King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth) (46 page)

“Nyneve is the storyteller,” said Fang. “She can put pictures into your head.”

“If you like,” said Nyneve.

For an hour she held the Swingers in an enchanted state while they relived the glorious Age of Chivalry, the battles and the tournaments, the clash of swords and the thunder of hooves, bright banners, bright metal and bright blood, yells of triumph and of agony, the smell of feasting and of death. The Swingers sat in the trees, on the grass, on the roof of the schoolhouse, experiencing it with all their senses.

Arthur smiled quietly to himself, remembering what it was really like.

Afah left after a few moments and walked quietly away into the forest, sick to his stomach. Fang, the Princess, and the Miggot stayed until Nyneve had finished; a little horrified, a little disgusted, but very much aware of the effect of the story on its human audience.

When it was all over, Adam said quietly, “Perhaps now we have our means of stirring up the True Humans.”

T
HE TASK FORCE SET OFF AT DAWN
.

They had decided to travel in the guise
of itinerant performers, keeping the identity of the kikihuahuas as a trump card to be revealed if needed. They took one packhorse on which the gnomes and Afah sat, ready to slip into the saddlebags at a moment’s notice. Adam and Marc took turns leading the horse, and Nyneve, Arthur, Morgan le Fay, and Sally walked ahead. The sky was clear, the last stars fading.

“I smell disaster,” said the Miggot, nursing a pounding headache due to overindulgence in cider the previous night.

“Everything’s fine!” said the Princess gaily. The gnomes carried packets of bread and cheese, with small flasks of beer hung from their belts. Fang was already eating. By the time they reached the fringes of the forest, the sun was brightening the ground in little patches as though an artist had flicked his brush around, and even the Miggot began to cheer up. It was good to be back on Earth.

The feeling did not last long. “Look!” said Adam. “The bastards meant what they said about closing off the moor.”

A Tin Mother stood motionless and erect on the open ground before them.

“It’s standing guard,” said the Princess. “It’s guarding the moors against trespassers like us.”

“It’s our servant, remember,” Fang pointed out.

The Miggot’s gloom returned as he scanned the landscape. “The moors look different
,” he said. “It’s all changed.” He pointed to an immense silver crescent cutting into the sky. “That must be the dome they talk about. And look, they’ve built rock walls all over the moor. In my day a gnome could run for miles and never see a sign of giantish habitation.”

“They’re very old walls, Miggot,” said Fang. “Most of them have fallen down.”

“It’ll never be the same. Nothing ever is. My Cousin Hal used to have a saying: ‘Things get worse.’ He called it Hal’s Law. He said it was a universal truth, like entropy.”

“We’ll be able to see Pentor soon,” said the Princess brightly. “That’ll be nice. It’ll bring back happy memories of Hal for you, Miggot.”

“I have no happy memories of Hal.”

“Better slip into the saddlebags now,” Nyneve warned them. “We don’t want that Tin Mother to see you. There’s no point in revealing our hand yet.”

The robot gave no acknowledgment of their presence, however. Sally tapped it but it stared woodenly over her head, not moving. She kicked it. Nothing happened.

The Princess’s head popped out of her saddlebag. “Perhaps it’s dead,” she suggested. “Perhaps it’s all rusted away inside there.”

“I’ve never seen one like this before,” said Adam. He stepped close and stared into the Tin Mother’s eyes. No telltale lights burned in their depths. The chest screen was blank. The Mother was either switched off or derelict.

“Perhaps the whole race has run its course,” said the Miggot hopefully. “Races do. It’s even happened to races the Sharan created.” Remembering something, he scanned the moors nervously. “I hope it happened to the fogdogs,” he said.

They left the robot standing there, and climbed onto the moors. As the great Rock of Pentor came into view it became clear that the Tin Mothers had not, after all, run their course. Several could be seen on the exposed moorland, some of them rigid and motionless, but others busily pacing around. At least twenty stood around a huge tracked vehicle
about a kilometer away. This vehicle was rectangular and featureless except for a tracery rising above its flat top, sustained by two towers and resembling a spiderweb on a dewy morning.

“What on Earth is that?” asked Fang. The hairs on his head prickled as though he were in the presence of some unimaginable evil.

A Tin Mother came striding from behind a rock before the gnomes could hide themselves. “This is a restricted area,” it said. “I am surprised that you were not told. I regret that you must leave.”

Fang had to play his trump sooner than he’d wanted to. “We’re kikihuahuas, and the humans are our friends. Let us pass.”

The Mother regarded him calculatingly. “You do not look like a kikihuahua.”

“What about him?” Fang pointed to Afah.

“He looks like a kikihuahua.” The Tin Mother inhaled noisily. “He smells like a kikihuahua.” There was a pause, then: “He
is
a kikihuahua. We received word from the coast that a kikihuahua had arrived. You must be it.”

Fang had been hoping for a display of subservience. At the very least, the Mother should have addressed Afah as “Master.” At best, the robot would have sunk to its knees and pledged undying loyalty. Neither of these things happened, nor any of the wide range of possibilities in between. The Mother grunted and fell silent, presumably discussing the situation with its colleagues. Fang had the unhappy feeling that he was being outthought.

“My hair feels funny,” said the Princess. “It’s prickling.”

“You may pass through,” said the Tin Mother at last, “but you must not approach Pentor Rock. This is for your own good, and should not be taken to indicate any lack of respect on our part.”

The Rock stood about a kilometer away; an irregular outline against the vast curve of the dome. There was a curious glow in the air like evening sunshine after
rain, and a faint odor of ozone. The Rock itself seemed to be shimmering, but Fang had the feeling that the phenomenon was centered on that great machine. He could almost see lines of force converging on it.

The Tin Mother explained, “Pentor Rock is to be converted to hydrogen atoms.”

Fang glanced at Nyneve, remembering odd remarks she and Avalona had made in the past. So this was the moment she’d been working to prevent, all these thousands of years. He felt a deep awe, and a sense of wonder, that he was in some way involved in such an historic occasion.

Morgan felt no such respect for the occasion. “If the Mothers didn’t blow it up, the humans would, for some reason or other. It’s an inevitable happentrack.”

“Yes,” said Nyneve. “But I
knew
it wouldn’t be the humans.”

“Avalona knew, you mean,” admitted Morgan grudgingly. “The old bat.”

“How are you going to do it?” Adam asked the robot with some skepticism.

The Tin Mother became quite talkative. “All systems will be shut down while the conversion takes place. The converter—that machine over there—will draw energy from the entire country. Even priming the converter absorbs great amounts of energy. Priming has been taking place for two days already. The converter,” continued the Mother in a burst of confidence, “has possibly the greatest capacity for doing good of any machine in the galaxy. Admittedly this is an unusual situation and we have not been able to erect the solar generator field from which the machine would normally derive its power. But when properly set up on the surface of a planet, the converter can produce a balanced atmosphere by fractional disintegration and subsequent molecular reconstruction of the rocks around it, thus creating a world suitable for organic habitation.”

“But there’s no shortage of air around here,” said Sally. “Why are you doing this?”

“Unfortunately our purpose on this
occasion is destruction, pure and simple,” said the Tin Mother, and Fang fancied he detected a hint of relish in its tone. “We do this for the benefit of the human race—and now, for the kikihuahuas too. Pentor Rock is similar to rocks on other worlds we visited. Such rocks are used for an unusual and dangerous form of space travel. Only organic species are capable of using it. And organic species are irrational, headstrong, and fragile.”

“So you want to prevent travelers from using the Rock?” asked Morgan.

“And to prevent hostile aliens from attacking.”

Meanwhile the Miggot had been muttering to himself and had reached a worrisome conclusion. “The True Humans,” he said, “what about them?”

“Well, what about them?” asked Adam.

“Their minds are plugged into a computer in the dome, aren’t they?”

“That is approximately correct,” said the Tin Mother.

“Well, what happens when you fire off that converter and they lose their power? You did say all systems would shut down.”

“Regrettably there will be loss of life. The human bodies may live for a while, but their minds will not survive the temporary loss of power. The organic mind is a delicate thing when compared to the electronic mind and cannot be switched on and off at will.”

“So you’ll kill them!”

“Their deaths will be only a temporary setback for the human race. Ample breeding stock still exists in pockets outside the domes and in the dome caretakers. We are ensuring their safety. The future of the race as a whole is more important than a few dreamers. And now we have you kikihuahuas to consider too.”

The task force exchanged frightened glances. “When does disintegration take place?” asked Adam.

“At noon today.”

“So the True Humans die at noon?” Adam’s voice shook. “Why don’t you delay the countdown and get them all out?”

“There are severe logistics problems
in releasing several hundred thousand frail humans into a primitive environment. I’m sure you can appreciate that. Many of them would die from starvation within a few weeks, and there would be untold savagery. We have considered the problem at some length and we have decided they are happier where they are. It would not be a kindness to jerk them back to reality and then death.”

“We’ll have to think about this,” muttered Adam, drawing the others away from the Tin Mother. Once out of earshot, he said quietly, “I think they
want
to kill the True Humans.”

“Why?” asked Fang. “I thought they were your saviors.”

“Yes, but now you kikihuahuas have arrived. The Tin Mothers’ first duty is to you. Humans are much bigger and stronger than you, and they see us as a threat to you. So now they have two objectives that they can accomplish at the same time: They can wipe out large numbers of humans, and they can destroy Pentor Rock. … I still don’t understand what they’ve got against that Rock.”

“It’s a very long story,” said Nyneve. “We don’t have time to talk about it now. We only have three hours to get the True Humans out of the dome.”

“Did you expect this development?” asked Morgan curiously.

“No,” Nyneve admitted. “Too many random factors have popped up. The ifalong’s all twisted. We’ll have to play this by ear, like normal human beings.”

“I wish I knew what you two were talking about,” said Arthur. “Come on, for God’s sake. The gnomes must stay here and try to hold the Tin Mothers off until we get back. Afah must come with us because the Tin Mothers will obey him. Fang—we’ll see you later.”

Events seemed to be moving very quickly.

“Good-bye, Fang,” said Nyneve, bending forward and kissing him on the cheek.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked hopefully. She’d always seemed so sure of things before.

“I have a plan, but I don’t know if it’ll work. And I don’t have time to analyze the ifalong.”

Fang, the Princess, and the Miggot watched the
others hurry away over the brow of the moor.

Matthew, the caretaker, made a point of walking on the moors every day. Although the dome was immense, a person could still feel claustrophobic in there. Sounds echoed, there was a pervasive medicinal smell, and above all, there was the presence of thousands of comatose humans, dreaming their lives away.

As he emerged from the air lock he saw scenes of unaccustomed activity on the moor, and a huge tracked vehicle.

“I’m sorry, sir. Access to the moor is restricted today.”

“Oh.” He turned back without questioning Gentle Jim. No doubt the saviors had very good reasons. Gentle Jim took him by the arm and guided him back into the air lock. He found himself irritated once again by the way the saviors insisted in pairing off with the humans, so that a person had a robot at his elbow every minute of the day. The majority of the dome staff didn’t seem to mind because the saviors were only too ready to help with the less pleasant chores, such as the dreamers’ personal hygiene.

Now Gentle Jim escorted Matthew to the Rainbow Room.

“Once again I must request that composite reality be adjusted to remove undesirable elements from the current dream,” said the savior.

The Rainbow Room was half a kilometer wide and a full kilometer long. At present it displayed a ghostly pastoral scene. People played beside a placid lake in a forested valley. A silver transporter trundled slowly toward them, bringing fruit. The people, laughing, ran to meet it. A golden bird was painting a picture in the sky. A furry water rat traced a wake across the river. It
was a pleasant, peaceful fantasy.

“I can’t see anything objectionable about that scene,” said Matthew. “But then, I can’t see anything objectionable about anything the dreamers do. If they want to spend their lives picking flowers, that’s their problem, not yours.”

“What you see is intended to provide a contrast to the real purpose of the dream,” said Gentle Jim.

Now the sky-painting bird folded its wings and dropped like a stone. Talons open, claws downward-pointing, it hit the water rat squarely on the back with an audible thud. The dreamers cheered. The bird began to flap heavily away, the animal struggling in its talons, trailing an arc of bright blood.