King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth) (48 page)

They reached the row where Nyneve, Morgan, and Arthur lay. Matthew turned left and the others followed, clattering along the catwalk. Some of the shelves were swinging slightly. In the distance stood a figure, bending forward as though inspecting something. It was a Tin Mother.

Sally’s eyes were not human eyes. The genes of a sea eagle were in her, and she could see details the others could not. Far away, the Tin Mother raised a knife above a clothed body on a shelf.

“Stop!” screamed Sally. “I command you to stop!”

The runners halted, misunderstanding.

“That Mother’s got a knife!” she cried. “It’s going to kill Nyneve!”

The Mother was too far away; they could never reach it in time. It paused, however, turning toward
the sound of Sally’s shout. It felt the need to explain. “This is necessary for the benefit of the kikihuahuas!” it roared across the vastness. “Two humans must die so that the kikihuahuas may live on in peace and gentleness!”

“You can’t do this!” Matthew shouted back. “Are you in communication with the Rainbow? The Rainbow would never allow this!”

“There are times when a small unit in possession of all the facts is a more appropriate decision maker than the greatest of computers,” boomed the Tin Mother.

So saying, it plunged the knife down.

When two knights collided, the dreamers could feel the earth shake beneath them; and when they bled, the blood was warm and salty. It was a rough and violent world Nyneve was showing them, yet more fun, somehow, than any of their own dream worlds.

It had an indefinable glory.

The world was simple and there was no need to explain why the Britons were good and the Saxons bad; those facts alone were enough. The code of chivalry existed only among the Britons. The Saxons, Morgan’s contribution, were blackguards to a man, and so were the Picts and the Celts. Arthur defeated these forces again and again, defending all of England against his attackers until he was betrayed from within.

The rumor swept across Dream Earth: Something exciting and different was happening at Camelot. More dreamers arrived, deserting their dull old haunts for a world constructed by people who knew how. Forlorn inventions were left behind: bartenders, waiters, ships, and unicorns; all purpose gone, gradually fading away.

Nyneve told her story as never before, assisted by Morgan, who proved an able replacement for Merlin. Arthur sat watching the openmouthed dreamers, smiling, awaiting the time when he would play his part.

Finally Nyneve secured England’s borders against the marauders and turned her attention
to internal matters; to feasts and tournaments, loving and living. The dreamers settled back, entranced, relaxing. The period of danger was over. This fine new world was safely established. It hadn’t mysteriously disappeared, like so many of their other more stimulating inventions. Nyneve soothed their minds with scenes of domesticity, a little excitement here and there, a few quests, a damsel rescued from a fearful fate. All was well with Camelot. It was a bright and perfect world, perfect and good, and astonishingly realistic.

Morgan took her cue.

Mordred crept away from Camelot, evil surrounding him in a palpable cloud, and set a course for destruction. The dreamers shifted nervously.

Mordred did not go to the Saxons, or to the Picts or the Celts. Helped by a spell cast by Morgan le Fay, he rode into the future on a coal-black horse in search of his ally: the worst enemy Mankind would ever know. He lived through the frenzied era when fossil fuel ran out and Earth was shaken by the Consumer Wars. He shivered through the Great Ice Age, which caused most of Mankind to retreat to the domes. He searched through that peculiar era when Earth’s magnetic field reversed and mutants were everywhere—but even in that strange time he could not find the perfect enemy for Arthur, his hated father. He watched the Age of Resurgence begin. The starships left Earth and distributed Mankind into a thousand different worlds—and then, when it seemed that humans were too strong ever to have a serious enemy, he found what he wanted. …

Timing the plan to perfection, Morgan le Fay finished her story.

Ten thousand dreamers took over for themselves, rapidly building on Nyneve’s world. Camelot became massive and beautiful, spread over a hundred acres. Men clad themselves in armor and created themselves horses and weapons; women generated fine clothes and filled the castle halls with beautiful furniture and tapestries. Battles were fought and enemies were vanquished in a hail of arrows. Camelot’s boundaries were extended. Arthur took
his place as a leader of armies.

Across the great plain lumbered the Tin Mothers, led by Mordred. They regarded Camelot with dull, mechanical revulsion. A tournament was in progress. A lance lifted a knight from his horse and dumped him bleeding to the ground. The dreamers cheered. The Tin Mothers strode onto the sward.

“You’ll hurt themselves!” they boomed.

Annoyed, the humans shouted back, “Get out of the way!”

“We cannot allow you to endanger yourselves like this!”

“We are not endangered. Nothing is real!”

“Your minds are endangered. You are becoming dehumanized by exposure to violent sights. You are beginning to regard them as commonplace. As a result, you will become violent and antisocial yourselves! If you don’t stop, we shall be forced to destroy this scenario!”

Now Nyneve took Arthur’s thoughts and gave them voice, and projected them into the scene.

“The scenario is not yours to destroy,” he told the Tin Mothers. “And perhaps you should consider this: You were brought here by Mordred, who is possibly the most evil person on Earth. He’s using you for his own ends. He wants the world of chivalry destroyed because there’s no place in it for himself!”

Nyneve smiled as she relayed Arthur’s words. Somehow he could not fail but do and say the right thing. In any other man that would have been a remarkably dull attribute, but in Arthur it was fitting.

The Tin Mother said, “Evil is not a significant factor in our considerations. It is a human concept unrelated to what is, or is not, expedient. It is expedient for us to destroy this scenario to save you from yourselves, and this we will do!”

So saying, the Tin Mother snatched the sword from the hand of a knight and broke it over his knee.

Another knight, riding past, caught the Tin Mother full in the chest with his lance, and the robot fell backward, torn open, circuits melting and
dripping. A second Tin Mother stepped forward, seized the knight by the foot, and swung him to the ground. The Tin Mother knelt over him. The few dreamers who still had memories of the real world expected it to tend to the injured man.

It took him into its arms and broke his neck.

A howl of rage arose. “What are you doing?” shouted a dreamer in the guise of Uther Pendragon. “Who do you think you are?”

“That was not a man. That was an image,” said the Tin Mother. “I committed no crime. I am here to serve you. Now stand back while we destroy the rest of this perverted scenario. Wish yourselves elsewhere.”

Arthur stood tall on a grassy knoll. “They are the forces of evil!” he roared. Drawing Excalibur, he dragged a struggling figure from behind a tree. “This is Mordred, my bastard son. He leads the Tin Mothers against us!” Mordred, dark and saturnine, glared at the dreamers with fierce and cunning eyes. “Look at him! He is evil incarnate!”

“Mordred …” The name passed among the dreamers. “Kill him, Arthur!” shouted somebody.

“He is my son,” said Arthur. “I cannot kill him.” He flung Mordred aside and plunged Excalibur into the nearest Tin Mother. It sank to the ground, hissing. “Help me rid the world of these villains,” Arthur shouted. “They would reduce us to a race of weaklings unfit to live in the real world!”

The Tin Mothers, guided by Morgan, had begun to destroy Camelot. With fearsome strength they were pulling the chiseled rocks apart and throwing them to the ground. In minutes they were undoing the work of ten thousand dreamers’ wishes. Yelling their outrage, a vast crowd of dreamers attacked with swords, crossbows, and spears.

Nyneve and Morgan withdrew to a distant hilltop.

“Don’t make it too easy for Arthur,” said Nyneve.

“Too easy? Hell, I have a vested interest in Mordred,” replied Morgan, grinning.

They watched the most unusual battle Dream Earth had ever known, when Britons fought
robots. Led by King Arthur; inspired by the visions of chivalry and glory Nyneve had planted in their minds; cheered on by a multitude of queens, ladies, damsels, and wenches—a thousand knights flung themselves at the Tin Mothers.

Mordred climbed to the topmost tower of Camelot and screeched orders to his forces from there; Arthur, however, fought in the thick of the battle, Excalibur flashing like fire. The Tin Mothers fell back, driven into the ruins of a keep.

“Hold your line!” screamed Mordred. “You’ll be trapped, you fools!”

Strangely, he seemed to have gained some measure of support from the dreamers. “We love you, Mordred!” called a group of damsels.

On her hilltop, Nyneve asked, “What the hell is going on?”

“It’s a good sign,” said Morgan. “They’re beginning to appreciate the importance of evil.”

“I suppose so. But
Mordred
… ?”

“One of my finer creations. I’ll be sorry to see him go.”

Nyneve thought for a moment. “Perhaps we should keep him around, after all. Just as a symbol, you understand. No big thing. Just to give people something to get worked up about from time to time.”

Morgan grinned. “Keeps them on their toes.”

Now the Tin Mothers were surrounded, and one by one they fell. The knights moved into close quarters, slashing and thrusting, and the acrid stink of burning insulation wafted across the plain. With a great cry of despair Mordred conceded defeat, swung apelike down the ruins of his tower, leapt astride his black horse, and galloped from sight. The battle was over and the field of Camelot was littered with crumpled Tin Mothers. The victors began to converge on the castle gate.

A lone figure appeared on the ramparts, blood seeping from many cuts, brandishing a sword that flashed like no other.

“My noble knights!” shouted Arthur. “My friends! To all of you I give my thanks. This day we have fought
long and hard against the forces of evil, and we have triumphed. And yet my joy is mingled with sadness, for it was my own son, Mordred, who assembled the evil machines and sent them against us. Machines that pretend to be on the side of the righteous, with their sly words, with their appearance of caring—while slowly they turn the human race into a world of effete dreamers frightened to face reality.

“Yes, frightened! We’re all frightened, cowering here in Dream Earth because we don’t have the guts to go out into the wind and the rain and live like real people. Frightened to get out and compete against one another, to till the soil and earn a living by honest work. Frightened of the heat and the cold against our soft bodies. Frightened of pain, of childbirth, of death. And encouraged in this fear by the robots that Nyneve calls the Tin Mothers. It’s not our fault; they are a powerful enemy and they caught the human race at a vulnerable moment.

“The Tin Mothers are like a vise, crushing the human spirit. They are like a pillow suffocating human endeavor. When they came to real Earth, we let them conquer us without raising so much as a sword against them. But now, here in Camelot, we’ve shown ourselves what can be done, when we have the will to do it. The Tin Mothers saw the danger to themselves, and look what they did! Camelot was beautiful, so they tried to destroy it. It was exciting, so they tried to suppress it. But this time they met their match. The spirit of Camelot was too strong for them—too
human
for them. So we beat them. They were defeated in this last stronghold of the human race.

“But they still rule real Earth! They still walk the lanes and the moors, discouraging people from adventure, wrapping them in protective cocoons. They’re out in real Earth, thousands of them, and now they’ve shown their true colors. They’ve realized they can’t keep you locked in Dream Earth forever, so they’re plotting to destroy you!”

There was a murmur of alarm from his audience. “I know!” shouted Arthur. “I’ve just arrived from real Earth myself! The Tin Mothers plan to drain all the
power from the dome! You know what that means. Your minds will die. True, your bodies will survive, but they will be zombies with no free will, obedient to the commands of the Tin Mothers. Your minds—the real
you
—will be snuffed out here in Dream Earth like candles at bedtime!”

“What can we do?” someone yelled. “Tell us what to do, Arthur!”

“There’s only one thing to do,” Arthur shouted back. “It just takes a little determination, that’s all. Reincorporate! Get out into the real world, smash the Tin Mothers, and build a new Camelot, one that will endure forever! Reincorporate!”

Nyneve lay down on the grass and closed her eyes.

She thought, she wished.
Reincorporate
. …

She opened her eyes to find herself back in the vast hibernation chamber of the dome. A great dark blur hovered over her like a thundercloud. She blinked and focused. The cloud became a Tin Mother. As she wondered drowsily what it was doing, it raised a knife and shouted words that made no sense at all.

“There are times when a small unit in possession of all the facts is a more appropriate decision maker than the greatest of computers!”

“What?” she said.

The Tin Mother had apparently made its point. It plunged the knife toward her heart.

Nyneve reacted sluggishly, rolling aside. It was probably this slowness that saved her life, because it did not give the Tin Mother time for a second try. The knife grazed her back and thudded onto the shelf. The Tin Mother, caught off-balance, grabbed at the shelf to save itself. The shelf swung away. The Tin Mother, fingers scrabbling at the smooth surface, fell between the shelf and the catwalk, crashed to the railing of the next catwalk below, bounced off it, and fell through level after level of the chamber until all sounds ceased.

Nyneve found strong hands steadying
her shelf. Eyes stared at her anxiously. Beside her was the nose of the Miggot of One. Incredibly, there were tears in the eyes of that irascible little gnome.