فصل 6

Six

The Pool of Fire

I do not know what they thought was happening to them, but they plainly failed to work it out. Perhaps they thought it was the Sickness, the Curse of the Skloodzi, operating in a new and more virulent fashion. I suppose the notion of poisoning was something they were incapable of grasping. They had, as we had found with Ruki, an apparently infallible means of sensing anything in their food or drink which could be injurious. Apparently infallible, but not quite. It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.

So they drank, and staggered, and fell; a few at first and then more and more until the streets were littered with their grotesque and monstrous bodies. The slaves moved among them, pitifully at a loss, occasionally trying to rouse them, timid and imploring at the same time. In a plaza where more than a score of Masters were lying, a slave rose from beside one of the fallen, his face streaming tears. He called out, “The Masters are no more. Therefore our lives no longer have a purpose. Brothers, let us go to the Place of Happy Release together.” Others moved toward him gladly. Fritz said, “I think they would do it, too. We must stop them.” Mario said, “How? Does it matter, anyway?”

Not answering, Fritz jumped onto a small platform of stone, which was sometimes used by one of the Masters for a kind of meditation they did. He cried, “No, brothers! They are not dead. They sleep. Soon they will wake, and need our care.” They were irresolute. The one who had urged them before said, “How do you know this?”

“Because my Master told me, before it happened.”

It was a clincher. Slaves might lie to each other, but never about anything relating to the Masters. The idea was unthinkable. Bewildered, but a little less sorrowful, they dispersed.

As soon as it was apparent that the scheme had succeeded, we turned to the second and equally important part of our task. The paralysis, as we knew, was temporary. It might have been possible, I suppose, to kill each Master individually as he lay helpless, but we probably would not find them all in the time . . . quite apart from the fact that it was most unlikely that the slaves would stand idly by while we did it. As long as the Masters were not dead, but only unconscious, the power of the Caps remained.

The answer was to strike at the heart of the City, and wreck it. We knew—it was one of the first things Fritz had discovered—where the machines were that controlled the City’s power: its heat and light and the force that produced this dragging leaden weight under which we labored. We headed in that direction. It was some way off, and Carlos suggested we should use the horseless carriages which carried the Masters about. Fritz vetoed that. Slaves drove the carriages for their Masters, but did not use them otherwise. The Masters were in no position to notice the infringement, but the slaves would, and we did not know how they would react.

So we toiled along to Street II, and to Ramp 914. The approach was through one of the biggest plazas in the City, lined with many ornate garden-pools. The ramp itself was very broad and dipped under a pyramid that towered above its neighbors. From below came a hum of machinery that made the ground under our feet vibrate slightly. I had a sense of awe, going down into the depths. It was a place that slaves never went near, and so we had not been able to earlier. This was the City’s beating heart: how dared we think of penetrating it?

The ramp led into a cavern twice or three times as big as any I had seen, made up of three half circles about a central circle. In each of the hemispheres were vast banks of machinery, having hundreds of incomprehensible dials along their fronts. Scattered about the floor were the bodies of the Masters who had tended them. Some, clearly, had dropped at their posts. I saw one whose tentacle was still curled about a lever.

The number of the machines, and their complexity, confused us. I looked for switches by which they might be turned off, but found none. The metal, gleaming a faint bronze, was unyielding and seamless, the dials covered by toughened glass. We went from one to another, looking for a weak spot but finding nothing. Was it possible that, even with the Masters made impotent, their machines would continue to defy us?

Fritz said, “Perhaps that pyramid in the middle . . .”

It occupied the dead center of the inner circle. The sides were about thirty-five feet at the base and formed equilateral triangles, so that the apex was more than thirty feet high. We had not paid attention to it before because it did not look like a machine, being featureless apart from a single triangular doorway, high enough to admit a Master. But there were no fallen bodies anywhere near it.

It was of the same bronze metal as the machines, but we did not hear a hum as we approached. Instead there was a faint hissing noise, rising and falling in volume and also in tone. The doorway showed only more blank metal inside. There was a pyramid within the pyramid, with an empty space between them. We walked along the passage this formed and found the inner pyramid also had a doorway, but in a different face. We went through, and faced a third pyramid inside the second.

This, too, had a doorway, in the side which was blank in the external pyramids. A glow came from within. We entered, and I stared in wonder.

A circular pit took up most of the floor, and the glow was coming from there. It was golden, something like the golden balls produced in the Sphere Chase, but deeper and brighter. It was fire, but a liquid fire, pulsing in a slow rhythm which matched the rise and fall of the hissing sound. One had an impression of power—effortless, limitless, unceasing.

Fritz said, “This is it, I think. But how does one stop it?”

Mario said, “On the far side . . . do you see?”

It lay beyond the glow, a single slim bronze column, about the height of a man. Something protruded from the top. A lever? Mario, not waiting for an answer, was going around the glowing pit toward it. I saw him reach up, touch the lever—and die.

He made no sound, and perhaps did not know what was happening to him. Pale fire ran down the arm grasping the lever, divided and multiplied to leap in a dozen different streams along his body. He stayed like that for a brief instant. Then he slumped, and the lever came down with his dead weight, before his fingers unclasped and he slipped to the ground.

There was a shocked murmur from the others. Carlos moved, as though to go to him. Fritz said, “No. It would do no good, and might kill you, too. But, look! Look at the pit.” The glow was dying. It went slowly, as though reluctantly, the depths remaining lambent while the surface first silvered and then darkened over. The hissing faded, slowly, slowly, and this time into a whisper that trailed into silence. Deep down the glow reddened to a dull crimson. Spots of blackness appeared, increased in size, and ran together. Until at last we stood there, in silence and in the pitch dark.

In a low voice, Fritz said, “We must get out. Hold on to each other.”

At that moment, the ground shuddered under us, as though we were in a small earthquake; and suddenly we were liberated from the leaden weight which had dragged at us throughout our time here. My body was light again. It felt as though thousands of little balloons, attached to nerves and muscles, were lifting me up. It is an odd thing. For all the sensation of lightness, I found myself desperately weary.

We shuffled and groped our way through the maze of pyramids, blind leading the blind. In the great cavern it was just as black, the lights having gone out. Black and silent, for there was no hum of machines any longer. Fritz guided us to what he thought would be the entrance, but instead we came up against one of the banks of machines. We went along, feeling the metal with our hands. Twice he checked, encountering the body of a Master, and once I myself, at the end of the line, unwittingly put my foot on the end of a tentacle. It rolled under my foot, and I wanted to be sick.

At last we found the entrance and, making our way along the curving ramp, saw the glimmer of green daylight ahead. We went more quickly, and soon could let go of each other. We came out, into the great plaza with the garden-pools. I saw a couple of Masters floating in one of them, and wondered if they had drowned. It really did not matter any longer.

Three figures confronted us at the next intersection. Slaves. Fritz said, “I wonder . . .”

They looked dazed, as though knowing themselves to be in a dream—on a point of waking but not capable of bringing themselves into full consciousness. Fritz said, “Greetings, friends.” One of them answered, “How do we get out of this . . . place? Do you know a way?”

It was an ordinary, simple remark, but it told us everything. No slave would possibly seek a way out of the hellish paradise in which they could serve the Masters. It meant that the control was broken, the Caps they wore as powerless as the ones we had put on for a disguise. These were free men. And if this were the case inside the City, it must be equally true in the world beyond. We were a fugitive minority no longer.

“We will find one,” Fritz said. “You can help us.”

We talked with them as we made our way toward the Hall of the Tripods, the gateway to the City. They were desperately confused. They remembered what had happened since they were Capped, but could make no sense of it. Their earlier selves, who had worshipfully tended the Masters, were strangers to them. The horror of what they had experienced was slow in dawning, but searing when it came. Once they all three, stopped, where two Masters had fallen side by side, and I thought they might be going to savage them. But, after a long moment’s looking, they turned their heads away, shuddering, and walked on.

We met many of the Capped. Some joined our party; others wandered aimlessly about, or sat staring into vacancy. Two were shouting nonsense, perhaps turned Vagrant by the withdrawal of the Masters’ influence as others had been by its imposition. A third, who possibly had gone the same way, was lying at the edge of one of the ramps. He had taken his mask off, and his face wore a hideous grimace of death: he had choked in the poisonous green air.

Our band was some thirty strong when we came to the spiral ramp, at the edge of the City, which rose to the platform that fronted the Entering Place. I remembered coming down, on my first day here, striving to keep upright on knees that buckled under me. We reached the platform, and were on a height above the smaller pyramids. There was the door, through which we had come from the changing room; on the other side of it air that we could breathe. I was ahead of the others, and pressed the small button which had worked the entrance to the airlock. Nothing happened. I pressed again, and again. Fritz had come up. He said, “We should have realized. All the power for the City came from the pool of fire. Including the power for opening the carriages, and also for opening and closing doors. It will not work now.” We took turns hammering and banging against the barrier, but without success. Someone found a piece of metal, and tried that; it dented the surface, but the door would not yield. One of the newcomers said, fear plain in his voice, “Then we are trapped in here!” Could it be so? The sky was less bright, as the afternoon faded. In a few hours it would be night, and the City dark and lightless. The heat was no longer as powerful, without the machines to maintain it. I wondered if cold would kill the Masters, or if they might recover before the temperature dropped too low. And, having recovered, relight the pool of fire . . . Surely, we could not be defeated now.

I thought of something else, too. If this door would not open, neither would those in the communal places. We had no means of getting food or water; more important, no means of renewing the filters in our masks. We would choke to death, as that one lying on the ramp had done. I had an idea, from the look on Fritz’s face, that the same thought had come to him.

The one who was hammering with the metal said, “I think it will give if we persist long enough. If you others found things to hammer with, as well.” Fritz said, “It would not help. There is the other door beyond that. Then the Entering Place. The room that goes up and down will not be working, either. We could never get past that. And there will be no light in there . . .” Silence registered agreement with what he had said. The one with the metal stopped hammering. We stood in a motionless dispirited group. Carlos looked up at the vast crystal bubble, covering the maze of ramps and pyramids.

“If we could only get up there,” he said, “and knock a hole in that . . .”

Jan sat down, to rest his injured leg. He said, “You can stand on my shoulders, if you like.”

It was a feeble joke, and no one was in a mood for laughing. I drew a deep breath, and winced at the pain in my bandaged ribs. I was trying to think of something, but all my brain would say was, “Trapped . . . trapped.” Then one of the Capped said, “There is a way up.”

“How can there be?”

“My—” He hesitated. “One of—them—showed me. He was inspecting the dome, and I had to take things up to him. And there’s a ledge running around, inside the dome, at the top of the Wall.” I said, “We could never hope to break the dome. It must be stronger than the glass over the dials on the machines. I doubt if we could scratch its surface.” “We’re going to try, though,” Fritz said. “I see no other way out except by the river.”

I had forgotten the river! I looked at him happily.

“Of course! Why not do that? Escape through the river.”

He shook his head. “We can’t. We have to be sure they aren’t able to take over again, when they recover consciousness. We must wreck the City, somehow, while we have the chance.” I nodded, my optimism disappearing as rapidly as it had come. The river was no answer.

• • •

We went down the ramp again, with our new guide leading the way. At one of the garden-pools, we equipped ourselves with metal stakes: they had been used for training a certain creeping plant that ran along the edges of the pools, and we could wrench them out without too much difficulty. Coming away, I thought I saw one of the fallen Masters stir. It was hardly anything, just the quiver of a tentacle, but the sight was ominous. I spoke to Fritz, and he nodded, and urged the guide to move faster.

The way up, of which he had spoken, was in a part of the City filled with tall tapering pyramids—one to which slaves had very rarely gone. This was a ramp, too, but one which clung to the Wall; narrow, and vertiginously steep. He had warned us of that, and said that he did not know how he had climbed it on that earlier occasion—that he could not have done it if he had not had a direct order from his Master. The ending of their gravity made it less difficult physically, but as we climbed higher and higher, and an unfenced abyss yawned beside and beneath us, the sensation was a terrifying one. I kept in as close to the gleaming surface of the Wall as I could and, after one horrified glimpse, did my best to avoid looking down.

We reached the ledge at last. It too was unfenced, and no more than four feet wide. The Masters must have had no sensitivity to heights. It ran along inside the Wall as far as the eye could see in either direction. The edge of the crystal bubble came down to within about eight feet of it. For one of the Masters, of course, this would be below eyelevel, but for us . . .

We had a try. Some made backs for the others, who clambered up and wielded their stakes awkwardly. I could not, because of my ribs, but it was harrowing enough watching them. The ledge seemed to shrink, and an incautious movement precipitated the fear of their falling to the ground, two or three hundred feet below. They hammered at the crystal, and at the point where it united with the metal of the Wall. But there was no sign of a seam, they said, and no sign of their blows making any impression. A second team was formed further along, and a third, with no greater success.

Fritz said, “Stop a minute.” To the one who had guided us, he went on, “You met your Master here?” He shook his head. “No, I did not see him. The command was to bring food and gas-bubbles and leave them here. I stayed no longer than was necessary.” “You did not even see him further along the ledge?”

“No, but he might have been out of sight. One cannot see across to the far side.”

“One cannot see through the Wall, either—he might have been outside.”

“They could not breathe out there, in our air. And he did not have a mask with him.”

Fritz said, “They would need to be able to inspect the outside as well as the inside. It’s worth looking for.” He looked up at the sweep of crystal, with the pale disk of the sun well down toward the west. “Unless someone has a better idea.” No one had. We set out to walk along the ledge, in a clockwise direction. On our right was the vertical drop to the City’s streets. Some of the smaller pyramids looked like spikes, ready to impale a body that dropped on them. I felt sick from the height, and my chest was hurting badly. I supposed I could have fallen out, and gone back; it was not as though I was going to be any use to anyone in my condition. But the thought of leaving my companions was worse still.

We trailed on. The top of the ramp was lost in the haze behind us. There was nothing to find, I was sure. The Master would have simply been out of sight of the ramp, as we now were. Then Fritz said, “There is something!” The others were obscuring my view, but after a moment I saw what he meant. Just ahead, the ledge ended, or rather was replaced by something which projected out from the Wall to take up its full space and more. A sort of blockhouse—and with a door. And the door did not have a button to operate it. Instead there was a wheel, of the same golden metal as the Wall.

We crowded up, ignoring vertigo for the moment, as Fritz tried to turn the wheel. He got nowhere at first, but then, trying it in the reverse direction, it moved. Not much, but enough to give us hope. He swung on it again, using all his strength, and it yielded a bit more. After a few minutes, he handed over to another. This continued, with volunteers working in relays. The wheel moved painfully slowly, but it went on moving. And, at last, we saw a crack widen in the side. The door was opening to us.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, Fritz squeezed through, and we followed. There was light, from the partly opened door and also from squares of crystal in the roof. We could see our surroundings quite clearly.

The blockhouse was slotted into the Wall, and extended on either side of it. It was very bare, but held some boxes, which probably contained equipment, and, on a rack, half a dozen of the mask-suits which the Masters could wear if they had to breathe human air. Fritz pointed to them, “That was why he did not take a mask. They were kept here.” He looked around the cell-like room. “They would not bring power all the way up here. It would not be worth it. So the doors are mechanically operated.” There was another door facing the one through which we had come, and presumably giving access to a continuation of the ledge. At the far side, two similar doors faced each other. They must open on to a similar ledge, but outside the dome. I said, “But if this is an airlock . . . you would need power for pumping the air.” “I do not think so. Remember, their air is denser than ours. A simple pressure-operated valve would do it. And the volume of air in here, compared with what the dome holds, is very small. Power is not necessary.” Jan said, “So all we have to do is open one of the doors on the outside. What are we waiting for?” Fritz put his hands on the wheel, tensed, and heaved. His muscles bulged with the force he was applying. He relaxed, and heaved again. Nothing happened. He stood back, wiping his brow.

“Someone else try.”

Several others did. Carlos said, “This is ridiculous. The door is the same as the other. The wheels are identical.” Fritz said, “Wait a minute. I think maybe I understand. Close the inner door.”

A wheel on this side complemented the other. It turned, though reluctantly: these had been made for Masters’ strength, not human. At last the door was sealed.

“Now,” Fritz said.

He heaved on the outer door’s wheel again. This time it moved. Slowly, slowly, but at last there was a crack of light, and the crack widened. There was the whistling noise of air escaping, the breeze of its passing on our bodies. Soon we were looking out onto a ledge, the outside of the dome, and the earthly landscape spread out below us, a patchwork of fields, streams, the distant mound of the ruined great-city. The brightness of daylight made me blink my eyes.

Fritz said, “Even Masters can make mistakes, so they have a device to prevent it. The doors to the outside will not open unless the doors to the inside are sealed. And the other way around, I should think. Try to open the inner door now.” The attempt failed. It was clear that what he said was right.

Carlos said, “Then we can open one door . . . but must smash through the other?”

Fritz was examining the door.

“That will not be easy. Look.”

The door was about four inches thick, made of the tough gleaming metal that formed the Wall. It had been machined to a satiny smoothness and, obviously, to such precision that even air would not pass between the opposing surfaces when it was sealed. Fritz picked up the spike he had been carrying and hammered at it. It made absolutely no impression that I could see.

We had come to another, perhaps a final check. We could keep the inner door closed and thus, with our natural air surrounding us, we could remove the masks. So we would not suffocate. But we had no food, no water—above all, no means of getting down the sheer cliff of the Wall. In any case, unless we could puncture the shell of the City in some way, we faced the possibility of the Masters recovering from their paralysis and relighting the pool of fire.

We were all looking at the door. Carlos said, “There is a difference between the inner doors and the outer ones. The first one opened inward, but this opens out.” Fritz shrugged. “Because of the difference in pressure. It makes it easier for them.”

Carlos squatted, fingering the place where door and wall joined.

“The door itself is too strong to be broken. But the hinges . . .”

Hinges ran all the way up the inside, thin and bright and gleaming a little with oil. Renewed, perhaps, by the Master who had unwittingly led us here.

Fritz said, “I think we could break them. But we can only get at them with the door open, which means the inner door is sealed. How does that help?” “Not break them entirely,” Carlos said. “But if we were to weaken them—then close the door—then, after opening the inner door . . .” “Try to hammer it open from inside? It might work! At any rate, we can try.”

They got down to it, two at a time hammering at the joints of the hinges. It was not easy, but a cry of triumph told us that the first had broken. Others followed. They went through them systematically, leaving only a single hinge at the top and one at the bottom untouched. Then the door was wound shut again, and the inner door opened.

“Right,” Fritz said. “Now we hammer top and bottom.”

They banged and thumped with the metal stakes. Fritz and Carlos had started; when they were exhausted they passed the task on to others. These, in turn, tired and were replaced. Minutes dragged by, to the monotonous unchanging clang of metal on metal. The crystal squares in the roof of the blockhouse were darkening, dusk beginning to fall. I wondered if the Masters were stirring yet, moving about, in confusion but with a purpose . . . making their way toward the dark pit where the fire had danced, and might dance again . . . I said, “Can I have a go?” “I’m afraid you would be little help,” Fritz said. “All right, Carlos. You and I once more.”

The hammering went on and on. Then my ear caught something else, a sort of creak. It came again, and again.

“Harder,” Fritz called.

There was a sound of metal tearing. The two hinges must have given way almost simultaneously. The door began to fall, and I glimpsed the open sky, graying now. That was the last thing I noticed clearly for quite a time. Because, as the door collapsed outward, a great wind swept through the blockhouse, from open door to open door, a gale plucking one outward. Someone shouted, “Get down!” I dropped to the floor, and it was a little better there. I felt it tearing at my back, but I stayed where I was. It roared through, and it was like no noise of wind I had ever heard because it stayed on one note, unvarying, a harsh unending bellow. One could not speak above the din, and anyway I was too dazed to have anything to say. I could see the others scattered on the floor. It was incredible that it could go on for so long, unchanging.

But change came at last. The noise was overlaid by another, sharper, far louder, more terrifying. It sounded as though the sky was splitting and tearing to shreds. And a moment later, the wind died. I was able to get groggily to my feet, only now realizing that my ribs were hurting even more after dropping to the floor.

Several of us went to the inner doorway. We looked out silently, too awed for comment. The crystal dome had shattered inward. Quite a lot still adhered to the top of the Wall, but a jagged hole extended all across the center. Huge shards had fallen on the City; one seemed to be covering the Sphere Arena. I turned to look for Fritz. He was standing alone by the outer door.

I said, “That’s it. Not one of them could have survived.” There were tears in his eyes. Of joy, I thought, but there was no joy in his expression. I asked, “What’s the matter, Fritz?” “Carlos . . .”

He gestured toward the open door. I said, in horror, “No!”

“The wind took him through. I tried to hold him, but could not.”

We looked out together. The Wall was a precipice beneath our feet. Far, far down, a tiny square of gold marked the position of the blockhouse door. Near it lay a small black speck.

• • •

We ripped off the masks, and could breath ordinary air. The green air of the Masters had spread out and been lost in the vastness of the world’s natural atmosphere. We made our way back along the ledge, and down the steep ramp into the City. I was glad we had not left it any later than this; light was fading rapidly and poor visibility did nothing to improve my feeling of dizziness. But we got down at last.

The communal places inside the pyramids were still barred to us. We found stores of food, though, in open warehouses, and broke open the crates to eat it. There were drinking fountains in several places, put there to serve the thirst of passing Masters, and we drank from them. The bodies of the Masters themselves lay scattered about in the growing dark. We were joined by more and more of the Capped. They were shaken and bewildered, and some had been injured by fragments of the falling dome; we cared for them as best we could. Then we settled down to endure a cold spring night. It was not pleasant, but at least stars shone overhead, the diamond-bright stars of earth.

In the morning, shivering, Fritz and I discussed what to do. We still could not get through the Entering Hall without a slow and arduous process of breaking down doors, and the door in the Wall, that admitted the Tripods, would be a well-nigh impossible proposition. We could escape by way of the river, of course, but that, too, would not be easy—in my own case, possibly suicidal. I said, “We could tie things together to make a rope—there are stocks of the material they used to make clothes for the slaves—let ourselves down from the blockhouses . . .” “It would take a long rope, “ he said. “I think it might be worse than the river. But I’ve been wondering . . .” “What?”

“All the Masters are dead. If we were to start the pool of fire again . . .”

“How? Remember Mario.”

“I do. The power killed him. But that switch was meant to be used.”

“By a tentacle. They are of a different substance to our flesh. Perhaps the power does not run through it. Are we to chop off a tentacle, and use it to push the lever up?” “It is an idea,” he said, “but not what I had in mind. The fire was on when Mario grasped the lever. It died slowly. If it also starts slowly . . . Do you see what I mean? There might be no danger until the fire is burning.” I said slowly, “You could be right. I’ll do it.”

“No,” Fritz said decisively. “I will.”

• • •

We went down the ramp into the Hall of the Machines. The darkness was absolute, and we had to guess our way toward the central pyramid. There was a strange smell, like rotting leaves, only more pungent, and when I had the misfortune to stumble over the body of one of the Masters I realized where it was coming from. They were beginning to decompose, and I suppose it was more evident down here than out in the streets.

We missed the pyramid completely the first time, and came up against the banks of machines in one of the hemispheres beyond. Our second attempt was more successful. I touched smooth metal, and called out to Fritz to join me. Together we felt our way around to the side with the entrance, and through the maze of concentric pyramids. It was no darker here, of course, than anywhere else in the Hall, but I was more afraid. The confinement, perhaps, had something to do with it—that, and the fact that we were approaching the pit where the fire had burned.

As we came to third entrance, Fritz said, “You stay here, Will. Come no farther.”

I said, “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m coming.”

“No.” His voice was flat and final. “It is you who are being silly. If anything goes wrong, you are in charge. A safe way out of the City will still need to be found.” I was silent, recognizing the truth of what he said. I could hear him edging his way around, avoiding the central pit. It took a long time, because he went cautiously. At last, he said, “I have reached the column. I am feeling for the switch now. I have got it. I have pushed it up!” “You are all right? Get away from it, just in case.”

“I have done that. But nothing is happening. There is no sign of the fire.”

Nor was there. I strained my eyes into blackness. Perhaps it had been out for too long. Perhaps there was something else that needed doing, which we could not begin to guess at. His voice showing his disappointment, Fritz said, “I’m on my way back.” I put a hand out, and he grasped at it. He said, “It will have to be the rope, or the river. It is a pity. I had hoped we could control the City.” I thought at first it might be my eyes playing tricks with me, showing spots of brilliance as they sometimes do in darkness. I said, “Wait . . .” And then, “Look!” He turned with me, and we both stared. Down in what must be the bottom of the pit, a spark flickered into being, followed by another and another. They grew, ran together, began glowing brightly. The fire spread and leaped as we watched, and the hissing noise began. Then the whole pit was shimmering with it, as radiance filled the room.