M. Harrison - The Pastel City

They stood in the lee of the vehicle, eddies of wind wrapping their cloaks about them. Dust in their eyes and mouths. Cromis looked at the thin, hunched shoulders of the Queen. We are nothing but eroded men, he thought, Wind clothing our eyes with white ice. Benedict Paucemanly flew to the Earth. It is we who live on the barren Moon…

'Well?'said Trinor.

A hundred yards away reared the curving flank of a dune. From it poked the ends of broken and melted load girders, like a grove of buckled steel trees. They were bright, polished and eroded. Cromis, eyeing the desolation silently, became aware that beneath the muted cry of the archaic wind was a low humming: the rock beneath his feet was vibrating faintly.

Tomb the dwarf walked about. He bent down and put his ear to the rock. He got up again and dusted his leather leggings.

'This is the place,'he said. 'Begin digging at the base of the dune.'He grinned cockily at Cromis. 'The wolves become moles,'he said loudly. 'This would have taken us weeks without them. Perhaps we should thank Lord Traitor.'He strutted off to examine the girder-forest, his long white hair knotting in the wind.

With surly gruts, the Northmen were set to work; and by noon of the following day, their labours had exposed a rectangular doorway in the flank of the dune: a long low slit sealed with a slab of the same resistant obsidian stuff as had been used to construct the Birdmaker's tower.

The maker of the door had cut deep ideographs in it. Time and the desert had been unable to equal him in this respect:

the slab was as smooth and the ciphers as precise as if they had been made the day before. It seemed a pity that no one could read them.

Trinor was jubilant.

'We have a door,'he said, pulling at his moustache. 'Now let us see if our dwarf can provide a key.'He slapped Tomb jovially on the shoulder.

'You forget yourself,'murmured the dwarf.

He stood before the door, his lips moving silently. Perhaps he was recalling his apprenticeship on the fifth floor. He knelt. He passed his hands over a row of ideographs. A red glow sprang up and followed them. He murmured something:

repeated it.

'NEEDS YOU,'intoned the door abruptly, in a precise, hollow voice: 'NEEDS YOU. BAA, BAA. BAA. OUROBUNDOS-'

The gathered Northmen dropped their spades. Many of them made religious signs with their fingers. Eyes round, they clutched their weapons, breathing though their open mouths.

'DOG MOON, DOG YEARS,'moaned the door: 'BAA, BAA, BAA.'

And to each ritualistic syllable, Tomb made a suitable reply. Their dialogue lasted for some minutes before silence descended and he began again the process of moving his hands across the ancient script.

'GOLEBOG!' screamed the door.

A brief, intense flare of white light obscured the dwarf. He staggered out of it, beatig at his clothes. He chuckled. His hair reeked, his leggings smouldered. He blew on his fingers.

'The door mechanism has become insane over the years,'he said. 'It -'Here, he said a word that no one knew '- me, but I misled it. Look.'

Slowly, and with no sound, the obsidian slab had hinged downwards until it rested like the lower lip of a shack mechanical mouth on the dust, compacting it; and behind it stretched a sloping corridor lit by a pale, shifting pastel glow.

'Your door is open,'he told Trinor. 'The defences are down.'

Trinor rubbed the scar on his cheek.

'One hopes that they are,'he said. 'tegeus-Cromis enters first. If there should be a misunderstanding between him and the door, the Queen will follow.'

There were no accidents.

As Cromis entered the bunker, the door whispered malevolently to him, but it left him alone. The light shifted frequency several times as he stood there staring at the vanishing-point of the gently-sloping passage. Vague, unidentifiable musical sounds were all around him. Growing from the walls were clumps of crystal that reminded him of the Metal Salt Marsh; they pulsed regularly.

He felt no fear.

'Remain where you are, Lord Cromis.'Trinor's voice seemed muffled, distant, as though affected by passage through the open door. 'I shall expect to find you when I come through -'

He entered with sword drawn. He grinned.

'Just in case you had planned… Well, of course, I'm sure you hadn't.'He raised his voice. 'Bring the Queen through first.'

When they had assembled, the Northmen sullen and silent, keeping their eyes fixed on the floor and mis-hearing their orders, he made Tomb take the lead. 'Any… defences… you should disarm. Remember where the knife is held, dwarf, and who holds it.'

That corridor stretched for two miles into the earth. Shortly after they had begun to walk, they found that the incline had levelled off. The nature of the walls changed: ±e clumps of crystal were replaced by yard-square windows, armanged at four foot intervals. Nothing could be clearly discerned through them, but they were filled with a milky light in which were suspended vague but menacing organic shapes.

There were no turnings. Their footfalls echoed.

There were no junctions or side-passages. They did not speak.

They came eventually to a great circular chamber, in the centre of which columns of light and great rods of shadow wove patterns umpossible to understand, like spectral dancers at the end of Time. Its roof and walls, all of green diamond, made a perfect half-globe. Twelve corridors, including their own, led off it from twelve vaulting arches. Otherwise, it was totally featureless.

Those columns and cylinders of light and darkness flickered, intertwined, exchanged their substance, reversed their directions of motion. Motes of brighter light appeared suddenly among them, hovered like insects, and vanished. A single musical chord filled the place, a high cathedral resonance.

Cromis saw nothing he recognised as a machine.

'You had better begin,'said Trinor to the dwarf, looking uneasily about. His voice was taken by the diamond walls and flung about. As if in response, the visual display of the brain increased its activity. 'It is aware of us. I would like to leave here as soon as possible. Well?'

For a moment, the dwarf ignored him. His ugly features had softened, there was a gleam in his knowing eye. He was enraptured. He sniggered suddenly, swivelled slowly on his heel to face the traitor.

'My lord,'he said satirically, 'you ask too much. It will take a century to understand this.'He shrugged. 'Ah yes, you hold the knife, I remember.'He shook his head sadly. 'I can shut it down in a week – perhaps a little more. It is a matter of finding the right…, combination. A week: no less.'Trinor fingered his scar.

For the next few days, Cromis saw nothing of Tomb or the Queen: they were kept in the central chamber of the complex, constantly under the eyes and swords of the reluctant Northmen, while he and Grif were limited to the cargo hold of the airboat, and lived out a dreary captivity among the dead sloths.

Each day, a Nortimman brought them food.

Cromis's in-turning nature enabled him to come to terms with this – he made verses while gazing from the porthole at the unchanging waste: but it betrayed him also in the end, in that it kept him unaware of Birkin Grif's shift of mood.

Confinement chafed the big Methven. He grew irritable and posed questions without answer. 'How long do you suppose we will live after the shutdown? Tell me that.'And: 'The dwarf cares only for his machines. Are we to rot here?'

He took to sharpening his broadsword twice a day.

Later, he lay morose and withdrawn on a pile of bloody pelts, humming songs of defiance. He tapped his fingers dangerously.

Each day, a Northman brought them food.

On the sixth day after the discovery of the central chamber, Birkin Grif stood behind the door of the hold, honing his sword.