The City of the Sun. Brian Stableford
say: “Suit up, Mariel.”
“Is that wise?” I asked.
“Mariel’s the best way we have of getting a lot of information fast,” he said. “I want to get on top of this one quickly—I want to know just what their attitudes are toward us, this parasite, and life in general.”
“They’ve only brought two spare mounts. Maybe they’ll hold us to two visitors.”
“In that case,” he said, “you stay.”
Mariel had paused to hear the beginning of the exchange, but now she set off for the lock to get a suit.
“Oh no,” I said. “This is my play as much as it is yours. Those parasites are my business...and I want to get a line on this just as much as you do. I’m coming in with you.”
He ducked the issue. “They probably brought two mounts because they’re expecting two of us,” he said. “You can ride with Mariel...you’re the only one of us who’s had practice riding all manner of weird creatures. You help her and I’ll manage on my own.”
He turned away as soon as he finished, not leaving me space to argue. I cursed silently and followed him, thinking: At least I get to see how you explain why we’re now all dressed up in plastic bags.
But I was wrong. He didn’t explain. He just stepped out of the lock and went to meet our silver-clad friend as if nothing could be more natural than wearing a plastic bag. I watched the dark man/woman’s eyes narrow slightly in surprise, but he/she made no reference to the matter. Politeness is a wonderful thing.
“You may come to the city,” he/she said. “The Ego will interrogate you. Then the Self will decide whether you are to stay.”
Then he/she saw Mariel coming out of the lock behind us.
His/her only comment was: “Two of you must ride together.”
The archers were waiting with the spare mounts at the same respectful distance they had maintained during our morning meeting. But now we could approach them. I set off with an eager stride, glancing up at the dark man/woman as I passed his/her placid beast. He/she looked back, his/her face quite impassive and his/her body apparently quite relaxed.
Nathan lagged a few paces behind and fell into step with Mariel.
I heard her say: “Nothing...I can’t read anything.”
“Stay with it,” he said. “Relax and take your time.”
Their voices sounded a little hoarse filtered through the vocal apparatus of the suits, which made whispering a little difficult.
My attention was fixed ahead, though. As I came closer to the naked archers I took a good long look at the way the parasite extended itself over the body. I also checked what I hadn’t been quite sure of earlier in the day—the absence of pubic hair. The hair was missing, of course...but it wasn’t all that was missing.
The archers were all of full adult size—five and a half to six feet tall. They had neither beards nor wrinkles, and it wasn’t easy to make a guess at their ages, but none of them were children. But the ones I could see, though definitely male, had sexual organs that were either undeveloped or vestigial. In brief, no balls.
I looked back over my shoulder at the man in the silver tunic. Man he was, I decided. The silvery voice which went with the clothes had simply never broken.
It was something I might have anticipated, at least as one of a number of possibilities, but somehow the thought just hadn’t crossed my mind. It came as a shock, now.
I arrived at the waiting mounts, and the archer passed the reins to me. I said “thanks” but he didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Now I was close, it struck me what a long way it was from the ground to the ridge of the shaggy back. There was no stirrup to help me up. I’d ridden a lot of animals in my time, including some extremely tall camels, but nothing as weird as this creature. And camels will bend down for you if you ask them nicely.
I passed one of the reins to Nathan and stood back, quite happy to let him take first crack at getting aboard. He’d done most things in his long and colorful life—maybe including riding camels—but when you do just about everything you don’t get much practice at anything in particular. I was wondering how he’d go about it.
I should have guessed.
“Give me a leg up, will you?” he said.
I sighed, and let him put his knee into the palm of my hand, then boosted him up. I did the same for Mariel. She took a handful of mane and offered her other hand to me. Somehow, with that assistance, I contrived to end up on the beast’s back sitting just behind her. We’d never have managed it but for the perfect docility of the mounts themselves.
I watched Mariel part the mane with her gloved fingers to expose the tracing of black lines against the skin. They were very thin lines, with no gathering at any point into a considerable mass. But on the backs of the archers, I saw, from the base of the neck extending like the silhouette of a bird with wings spread wide, was a large expanse of parasite tissue...a kind of shallow hump.
I wondered, briefly, how a medium-sized creature like a man could support so much parasite, when a large creature like an ox could apparently support so little.
The leader walked his mount back to the group, passing between my beast and Nathan’s, and then going through the corridor opened up by the attendants. We followed him, the archers being left to bring up the rear.
“There’s something very odd about that man,” murmured Mariel, her voice blurring slightly because of the suit.
“Apart from his being a eunuch, you mean?”
She turned slightly, glancing over her shoulder at me. She hadn’t picked that up.
“He’s got a mind like a brick wall,” she said. “I can’t read him at all.”
“He hasn’t got what you might call an expressive face,” I agreed. “But give it time.”
“It’s more than that,” she insisted. “There are some people it’s difficult to read, sure. I have to be able to look at them for a while, or touch them. The talent isn’t like tuning in a radio to people’s thought waves. I’ve met blanks before...but this one is a sort of positive blank. No...that’s wrong...don’t for God’s sake start thinking about mind-shields and things like that. It isn’t that kind of thing at all.... Most of what I pick up, you see, is peripheral. It’s the fringes of what people say—the things they mutter under their breath, the commentary on their own actions, their unvoiced reactions to what they see and hear. But there seems to be nothing of that in his face. As if his mind were...still...completely settled...ordered.”
“I saw his eyes narrow,” I told her. “When he first saw you. Do you think he can sense your talent? Maybe he....”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. I think that it just didn’t fit in with his calculations—three people and two mounts. That’s what I’m trying to say about him. He calculates everything. Every move, every thought. It’s precise. No ragged edges for me to pick up on the borders of verbal communication.”
“Mechanical,” I said.
“If you like.”
“Like a robot.”
The mount was walking forward with precisely measured strides. I was just holding the rein limply. The beast knew where it was going. It knew what it was doing. It moved like a machine. A robot.
She couldn’t see my face, and there were two layers of plastic between us, but she knew me pretty well by now. She didn’t need all the frills to use her talent on me.
“Something’s frightened you,” she said.
“You’re dead right,” I told her. “I’m half inclined to duck out of this party right now. I’ve got a very nasty feeling.”
I