A World Called Solitude

Chapter 1-2

Birk emerged from his side of the delta, paying no attention to the mechanical dwarves. He walked to the edge of the low wall that enclosed the roof and leaned on it, staring down at the city below him. Beta-Nu, though small, was one of the more interesting sites he’d explored during his sojourn on this world. It was once known, Arthur had informed him, as an artists’ haven; museums and galleries abounded, and even some of the individual homes and apartments showed artistic pretensions: entire walls of stained glass, unusual architectural designs, murals that covered whole rooms, So far, Birk had barely explored one quadrant’s worth of richness; the rest of the city was his for the taking.

After some moments he was aware of Arthur standing slightly behind him, trying to attract his attention. He ignored the subliminal signals, forcing the robot to speak aloud.

“Sir, were you considering an exploration this afternoon?”

“Yes, I was.”

“An excellent idea. Perhaps I could show you some of the—”

“I’ll go alone if you don’t mind, Arthur.”

The robot hesitated just a fraction of a second. “If that’s what you want, sir.” And, after another pause, “May I ask you a question?”

“Sure. But I won’t guarantee to answer it.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

Birk’s first impulse was to snap back a quick “Of course,” but then realized Arthur wasn’t inquiring about his physical health. An honest answer would be far more difficult. He tried to evade instead. “You’re a robot. You don’t even know what feelings are.”

“Not from firsthand experience. But I can make inferences from the outward appearance and behavior you project, comparing them to your previous behavior. The difference is entirely too obvious, sir. If you want to hide your feelings from me, you’ll have to be far more subtle than this.”

Birk grinned in spite of himself. “Arthur, there are times when you’ve been the only thing keeping me sane in this place and there are other times I’d gladly take you apart piece by piece. I don’t know which feeling is uppermost at the moment, but I hope I never do reach the point where I dismantle you. That would be—”

“Sir?”

“What?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Damn you!” Birk turned away, then turned back again almost immediately. The petulance was gone from his face. “There’s a doomsday feeling that’s been building up in me over the last week or so. Have you ever known that the world was going to end very shortly, and there was nothing you could do about it? Don’t bother answering, that was just rhetorical. But that’s how I feel right now.”

“The world did end for me once, sir,” Arthur said quietly.

Birk stared at him, nodding slowly. “Yes, you’re right. I keep forgetting, even though the evidence is all around me. I think that’s why I feel so close to you; we’ve each of us had our world end once. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, sir. I have no feelings, remember?”

“You’re either being cynical or naive. If I can ever figure out which, I probably will dismantle you.” Birk shrugged. “Nevertheless, I’ll be going out into the city today. Alone.”

“As you wish, sir,” Arthur said—the model of the perfect servant.

***

The streets were patterned mosaics in waves of colors. They echoed the soft clicks of his boots as he walked, while the silence welled up inside him until it was a roar. The thoroughfares of Beta-Nu were narrow, made to accommodate only pedestrians; mechanized traffic was reserved to the underground tubeways. It was not that way in all the cities on this world, but Beta-Nu had been one of the newer, more progressive communities. Perhaps that was why Birk liked it so much.

Around him towered the city. Stone giants of blue and gold and red and green peered down at him, barely tolerant of this alien interloper and indignant that he should command the situation. The sturdy structures showed the wear of time and the wind, and the city was scented with the perfume of gentle decay.

The ubiquitous gray maintenance robots bustled all about him. Most were only waist-high, but they gave the city its only pretense at life. It was these mechanized legions who’d kept the cities so well preserved centuries after their builders had perished. Birk had, by now, become accustomed to seeing them sweeping, dusting, removing foreign matter, or repairing cracks with their welding lasers; he paid them as little attention as they paid him.

And, as always, the streets were lined with ghosts. Birk had seen enough pictures of the Makers to visualize them quite vividly. Averaging more than two meters tall, with two arms and two legs apiece, they had heads that were squashed ovoids with narrow, pinpoint eyes, no noses, and a gash that only by generosity could be called a mouth. Skin colors varied from blue to green, but there was one minority race that seemed to have a pleasant golden cast.

The most blatant features of the Makers, though, were their enormous hands and feet. The hands each had seven digits, including two thumbs, and had twice the span of a human’s. The feet were similarly oversized, and yet the arms and legs were proportioned normally for slender bodies.

Eleven years ago, these creatures had seemed bizarre; now, Birk was more used to seeing representations of them than he was to seeing humans. Even his own reflected image seemed strange to him. In some ways, too, he felt more of a kinship with the Makers. They existed in a place that was now out of time and reality—and so did he, cut off from all that was normal for his race.

A gentle breeze blew from his back, ruffling his unkempt dark hair still further. There were times when the wind could become strong enough to make the buildings vibrate. On some of those occasions, Birk could feel as though the city were serenading him with a soulful siren song; yet at other times it was merely cacophonous vibrations, and he would stand in the middle of a room, holding his hands over his ears and screaming.

He ignored the taller buildings on this jaunt. He’d learned early on that they were usually either offices or apartment houses; and while there were always serendipitous discoveries to be made there, his soul today craved more momentous accomplishments.

He likewise walked right past the parks with their immense statues and monuments to war; they held no meaning for him today. Picking up a small pebble, he threw it at some birds to watch their hasty flight with grim amusement. He was looking for something special, and was angry with himself for not knowing what it was.

There were smaller buildings interspersed among the larger ones. Cubical and rectilinear architecture prevailed, though occasionally he would come across a whimsy that was a dome or pyramid or even some irregular conglomeration of straight lines and curves. These were the ones that attracted his attention now; only eccentricities would soothe his strange mood of the moment.

The first few he came to were shops of some sort, but whatever merchandise they’d sold had long ago turned to dust and been swept away by the efficient maintenance robots. Sometimes murals were painted on the walls, faded over the millennia; invariably they were scenes of great battles, dedicated to the glory of war. The best one he saw was of two opposing robot armies, clashing in a furious metallic assault. The din of that silent struggle was overwhelming, but Birk turned away, unmoved.

After three hours of random walking, he found what he’d been seeking—an art museum. In contrast to the war murals that graced public walls and the heroic statues that filled the parks, the art in the museums tended to be of a softer, more sensitive nature. The Makers put their spirit on display, but they held their soul in secret.

This building was an inverted truncated cone, held upright by three outside pillars. Inside, the gallery was arranged along a helical walkway that spiraled up the sides. The vast open space in the center—which grew larger the higher one climbed—was filled with mobile sculptures suspended from the translucent ceiling, and with phantom images of animals and flowers that floated through the air courtesy of hidden holographic projectors. Standing at the foot of the walkway and looking upward, the effect was one of having the museum stretching out infinitely into space overhead, even though Birk knew the building was only ten to fifteen stories tall. He was suitably impressed, as the designer of this gallery had intended him to be.

He started casually up the ramp with the wall on his left, noting as he walked the artistic legacy that was now his alone. Some of the works had been done on a fabric-based material similar to canvas; these had been partially eaten away by this world’s equivalent of mildew and bacteria, though not to the extent one might have supposed. They were, after all, indoors and protected from the elements and animals. The maintenance robots had done what they could to preserve these treasures, with more success in some cases than in others.

Later paintings were made on an artificial material that could be as thin as parchment while retaining color and lasting indefinitely. The paints themselves were mineral-based and faded almost not at all, despite the millennia that had passed since their original application.

There were other forms of art besides the paintings. Sculptures both of stone and of metal were set at intervals in niches along the wall as he ascended; the metals tended to be corroded, but the stone works were as fresh as the day they were cut.

In addition, there were some of the unique art forms that, for want of a better word, Birk had called “windows.” A plate of what looked to be glass was framed flat against a wall, and yet looking through it gave the viewer a panoramic scene as though he were looking through the wall. The representation was perfectly three dimensional, yet the glass that held it was flat. Birk had once taken down one of these pieces to make sure there was nothing behind it but solid wall. He had never figured out the process that created these windows—it was certainly no holographic procedure he was familiar with—but he had to admire the technique and craftsmanship that went into them. Often they were the most striking works in any given display.

The works at the lowest level of this gallery had a martial flavor to them, but they were subtly different from the more public art forms. These paintings concentrated on the individual aspects of battle—bravery and loyalty, cowardice and betrayal. A few were even so bold as to depict the tragedy of warfare as well as its glory: widows mourning their loved ones, limbless veterans returning to shattered homes, terrified children dying for reasons they could not understand. Birk passed them by, observing but uncaring.

Next came a series of more surrealistic works: pieces where perspective shifted in and out of focus with startling abruptness; where there were several different references of gravity in one painting; where familiar objects were of unusual proportions or in bizarre juxtaposition; where colors clashed in outrageous combinations. There were times when Birk enjoyed standing before such works, wondering about the symbolism they carried to the audience they’d been intended to reach. But today he was in no mood for puzzles, and he pushed relentlessly on.

There were some strictly representational pieces, though not very many in this gallery—simple landscapes, or seascapes, or portraits, or scenes of ordinary events: merchants in a marketplace, craftsmen at their labors, children playing by a seashore. Birk spent a long time studying these last, hoping they would speak to him, tell him something that could relate to life as he was living it, But they were just pictures, as lifeless now as their creators, and try as he would he could not bring animation to their subjects.

The higher he went, the harder it was to go on. His legs began to ache from the climb. His breaths were deep puffs. One more time around the spiral, he thought, and then I’ll quit. He grew thirsty, and wished the Makers had believed in putting water fountains in public places. He climbed some more and rested, drawing deep breaths. One more time around.