IN HIS IMAGE-2
681 Words
THE OLD MAN SHRUGGED again. “Go ahead, I said. Just promise not to ever come back and lead them down here. You’ll promise that, Jon?”
Something thickened in his throat, but he managed to say yes. He turned, then twisted back toward the Old Man. “You’re smart,” he said. “You’re supposed to know about when they took over. I’ve asked others. No one seems to know, and they care less. Would you tell me, Chief. What are they—the Mechs?”
The Old Man’s voice echoed strangely against the surrounding grotesque bars of limestone stalactites and stalagmites in multicolored hues of fusing reds and orange, purple and browns. A pinched face peered at them from between the ancient bars, then withdrew its tired eyes.
“Maybe there’s fifty humans left down here in Mammoth Hole,” the Old Man said softly. “Maybe there ain’t nobody else left in the world. Just them with their silent machinery drivin’ over the wastes, and their red death eyes sweeping the dark, grubbin’ for us. The big war went on and on, nobody knows how long. But humans couldn’t fight it. Too much deadly radiation, so they made machines to fight for ‘em. The sky and the land were just masses of machines, throwing out clouds and streamers and explosions. The land became nothing but pools and seas of deadly dust, and fire. The sky was clouded with it. And people went underground. They had to go down deep, and they couldn’t come back up, what was left of ‘em, for hundreds of years and more.”
The Old Man was gazing with a distant, haunted expression at the small blind lizard crawling up the painted wall. Jon listened, his skin was cold. A shiver ran down his back.
“Then they started grubbing the humans out, and killing ‘em. I don’t suppose anyone knows how long it’s been since they took over. That’s wrong. I wasn’t around then. Nor my father, nor my father’s father’s father. It was long, long before that. It was so long ago that—” The Old Man’s eyes widened. His voice choked off with a cloud of unconscious fear that had slipped through.
“They’re godly,” he whispered. “You seen ‘em. They’re all shapes and angles, cubes, and small smooth running things. They all shine like metal. And I guess they are metal. Nobody knows what they are. I heard tell when I was a boy that they were just machines. Machines built by humans a long time before. And that somehow or other the hard radiation had put a spark in ‘em that made ‘em able to think, and move around and organize like humans used to do. But I reckon they’re more intelligent than any humans ever were.”
Jon backed away. Sweat popped out coldly on his face and chest. “I seen ‘em,” he choked. “I sneaked on top. I went down to the river. It took me hours to get used to the sun. I waited until the sun started going down, then I sneaked out and looked down the big hill that goes into the valley. I seen two of ‘em. They must have been a hundred foot high. They was smooth. They had long snaking arms and single eyes that shot out red beams like fire. They stood on top of the hill against the sun. The sun was red all around ‘em. They looked like they were made of metal, all right, Chief. But how can they move by themselves, and—and think, if they’re metal?”
The Old Man sighed. “How?” He peered at Jon with tired retreating eyes. “What is thought,” he said then. “What was life, ever? Floods of gamma rays bathed them for centuries, and then they were living, and they had thoughts of their own. Humans never got a chance to find out what life was before he took it away from himself. He took it and gave it—to them.”
The Old Man dropped his face in his shaking hands. Jon had never heard a man crying before. He backed away slowly, then turned and ran out of the great cavern.
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- Writer
