beings who laired here.
"Have you control over your course?" inquired the voice.
"Yes. Let me speak to a ranking officer."
"You will go approximately five hundred kilometers northwest of your
immediate position. Prepare to record a map." The visage vanished, a
chart appeared, two triangles upon it. "The red apex shows where you
are, the blue your mandatory landing site, a spacefield. You will stay
inboard and await instructions. Is this understood?"
"We'll try. We, uh, we have a lot of speed to kill. In our condition,
fast braking is unsafe. Can you give us about half an hour?"
Aycharaych would not have spent several seconds reaching a decision.
"Permitted. Be warned, deviations may cause you to be shot down.
Proceed." Nor would he have broken contact with not a single further
inquiry.
Outside was no longer black, but purple. The spacecraft strewed thunder
across desert. "What the hell, sir?" Chives exploded.
"Agreed," said Flandry. His tongue shifted to an obscure language they
both knew. "Use this lingo while that channel's open."
"What shall we do?"
"First, play back any pictures we got of the place we're supposed to
go." Flandry's fingers brushed a section of console. On an inset screen
came a view taken from nearby space under magnification. His trained
eyes studied it and a few additional. "A spacefield, aye, standard
Merseian model, terminal and the usual outbuildings. Modest-sized, no
vessels parked. And way off in wilderness." He twisted his mustache.
"You know, I'll bet that's where every visitor's required to land. And
then he's brought in a closed car to a narrowly limited area which is
all he ever sees."
"Shall we obey, sir?"
"Um, 'twould be a pity, wouldn't it, to pass by that lovely city we had
in mind. Besides, they doubtless keep heavy weapons at the port; our
pictures show signs of it. Once there, we'd be at their mercy. Whereas I
suspect that threat to blast us elsewhere was a bluff. Imagine a
stranger pushing into a prohibited zone on a normal planet--when the
system's being invaded! Why aren't we at least swarmed by military
aircraft?"
"Very good, sir. We can land in five minutes." Chives gave his master a
pleading regard. "Sir, must I truly stay behind while you debark?"
"Somebody has to cover us, ready to scramble if need be. We're
Intelligence collectors, not heroes. If I call you and say, 'Escape,'
Chives, you will escape."
"Yes, sir," the Shalmuan forced out. "However, please grant me the
liberty of protesting your decision not to wear armor like your men."
"I want the full use of my senses." Flandry cast him a crooked smile and
patted the warm green shoulder. "I fear I've often strained your
loyalty, old chap. But you haven't failed me yet."
"Thank you, sir." Chives stared hard at his own busy hands. "I ...
endeavor ... to give satisfaction."
Time swooped past.
"Attention!" cried from the screen. "You are off course! You are in
absolutely barred territory!"
"Say on," Flandry jeered. He half hoped to provoke a real response. The
voice only denounced his behavior.
A thump resounded and shivered. The tone of wind and engines ceased.
They were down.
Flandry vaulted from his chair, snatched a combat helmet, buckled it on
as he ran. Beneath it he already wore a mindscreen, as did everybody
aboard. Otherwise he was' attired in a gray coverall and stout leather
boots. On his back and across his chest were the drive cones and
controls of a grav unit. His pouchbelt held field rations, medical
supplies, canteen of water, ammunition, blaster, slugthrower, and
Merseian war knife.
At the head of his dozen Dennitzan marines, he bounded from the main
There he crouched in what shelter the hull afforded and glared around,
fingers on weapons.
After a minute or two he stepped forth. Awe welled in him.
A breeze whispered, blade-sharp with cold and dryness. It bore an iron
tang off uncounted leagues of sand and dust. In cloudless violet, the
sun stood at afternoon, bigger to see than Sol over Terra, duller and
redder than the sun over Diomedes; squinting, he could look straight
into it for seconds without being blinded, and through his lashes find
monstrous dark spots and vortices. It would not set for many an hour,
the old planet turned so wearily.
Shadows were long and purple across the dunes which rolled cinnabar and
ocher to the near horizon. Here and there stood the gnawed stump of a
pinnacle, livid with mineral hues, or a ravine clove a bluff which might
once have been a mountain. The farther desert seemed utterly dead.
Around the city, wide apart, grew low bushes whose leaves glittered in
rainbows as if crystalline. The city itself rose from foundations that
must go far down, must have been buried until the landscape eroded from
around them and surely have needed renewal as the ages swept past.
The city--it was not a giant chaos such as besat Terra or Merseia;
nothing on Chereion was. An ellipse defined it, some ten kilometers at
the widest, proportioned in a right-ness Flandry had recognized from
afar though not knowing how he did. The buildings of the perimeter were
single-storied, slenderly colonnaded; behind them, others lifted ever
higher, until they climaxed in a leap of slim towers. Few windows
interrupted the harmonies of colors and iridescence, the interplay of
geometries that called forth visions of many-vaulted infinity. The heart
rode those lines and curves upward until the whole sight became a silent
music.
Silent ... only the breeze moved or murmured.
A time passed beyond time.
"Milostiv Bog," Lieutenant Vymezal breathed, "is it Heaven we see?"
"Then is Heaven empty?" said another man as low.
Flandry shook himself, wrenched his attention away, sought for his
purposefulness in the ponderous homely shapes of their armor, the guns
and grenades they bore. "Let's find out." His words were harsh and loud
in his ears. "This is as large a community as any, and typical insofar
as I could judge." Not that they are alike. Each is a separate song. "If
it's abandoned, we can assume they all are."
"Why would the Merseians guard ... relics?" Vymezal asked.
"Maybe they don't." Flandry addressed his minicom. "Chives, jump aloft
at the first trace of anything untoward. Fight at discretion. I think we
can maintain radio contact from inside the town. If not, I may ask you
to hover. Are you still getting a transmission?"
"No, sir." That voice came duly small. "It ceased when we landed."
"Cut me in if you do ... Gentlemen, follow me in combat formation.
Should I come to grief, remember your duty is to return to the fleet if
possible, or to cover our boat's retreat if necessary. Forward."
Flandry started off in flat sub-gee bounds. His body felt miraculously
light, as light as the shapes which soared before him, and the air
diamond
clear. Yet behind him purred the gravity motors which helped his
weighted troopers along. He reminded himself that they hugged the ground
to present a minimal target, that the space they crossed was
terrifyingly open, that ultimate purity lies in death. The minutes grew
while he covered the pair of kilometers. Half of him stayed cat-alert,
half wished Kossara could somehow, safely, have witnessed this wonder.
The foundations took more and more of the sky, until at last he stood
beneath their sheer cliff. Azure, the material resisted a kick and an
experimental energy bolt with a hardness which had defied epochs. He
whirred upward, over an edge, and stood in the city.
A broad street of the same blue stretched before him, flanked by dancing
rows of pillars and arabesque friezes on buildings which might have been
temples. The farther he scanned, the higher fountained walls, columns,
tiers, cupolas, spires; and each step he took gave him a different
perspective, so that the whole came alive, intricate, simple, powerful,
tranquil, transcendental. But footfalls echoed hollow.
They had gone a kilometer inward when nerves twanged and weapons snapped
to aim. "Hold," Flandry said. The man-sized ovoid that floated from a
side lane sprouted tentacles which ended in tools and sensors. The lines
and curves of it were beautiful. It passed from sight again on its
unnamed errand. "A robot," Flandry guessed. "Fully automated, a city
could last, could function, for--millions of years?" His prosiness felt
to him as if he had spat on consecrated earth.
No, damn it! I'm hunting my woman's murderers.
He trod into a mosaic plaza and saw their forms.
Through an arcade on the far side the tall grave shapes walked,
white-robed, heads bare to let crests shine over luminous eyes and
lordly brows. They numbered perhaps a score. Some carried what appeared
to be books, scrolls, delicate enigmatic objects; some appeared to be in
discourse, mind to mind; some went alone in their meditations. When the
humans arrived, most heads turned observingly. Then, as if having
exhausted what newness was there, the thoughtfulness returned to them
and they went on about their business of--wisdom?
"What'll we do, sir?" Vymezal rasped at Flandry's ear.
"Talk to them, if they'll answer," the Terran said. "Even take them
prisoner, if circumstances warrant."
"Can we? Should we? I came here for revenge, but--God help us, what
filthy monkeys we are."
A premonition trembled in Flandry. "Don't you mean," he muttered, "what
animals we're intended to feel like ... we and whoever they guide this
far?"
He strode quickly across the lovely pattern before him. Under an ogive
arch, one stopped, turned, beckoned, and waited. The sight of gun loose
in holster and brutal forms at his back did not stir the calm upon that
golden face. "Greeting," lulled in Eriau.
Flandry reached forth a hand. The other slipped easily aside from the
uncouth gesture. "I want somebody who can speak for your world," the man
said.
"Any of us can that," sang the reply. "Call me, if you wish, Liannathan.
Have you a name for use?"
"Yes. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy of Terra. Your
Aycharaych knows me. Is he around?"
Liannathan ignored the question. "Why do you trouble our peace?"
The chills walked faster along Flandry's spine. "Can't you read that in
my mind?" he asked.
"Sta pakao," said amazement behind him.
"Hush," Vymezal warned the man, his own tone stiff with intensity; and
there was no mention of screens against telepathy.
"We give you the charity of refraining," Liannathan smiled.
To and fro went the philosophers behind him.
"I ... assume you're aware ... a punitive expedition is on its way,"
Flandry said. "My group came to ... parley."
Calm was unshaken. "Think why you are hostile."
"Aren't you our enemies?"
"We are enemies to none. We seek, we shape."
"Let me talk to Aycharaych. I'm certain he's somewhere on Chereion. He'd
have left the Zorian System after word got beamed to him, or he learned
from broadcasts, his scheme had failed. Where else would he go?"
Liannathan curved feathery brows upward. "Best you explain yourself,
Captain, to yourself if not us."
Abruptly Flandry snapped off the switch of his mind-screen. "Read the
answers," he challenged.
Liannathan spread graceful hands in gracious signal. "I told you,
knowing what darkness you must dwell in, for mercy's sake we will leave
your thoughts alone unless you compel us. Speak."
Conviction congealed in Flandry, iceberg huge. "No, you speak. What are
you on Chereion? What do you tell the Merseians? I already know, or
think I know, but tell me."
The response rang grave: "We are not wholly the last of an ancient race;
the others have gone before us. We are those who have not yet reached
the Goal; the bitter need of the universe for help still binds us. Our
numbers are few, we have no need of numbers. Very near we are to those
desires that lie beyond desire, those powers that lie beyond power."
Compassion softened Liannathan's words. "Terran, we mourn the torment of
you and yours. We mourn that you can never feel the final reality, the
spirit born out of pain. We have no wish to return you to nothingness.
Go in love, before too late."
Almost, Flandry believed. His sense did not rescue him; his memories
did. "Yah!" he shouted. "You phantom, stop haunting!"
He lunged. Liannathan wasn't there. He crashed a blaster bolt among the
mystics. They were gone. He leaped in among the red-tinged shadows of
the arcade and peered after light and sound projectors to smash.
Everywhere else, enormous, brooded the stillness of the long afternoon.
The image of a single Chereionite flashed into sight, in brief white
tunic, bearing though not brandishing a sidearm, palm
uplifted--care-worn, as if the bones would break out from the skin, yet
with life in flesh and great garnet eyes such as had never burned in
those apparitions which were passed away. Flandry halted. "Aycharaych!"
He snatched for the switch to turn his mindscreen back on. Aycharaych
smiled. "You need not bother, Dominic," he said in Anglic. "This too is
only a hologram."
"Lieutenant," Flandry snapped over his shoulder, "dispose your squad
against attack."
"Why?" said Aycharaych. The armored men gave him scant notice. His form
glimmered miragelike in the gloom under that vaulted roof, where sullen
sunlight barely reached. "You have discovered we have nothing to resist
you."
You're bound to have something, Flandry did not reply. A few missiles or
whatever. You're just unwilling to use them in these environs. Where are
you yourself, and what were you doing while your specters held us quiet?
As if out of a stranger's throat, he heard: "Those weren't
straightforward audiovisuals like yours that we met, were they? No
reason for them to put on a show of being present, of being real, except
that none of the
m ever were. Right? They're computer-generated
simulacrums, will-o'-the-wisps for leading allies and enemies alike from
the truth. Well, life's made me an unbeliever.
"Aycharaych, you are in fact the last Chereionite alive. The very last.
Aren't you?"
Abruptly such anguish contorted the face before him that he looked away.
"What did they die of?" he was asking. "How long ago?" He got no answer.
Instead: "Dominic, we share a soul, you and I. We have both always been
alone."
For a while I wasn't; and now she is; she is down in the aloneness which
is eternal. Rage ripped Flandry. He swung back to see a measure of
self-command masking the gaunt countenance. "You must have played your
game for centuries," he grated. "Why? And ... whatever your reason to
hide that your people are extinct ... why prey on the living? You, you
could let them in and show them what'd make your Chereionites the ...
Greeks of the galaxy--but you sit in a tomb or travel like a
vampire--Are you crazy, Aycharaych? Is that what drives you?"
"No!"
Flandry had once before heard the lyric voice in sorrow. He had not
heard a scream: "I am not! Look around you. Who could go mad among
these? And arts, music, books, dreams--yes, more, the loftiest spirits
of a million years--they lent themselves to the scanners, the
recorders--If you could have the likenesses to meet whenever you would