The City of the Sun (12 page)

The Servant looked at me long and hard—at my face, at the torn plastic sheathing my leg, at the blood that was staining my one-piece. Then he looked at the beast. It took him a long, long time to make up his mind. Then be just glanced at the archer and shook his head.

I realized that I was holding my breath, and exhaled gratefully.

“It was an accident,” I said again. “It could have happened to any of us.”

The Servant transfixed me with a gaze that was almost venomous. At least I’d gotten a reaction out of him, though it was a reaction I couldn’t immediately understand. The ox would have to be destroyed, of course—the broken leg would finish it. But why should a mishap to a beast cause such an upswell of rage in such an imperturbable individual?

“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt obliged to say something.

The Servant was caressing the neck of the injured animal, which was quite quiescent now. Its reaction to the shock and the pain had been damped down...probably by the parasite.

I remembered what the Servant had implied regarding the beasts being part of the Nation along with the people. Was that the cause of the rage...as if I had caused the death of his brother?

Suddenly, it occurred to me to wonder what would happen next. I watched the Servant’s hand as it slowed in its gentle movement over the hide where the black network was. The archers dismounted, and settled their mounts as if we were scheduled for a long wait. The Servant knelt down, adjusting his position so that he could be comfortable, and placed his other hand on the neck of the fallen beast.

Then I saw the black lines on his arm begin to move.

It was as though they were growing longer, or being stretched. The tips of the filaments that descended as far as the fingers themselves were lifted from the skin and began writhing like worms, very slowly...until they found their way into the matted hair of the beast’s mane, into which they went as if they were searching for something.

And then I realized what a fool I’d been—what fools we’d all been—for not guessing what should have been obvious, for not realizing exactly what the situation in the City of the Sun was. I realized what the Self had decided to try and conceal from us, until one of us might be prepared to experience it for himself. And I realized why I had almost been shot...not because of the death of the beast but because I was about to witness something that would help me to understand the people of the city far more than I already did...and which would increase my fears proportionately.

No wonder every single man and woman could understand every single one of the pictographs mounted upon the city walls. No wonder they needed only one physical representation of all that they knew and understood...and that only as a means of reinforcement, of constant support and unification of the community. Of course they needed no reference books, no data bank. No wonder their evasion of questions was so absolutely consistent and uniform throughout the city.

I had marveled about all the features of the life of the people that were significant of a hive mind. But after rejecting telepathy as a hypothesis I had discarded the notion as anything more than a metaphor. Not for a moment had it occurred to me that there could be a
physical
link between minds, and that the parasite tissue, with its faculties of mimicry and adaptive versatility, could provide such a link.

Now I saw, and understood.

They had tried to hide from us how different from us they really were. They had let us think that they were all individuals—unnaturally similar to one another, living in unnaturally perfect order, but still individuals. They did not want us to realize how real their representation of themselves as facets of a single Self actually was. They had hoped to appear harmless...strange, but harmless. They had hoped to persuade us that we stood to lose very little by the experiment of exposing ourselves to infection—allowing the parasite access to our bodies. They hoped to take advantage of our confidence in our medical resources, our genetic engineering facilities.

But once one of us was infected...sufficiently infected to enable the brain-to-brain linkages to be set up...then we would have been led to the full and complete understanding that was promised. We would have become part of the Self.

Totally and irrevocably.

Our minds would be sucked into the group, the group’s mind would have flooded our brains. It would probably take no more than a few moments, once the parasite was established.

And then our volunteers, whoever they were, would return to the ship full of assurances about there being no danger, nothing at all to worry about. Not slaves or automata, as we had feared in our primitive way, but merely parts of the Self, engaged in the routine business of Self-interest.

I dropped my eyes from their fascinated study of the Servant recovering the companion from the doomed ox, and stared instead at the foot-long rent in my protective suit. I felt suddenly very sick...and the feeling had nothing to do with the sight of my blood oozing sluggishly from the scratch that ran across the side of the knee.

I noticed then that the archers were peering intently westward, staring into the bleak wilderness. The wind was blowing that way...carrying the scent of blood. The beast’s blood, and mine. I recalled the archer’s laconic revelation that there had been a wolf prowling around the camp during the previous night.

I got slowly to my feet, and walked past the injured ox. The Servant was in a virtual trance, and was as still as a statue.

“Are the wolves still nearby?” I asked the bowman who’d stood guard before the dawn.

“They will not have gone far,” he replied.

“Will they attack?”

“Possibly.”

I followed the direction of their gaze with my own eyes, but there seemed to be no movement.

“Shouldn’t we build a fire?” I asked.

“There is not time,” came the reply. “And fire is not so frightening by day.”

He didn’t sound in the least fearful. I sat down again, and inspected my leg carefully. It would be no problem, but I had to sit still for a while to allow the blood to clot. Time dragged by, and the stillness seemed pregnant with menace. The tableau of man and beast seemed frozen now—there was no movement of the black threads now they were joined. Cells were moving, probably inside the outer tegument, but there was no gross movement of the whole structure. There was no way to guess how long the recovery would take because there was no way to guess how extensively the parasite had developed inside the large host body.

I began to feel thirsty.

Then I heard the baying of the pack and knew that they were on their way.

I was overcome by a sensation of helplessness. I had no weapon—not the slightest means of self-defense. There was no contribution I could make to the coming battle, if battle there was to be. I wanted to get on my mount and ride away, but the mount that had been mine was on its way to a merciful death.

The carnivores approached quickly, but stealthily. They were close before I saw one scuttling from the shelter of one tattered bush to another. It looked more like a hyena than a wolf, with skin dappled ochreous yellow and muddy grey, and a rounded head with squat muzzle and round ears. There was no way I could count them—there might have been four or forty.

They didn’t charge in all at once. They spread out to surround us, and circled, taking a good long look at us from a range of fifty or sixty yards, ducking from cover to cover, poking their heads up every few moments.

The archers had arrows notched to their bowstrings, but they waited patiently, quite relaxed. The range was too long and they had no chance yet to get a reasonable sight of the enemy. As the beasts circled us, so the bowmen spread out, forming four points of a square, with myself, the Servant and the injured ox in the middle. The other oxen also spread out, and began to move back and forth along the lines of the hypothetical square. I was fascinated by the purposeful nature of their movements. They were neither frightened nor restless. They were under control.

What effect does contact with a supermind have on an animal? I wondered. It can’t become intelligent—the brain hasn’t the carrying capacity. But contact with the Self might allow it to make the most efficient possible use of what it has...most efficient, perhaps, in terms of the Self’s priorities.

Their horns weren’t built for stabbing, but rather for butting and tossing. I could have wished that they were better equipped, but I had the feeling that in a hard fight they’d be no mean allies.

The predators showed themselves more frequently as they crept ever closer, and I was able to get an increasingly better estimate of their strength. I formed the impression that there were between fifteen and twenty-five.

If I was right, they had sufficient numbers to do us a lot of damage—if they followed their present cautious tactics until they were close enough for a quick dash, and then all charged simultaneously.

But that wasn’t their way.

One dog, bolder than the rest, finally broke cover for too long and tried to run diagonally for a clump of stiff-stemmed plants only twenty feet away. One of the archers let fly and the arrow caught the beast just behind the shoulder. It rolled over and made a terrible mewling sound. It lay on its back, kicking. The bolt hadn’t killed it outright, but it had sealed its fate.

Meanwhile, the others ducked and dodged. But the example of what had happened to their unfortunate comrade didn’t deter them. If anything, it seemed to excite them. There was more blood smell in the air now, and the blood of their own kind was apparently just as much a stimulus as the blood of a natural victim.

Another archer released an arrow, striking a wolf in the leg—again the wound wasn’t fatal, but again it stopped the predator, which turned to limp away, the arrow catching in the grass as it ran.

Then the rest came, in groups of two or three, the runs not timed at all. Three were taken out by arrows, then a fourth...then the rest were at the perimeter of the defensive square...and the yak-deer went into action, heads down and hooves plunging.

Suddenly, everything was chaos, with the archers unable to get in a clear shot. They retreated inward, arrows notched so that they could let fly at point-blank range if a wolf came close enough for a final leap. And the wolves were leaping, jaws agape, at their natural prey, the oxen. Their strategy—attacking in small groups—was geared to pulling down herbivores cut out from a herd. They could stand being tossed and bruised, and while one occupied the horned head the others would dive for the legs or jump at the neck. But the head wasn’t the only weapon the oxen had, and their forelegs lashed out to bowl the marauders over.

Another arrow thumped into flesh, and another. The archers didn’t miss now. Despite the confusion they were picking their targets—wolves that had been knocked aside and were rolling on the ground, showing their pale underbellies and momentarily vulnerable.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the dogs make an absolutely prodigious leap at the shoulder of one of the mounts, its jaws clutching at the shaggy mane. As the long canines closed on a mouthful of fur the ox wheeled and bucked. One horn caught the wolf in the flank and turned the mighty leap into a soaring acrobatic arc. Thrown sideways, the wolf came plunging down into the center of our defensive circle...to land squarely on top of me.

I got my arms up to shield my face, but I was knocked flat by the weight of the descending body. The wolf was as surprised as I was, and he was falling sideways, so the jaws—still trailing long brown hairs—snapped shut on the empty air. I tried desperately to thrust the thing away, just to get rid of its presence, but all I did in rolling its body off mine was to turn it over and give its feet a chance to meet the earth and right its body. I was flat on my back by this time and in the worst position possible for self-defense. All I could do was grab a handful of the skin about its throat and push up, trying to force those dreadful teeth away from me. There wasn’t much skin to spare but I managed to shove the head up anyhow. The creature jerked free and stabbed with its head, but it had lost coordination, and it didn’t manage to get in a bite. Saliva flecked the plastic of my no-longer-protective suit, and the great yellow rows of teeth opened up again like a gin-trap.