The City and the Stars / The Sands of Mars (27 page)

At his master’s approach Kris departed, still buzzing balefully. In the silence that followed, Hilvar stood looking at the robot for a while. Then he smiled.

“Hello, Alvin,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve come back. Or are you still in Diaspar?”

Not for the first time, Alvin felt an envious admiration for the speed and precision of Hilvar’s mind.

“No,” he said, wondering as he did so how clearly the robot echoed his voice. “I’m in Airlee, not very far away. But I’m staying here for the present.”

Hilvar laughed.

“I think that’s just as well. Seranis has forgiven you, but as for the Assembly— well, that is another matter. There is a conference going on here at the moment— the first we have ever had in Airlee.”

“Do you mean,” asked Alvin, “that your Councilors have actually come here? With your telepathic powers, I should have thought that meetings weren’t necessary.”

“They are rare, but there are times when they are felt desirable. I don’t know the exact nature of the crisis, but three Senators are already here and the rest are expected soon.”

Alvin could not help smiling at the way in which events in Diaspar had been mirrored here. Wherever he went, he now seemed to be leaving a trail of consternation and alarm behind him.

“I think it would be a good idea,” he said, “if I could talk to this Assembly of yours— as long as I can do so in safety.”

“It would be safe for you to come here yourself,” said Hilvar, “if the Assembly promises not to try and take over your mind again. Otherwise, I should stay where you are. I’ll lead your robot to the Senators— they’ll be rather upset to see it.”

Alvin felt that keen but treacherous sense of enjoyment and exhilaration as he followed Hilvar into the house. He was meeting the rulers of Lys on more equal terms now; though he felt no rancor against them, it was very pleasant to know that he was now master of the situation, and in command of powers which even yet he had not fully turned to account.

The door of the conference room was locked, and it was some time before Hilvar could attract attention. The minds of the Senators, it seemed, were so completely engaged that it was difficult to break into their deliberations. Then the walls slid reluctantly aside, and Alvin moved his robot swiftly forward into the chamber.

The three Senators froze in their seats as he floated toward them, but only the slightest flicker of surprise crossed Seranis’s face. Perhaps Hilvar had already sent her a warning, or perhaps she had expected that, sooner or later, Alvin would return.

“Good evening,” he said politely, as if this vicarious entry were the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve decided to come back.”

Their surprise certainly exceeded his expectations. One of the Senators, a young man with graying hair, was the first to recover.

“How did you get here?” he gasped.

The reason for his astonishment was obvious. Just as Diaspar had done, so Lys must also have put the subway out of action.

“Why, I came here just as I did last time,” said Alvin, unable to resist amusing himself at their expense.

Two of the Senators looked fixedly at the third, who spread his hands in a gesture of baffled resignation. Then the young man who had addressed him before spoke again.

“Didn’t you have any— difficulty?” he asked.

“None at all,” said Alvin, determined to increase their confusion. He saw that he had succeeded.

“I’ve come back,” he continued, “under my own free will, and because I have some important news for you. However, in view of our previous disagreement I’m remaining out of sight for the moment. If I appear personally, will you promise not to try to restrict my movements again?”

No one said anything for a while, and Alvin wondered what thoughts were being silently interchanged. Then Seranis spoke for them all.

“We won’t attempt to control you again— though I don’t think we were very successful before.”

“Very well,” replied Alvin. “I will come to Airlee as quickly as I can.”

He waited until the robot had returned; then, very carefully, he gave the machine its instructions and made it repeat them back to him. Seranis, he was quite sure, would not break her word; nevertheless he preferred to safeguard his line of retreat.

The air lock closed silently behind him as he left the ship. A moment later there was a whispering “hiss…” like a long-drawn gasp of surprise, as the air made way for the rising ship. For an instant a dark shadow blotted out the stars; then the ship was gone.

Not until it had vanished did Alvin realize that he had made a slight but annoying miscalculation of the kind that could bring the best-laid plans to disaster. He had forgotten that the robot’s senses were more acute than his own, and the night was far darker than he had expected. More than once he lost the path completely, and several times he barely avoided colliding with trees. It was almost pitch-black in the forest, and once something quite large came toward him through the undergrowth. There was the faintest crackling of twigs, and two emerald eyes were looking steadfastly at him from the level of his waist. He called softly, and an incredibly long tongue rasped across his hand. A moment later a powerful body rubbed affectionately against him and departed without a sound. He had no idea what it could be.

Presently the lights of the village were shining through the trees ahead, but he no longer needed their guidance for the path beneath his feet had now become a river of dim blue fire. The moss upon which he was walking was luminous, and his footprints left dark patches which slowly disappeared behind him. It was a beautiful and entrancing sight, and when Alvin stooped to pluck some of the strange moss it glowed for minutes in his cupped hands before its radiance died.

Hilvar met him for the second time outside the house, and for the second time introduced him to Seranis and the Senators. They greeted him with a kind of wary and reluctant respect; if they wondered where the robot had gone, they made no comment.

“I’m very sorry,” Alvin began, “that I had to leave your country in such an undignified fashion. It may interest you to know that it was nearly as difficult to escape from Diaspar.” He let that remark sink in, then added quickly, “I have told my people all about Lys, and I did my best to give a favorable impression. But Diaspar will have nothing to do with you. In spite of all I could say, it wishes to avoid contamination with an inferior culture.”

It was most satisfying to watch the Senators’ reactions, and even the urbane Seranis colored slightly at his words. If he could make Lys and Diaspar sufficiently annoyed with each other, thought Alvin, his problem would be more than half solved. Each would be so anxious to prove the superiority if its own way of life that the barriers between them would soon go down.

“Why have you come back to Lys?” asked Seranis.

“Because I want to convince you, as well as Diaspar, that you have made a mistake.” He did not add his other reason— that in Lys was the only friend of whom he could be certain and whose help he now needed.

The Senators were still silent, waiting for him to continue, and he knew that looking through their eyes and listening through their ears were many other unseen intelligences. He was the representative of Diaspar, and the whole of Lys was judging him by what he might say. It was a great responsibility, and he felt humbled before it. He marshaled his thoughts and then began to speak.

His theme was Diaspar. He painted the city as he had last seen it, dreaming on the breast of the desert, its towers glowing like captive rainbows against the sky. From the treasure house of memory he recalled the songs that the poets of old had written in praise of Diaspar, and he spoke of the countless men who had spent their lives to increase its beauty. No one, he told them, could ever exhaust the city’s treasures, however long they lived; always there would be something new. For a while he described some of the wonders which the men of Diaspar had wrought; he tried to make them catch a glimpse at least of the loveliness that the artists of the past had created for men’s eternal admiration. And he wondered a little wistfully if it were indeed true that the music of Diaspar was the last sound that Earth had ever broadcast to the stars.

They heard him to the end without interruption or questioning. When he had finished it was very late, and Alvin felt more tired than he could ever before remember. The strain and excitement of the long day had told on him at last, and quite suddenly he was asleep.

When he woke, he was in an unfamiliar room and it was some moments before he remembered that he was no longer in Diaspar. As consciousness returned, so the light grew around him, until presently he was bathed in the soft, cool radiance of the morning sun, streaming through the now transparent walls. He lay in drowsy half-awareness, recalling the events of the previous day and wondering what forces he had now set in motion.

With a soft, musical sound, one of the walls began to pleat itself up in a manner so complicated that it eluded the eye. Hilvar stepped through the opening that had been formed and looked at Alvin with an expression half of amusement, half of serious concern.

“Now that you’re awake, Alvin,” he said, “perhaps you’ll at least tell me what your next move is, and how you managed to return here. The Senators are just leaving to look at the subway; they can’t understand how you managed to come back through it. Did you?”

Alvin jumped out of bed and stretched himself mightily.

“Perhaps we’d better overtake them,” he said. “I don’t want to make them waste their time. As for the question you asked me— in a little while I’ll show you the answer to that.”

They had almost reached the lake before they overtook the three Senators, and both parties exchanged slightly self-conscious greetings. The Committee of Investigation could see that Alvin knew where it was going, and the unexpected encounter had clearly put it somewhat at a loss.

“I’m afraid I misled you last night,” said Alvin cheerfully. “I didn’t come to Lys by the old route, so your attempt to close it was quite unnecessary. As a matter of fact, the Council of Diaspar also closed it at their end, with equal lack of success.”

The Senators’ faces were a study in perplexity as one solution after another chased through their brains.

“Then how
did
you get here?” said the leader. There was a sudden, dawning comprehension in his eyes, and Alvin could tell that he had begun to guess the truth. He wondered if he had intercepted the command his mind had just sent winging across the mountains. But he said nothing, and merely pointed in silence to the northern sky.

Too swiftly for the eye to follow, a needle of silver light arched across the mountains, leaving a mile-long trail of incandescence. Twenty thousand feet above Lys, it stopped. There was no deceleration, no slow braking of its colossal speed. It came to a halt instantly, so that the eye that had been following it moved on across a quarter of the heavens before the brain could arrest its motion. Down from the skies crashed a mighty petal of thunder, the sound of air battered and smashed by the violence of the ship’s passage. A little later the ship itself, gleaming splendidly in the sunlight, came to rest upon the hillside a hundred yards away.

It was difficult to say who was the most surprised, but Alvin was the first to recover. As they walked— very nearly running— toward the spaceship, he wondered if it normally traveled in this meteoric fashion. The thought was disconcerting, although there had been no sensation of movement on his voyage. Considerably more puzzling, however, was the fact that a day ago this resplendent creature had been hidden beneath a thick layer of iron-hard rock— the coating it had still retained when it had torn itself loose from the desert. Not until Alvin had reached the ship, and burned his fingers by incautiously resting them on the hull, did he understand what had happened. Near the stern there were still traces of earth, but it had been fused into lava. All the rest had been swept away, leaving uncovered the stubborn shell which neither time nor any natural force could ever touch.

With Hilvar by his side, Alvin stood in the open door and looked back at the silent Senators. He wondered what they were thinking— what, indeed, the whole of Lys was thinking. From their expressions, it almost seemed as if they were beyond thought.

“I am going to Shalmirane,” said Alvin, “and I will be back in Airlee within an hour or so. But that is only a beginning, and while I am away, there is a thought I would leave with you.

“This is no ordinary flyer of the kind in which men traveled over the Earth. It is a spaceship, one of the fastest ever built. If you want to know where I found it, you will find the answer in Diaspar. But you will have to go there, for Diaspar will never come to you.”

He turned to Hilvar, and gestured to the door. Hilvar hesitated for a moment only, looking back once at the familiar scenes around him. Then he stepped forward into the air lock.

The Senators watched until the ship, now moving quite slowly— for it had only a little way to go— had disappeared into the south. Then the gray-haired young man who led the group shrugged his shoulders philosophically and turned to one of his colleagues.

“You’ve always opposed us for wanting change,” he said, “and so far you have won. But I don’t think the future lies with either of our groups now. Lys and Diaspar have both come to the end of an era, and we must make the best of it.”

“I am afraid you are right,” came the gloomy reply. “This is a crisis, and Alvin knew what he was saying when he told us to go to Diaspar. They know about us now, so there is no further purpose in concealment. I think we had better get in touch with our cousins— we may find them more anxious to co-operate now.”

“But the subway is closed at both ends!”

“We can open ours; it will not be long before Diaspar does the same.”

The minds of the Senators, those in Airlee and those scattered over the whole width of Lys, considered the proposal and disliked it heartily. But they saw no alternative.

Sooner than he had any right to expect, the seed that Alvin had planted was beginning to flower.