New Writings in SF 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  He could not have been more wrong, but he was never to know it. Semantic modifications and linguistic changes over many centuries had turned him into a comparative illiterate, and he would never know that, either. The now-archaic language which he still used misled him hopelessly so that he could not recognize the clipped form and simplified spelling of the word BEWARE; neither could he identify a long-discarded capital letter as the stylized drawing of a hateful bacillus.

  He could never know that humanity had left the stage of life non-explosively, more or less accidentally, and mostly as the unfortunate result of making something not theirs to create. Some experiments are for Man, some for Another.

  So he sat on the stone, elbows on knees, chin on hand, lonely, sick at heart, bitter, resentful and yet strangely full of fight. Whatever had occurred, he decided, made no difference in the fact that he was the last man, the very last.

  Ultimately there had to be a last man, anyway, but it could have happened more gloriously and at later date. It could have happened to someone changed beyond dreaming by countless millennia, so old that he was tired, content to sleep forever while the rest of humankind roamed among the stars. It need not have happened now, when the last man had come bearing gladsome news to a world that had always yearned for space.

  His fists were tight, his knuckles white as he made decisions with grim disregard for the futility of battle.

  All have gone but me. There are no others. But while I live, mankind still lives. I will build myself a rock house and give it a chimney. I will warm it with log fires, and the chimney will send smoke towards the skies, and the stars will peer down and know that Man still lives. There will be one home, one window glowing through the night, one garden worshipping the sun by day—because Man still lives.

  Then, for the briefest moment, reaction set in, and he covered his eyes and murmured: “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

  And when it had passed, he looked slowly along the grass and saw the mighty feet.

  He could not gaze upward. If he had summoned every fibre of his being, he could not look up. The feet!

  Nothing like these existed within two thousand years of space-travel. He knew that beyond doubt, for it was he of all men who had been to see. And he dared not let his eyes follow the feet upward to some colossal height and unbearable culmination. It would be more than human spirit could stand.

  The feet could be sensed rather than seen. They stood before him, shapeless yet shaped, immaterial yet undeniably there, of no estimable size or proportions, compounded of the stuff of thought, and of mists and of faraway star-clouds. Their surfaces embodied multitudinous elusive, eye-twisting planes, almost as if while standing there they were simultaneously standing in a thousand other dimensions.

  Jerrold had more than enough experience of lower, or equal or stupendously different life-forms to know when he was in the presence of a higher. The effect was hypnotic. The strength within him was not enough to save him from being paralysed by a mighty awe—though still he had no fear, no fear at all. Man is not afraid, not even the last man.

  The little house. A chimney giving forth smoke. I am the last, but I will show them. I will tell the stars.

  “Sleep!” came an order into his mind, an irresistible order: “Sleep!”

  He slumped on to his back, his lidded eyes staring where they dared not look when open.

  The feet moved a fraction, their countless planes shifting and angling into each other. Came a long-drawn sigh susurrating from the very limits of the space-time continuum. It expressed infinite patience.

  “Nothing for it but to try again.”

  He took something from the sleeper’s side, extended its cellular structure of blood and flesh and bone, shaped it, and breathed into it the breath of life.

  Leaving the woman to await the man’s awakening, the Stranger went away.

  <>

  * * * *

  DEFENCE MECHANISM

  By Vincent King

  New Writer Vincent King produces so many problems and surprises in this suspenseful story that it seems strange not to have seen his work before. Here, indeed, is a different “sense of wonder” story.

  * * * *

  I was in the smithy working on Peter’s new gun. I’d built up the metal round the breech, that meant it would take a bigger charge now—and a heavier slug. I’d cut down the barrel length so the gun didn’t weigh any more over all. My own is like that. You don’t want a great long thing in the City, not in the Corridors. You got to be quick, and you quite likely only get one chance.

  I had the gun in the press putting in the liners on the fire wheel bearings. I bush them with bronze when I can get it, it makes for a lasting job. Not all smiths know how, but I do. I make double barrel guns too, over and under, but they cost you more. I drive the drill and my lathe from one of the vent fans—fast and loose belts. My smithy is only a few hundred floors down, a lot of the lights work, there’s plenty of water too. If the vent fans stop we’ll have to go up. They say the Camerons are really established there now, it’ll mean war if we try to move in. They say there are many more floors below us; you can’t go down so I don’t know how many. I’ve been down four, through the Farm Lands gathering metal and chemicals, but much farther than that you don’t go. There are Things down there, dwarfs, demons and the Aliens, but the Aliens are the worst and deepest. I’m not sure I believe in the others either, really. I knew a man once who went down seven Levels. A real good man, he was, and well armed. Lost an eye down there, he did. Said the farther down you go the more Aliens there are.

  We know how they got there, the Aliens I mean. My father took me up to the Top, as soon as I was strong enough; mind, it was a lot safer then. We’d only just heard of the Camerons and we’d finally broken the Johnson’s power a bit before that. Killed seventy of them we did, in the Half-Dark. You can still see the shot scars over there; it was a famous victory.

  Up there on the Top you can see for ever. Right out across the Green to the other City. Over the “horizon” that is, you can just see the Top. The Top of this City is pretty big too. It took us a couple of days to get to the Edge, Father said it was the nearest one too. The other way, east-west, the City goes on infinitely, on and on till it meets itself coming back, they say. It’s been there for ever too, they say it made itself. Or perhaps the Old Men made it, they were gods.

  If you look down off the Edge you can see to the Wall bottom. It’s a long way, several thousand feet. Misty down there it is, and hot. Even if you could get down you couldn’t live there, there are poisonous vapours after dark. Down there, sticking up out of the Green, you can see the tail fins of the Ships.

  The Old Men saw them coming, descending on great pillars of fire and smoke, out of the Sky, from the Stars. I’ve seen the Sky and the Sun—but the Moon and the Stars are the best. It’s worth going up just to see them.

  In those days, when the Ships came, some of the defence Machines were still working—and the Old Men knew how to work them. Even as the ports opened they blasted the Aliens. The Old Men thought all the Aliens were dead for a while, but then they started to come through, gaining ground all the time. They say that was the real end of the Mayorality, things broke down after that. The Clan Wars really got going then. It was the end of the Great Old Days.

  There is still a lot of the Power on. Solar Engines make it, that’s what my father went up to see, that and the Water Catchment. That was very impressive. Great sloping surfaces over to the west, and again to the east—but farther away there, just about unbroken too. The rain fell on them and ran down to the great tanks on the highest Level. My father explained all that to me up there on the Top, but he couldn’t fathom the Solar Engine. Great semi-circular dishes they were. Father thought they were to catch the warmth from the sun, but what happened then he couldn’t make out. I can see him now, hunkered down staring at the great structures, scratching himself, out there in the too brilliant light. After a bit he said, “Come on, son,” and we went
back on down. He didn’t speak all the way.

  So you see how it is. The Camerons are above us and the Aliens are below. As they come up so we will be forced into the Camerons. My grandfather told me that one time, when he was a boy, the Farm Lands were above the living Chambers. That means we’ve been forced up maybe four Levels in fifty years. If the water or the vent fans fail we’ll be in real trouble. That’s why I’m trying to make a breech loader. They say the Aliens are active again, pushing over to the east.

  That’s where I was when it all started; when the shout went up. In the smithy, pressing in the bearings on Peter’s gun, thinking about my breech loader.

  “Alien! Alien! Alien on the Level!” Peter’s daughter came scampering in and hid behind the water trough. All you could see were her big dark eyes and the muzzle of her gun.

  I said: “You stay there. Shoot if it shows here. But make sure of it. I’ll tell your dad if I see him.” She was a pretty little girl, was young Pete. I hoped the Alien wouldn’t find her.

  I grabbed my over and under, the shot pouch and the food pack I had ready. I went out to the Assembly Chamber. I was on the Duty that week.

  Occasionally, once in a while, an Alien gets up into our Levels. They come up to steal food, or just to raid; you can’t fathom their minds, they aren’t like us. Somehow they get past the Patrols, then get spotted in the Farm Lands; you can’t shoot among the algae tanks so they make it up to the next Levels. The Patrols are below them so all they can do is go on up and try to get through the women and children before we can get organized. They’re pretty savage when you corner them. Tough and fast too. We get as many as we can; that’s the idea of the Duty men, always ready to drop everything and go after any that get through.

  As I went into the Assembly Chamber there was a hoarse scream and a crashing of shots out to the west. I ignored the messenger waiting for me and ran in the direction of the shots.

  When I smelled the powder smoke I unslung my gun and set the firing wheels. I was running in an easy controlled lope, I had to save myself, I might have miles to go. These Hunts could go on for days.

  When I got to where the firing had been I could smell the Alien’s sweet reek over the acrid powder smoke. It was a shambles.

  Old Henry had got his. His head was practically off his shoulders. There was blood everywhere. One of his sons was lying in the blood waiting for someone to straighten his broken leg. His gun was over against the Corridor wall. The Alien had taken time to break the stock against the wall before it went on. Down at the end of the Corridor I could see shot marks on the wall. There was a pool of something and the light down there was broken. I thought they might have hit the Alien when I saw the pool but it turned out to be water from a holed pipe.

  I looked to Henry’s son.

  “Jumped us,” he said. “We were a bit ahead of the rest. Got the old man before I knew it.”

  “Did you get a shot in?”

  “Naw. It had me and threw me against the wall before ... It scrammed before it could finish me ... heard the rest coming.”

  “How far ahead?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Did you see it properly?”

  “Yeah. It’s a big one, good condition too. Plenty fast.”

  “The others after it?”

  “Yeah. Five minutes ago.... They got a shot in.”

  “You hang on,” I told him. “They’ll pick you up on the way back.” I gave him old Henry’s unfired gun and ran on.

  I didn’t think the Alien would be back that way, but you never really knew anything about what they might do— except you had to stop them before they did.

  As I padded on down the Corridors I tried to work out the best thing to do. As Senior Duty man I had to give the orders and organize the Hunt. You might think we would be certain of getting the Alien only by taking as many men as possible on the Hunt. That’s as may be, but you can’t spare as many as all that from the Levels, from the Perimeter. Say we went out with nine or a dozen men and boys. It wouldn’t be long before the Camerons found out all that, and it wouldn’t be much longer before they mounted an attack. It isn’t that twelve or so men is such a big number, we’ve got maybe ninety men on the Perimeter at any time, it’s that they would leave gaps. Each Perimeter man has to keep the next in sight the whole time. Or else someone filters in and gets at our food or women. You got to guard every vent, every stair and every shaft. It could be terrible, the Aliens might get through in strength; and you know what they are like.

  I think three are plenty on a Hunt anyway, if they are good men. My idea is that if one man goes a bit ahead then the other two can get a shot if the Alien jumps him—more often than not before he gets it. It’s better than huddling about in a great crowd. You don’t have room to move then, you drown any noise the Alien might make and with more than a few men you can’t smell them. Anyway you’re just as likely to shoot each other as the Alien.

  I got a special team. Me, Sim and the Boy Peter, that’s old Peter’s youngest son. We work together well. The Boy goes in front, then me about fifteen feet back with Sim a few paces behind, guarding the rear. We’ve been on about eight Hunts like that. The Alien only got the Boy once and then it was dead before it could do him much harm. Sim got that one, I had a miss-fire. Mostly it’s us that jump the Aliens though. They’ve got a tendency to go west, into the Dark Areas, hide up there for a few days, then try to find a way down through the Levels to their own regions. If the Hunt gets more than about three Levels below ours it’s very dangerous, you can’t go too low.

  I caught up with the rest in the Big Chamber to the west of our Levels. The Lights begin to get a bit sparse out that way. The Chamber is big. Thousands of yards long and wide, the lit places edging off into the long distances.

  The men were standing in a loose group under one of the lights. They weren’t talking, just peering into the half light around them, their guns in their hands. You didn’t want to look too ready, someone might think you were scared. You tried to hold your gun as if you didn’t know it was there, but so that it was ready just the same. Now the first anger of the chase was over they were beginning to feel a bit uneasy. They would be glad to get back to the Levels now, back to the Perimeter; and leave the Hunt to us.

  As I came into the Chamber the white faces and dark gun barrels swung towards me. Sim and the Boy stepped forward.

  “All right men.” Sim raised his gun in salute. “It’s him. Senior Duty Man.” The men relaxed.

  “Which way and how long?” I was in a hurry. An Alien could make maybe ten miles in an hour and their endurance and strength were legendary.

  The Boy gave me the facts. He thought that there were two Aliens. He hadn’t told the men, they were jumpy enough as it was. So was the Boy, two to three is long odds. The Aliens were about fifteen minutes ahead and still going west. The men had glimpsed an Alien in a far light, well out of range, as they entered the Chamber. So they had waited for me, rather than plunge into the uncertainty of the near dark.

  Sim had dismissed the men by now. I could hear their low talk as they hurried home. I released the wheel springs on my gun. The Alien, or Aliens, were far on now, there was no immediate hurry; it would be a long Hunt.

  Sim wanted to catch my eye. Good old Sim. He was unusually tall, nearly six feet, cool calm face, leaning his bulk on his gun. He whispered to me: “There are two of ‘em. Don’t speak loud, the Boy doesn’t know yet.”

  “It’s O.K., Sim. He knows very well.... He’s getting good.”

  The Boy had a look of suppressed triumph on his face. Sim grinned at him and turned to scan the darkness. You don’t turn your back for too long on a Hunt.

  I gave them their Hunt Badges. White disks they are, you can turn them round to show the dark face when you didn’t want to reveal yourself. The other Clans recognized them, if you showed the Badge they wouldn’t shoot so quick; they might even help you. They would give you an escort through their Levels anyway, partly to help and partly to w
atch you. On the Hunt the Old Hospitality still applied, they would most likely feed you too.

  We checked our food and shot pouches. We went on then, in our Hunt formation; the Boy ahead, Sim and I behind—keeping in the shadows while the Boy crossed the broad islands of light. The Hall was the best part of three miles long and almost as wide. It was tall too. Far up on the walls we could see tiered balconies, picked out by the occasional pattern of still functioning lights. Every so often we came to the Great Columns set solid on the floor. Occasionally there was a stream coming from some shattered, forgotten pipe, running in shallow beds cut through the dust into the plastic. We saw the muddy marks where the Aliens stopped to drink—they foul everything they touch—and drank upstream of that place. Sim gathered some of the yellow-white stringy plants for use later. They make a good soup if you add some algae block.

  We followed the soft pad marks in the dust out of the Great Chamber and into the Corridors. We camped that night ten miles on from there in a small room we picked because it had only one door and vent. We blocked them with the old furniture we found in the room. The Boy broke some shards of plastic from the walls and lit a small fire. We boiled our water and made the soup. Sim had a flask of the wood spirit from Food Plant. We sat and drank.