Melissa shrugged. “Something to do with water. I’ll get it done.” Her voice was fault and lifeless as she turned and walked away, leaning sideways once, mechanically, to pluck a long stem of grass. Stirling unwound a length of plastic rope from the ladder on the side of the nearby tank, and used it to tie Johnny’s wrists and ankles.
There was no sound as the villagers rode west.
Stirling had tried to use the radio to let Mason Third know everything had gone according to plan; but its case was cracked and flattened, and there had been no response. Close to one end, he sat astride the beam of the big robot and kept his eye on the other machine following a short distance behind on the adjacent strip. Once or twice some villager further along the beam began to sing; but the idea failed to catch on, and the plaintive words trailed away behind, swirling out across the soil beds in flat invisible eddies. Melissa was on the other robot, but he found it hard to pick her out in the solid row of blackly ragged humanity perched along the beam. Beggars, refugees on horseback.
As far as Stirling could tell, the exodus had been joined by every member of the village community who was still breathing and able to walk. Almost directly below him, Johnny lay on the upper surface of the bogey. He was conscious; but his wrists and ankles were still bound, and extra loops of plastic prevented him from rolling over the edge. His eyes were unreadable black slits under the bruised mound of his forehead. Stirling found himself avoiding looking down. Of course I’m my brothers keeper. Would you like to see his cage?
He shifted his position on the beam and looked northwards to the distant outline of the power station. Theo and the other technicians Johnny had recruited were still’ hi the station, but there was no way of telling if they had noticed the evacuation of the village taking place. Stirling decided to leave them to find out for themselves. He was turning away again when a cold, disquieting thought stirred in his mind. There had been something wrong about the appearance of the power station.
Shielding his eyes from the whipping breeze, Stirling stared at the rectangular block. Several seconds went by before he was able to accept the fact that its proportions had altered. The building was longer and lower in appearance, as though it had begun to sink into the ground—only there was no ground to receive it! As he watched, the sinking motion which had previously been imperceptible gradually accelerated, and the power station sank completely out of sight.
Stirling went rigid with shock and waited for the feeling of weightlessness which would signify that—deprived of its power source—the He was falling into the Atlantic. Nothing happened, except that the robot continued to thunder westwards, trembling and swaying slightly beneath him. He fought off the feeling of unreality for a few seconds. Then the top of the station reappeared on the horizon. The featureless block rose steadily until it was higher than he had ever seen it before, paused, and began to sink again.
Suddenly, Stirling knew what was happening. The He had begun to undulate like a gigantic blanket flapping in the wind.
Hoarse shouting from further along the beam announced that somebody else had become aware of what was happening. A woman joined in with a shrill scream as, for the first time, the movement of the huge structure made itself felt. The gentle sinking motion chilled Stirling’s stomach and made him grip the beam with an instinctive, useless reaction.
“Look over there!” The man beside Stirling gripped his arm and pointed away, across the He, diagonally ahead of the robot.
A sharply defined ripple was sweeping across the soil beds. Fountains of dark earth, thrown up by the buckling of the underlying pans, feathered the air above the advancing crest, like an artillery barrage. It became obvious that they were going to intercept the ripple in a matter of seconds—and the robots were traveling at fifty miles an hour.
“Stop!” Stirling shouted, trying to make himself heard above the noise; but the villager lying on the underslung turret was already fumbling with the machine’s alarm relays. The robot abruptly slowed down and was rumbling to a halt when the surface below it lifted savagely, erupted earth, and sickeningly fell away again. Sprays of dirt lashed the row of villagers, who were clinging precariously to the beam. Stirling was deafened by the awful sounds of cataclysm, the vast, shuddering groans of metal structures being overtaken by failure: tearing, grinding, crunching, ringing, snapping.
From his position at the end of the beam he saw the tracks far below him part momentarily—allowing daylight to spill upwards, reflected from the ocean three unthinkable miles further down—then the tremor was past. As the robot returned to an even keel, and silence descended, Stirling looked up grayly, as though he was trying life on for size. The substructure of the He had been punished, but it had failed-safe—this time. He decided that Johnny’s technical experts working in the power station had made a mistake or had taken a calculated risk. Either way, he did not want to be on the He when the next major adjustment to the power unit was attempted.
“Let’s go,” he shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”
The robot moved away again, crunching on dirt-strewn rails; and the second machine followed close behind it. They had almost reached full speed when Stirling realized Johnny was gone. He stood up for a moment and looked back the way they had come, but in all of Heaven’s broad acres there was no sign of life.
“All right, Johnny,” he whispered. “You and I are not brothers.”
Chapter Nineteen
There had been three mud tremors during the nightmare ride to the He’s western rim and the subsequent five-mile march to the elevator head. Each time, Stirling had closed his eyes to wait it out and, each time, had seen a familiar face, stern and accusing. When we reach that elevator, he told himself, I’m going down below with all the others. Nobody could expect me to do anything else, not even my—another part of his mind had sent up a frightened clamor, trying to obliterate the thought, but Stirling had forced it through—not even my father. Completion of the thought brought a feeling of catharsis, of release; and at the same time, the certain knowledge he was caught in a trap which had been sprung on him a thousand years earlier.
Now he was looking at Melissa across two sets of ice-encrusted barriers: one on the elevator car, the other on the lip of the docking bay. The wind made irregular moaning sounds in the light-spewing gap between the two structures. Stirling turned in the direction of the monitor cameras and waved both arms. Red lights glowed suddenly on the corners of the freight car, and caused the villagers inside it to glance around them uneasily.
“Melissa,” he called above the wind. “Don’t worry. It’s going to work out.”
She smiled wanly and nodded, making him aware of how inane his words must have sounded. How could it work out? Melissa’s personality had already begun to crumple, and the jaws of the Compression were scarcely beginning to close. When the car dropped away, he kept his eyes on her face until the cold, brilliant air blurred his vision; then he turned in the direction of the power station,
Stirling could have traveled faster by running down the center of a strip; but the risk of being seen from the station would have been too great, and he kept at track level. His heavy rifle seemed to become more awkward with every mile he covered, but he jogged along the track bed determinedly by stiffening his ankles to prevent them turning on the uneven surfaces. The air seemed to have become colder and thinner, stinging his throat and lungs as he labored to keep up the pace. There was no movement of aircraft near the power station, but dark specks disturbed the He’s milky canopy far away to the southeast. He guessed the Air Force was lifting the wounded villagers to safety, and the load of bis self-imposed responsibility eased slightly.