Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (16 page)

 
          
 
The robots moved as one when
Alvin
called them toward him. Speaking his
commands, as he often did for Rorden's benefit, he asked again the question he
had put so many times in different forms.

 
          
 
"Can you tell me how your first master
reached Shalmirane?"

 
          
 
Rorden wished his mind could intercept the
soundless replies, of which he had never been able to catch even a fragment.
But this time there was little need, for the glad smile that spread across
Alvin
's face was sufficient answer.

 
          
 
The boy looked at him triumphantly.

 
          
 
"Number One is just the same," he
said, "but
Two
is willing to talk."

 
          
 
"I think we should wait until we're home
again before we begin to ask questions," said Rorden, practical as ever.
"We'll need the Associators and Recorders when we start."

 
          
 
Impatient though he was,
Alvin
had to admit the wisdom of the advice. As
he turned to go, Rorden smiled at his eagerness and said quietly:

 
          
 
"Haven't you forgotten something?"

 
          
 
The red light on the Interpreter was still
flashing, and its message still glowed on the screen.

 
          
 
PLEASE CHECK AND SIGN

 
          
 
Alvin
walked to the machine and examined the
panel above which the light was blinking. Set in it was a window of some almost
invisible substance, supporting a stylus which passed vertically through it.
The point of the stylus rested on a sheet of white material which already bore
several signatures and dates. The last of them was almost fifty thousand years
ago, and
Alvin
recognized the name as that of a recent
President of the Council. Above it only two other names were visible, neither
of which meant anything to him or to Rorden. Nor was this very surprising, for
they had been written twenty-three and fifty-seven million years before.

 
          
 
Alvin
could see no purpose for this ritual, but
he knew that he could never fathom the workings of the minds that had built
this place. With a slight feeling of unreality he grasped the stylus and began
to write his name. The instrument seemed completely free to move in the
horizontal plane, for in that direction the window offered no more resistance
than the wall of a soap bubble. Yet his full strength was incapable of moving
it vertically: he knew, because he tried.

 
          
 
Carefully he wrote the date and released the
stylus. It moved slowly back across the sheet to its original position—and the
panel with its winking light was gone.

 
          
 
As
Alvin
walked away, he wondered why his
predecessors had come here and what they had sought from the machine. No doubt,
thousands or millions of years in the future, other men would look into that
panel and ask themselves: "Who was Alvin of Loronei?" Or would they?
Perhaps they would exclaim instead: "Look! Here's
Alvin
's signature!"

 
          
 
The thought was not untypical of him in his
present mood, but he knew better than to share it with his friend.

 
          
 
At the entrance to the corridor they looked
back across the cave, and the illusion was stronger than ever. Lying beneath
them was a dead city of strange white buildings, a city bleached by the fierce
light not meant for human eyes. Dead it might be, for it had never lived, but
Alvin
knew that when Diaspar had passed away
these machines would still be here, never turning their minds from the thoughts
greater men than he had given them long ago.

 
          
 
They spoke little on the way back through the
streets of Diaspar, streets bathed with sunlight which seemed pale and wan
after the glare of the machine city. Each in
his own
way was thinking of the knowledge that would soon be his, and neither had any
regard for the beauty of the great towers drifting past, or the curious glances
of their fellow citizens.

 
          
 
It was strange, thought
Alvin
, how everything that had happened to him
led up to this moment. He knew well enough that men were makers of their own
destinies, yet since he had met Rorden events seemed to have moved
automatically toward a predetermined goal. Alaine's message—
Lys
—Shalmirane—at every stage he might have
turned aside with unseeing eyes, but something had led him on. It was pleasant
to pretend that Fate had favored him, but his rational mind knew better. Any
man might have found the path his footsteps had traced, and countless times in
the past ages others must have gone almost as far. He was simply the first to
be lucky.

 
          
 
The first to be lucky.
The words echoed mockingly in his ears as they stepped through the door of Rorden's
chamber. Quietly waiting for them, with hands folded patiently across his lap,
was a man wearing a curious garb unlike any that
Alvin
had ever seen before. He glanced
inquiringly at Rorden, and was instantly shocked by the pallor of his friend's
face. Then he knew who the visitor was.

 
          
 
He rose as they entered and made a stiff,
formal bow. Without a word he handed a small cylinder to Rorden, who took it
woodenly and broke the seal. The almost unheard-of rarity of a written message
made the silent exchange doubly impressive. When he had finished Rorden
returned the cylinder with another slight bow, at which, in spite of his
anxiety,
Alvin
could not resist a smile.

 
          
 
Rorden appeared to have recovered himself
quickly, for when he spoke his voice was perfectly normal.

 
          
 
"It seems that the Council would like a
word with us, Alvin. I'm afraid we've kept it waiting."

 
          
 
Alvin
had guessed as much. The crisis had come
sooner—much sooner—than he had expected. He was not, he told himself, afraid of
the Council, but the interruption was maddening. His eyes strayed involuntarily
to the robots.

 
          
 
"You'll have to leave them behind,"
said Rorden firmly.

 
          
 
Their eyes met and clashed. Then
Alvin
glanced at the Messenger.

 
          
 
"Very well," he said quietly.

 
          
 
The party was very silent on its way to the
Council Chamber.
Alvin
was marshaling the arguments he had never properly thought out,
believing they would not be needed for many years. He was far more annoyed than
alarmed, and he felt angry at himself for being so unprepared.

 
          
 
They waited only a few minutes in the
anteroom, but it was long enough for
Alvin
to wonder why, if he was unafraid, his legs
felt so curiously weak. Then the great doors contracted, and they walked toward
the twenty men gathered around their famous table.

 
          
 
This,
Alvin
knew, was the first Council Meeting in his
lifetime, and he felt a little flattered as he noticed that there were no empty
seats. He had never known that Jeserac was a Council member. At his startled
gaze the old man shifted uneasily in his chair and gave him a furtive smile as
if to say: "This is nothing to do with me." Most of the other faces
Alvin
had
expected,
and
only two were quite unknown to him.

 
          
 
The President began to address them in a
friendly voice, and looking at the familiar faces before him,
Alvin
could see no great cause for Rorden's
alarm. His confidence began to return: Rorden, he decided, was something of a
coward. In that he did his friend less than justice, for although courage had
never been one of Rorden's most conspicuous qualities, his worry concerned his
ancient office almost as much as himself. Never in history had a Keeper of the
Records been relieved of his position: Rorden was very anxious not to create a
precedent.

 
          
 
In the few minutes since he had entered the
Council Chamber,
Alvin
's plans had undergone a remarkable change. The speech he had so
carefully rehearsed was forgotten: the fine phrases he had been practicing were
reluctantly discarded. To his support now had come his most treacherous ally—that
sense of the ridiculous which had always made it impossible for him to take
very seriously even the most solemn occasions. The Council might meet once in a
thousand years: it might control the destinies of Diaspar—but those who sat
upon it were only tired old men.
Alvin
knew Jeserac, and he did not believe that
the others would be very different. He felt a disconcerting pity for them and
suddenly remembered the words Seranis had spoken to him in
Lys
: "Ages ago we sacrificed our
immortality, but Diaspar still follows the false dream." That in truth
these men had
done,
and he did not believe it had
brought them happiness.

 
          
 
So when at the President's invitation
Alvin
began to describe his journey to
Lys
, he was to all appearances no more than a
boy who had by chance stumbled on a discovery he thought of little importance.
There was no hint of any plan or deeper purpose: only natural curiosity had led
him out of Diaspar. It might have happened to anyone, yet he contrived to give
the impression that he expected a little praise for his cleverness. Of
Shalmirane and the robots, he said nothing at all.

 
          
 
It was quite a good performance, though
Alvin
was the only person who could fully
appreciate it. The Council as a whole seemed favorably impressed, but Jeserac
wore an expression in which relief struggled with incredulity. At Rorden,
Alvin
dared not look.

 
          
 
When he had quite finished, there was a brief
silence while the Council considered his statement. Then the President spoke
again:

 
          
 
"We fully appreciate," he said,
choosing his words with obvious care, "that you had the best of motives in
what you did. However, you have created a somewhat difficult situation for us.
Are you quite sure that your discovery was accidental, and that no one, shall
we say, influenced you in any way?" His eyes wandered thoughtfully toward
Rorden.

 
          
 
For the last time,
Alvin
yielded to the mischievous promptings of
his mind.

 
          
 
"I wouldn't say that," he replied,
after an appearance of considerable thought. There was a sudden quickening of
interest among the Council members, and Rorden stirred uneasily by his side.
Alvin
gave his audience a smile that lacked
nothing of candor, and added quickly in a guileless voice: