“And abandoned,” said Wilder.
“You make it sound like a plague drove them—”
“Not a plague.” Wilder stirred uneasily, feeling himself weighed on the great scale sunk beneath his feet. “Something. Something … “
“Let’s find out! In, all of you!”
Singly, and in pairs, the people from Earth stepped over the threshold.
Wilder, last of all, stepped across.
And the City came more alive.
The metal roofs of the City sprang wide like the petals of a flower.
Windows flicked wide like the lids of vast eyes to stare down upon them.
A river of sidewalks gently purled and washed at their feet, machined creekways which gleamed off through the City.
Aaronson gazed at the metal tides with pleasure. “Well, by God, the burden’s off me! I was going to picnic you all. But that’s the City’s business now. Meet you back here in two hours to compare notes! Here goes.”
And saying this he leapt out on the scurrying silver carpet that treaded him swiftly away.
Wilder, alarmed, moved to follow. But Aaronson cried jovially back:
“Come on in, the water’s fine!”
And the metal river whisked him, waving, off.
And one by one they stepped forward and the moving sidewalk drifted them away. Parkhill, the hunter, the poet and his wife, the actor, and then the beautiful woman and her maid, They floated like statues mysteriously borne on volcanic fluids that swept them anywhere, or nowhere, they could only guess.
Wilder jumped. The river seized his boots gently. Following, he went away into the avenues and around the bends of parks and through fiords of buildings.
And behind them, the dock and the gate stood empty. There was no trace to show they had arrived. It was almost as if they had never been.
Beaumont, the actor, was the first to leave the traveling pathway. A certain building caught his eye. And the next thing he knew, he had leapt off and edged near, sniffing.
He smiled.
For now he knew what kind of building he stood before because of the odor that drifted from it.
“Brass polish. And, by God, that means only one thing!”
Theater.
Brass doors, brass rails, brass rings on velvet curtains.
He opened the door of the building and stepped in. He sniffed and laughed aloud. Yes. Without a sign or a light, the smell alone, the special chemistry of metals and dust torn free of a million tickets.
And above all … he listened. The silence.
“The silence that waits. No other silence in the world waits. Only in a theater will you find that. The very particles of air chafe themselves in readiness. The shadows sit back and hold their breath. Well … ready or not … here I come … “
The lobby was green velvet undersea.
The theater itself: red velvet undersea, only dimly perceived as he opened the double doors. Somewhere beyond was a stage.
Something shuddered like a great beast. His breath had dreamt it alive. The air from his half-opened mouth caused the curtains one hundred feet away to softly furl and unfurl in darkness like all-covering wings.
Hesitantly, he took a step.
A light began to appear everywhere in a high ceiling where a school of miraculous prism fish swam upon themselves.
The oceanarium light played everywhere. He gasped.
The theater was full of people.
A thousand people sat motionless in the false dusk. True, they were small, fragile, rather dark, they wore silver masks, yet—people!
He knew, without asking, they had sat here for ten thousand years.
Yet they were not dead.
They were—he reached out a hand. He tapped the wrist of a man seated on the aisle.
The hand tinkled quietly.
He touched the shoulder of a woman. She chimed. Like a bell.
Yes, they had waited a few thousand years. But then, machines have a property of waiting.
He took a further step and froze.
For a sigh had passed over the crowd.
It was like the sound, the first small sound a newborn babe must make in the moment before it really sucks, bleats and shocks out its wailing surprise at being alive.
A thousand such sighs faded in the velvet portieres.
Beneath the masks, hadn’t a thousand mouths drifted ajar?
Two moved. He stopped.
Two thousand eyes blinked wide in the velvet dusk.
He moved again.
A thousand silent heads wheeled on their ancient but well-oiled cogs.
They looked at him.
An unquenchable cold ran wild in him.
He turned to run.
But their eyes would not let him go.
And from the orchestra pit: music.
He looked and saw, slowly rising, an insect agglomeration of instruments, all strange, all grotesquely acrobatic in their configurations. These were being softly thrummed, piped, touched, and massaged in tune.
The audience, with a motion, turned their gaze to the stage.
A light flashed on. The orchestra struck a grand fanfare chord.
The red curtains parted. A spotlight fixed itself to front center, blazing upon an empty dais where sat an empty chair.
Beaumont waited.
No actor appeared.
A stir. Several hands were lifted to left and right. The hands came together. They beat softly in applause.
Now the spotlight wandered off the stage, and up the aisle.
The heads of the audience turned to follow the empty ghost of light. The masks glinted softly. The eyes behind the masks beckoned with warm color.
Beaumont stepped back.
But the light came steadily. It painted the floor with a blunt cone of pure whiteness.
And stopped, nibbling, at his feet.
The audience, turned, applauded even louder now. The theater banged, roared, ricocheted with their ceaseless tide of approbation.
Everything dissolved within him, from cold to warm. He felt as if he had been thrust raw into a downpour of summer rain. The storm rinsed him with gratitude. His heart jumped in great compulsive beats. His fists let go of themselves.
His skeleton relaxed. He waited a moment longer, with the rain drenching over his upthrust and thankful cheeks and hammering his hungry eyelids so they fluttered to lock against themselves, and then he felt himself, like a ghost on battlements, led by a ghost light, lean, step, drift, move, down and along the incline, sliding to beautiful ruin, now no longer walking but striding, not striding but in full-tilted run, and the masks glittering, the eyes hot with delight and fantastic welcoming, the flights of hands on the disturbed air in upflung dove-winged rifle-shot flight. He felt the steps collide with his shoes. The applause slammed to a shutdown.
He swallowed. Then slowly he ascended the steps and stood in the full light with a thousand masks fixed to him and two thousand eyes watchful, and lie sat in the empty chair, and the theater grew darker, and the immense hearth-bellow breathing softer out of the lyre-metal throats, and there was only the sound of a mechanical beehive thrived with machinery-musk in the dark.
He held to his knees. He let go. And at last he spoke:
“To be or not to be—”
The silence was complete.
Not a cough. Not a stir. Not a rustle. Not a blink. All waited. Perfection. The perfect audience. Perfect, forever and forever. Perfect. Perfect.
He tossed his words slowly into that perfect pond and felt the soundless ripples disperse and gentle away.
“—that is the question.”
He talked. They listened. He knew that they would never let him go now. They would beat him insensible with applause. He would sleep) a child’s sleep arid rise to speak again. All of Shakespeare, all of Shaw, all of Moliere, every bit, crumb, lump, joint, and piece.Himselfin repertory!
He arose to finish.
Finished, he thought: Bury me! Cover me! Smother me deep!
Obediently, the avalanche came down the mountain.
Cara Corelli found a palace of mirrors.
The maid remained outside.
And Cara Corelli went in.
As she walked through a maze, the mirrors took away a day, and then a week, and then a month and then a year and then two years of time from her face.
It was a palace of splendid and soothing lies. It was like being young once more. It was being surrounded by all those tall bright glass mirror men who would never again in your life tell you the truth.
Cara walked to the center of the palace. By the time she stopped she saw herself twenty-five-years old, in every tall bright mirror face.
She sat down in the middle of the bright maze. She beamed around in happiness.
The maid waited outside for perhaps an hour. And then she went away.
This was a dark place with shapes and sizes as yet unseen. It smelled of lubricating oil, the blood of tyrant lizards with cogs and wheels for teeth, which lay strewn and silent in the dark waiting.
A titan’s door slowly gave a slithering roar like a swept-back armored tail, and Parkhill stood in the rich oily wind blowing out around him. He felt as if someone has pasted a white flower on his face. But it was only a sudden surprise of a smile.
His empty hands hung at his sides and they made impulsive and completely unconscious gestures forward. They beggared the air. So, paddling silently, he let himself be moved into the Garage, Machine Shop, Repair Shed, whatever it was.
And rilled with holy delight and a child’s holy and unholy glee at what he beheld, he walked and slowly turned.
For as far as his eye could see stood vehicles.
Vehicles that ran on the earth. Vehicles that flew in the air. Vehicles that stood ready with wheels to go in any direction. Vehicles with two wheels. Vehicles with three or four or six or eight.
Vehicles that looked like butterflies. Vehicles that resembled
