Gods of the Greataway (16 page)

“Perhaps you should —”

“Which crystal was missing?”

“Brutus made it very clear that he wanted nobody to be told about this —”

“You’ve already told me, you fool. And I’m in charge of this Station, remember?
Which crystal?
”

“It seemed to be around the early part of the hundred and ninth millennium,” the man had said sulkily.

So, like Brutus a short while before, Selena had found her investigations into neotenite history blocked at the crucial year. She’d played with the Rainbow for a while but, lacking Brutus’s skill and unwilling to ask the clerk for help, she had been unable to establish the significance of the year 108,285 — or even to call up the events of the preceding years.

Frustrated, she had decided to take Mentor’s advice. She would ask the Everlings if they remembered anything about that period.

*

It was a bad
time to visit the Everlings.

As Selena dismounted from her shruglegger, she could already hear the yells of satisfaction as the immortal children rampaged through their village, indulging in one of their insensate periods of destruction. As she hesitated, a small deerlike creature appeared from behind a corrugated-iron shed. It was beautiful and graceful, and there was fear in its wide eyes as it stepped along quietly, obviously hoping to reach the safety of the hills. It glanced at Selena in passing, a long-lashed timid look that tore at her heart. Then a sudden yell of discovery made it bound forward.

“Come here, you bugger!”

A child ran round the corner of the shed, grinning ferociously and brandishing a club. “Got you, hah!” he shouted, chasing after the deer and leaping nimbly over the heaps of accumulated garbage, the wrecked statues, half-finished vehicles and mysterious, incomprehensible inventions that littered the landscape of the Everlings’ territory.

The tiny deer bounded into Selena’s arms and huddled there, trembling.

“Give me that!” The Everling’s face crumpled in frustration. “It’s mine!”

“Do you have to destroy it? It’s such a beautiful thing.”

“Well,
I
made it.”

In reasonable tones, Selena said, “But it has freewill. It doesn’t
want
to be killed. Can’t you see that? I don’t want you to kill it, either. It’s one of the nicest things you Everlings have ever made.”

“All the more reason to destroy it!” So saying, the child reached up and dragged the little creature from Selena’s grasp. Throwing it to the ground, he swung his club in a powerful arc, catching the deer on the shoulder and splitting it open. Delicate electronic components spilled out. The next blow tore into the mechanical parts — the wires and cogs, spindles and chains. Screaming wordlessly, the child jumped up and down on the remains, kicking and stamping, reducing the deer to unrecognizable wreckage, scuffing the brown pelt into the mud.

Only
the head remained. “Now,” gloated the Everling. He raised his club, paused for an anticipatory second, then brought it down with such force that his feet left the ground.

The head split open and Selena uttered a little scream of dismay. Blood and pale organic matter splattered her cloak. “It’s … it’s got a brain! How could you
do
this?”

“We’re very clever people,” said the child, suddenly still. He seemed abashed, ashamed of what he had done, as he stirred the remains with his toe. “Oh, what the hell,” he muttered. Then he brightened up. “Jacko’s got a Crystal Palace to pull down,” he confided. “He says he’ll let me help him.”

“You’re Tom, aren’t you? How long has this destruction been going on?”

“We started this morning. It’s taken me all this time to catch my deer. I’m through with organic stuff for a few cycles, I can tell you, Selena.”

“I’m very pleased to hear it.”

“Jenny’s been breeding electronic guinea pigs. You should see the little buggers go! We’ve been mostly into livestock, this last cycle. It makes a change from pure art. Nature is Art, anyway — so Georg said a few hundred years back.”

“
Breeding
electronic guinea pigs?”

“You want to see? I don’t think she’s smashed them yet. “Come with me!” He took her hand and led her into the village.

The Everlings’ village consisted of a single street of tumbledown buildings that looked as though they had been dumped there by the last hurricane. All manner of construction materials were used, but the principal ingredient seemed to be flattened works of art. Selena saw a crushed copper shield used as a door it had been inlaid with a ceramic design and some remnants of its beauty could still be discerned. A window was framed with a picture frame, wonderfully carved and decorated with peeling gold leaf. Selena couldn’t help but wonder about the painting that once sat in that frame, and to lament its destruction.

“Better
wait,” said Tom suddenly.

A large statue stood at the end of the street. It was in heroic Greek style, a perfectly proportioned nude male in full color, with a victor’s crown of leaves, holding a bow, a quiver slung across his back. It was in the act of reaching for an arrow, frozen in a timeless moment of grace. Selena felt tears prick her eyes as she looked at it.
This
was the True Human form.
This
was what the Cuidador’s duty was all about. Just for a moment, the clouds parted and the sun shone, and the statue appeared to be bathed in glory, glowing against the backdrop of the angry sea.

“Ned spent fifteen years on that,” said Tom reverently.

“It’s beautiful.”

“And that’s not all.”

There was a sound of trumpets. By now all the Everlings had gathered in the street, watching the statue. This was clearly a big event. Unhappily, Selena waited for the beautiful creation to explode, or melt, or whatever childish fate the Everlings had in mind. The trumpets called again.

The statue’s arm moved. Slowly, gracefully, it reached behind its back and grasped an arrow. The crowd hushed. The arrow was drawn out smoothly and, with precision, fitted to the bow. Muscles tensed, perfectly proportioned, perfectly realistic. The string was drawn back. For an instant the statue was motionless, sighting along the arrow at some distant, unknown target. Selena held her breath. The suspense in the onlookers was almost palpable.

The strong fingers released the string; the sudden twang was shocking.

The arrow shot backward. It struck the hero in the groin. For the first time, Selena saw that the genitals were oversize, out of proportion. The arrow lodged there, quivering.

There was a single yelp of laughter from an onlooker, quickly hushed.

The statue swung its body, tilted its head, looking down at itself. Its lips moved.

“Oh, bugger it,” said the statue.

*

Meanwhile, a group
of Everlings scattered, leaving behind a richly detailed bronze cannon from which a wisp of smoke trailed. While the crowd was still rocking with laughter, the cannon roared, and Selena caught a glimpse of a large ball catching the statue squarely in the buttocks and propelling it off the plinth. Yelling realistically, it lurched forward, clutching itself front and rear, staggered to the edge of the cliff and fell out of sight.

By now many of the crowd were rolling in the mud in agonies of laughter. “That’s the best ever!” cried Tom, tears flowing down his cheeks.

Losing control for quite a different reason, Selena snapped, “It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Eh?”

“Mocking the True Human form. Don’t you have any respect for —” Her next words were unheard as the cannon itself exploded, filling the air with whizzing shrapnel and causing the few members of the audience who were still standing to fling themselves to the ground. “It’s so childish!” said Selena from her prone position.

“Well,” retorted Tom viciously, “we
are
children, and we always will be, and ask yourselves who were the buggers that made us this way?”

“But you’re intelligent people, Tom.”

“That has nothing to do with our fun.”

“Your idea of fun is too destructive for my tastes.”

“Oh, is it?” His face was twisted with malice as he jumped to his feet. “Too destructive, is it? Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? I was going to show you Jenny’s guinea pigs. I’ll guarantee you won’t find
them
destructive.”

With some foreboding, Selena followed Tom into a nearby shack, where a small urchin sat. Clearly, Jenny had not been watching the exhibition in the street. All around the walls of her shack stood gleaming machinery, but the only item Selena could recognize was a computer keyboard. On the dirty floor lay a mess of broken machinery, which Jenny, sitting on a rough chair, was rhythmically pounding with a mallet.

“You’ve
smashed them all,” said Tom, disappointed.

She flashed him a guilty look from dark eyes.

“You haven’t?” Tom brightened. “Selena here would like to see them breed.”

Slowly Jenny rose and from a cupboard took two small creatures. She laid them on the floor. They sniffed around, noses twitching. “I was going to smash these, too,” said Jenny. “I really was.”

“Is there anything … organic in them?” asked Selena cautiously.

“No.”

The guinea pigs were now sniffing each other. Tom uttered a little sneeze of laughter. Jenny glanced at him gravely, pulling a box out from under a bench. The box was full of minuscule glittering things. The guinea pigs sniffed the box. They stood on their hind legs to look inside, then dropped back to all fours, regarding each other stonily.

Then abruptly they reared up and, prancing on hind legs, sang in tinny little voices:

The last line rose to a squeal of triumph and the guinea pigs scrambled into the box and began to forage among the tinkling objects. Picking up tiny tools in nimble fingers, they set to work in a blur of motion, singing all the while:

“It’s an allegory,” said Tom, suddenly grave. “It could be one of the most powerful works the Everlings have produced. Almost a pity it has to be destroyed.”

Selena watched, her
lips tightly compressed, saying nothing. It had become clear what the guinea pigs were doing. With incredible rapidity they were constructing duplicates of themselves from the components in the box. Soon they were finished. They rose on hind legs and began to dance again. To an accompaniment of tinkling and smashing components, they sang:

Now the box was a whirl of activity as the four guinea pigs duplicated themselves and, having done so, spilled out of the box while they assembled a creditable miniature of Dome Azul. All this time the relentless chorus hammered at Selena’s ears until, to her fury, she found her foot was tapping with the beat.
Screw for the good of everyone!
Then the dancing resumed.

“I suppose that’s all,” said Selena grimly.

“There’s more,” said Tom. And there was. The jingling chorus had resumed, and the guinea pigs were working again. Selena backed away as a furry tide spread in ripples toward her. Menacing little globes materialized in midair. By the time their chorus had reached “Screw for the future, screw for the fun,” it was almost deafening, like an advancing army of starving rats.

Soon the guinea pigs had finished their work. They covered a large portion of the floor, but now they were moving much more slowly. Due to their dancing and trampling, many of their number had been constructed of damaged components. Some lay motionless, and the final verse assumed the quality of a dirge.

With this, the guinea
pigs self-destructed, collapsing in little explosions of components. The tiny Hate Bombs fell and burst open, and the Dome fell in. Within seconds the floor was carpeted with small parts and Jenny was sweeping them together, glancing shyly at Selena from under a lock of lank hair.

“You do understand,” said Tom.

“More than you think,” said Selena tightly. “But what I don’t understand is what’s got into you people, this last cycle. I remember when I looked forward to my visits to the Everling village because of the works of art I’d see. You’d be creating poetry, literature, music, paintings — beautiful things. And you did it all for the pure love of creating. But now …”

“We’re going through a period of social comment,” said Tom sulkily. “The purpose of Art changes. True Humans aren’t handling things well. We’re pointing it out through our Art.”

“Garbage!” Selena found herself trembling with temper and struggled to control herself. “What you’re hitting at is not True Humans. It’s
sex
— and there’s no way you can say True Humans invented that. Everything I’ve seen since I arrived has been aimed at degrading sex — because we can experience it and you can’t. Well, too bad. But you can keep your nasty, sniggering little jealousies to yourselves from now on. I don’t have to see it.”

“But Selena —”

“And another thing!”

“There’s more?”

“Instead
of creating for the love of it, you’ve started creating for the fun of smashing. These works of art are no better than firecrackers — all the excitement is in watching them destroy themselves. Do you know what will happen next? You’ll lose all your artistic ability because you’ve forgotten that love and art can’t be separated, whereas love and sex can!”