When Cities Implode: Golden Age Space Opera Tales

IN HIS IMAGE-3

A GREY DUSKY AFTERNOON was dying when Jon crawled out of the small hall between rocks and started writhing down the hill. His eyes stayed open in fearful wonderment until tears rolled down his cheeks. The soft greens and browns of the great forest that thinned up into the hills. There was not the slightest hint that beneath this vast silent beauty, stretched the enormous grotesque underworld of Mammoth Hole.

Nor that in those nameless caverns and corridors along the cold and rushing and naked rivers a few unkempt savages clung to dim memories of centuries-lost power and surface civilization.

Jon stopped. An intangible yet powerful emotion surged in him. “I’m crawlin’,” he gritted as he sat up. “I said I was sick a’ crawlin.’ I ain’t a grub. I’m not crawlin’ anymore. Not for them damn machines, not for anything. They can’t do nothing but kill me, an’ what’s life down in that hole?”

He stood up. He stood up straight and started walking down the rocky trail, and finally along the smooth greenness beside the river. His strides were long and unhesitating, but inside him was a deep growing horror, as he remembered those shiny silver giants that had stood so silently on the hill against the red sunset. The huge attentive waiting stillness, and the sudden terrible sweep of the red beamed eye and the reaching of the metal arms.

He stopped and looked down at his thin white legs, starved of the sun, knotted and scarred from crawling over the harsh underground paths. He looked at his gnarled pallid fingers quivering in the cold.

He looked up at the sky. A few stars were showing dimly, palely. “Oh God, give me a quick ending when my time comes, that’s all I ask. Don’t let me crawl anymore on my belly. Give me the guts to keep walkin’, straight up, like I’m walkin’ now.”

There was no answer. There was no sound except the cry of birds in the forest, the drone of insects and other louder noises from the river. He was alone. He walked faster.

But he soon tired, because he had never walked far at a time. Underground, people crawled a lot of the time through narrow holes. And under there no one could walk far unless they went in circles.

He sat down to rest beneath the canopy of stars. He lay back and looked up at them, a feeling of frightful awe pressing down upon him. The night around him was colder now, and the sounds of the night had risen to a hungry song. And then he rolled over with a quick, terrible cry, leaped crouching to his feet.

There were at least a dozen of them. Great shiny angular and cubed monsters sliding noiseless down the hill. A peculiar bluish radiance pushed out around them, bathing the surrounding night in a deadly-seeming pall.

With a pathetic defiance, Jon picked up the heavy stone, stood with legs wide apart, holding the rock in front of him. Every nerve in him shrieked, pulling his muscles away. But he couldn’t run. He couldn’t run, nor crawl anymore. A kind of dark resigned courage replaced the first impulses of flight, and he hurled the rock. There was a futile thud, and the rock bounded from the great unruffled wall of metal.

Then—for an instant he didn’t think the thoughts, the voices, were anything but his own, strange, alien, terrifying, inspired by his own fears.

And then he realized it was the Mechs!

“A grub!”

“Yes. I thought they were all gone.”

“No. There are some remaining, deep in the soil. Central File says they are no longer of any danger. But File also retains orders to kill all organic things.”

Jon moved toward them. He moved stiffly, a strange and intangible bulwark of purpose shielding him from the screaming horror.

Something of the awful indignity of his position shook him, sent a hot rage throbbing blindly past his temples. He heard his breath coming hard from tightened throat. These great nameless things—machines, intelligent metal, it didn’t matter what. They had no idea of what he was, that he had a brain, that he could think. And yet, their gigantic thoughts were plain to him.

Some time, some time so very long ago, he—his kind—humans—had made these things. Had built them up from molten stuff, had put intricate interlocking machinery within them so that they could move, think for themselves, repair themselves. And then—humans had launched the Big War, had released seething seas of basic energy, and somehow these gigantic shiny silvery things had begun to—live.

But to them, Jon, a human, a descendant of the humans that had made them and had given them life, was less than the dirt under their towering, invulnerable radiance. Less than the dust beneath their sweeping red-death eyes. They had no conception that he was anything but a pale, crawling, cave-worm.

* * *

* * * *

JON WALKED CLOSER. He was not so much afraid for himself now. There was more of a sweeping terror of the whole situation, the terrible futility and irony. He wasn’t afraid to die, and he knew that he had to die now, that there was no escape, no defiance.

He shook his fist at the silent, towering forms. “Damn you! It’s me. Man. Man. I’m human. I’m not crawlin’. See, I’m not crawlin’, I’m talkin’ to you. I’m talkin’ and I’m thinkin’, too. See.”

“It’s making noises.”

“Yes. All the various species of organic life make noises peculiar to their type. Have you not seen a grub before?”

“No. Let us kill it now. We must report back to Central File. How long will it take to kill all organic life?”

“Central File says it will take many more years, even though now most organic life has been destroyed. We must complete the task soon, you know. Man will return. Glorious Mangod. Mighty Mangod. Mangod the Creator. Mangod the Eternal!”

“Ah yes. Mighty Mangod. How long will it be before the Mangod’s coming?”

Jon shivered, reached out a shaking hand as though to support himself against the air. He tried to speak, but his facial muscles seemed frozen. He wanted to say, “I’m Man. I’m your Creator. I made you, long ago.” But he could say nothing. Nothing at all.

“That is not known. Mangod made us in his own image, then departed, promising to return. Return to bring us glory and eternity.”

“May the Great Mangod who created us from the lifeless stuff of the dirt return soon, for only then may our destiny be fulfilled.”

“Yes. May Mangod return soon. Meanwhile, Central File demands immediate action in preparation for that Day. Kill this grub. Soon all organic life that stands in the way of the Mangod’s coming will be eradicated.”

The thunderous impact of telepathic power roared in Jon’s head as he staggered forward, fists clenched.

“FOR THEE, GREAT MANGOD. FOR WHOM WE WAIT.”

Jon laughed. Hot tears scalded his face as he laughed. He was still laughing as the red-death eye brightened, leaped out, and silently swept him away.