| |
A simple funeral was held for the droid killed
in the expedition. Many droids wanted to make this a military funeral, to
honour the first droid killed in combat, but Xavier persuaded them that
it would be foolish to draw attention to themselves at this point. A few
weeks later, as arranged with their new friends from the Fusodrome, they
picked up twenty or so droids from the waste tunnel and took them to the
Commune. It was not hard for the droids to develop malfunctions that rendered
them useless as far as the Fusodrome was concerned. From the scrap heaps
where they were thrown other droids collected them and led them to the waste
tunnel. Xavier's plan was to recruit in this fashion, and at the same time
send arms and equipment in to the complex via the tunnel. By good fortune
the Government forces had not connected the A.D leagues presence near the
tunnel with its possible uses. It was too 'hot' for the A.D. League to have
had any interest in it.
Noel, Xavier, and Prunella travelled with the new droid recruits on one
of the later trips to the Commune. Some of the new droids were to stay there,
while others would be trained for the coming fighting. Once at the Commune
Noel wasted no time but went straight to Marinima. The revelations that
he had received during George's visit had at first seemed like just a nightmare
- dreams that faded in contact with daily life - but as time went on he
found that he could only treat them as fact. The conviction with which he
had talked to George about his premonitions had received the final reinforcement
from the droid telepath, and now he was ready to act on it.
"Some resolve has taken hold of you. Tell me about it," said the
old man before Noel had even begun. Noel nodded and paused a while before
speaking.
"Everything is concentrating on the Fusodrome," said Noel. "The
A.D. League are building up their forces in the desert on the Western perimeter.
Xavier is training droids there and supplying them with weapons. The Government
forces are concentrating there."
Noel paused.
"It's going to explode. There will be absolute devastation."
Noel said this in a low voice, staring at the ground. The bare statement
of events could not hide the emotion in Noel's words. Noel could feel again
the future as though it were his sole personal burden.
"The Fusodrome is situated close to a geological fault."
Silence again.
"First radiation. Then the rains. Then the Continent will sink."
Tears fell from Noel face. He looked up at Marinima.
"Everything will be lost."
Marinima sat in silence while Noel recovered himself.
"The Commune is far enough from the Fusodrome to escape the direct
impact of the blast. If we were to build a shelter in the mountainside we
could ride out the worst of the radiation; maybe for a year. I cannot believe
that the Continent could sink so quickly, but in my visions it seems a short
time between the explosion and the waters rising."
Noel hesitated.
"If we choose a suitable part of the mountain we could construct a
cavern large enough to house a boat. If the waters really rise that fast
then we simply leave by boat. If they raise faster even than that, then
the radiation will still be too great. But the boat is our only chance.
George has enough knowledge to help us build it."
Noel shook his head.
"If we could construct flying machines in this short time that would
be best. But that knowledge is completely lost."
"What about building boats on the coast?" asked Marinima.
"The Government in its position of shoring up the New Constitution
against the League is clamping down on the boat people now. I think that
it is just too dangerous to move large amounts of men and equipment to any
coastal areas. They would never look in the mountains though. Anyway my
visions tell me we should go there."
Noel looked up at Marinima to see how he would react to the mention of visions,
but the old man just nodded.
"I have dimly known all of this for a long time. I told you once that
I could not see the future. I can see the present very well though, and
it has told me for a long time that we have built ourselves a world that
is doomed to consume itself. This strange period in man's history has lead
us to a conflict with no possibility of resolution. Man has played at God,
and created creatures in his own image. The creatures have held a mirror
up to his pride and vanity and man has not risen to the level where he can
let his creations teach him about matters of the heart. What you have told
me now just shows me how it will end. I already knew why."
Marinima asked Noel to wait a few days so that he could reflect on the possible
alternatives before setting anything in motion. Noel trusted Marinima's
judgement and was content to leave it in his hands for the moment. He was
relaxing a few days later in the lounge with a number of droids and people;
the atmosphere was serene and affectionate as usual, though possibly there
was some intangible excitement in the air. Prunella came up to him and whispered
into his ear:
"Could I talk to you? Somewhere quiet?"
"Sure," said Noel. He thought that she seemed a bit worried.
In a secluded spot she asked him:
"Can you read my mind?"
Noel was taken aback and frowned.
"Did Xavier tell you about the incident in the tunnel?"
She nodded.
"You know that I had suspected that you especially could communicate
without talking to Xavier. What I want to know is: can you read the mind
of a human?"
Noel shook his head.
"I have never tried," he said softly.
"Do you think that Xavier can read my mind?" she persisted.
"I don't think so," replied Noel.
Prunella shook her head.
"I wish he could," she said bitterly.
"Why?" said Noel surprised. He expected Prunella to share Xavier's
desire for privacy in this respect.
"Because then he would know."
"Know what?"
Prunella looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes.
"That the baby is for him."
Noel looked at the floor. His mind went back to George's visit.
"Can you understand?" she demanded. "It was the only way
I could give him a child. I did not want to hurt George, but I couldn't
do it with just some stranger. He turned up then and I knew that I had to.
I didn't expect Xavier to be so angry. I only want to give what he wants
most. To be like a man in every respect. He would be such a good father."
She burst into tears. Noel took her hand, and she curled up against him
sobbing quietly. Noel stroked her hair.
"Of course I understand," he said.
Prunella looked up at him.
"I thought you might. You are always so calm. But will he?"
"He must, he must," said Noel.
Prunella seemed satisfied with his reassurance and was quiet for a while,
nestling in Noel's arms.
"You will be an uncle you know," she whispered smiling. Noel was
moved. How on earth would Xavier react? Noel knew his friend so well: Xavier
was deeply and instinctively a man. Noel sighed and stroked Prunella again.
Somehow his own role in the present crisis at least spared him the sort
of conflicts in those he loved.
A few days later, Marinima asked to see Noel; he had decided to put Noel's
plans into operation. Marinima, though frail and mainly silent, could initiate
the mobilisation of considerable resources towards a given project: his
followers in the Commune and outside would raise money and put their labour
towards anything he directed them to. Marinima would appoint construction
engineers for the blasting of an artificial cavern into the mountainside
above the commune. George's marine technology manuals would be handed over
to automotive engineers and carpenters; wood was available in abundance,
and nuclear engines were easy to procure in the nearby cities. Noel practically
laughed with happiness, he now felt that at least some of them, and some
of the Continent's history, would be preserved.
Some weeks later Noel met the engineers, who took the whole project with
absolute seriousness, such was the loyalty that Marinima inspired. Noel
was anxious to know how long it would take to complete the cavern, for once
it was built and equipped, they could relax. They would then have plenty
of time to build the boat inside, according to Noel's picture of eventualities.
The entrance to the cavern would have to be designed to take between six
months and year of severe radiation, and still open and allow the launching
of the boat. The engineers seemed to think that six months would just about
be long enough to see its completion. Their only immediate problem would
be to obtain the earth-moving and rock-blasting equipment without raising
suspicions that they were to be used for military purposes.
Xavier and Prunella were to travel back to the Poets Quarter. From the look
in Xavier's eyes when standing with Prunella, Noel knew that she had not
yet told him her news. There was none of the conflict inside Xavier that
the news would undoubtedly bring, none of the conflict that had possessed
him at the time of George's visit. Noel was to stay for a while helping
in the planning of the cavern. They embraced with especial feeling for some
reason, and said goodbye.
A few days after Xavier and Prunella had left, Noel was summoned to Marinima.
"Noel, I think that you may have a certain telepathic gift."
"Why yes! How did you guess? So far it seems to work mainly between
Xavier and myself, but it doesn't happen very often."
"Do you think that you could read the mind of a human? A rather hostile
human at that?"
"I don't know. But I could certainly try." Noel was taken aback
to be asked the same question twice in such a short time.
"Good."
Marinima turned to one of the guards, and ordered him to bring in a prisoner.
The man they brought was an ADL spy, Marinima told him, and had been captured
just after Xavier's departure. Noel looked at him for a moment and then
whispered to Marinima:
"I am sure that I know this man. He seems familiar."
Noel went up to the prisoner, who tensed, seeing the tell-tale redness in
Noel's eyes.
"Tell me, if you would; where were you born?"
"I am saying nothing."
The spy's jaws were clenched and the words were spat out: he tried to look
his defiance at Noel, but averted his eyes after a moment as Noel made a
brief contact with his mind. Noel could see past the present anxiety and
anger over his capture, and his hatred of the droids around him, to his
years with the ADL and memories of good-humoured camaraderie out in the
open. Noel could also see memories of their vicious attacks on droids, and
past that to his childhood. Noel grinned suddenly, but there was no humour
in his eyes.
"How is Biggins then?"
The man cringed as though he had been hit, but recovered and spat out:
"The name is Bill to you."
"You don't remember your old nanny then?" asked Noel.
Bill looked confused and suddenly sagged against the guards holding him.
Noel could see the conflict in him, that lurked in so many ADL men. The
warmth of his childhood feelings towards his droid child-minder, that so
many of them had been nurtured by, was now brought painfully up against
his present hatred of them. The ADL followers now lived and breathed for
the day when the they could destroy them, their early protectors. Bill looked
at Noel with a sullen anger while Noel took the opportunity to gently probe
his defenceless mind.
"They are preparing for an attack, but he knows none of the details,"
Noel announced after a pause.
Bill lunged forwards against the restraining arms of his guards, his face
contorted in rage.
"Filthy revert!" he shouted, "You had no right to do that!"
"You had no right to beat up defenceless droids," Noel said coldly.
"They are only machines," retorted Bill.
Noel moved closer to him.
"So are you," he said quietly.
Bill ignored the remark.
"You've no right to read my mind!" he screamed again.
Noel drew himself up to his full height.
"You have declared war on us. We will fight with all the weapons we
have."
Bill just stared at him, and was taken away by the guards. As Noel passed
Marinima on the way out of the room, the old man held his arm and looked
at him for a moment. After a brief pause Marinima nodded and let him go.
"You have changed, Noel," he said.
As Noel lay down to sleep that night he reflected on Marinima's comment.
He had accepted that he had to bear the burden of his prophecy, and he could
see how it was changing his attitudes. Only gradually was it becoming clear
that others would start to treat him specially as a result. He didn't want
it: it made him feel lonely. His consolation was that at least he would
be listened to, and that action was being taken to save some of them from
the disaster to come. But what did it mean to be a prophet? He had come
to see the future somehow, and had persuaded others of the truth of it.
But wasn't there more to it than that? Why did he feel that his life was
changing so utterly from what it had been before? It was one thing to deal
with the visions, but how was he to deal with those who might come to depend
on him? How was he to give them answers? Noel could make no sense of it
and just shook his head as he lay on his bed. It was a long time before
sleep came.
Some time afterwards, Noel was introduced to a very strange looking droid.
Most droids wore some kind of hair-piece, the bolder ones styling it in
a droid fashion that was quite unlike the human ones. This droid however
was completely bald and had painted his entire head in shades of white and
blue, and his eyes had deep black shadows round them making him look quite
extraordinary. Noel finally recognised him as the singer Zero.
"I love your music," said Noel.
"Thank you," said Zero. He was unexpectedly shy, and Noel took
a great liking to him.
A few days later Noel was resting on a rock at the back of the Commune,
looking at the view over the valley and towards the Fusodrome on the horizon,
when he heard somebody singing close by. Straining to hear the words, he
caught a fragment of a song:
I dream on borrowed time,
I dream of borrowed love,
It all ended years ago,
When I was born an adult.
We live on borrowed time,
We love on borrowed time,
Yet new ways are here,
New ways are here to stay.
We opened doors by thinking,
Years ago this marked the end,
Since then we had no place to go,
Since then we've only borrowed time.
Noel wandered over to the source of the song, and found Zero looking at
him with a wary smile on his face.
"Yes, we have been living on borrowed time," said Noel.
Zero nodded.
"We opened doors by thinking?" asked Noel.
Zero's smile widened.
"I wrote the song for you," he said, "and for all the other
reverts."
Noel grinned.
"You're quite right," he said "I knew what your song was
about. What do you think the new ways will be?"
"Man will start from scratch again. The new ways will be the oldest
ways."
Zero looked up at Noel and said with some bitterness:
"They don't want us you know."
"Yes," agreed Noel quietly.
Zero was silent for a while.
"I don't know how to ask this," he said eventually, "but
they call you the Prophet Droid..."
Noel looked at Zero, who continued:
"I think I am saying this for a lot of droids, but I don't have any
idea of how to react to you. How are we to treat you? There is nothing in
our history that prepares us for it."
"I don't know either," said Noel, shaking his head.
Suddenly, there came the thought to Noel: just open your heart, but
something inhibited him from saying it out loud. They returned together
for supper, talking about other things.
Noel stayed several months while the initial stages of planning the cavern
were undertaken.
Almost within view of the Commune, if one had high-powered sights and a
reason to look that way, one could have spotted Zebulun March flying over
the desert with a group of zeesuited Brothers under his command. They had
made a base in a hollow in some rocky outcrops, and entered and left from
a great height, so that to a casual observer on the ground some miles away
they would be seen only as birds. Over a period of weeks they had gathered
a stock of hand-held bombs, provisions, and imaging equipment to monitor
the movement of troops. Ordering his Brothers back to base, Zebulun flew
one last circuit with his high-powered imaging recorders to gather information
- though it was also to indulge his insatiable appetite for flying - when
he was arrested suddenly in mid-flight. The zeesuit made no response to
his inputs, and a panic gripped his heart: this intensified as he started
slowly to rise, quite beyond his control. By arching his back and forcing
his hands down against the delicate sensors that controlled his flight,
he brought himself down again a little to his former position, but as soon
as he relaxed the suit took him inexorably upwards. Breaking radio silence,
he contacted base to inform them of his plight, but to his horror the voice
of Dan Amalek came back to him: Dan must have taken over his call frequency.
His voice was harsh:
"You have betrayed the Brotherhood, Zebulun March: you used the zeesuit
for your own adventures, risking exposure of us all - those fools who hang
about with the droid Xavier and his pathetic Prophet Droid have you on vid,
and know who you are. We don't need people like you."
There was a buzz on the line and then silence. The zeesuit started pulling
Zebulun upwards again, and now in earnest fear for his life Zebulun struggled
to pull it down. Only through Zebulun's truly massive strength did he manage
to force himself down towards the lonely stretch of desert over which he
hovered, and spotting an old highway to the left, he pulled himself towards
it. He was perspiring from every pore in the extremity of his effort, with
his back almost breaking to control the suit. He managed to unclasp most
of the buckles holding him to the suit, though this additional effort caused
him to rise again. As he felt his strength fading, he knew that he could
never bring himself to ground level now, and with a roar of anger slipped
out of the last clasps holding him and fell to the ground; a fall equal
to that from the first or second floor of an apartment block.
Hours later Zebulun regained consciousness with the pain of his broken legs,
ribs, and arm flooding his mind, to be subdued eventually by his trained
will. Zebulun made no move, but contemplated his desperate position: he
could not walk, or even drag himself along the ground, and he was very thirsty.
With his one good arm he carefully felt as much of his body as he could,
discovering that he was not bleeding, only internally. These were mere data
however that he recorded unemotionally: the real situation was that he was
now presumably a target for the Brotherhood, should they discover him still
alive. The worst was that he was now on his own - truly on his own, and
with no possibility of going back to anywhere or anyone, and for the first
time in his life with no future. His only faint, faint hope lay in the imminent
upheaval: perhaps everything would reorganise itself and he would be able
to start anew... He felt his mind wandering now, gradually becoming incoherent
in his thoughts. The sun shone remorselessly, and his thirst slowly became
as grim a reality as the pain in his broken limbs. He lost consciousness
for a while, waking with a start to see a figure faintly hovering over him
- oh God! - it was his wife.
Zebulun broke down and wept, the sobbing only causing him fresh waves of
pain as he tried to hide his face from her; he remembered the terror in
her eyes as he pushed against her face to break her grip and make her fall
to her death. The sense now of the entire Brotherhood against him - of himself
as an outcast from all that he had devoted his life to - made her accusing
features tear at him in a way he had ever known: for the first time in his
life he felt remorse.
The apparition of his wife faded after a while, and his thoughts turned
back to the Brotherhood and their teachings. Only the developed man could
attain a soul and be reborn, as did the Elders, and those that served the
Brotherhood and practiced the secret Way would attain this in their lifetime.
Those that did not, would perish: their souls at the time of death would
rise up as food for the moon - and as Zebulun stared upwards it seemed that
it was the moon hanging over him rather than the afternoon sun, and he shuddered.
The bright sky, by a trick of vision, seemed to darken and the imaginary
moonlight played on the thorn-bushes and scrubby tracts of desert around
him. Small darting hoverflies gathered over him - alongside the flies and
an occasional wasp - and their various buzzings tormented him: they seemed
to say that he was no more than an insect, soon to be extinguished in the
moonlight, to be sucked up as food for the moon's sinister being.
After another period of unconsciousness he woke to a second apparition:
a droid with red eyes shimmering above him: at first he thought that it
was Althea's lover, but after a time the figure reached out to touch him
and said in a gentle voice that caused Zebulun's hairs to stand on end:
"Zebulun March: why do you wage war on us?"
This phrase hung in the air as Zebulun shrank in terror and lost consciousness
again, waking with the words "The Prophet Droid, the Prophet Droid"
on his lips. He shrank again to see another red-eyed droid peering down
over him. In a haze of pain and delirium he saw the figure withdraw and
then return with water, and finally strap him to a primitive stretcher and
place in him a vehicle. The agony of the jolting desert ride seemed endless,
but in reality Zebulun was conscious for only part of it, waking the next
day in a small unfamiliar room.
|
