Chains of the Sea Page 20

  What luck!

  She had been stopped. The body had beached against the face of a big boulder jutting from the middle of the stream. He reached out with the stick, but the river was too wide and the end of the branch fell way short of the body.

  He knew he didn’t dare wait for the water to go down. The way this storm was raging, it might not be for days and days, and once Donna Maria slipped off her precarious perch and was carried away by the river, he might never find her again. He wished Andrew were here. He could have fetched the body easily; robots could not drown.

  Carefully, with numbed fingers, he stripped off the tattered remnants of his underwear. He put a foot into the water. It was freezing cold, but hardly worse than what he had already experienced. A bolt of lightning struck the ground ten yards behind. He fell forward, waving his arms like the wings of a bird. In a moment, the water closed around him. His eyes burned with the sting of the mud. He threw out his arms, kicked his legs, trying to swim. As a boy, he had seen the other village children making these motions on hot afternoons in nearby brooks and streams; he had been too timid to try himself.

  Suddenly, his head burst through the surface. The rain pounded around him like a downpouring of rocks. He threw his arms forward, tucked his head against his shoulder, clawing the water, pausing occasionally to breathe. He could not feel his legs but thought they must be moving, or else he would sink.

  He sank.

  Again, he fought the water, pulling it toward his chest. His lungs were bursting. He had no air. Above was nothing but thick, swirling darkness, eddies of mud, dead chunks of grass and weed.

  Then his hands touched something hard and slick. The rock? Yes! It had to be. He drew himself up its jagged face. His lungs cried for air. He moved slowly, carefully. Tiny streams of red trickled from his hands. He realized his fingers were bleeding. Then, abruptly, he heard the desperate pounding of the rain.

  The air was like wine rushing down his throat. He took deep gasping breaths, water pouring in with the air. His head bounced upon the surface. He nearly lost his balance but held on with tom, ragged fingers.

  But where was she?

  He experienced a sudden horrible feeling that, while he was underwater, she had been swept away. He struggled to move around the rock. Here she was. He could have laughed. She was standing upright, her back to the rock. Her head floated out of the water; her eyes were open; her face was streaked with mud.

  He clawed his way to her side and, carefully, gently, kindly, tried to wipe her face. But the mud was thick and hard and his blood mixed with it, giving her face the appearance of a grinning, painted clown. He put an arm around her and straggled to say, “We are safe—safe—nothing can harm us here.” He put both arms around her, holding her now as he had never been able to do while she lived, attempting to draw her near to his chest. He lost his balance. He slipped. In a second, the water roared over him.

  He held Donna Maria, preferring the finality of death to the torture of losing her again. The current gripped him like the hand of an angry giant, drawing him obliviously forward. He was slammed clear to the bottom of the stream, his head smashed against the buried rocks below. He laughed, shrieked, screamed, hugged his wife. He popped up again, clearing the surface, still rushing ahead. He flopped in the air, skipping like a giant flat rock.

  Her face was next to his; their cheeks touched moistly. She was unchanged by death, untouched by the passing days of eternal traveling, and now, for the first time, with death creeping at his own heels, Julian admitted this was wrong. Was she some kind of supernatural entity, a god on earth, who passed untampered through the gates of death?

  Or was she a woman, a creature, a being like himself? Unhuman, inhuman, more than human?

  Glimpsing the truth, knowing it for what it was, Julian swept down the river. The current drew him onward; he did not care. It threw him, spun him, set him to swirling, lifted him, carried him, dropped him. He saw nothing: darkness was above, below; it swirled on all sides. He breathed water, spat air, bled without sense or feeling.

  Under again. The water ran over him. He shut his eyes, completing the blackness. He hugged Donna Maria but could not feel her.

  He was her brother. He knew that. She, his sister. As the bottom of the stream came sweeping up to engulf him, he remembered Andrew.

  Another brother.

  There was singing. The voices penetrated his consciousness, intruding one by one till he heard them all rising in unison. The song was wordless—a tuneless hymn—an angelic chorus of passion and peace.

  Of course, he thought he was dead.

  He crawled free of the mud, standing on wobbly knees. He blinked, squinted, covered his eyes. A massive burning, brilliant light, flickering orange, yellow, red, glowed in front of him. Falling to his knees in the mud, he raised his hands to the pale-blue sky.

  But the light was only the sun; it was dawn.

  The singing did not cease.

  And then he saw from where it came. Nearby, on this side of the narrow stream, the robots stood in a cluster. A dozen robots. It was they who sang.

  He knew it was the Shrine of Sebastian.

  Donna Maria lay in the mud at his side. Raising her in his arms, he carried her forward.

  The robots had brought gifts. The cold stone altar was strewn with flowers, fruit, silver, gold, necklaces, trinkets, jewels, pearls, bracelets, ivory. Julian passed through the ranks of the robots. They fell back and stopped singing. The shadow of the shrine covered him.

  He placed Donna Maria on the altar. Her silk dressing was tom, her body clothed in mud. Reaching down, he shut her eyes, then stepped back.

  And now, with the last measure of his strength, he lifted his eyes and gazed upon the whole of the shrine, seeing clearly the huge painting that burned above the altar like a second sun. Here stood Sebastian with his hands lifted toward a sky filled with silver ships. On these ships, Julian knew, were the men—the travelers—those who had fled with their god.

  And behind, upon the Earth, waiting, watching, clustered around their saint, stood the remnants, the robots, those of steel. . . .

  . . . and those of flesh.

  He gazed upon Sebastian’s revealed face, seeing the grief and sadness that burned in those cold golden eyes, the dreadful awareness of one chosen to stay behind when all he loved had gone away. And the body of Sebastian, his form: black, hard, the steel and the glass—and, within, the heart that could never beat, the blood that could never flow.

  Yes.

  Julian fell to his knees, closing his eyes, not from anger or terror, but simply from humility. He prayed aloud, begging the Lord to bestow his blessings equally on all his children, not only on the men who had heard his message and gone away, but also on those who had remained behind and survived—robots, yes—but men as well, though made from steel and glass.

  “And I,” he said. “Lord, you must bless me with your wisdom, for none is more in need of your guiding hand than I. I, robot of flesh—your child—bless me, O Lord.”

  He continued to pray until he ran out of words and then he went on silently, his knees sunk deep in the mud.

  Andrew waited on the crest of the hill until it was dark. Then, at last, he went down to the shrine. The other robots had long since departed. Julian knelt alone. He did not look up until Andrew laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Come,” said Andrew. “I have brought the horses.”

  “And Donna Maria?”

  “The keepers will bury her. Do not worry.”

  “All right.” Julian stood slowly. Even in the dark, the painted face of Sebastian glowed brilliantly, every stroke and feature clearly revealed. Julian and Andrew watched together, then turned away at last.

  “You told her, too,” Julian said, as they mounted the soft face of the hill. “That last night.”

  “I told her,” Andrew said, “but she refused to believe me. So, dying, she sent you out to see for certain. Now you know th
at I did not lie.”

  “But why show us now?” Julian asked.

  “Because it seemed a good time. We are dying, and so are you. Our races possess much in common. Why shouldn’t you share the truth?”

  “Is there a name?”

  “Androids.”

  “I guessed last night. In the water. When I saw that death had not touched her. I knew it was because she was not human and, if she wasn’t, then what was I?”

  “Yet you still believe?” Andrew asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “But . . . I thought. . .”

  Julian shrugged. They had reached the summit of the hill. Nearby, the stallion stood, munching at a clump of wet grass. Julian waved a hand at the world surrounding them.

  “What else is there to do?” he asked.

  Later that night, as they paused on the trail, while Julian slept a restless sleep, Andrew raised his pen and began to write. For the first time, he did not choose to tell his story exactly in the order it had happened.

  Instead, he wrote the end.

  And when Sebastian approached the last of the silver ships, the men raised their arms and cried, Halt. They told Sebastian he could not enter, for it was not to be allowed. But I am the Saint, Sebastian cried; I am your prophet. But the men would not listen. They proclaimed it was the will of God that men should leave this world and that the Lord had truly chosen Sebastian as his messenger. But you are not a man, they vowed, and the new world of Advent is not your world. Remain here, prophet, and this world shall be yours. Your race shall cover the whole of the Earth, for the men who have chosen to remain must soon perish through the hatred of their wars. Then only you will be left to rule.

  Hearing this, Sebastian threw back his head and laughed bitterly, but he did not deny the rightness of these words. Instead, he lifted his head until it pierced the highest clouds and his gaze swept the whole of the world, and when he returned his eyes to the ground, the last of the silver ships had gone. Then Sebastian wept, calling upon the others to fall upon their knees, refusing to say why.

  At last, facing the brethren, he consented to speak.

  It is our world, he told them. The Earth belongs to us, the children of men. Now it is up to us to decide: what are we to do?

  He waited, but none attempted to answer this question. He said nothing himself. Finally, he turned and went away. He was never seen again. But his words were never forgotten.