Alice's World Read online

  “You come through my pass. Very well, then: you must answer my riddle, then you may pass. If not…” Claws appeared on her paws, black and deadly.

  Jocelyn is still secure (the man-robot; the sentient ship; power).

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “The Theban Sphinx,” she said, smiling beautifully. “The Throttler, the Choker, the Tight-binder, the Guardian of the Pass, the Demon of Death. I was sent here by Hera; I give riddles; I guard the pass. Only one has solved my riddle, a man with black eyes and swollen feet who limped by on his way to a mother unknown. Now I will give you the riddle.” She smiled again.

  “It’s like a talking parrot,” Jocelyn said, “but horrible.” He peered at the Sphinx, who crouched in the pearly light of the moon. “A machine?”

  Martha had retreated back into the shadows. “Let’s go back.”

  “I am swift as Death,” the Sphinx said, looking at her. “You will never get away unless you solve my riddle.”

  “A joke,” Jocelyn said contemptuously. (The man-robot, the ship, gun in hand, cool metal and slumbering fire: a sense of power.) “Perhaps it can do tricks.” He grinned at the Sphinx. “Can you?”

  “I don’t like this,” Martha said. “Let’s go back.”

  “It’s only a robot or something! Are you scared?”

  “Yes.” Strained.

  The Sphinx said, “Are you ready for the riddle?”

  “Sure. Shoot.”

  “Now,” she said, “listen.”

  “A thing there is whose voice is one,

  Whose feet are two and four and three.

  So mutable a thing is none

  That moves in earth or sky or sea.

  When on most feet this thing doth go

  Its strength is weakest and its pace most slow.”

  There was silence. After a while, the Sphinx smiled. Claws appeared. Muscles strained for the leap; the wings folded out. Lazily, the Sphinx rose on her legs, shifting her eyes from one to the other.

  “The riddle,” she said, “is nought for you to solve; and having failed, as all flesh must fail, I will devour you.”

  The wings spread out.

  “For heaven’s sake!” Martha cried. “Run!”

  The Sphinx leaped.

  In the ship, the robot gazed at the visor screen. There were moving forms, pale in the bleak white lights; the flashing of a gun momentarily froze the picture into a blinding white caricature of life. The man was locked in the embrace of the Sphinx; the woman was crouching on the ground, widened eyes gleaming and white. Fire streamed from her hand, and dissipated. The Sphinx was unharmed.

  The robot was quiet and methodical. He swiveled the chair around, hands reaching for the maneuver console. In the flickering light from the screen, he moved like a smoothly animated puppet among the shadows and the blinking red and blue lights. He touched buttons, levers, dials. There was the hum of awakening machinery, swelling and rising, climbing up the scale and disappearing, the sound of mechanisms being retracted into the hull and others taking their places. Gleaming black barrels swung into position, trajectories were calculated. The maneuver console dazzled with light.

  The screen scanned the landing site, surrounded by brooding ruins, silent and quiet. The robot gave the order for ascent. The ship lifted obediently, but stopped again.

  Dark forms appeared, looming around the ship, perceived only by the ship. The visor screen still showed the open plain, ringed by ruins, but the ship registered walls of stone, rapidly rising all around. Steep cliffs grew out of the ground, rising and closing in above. They formed a cavern, dripping with moisture and dark. Glittering with light, stalagmites and stalactites appeared, forming pillars, and arches, draperies. They enclosed the ship in a cage of magnificent crystalline bars, glittering with the light of emeralds, tourmalines, and chrysolites. The ship’s mass detectors registered billions of tons of stone enclosing the cave. It hesitated, hovering beneath the impenetrable roof, then descended to the ground again, refusing to move.

  The robot saw nothing of this: only the open plain, the sky. He touched the buttons, gave orders, but the ship stayed put. Finally, he leaped out of the chair, grabbed weapons and ran out through the airlock. The ship watched him run away between pillars of frozen fire, only to disappear in unyielding rock. It was puzzled, but the instruments show the cave to be there. It filed the information and forgot about it.

  The robot raced down the slope, toward the gorge where the black mass of Jocelyn and the Sphinx was tumbling on the ground. Martha lay huddled behind a boulder nearby, white-faced. The robot dropped the weapon and threw himself at the Sphinx, metallic hands tearing at her flesh. The Sphinx flung away Jocelyn, who hit the rocks with a sickening thud and lay still, and then turned against the robot. The robot was quick and intelligent and methodical; the Sphinx was old, old, and cunning. She circled around him, smiling.

  “My riddle applies not to you,” she said, “and Hera never thought your likeness would come. I cannot devour you; but where life is, life must be taken, and there is life in you, the flickering light of life. So may it be.”

  She lunged forward. The robot moved away, but not quite fast enough. There was the sound of tearing metal, a crunch, a heavy fall. The Sphinx rose slowly and returned to Jocelyn. Martha, momentarily forgotten, also rose, her eyes staring blindly at the creature. Then she turned around and ran.

  The ship was no longer alone. A yellow-haired girl in a blue dress came out of the cave-wall and entered the ship. She sat in the maneuver chair, looking at the whirling kaleidoscopic patterns of the visor screen and kicked her feet in delight. The ship gave no signs of noticing her. There were buttons and dials in the armrest of the chair, multicolored and blazing with light. Strange things occurred when she pushed them, and her mischievous blue eyes glittered with unrestrained joy.

  6

  Monteyiller raced down the main corridor of the flagship, his eyes still clouded with sleep. His boots made a hollow sound on the steel floor, echoed by the running steps of the young and nervous lieutenant who had awakened him.

  He had gone to sleep, at last; that, he thought grimly, was the mistake. Something was bound to turn up. He swore under his breath as he swung into the command room.

  “Okay!” he shouted over the din in the room. “I’m here! Now quiet down, so I can see what’s up!” He elbowed his way through the small room crowded with excited personnel and thankfully sank down in a chair vacated by a red-eyed technician. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, feeling terrible.

  “Okay,” he said, somewhat calmer, “somebody please tell me what’s happening.” In an undertone, he added, “I’m probably going to be crucified for this anyway, so I might as well know what it’s about.”

  “It’s the scoutship,” somebody said. “You know, Martha and Jocelyn—”

  “So I gathered. What’s happened?”

  “They’ve been attacked.”

  “What?” He straightened up, the sleepiness disappearing in an instant. “How?”

  Edy Burr appeared between him and the control console. “The computers,” he said uncertainly, “don’t give any—”

  “Damn the computers! What happened?”

  “The instruments don’t agree as to what’s happened, that’s all,” interjected a voice which he recognized as belonging to the watch-officer, a small man with a permanently perplexed look and a brooding black moustache. “The video link has one version, the data processing unit of the scoutship has another.” He swallowed. “It’s very disturbing, sir.”

  “Everything is disturbing in this place,” Monteyiller muttered. “Where are Martha and Jocelyn now?”

  There was a brief pause. Then Edy coughed. “We believe they were…killed,” he said quietly.

  “You’re mad!” Monteyiller rose halfway out of his chair. “They can’t be! The ship would have prevented it!”

  “The ship,” Edy said, “says it was in a stalactite cave, with miles of rock surrounding it in all directi
ons.”

  “That’s a real good one,” Monteyiller said curtly. “What about the robot? Was he in some stalactite cave, too?”

  “He tried to intervene,” Edy said. He hesitated. “We believe he was destroyed in the process. I’m sorry, Mon, but that’s how it is.”

  “That’s true?” he asked quietly. “Just like that?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Somebody thrust a cup of pseudo-coffee in Monteyiller’s hands. He sipped it slowly, looking over the brim at the group that surrounded him.

  “You there,” he said, looking at the watch-officer. “What happened, exactly?”

  “They decided to go on with the search,” the watch-officer said. “We spoke a lot about it, first, but then they became convinced that it had been some sort of hallucination after all—”

  “I see you didn’t exactly discourage them,” Monteyiller commented dryly. “Okay, go on.”

  “They came down in a gorge just outside the landing site, and there was a creature—” He hesitated. “There’s a recording from the ship. If s better if you look at that”

  Monteyiller snapped, “Turn it on.”

  He leaned forward in the chair as the screen before him lighted up with the picture of the ghostly, moonlit gorge and the creature, crouched on the protruding cliff over Martha’s and Jocelyn’s heads. He stiffened.

  “Thorein!” he gasped. “A Sphinx!”

  “You know what that is?” The watch-officer was clearly bewildered.

  “Shut up!” He gazed intently at the screen, as the drama was played over again, thoughts whirling around in his head. It was unbelievable, impossible—yet here it was, complete in the last little detail. Even the riddle was there. He looked silently at the swiftly moving shadows, a sick feeling spreading inside him.

  The recording ended, and Monteyiller looked up at the silent group that surrounded him. “Anybody recognize it?” he asked. He looked for Cat, but couldn’t find her in the room. Instead, his gaze fell on Dr. Gernstein, who stood tall and aloof by the atrogator sphere, his eyes fixed on the visor screen. “You, Dr. Gernstein, don’t you recognize it?” He suddenly became aware of the hysterical note in his voice, and sank back, cursing himself.

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Gernstein asked. “Recognize? Is this some kind of joke…?”

  Monteyiller drew deeply for breath. His hands flexed and unflexed on the armrests of the chair. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “It was nothing. I was…wrought up, I guess…. Martha got away. What became of her?”

  “We don’t know,” Edy said.

  “I see.” Monteyiller frowned. “And Jocelyn just might be living. I didn’t see the…creature actually kill him.”

  “But you saw what happened!” Edy exclaimed. “You can’t believe that he came through that!”

  “I see what I see!” Monteyiller snapped. “And. I surely didn’t see anything worse than a rough rumble. Jocelyn is a tough man; he can take care of anything, in one way or another. And as for that robot, it wasn’t made for fighting anyway.” He bit his lip thoughtfully. “What about that ship? Let’s see the visual recordings from the so-called cave.”

  The screen showed the desolate plain, unmoving beneath the moon. Cliffs appeared, walls closed in over the ship, pillars grew, glittering with crystal light. The dials registered uncountable tons of unyielding rock in all directions. Monteyiller sighed.

  “So that’s the famous cave,” he said. “What a performance!” He looked up. “You had contact with the ship all the time, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t the cave shield the transmission? There are billions of tons of rock there, and the transmitters are good, sure, but not that good. There isn’t a signal in the whole universe that could have penetrated that mass! So how could you receive this?”

  There was silence. Finally, Edy said, “But the instruments—”

  “The instruments! That blasted ship just conked out for good, that’s all. First that cathedral, and now this. I don’t care if every instrument bears it out, it’s just downright impossible that there could have been any cave there. And if it wasn’t any cave…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Martha and Jocelyn saw the cathedral too,” Edy said stiffly.

  “Yeah. That’s what’s bothering me.” Monteyiller rose from the chair and walked toward the door. “Something funny is going on down there, I grant you that—but I won’t take the ship’s word for it.” He cast a glance up at the wall clock. “I’m going down mysell. Prepare for launching of another scoutship in…fifteen minutes. And keep contact with the ship down there. That’s all.” He turned abruptly around and left the room.

  He found Cat in one of the briefing rooms, looking through a library spool with ancient folklore of Earth. A three-dimensional picture of a centaur hung in the air before her. Monteyiller sank down on a chair beside her.

  “Doing research on our virile friend down there?”

  “A little.” She switched off the projector and turned to him. “Has something come up?”

  ‘That’s the very least you could say.” He briefly related the incident, describing the creature in detail. “It was straight out of one of those psychological plays you showed me once….” He searched for it. “Orestes something.”

  “King Oedipus.” She nodded slowly. “An ancient play by Sophocles. And the riddle, too….” She looked up at him. “You’re sure there isn’t somebody pulling your leg? It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “Nobody here knows a single line from any King Oedipus, or from any other play for that matter. Besides, this is too grave; nobody would joke about that.”

  “A robot actor or something?”

  “Could be. But it should be a hell of a robot to work like that after fifty thousand years.” He leaned toward her.

  “Look, I don’t like this, it’s…uncanny. All those fantastic creatures running around everywhere, centaurs, dragons, this Sphinx…and the ship is starting to get hallucinations, too. The machines are about the only thing in the world that one can trust—they don’t lie—and now they’re starting to behave strangely too. I—” He paused, hesitated. “We’re going down,” he said abruptly.

  “The whole ship? I thought you didn’t dare risk it.”

  “A scoutship. Room for three, the robot included.” He looked thoughtfully at her. “Well need a psychologist, preferably one with extensive knowledge of the old folklore of Earth.”

  “I get the hint.” She smiled.

  He rose. “We made a good pair once. It could work out again.”

  “The good old team….” She turned around. “It’s a deal, Mon, I’ll go.”

  The sound of his hurried steps disappeared in the echoing corridor, and as Cat briskly started to collect the library spools, her smile faded and her mouth hardened.

  7

  On Earth: the landscape stabilized into new forms. In the crumbling spaceport, the scoutship still hovered unmovingly, imprisoned by forces perceived only by itself. The gorge was no more; where it had been a dark forest began, stretching away toward the horizon. And far away in the forest: Martha.

  Martha walked down an ancient stone-paved road, her shadow crawling grotesquely after her. The dim forest spread silently out around her, in the first jagged light of dawn. The rising sun gleamed in her black hair and her large, frightened eyes. There were cedars, birches, and the gnarled trunks of old, old oaks around her; and behind her, soft green light filtered down through the dense crowns of beeches. There were echoes of birds and distant winds, the rustling of leaves, the sound of hidden streams: orchestras played in the still, timeless sea of the sleeping forest.

  She stumbled on, haunted by the memory of the Sphinx and the bloodied piece of flesh that had been someone she knew. The scene had played over and over again behind her closed eyelids as she had run through the silent forest, crying out at the impenetrable night, stumbling, falling, crawling, recoiling in horror at the slightest sound and weeping
with the unreasonable fear of the unknown. There had been beings in the night, silently running beside her, slitted eyes gleaming with light of their own and disappearing when she lunged after them. The night had been endless, filled with the sounds of her own labored breathing and formless shadows creeping nearer and disappearing again. And when the dawn came at last, they melted away in the shadows of the brooding trees, so swiftly and noiselessly that she wondered if they ever had existed.

  Martha walked on, only halfway conscious of the forest surrounding her. The forest was a dream, the ship was a dream, only the memory of Jocelyn dying was real. Behind her frozen face, she was crying.

  Suddenly she heard voices behind a small grove by the road. Her hand darted automatically down to the useless gun that hung at her thigh, its fire spent on an invincible beast half a night and an eternity ago; then she cautiously crept up to the grove.

  There were laughing voices of men and women, speaking in an oddly archaic but still recognizable tongue. The sweet voices seemed to pose no danger. She parted the branches and looked down on a small sunlit glade, filled with strange beings. There were girls in bright dresses, iridescent gossamer wings spreading from their backs, dwarfs, men and women dressed in flowing robes, and there—Martha’s eyes widened—a small, fat man with an ass’s head, sitting on the ground, while a strangely beautiful woman in a dress of a thousand colors bent over him, caressing the animal head and talking, her voice soft and low.

  As Martha gazed down at the strange scene in the glade, there was a slight sound behind her, and something touched her arm. She whirled around.

  The little yellow-haired girl in the blue dress looked up at her, hands behind her back, wearing a look of blank inquiry.

  “A midsummer night’s dream,” she said. “Do you like it?” She hesitated shyly. “I mean, the fairies? It is nice, isn’t it?”