The City and the Stars/The Sands of Mars Read online

  “I guessed it,” he said at last.

  Jeserac settled down more comfortably in the depths of the chair he had just materialized. This was an interesting situation, and he wanted to analyze it as fully as possible. There was not much he could learn, however, unless Khedron was willing to co-operate.

  He should have anticipated that Alvin would one day meet the Jester, with unpredictable consequences. Khedron was the only other person in the city who could be called eccentric— and even his eccentricity had been planned by the designers of Diaspar. Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull. Crime, however, from the nature of things, could not be guaranteed to remain at the optimum level which the social equation demanded. If it was licensed and regulated, it ceased to be crime.

  The office of Jester was the solution— as first sight naïve, yet actually profoundly subtle— which the city’s designers had evolved. In all the history of Diaspar there were less than two hundred persons whose mental inheritance fitted them for this peculiar role. They had certain privileges that protected them from the consequences of their actions, though there had been Jesters who had overstepped the mark and paid the only penalty that Diaspar could impose— that of being banished into the future before their current incarnation had ended.

  On rare and unforeseeable occasions, the Jester would turn the city upside-down by some prank which might be no more than an elaborate practical joke, or which might be a calculated assault on some currently cherished belief or way of life. All things considered, the name “Jester” was a highly appropriate one. There had once been men with very similar duties, operating with the same license, in the days when there were courts and kings.

  “It will help,” said Jeserac, “if we are frank with one another. We both know that Alvin is a Unique— that he has never experienced any earlier life in Diaspar. Perhaps you can guess, better than I can, the implications of that. I doubt if anything that happens in the city is totally unplanned, so there must be a purpose in his creation. Whether he will achieve that purpose— whatever it is— I do not know. Nor do I know whether it is good or bad. I cannot guess what it is.”

  “Suppose it concerns something external to the city?”

  Jeserac smiled patiently; the Jester was having his little joke, as was only to be expected.

  “I have told him what lies there; he knows that there is nothing outside Diaspar except the desert. Take him there if you can; perhaps you know a way. When he sees the reality, it may cure the strangeness in his mind.”

  “I think he has already seen it,” said Khedron softly. But he said it to himself, and not to Jeserac.

  “I do not believe that Alvin is happy,” Jeserac continued. “He has formed no real attachments, and it is hard to see how he can while he still suffers from this obsession. But after all, he is very young. He may grow out of this phase, and become part of the pattern of the city.”

  Jeserac was talking to reassure himself; Khedron wondered if he really believed what he was saying.

  “Tell me, Jeserac,” asked Khedron abruptly, “does Alvin know that he is not the first Unique?”

  Jeserac looked startled, then a little defiant.

  “I might have guessed,” he said ruefully, “that you would know that. How many Uniques have there been in the whole history of Diaspar? As many as ten?”

  “Fourteen,” answered Khedron without hesitation. “Not counting Alvin.

  “You have better information than I can command,” said Jeserac wryly. “Perhaps you can tell me what happened to those Uniques?”

  “They disappeared.”

  “Thank you: I knew that already. That is why I have told Alvin as little as possible about his predecessors: it would hardly help him in his present mood. Can I rely on your co-operation?”

  “For the moment— yes. I want to study him myself; mysteries have always intrigued me, and there are too few in Diaspar. Besides, I think that Fate may be arranging a jest beside which all my efforts will look very modest indeed. In that case, I want to make sure that I am present at its climax.”

  “You are rather too fond of talking in riddles,” complained Jeserac. “Exactly what are you anticipating?”

  “I doubt if my guesses will be any better than yours. But I believe this— neither you nor I nor anyone in Diaspar will be able to stop Alvin when he has decided what he wants to do. We have a very interesting few centuries ahead of us.”

  Jeserac sat motionless for a long time, his mathematics forgotten, after the image of Khedron had faded from sight. A sense of foreboding, the like of which he had never known before, hung heavily upon him. For a fleeting moment he wondered if he should request an audience with the Council— but would that not be making a ridiculous fuss about nothing? Perhaps the whole affair was some complicated and obscure jest of Khedron’s, though he could not imagine why he had been chosen to be its butt.

  He thought the matter over carefully, examining the problem from every angle. After little more than an hour, he made a characteristic decision.

  He would wait and see.

  Alvin wasted no time learning all that he could about Khedron. Jeserac, as usual, was his main source of information. The old tutor gave a carefully factual account of his meeting with the Jester, and added what little he knew about the other’s mode of life. Insofar as such a thing was possible in Diaspar, Khedron was a recluse: no one knew where he lived or anything about his way of life. The last jest he had contrived had been a rather childish prank involving a general paralysis of the moving ways. That had been fifty years ago; a century earlier he had let loose a particularly revolting dragon which had wandered around the city eating every existing specimen of the works of the currently most popular sculptor. The artist himself, justifiably alarmed when the beast’s single-minded diet became obvious, had gone into hiding and not emerged until the monster had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

  One thing was obvious from these accounts. Khedron must have a profound understanding of the machines and powers that ruled the city, and could make them obey his will in ways which no one else could do. Presumably there must be some overriding control which prevented any too-ambitious Jester from causing permanent and irreparable damage to the complex structure of Diaspar.

  Alvin filed all this information away, but made no move to contact Khedron. Though he had many questions to ask the Jester, his stubborn streak of independence— perhaps the most truly unique of all his qualities— made him determined to discover all he could by his own unaided efforts. He had embarked on a project that might keep him busy for years, but as long as he felt that he was moving toward his goal he was happy.

  Like some traveler of old mapping out an unknown land, he had begun the systematic exploration of Diaspar. He spent his weeks and days prowling through the lonely towers at the margin of the city, in the hope that somewhere he might discover a way out into the world beyond. During the course of his search he found a dozen of the great air vents opening high above the desert, but they were all barred— and even if the bars had not been there, the sheer drop of almost a mile was sufficient obstacle.

  He found no other exits, though he explored a thousand corridors and ten thousand empty chambers. All these buildings were in that perfect and spotless condition which the people of Diaspar took for granted as part of the normal order of things. Sometimes Alvin would meet a wandering robot, obviously on a tour of inspection, and he never failed to question the machine. He learned nothing, because the machines he encountered were not keyed to respond to human speech or thoughts. Though they were aware of his presence, for they floated politely aside to let him pass, they refused to engage in conversation.

  There were times when Alvin did not see another human being for days. When he felt hungry, he would go into one of the living apartments and order a meal. Miraculous machines to whose existence he seldom gave a thought would wake to life after aeons of slumber. The patterns they had s
tored in their memories would flicker on the edge of reality, organizing and directing the matter they controlled. And so a meal prepared by a master chef a hundred million years before would be called again into existence to delight the palate or merely to satisfy the appetite.

  The loneliness of this deserted world— the empty shell surrounding the living heart of the city— did not depress Alvin. He was used to loneliness, even when he was among those he called his friends. This ardent exploration, absorbing all his energy and interest, made him forget for the moment the mystery of his heritage and the anomaly that cut him off from all his fellows.

  He had explored less than one-hundredth of the city’s rim when he decided that he was wasting his time. His decision was not the result of impatience, but of sheer common sense. If needs be, he was prepared to come back and finish the task, even if it took him the remainder of his life. He had seen enough, however, to convince him that if a way out of Diaspar did exist, it would not be found as easily as this. He might waste centuries in fruitless search unless he called upon the assistance of wiser men.

  Jeserac had told him flatly that he knew no road out of Diaspar, and doubted if one existed. The information machines, when Alvin had questioned them, had searched their almost infinite memories in vain. They could tell him every detail of the city’s history back to the beginning of recorded times— back to the barrier beyond which the Dawn Ages lay forever hidden. But they could not answer Alvin’s simple question, or else some higher power had forbidden them to do so.

  He would have to see Khedron again.

  CHAPTER

  7

  You took your time,” said Khedron, “but I knew you would call sooner or later.”

  This confidence annoyed Alvin; he did not like to think that his behavior could be predicted so accurately. He wondered if the Jester had watched all his fruitless searching and knew exactly what he had been doing.

  “I am trying to find a way out of the city,” he said bluntly. “There must be one, and I think you could help me find it.”

  Khedron was silent for a moment. There was still time, if he wished, to turn back from the road that stretched before him, and which led into a future beyond all his powers of prophecy. No one else would have hesitated; no other man in the city, even if he had the power, would have dared to disturb the ghosts of an age that had been dead for millions of centuries. Perhaps there was no danger, perhaps nothing could alter the perpetual changelessness of Diaspar. But if there was any risk of something strange and new coming into the world, this might be the last chance to ward it off.

  Khedron was content with the order of things as it was. True, he might upset that order from time to time— but only by a little. He was a critic, not a revolutionary. On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples: he shrank from diverting its course. The desire for adventure, other than that of the mind, had been eliminated from him as carefully and thoroughly as from all the other citizens of Diaspar.

  Yet he still possessed, though it was almost extinguished, that spark of curiosity that was once Man’s greatest gift. He was still prepared to take a risk.

  He looked at Alvin and tried to remember his own youth, his own dreams of half a thousand years before. Any moment of his past that he cared to choose was still clear and sharp when he turned his memory upon it. Like beads upon a string, this life and all the ones before it stretched back through the ages; he could seize and re-examine any one he wished. Most of those older Khedrons were strangers to him now; the basic patterns might be the same, but the weight of experience separated him from them forever. If he wished, he could wash his mind clear of all his earlier incarnations, when next he walked back into the Hall of Creation to sleep until the city called him forth again. But that would be a kind of death, and he was not ready for that yet. He was still prepared to go on collecting all that life could offer, like a chambered nautilus patiently adding new cells to its slowly expanding spiral.

  In his youth, he had been no different from his companions. It was not until he came of age and the latent memories of his earlier lives came flooding back that he had taken up the role for which he had been destined long ago. Sometimes he felt resentment that the intelligences which had contrived Diaspar with such infinite skill could even now, after all these ages, make him move like a puppet across their stage. Here, perhaps, was a chance of obtaining a long-delayed revenge. A new actor had appeared who might ring down the curtain for the last time on a play that already had seen far too many acts.

  Sympathy, for one whose loneliness must be even greater than his own; an ennui produced by ages of repetition; and an impish sense of fun— these were the discordant factors that prompted Khedron to act.

  “I may be able to help you,” he told Alvin, “or I may not. I don’t wish to raise any false hopes. Meet me in half an hour at the intersection of Radius 3 and Ring 2. If I cannot do anything else, at least I can promise you an interesting journey.”

  Alvin was at the rendezvous ten minutes ahead of time, though it was on the other side of the city. He waited impatiently as the moving ways swept eternally past him, bearing the placid and contented people of the city about their unimportant business. At last he saw the tall figure of Khedron appear in the distance, and a moment later he was for the first time in the physical presence of the Jester. This was no projected image; when they touched palms in the ancient greeting, Khedron was real enough.

  The Jester sat down on one of the marble balustrades and regarded Alvin with a curious intentness.

  “I wonder,” he said, “if you know what you are asking. And I wonder what you would do if you obtained it. Do you really imagine that you could leave the city, even if you found a way?”

  “I am sure of it,” replied Alvin, bravely enough, though Khedron could sense the uncertainty in his voice.

  “Then let me tell you something which you may not know. You see those towers there?” Khedron pointed to the twin peaks of Power Central and Council Hall, staring at each other across a canyon a mile deep. “Suppose I were to lay a perfectly firm plank between those two towers— a plank only six inches wide. Could you walk across it?”

  Alvin hesitated.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I wouldn’t like to try.”

  “I’m quite sure you could never do it. You’d get giddy and fall off before you’d gone a dozen paces. Yet if that same plank was supported just clear of the ground, you’d be able to walk along it without difficulty.”

  “And what does that prove?”

  “A simple point I’m trying to make. In the two experiments I’ve described, the plank would be exactly the same in both cases. One of those wheeled robots you sometimes meet could cross it just as easily if it was bridging those towers as if it was laid along the ground. We couldn’t, because we have a fear of heights. It may be irrational, but it’s too powerful to be ignored. It is built into us; we are born with it.

  “In the same way, we have a fear of space. Show any man in Diaspar a road out of the city— a road that might be just like this road in front of us now— and he could not go far along it. He would have to turn back, as you would turn back if you started to cross a plank between those towers.”

  “But why?” asked Alvin. “There must have been a time—”

  “I know, I know,” said Khedron. “Men once went out over the whole world, and to the stars themselves. Something changed them and gave them this fear with which they are now born. You alone imagine that you do not possess it. Well, we shall see. I’m taking you to Council Hall.”

  The Hall was one of the largest buildings in the city, and was almost entirely given over to the machines that were the real administrators of Diaspar. Not far from its summit was the chamber where the Council met on those infrequent occasions when it had any business to discuss.

  The wide entrance swallowed them up, and Khedron strode forward into the golden gloom. Alvin had never entered Council Hall before; there was no rule a
gainst it— there were few rules against anything in Diaspar— but like everyone else he had a certain half-religious awe of the place. In a world that had no gods, Council Hall was the nearest thing to a temple.

  Khedron never hesitated as he led Alvin along corridors and down ramps that were obviously made for wheeled machines, not human traffic. Some of these ramps zigzagged down into the depths at such steep angles that it would have been impossible to keep a footing on them had not gravity been twisted to compensate for the slope.

  They came at last to a closed door, which slid silently open as they approached, then barred their retreat. Ahead was another door, which did not open as they came up to it. Khedron made no move to touch the door, but stood motionless in front of it. After a short pause, a quiet voice said: “Please state your names.”

  “I am Khedron the Jester. My companion is Alvin.”

  “And your business?”

  “Sheer curiosity.”

  Rather to Alvin’s surprise, the door opened at once. In his experience, if one gave facetious replies to machines it always led to confusion and one had to go back to the beginning. The machine that had interrogated Khedron must have been a very sophisticated one— far up in the hierarchy of the Central Computer.

  They met no more barriers, but Alvin suspected that they had passed many tests of which he had no knowledge. A short corridor brought them out abruptly into a huge circular chamber with a sunken floor, and set in that floor was something so astonishing that for a moment Alvin was overwhelmed with wonder. He was looking down upon the entire city of Diaspar, spread out before him with its tallest buildings barely reaching to his shoulder.

  He spent so long picking out familiar places and observing unexpected vistas that it was some time before he paid any notice to the rest of the chamber. Its walls were covered with a microscopically detailed pattern of black and white squares; the pattern itself was completely irregular, and when he moved his eyes quickly he got the impression that it was flickering swiftly, though it never changed. At frequent intervals around the chamber were manually controlled machines of some type, each complete with a vision screen and a seat for the operator.