OZYMANDIAS

Terry Carr

They came up out of the groundstars howling and leaping, laughing and pushing, singing into the night a strange, tuneless, polyphonal chant. They proceeded past the markers and twice around them, still giggling and chanting, and spread out in a wavering line that went up the hill like a snake. It took them ten minutes to go from the markers to the boundary, a distance of no more than fifty paces for a walker—but these were not walkers, they were robbers, and they had the laws to follow.

Sooleyrah was in the lead, because he was the best dancer among them—the most graceful and quick and, even more important, the most inventive. No approach to the vaults could be made in just the same way any had been made before, and if the watcher, who was always second in line, noticed a pattern developing that he thought he might have seen before, it was his job to trip the leader, or shove him, or kick him, or whatever was necessary to shake him into a new rhythm or direction. On those raids when the leader invented enough new variations, and the watcher made sure there were no repeats from the past, then they had a successful raid. When leader and watcher failed, there were explosions, blindings, gases, and sometimes the sound-without-sound, and then there was death.

But Sooleyrah was in good form tonight, and even Kreech, who was watcher, had to admit that.

"Go good," he chanted. "Go good, good, good, go good." Then he tripped Sooleyrah, but only for the fun of it, and danced in a circle till the leader bounded up and continued.

"Watchers got easy, yeah easy," Sooleyrah sang. "Easy trip leader, no reason; damn no reason." He did a double-back step, and whirled, his flying foot narrowly missing Kreech's mouth.

"Reason next time," he sang, and laughed.

Behind him, Kreech did the whirling step, just missing the next in line, and he too laughed; then the third man followed it, and the kick and laugh traveled back down the hill, undulating in the darkness. Sooleyrah, slim and graceful and dark-bearded, did a slide, three jumps, then rolled on the ground, leading always upward, toward the vaults. They stood black and distant against the night sky at hillcrest, jagged storehouses of darkness.

"Don't matter anyway," Kreech told him. "Don't matter, Sooleyrah, don't leader matter. Go good, go bad, no difference." He rolled, following Sooleyrah up the hill, and the small bells he carried in his tattered shirt pocket tinkled dully. "You heard he said, don't matter."

"Hell damn, yeah," Sooleyrah sang. "Damn yeah, damn fat boy, damn he knows." He paused, straining on tiptoes to look back down the line. The fat boy was only a little way behind them, puffing and gasping already as he tried to follow the upward dance; he wasn't accustomed to it, as anyone could see. His gray-washed tunic was splotching dark with sweat; his hair, cut short at ear-length, fell in sweat-strings down his forehead.

Kreech paused, turned, looked back, and so did the next man, and the next, and so on until the one in front of the fat boy turned suddenly to stare at him; and the fat boy yipped, startled, then caught on to it and turned to look back himself.

Sooleyrah laughed again, and returned to his dance. "Damn fat boy no good anyway," he sang. "No good, know nothing, no good, know nothing."

"Hell damn yourself," Kreech said. "Damn fat boy almost a thinker. Damn almost."

Sooleyrah snorted, and did a particularly difficult series of jump-steps deliberately for the confounding of the almost-thinker back down the line. "Damn-almost as good as nowhere, nowhere," he sang. "That's thinkers now anyway, nowhere, nowhere. Nowhere."

"Except fat boy," Kreech said.

"Hell fat boy," Sooleyrah said, lapsing from song in his disgust. "Fat boy don't know, but you know, I know. Vaults still there—there!"—he pointed up the hill, still dancing—"so what's fat boy know? So we dance, we sing, careful, damn careful."

They were halfway up the hill now, the luminescent groundstars merging into a bright mist spread over the valley below, where only occasional widely spaced bones of buildings thrust up into the open night air. The rest of the valley, all the way to the mountains, was groundstars from here.

Above them, up the hill, blackness grew and deepened with each step, and the massive vaults loomed black against the weak, scattered light of the skystars. The vaults covered the crown of the hill, most of them broken or crumbled or even exploded by now—the result of centuries of raids by the valley robbers. Those that still stood were all empty inside, or so the thinkers had said, but Sooleyrah didn't believe them. There were always more vaults to open—always had been, always would be. Hell damn foolishness to say there weren't, or wouldn't be.

If the vaults all became empty, there would be no toys, no starboxes, no tools to replace those worn and broken or maybe thrown away dull, and no samesongs or pictures or any of the other things that had been stored there for the valley people. Which was ridiculous, and unthinkable, and Sooleyrah wouldn't think it.

So he danced on upward, darting to right and left, rolling and tumbling, laughing into the empty air, while behind him, one by one, the others pointed after him to the vaults, and danced and tumbled, and echoes of his laugh faded back down the line.

 

Lasten, the fat boy, was frightened. He had never been on a raid before, had never been trained for it. He knew he would make some disastrous mistake at any moment, and then the others would turn on him. Or, if they did get to the vaults without trouble, it would be a night for the Immortals.

Probably gas or the sound-without-sound, he thought. Not so afraid of a blinding—least you can get back down the hill from that. But it be something killing for me, yeah.

Well, he was lucky to be alive anyway: all the other thinkers had been killed the night before. Massacred by the robbers—just lined up in the hub-square and stoned to death. Oh, the screaming and panic, the ones who tried to run with their ankles hobbled, the manic singing and shouting of the robbers—Lasten shuddered, hating himself for his cowardice, hating the way he had hidden in an unused basement where groundstars were so thick they made a shimmering fog. Hiding, he had heard all of it anyway, had even seen some of the worst scenes, the most vivid ones; they'd invaded his mind in waves of terror from the thinkers or, sometimes, exultation and a kind of crazed kill-frenzy from the robbers. For Lasten, the fat boy, was a weird, one of the 10% of human mutations that managed to live in each generation.

Some were born with extra toes, or no feet at all; these were the common ones, the ones who lived as easily as anyone else, accepting tithes from the market thieves as they rocked back and forth in the dirt and listened for rumors to sell. Others were born already dead or dying, with jellied skulls or tiny hearts unable to support life. And a few, a very few, had extra things that no one else had: not just extra hands or grotesquely oversized private parts (like Kreech, like Kreech), but talents. Lasten's father, for instance, had had a talent for numbers; he could remember how many seasons ago a thing had happened, or how often it had happened during his lifetime, or even put numbers together in his head to make new numbers. And Sooleyrah claimed he had a place somewhere in his head where everything was always level, and that was why he was such a good dancer.

Lasten could hear people's minds. Not their thoughts, for people don't have thoughts inside; Lasten heard emotions and mind-pictures, whatever was strongest in the consciousness of those around him. Red hate, boiling and exploding; sometimes pure fear, blue-white, rigid; sex fantasies that echoed disturbingly in Lasten's own mind. They came at him unbidden; he couldn't shut them out when they were really strong, as they had been last night. Blood, blood on the ground, dark blood spurting from crushed skulls, a trail of red where one man had tried to drag his battered body away to safety. And screaming: Lasten had heard the screams of both the killers and the dying, and had found himself, when it was over, huddled in a corner and still screaming himself, his throat hoarse and ragged. He was crying, and he had emptied his stomach and his bowels simultaneously, helpless to stop either.

And it had all been unnecessary, because they wouldn't have killed him anyway. He wasn't yet a thinker.

Yeah, only thinkers got the death, only official thinkers. Dumb robbers don't know I'm a thinker too, just not entered yet. Dumb robbers don't know hell damn thing.

Lasten tripped over his feet trying to accomplish a whirling jump-step; he fell gasping to the ground, and for a second he thought he'd lie there, let the line pass him while he caught his breath. But the next in line kicked him sharply, kicked him again and again, and Lasten moaned and struggled to his feet. He ran weakly to catch up to the line ahead, sweating and whimpering. He knew he'd never get back alive from this raid. Probably none of them would.

Should try to get away, roll out into the dark where they can't see, maybe they'd go right on by. Couldn't stop to look for me, no; rest of the line has to keep up or the approach goes bad, sure it does. Damn dumb robbers.

But he didn't have the quickness to get out of sight before they'd catch him and drag him back into line, and he knew it. Yeah, damn dumb robbers were going to get themselves killed, blown up, burned—and fat boy thinker Lasten was going to get killed with them, because he couldn't get away.

"Fat boy fell down," Kreech laughed, stepping high behind Sooleyrah's had. "Daipell kicked him, kicked him, kicked him, fat boy got up."

Sooleyrah paused, looked angrily back down the hill. The fat boy was back in line now, clumsily following the steps. Sooleyrah could hardly see him now, they had progressed so far up into the skystar darkness; but the fat boy's size stood out against the brightness of the valley groundstars below.

"Fat boy messes up my approach, I'll kill him, smash him with rocks, rocks," Sooleyrah chanted. "Yeah, like the rest, make him a thinker too. No good, any thinker." Abruptly he whirled, and did an easy dance-skip straight up the hill. Kreech immediately followed him.

"Told you leave him back, leave him back," Kreech sang. "No good dancer yeah you're right, damn right. No good for the rest."

"Fat boy dances right or I damn smash him with rocks," Sooleyrah said.

"We don't smash nobody if we're dead too. No good dancer, no good approach, no good at the vaults. Get ourselves dead, because of fat boy."

Sooleyrah slowed his dancing even more than he already had. He did a waddle-step, then giggled and broke into a tension-high laugh. "Go slow, go easy for fat boy. Go easy so he can follow, so we get into vaults right, no killing tonight. Waddle waddle, kind of dance fat boy does all the time anyway." He giggled again. "Make sure no killing at vaults, show damn almost-thinker vaults still there. Yeah, let him see for himself, no different from always, always . . ."

Kreech leaped forward quickly and tripped him. Their feet tangled together and they both fell, Sooleyrah's lean form sprawling loosely, Kreech's bulkier body hitting the sparse grass heavily. Sooleyrah rolled over quickly and was on his feet almost immediately. Kreech grunted and bounded up too.

"Go bad there," he sang. "Too much the same, go bad, go lousy. Got to go good, Sooleyrah, go good, go good."

The next man in line caught up to them, and he deftly tripped Kreech and fell to the ground beside him, following the lead. Sooleyrah whooped his laughter, whirled and danced on up the hill.

"Yeah, go good tonight," he sang. "Just let fat boy thinker see, yeah, then tomorrow we smash him, damn yeah."

 

And it was all so useless, so senseless. Lasten puffed and sweated trying to follow the lead of the man ahead of him in the line, trying to duplicate each movement, each step, every twist or hop or gesture; that was the rule when the robbers went up to the vaults, and if you didn't follow it they might stop long enough to kill you. Senselessly, uselessly.

Because it didn't matter. The whole ritual of the dance-approach, the singsong chanting, the leader and the watcher . . .all unnecessary. The robbers thought they were conquering taboos by the skill of their dancing whenever they made a successful approach to the vaults, and they thought they'd failed when instead they encountered the vault-fires, the blindings, the deaths . . .but fat boy Lasten who had been trained as a thinker knew better.

Damn yeah, know better than dumb robbers.

The robbers could have walked straight up the hill to the vaults, no wandering snakelike line, no jumping and dancing, no chanting. They could have approached any of the vaults, and they would have gotten in without incident . . .or else they would have been gassed or blinded or killed. Sometimes a raid would get through the Immortals' defenses, and sometimes it would mean danger and death, but it had nothing to do with the dance or the rituals.

Yeah, dance it right and you get in, or dance it wrong and you get killed. Stupid, stupid.

Lasten's people had been thinkers, the ones who kept the old knowledge . . .or what remained of it. They knew that the vaults were guarded not by curses or demons, nor by strange magic laws that judged and recorded the dance steps of generations of ignorant vault robbers. No, these vaults had been protected by the Immortals in ways even the thinkers no longer knew . . .but it was not magic. There were hidden eyes surrounding each vault, and they defended against invasion with a variety of weapons. Gas was one, explosions were another; that was plain enough. The sound-without-sound was not so simple, nor the blinding lights, but they were all the same, only defenses left to guard the vaults.

The world that had created those vaults was gone, destroyed in bombings and explosions and gases so powerful they had killed most of the Immortals. They screamed and died, screamed and died, until only a handful were left, grubbing among the ruins, their women bearing strange children, and all of them dazzled by the groundstars that filled the low places everywhere.

Each spring now, as soon as the thaw was complete, the people of the valley held memorial for the past and the thinkers told the story.

The man ahead of Lasten was waddling now, laughing as he glanced back to see the fat boy follow the lead. Lasten cursed in ragged gasps, but he waddled after him as the man leaped forward to trip the dancer in front of him. The two of them fell sprawling to the ground, and giggled and laughed as they rose.

"Hey yeah, fat boy," the dancer ahead of him sang, "come get me, fat boy, your turn to trip ole Sharksey," and he danced in a circle, waiting, giggling, challenging.

Lasten sucked harsh air into his lungs, gathered what strength he had and ran forward to swing a leg and trip the man. But his aim was short; he felt himself falling, off balance, saw Sharksey's face suddenly angry, and then he was on the ground gasping weakly, and Sharksey muttered "Sisterson!" and leaped upon him.

The man's weight was not great, but the impact knocked the rest of Lasten's wind out of him. He moaned weakly, hardly feeling the elbows Sharksey was wielding freely as he rolled off him and got to his feet. "Damn lousy fat Lasten, should've been made a thinker so you'd be killed too. No good dancer, damn no good. Get us all killed, yeah, only maybe we kill you, kill Lasten, hey kill fat boy, yeah? Yeah? Unless you get up, fat boy, up right now, right now!"

And Lasten struggled to his feet while Sharksey continued to dance around him cursing and threatening. He stood up shuddering, and Sharksey sang, "Okay, dance it right, dance right . . .oh yeah, or we kill you, Lasten, and you know it, you know it, don't you?" He laughed, whirled and danced on upward to follow the others.

Lasten watched him go, seeing him through a red mist like crimson groundstars swarming around his head. In his mind he still felt the throbbing hatred, the promise of death that was more than just promise; Sharksey really wanted to kill him. He gasped in air, and the mist began to dissipate—and suddenly his legs were cut from beneath him as the next dancer in line leaped forward to trip him in his turn. Again he was on the ground, but this time, driven by fear of the anticipation he'd felt from Sharksey's mind, he got up quickly and danced, or lurched, or shambled, step by step up the hill after the line.

No more mistakes for Lasten, no, he told himself. Dancing don't matter to the Immortals, but it does to the filthy robbers, murdering robbers, and they'll really kill you, won't make no difference why you die.

But damn them, damn them forcing me here when I've told them the vaults are empty.

 

Sooleyrah had reached the gates now. There had once been a strong wall here, he'd heard that, but it was virtually demolished by generations of robbers who had torn it down barehanded, stone by stone, and the stones were littered all around, some scattered back down the hill where they'd rolled or been thrown. Fifteen or twenty yards to the right was a pit where once a bad dancer had caused an explosion. Of the wall only the gates remained, twin steel markers pitted and rust-flaking with age. Night moss had crept up the sides of the gates, half covering them with dark green fur. Overhead the cold skystars hung silently.

"Okay, we go in," Sooleyrah chanted. "We go in, go in—hey we go in now!" and he danced forward, through the gates as quickly as he could (many robbers had been killed there, though none within Sooleyrah's memory), and on the other side, the inside, he paused and did shuffle-steps, humming a high keening song while Kreech and one, two, three more followed him through.

"Now we're in," he said softly to Kreech, and they turned to survey the vaults. Behind them more of the line danced through the gates, slowed and finally stopped like Sooleyrah and Kreech, panting, staring around them at the vaults.

"Which one?" Kreech asked. "You been here three, four times in a row now, so which one we go into?"

Sooleyrah's eyes narrowed as he studied the vaults. They crowned the entire hilltop, vaults of many sizes and shapes, some tall, like obelisks, others domelike, still others jointed with odd angles and designs. Sooleyrah had always been afraid of the vaults—for their size alone, even if they hadn't been so dangerous. They towered into the sky above; and when the robbers entered those doorways the arches stretched far overhead to encompass echoing empty darkness.

"Starboxes are kept in the vaults for us, no other reason, yeah?" he said to Kreech. "And samesongs, and tools; some toys maybe too, lots of shapes, yeah? Plug 'em into the starboxes and yeah, they work, they work. Now why unless they're for us? Who else, Kreech, who else?"

"Nobody," Kreech said. "Nobody but us to take 'em."

"Yeah, yeah, nobody," Sooleyrah said, turning slowly in the night, in the poised silence of the hilltop and the looming vaults. He looked back down the hill and saw the rest of the line coming through the gates, and the gates themselves now seemed to lead out, to lead downward, back to the brightness of the groundstars. He saw Lasten come panting and shuffling through, and suddenly he grinned.

"Hey, fat boy Lasten can pick us a vault. Almost-thinker says they're all empty, hell he knows. Remember what the rest said? Rest of the thinkers? Said they could remember which vaults were used up, remember how many vaults there were, and all empty now. You remember? Yeah? Damn dumb thinkers been fooling us for hey long time. Send us up here instead of them, make us take the chances, oh yeah, they just tell us which vaults to go to. Oh sure, oh yeah, smart old thinkers, and every one dead now, about time."

Kreech kicked over a loosely planted stone; underneath it were faintly glowing crawling things that scurried in small circles and quickly burrowed into the ground, hiding.

"Yeah, always hated the thinkers," Kreech said. "Always knew they were liars—well, didn't all of us? Hey yeah, good, get Lasten up here and make him pick out our vault tonight."

"Yeah okay, pass the word back," Sooleyrah said, then turned his back to the line and stared again at the vaults. But almost immediately he had another thought; he said to Kreech, "Lasten picks our vault, and he's first one to go in tonight. First one. Place of honor, yeah?" He laughed.

"First one in gets killed if the approach wasn't good," Kreech said. "Oh yeah, place of honor."

"Fat boy needs it," Sooleyrah said. "Bring him here."

 

Lasten's fear sharpened when they came for him. Why did they want him now, when they were through the gates and at the portals of the vaults themselves? Surely they wouldn't kill him now, up here on the silent hilltop. What reason, what reason? (Unless they were going back to human sacrifice in front of the vaults. No.)

But the flickering impressions that reached him from Sooleyrah's mind, when he was brought to the leader, had nothing of murder in them. There was hatred, yes, and the soft spongy feel of gloating. But not murder, no, nothing overt.

"Hey Lasten, you almost a thinker, yeah?" Sooleyrah said, and his voice was so quiet, almost friendly. But not his mind.

"I wasn't entered," Lasten said cautiously.

"Yeah, we know. Okay, but you know a lot of stuff, yeah? Know a lot about vaults, which ones are dangerous, which ones maybe empty, we hear. Now, not all of 'em empty, Lasten, not all of 'em. You almost a thinker, you not dumb, yeah?"

"The thinkers told you they were all empty," Lasten said, "so you killed the thinkers. Now if I still say that, you'll kill me."

Sooleyrah smiled widely, glancing at Kreech. "No, no, Lasten, you not dumb. Okay, now what vault do we go to tonight?"

A chill scurried up Lasten's back, touching the nape of his neck spider-softly.

"You want me to pick the vault?" he asked. "Why me? Why, Sooleyrah?"

Sooleyrah laughed, enjoying himself. "Hell damn I know what vault to pick. Thinkers always do that, always. So no more thinkers, but we got you Lasten. So you pick."

So I pick—and if the vault is empty, it's my fault, not Sooleyrah's. Sooley rah maybe not so sure about the vaults after all, eh?

"You scared to pick one yourself, Sooleyrah? Scared you can't find a vault with your pretty things? Yeah, you're scared, scared."

But he shouldn't have said that. Sooleyrah leaped forward and grasped Lasten's arm, painfully squeezing the soft flesh, twisting the arm behind him. Lasten cried out in pain, and bent over trying to escape the pressure. Sooleyrah jammed his arm up against his shoulder blades.

"Not scared, fat boy; not scared, just smart. Thinkers knew about vaults, they taught you, yeah? Sure, Lasten, sure, we know. Then thinkers said all vaults empty, no use making raids any more, yeah? Yeah? Well, maybe thinkers got something up here they don't want found, eh? Robbers not so dumb, Lasten, and Sooleyrah not dumb either. You pick vault, you, and it better not be empty!"

Or they'll stone me right here, Lasten thought, seeing that as a bright certainty in Sooleyrah's mind. Only way Sooleyrah could make up for leading a failure raid. Yeah, and the robbers would love another stoning, especially up here where the magic is. Magic and death, oh yeah, they'll love it.

"And you go into vault first, Lasten," Kreech told him with happy malice. "Sure, you, Lasten, place of honor for you."

Place of death, Lasten thought. Oh, you dumb damn robbers, lousy murdering superstitious—

"Which one, Lasten?" Sooleyrah said, applying pressure to his arm. "Which one?"

And Lasten, the almost-thinker, suddenly laughed.

"Yeah, okay," he said, and giggled again, a giggle just like Sooleyrah's or Kreech's, only higher pitched, thinner. "Okay, yeah, okay, okay . . ."

Sooleyrah let go of his arm, stepping back. "You take us to an empty vault, you won't be laughing," he warned.

"Yeah, oh yeah, I know," Lasten said, managing to stop his giggling. It wasn't that funny, after all; in fact, probably it wasn't funny at all.

"That one," he said, pointing to the vault nearest to them. "We go there."

Sooleyrah and Kreech both stared. "That one? Fat boy, you crazy? Nothing in that vault, nothing there since before you or me born!"

"Hey, yeah," Kreech said. "First vault ever emptied was that one, that one right there, don't you know that?"

"Sure, I know, sure. But that's the one we go to tonight. And you look close, robber leader and watcher, you look close and you'll see vault's not empty. You want more pretty stuff stored in vaults, you just look close tonight!"

He began to walk confidently toward the nearest vault, while behind him Sooleyrah and Kreech looked angry, then uneasy, and finally they turned and motioned the rest of the party to follow them as they moved after Lasten.

Sure, damn robbers emptied this vault first thing, Lasten was thinking. Been in this one so often you can't count, clearing it out, every piece they could find, everything the Immortals stored here. Only that just means it's a safe vault, all the defenses used up or burned out so long ago. Nothing here to blind me, burn me, kill me. Safe vault, yeah . . .but maybe not so empty as they think.

The door to the vault gaped open, leading into blackness. Lasten called for torches, and two of the robbers came forward and lit them. "Okay, now we go in," Lasten said, and sullenly the torchbearers followed him through the wide doorway, Sooleyrah and Kreech right behind them.

Inside was a high-ceilinged room littered with dust and stones and broken pieces of once-complete artifacts; one wall of the room was dark and misshapen, its plastoid seared by some long-forgotten fire-explosion. A hole in the ceiling, so far above them it was barely discernible in the flickering torchlight, showed where once there had been lighting fixtures, long since ripped out by the robbers. The sounds of footsteps were flat and harsh in the bare room, and the faint smell of old torchsmoke seemed to come from the shadows. Sooleyrah moved closer to Lasten, saying with dangerous softness, "Don't see nothing in here, thinker."

Lasten nodded, looking carefully around the vault.

"You see anything in here, Kreech? Looks empty to me, just empty as damn, yeah?"

Kreech grinned. "Oh no, not empty. Can't be; fat thinker brought us here. That right, fat thinker? Something hidden in here?"

Lasten got down on hands and knees in the middle of the floor, picking through the rubble. Here and there he brushed aside dust and stones to look closely at the floor.

"Yeah hey, he got something hidden all right," Sooleyrah said. "Hey, move in with the torches there, move closer." The torchbearers edged suspiciously forward; Sooleyrah grabbed one, swung him around and placed him where he wanted him, standing right over Lasten. "You too," he told the other man, and that one too held his torch close over the fat boy.

Lasten giggled.

"You find it, hey?" Sooleyrah said. "What is it, fat boy? Better be good and you know it, now don't you? What is it?"

Lasten knew Sooleyrah and the others were more frightened than they acted. The robbers had always been afraid of these vaults, no matter how often they'd pillaged them, and despite the lower and lower frequency of maimings or killings by the defense systems. Robbers think this is all demon-stuff, something like that. Hell, no demons, not even lousy magic. Just stuff we forgot, even the thinkers forgot.

But yeah, I know one more thing about vaults that Sooleyrah don't know.

Lasten rose to his feet, puffing, then looked around and picked out the south wall. In the center of it was a metal plaque with writing on it—devil marks, the robbers called it: another kind of magic to fear.

Lasten couldn't read it, but he knew what it must be. He motioned Sooleyrah over to him and pointed at the plaque. "Take that off the wall," he said.

Sooleyrah stared at him; so did Kreech, and so did the rest, the torch-bearers and the ones crowded around the doorway.

"Take it off the wall!" Lasten said sharply, a little shrilly. "Pry it, use your knives—but be careful."

Sooleyrah hesitated only a moment more; then he turned and picked out one of the men in the doorway. "Takker—you. Bring your knife, do what thinker says. Rest of you, you keep door blocked so thinker can't run out."

Takker came into the vault reluctantly, drawing his knife. It was crude but strong; once it had been just a slim bar of metal, but Takker had filed it sharp. He worked the edge under the plaque and pried; the plaque began to loosen.

"Secret place in there?" Sooleyrah asked, and Lasten didn't have to feel the suppressed fear from his mind; it was apparent in his voice.

"Yeah, secret place," he said. "Surprise for you."

The plaque came off and dropped to the floor with a sharp metallic ring. Lasten stepped forward, motioned for the light and looked into the small hole opened in the wall.

There was a round dial, with markings and writing—the short writing they'd used for numbers. A time-lock, set for sometime in the future, after the wars. But the time could be changed, no reason it couldn't be changed.

Lasten twisted the dial, heard its faint scraping clearly in the suddenly silent vault. Turn, turn, and seasons flowed by, more and more time was marked off. Years, years. He kept turning the dial, waiting for the time-lock to release. (Maybe he was turning it the wrong direction? But no; it wouldn't turn at all the other way.)

All around him he tasted fear. He stood in semidarkness as the torch-bearers edged away; shadows sprang up to claim more of the vault. Even Sooleyrah and Kreech had moved away, toward the door.

Then the floor of the vault began to rise.

There was a section of the flooring, twice as long as the height of a man and half as wide, that was separate from the rest; Lasten had searched for and found the edges of that section when he'd been on hands and knees earlier. Now the section was rising out of the floor, accompanied by a low subterranean hum of machinery. It was a block of heavy plastoid, and as Lasten and the others stared in wonder and terror it raised itself steadily to a height almost up to their shoulders.

It was a compartment, transparent-sided; inside it lay the body of an Immortal—or a demon, a god, a monster. He was huge, twice the size of Lasten or Sooleyrah or any of the rest of them; they could see that even while he was lying down, in the moving shadows of torchlight.

The mechanisms of the compartment were whirring to life; Lasten saw the top of the case lifting off, smelled stale air as it was released from the case, saw a needle-thin marker on the side of the compartment leap to the end of its dial, and at the same time the giant's body convulsed, back arching, muscles quivering. It settled back, but again the dial-marker leaped, and the huge body with it.

This time there came a moan, low and weak, and the monster's head rolled onto its side. Its mouth was open, slack; the eyes fluttered; the hands shook and moved.

Needles and tubes withdrew from the body, sinking back into their seats within the case. The dials settled to rest.

The Immortal's eyes opened and stared emptily at them.

Hell hell hell hell hell big monstrous inhuman devil hell hell kill us all kill us no no!

The eyes opened wider, and the creature moaned again, louder now. It was a deep growl, half-choked, and it echoed from the walls.

Hate us hate us all kill us kill me me me me no!

And the giant tried to sit up.

Its hands scratched at the sides of the case, lacking coordination, lacking strength. The creature grunted and fell back; it breathed in pain-wracked gobbets of air, making harsh gasping sounds deep in its throat.

Kreech screamed. He threw himself at the men standing frozen in the doorway and fought his way through them, still screaming. He sent others reeling backward as he burst through, and several followed him, adding their screams to his. Sooleyrah yelled after him, started to run too but hesitated.

Lasten stood rooted in fright, his whole being filled with terror, both from himself and from the flood of panic in the minds around him. Red, bursting fear, splashing white-hot into his stomach, his chest . . .

Kill me kill me kill me me me me kill—

The giant sat up, and it was monstrous. Twice the height of a man, it swayed and moaned above them in the dark vault. Its fingers scrabbled spasmodically; it slipped back onto one elbow; its eyes rolled as it stared down at them. And it spoke.

"God . . .oh God . . .what are you? What are you?"

A weak, thin voice. Frightened.

"Help me . . .please, help—"

Suddenly it tumbled over, falling off the side of its mount, headfirst onto the floor at Lasten's feet. It crashed heavily and noisily, sending Lasten staggering back in fright. The monster writhed there on the floor, hands clutching air, legs jerking, spittle falling from its mouth. And then it slumped, and sobbed weakly, hopelessly. "Oh God, please . . ."

Kill me kill me me me kill kill and Lasten suddenly had a large stone in his hands and he ran forward and brought it down with all his strength on the monster's face. It smashed in one eye, a side of the head, and thin red blood spurted. The giant thrashed about wildly, arms flung up and feet kicking spasmodically, and faint little sobs came from its gaping mouth. Lasten hit it again, and again, and again, and he was screaming now, screaming to drown out the cries of the monster, and he hit it again, and again, and harder . . .

And at last there were only his own screams in the vault. The monster, the Immortal, the inhuman giant lay silent and destroyed at his feet. Sooleyrah and the rest had fled. Lasten choked off his cries and dropped the slippery red stone. He fell against the case, hardly noticing the blood that covered his legs and hands.

I'm alive I'm alive, alive . . .I'm alive . . .

 

It was more than an hour later when Sooleyrah and Kreech crept back up to the vault. There had been silence for all that time, and the monster had not come out after them.

Kreech carried a torch; he thrust it before him through the doorway. He saw the demon-monster, and he recoiled; but then he realized that it lay completely still and there was blood all around its smashed head.

Sooleyrah pushed past him and entered the vault. He saw Lasten standing beside the monster's case, a dark stone in his hands. Lasten brought the stone down once, twice, and the molding broke; pieces showered to his blood-caked feet. He reached into the recesses of the case, yanked, and brought forth a handful of wires, red, yellow, blue, green.

He looked up and saw Sooleyrah, and smiled.

And giggled.

And said, "Come on, Sooleyrah. Come on, little dancer leader. No demon left to hurt you now, oh no, no demon, no monster. Devil scared you? But I killed him—me. Don't be scared, dancer, don't be scared; come inside. Plenty of stuff here, oh plenty. And in other vaults too."

He held up the fistful of many-colored wires.

"Pretty?"

Afterword

I'm strictly a spare-time writer these days, and not at all a prolific one; I write a couple of short stories a year, that's all. Not much of an output, but it does give me one advantage: before I actually sit down to write a story, I've usually been mulling it over in my head for months or sometimes years, with the result that my original story idea may have been carried much further out than I'd expected, and a lot of undertones may have crept into the story.

"Ozymandias" happened like that. Originally it was just a notion that came when I'd been reading about cryogenics: Where would they store all the bodies? Maintenance would be prohibitive over the long haul, unless it were automated. And if it were automated, then you'd have a self-contained unit, a modern tomb sufficient unto itself, a scientific version of the elaborate tombs of ancient Egypt.

Well, why not? Those Egyptian tombs were designed to insure the immortality of pharaohs, nobles and anyone else with enough money and power; today the criteria are the same, and so is the purpose. So . . .put a bunch of cryogenics tombs together and you've got a new Valley of the Kings.

It was an eerie image, and I carried it around in the back of my head for several months. Then an apparently different story idea came to me: Cryogenics is, in a sense, a method of time travel, so mightn't it one day come to be used specifically for that purpose? Rich men and women shut themselves in their tombs and set the mechanism to awaken them in time for, say, the turn of the millennium, or a century later, and another century, traveling forward in these time-leaps.

But if the future of the world should turn out to be as grim as some trends are warning us, then those cryogenic time-tombs could be used not just to travel forward but to escape from something—armageddon, maybe. For the rich, even an atomic war might be just something else to sleep through.

And there I had another analogy to the tomb: a retreat designed to carry a person through death for a reawakening on the other side. And I was back again in the Valley of the Kings, for now it was even reasonable to assume that these people might store in their tombs quantities of tools, weapons, power sources, food . . .whatever they felt they might need on the other side of the catastrophe. Like the pharaohs, who stored food, possessions and wealth for use in the afterlife.

For the pharaohs this inevitably meant that their tombs would be violated by tomb-robbers, because it's the way of the world that those who need will take from those who have, if they can. And after an atomic war, anyone left alive would probably be very desperately in need, so those cryogenic tombs would become natural prey for robbers, or scavengers.

That was the background I had in mind when I began to put the actual story together; the rest is elaboration in terms of story, character, imagery and even symbolism. The symbolism, frankly, just happened as the story took form; it was an unconscious thing on my part, and I was surprised when I read over the final manuscript to see how many details had a little touch of extra referents . . .nothing major, nothing crucial to the story, but they're there if you have that turn of mind.

I'd almost finished the story before I realized that it should be titled "Ozymandias." This story is a comment on modern achievements in much the same way that Shelley's poem was a refutation of the vainglorious boasts of pharaohs: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

This time a new Ozymandias awakes to look on his own works, but the reaction is the same.