Edmund Cooper - A Far Sunset

There were no more voices in the dark. Nor did Oruri—or Aru Re —utter his soundless words in the daytime. After less than a day’s travel, Paul noticed that the long savannah grass was getting shorter. Presently it was only as high as his, knee. Presently, no higher than his ankle. The air grew colder as they came to the uplands.

And there before them, less than half a day’s march away, was the mountain range whose central peak was called the Temple of the White Darkness. All that lay between was a stretch of scrubland, rising into moorland and small patches of coniferous forest.

Suddenly, Paul became depressed. Through the high, clear air, he could see the detail of the jagged rock-face of the mountain—capped and scarred by everlasting snow. And sweeping round the base of the mountain was a great glacier— a broad river of ice whose movement could probably be reckoned in metres per year.

As they made their last camp before they came to the mountain, there were distant muted rumbles, as if the mountain were aware of their presence and resented their approach. The three Bayani—the man, the youth and the child—had never heard the sound of avalanches before.

Paul had much difficulty explaining the phenomenon to them. Eventually, he gave it up, seeing that they could not clearly understand. To them, the noise was only one more manifestation of the displeasure of Oruri.

He gazed despairingly at the Temple of the White Darkness, wondering how he could possibly begin his search. He was no mountaineer. Nor was he equipped for mountaineering. And it would be sheer cruelty to drag his companions— children of the forest—across the dangerous slopes of ice and snow. How terrible it was to be so near and yet so helpless. For the first time he was ready to acknowledge to himself the probability of defeat.

Then the sunset came—and with it a sign. Paul Marlowe was not easily moved to prayer. But, on this occasion, prayer was not just the only thing he was able to offer. It seemed strangely appropriate and even inevitable.

There, far above the moorland and the ring of coniferous forest, as the sun sank low, he saw briefly a great curving stem of fire.

He had seen something similar many, many years ago in a world on the other side of the sky. As he watched, and as the sun sank and the stem of the fire dissolved, he remembered how it had been when he first saw sunlight reflected from the polished hull of the Gloria Mundi.

Paul Marlowe was alone. He had left his companions on the far side of the glacier. Shon Hu was partly snow blind, Zu Shan’s nose had started to bleed because of the altitude, and little Nemo, wrapped in skins so that he looked like a furry ball, had an almost perpetual aching in his bones.

So Paul had left the three of them on the far side of the glacier and had set off alone shortly after dawn. He had told them that, if he had not returned by noon, they must go without waiting for him. He did not think that they could stand another night on the bare, lower slopes of the mountain.

The glacier had looked much more formidable than it really was. His feet and ankles ached a great deal with the effort of maintaining footholds on the great, tilting ice sheets; and from the way his toes felt it seemed as if sharp slivers of ice might have cut through the tough skins that were his only protection. But on the whole, apart from being bruised by innumerable minor falls, he felt he was in reasonable shape.

And now, here he was, standing near the base of one of the mighty metal shoes that supported the three impossibly slender legs of the great star ship. The shoes rested firmly on a broad flat table of rock in the lee of the mountain, and they were covered to a depth of perhaps three metres by eternal ice. The legs themselves were easily twenty metres tall; and the massive hull of the star ship rose all of two hundred metres above them—like a spire. Like the spire of a vast, buried cathedral.

Paul gazed up at the fantastic shape, shielding his eyes against the glow of its polished surface, and was drunk with wonder.

Then the voice that was no voice spoke in his head.

‘I am beautiful, am I not?’

So much had happened that Paul was beyond surprise. He said calmly: ‘Yes, you are beautiful.’

‘I am Aru Re —in your language, Bird of Mars. I have waited here more than fifty thousand planetary years. It may be that I shall wait another ten thousand years before my children are of an age to understand. For I am the custodian of the memory of their race.’

Suddenly, Paul’s mind was reeling. Here he was, a man of Earth, having made a hazardous journey on a strange planet, through primeval forests, across wide savannah, into the mountains and over a high glacier to meet a telepathic star ship. A star ship that spoke in English, called itself the Bird of Mars and claimed to have been in existence for over fifty thousand years. He wanted to laugh and cry and quietly and purposefully go mad. But there was no need of that. Obviously he was already mad. Obviously, the glacier had beaten him and he was lying now—what was left of him—in some shallow crevasse, withdrawn into a world of fantasy, waiting for the great cold to bring down the find curtain on his psychic drama.

‘No, you are not mad,’ said the silent voice. ‘Nor are you injured and dying. You are Paul Marlowe of Earth, and you are the first man resolute enough to discover the truth. Open your mind completely to me, and I will show you much that has been hidden. I am Aru Re, Bird of Mars … The truth also, is beautiful.’

‘Nothing but a machine!’ shouted Paul, rebelling against die impossible reality. ‘You are nothing but a machine—a skyhigh lump of steel, wrapped round a computer with built-in paranoia.’ He tried to control himself, but could not restrain the sobbing. ‘Fraud! Impostor! Bastard lump of tin! ’

‘Yes, I am a machine,’ returned the voice of the Aru Re, insistendy in his head, ‘but I am greater than the sum of my parts. I am a machine that lives. Because I am the custodian and the carrier of the seed, I am immortal. I am greater than the men who conceived me, though they, too, were great.’

‘A machine!’ babbled Paul desperately. ‘A useless bloody machine! ’

The voice would not leave him alone. ‘And what of Paul

Marlowe, voyager in the Gloria Mundi, citizen on sufferance of Baya Nor, Poul Mer Lo, the teacher? Is he not a machine — a machine constructed of bone and flesh and dreams?’

‘Leave me alone! ’ sobbed Paul. ‘Leave me alone! ’

‘I cannot leave you alone,’ said the Aru Re, ‘because you chose not to leave me alone. You chose to know. I warned you to go back, but you came on. Therefore, according to the design, you shall know. Open your mind completely.’

Dimly, Paul knew that there was a battle raging in his head. He did not want to lose it. Because he knew instinctively that if he did lose it he would never be quite the same again.

‘Open your mind,’ repeated the star ship.

With all his strength, Paul fought against the voice and the compulsive power that had invaded his brain.

‘Then close your eyes and forget,’ murmured the Aru Re persuasively. ‘It has been a long journey. Close your eyes and forget.’

The change of approach caught Paul Marlowe off guard. Momentarily, he closed his eyes; and for the fraction of a second he allowed the taughtness to slacken.

It was enough for the star ship. As great spirals of blackness whirled in upon him, he realized that he was in thrall.

There was no sensation of movement, but he was no longer on the mountain of the White Darkness. He was in a black void—the most warm, the most pleasant, the most comfortable void in the universe.