Shadow of Heaven

Chapter Eighteen

In a way, Stirling was almost grateful.

The idea was crazy, of course; but it was the kind of purposive craziness with which he could sympathize and almost understand—and it explained so much. Johnny’s continual discussions with other Council members, the uneasy awe he seemed to inspire in so many of the villagers, his apparent disregard for consequences—all these became understandable in the light of Johnny’s vision of the future. Stirling had no doubt the original idea had been his brother’s. In it he could hear echoes of Johnny’s own voice, the one he had had as a child, before a glass dagger ripped open his throat. The fair-haired, gap-toothed kid, who had leaned on the same window ledge as Stirling while they waited for a signal from Heaven, had been the author of this plan to turn the He into a fifteen-mile-long spaceship and fly it to … ?

“The Moon,” Johnny said.

“There’s no real need for us to put the lie down anywhere; but the Moon will provide gravity and, somehow, it helps to have a target to act as a fixed frame of reference. The Moon. I always think a good address is so important, don’t you?”

“Most good addresses have air and water laid on.”

“We have all we need—all that’s necessary is to make sure we don’t lose it. This can be done by boosting the lie’s shell field to maximum impermeability. It won’t be perfect, naturally; but it should retain air and moisture for twenty or thirty years … and that’s enough to be getting along with.”

“With those holes in the decking your air wouldn’t last twenty or thirty minutes in space.”

Johnny frowned momentarily. “You’ve got a point there, but that’s the sort of job the maintenance robots can handle. They aren’t doing anything on it yet because the work we’re doing in the power station has interrupted certain supplies. The hole where that aircraft went through is going to hold us back by a couple of days, though… .

“You were right about Dix—I’ll give you that. He was the one who chopped up the plane. I should have dumped him long ago.”

“Where is he now?”

“I told you—I dumped him.”

“Literally?”

“Yeah. Through one of the bomb holes. Poetic justice.”

Stirling opened his mouth, but closed it again without speaking. Johnny could not have made a better choice than Dix for his first venture into death-dealing. His action could even do him some good with Raddall, but Stirling hated to think of any man going out that way.

“What do you say, big brother?”

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Well, you’ve always had plenty to say in the past.”

“All right.” Stirling looked past Johnny and saw that some instinct was bringing the villagers out of their spider holes to watch the confrontation. “How many of those people down there know about your plan? And how many of the ones that do know are in agreement?”

Johnny shrugged./‘How many of the people down there want to eat pap all year round and live in caskets?”

“That’s different. Nobody’s gambling with their lives.”

“Nobody’s gambling for their lives, you mean. They haven’t a chance. But the way I have things worked …”

“Johnny!” Stirling felt that to wait any longer would be dangerous in some unspecified way. “Raddall is holding off his planes till noon; and before that, I’m going to walk out of here and take everybody with me who wants to go.”

“I can’t permit that. Theo and the others in the power house need another five or six days. So, nobody goes back.”

“I say different.” Stirling looked squarely into Johnny’s eyes. For a few seconds there was absolute silence; then he saw that Johnny was twisting his body slightly, so that the muzzle of the rad-rifle—which had been pointing obliquely past him—was moving in an almost imperceptible arc into line with Stirling’s stomach. He put his hand out with studied casualness and grasped the muzzle. Johnny smiled with one side of his mouth and began to apply pressure, using the full length of the weapon for leverage. In order to keep out of the line of fire, Stirling had to move sideways; and they began a slow, shuffling rotation. A ring of villagers had gathered to watch the deadly saraband take place on the high platform of the tank. As Stirling moved around under the relentless force of the rifle, he saw Johnny alternately outlined against a background of misty soil beds or the beaten pewter of the Atlantic visible over the eastern wall.

“Johnny,” Stirling said desperately. “What are we doing?”

“Anybody who isn’t for me is against me. Jaycee’ speaking again, Johnny?”

“I told you before—I don’t like that stuff.”

“But what can you do? You won’t burn me.” For an answer, Johnny squeezed the trigger, and a blinding amethyst torch searched past Stirling’s ribs. He let go of the stinging metal involuntarily, tried to grab it again, missed, and drove forward against Johnny’s chest. Johnny grunted with surprise as the impact carried him backwards. They staggered across the tank, on the point of overbalancing; then Johnny’s heels caught the upraised rim of the iris where the robots inserted their drinking tubes; the two men went down; and the rifle skidded away on the damp metal. As they scrambled to their feet, Stirling threw in his right and felt pain streak up his arm from a damaged fist. He had connected with the metal sphere of the bomb slung from Johnny’s neck. Johnny seized the advantage and closed in with a flurry of practiced, crushing blows. Stirling, who had never trained and who had always relied upon the sheer destructive power of the battering-ram that nature had given him for a right arm, fenced unsuccessfully with his left.

As he felt the solid, thudding blows rob him of the ability to move, he tried hitting back with his right, but the punches he landed harmed him more than Johnny. His hand seemed to be broken. He backed towards the fallen rifle and momentarily gave up any attempt to defend himself as he stooped to pick it up. Two crippling punches smacked into the small of his back, and he felt his knees begin to buckle. Johnny shouldered him contemptuously away from the rifle; and, as he toppled, Stirling clawed the air for support. His hands encountered the heavy sphere of the bomb, still in its pouch. He gripped the bomb hard, settled his heels against the metal underfoot, and swung Johnny away from the rifle. Johnny was lifted into the air before the strap of his pouch snapped. He came down on one foot right on the edge of the tank and skidded out into empty space.

Stirling set the bomb down and looked over the edge. Twenty feet below, Johnny was lying motionless in a patch of wiry grass, and his knees were drawn up to his chin like those of a small boy in an extravagant posture of sleep.

Cradling the rifle in his right arm, Stirling climbed down the feed pipes—noticing for the first time that pieces of plastic had been lashed to them to serve as a crude ladder. The villagers stood back silently as he ran around the braced legs of the tank to the spot where Johnny was lying. He turned him over gently. A huge bruise was domed across Johnny’s forehead, and a single trident of blood ran from his mouth across one cheek. “How is he?”

Stirling looked up and saw Melissa. “Hell live.”

“Oh!”

Stirling had no time to work out whether the monosyllable signified relief or disappointment. Some of the villagers who had gathered around were staring at him with a kind of grinning uneasiness; they were obviously teetering on the brink of taking up the battle where Johnny had been forced to leave off. He wondered if their hesitation sprang from the ambivalence which had always been present in their attitude to his brother, or if they were showing a normal respect for the rad-rifle.

“Let’s get one thing very clear,” Stirling said steadily. “I’ve been back down on the ground, and you haven’t. So, I know better than Jaycee or any of you what has been going on. And I can assure you the Administration is going to keep up the pressure till the He has been cleared. Anybody who wants to get out before the raids start again, should head for the southeast corner right now. The rest of you might as well jump through one of those bomb holes. It’ll be quicker that way.”

He finished speaking and stood staring into the encircling faces, none of which showed much sign of conviction. You haven’t the touch, Johnny had said, and Stirling was beginning to understand what he had meant.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” It was the husband of the woman he had met on the way into the village. “Are we going to stay here and get shot to pieces? Me and Joanna’s getting out while we got the chance.”

His yelping voice had a raw edge of fear which broke the mental stasis of the group. Some of them began to drift away to the south, while others scurried towards their huts and spider holes to collect still valued possessions. Once the movement had begun, it accelerated until the villagers were almost in a panic to get away.

“What are we going to do about the wounded?” Melissa had regained much of her usual composure, but her eyes were taut with fear and strangely reminiscent of his mother’s. He resisted an impulse to put an arm around her shoulders and tell her she would soon adjust to the Compression. There were lies, and there were lies—even for a young girl with an old woman’s eyes.

“Leave them till the medics get here,” he said. “We’ll get clear as soon as possible. Can you stay on your feet?”

“I guess so.”

“Then get somebody to call up two robots. That should be enough for the lot of us. How exactly do they do it, when there’s no crop to damage?”

Melissa shrugged. “Something to do with water. I’ll get it done.” Her voice was fault and lifeless as she turned and walked away, leaning sideways once, mechanically, to pluck a long stem of grass. Stirling unwound a length of plastic rope from the ladder on the side of the nearby tank, and used it to tie Johnny’s wrists and ankles.

There was no sound as the villagers rode west.

Stirling had tried to use the radio to let Mason Third know everything had gone according to plan; but its case was cracked and flattened, and there had been no response. Close to one end, he sat astride the beam of the big robot and kept his eye on the other machine following a short distance behind on the adjacent strip. Once or twice some villager further along the beam began to sing; but the idea failed to catch on, and the plaintive words trailed away behind, swirling out across the soil beds in flat invisible eddies. Melissa was on the other robot, but he found it hard to pick her out in the solid row of blackly ragged humanity perched along the beam. Beggars, refugees on horseback.

As far as Stirling could tell, the exodus had been joined by every member of the village community who was still breathing and able to walk. Almost directly below him, Johnny lay on the upper surface of the bogey. He was conscious; but his wrists and ankles were still bound, and extra loops of plastic prevented him from rolling over the edge. His eyes were unreadable black slits under the bruised mound of his forehead. Stirling found himself avoiding looking down. Of course I’m my brothers keeper. Would you like to see his cage?

He shifted his position on the beam and looked northwards to the distant outline of the power station. Theo and the other technicians Johnny had recruited were still’ hi the station, but there was no way of telling if they had noticed the evacuation of the village taking place. Stirling decided to leave them to find out for themselves. He was turning away again when a cold, disquieting thought stirred in his mind. There had been something wrong about the appearance of the power station.

Shielding his eyes from the whipping breeze, Stirling stared at the rectangular block. Several seconds went by before he was able to accept the fact that its proportions had altered. The building was longer and lower in appearance, as though it had begun to sink into the ground—only there was no ground to receive it! As he watched, the sinking motion which had previously been imperceptible gradually accelerated, and the power station sank completely out of sight.

Stirling went rigid with shock and waited for the feeling of weightlessness which would signify that—deprived of its power source—the He was falling into the Atlantic. Nothing happened, except that the robot continued to thunder westwards, trembling and swaying slightly beneath him. He fought off the feeling of unreality for a few seconds. Then the top of the station reappeared on the horizon. The featureless block rose steadily until it was higher than he had ever seen it before, paused, and began to sink again.

Suddenly, Stirling knew what was happening. The He had begun to undulate like a gigantic blanket flapping in the wind.

Hoarse shouting from further along the beam announced that somebody else had become aware of what was happening. A woman joined in with a shrill scream as, for the first time, the movement of the huge structure made itself felt. The gentle sinking motion chilled Stirling’s stomach and made him grip the beam with an instinctive, useless reaction.

“Look over there!” The man beside Stirling gripped his arm and pointed away, across the He, diagonally ahead of the robot.

A sharply defined ripple was sweeping across the soil beds. Fountains of dark earth, thrown up by the buckling of the underlying pans, feathered the air above the advancing crest, like an artillery barrage. It became obvious that they were going to intercept the ripple in a matter of seconds—and the robots were traveling at fifty miles an hour.

“Stop!” Stirling shouted, trying to make himself heard above the noise; but the villager lying on the underslung turret was already fumbling with the machine’s alarm relays. The robot abruptly slowed down and was rumbling to a halt when the surface below it lifted savagely, erupted earth, and sickeningly fell away again. Sprays of dirt lashed the row of villagers, who were clinging precariously to the beam. Stirling was deafened by the awful sounds of cataclysm, the vast, shuddering groans of metal structures being overtaken by failure: tearing, grinding, crunching, ringing, snapping.

From his position at the end of the beam he saw the tracks far below him part momentarily—allowing daylight to spill upwards, reflected from the ocean three unthinkable miles further down—then the tremor was past. As the robot returned to an even keel, and silence descended, Stirling looked up grayly, as though he was trying life on for size. The substructure of the He had been punished, but it had failed-safe—this time. He decided that Johnny’s technical experts working in the power station had made a mistake or had taken a calculated risk. Either way, he did not want to be on the He when the next major adjustment to the power unit was attempted.

“Let’s go,” he shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”

The robot moved away again, crunching on dirt-strewn rails; and the second machine followed close behind it. They had almost reached full speed when Stirling realized Johnny was gone. He stood up for a moment and looked back the way they had come, but in all of Heaven’s broad acres there was no sign of life.

“All right, Johnny,” he whispered. “You and I are not brothers.”