Greaves, Adelie and Vigil stood beside the beast-couch. "All right,"
Greaves said. "Now there are things I want to know, and I want no
quarrels, Vigil."
"And by what right do you order me around?" the old man growled. "You
may be a god to some, but you are not _my_ god."
"You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat
moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn't. You kept me
asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you
owe me."
The old man grunted. "You're brave with Mayron and brave with me. But
all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods."
"But you have one."
Adelie touched his arm. "You have lived from the beginning of human
history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You
were braver than any man, and for your bravery, you could not die.
While other heros conquered the stars and, in their time, died, you
lived on. While enemy after enemy was beaten by Man, and the victorious
men died, you lived on. The stars and all worlds became ours. Men loved
and begat, and men died, but you lived on. It seemed to us that as long
as you lived, all men would have something to remember--how great Man
is; what the reward of courage can be. It seemed only fitting that we
should bring to you the trophies of our achievements. It seemed only
right to believe that you had survived to some purpose--that a day
would come when Man would need his greatest hero."
"Precisely," Vigil snorted. "Man worships nothing but himself. You were
a convenient symbol. It did no harm. It may have done some good. Of
course, the chuckleheads took it all literally. And so--thanks to Man's
stupid persistence in breeding idiots as well as men with some brains,
you, whoever you are, whatever kind of filibustering bravo you actually
were, have become the focus of a cult populated by the credulous, the
neurotic and those who profit by them. I hope you are grateful for your
legacy!"
Greaves looked up at the stars. There were some constellations that
might have been the ones he knew, distorted by his transit to another
viewpoint ... or by time. He was no astronomer.
_I've come a long way_, he thought, _and I wonder what the end of it
will be._ "Those who profit from the credulous, hmm?" he said to Vigil.
"I am your guardian and I guarded you. As many others have done before
me, from various motives. This is not your first court, nor your tenth.
The ritual around you is compounded from thousands of years of hogwash,
as witness my worshipful daughter who inherits a post from some time
when every venturing hero had to have a leman patiently awaiting his
return. My duties no doubt were originally medical. But the couch
has been attending to that--with some exceptions--for centuries. And
you may be assured, Man's history has not been one unbroken triumph,
nor his civilization any steady upward climb. But we built while you
slumbered. I had thought to prevent your besmirching Man's greatness
with your cheap legend."
"Or perhaps he was afraid of the god he denies," Adelie murmured, her
eyes glowing warmly.
Greaves looked from her to her father. "So she believes in me and you
do not," he said to Vigil. "But it may be you're not entirely sure--and
from the looks she gives me, it may be she isn't, either." He grinned
crookedly. "Man may have climbed, but I assure you he hasn't changed."
* * * * *
He smiled at the looks on both their faces. Divinity was new to him,
but humanity was not. If these two had thought perhaps they had some
dull-witted barbarian here--the one for his faith in his faithlessness,
the other for her pleasures--it had been time their error was corrected.
"Old man, god or not I have been called out ... whether it pleases you
or not. And I won't willingly lay me down to sleep again until _I_
think it's time. So you had better tell me what all this is about, or I
will blunder around and perhaps break something you're fond of."
Adelie laughed.
Vigil swung his arm sharply toward her. "This--this would-be courtesan
was once Mayron's great love, when he was First of us all. Because he
could find nothing to conquer for her in all the Universe, he began
dabbling beyond it for a worthy prize. And he found it. Oh, he found
it, didn't he, my child?"
"Be careful, Father," Adelie spat. "The worshippers follow _me_ now
that I've wakened him as promised, and you--"
"Quiet," Greaves said mildly. "He was telling me something."
"That I was," Vigil said angrily, while his daughter's look at Greaves
was the least sure it had ever been, "and for all the need you have
of it, I might as well not. But if I may say it once and get it said,
I can then go to my meal and the two of you will be free to amuse
yourselves. Mayron discovered the Shadows, when his machines touched
some continuum beyond this one, and the Shadows ate him. But like the
fox that lost his tail in the trap and then cozened other foxes with
the lie that it was better so and fashionable besides, Mayron made a
virtue of his slavery. Those who give themselves up to the Shadows
never rest and never hunger. They know no barrier. And no love. No
true joy. No noble sorrow. An untailed fox is safe from catching by
the tail. A Shadow has no spirit, no humanity, no--soul. But there are
always dunderheads. Mayron has them, and down in that city of his down
there--" the old man waved a hand at the horizon, but all Greaves could
see from where he stood were the glowing tops of what he took to be
three fitfully active volcanoes--"he has a city full of dunderheaded
shadows who go to some temple he has built and enter the Shadow chamber
to be changed. The admission is easily gained; the price of freedom
from human care is humanity."
"And up here," Greaves said, "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, heart-broken, 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
out-stretched 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 ... if I were to touch that control--
"The weapon is at its lowest setting--it has incomparably more power
than that; it has the power of all the Universe in it--and look what it
can do when it is barely tapped in to its source of power!"
Greaves rumbled in his throat. Suddenly the gun's song was more than
he could stand. He barely seemed to move, but Vigil had time to shout,
the outraged cry beginning to echo in the chamber when suddenly there
came the snap of rending metal, and a choked stammer from the gun.
And then Greaves had the gun in his hands, completely torn from its
pedestal. He threw it out into the night in a bright flash of fire that
bathed them all in a thunderclap of light. Greaves stared after it,
his teeth bared, the horrid sound of his hatred still rumbling within
him. When that had dwindled, leaving him with his heavy chest heaving
for air, the trapped Shadow had vanished, no doubt to tell Mayron that
Humanity's godling had gone insane.
Adelie was very pale. Vigil was trying to speak.
And that from the old man was enough to bring back the first scarlet
edge of the fury he had turned on the gun.
"Close your mouth!" Greaves commanded him. "I have to go fight Mayron
tomorrow, and I don't want another word out of you. Go find something
useless to do. Adelie, I want a bath, some food and drink. Right now!"