Short Fiction Algis Budrys (best large ereader TXT) 📖

“other dunderheads come to gain what in exchange for what?”

“Gain at least some sort of affirmation at the cost of remaining men!” the old man growled. “If they are simple, at least they are human! And even an intelligent man can see the value in what is embodied here.”

“As witness yourself. Yes.”

“I didn’t want to wake you! We know enough so you could have been awakened centuries ago. But to what purpose? To turn another hooligan loose to upset civilization, and lose the symbol of that precious thing? When Man himself can rescue himself? But, no, this one, this superstition-ridden tramp I wish I’d strangled in her cradle⁠—she stirred the worshippers up, she arranged the combat between yourself and Mayron, she⁠—”

“When and where?”

“What?”

“This fight Mayron and you have both spoken of.”

“Tomorrow at noon. In the city. But there’s no need for it. Tomorrow Mayron dies, and the other Shadows die. You can watch or not⁠—as long as you stay out of the way.”

Greaves looked at Adelie. “Your daughter, Vigil, does not look much impressed.”

“Impressed! Impressed!” The old man was very nearly dancing with rage. “I’ll show you! Come with me.” Vigil turned without looking back and pattered rapidly down the steps of the dais, his calloused feet slapping indignantly on the time-buffed stones.

Greaves frowned after him. Then he jerked his head to Adelie. “Come on,” he said and they, too, walked quickly down the length of the court of the conquered monsters. And for the first time since their creation the pillared gargoyles did not have to bear the sight of Man.

The scent of Adelie’s fragrance was in Greaves nostrils again as they followed the old man through the temple, past the altar where the eternal flame burned bright enough to sting. He said nothing to her. She volunteered no words of her own. But she walked close enough to brush his thigh with hers. Greaves smiled appreciatively.

Vigil led them to a small chamber in one wing of the temple. He flung open the door with a clatter of bolts in a concealed lock, and pointed inside. “Look⁠—the two of you. It’s not just Mayron who can dabble with machines. For every clever man, there is another just as clever.”

A gun of green metal was mounted on a pedestal in the center of the chamber. Slim and graceful as a wading bird with one extended leg, it poised atop its mount and sang quietly of power and intent to kill. The friezed walls of the chamber hummed in harmonic response to the idle melody of the gun. Greaves felt his hackles rising unreasonably, and he very nearly growled with outrage at the sight of it.

“Tomorrow at noon,” Vigil said in a high, triumphant voice, “the weapon will be swung to point through that window and down upon Mayron’s city. And when it is done, there will not be a single Shadow alive down there.”

Greaves walked to the window in the chamber’s far wall and looked down. But it was dark below; nothing to mark the outlines of a city as cities had been in the time he remembered. The temple apparently stood atop a high hill, with the city in a great valley at its foot, but again all Greaves could see were three glowing mountaintops across the way, and, beyond them, the night sky.

Then suddenly one of the volcanos flared for an instant, and the few overhead clouds reflected redly down into the valley.

Greaves caught his breath. The city had emerged black and immense, extending for miles, its lightless towers like the spine-bones of a beast half-eaten and rotting in a tidal pool. Then the light was gone, and once again there was nothing visible down there⁠—if the undead beast had chosen to bestir itself and stealthily move on some errand of the night, no one standing here could have known until it was too late.

“So that’s the city of the Shadows,” Greaves said.

“The city that was once the First City of Man,” Vigil said bitterly. “That Mayron has made into an outpost of Hell. Where no man dares live; where they say that those with Shadows, once they were in sufficient number, dragged women and children into the Chamber of Shadows so that their men, heartbroken, joined them when their Shadow-children returned to plead with them.”

“And this gun of yours is going to do what to them?” he asked.

“Kill them.”

“I know that. How?” Greaves stared at the old man through narrowing eyes.

“A beam of power, made of the stuff that spins within all things⁠—the pure force of this continuum.”

“You mean this thing is some kind of particle emitter⁠—an electron or photon gun?”

“Our science need not concern itself with crudities like names, barbarian. This gun was made as a song or a poem is made⁠—in the mind of a man who dreams weapons where another man might dream bridges⁠ ⁠… and when the gun finds its fruition, tomorrow when Mayron expects no mightier enemy than you, then the beam will sweep that city, and when it stops Mayron’s city will be a tomb for empty skins. And Man will build another First City, and those who fled shall have a place again, and⁠—”

“Who built⁠—who dreamed⁠—this piece of ironmongery?” Greaves growled. “Who was the poet⁠—you?”

“Yes! Why not? Do you think because I am an old man⁠—”

“A heedlessly spiteful one who hasn’t stopped to think.”

“Stopped to think! Look!” Vigil seized the torch at the doorway and lifted it high. “Did you think I wasn’t sure? That the weapon has not been tested?”

Now Greaves could see why the gun sang rather than rested in quiet patience. A Shadow hung against the far wall, supported by its outstretched arms, its hands sunken wrist-deep in the stone. And though it jerked its legs and struggled feebly to be free, the hands remained trapped. Under the sound of the idling gun, he could distinguish a quiet, thin, whimpering.

Adelie laughed softly to herself.

Vigil crowed: “He cannot move⁠—what little strength remains to him is needed for bare existence⁠ ⁠…