Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

‘We already knew we were the first,’ Shana said, ‘stop delaying and just do it.’

She was already lying on the couch and Jon watched apprehensively as she put the headset on top of her riotous mass of hair. Instantly her eyes closed and her face went blank. Alarmed, Jon crossed to her and shook her as gently as he could but there was no response.

He stood over her for quite a while wondering what he should do. Eventually, he decided that trying to pull her out of whatever state she was in was too dangerous. There was only one way he could watch over her and that was to join her.

He lay down on the couch and very slowly placed the headset on his head. Instantly he felt tiny pinpricks as extremely small wires shot out of the ends and sank a short distance into his flesh. There was a short pang of pain and then no sensation at all.

He felt his eyes shut involuntarily.

And then his education began.

There was only blackness; a blackness so deep it was if the entire universe had been annihilated. A blackness that was the negation of everything that had ever been, was or ever would be. Jon could have been hanging motionless in a universe of eternal night.

And then at what could have been any distance whatsoever he saw some spinning shapes, each glowing with soft pastel light. And slowly they began to approach him, one after the other in a short train of mystery.

Jon could see that they were regular shapes but as yet he did not possess the terminology to define them. They were, in fact, the Platonic Solids, each softly glowing with pleasing radiance except the last, the icosahedron, which was not self-radiant but a lightless, lifeless black.

The first in the line, the tetrahedron, slowly approached him until it became obvious that they would touch. And touch they did and more; Jon passed without resistance into the exact centre of the object and was immersed in its lambent substance.

And then it began.

He felt a sudden probing of his mind, as if every neuron was being studied for its contents and its holding capacity for information.

It appeared that a decision had been made because then came a vast flux of data deep into every one of those neurons; a great irresistible tidal wave of information, of concepts, of axioms, of rules of inference, as entire slabs of mathematical knowledge crashed into his brain.

He felt like screaming, of begging whatever force was responsible to stop, of pleading for respite. But still it surged on.

Then it was over and he was free, outside the tetrahedron and adrift in emptiness again.

But not for long.

The softly glowing cube approached, touched him, swallowed him.

And it began again. This time the mighty cascades were of advanced theoretical physics: special relativity, general relativity, quantum chromodynamics, non-abelian string theory. And there was practical physics also, mainly to do with rocket propulsion, but with a sinister subsection on weaponry.

And then the cube moved on.

Jon watched the glowing octahedron approach with the certainty that it too would be forcing yet more knowledge into his burning brain. And so it proved, this time of chemistry; mainly organic but with a heavy dose of planetology. And once again a disturbing area, this time on the use of chemistry for explosives.

The octahedron passed into unplumbed blackness and he was swallowed by the oncoming dodecahedron, which poured biochemical knowledge into his tottering mental circuitry.

He was released and waited for the final chapter of his ordeal by knowledge – but No! the icosahedron was dark and aloof. It passed him by without any recognition of his existence.

Jon watched it disappear into ebon oblivion and reflected that whatever knowledge it contained was not regarded as being for the likes of him.

Suddenly he realised that he was en rapport with Shana although he could not see her; he was somehow able to observe her thoughts, thoughts which were in a mind that was in total turmoil from having tremendous amounts of information poured into it. Then with what seemed like an audible snap, contact was lost. Jon hoped that was because she had come out of the Educator before him.

He then expected to awake from whatever this state was and find himself on the couch but once again he was surprised.

Now he was to be given a history lesson.

A great face appeared in the darkness, covering an area several times greater than Jon’s dimensions. It was the face of a man whose visage bore the unmistakeable lines of power and great authority. A face seemingly not made of soft flesh but skilfully carved from dark flint. A face that was that of someone used to deciding on matters of life and death without a second’s thought. A face of a man whose enmity was something to be greatly feared.

The face spoke.

‘I am Maroun,’ it said, in a voice that thundered through Jon’s mind, ‘I will show you the fate of the Degenerates and how we built the Protectorate on foundations made from their soft corpses.’

Like Shana before him, but in much greater detail, he saw in his mind scenes of past events.

He saw the gentle, peaceful cultures of the Degenerates in their last days. He saw their pathetic attempts to remove all danger from their meaningless lives; how they shrank from pain; their gnawing fear of death. He saw the people, apparently happy but in reality assailed by a million doubts, going about their myriad activities, unaware of the approach of the fatal scimitar. He saw their violent overthrow by forces both internal and external; saw their populations enslaved and brutalised.

Maroun spoke again: ‘And so was formed the Protectorate; so-called because we exist to preserve all that is proud, strong and manly in humanity. People who obey orders without concern for their own safety; people prepared to leap into the furnace in the service of the Great Khan.’

Jon felt a tremendous need to speak out against this interpretation of history but he realised that would be extremely unwise. All he could do was hope that Maroun, whoever he was, could not read his thoughts.

‘Now behold our army!’ the voice thundered, ‘let inferior breeds throughout the universe tremble at their approach!’

The visions changed again, this time into something Jon could recognise because he had been there not long previously. It was the room with the pods and somehow he could clearly see inside each one. At once he noticed that he was seeing the same features again and again and he soon realised that there were only ten male types (of which he was obviously one) and fifteen female types. Again and again he saw Shana’s face in casket after casket.

With his new knowledge, the explanation was obvious.

‘Clones!’ he said to himself.

To his surprise Maroun answered him. ‘Yes. But not just clones, clones made in the laboratories of the Protectorate. Clones composed of proteins utilising amino acids not found in nature; genetic material using artificial bases; all designed so that the creature composed of these substances will be stronger and longer lasting. Add blind loyalty to that robust frame and you have the perfect soldier.’

But something has gone wrong with your plan , Jon thought in the secret places of his mind, for I do not possess blind loyalty to the Protectorate .

As Jon studied the comatose individuals in the caskets he became aware of something else: he could sense their mentalities. In some, he could see a little bubble of awareness slowly rising in a dark column of unconsciousness. This was obviously the true meaning of the Gate of Light: it was simply the awakening of the individual from this form of stasis – just as he and Shana had done not long ago. This was what Jarz had meant when he had said that soon they would have enough arrivals to enter the Gate of Light en masse.