Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War by Christopher Leadem (to read list txt) 📗

rift. These short bursts of flight he repeated several times (the thought that he could fly to safety and forget this fight never occurred to him), searching for a weakness. Though filled with a sullen rage, he knew there could be no mistakes. Rising higher, he hovered briefly above his baffled foe, then swept down onto its back, and in three quick motions of jaws and foreclaw, tore off its head and left it to die.

Still full of bitter and unused anger he landed again on the plain closest to the female, clawing the rock as if clinging to a rope, as his blurring wings drummed threateningly. Then letting go he flew directly over her, and left the sorry massacre behind.

With this action his patience expired. Landing as the far side of the chamber grew shallow, he walked on through a curving length of tunnel for some miles, until confronted by a three-directional branching of the passageway. He followed the right-hand way first, and for a short time made good progress. But then it doubled back on him and finally ended, died, into a narrowing of stone through which he could not pass. Furious, he worked his way back to the starting point, taking this time the central shaft, leading downward. The result was the same, though it took him much longer to realize. Returning again to the meeting of ways was now difficult, since in his haste he had been forced to take and re-take several turns in a compact but puzzling labyrinth, that he found in the end took him nowhere.

Coming again after many hours to the branching of paths, he tried to rest both mind and body, conceding the inevitable. His anger here was useless. It had only robbed him of strength and precious time, and he was no closer to a resolution of his bitter quest than he had ever been. And also, a peculiar yellow fear, such as he had seldom experienced in his life, was beginning to grow in him. At first he blamed himself, raging. But walking through the twisted tunnels of the labyrinth he had realized, suddenly, that it was not his fear alone. His body was still not right, if wrong in a way that was hard to define, and there could be but one explanation for it. The mist, the growing light, was affecting his altered physiology. He searched within himself, bewildered, till Shannon's memory put a name to it. RADIATION. A force that should not affect an insect, but which worked on those parts of his body that were yet human.

He rested for a time, but his rest was brief. The feelings of unease continued to grow in him; they would not be contained. The source of what he sought—-he could now feel a faint throbbing in the stone around him—-was a danger in itself, repulsing, even as it called to him. He must find it quickly, then be gone. For he knew that his time in those depths was limited. He gathered what courage and presence of mind he could, then pushed on, entering the left-hand passage.

He summoned now all his underground instincts, honed by the long delvings of his life among the mai. In those days, a constant stream unbroken by sleep, he had endlessly searched out tunnels untraveled or long forgotten, returning ever and again to those that went deepest, learning the mazes, delving deeper still. Though what he sought there he could not have said.

The left-hand way was subtle, as he passed onward through the narrow stone, with many turnings and side passages. He held mostly to the main shaft, learning its direction, following it on its slow, steady course downward. Many times it narrowed, till he was ready to despair. But always through perseverance and careful backtracking, he was able to find a way through.

The narrowing and tight touching of the walls began to frighten him. By this, more than any other token, he knew that the growing fear inside him was not solely his own. Far back in the journey he had realized that in taking the quest he must know, in part, what it was to be human. Perhaps the spirit of Shannon still lived more strongly than he knew. And perhaps there were others as well. Often he had thought with human voice, human words, till now it was impossible to separate the two. He had known, and been, emotions that were not his own…..

But THIS fear. Sometimes from the deeps of his mind he could hear a howling as of many tormented voices, rising out of him like a driven, heart-frozen wind.

He stopped. He himself was afraid, and he did not know why. He must master it and go on. He must master it and go on. Go on….. Resistance was thick around him, his body's weakness, till he felt that in standing still he walked against a current of water.

He hardened, and went forward. The passage began to open again, growing wider. Several more of the branching ways, through a mesh of stone, and a straight, subtly rising tunnel lay before him. Far off in the distance he heard, unmistakably, a steady throbbing, echoing like a fall of water—-the deep, rapid pulsing of a heart. He pushed on, harder, though the pulsing of yellow light grew stronger, pushing back on him, darkening to gold, an airless wind urging him back.

The passage seemed endless, and still it went on, with no indication….. Ahead of him, the tunnel opened out, almost beyond the edge of sight. He continued. Farther. He had reached it: the horn's spout. Over the lip, and in…..

*

The beginnings of the chamber greeted him like an opened book, lying on its bindings, leaning downward. The rock of that flattened wedge, angling slowly away from him, was ribbed and strangely symmetrical—-smooth porous gray, but bathed in a strong golden light, inexplicably tinged dark crimson where it met a rise of stone. He was only vaguely aware that beyond this antechamber the ceiling warped high and huge, above a valley that dwarfed even the place of his birth. For here, as nowhere else beneath the surface of his world there were shadows, lengthening toward him to either side of the shallow, widening staircase. And for all the desperate haste of his journey, Simin could not yet go forward. He stood looking down at the two pillared sentinels in awe, the vast spherical expanse beyond. He little thought that he himself, standing before the rim of the long tunnel he had just traversed, his upper body and underside wreathed in red, formed an equally stunning and unlikely visage of life against the Void.

Assimilation.

Two stone sentinels stood in perfect symmetry, like Roman statues, atop the angling walls that rose to either side of the stairway's end. The sunken plain lay beyond. Whether these silent watchers had been carved by Nature or intelligence it was impossible to say: perhaps meant to connote angry, reptilian merman rising out of the stone, perhaps roughly shaped bodies whose accidental carving held no meaning at all. Here all boundary between the spiritual and the meaningless faded. They stood silent, faces outward, guarding the plain below. He descended slowly until he stood between them, on the ripple of stone looking down.

The plain lay before him like a massive wrinkled dish, bone-white and barren. He breathed deeply several times, not knowing why. His objective was a clear as the tolling of a bell.

A broad crater rested in the center of all, sinking out of sight, and from it came the deep tremor of sound, the slow throbbing of light that pervaded the underground vastness with its certain and unnerving presence. Everywhere the edges of floor and ceiling glowed red, as if from heat, and the brightness of yellow gold folded over and through him like a liquid current of sun and air, warming. Simin had not the heart to remain there long; he must descend now, or turn back in defeat. This place was the very nexus of his unspoken fears.

He descended into the Valley, and almost at once the wailing of human voices erupted in his ears, rising and falling in a discordant terror of mutilated passions, scales without notes or boundaries. He moved on, oblivious, physically incapable of dealing with this fear. His weakness cried out strange horrors; his strength was confused.

He continued, not knowing what else to do. The surface of that plain was cracked and uneven—-warm, and unbearably long. The cacophony of human fears climbed and fell back, rising now as if engulfed in flame, then chilled, despairing.

HUMAN FEAR. At last he understood. He felt the presence of other minds so strongly that he wondered if Shannon were truly dead, and not merely the emissary of human suffering and grief. For this, surely, was an unearthly place of His world. The high ceiling, the infinite, trackless waste. The heat. Words raced through his beleaguered body, slowing, till with a dread he would not have thought possible….. The voice of a weary, tortured old man, his spirit broken in the end—-a Jew, his lungs filled with poison—-formed physically, undeniable, in his ears.

"Inferno."

He stopped, as if a razor had cloven him in two. It was there before him, all around. He could not go forward, or back. He was dying. Yes, dying in that place, where the river of his dreams, fallen to a trickle, had at last died into unconquerable sand. He stood frozen in terror. To breathe was a pointless misery. There was nothing—-alone—-in that hollow place but death.

He knew not where he got the strength, or desperation. He lifted the first of his walking legs, moved it forward. It touched the ground, a little farther ahead. He moved the next, and then the next. He staggered forward, feeling a will such as he had never known hardening out of his weakness and despair. He was terrified, in pain. Burning with fever. But he moved.

With this action the resistance seemed to falter, the wailing of human passions to subside. But only for a moment. They redoubled their assault—-the current against him was physical—-but broke against his stubborn movement like a wall of water against stone. He continued. The sand of many hours flowed past him.

He was nearing the crater, now certain he would die. If only by his death he could achieve for Shannon, and for the other….. He forced a foreclaw to shackle the edge of the crater, looking down. Determined. The dry heat of that place was unbearable; and still distance defied him. A silver-white core, cruel mockery of the Carrier stone, glowed at the center of the broken-rock pit. From within came the voices, the fever, the Heat. Yet this was his only quest. He must. . .TOUCH it….. Must.

He could not walk; his legs would no longer carry him. With a weak spasm of his hind and a pathetic flutter of wings, he pushed himself over the edge and slid, rolled across stones, folding his wings just in time, to tumble down a steep slope then land, legs folded beneath him gripping hot stones, perhaps a hundred yards from all his desire.

He welcomed now its death, if only he could move. If only he could go that distance farther, against the barrage. Of distance. But he was afraid. Afraid to die. To die! At last he had met the greatest human fear: the wakened animal, knowing it would live no more.

Oh, it was too much. He steeled the fire in his heart and went on, but would have screamed if he could. Fifty yards. Forty. It was too much. Too much. The stones beneath him rasped and hissed, speaking Death's name. Downward, into the final hole of death, the murderer of all his passions. It was too much. What kind of God would ask….. Too much.

His death reached out. He touched the stone.

*

He touched the stone. Slowly the feverish weakness left him, as if a violent storm fading at the last.