of earth and rock could blur but
could not conceal the proud lines of the ship still ascending from the riven
desert. As Rorden watched, it slowly turned toward them until it had
foreshortened to a circle. Then, very leisurely, the circle started to expand.

 
          
 
Alvin
began to speak, rather quickly, as if the
time were short.

 
          
 
"I still do not know who the Master was,
or why he came to Earth. The robot gives me the impression that he landed
secretly and hid his ship where it could be easily found if he ever needed it
again. In all the world there could have been no better hiding place than the
Port of Diaspar, which now lies beneath those sands and which even in his age
must have been utterly deserted. He may have lived for a while in Diaspar
before he went to Shalmirane: the road must still have been open in those days.
But he never needed the ship again, and all these ages it has been waiting out
there beneath the sands."

 
          
 
The ship was now very close, as the
controlling robot guided it toward the parapet. Rorden could see that it was
about a hundred feet long and sharply pointed at both ends. There appeared to
be no windows or other openings, though the thick layer of earth made it
impossible to be certain.

 
          
 
Suddenly they were spattered with dirt as a
section of the hull opened outward, and Rorden caught a glimpse of a small,
bare room with a second door at its far end. The ship was now hanging only a
foot away from the parapet, which it had approached very cautiously like a
sensitive, living thing. Rorden had backed away from it as if he were afraid,
which indeed was very near the truth. To him the ship symbolized all the terror
and mystery of the Universe, and evoked as could no other object the racial
fears which for so long had paralyzed the will of the human race. Looking at
his friend,
Alvin
knew very well the thoughts that were
passing through his brain. For almost the first time he realized that there
were forces in men's minds over which they had no control, and that the Council
was deserving of pity rather than contempt.

 
          
 
In utter silence, the ship drew away from the
tower. It was strange, Rorden thought, that for the second time in his life he
had said good-bye to
Alvin
. The little, closed world of Diaspar knew only one farewell, and that
was for eternity.

 
          
 
The ship was now only a dark stain against the
sky, and of a sudden Rorden lost it altogether. He never saw its going, but
presently there echoed down from the heavens the most awe-inspiring of all the
sounds that Man had ever made—the long-drawn thunder of air falling, mile after
mile, into a tunnel drilled suddenly across the sky.

 
          
 
Even when the last echoes had died away into
the desert, Rorden never moved. He was thinking of the boy who had
gone—wondering, as he had so often done, if he would ever understand that aloof
and baffling mind.
Alvin
would never grow up: to him the whole Universe was a plaything, a
puzzle to be unraveled for his own amusement. In his play he had now found the
ultimate, deadly toy which might wreck what was left of human civilization—but
whatever the outcome, to him it would still be a game.

 
          
 
The sun was now low on the horizon, and a
chill wind was blowing from the desert. But still Rorden waited, conquering his
fears, and presently for the first time in his life he saw the stars.

 
          
 
Even in Diaspar,
Alvin
had never seen such luxury as that which
lay before him when the inner door of the airlock slid aside. At first he did
not understand its implications: then he began to wonder, rather uneasily, how
long this tiny world might be upon its journeying between the stars. There were
no controls of any kind, but the large, oval screen which completely covered
the far wall would have shown that this was no ordinary room. Ranged in a
half-circle before it were three low couches: the rest of the cabin was
occupied by two tables, a number of most inviting chairs, and many curious
devices which for the moment
Alvin
could not identify.

 
          
 
When he had made himself comfortable in front
of the screen, he looked around for the robots. To his surprise, they had
disappeared: then he located them, neatly stowed away in recesses high up
beneath the curved ceiling. Their action had been so completely natural that
Alvin
knew at once the purpose for which they had
been intended. He remembered the Master Robots: these were the Interpreters,
without which no untrained human mind could control a machine as complex as a
spaceship. They had brought the Master to Earth and then, as his servants,
followed him into
Lys
. Now they were ready, as if the intervening
eons had never been, to carry out their old duties once again.

 
          
 
Alvin
threw them an experimental command, and the
great screen shivered into life. Before him was the
Tower
of
Loranne
, curiously foreshortened and apparently
lying on its side. Further trials gave him views of the sky of the city, and of
great expanses of desert. The definition was brilliantly, almost unnaturally,
clear, although there seemed to be no actual magnification.
Alvin
wondered if the ship itself moved as the
picture changed, but could think of no way of discovering this. He experimented
for a little while until he could obtain any view he wished: then he was ready
to start.

 
          
 
"Take me to
Lys
"—the command was a simple one, but how
could the ship obey it when he himself had no idea of the direction?

 
          
 
Alvin
had never thought of this, and when it did
occur to him the machine was already moving across the desert at a tremendous
speed. He shrugged his shoulders, thankfully accepting what he could not
understand.

 
          
 
It was difficult to judge the scale of the
picture racing up the screen, but many miles must be passing every minute. Not
far from the city the color of the ground had changed abruptly to a dull gray,
and
Alvin
knew that he was now passing over the bed
of one of the lost oceans.
Once Diaspar must have been very
near the sea, though there had never been any hint of this even in the most
ancient records.
Old though the city was, the oceans must have passed
away long before its building.

 
          
 
Hundreds of miles later, the ground rose
sharply and the desert returned.
Once
Alvin
halted his ship above a
curious pattern of intersecting lines, showing faintly through the blanket of
sand.
For a moment it
puzzled him: then he realized that he was looking down on the ruins of some
forgotten city. He did not stay for long: it was heartbreaking to think that
billions of men had left no other trace of their existence save these furrows
in the sand.

 
          
 
The smooth curve of the horizon was breaking
up at last, crinkling into mountains that were beneath him almost as soon as
they were glimpsed. The machine was slowing now, slowing and falling to earth
in a great arc a hundred miles in length. And then below him was
Lys
, its forests and endless rivers forming a
scene of such incomparable beauty that for a while he would go no farther. To
the east, the land was shadowed and the great lakes floated upon it like pools
of darker night. But toward the sunset, the waters danced and sparkled with
light, throwing back toward him such colors as he had never imagined.

 
          
 
It was not difficult to locate Airlee—which
was fortunate, for the robots could guide him no farther.
Alvin
had expected this, and felt glad to have
discovered some limits to their powers. After a little experimenting, he
brought his ship to rest on the hillside which had given him his first glimpse
of
Lys
. It was quite easy to control the machine:
he had only to indicate his general desires and the robots attended to the
details. They would, he imagined, probably ignore any dangerous or impossible
orders, but he did not intend to try the experiment.

 
          
 
Alvin
was fairly certain that no one could have
seen his arrival. He thought this rather important, for he had no desire to
engage in mental combat with Seranis again. His plans were still somewhat
vague, but he was running no risks until he had re-established friendly
relations.

 
          
 
The discovery that the original robot would no
longer obey him was a considerable shock. When he ordered it from its little
compartment it refused to move but lay motionless, watching him dispassionately
with its multiple eyes. To
Alvin
's relief, the replica obeyed him instantly, but no amount of cajoling
could make the prototype carry out even the simplest action.
Alvin
worried for some time before the
explanation of the mutiny occurred to him. For all their wonderful skills, the
robots were not very intelligent, and the events of the past hour must have
been too much for the unfortunate machine. One by one it had seen
all the
Master's orders defied—those orders which it had
obeyed with such singleness of purpose for so many millions of years.