After a short while Clay says sadly, “Thank you,” and turns away. The robot is at his elbow. “No use,” Clay murmurs. “No damned use. Just as well.”
“To clothe the naked,” the robot says. “Another urgent obligation. Do you wish clothing?”
“Am I so ugly this way?”
“Humans cover their bodies when in the streets. For those who lack, we supply.”
Clay does not respond, and the robot takes his response for assent. A section of the wall behind Clay irises open and a second robot appears. It lifts a snoutlike hose and sprays Clay with a single honking blast of pigment and fabric. When he recovers from his surprise, Clay finds that he now is wearing a tight golden tunic, shoes that resemble transparent envelopes, and a slouchy hat. He has gone naked so long that the clothing instantly begins to chafe and bind him. Not wishing to give offense, he continues to wear it. He walks along the corridor. The first robot pursues him, saying, “Food? Shelter? Bodily cleansing? Amusements?”
“No.”
“No wishes of any kind?”
“One,” Clay says. “Privacy. Go away. When I need you, I’ll whistle.”
“Interrogative.”
“I’ll call. I’ll yell out loud with my vocal cords. Better? Now go, please. I ask you kindly. Don’t go far, but stay out of my sight until you’re summoned.”
Turns. Walks on. Robot rolls away.
Clay peers into rooms and shops. Everything quite neat, a Pompeii for his prowling, no doors locked. In this place a television-like screen offers, at a touch of the level, three-dimensional protuberances that jut and withdraw like bubbles in molten lava. Beyond is an octagonal bathtub whose porcelaneous walls sweat convincing blood at the push of a stud. Green maybe-sausages extrude themselves from a cluster of metal pipes above what is possibly a stove. A bed changes size and shape with frenzied energy, getting bigger, smaller, circular, rectangular. A colossal pink phallus, sinister in its lifelikeness, rises from the center of a black slate floor. A wall dissolves into a shower of mosaic tiles. Nozzles growing like toadstools along a window douse him with perfumes, spices, ointments, and a thin pale fluid that consumes his clothing in a second or two. He enjoys his return to nakedness, although he lingers before the nozzles too long, and one of them squirts a red oil at him that anesthetizes his skin. He puts a finger in his ear: nothing. He cautiously scratches his chest: nothing. He squeezes his penis in his fist: nothing. He cannot feel his bare feet in contact with the shaggy flooring. Is it permanent? He imagines himself casually blundering into sharp things that gouge out his flesh and slice off his toes without his noticing it, until he is reduced to a few shreds of muscle hanging to bare bones. “Robot?” he calls. “Hey, robot, come help me!” but before the machine-man can reach him, two nozzles at once spray him, and he feels his nerve cells come alive with such marvelous intensity that he has an orgasm on the spot. Panting a little, he backs away, dismissing the robot with two quick syllables. Going onward, he stumbles between a double wall of mirrors and is caught in an infinite regress, pong and pong and pong from wall to wall as the mirrors turn and shift and buckle, and he drops to the floor and crawls out of range. How have all these things survived, he wonders, when the world has endured so many upheavals of geology, when the continents themselves have been reshaped? He concedes a finite probability that the tunnel-world is illusory. He shifts to a different cluster of streets and galleries; here the architecture is of another style, more brutal, less imaginative than the last, but the ornamentation and surface texture of the structures is of a far higher order. Robots roll out of every corner and offer to serve him, but he keeps his eye cocked for his robot, the one following him at a respectful distance, and pays no heed to the others. “Where did the people go?” he asks his robot. “Why did they leave? When?” The robot says wistfully, “One day they were not here any more.” Clay accepts this in good grace. He touches a button and an abstract three-dimensional film cascades from a fluorescent projector. When he releases the button, the whole gaudy whirl of colored lights funnels back into the projector in reverse, going whoosh as it vanishes. In another room he finds games of chance: boards that glitter and thump, wheels that spin in erratic orbits, chips, markers, counters, ebony dice, playing cards that melt and sag as he touches them. Beyond is something like a giant aquarium, but there are no fish in it. Then he beholds a child’s puzzle, an embalmed tree, an empty cage, and a small sealed box. He passes onward. Jets of live steam warn him away from a tempting womby room with spongelike walls. He avoids a flight of stairs descending into what may be a lower level, for choking clouds of green dust break forth before he has taken three steps down. He comes to a place where robots are disassembling robots. He discovers a mighty screen that shows a view of the surface world: soft hills and valleys, no trace of that grim desert of hallucinations through which he has come. Finally he nudges a nicely pivoted door of thick aluminum-looking metal, and, as it swings solemnly open, the robot scuttles toward him and says, “Beyond this point there are no safeguards.”
“What am I supposed to understand by that?”
“We cannot protect you if you continue in this direction.”
Clay stares into the newly revealed corridor. It looks much like the one he has just explored, but if anything it is brighter and more attractive. The buildings have subtle, understated facades that gleam with the restrained fire of fine rubies, and he detects a hint of elegant music tinkling in some nearby courtyard. He will go onward. The robot repeats its warning, and Clay says, “Nevertheless, I accept the risks.” As he takes his first step into the forbidden sector an uncomfortable thought strikes him and, looking back, he asks the robot, “Will this door close after I’ve gone in there?”
“Affirmative.”
“No,” Clay says. “I don’t want it to. I order you to leave it open until I come out again.”
“Strict instructions to prevent incursions by inhabitants of—”
“Forget them. This is an order. I’m the only man on the planet right now, and this whole place was built to serve men, and you yourself are nothing but a machine designed to make the lives of men happier and more rewarding, and I’m damned if I’ll let you defy me. The door stays open. Is that understood?”
Hesitation. Conflict.
“Affirmative,” says the robot ultimately.
Clay goes in. On his sixth step he swings round. The door is still open. His robot waits beside it. “Good,” Clay says. “Remember, I’m boss. It stays open.”
As he inspects the classic facades in this wing of the tunnel-world, he comes upon his first sign—other than the goat-man’s corpse—that nonmechanical life has impinged on any part of the underground refuge. Eight little green pellets lie outside the entrance to a glossy parlor. Plainly they are the droppings of some rodent of the era. Where the robots do not go, wildlife has taken possession.
Lurking, Clay sees the possible pellet-maker: a ferrety animal close to the ground, moving on stumpy legs and switching a naked purple tail. Its back is lined with eyes. Clay is aware of a cruel and purposeful intelligence within the beast. Not another son of man, this? No. No micron of humanity in it. It is stalking something down the corridor. Clay follows. Beast pounces. Invisible prey, perhaps? The ferret grasps with all feet and tail, plunges jaws into. Munches. Evident enjoyment. Nasty little carnivore, feasting. At length it is through; it drags its unseen victim into an alcove and emerges, dropping more green pellets. Scuttles away. Clay continues.
There is no maintenance here. The air is moist, congested, protoplasmic. Sparkling webs hang from the walls, and clicking predators squat at their centers. Clay confronts one: a hairy blue lobster. It smiles hungrily at him. He slips past its lair and enters a splendid courtyard where a fountain of radiance purrs and gleams. Here are more machines of the kind common on the far side of the door, though he has yet to see two devices alike. Before him is a concave mirror, the depths of which seem temptingly soft and shimmering, like a gateway to fairyland. He pu
ts forth fingertips to touch the silken glass, then thinks better of it and withdraws them. “What do you do?” he asks the instrument. “The things here ought to have labels on them, like DRINK ME or PUSH THIS BUTTON FOR GOOD HALLUCINATIONS, or something. Strangers can’t be expected to guess at these things. They might get hurt. Or damage something delicate.”
The moment he ceases speaking, he hears a shrill cackling, a gurgling, a bubbling, a babbling, and then there comes from a point within the mirror the sound of his own voice, rearranged and reduplicated and interlocked to form a screaming symphony of devastating intricacy:
“GOOD HALLUCINATIONS things labels have like strangers at at at at at at at can’t be expected PUSH THIS BUTTON or or or ought to have DRINK things delicate something damage damage damage guess might guess guess guess get hurt FOR ME here they can’t they they they they they they they hurt or PUSH PUSH PUSH like strangers the here on them on them FOR something to things these something labels BUTTON dam la ex some del age ink cate ic ess an’t ings uci ood delicate FOR things utton gers urt et PUSH THIS BUTTON a a a a mage HALLUCINATIONS angers GOOD.”
Followed by silence.
Followed by inverted repetition. Triple fugue. Modulation into the minor. Spiccato. Dazzling dominant seventh. Codetta before third voice enters. Transposition of subject into tonic. Allegro non giocoso. Andante ma non troppo. Largo. Vivace. Solfeggio. The room echoes with the music of his words. “PUSH!” “Ood!” “LUCINA!” “Ink!” Variations ad libitum. “Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo.” Sonata quasi una fantasia. Portamento. Sforzando. Sfogato. Fortissimo. He flees. The music pursues him into the corridor. Legato! Doloroso! Dal segno! Agitato! “Damage! Damage! Damage!” He runs, trips, arises, runs again. The recording machine hurls solid planes of sound after him that split the air into levels, like a pousse-café. He sprints around one corner and a second and a third, continuing to run even after the sounds have died away. Then he skids to a halt. A large beast blocks the corridor. It is tent-shaped, with sagging folds of leathery green skin, and it has about twice Clay’s bulk. It waddles on tiny ducklike yellow feet. Absurd little arms dangle from its chest; above them is a slit of a mouth and two large glossy eyes. The eyes startle Clay: they twinkle with a clownish good humor and with undoubtable intelligence, but there is a cold malevolence, too, about their sly flickering movements. The beast and Clay face one another in silence. At length he tells it, “If you’re a human form, I claim kinship. I’m an ancestral species. Carried by the time-flux.” The eyes grow even more alert, even more amused, but there is no other response. The creature continues to approach. It is big but seems harmless; Clay, nevertheless, naked and unarmed, is cautious, and moves carefully backward. Without turning his head, he gropes for a door, finds one, opens it, steps through, slams it, and leans against it to hold it tight, while following the movements of the corridor-creature by way of a wide window. The large beast makes no attempt to force the door. Evidently it has other prey in mind, for now, Clay sees, it is turning its attention to a nest fixed in a pillar on the far side of the corridor. The mouth-slit has opened, and from it a black trunklike tongue has uncoiled, several yards long, bearing three crooked fingers at the tip. With this it probes the nest, which is fashioned of glistening strands of plastic. As the fingers knock about within the nest, heads bob up: the young, it seems, of one of the ferret-things. Six black snouts weave in obvious fury. They dodge the groping tongue; one of them boldly leaps on it and sinks bright yellow fangs into it, then jumps off, and the tent-shaped thing, stung, pulls its tongue back a few feet, stropping it against the air to cool it. Then the tongue returns and resumes its exploration of the nest. The young ferrets leap and dance about, but this time the tongue strikes quickly, catching one by the underbelly and pulling it down toward the waiting mouth. Small cruel claws scrabble and scratch to no avail. Into the mouth it goes; and in the same moment the mother ferret, returning from a hunting trip, reaches the scene and leaps at the huge predator. Clay hears screeches through the door, but does not know whose. The outraged mother bites and claws and rips. The tongue, flailing like an irritated serpent, goes high and comes down, the fingers seeking the ferret, trying to pluck it away. But the spiky little animal is too quick. Scrambling swiftly, it eludes the blind fingers, biting them whenever they come too near. The ferret finds that its enemy’s hide is easily punctured, and it pierces it in several places, finally opening such a rent under one of the larger animal’s arms that it is able to burrow through. It enters the flesh of the tent-beast as if it plans to bore a passage to the stomach and liberate its swallowed pup. Now the struggle has been transformed. Snout, shoulders, middle of the ferret vanish into its foe. The tent-beast’s eyes have lost their roguish humor; they glisten with agony. The tongue, uncoiling to its full enormous length, whips the wall convulsively. The beast hops and jumps on its duck-legs; it tries in vain to reach the toothy burrower with its useless little hands; it rubs itself against pillars, emits bellows of pain, tips from side to side in clumsy distress. Its doom is certain.
But doom, when it comes, comes from a different distributor. Suddenly there is a third creature in the corridor, reptilian, almost dinosaurian. It strides forward on colossal claw-tipped legs, with thighs like treetrunks. A fleshy tail trails it. Its forearms are short but powerful; its face is extended into a ponderous snout; its teeth are fangs so savage and so numerous that they overstate the newcomer’s deadliness, making it a comic exaggeration of all that is most brutal in nature. Above this cluster of sinister blades are two broad bright eyes, icily gleaming. What is this hideous tyrannosaur? What trick of evolution, bending back upon itself, loosed this scaly saurian in these sleek corridors? The monster rears, its head touching the tunnel-world’s roof, and it seizes the tent-beast, whipping it aloft as though it has no weight. Two arrogant strokes of the front claws and the unfortunate tent splits, cloven. The ferret bursts free, coated with sticky black blood, and whistles up into its nest. The saurian, stooping, feeds, pushing gobs of meat into its awesome craw. Rending and tearing; snorts of satisfaction. Clay, safe behind his door, looks on, stunned not by the gory killing but by the messages spilling from the monster’s mind. It is no reptile. It is another of the sons of man. Are you of the Eaters? Clay asks, and the nightmare replies, not pausing in its feast, So we are known.
The thoughts of the Eater float like ice-floes on a gray sea. Clay is appalled by the contact. He draws back, shrinking up against the far wall; the Eater is much too big to come into this room, he tells himself. But the door flaps open. The ferocious snout pushes in, though the rest of the Eater remains in the hall. Clay sees himself reflected, distorted, in those glittering eyes.
Man? the Eater asks. Ancient form?
I am. The time-flux—
Yes. Brusque dismissal. Soft pink thing. Useless.
Clay replies, Humans were created weak so that their skills and reflexes would develop. If we had had your claws and teeth from the start, would we ever have invented knives and hammers and chisels and axes?
The Eater scoffs. It nudges its face a little deeper into the room. Clay uneasily contemplates the way the smooth, plastic wall around the doorframe is beginning to crack. He would be three mouthfuls for this thing.
I too am human, the Eater boasts.
Having taken on an animal’s form?
Having taken on the form of power.
Power lies in transcending your physical weakness through cleverness, says Clay. Not in giving yourself a beast’s raw strength.
I’ll match my teeth against your cleverness, the Eater offers. Pushing harder against the door; obviously insatiable and seeking whatever meat.
Clay says, Your fellow humans of this era seem to be able to get along without killing. They need no food. Why do you kill? Why must you eat?
By free choice.
Choice to revert to primitivism?
Must I be like the others?
The others are freer than you, Clay insists. You are bound by the needs of your flesh.
You aren’t a forward step in evolution. You’re an anachronism, an atavism. The doorframe strains. What was the purpose of evolving men out of monstrosities, if men were merely going to turn themselves into monstrosities again?
Fierce pressure against wall. Creaks within the structure.
The Eater says, There is no purpose. There is no pattern. Snaps teeth. Slips one arm into room. We chose this form at a time when it pleased us to choose it. Should we sit and sing? Should we play with flowers? Should we do the Five Rites? We have our own ways. We are part of the texture of things. And crashes through the door, ripping half the wall away.
The vast mouth opens. The ferocious teeth sparkle. Clay, who has eyed a small hatch in the corner of the room opposite the door during his colloquy with the monster, rushes to it now, finds that it opens, and, in great relief, hurries through it, escaping. The Eater’s roars resound as Clay retreats. He finds himself now in some kind of service core, dark, musty, a series of spiraling passages constituting a baffling maze. His eyes grow accustomed to his new surroundings in time. Animals of a hundred kinds live in these galleries. He does not comprehend the ecology: on what do the herbivores feed? Futile to seek logic here. And through the corridors move Eaters, at least a dozen of them, gathering the harvest. Each has its own territory. There are no trespasses. They hunt constantly, and can never find sufficient meat. Clay learns to detect them, snorting and clattering, long before he comes close, and thus he avoids any danger. Can he find his way back to the door that has been left open for him? Can he return safely to the part of the tunnel-world that the robots maintain?
He wanders eternally in the interlocking corridors. Hair sprouts on his body again. For the first time since he gave his hunger to Hanmer, he feels a faint but definite need of food. He experiences thirst. It bothers him to be naked. He swallows too much dust. Seeking to avoid Eaters, he fails to notice small carnivores, and several times is nipped on the heels and calves. Each passage feeds into another, but he gets no nearer to familiar territory. Despair engulfs him. He will wander in this underworld forever. Or, if he does succeed in regaining the surface, he will find himself merely in that same desert of hallucinations where his guide the spheroid abandoned him. The encounter with the Eater has darkened his spirit. He is oppressed by the notion of such a beast as a descendant.