Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (30 page)

 
          
 
Cley thought. Lost in lies?

 
          
 
Seranis blinked and Cley knew she had been
understood. The little joke came through in even this strange medium.

 
          
 
Somberly Seranis said. We believed the great
lie about invaders, yes. Some say that is why we are so named.

 
          
 
"Invaders?"

 
          
 
Once both Diaspar and
Lys
believed that humanity
fled the stars, before a horde.
But the fact — uncovered by Alvin as he ventured out from Diaspar, to
Lys and beyond — is that humanity retreated before the knowledge of greater
minds among the stars. We tried to evolve even vaster forces, minds free of
matter itself.
And succeeded.
But exhaustion and fear
drove us into a wan recessional as cities died and hopes faded.

 
          
 
An immense sadness ran through these thoughts,
long rolling notes that held in Cley's mind like a soulful dirge. These chords
were all counterpointed by the pressing world around her—a medley of crackling
distant fires, the acrid tang of oily smoke, the hoarse shouts of orders and
dismay, the grim grinding of heavy machines.

 
          
 
She realized Alvin was studying her with
interest, and remembered that she had spoken his name. Immediately she had a
sense of the chasm that had opened between her and anyone who could not catch
the silky speed of this talent, its filmy warmth and cloaked meanings.

 
          
 
And it brought more still—pure unbidden
sensation. Seranis turned to give a spoken order to a machine and Cley felt an
echo of the woman's swivel, the catch of indrawn breath, minute pressures and
flexes. Still deeper in Seranis burned a slow, sexual fire. The folk of Lys had
kept the roiling passions of early humanity, the carnal joy and longing that
flushed the mind with goaty rut, calling up the pulsing urgencies laid down in
reptile brains on muddy shores.

 
          
 
Seranis was an adult in a way Alvin would
never be. Neither was wrong or right; each subspecies had chosen profoundly
different paths.

 
          
 
"Ah, yes," Cley made herself say,
jerking her mind out of the hot, cloying satisfactions of this talent. "I,
I . . ."

 
          
 
"You need say nothing,"
Alvin
said, smiling. "I envy you. More, I
need you."

 
          
 
Ranks of tractor-driven robots roared by them,
making talk impossible, slinging pebbles high in the air. Seeker nervously
shuffled back and forth, eyeing the gargantuan machines. It had now the look of
an animal in strange surroundings, wary and skittish. Cley was concerned for
it, but she knew she could do nothing for Seeker without the approval of the
Supras.

 
          
 
"Need me?" she asked.
"For what?"

 
          
 
Alvin
said smoothly, "You are a rarity now.
That was why I searched."

 
          
 
The lightning sought our Ur-humans, Seranis
put in. Alvin himself looked for the survivors, but . . .

 
          
 
Cley glanced from
Alvin
to Seranis, acutely conscious of their
casual ease. They were half again as large as she, their chocolate skins
vibrant with health. Seranis, though, showed lines in her face which gave it a
grave, crinkled geometry. Their clothes rippled to accommodate each movement.
An air of unconscious well-being hovered around their sleek resilience. She
glanced down at herself: bruised from her injuries, scratched by bushes, skin
creased and scabbed and dirty.

           
 
She felt a flickering burst of embarrassment.

 
          
 
I am sorry, Seranis sent with concern. That
was an overlap of my own emotion. Nakedness carries sexual and social signals
in
Lys
.

 
          
 
Cley asked wonderingly, "The simple
baring of skins?" Her people enjoyed the rub of the world on their flesh,
but it meant nothing more. For her, passion rose from context, not attire.

 
          
 
Alvin V
kind do
not
feel it, since immortals do not need reproduction.

 
          
 
"They do not sex?"

 
          
 
Seldom.
Long ago they
altered themselves —a subcurrent added, (or perhaps the machines did a little
pruning) with a lilting tinge of amber laughter— to avoid the ferment of
sexuality. They banished sexual signaling, all the unconscious signs and
gestures. Still, I have this trait, and some of my feelings transmitted to you.
I —

 
          
 
"Never mind," Cley said shortly. She
ordinarily felt no shame at all and much preferred her present nudity. Clothes
robbed her of freedom and a silky sensitivity.

 
          
 
What did bother her was her sudden intense
feeling of inferiority. It had come welling up, tagged with the unsettling
embarrassment and riding on her knowledge that her kind was so limited. To the
Supras she was a living fossil.

 
          
 
She remembered with some satisfaction that
Alvin
was deaf to the darting talent-currents and
so spoke aloud, though already the thick movements of her throat and tongue
were beginning to seem brutish and clumsy. "Why are you so concerned for
us?"

 
          
 
"You Ur-humans are valuable," Alvin
said cautiously.

 
          
 
"Because we can do
grunt labor?"
Cley asked sarcastically.

 
          
 
"You know you have crafts in dealing with
biological systems that we later adaptations do not," Seranis said evenly.

 
          
 
"Oh sure."
Cley held up a small finger which she quickly transformed into five different
tools—needle, connector, biokey, pruner, linkweb. "This wasn't your
add-on?"

 
          
 
"Well," Seranis said carefully,
"we did modify a few of them. But Ur-humans had the underlying
capabilities."

 
          
 
Cley's mouth twisted with ironic humor.
"Good thing you gave me this talent-talk. I can feel that there's
something you don't want to tell me."

 
          
 
"You are right." Alvin swept his
arms to take in the wall of roiling smoke that stood like a solid, ominous
barrier. "We're concerned now because we could lose you all."

 
          
 
"Lose us?"

 
          
 
She caught thoughts from Seranis but the
layers were chopped wedges, fogged by meanings she could sense but not
decipher. In the instant between lose and us she felt a long, stretched
interval in which gravid blocks of meaning rushed by her. It was as if immense
objects swept through a high, vaulted space that she could see only in quilted
shadows. She felt then the true depth and speed of Seranis—knew that through
this luxuriant talent she was floating in a tiny corner of an immense cathedral
of ideas, far from the great transept and unaware of labyrinths forever
shrouded. Passages yawned far away, reduced by perspective to small mouths, yet
she knew instantly that they were corridors of thought down which she could
never venture in her lifetime. The hollow silence of these chilly spaces, all
part of Seranis, held unintelligible mystery. These people looked human,
despite their size and odd liquid grace, but she suddenly sensed that they were
as strange as any beast she had seen in the swelling forests. Yet they stood in
the long genetic tradition of her kind and so she owed them some loyalty.
Still, the sheer size of their minds—

 
          
 
"We could lose you Ur-humans," Alvin
said with what she now saw was indulgent patience. "Your species records
were obliterated in the attack. All other Ur-humans were burned to a crisp.
You, Cley, are the last remaining copy."

 
          
 
She worked for long days in the shattered
ruins. The robots cleared the heavy wreckage, but there were innumerable places
where human care and common sense could rescue a fragment of the shattered past
and she was glad to help. The severed finger on her left hand had regrown but
was still stiff and weak so she wanted to exercise it. And she needed time to
clear her head, to climb out of an abyss of grief.

 
          
 
The attack had been thorough. Livid bolts had
assaulted one wing of the Library with particular attention, she learned.
Shafts had descended again and again in brilliant skeins of color, hanging for
long moments like a malevolent rainbow whose feet shot electrical arrows into
the soil.

 
          
 
That wing had housed the Library of Humanity.
The Ur-humans had been the oldest form lodged there, and now they and all the
many varieties of humanity that had immediately followed them were lost—except
for Cley.

 
          
 
The impact of this was difficult for her to
comprehend. The robots gave her awkward, excessive deference. The Supras all
paid her polite respect, and she felt their careful protection as she worked.
In turn, without being obvious, she watched the Supras commanding their robot
legions, but did not know how to read their mood.

 
          
 
Then one day a Supra woman suddenly broke off
her task and began to dance. She moved with effortless energy, whirling and
tumbling, her feet flashing across the debris of the Library, hands held up as
if to clasp the sky. Other Supras took up the dance behind her and in moments
they were all moving with stunning speed that did not have any note of rush or
frenzy.

 
          
 
Cley knew then that she was watching a
refinement of Ur-human rituals that went far beyond anything her tribe had used
to defuse inner torments. She could glimpse no pattern to their arabesques, but
sensed subtle elements slipping by in each movement. It was eerie to watch
several hundred bodies revolve and spring and bounce and glide, all without the
merest glance at one another, without song or even faint music. In the total
silence she could pick up no signals from the talent; they were utterly quiet,
each orbiting in a closed curve. The Supras danced without pause or sign of
tiring for the rest of the day and through the night and on well into the next
morning.

 
          
 
Cley watched their relentless, driving dances
without hope of comprehending. Without meaning to, the Supras told her that she
was utterly alone. Seeker was no company, either; it gave the Supras only an
occasional glance and soon fell asleep. She longed for her own people and tried
to leave the Supra compound, but as she approached the perimeter her skin began
to burn and itch intolerably. While the tall, perfect figures whirled through
the night she remembered loves and lives now lost down death's funnel, tried to
sleep and could not.

 
          
 
And then without a sign or gesture they
abruptly stopped . . . looked around at each other . . . and wordlessly
returned to work. Their robots started up again and there was never any mention
of the matter.

 
          
 
The next day, as work resumed, Seranis took
samples of her hair, skin, blood and urine. For the Library, Seranis explained.