The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel R. Delany (most read books .txt) 📖

city broke the sky. Elevated highways looped tower after tower, many of them broken, their ends dangling colossaly to the streets. The docks of the city just across from them were completely deserted.

It was Geo who suggested, "Perhaps Hama's temple is in there. After all, Argo's largest temple is in Leptar's biggest city."

"And what city in Leptar is that big?" breathed Urson, awfully.

"How do we get across?" asked Iimmi.

But Snake had already started down to the water.

"I guess we follow him," said Geo, climbing down over the rocks.

Snake dove into the water. Iimmi, Geo, and Urson followed. Before he had taken two strokes, Geo felt familiar hands suddenly grasp his body from below. This time he did not fight, and there was a sudden sense of speed, of sinking through consciousness.

Then he was bobbing up through chill water with the rising embankment of stones to one side and the broad river to the other. He switched from skulling into a crawl now, wondering how to scale the stones when he saw the rusted metal ladder leading into the water. He caught hold of the sides and pulled himself up.

Snake came up now, and then Urson. And, at last Iimmi joined them on the broad ridge of concrete that walled the flowing river. Together now on the wharf, they turned to the city.

Near them, piles of debris lay between two taller buildings. After a few minutes' walk the building walls had reached canyon size. "Now, how are you going to go about looking for the temple?" Urson asked.

"Maybe we can take a look from the top of one of these buildings," Geo suggested.

They turned toward a random building. A slab of metal had torn away from the wall, and stepping through, they found themselves in a huge hollow room. Dim light came from a number of white tubes set around the wall. Only a quarter of them were lit, and one was flickering. Hung from the center of the room was a metal sign which read:

NEW EDISON ELECTRIC COMPANY

and beneath it, in smaller letters:

"Light Down The Ages"

One of the huge cylinders, across the floor, was buzzing.

As they mounted a spiral staircase to the next floor the great room turned about them, sinking. At last they stepped up into a dark corridor. A red light glowed at the end which said: EXIT.

Doors outlined themselves along the hall in a red haze. Geo moved to one at random and opened it. Natural light fell in on them as the others came to see. They entered a room whose outer wall was torn away. The floor broke off irregularly over thrusting girders.

"What could have happened to it?" Urson asked.

"See," Iimmi explained. "That roadway must have crashed into the wall and knocked it away."

A twenty-foot ribbon of road veered into the room at an insane angle. The railing was twisted, but there were the stalks of street lights still intact along the edges.

"Do you think we could climb that?" asked Geo. "It doesn't look too steep."

"For what?" Urson wanted to know.

"To get some place high enough to see if there's anything that looks like a temple."

"Oh," said Urson in a reconciled voice.

In general the walk was in good shape. Occasional sections of railing had twisted away, but the road itself mounted surely between the sheering faces of the buildings on either side of them through advancing sunset.

It branched before them and they went left. It branched again and again they avoided the right-handed road. A sign, half the length of a three masted ship, hung lopsidedly above them on a building to one side.

WMTH

The Hub Of World News, Communication, & Entertainment

As they rounded the corner of the building, Snake suddenly stopped and put his hand to his head.

"What is it?" asked Geo.

Snake took a step backward. Then he pointed to WMTH. It ... hurts.

"What hurts?" asked Iimmi.

Snake pointed to the building again.

"Is there someone in there thinking too loud?"

Thinking ... machine, Snake said. Radio ...

"A radio is a thinking machine and there's one in there that's hurting your head?" interpreted Iimmi, tentatively, and with a question mark.

Snake nodded.

"How come the one he showed us before didn't hurt him?" Urson wanted to know.

Iimmi looked up at the imposing housing of WMTH. "Maybe this one's a lot bigger."

"Look," Geo said to Snake, "you stay here, and if we see anything, we'll come back and report, all right?"

"Maybe it stops later on," Urson said, "and if he ran forward, he could get out the other side. It may just stop after a hundred feet or so."

"Why so anxious?" asked Iimmi.

"The jewels," said Urson. "Who's going to get us out of trouble if we should meet up with anything else?"

They were silent then. Their shadows faded over the pavement as the yellow tinge in the sky turned blue. "I guess it's up to Snake," Geo said. "Do you think you can make it?"

Snake paused for a moment, then shook his head.

"Well," Geo said to the others, "come on then."

Around them was a sudden click, and lights flickered all along the edges of the road.

"Come on," Geo said again, and once more they started, passing the lights which wheeled double and triple shadows about them over the road and the opposite railing. When they reached the next turn off that led to a still higher ramp, Geo looked back. Snake's miniature figure sat on the edge of the road's railing, his feet on the lower rung, one pair of arms folded, one pair of elbows on his knees. The light above him.

"Keep track of the turns," said Geo.

"I'm keeping," Iimmi assured him.

"By the time we get to the top of whatever we're trying to get to the top of," rumbled Urson, "we won't be able to see anything. It'll be too dark."

"Then let's hurry," Geo admonished.

Sunset stained one side of the towers copper while blue shadows hugged the other. By way of a plastic-domed stairway, they mounted another eighty feet to a broader highway where they could look down on the band of lights which was the one they had just left. They were beginning to clear the roofs of the lower buildings now.

On this road fewer lights were working. They were just about to enter a dark section when a figure appeared in silhouette at the other end.

They stopped, but the figure was suddenly gone. A little farther, Geo suddenly halted and said, "There!"

Two hundred feet ahead of them, what may have been a naked woman rose from the ground, and began to walk backwards until she disappeared into the next dark length of road.

"Do you think she was running away from us?" Iimmi asked.

Urson reached out and touched Iimmi's jewel. "I wish we have some more light around here."

"Yeah," Iimmi agreed. They continued.

The skeleton lay at the twilight edge of the next stretch of functioning lights. The rib cage marked sharp lines on the pavement with shadow from the lamps' glare.

"Do we turn back now?" Urson asked.

"A skeleton can't hurt you," Iimmi said.

"But what about the live one we saw?" countered Urson.

"... and here she comes now," Geo whispered in a cynical stage voice.

In fact two figures approached them through the shadow. As Urson, Geo and Iimmi moved closer, one stopped, and then the other a few steps before the first. Then they dropped. Geo couldn't tell if they fell, or lay down quickly on the roadway. But they seemed to have disappeared.

"Go on?" asked Urson.

"Go on," said Geo.

Pause. "Go on," from Geo.

Two more skeletons lay on the road where the figures had disappeared a minute before. "They don't seem dangerous," Geo said. "But what do they do? Die every time they see us?"

"Hey," Iimmi said. "What's that? Listen."

It was a sickly liquid sound, like mud dropping into itself. Something was falling from the sky. No, not the sky, but from the roadway that crossed fifty feet above them. Looking down again, they saw that a blob of something was growing on the pavement ten feet from them.

"Come on," Geo said, and they skirted the mess dripping from above them, and continued up the road, passing four more skeletons. The sound behind them turned into a wet sloshing. Turning, they saw it emerge into the light—shapeless and jelly-green under the white flare. Impaling its membrane on the skeletons, the mass flowed around them, faster, covering them, molding to them. There was a final surge, a shrinking, and its shapelessness contracted into limbs, a head, feet. The naked man-thing pushed itself to its knees and then stood straight, the flesh by now opaque. Eye sockets caved into the face. A mouth ripped apart on the skull, and the chest began to move with a wet steamy sound in irregular gasps.

It began to walk toward them, raising its hands from its sides. Then, behind it in the darkness, they saw more coming.

"Damn," said Urson. "What do they...?"

"One, or both, of two things," Iimmi answered, backing away. "More meat, or more bones."

"Whoops," Geo said. "Look back there!"

They whirled and saw seven more figures standing quietly behind them, while the ones in front advanced.

A covered flight of stairs had its entrance nearby, leading to the next level of highway. They ducked into it and fled up the steps. Geo glanced back once; one of the forms had reached the entrance and had started to climb. He was also, he realized, high enough to get some idea of the city, which stretched, beyond the transparent covering of the steps, away in a web of lighted roadways, rising, looping, descending. Two glows caught him: one, beyond the river, a red haze that flickered behind the trees and was reflected on the water itself. The other was within the city itself, orange white, nested among the buildings.

He turned back up the steps. A gurgling sound neared them as they reached the top entrance. Geo had only gotten half clear of the entrance when he yelled, "Yikes," and then, "Duck!"

They slipped from the doorway and nearly fell, avoiding a mass of jelly the size of a two-story house which flopped against the entrance. They edged by its pulsing, transparent sides. The lamp light pierced into it a yard, and once a skull swirled toward the surface and then sank again.

Suddenly it sucked away from the entrance and shivered ponderously toward them. Something was happening at the front. Figures, three or four of them, were detaching themselves from the mother mass and preceding it.

They turned and ran along the road, plunging suddenly into an extended darkened section. A moment later there was a glow in front of them and suddenly Urson yelled, "Watch it!"

Abruptly the road sheered off in front of them; they halted, and then approached the edge slowly. The surface of the road tore away and the girders descended, webbing toward the ruined stump of a building from which the orange-white glow rose. The glow came from the heart of the edifice. "What do you think it is?" asked Geo.

"I don't know," said Iimmi.

They looked, and in the shadow, numberless figures were marching after them. Suddenly the figures fell to the ground, and flesh rolled forward from bone, congealed, and rose quiveringly into the edge of the light.

Iimmi started out first on the skeletal, twisted structure that descended to the glowing pit. "You're crazy," Geo said. The thing flopped forward another yard with a sick sound. "Hurry up," Geo added. With Urson in the middle, they started out along the twenty-inch wide girder. Lit from beneath, their bodies were in the shadow of the girder. Only their outstretched arms burned in the pale orange light as they balanced themselves.

Before them, faintly legible on the broken building into which they were descending was the sign: ATOMIC ENERGY FOR THE BETTERMENT OF MAN

It was flanked by two purple trefoils. The beam twisted sideways, and then dropped. Iimmi made the turn, dropped to his knees and hands, and then started to let himself down the four feet to the next small section of concrete. Once he saw something, let out a low whistle, but continued to lower himself to the straightened girder. Urson made the turn next, while Geo knelt in front of him. When Urson saw what Iimmi had seen, his hand shot to Geo's chest and grabbed the jewel. Geo took his wrist. "That won't help us now," he said.

Urson expelled a breath, and then continued down, slowly. Quickly Geo turned to drop now.

The entire beam structure over which they had just come was coated with a trembling thickness of the stuff. Globs dripped from the steel shafts, glowing in the light from below, quivering, smoking, splashing off into the darkness. Here and there something half human would rise either to look around or to pull the