"You've been here three days," Spahl pointed out. The seal-like mutant
shrugged sadly. "That's three days longer than any non-mutant's ever
spent in this city, Kesley. We can't keep you here much longer."
"Why do you want to stay here?" asked Foursmith, an angular,
knobby-looking mutant with a row of inch-long red nubbins protruding
through the flesh of his back. "You've got to get going, you know.
Daveen's not here."
"I don't know _where_ Daveen is!" Kesley said. "Can't you let me catch
my breath?"
"You'll have to leave tomorrow," Spahl said. "We'll give you a horse."
"Thanks."
This was the third day since Spahl had rescued him in the forest and
brought him to Mutie City; they had fed him and rested him, but now
they insisted that he leave.
He couldn't blame them; the city was a refuge for harried mutants,
not a harbor for escaped turncoats. They ran the risk of incurring
Winslow's displeasure by giving him sanctuary. Yet, he thought, as long
as they'd admitted him they might as well have let him stay long enough
to get his bearings, to have some of the furor over him die down.
Well, at least they'd taken him in. A small blessing, but a real one.
"I'm sorry," he said humbly, walking to the window of the room they had
given him. He looked out over the variegated city below--strange and
motley compared with the neat regularity of all Empire-built cities.
"I'm imposing myself, and I'm acting like a fool." He wet his lips.
"I'll go whenever you want me to."
"Don't misunderstand," Foursmith warned. The mutant with the extended
vertebrae was the current head of the mutie enclave. "We're not
throwing you out. We think you should leave, that's all. For your good
and ours."
"Agreed," Kesley said. In the street below, a two-headed woman was
making slow progress pushing a perambulator in which squirmed a
many-armed monster-baby. He shuddered. He still was not used to such
sights.
This was the world's genetic refuse heap, the city where the alien race
in mankind's midst could live in peace and security. Gradually, Mutie
City was enfolding in itself the mutants of the Ducal cities; here, the
grim souvenirs of the time-shadowed great war could walk unmolested.
He could see the logic behind the agreement of the Dukes granting Mutie
City total independence. The mutants came here and, gradually, the
contamination of their genes would be localized, the cancer of mutation
penned into one tiny area. Kesley wondered whether, on the day when the
last mutant had left the Twelve Empires and entered Mutie City, the
Dukes would bomb the city to shreds and thus restore mankind's genetic
homogeneity. It was a terrible thought.
He turned. There they were, Spahl and Foursmith and Ricketts and
Huygens and Devree, each one looking as if he had come down from a
different world. They ruled the city.
"Why did you take me in?" he asked.
"There were reasons," Huygens, the double-header, said resonantly.
_Always reasons_, Kesley thought. _And everyone knows them but me._
"This Daveen--he's not a mutant, is he?" Kesley asked.
"No," Foursmith said. "I saw him once, in the court of Duke Winslow. He
is very tall, without hair, and blind. He's not one of us."
"And you don't know where I could find him?"
"You might try the Colony," Foursmith suggested. "He might be in hiding
there, among the other artists. At any event, the Colony is safe from
Winslow, too. Perhaps you could stay there for a while."
"Good enough," Kesley said.
* * * * *
The Colony sprang from the blue-green grass of Kentucky like a
sprawling, segmented worm. Its architecture bore no resemblance to that
of any city Kesley had ever seen; broad, rambling, almost ramshackle,
it presented an even more disorderly appearance than had Mutie City.
He wheeled the exhausted, six-legged horse the mutants had given him
up the final stretches of the roadway, looking around cautiously as he
rode. It had been a tense but, happily, uneventful journey down from
Illinois.
The Colony, like all other cities, was walled. But it was as if a
different architect had planned each segment of the wall. Here, it
was high and carved from blocks of pink granite; there, it was a lazy
stile of limestone. Towers of black basalt capped the wall at irregular
intervals.
He rode toward the gate--an open gate. Pulling his mount to a halt as
he approached, he turned toward the guard.
"Who are you?" questioned the guard, looking up from a notebook. Kesley
saw a series of interlocking doodles scrawled on the man's page.
"My name is Kesley. I'm here seeking sanctuary from Duke Winslow. I'm
also looking for a blind poet named Daveen. Is he here?"
"He has been," the guard answered. "You armed?"
"Pistol and truncheon," Kesley said.
"Leave 'em out here. You can pick them up when you're leaving."
Kesley didn't like the idea of parting with his weapons, but he seemed
to have little choice. Reluctantly, he surrendered them and rode
inside, into what seemed to be a park.
A fantastic array of houses was visible beyond the park. For a moment,
Kesley thought he had wandered into a lunatic's asylum. Then he
remembered it was simply an artists' refuge.
A nude girl stood unashamedly in the center of a lawn not far away, and
clustered about her, sketching furiously, was a group of painters.
Beneath a live-oak tree behind her, a fat, balding man squatted on the
ground, playing a wooden flute. Elsewhere, other members of the colony
seemed to be busying themselves at their various interests.
Kesley tethered his horse at a hitching-post just inside the main wall,
and looked around for someone who might be in authority.
After a moment, a girl in a brief halter and shorts approached him.
"Hello, friend. My name is Lisa. Where from?"
Her voice was clear and firm. Somewhat hesitantly, Kesley said,
"Chicago, mostly."
"Oh? What do you do?"
"I don't understand," Kesley said.
"Paint, sing, write? Light-sculpture? Architecture? Come on," she said
impatiently.
"I see. No, I'm not an artist. I'm ... just here visiting. Looking for
someone."
"That's nice. Who?"
"A poet. Daveen the Singer, they call him. Is he here?"
The girl frowned. "Daveen? I recall the name--but I don't think he's
living here now. You'll have to ask Colin about that. He remembers
everything."
"Where can I find this Colin," Kesley asked.
"Over there." She pointed to the group surrounding the nude girl. "The
old lecher's busy sketching Marla. He doesn't know any more about
sketching than I do, but he loves to look at a pretty body. He's the
bald one, right down in front. You'd better not bother him now."
"I'll wait," Kesley said. He could hold his own among assassins, but he
could see that he was going to be sadly out of his depth here in the
Colony.
* * * * *
The Colony was even more grotesque and wonderful a place than Kesley
had imagined, in that first dazzling introduction in the park. After
the darkness of the world of the Twelve Dukes, and the different
darkness of Mutie City, the Colony stood forth as a land of beacon.
Total anarchy prevailed, for one thing. People lived where they liked,
ate as they pleased, worked or did not work. There was always enough
food. The Colony was self-sufficient, insular, smug in its seclusion.
And inscribed in deep-cut letters over the inside of the main gate were
four words:
_DO WHAT THOU WILT_
"The guiding motto of the Abbey of Theleme," Lisa explained, when
Kesley commented.
"Theleme?"
"A reference to Rabelais," she said. "Oh, I see you don't know that
either. It's a book--I mean, he was a writer. You don't read much, do
you?"
"No," Kesley said distantly, staring at the huge letters in the stone.
_Do What Thou Wilt._ They were shattering words; he wondered what Duke
Winslow's reaction would be if he ever had an opportunity to see them.
But there wasn't much chance of that. The Colony was even older than
the Twelve Empires, having been established back in the days of the
chaos by a group of artists and poets determined to preserve their
way of life while the rest of the world crumbled about them. They had
succeeded; and now, the outside world did without them. They had no
part in Empire doings, and the Empire kept its distance from them. It
was, Kesley was told, all part of the uneasy balance in which the world
was held. No one dared tip the scales.
He was welcomed to the Colony warmly, even though he was quick to make
clear that he himself was no artist and that he was here solely in
quest of Daveen. The night of his arrival they held an immense party,
supposedly in his honor.
He recognized a few faces. The girl named Lisa had appointed herself
his guardian; she stayed close by his side. Somewhere else in the huge
roomful of milling people, he spotted the man named Colin, looking like
an aging Silenus with his baggy eyes and fuzzy crown of graying hair.
He was engaged in animated conversation with the girl Marla, who had
modeled nude that afternoon. Now, she wore a transparent plastic blouse
and tights; it was an even more startling costume.
Finally, Kesley got to speak to Colin.
The balding man was very fat and very drunk, he noticed. He stared
curiously at Kesley for a few minutes, then said, "You're the newcomer,
aren't you? The one we're all here to honor?"
"I'm looking for a man named Daveen. You know him?"
"No," Colin said loudly. "Never heard of him. Want a drink?"
Kesley shook his head. He flicked a glance warily at Lisa, who was
smiling enigmatically. "He's a poet," Kesley said. "A blind man. Lisa
thinks she remembers him."
"Lisa will say anything. I don't remember any Daveen."
"Daveen? Who's talking about Daveen?" a deep voice asked. Kesley
glanced to his left and saw a tall, burly, blond man with long curling
hair. The big youth was smiling sweetly.
"I am," Kesley said. "I'm looking for him."
From somewhere in the background came the discordant shrill of a
strange musical instrument. Kesley winced.
"What do you want Daveen for?" the blond boy asked. "You from the
court?"
"I'm _running_ from the court. Winslow wants to kill me. I have to find
Daveen."
The tall youngster chuckled raucously. "Daveen hasn't been here in
years. You'll _never_ find him!"
An atonal blast of the weird music blended oddly with the harsh
laughter that suddenly surrounded him. Defeated, confused, Kesley
looked at the alien faces of the men and women in the room. It was as
if they wore masks of desperate gaiety, hiding a deep inward brooding.
He realized it had been a mistake to come here. In the middle of the
room, a lithe girl of about nineteen was taking off her clothes to the
accompaniment of an ecstatic chant from a ring of onlookers; a spindly
man of about forty was intoning what was probably poetry, and the blond
boy had gone into a frenzied solo dance.
Distortion upon distortion, darkness within darkness. Kesley felt cold
and alone. At his side, Lisa clung tightly to him, sliding her hands
playfully over the flat, hard muscles of his chest, giggling and
whispering. The party was reaching a peak of wild license now.
This was what happened when walls closed around people, he thought. The
mutants in their city; the poets in theirs. The Dukes in their Empires.
And somewhere, far to the frozen south, the Antarcticans behind their
blockade. They all interlocked, meshed in a tightly-geared procession
to nowhere. Grimly, Kesley watched the blond boy dance himself into
exhaustion, watched the girl in the middle of the room whip off her one
remaining garment and stand totally naked.
Lisa was chanting, "_This is the way the world ends, this is the way
the world ends._" It was probably a line from some poem. But it was
more than poetry, thought Kesley. It was truth.
Truth.
X
When morning finally came, Kesley had long since decided to leave the
Colony.
As the first rays of dawn broke, he rose and made his way over the
huddling sleepers in the room. Lisa stirred; the poetess had slumped
over yawningly more than an hour before. On the floor, between the
sleepers, lay remnants of artistic achievement--strewn manuscripts,
curious statuettes, musical scores, musical instruments and such
things. Kesley carefully avoided stepping on them. He wanted no contact
here.
"Where are you going?" Lisa asked, looking up. Her eyes were red and
raw looking; the copper mesh of her blouse was stained with the thick
amber fluid of the drink she had laughingly poured between her breasts
at some wild moment of the night before.
"Outside," Kesley said.
"Wait a minute. I'll go with you."
Shrugging, he stepped outside and she followed him. The dawn was coming
up fresh and clear, with dew hanging brightly in the air. It would,
Kesley thought, wash away the pollution in the air from last night's
party. He tightened his lips nervously.
"Which way is the gate?" he asked.
"That way. Are you leaving? Why? Don't you like it here?" Impulsively,
she tugged on his arm. "Answer me, Dale."
He looked wearily down at her. "I don't like it here. This place is
poisoned. I want to get away, before I catch whatever all of you have."
"I don't understand you."
"Naturally not. Look, Lisa, you and your fellow esthetes have been
bottled up in here since--since--when? The year two thousand?"
"John Harchman came here to found his colony in 2059," she said as if
repeating a catechism.
"The year doesn't matter. You've been cooped up five hundred years. And
what do you have to show for it? Great works of art? No--just drunken
parties."
"We've produced wonderful things. Colin's done a glorious visomural,
and the sensotapes--"
"You've produced nothing," Kesley said inexorably. "You create for
yourselves--each other, at best. But not for the world outside."
"The world outside doesn't want us."
"Wrong. We don't understand you. And it's as much your fault as ours."
Kesley turned away. "Leave me alone, Lisa. I should never have come
here. I want to leave."
* * * * *
The jagged, violet blades of knifegrass glinted strangely in the
morning sun. Kesley waited patiently while his hungry horse grazed.
Mutant horse, mutant grass, the cycle held firm. Spindly, six-legged
animal nibbling sharp-toothed, man-high grass. The purple blades
blended with the blue-green of the Old Kind.
There had been no bombs over Kentucky, but the wind had carried the
drifting seeds, brought the zygotes of the strange new grass down here
to this unruined land. Now, a tough network of roots dug into the turf,
and from them sprang the metal-sharp grass the atoms had made.
* * * * *
Kesley rode south, his mind full of melancholy thoughts.
The trail had completely trickled out--if there had been a trail. He
was chasing phantoms, will-of-the-wisps.
Daveen, for instance. Who was he? A blind courtier who had vanished
some four years previously, whose name van Alen had happened to drop
and link with Kesley's. What relation did Daveen have to him? He didn't
know. What relation did van Alen have, for that matter?
But he was searching for Daveen. The search had led to the Colony, but
that was a dead end. Daveen had been there, and Daveen was no longer
there, and that was all anyone could or would tell him.
Then, Narella. A hauntingly lovely girl--but so, for that matter, was
the poetess Lisa. Narella was somewhere in Buenos Aires, at Miguel's
court. Would he ever see her again? Again, he didn't know.
The horse plodded onward toward the mysterious city of Wiener. Kesley
knew nothing about the city that lay ahead except that Lisa had
recommended that he go there. It was another island on the continent,
untouched by Winslow.
The picture of Winslow came to his mind, and immediately after, that
of Miguel. They were different and similar, the two Immortals: one fat
and gross, the other lean and hard, both complex and unfathomable, both
deep-eyed with the loneliness of the timeless man. Miguel had welcomed
him to his service, sent him off on a deadly errand, then reversed
himself and ordered his death. And Winslow had refused him sanctuary
and condemned him to death as well. Doubtless, there was now a price on
his head throughout all of North and South America.
That left Antarctica, a complete unknown. Vaguely, he recalled that
that had been his original destination when leaving Iowa, months
before. But Antarctica was about as accessible as the moon, Kesley
thought.
Then he thought of the mutants: Lomark Dawnspear, the blind one who had
unaccountably rescued him from Winslow's dungeon, and Spahl and Huygens
and Foursmith and the others of Mutie City, far to the north. What of
them?
Lisa. The Colony, shallow and desperate and decadent, rotten from
within and unable to see it.
Tiredly, Kesley rode on.
Above, the sky was warm and bright, and the rolling hills of southern
Kentucky were broad, beautiful, dotted heavily with the purple
grass and the strange golden-leaved trees the wars had brought. The
vegetation was the only hint here that there once had been devastation
in the world; today, in this place at this time, it seemed as if
everything had been perfect forever. But he knew that it hadn't.
He rode on. Wiener lay ahead.
* * * * *
A week later, the city of Wiener rose before him from the wide
flatlands of Northern Texas. He paused, reined in his horse, looked at
the low sprawling wall of metal that rambled out over the desert.
He urged the tired mutie on. Hooves kicked up dry bursts of yellow sand.
As he drew near he could see that the wall was solid from side to side.
This was no encircled city; it was one huge building, probably sunk
deep into the earth.
Sunlight glinted flashingly off the metal wall. Kesley squinted, saw
a dot of brightness detach itself from the city and come humming
across the sands toward him. The City of Wiener was taking no chances,
apparently; they were going to intercept him before he got too close.
He waited for the vehicle to approach. As it drew near, he saw that
it was unmanned, merely a hollow shell made of some bright metal,
teardrop-shaped and empty.
"Please get inside," a dead-sounding voice requested. "We will take you
to the city."
Shrugging, Kesley rode forward; the teardrop split into halves. He
guided his mount inside; the great door dropped closed again, and a
moment later he was heading at a terrifying speed toward the metal
city.