He expected to confront danger. He was not surprised nor, oddly enough, alarmed when things moved out of the gloom to intercept him. They came with a steady purpose to match his. And, without his willing it, his sword raised waist high, point outward. The force in it grew so strong that it jerked and quivered, so that the only way Ayyar could continue to hold it was to turn that movement into a swing, right and left.
They were armed, those thundering, stalking machines. There were beams that bit into the walls where they chanced to touch; there were other energies. But that waving, dancing sword set up a barrier of its own force to stop, to suck, to feed—for feed it did, and the backlash of that feeding was in Ayyar. Once he had been man, then Ift; now, thought a small part of him, he was a vessel of energy, alien to the place in which he walked in that he could draw upon the Enemy’s strength to give fuel to his own.
The machines continued to attack until the light from the sword touched them. There were blazes of shorting wires, the acrid smell of destruction. He pushed past them, stepped over them, to advance.
How many did he meet in that corridor? Ayyar did not count; there was no need. In him was only the compulsion to move ahead, seek that will which lay behind the machines, behind this plague spot that sickened Janus.
The passage ended, and he stood in a great chamber, near its roof, he thought, with dark below. He was on a platform from which descended a curling stairway. Down that the sword pointed, and he must go. This whole place was charged with force, and Ayyar wondered dimly if he would end as Man or Ift, burned out by the weapon he bore, which yet had not been used as it must be. Round and round the steps he went, down and down. Now his eyes were no longer dazzled by the raying, and he could see what lay below, built up against the walls, clicking, flickering with small lights, filling all the vast place with a moaning hum. Sections of it were dark, dead, perhaps long dead. But others were very much alive, with something inimical to all living flesh and blood. Naill-memory supplied an answer, for Ayyar memory had never seen machines mankind had built to supplement brain power. He was descending into the heart of the largest computer he had ever seen or dreamed might exist.
XVIII
“Computer!” Myrik’s voice rose above the hum that filled the place as the murmur of wind in leaves filled the Forest.
Ayyar faced the great banks of flashing lights. The sword and the power had led him here. But what weapon was it against this, no thing which could be put to rout by any attack that he knew. Unless—who had set this giant brain to running? He was the Enemy!
He began to run along the towering wall of machine, came to a corner to front another section at right angles, turned along that to face another, and eventually returned about the square to join the others by the stairway. There was no other exit from this chamber, nothing here but the machine—part of it running, part dark and dead. Baffled, Ayyar came to a halt, still unable to believe there was no Enemy to front.
“Computer”—Jarvas studied the walls—”and programmed.”
Myrik walked, not ran, along the same path Ayyar had taken, surveying closely each bank as he passed it.
“It is a computer, yes. But of no type I have ever seen—and it has been programmed, is in operation, part of it. Also, I think that it has once before been interrupted in the task set it. Come here—”
He motioned and they followed, almost timidly, to one of the dark sections. There he pointed to lines burned into the fabric of the machine. There was fusing, signs that repairs had been made—perhaps more successfully—in a neighboring section now working.
“Those machines Ayyar knocked out in the passages,” Myrik said, “were servos—for computer repairs. I would say they have been on duty here perhaps longer than we can guess.”
“Kymon!” Illylle’s voice shrilled. “Kymon was here! But a machine—why—?”
“It was intended”—Jarvas moved out into the open area in the center—”for some great and important task. And it is not Iftin. Once it was half destroyed; now it is partially at work again. And we have seen the results of that work. It was set a task, which it strives to carry out—”
“But who set it?” queried Illylle. “Who or what is That?”
Rizak had gone to the nearest wall and was watching the lights in motion there. “I think,” he said slowly, “that this is what we seek.”
“This is what I was sent to find!” Ayyar broke in, as sure of that now as if someone had spoken in his ear.
“I do not think it was ever programmed on Janus at all!” Jarvas added. “It is not Iftin in any part. And we cannot but believe that Ifts are truly native to this world; they are so one with its nature. Therefore, this is alien—”
Rizak laughed a little wildly. “Did it ever occur to you, brothers, that what we stand in now might be a part of a ship—a long planeted ship?”
“Ship?” echoed Kelemark. “This—this big? What kind of ship could be so large?”
It was Lokatath, perhaps because he had once been a garthman, who ventured to answer that.
“A colony ship?”
Jarvas turned sharply, but Rizak spoke first:
“Could just be! A ship, with a computer programmed for colonization duties, perhaps never meant for Janus at all, making a crack-up landing here. Then the computer taking up its duties—not properly, under the circumstances.”
Jarvas caught him up, speaking out of the knowledge of Pate Sissions, First-in Scout, one who had been the forerunner of such flights for those of his own species.
“Trying to alter the country to fit the needs of alien colonists. Ready to put down whatever would be inimical to settlement—”
“Such as the Iftin!” broke in Lokatath.
“And Kymon,” Illylle added quickly, “coming here, armed with power, perhaps doing this—” She pointed to the bands of ancient destruction. “Then it was repaired after a long time. But why would it come to life again now?”
“Perhaps it has been alive all the time,” Ayyar said, “but crippled, and it did not sense an enemy until the Ift changelings went abroad in the land. Why did it not rouse the colonists—or were they all killed in the crash?”
“The mirrors!” Illylle’s eyes widened. “The colonists are the people on the mirrors.”
“A reasonable assumption,” Kelemark agreed. “And now it will be my turn to guess. You were right, Jarvas, when you claimed there was much to be read in those companies at the foot of the false tree. I do not know why the Iftin were set up there—but the Larsh—they were not the beginning but the end!”
It would seem that Jarvas understood, for the one-time Scout nodded. “De-evolution, not evolution. The computer aroused some of the passengers, found that there was that on Janus it could not change, could not alter. Though I imagine that all the resources left it have been turned to that task ever since—”
“What are you talking about?” Lokatath demanded.
“The ones it aroused did not remain the same,” Jarvas explained. “They must have slipped back, generation by generation, from men—or what we may term ‘men’—into the less-than-men we remember as the Larsh. And finally the Larsh were thrown against us to free Janus from any interference while this machine labored to fashion a new world, one that would safely accommodate its burden. But it was crippled—perhaps actually by Kymon of the legend.”
He looked at the ancient sear marks. “We may never know whether those represent the coming of our folk hero or not. But the destruction was certainly deliberate, and it must have taken a long time to repair, even in part.”
“But it failed—that destruction—” Myrik mused.
“Because,” Rizak broke in, “it was wrought by an Ift, not one who knew the real meaning of this. He may have sprayed some energy back and forth, wrecking widely, but not to the roots—the heart of the machine.”
“But the Oath, what then was the Oath?” asked Illylle.
Jarvas shrugged. “What history does not take on embroidery when it becomes heroic legend? I do not think that Kymon, the Ift, could explain, even to himself, what he found here—if this is where he fronted That in all Its might. Now we must have an answer to something else—what do we do? Myrik, Rizak, what do we do?”
“We can cripple it as was done before. But again that might prove to be but temporary, if you reckon centuries as temporary. If this was programmed to do what we guess it was, then it has also been provided with safeguards and repairs. And we do not know what lies in all these burrows. No, we have to find the heart control, wherever that lies, and burn it out for all time!