The Dying Earth

"Rogol Domedonfors!" murmured Elai, and the room held its breath, grew still. They felt the stir their living breath made in the long-quiet air, and the depicted eyes stared deep into their brains ...

Ulan Dhor said, " 'Red to the left eye, yellow to the right; then blue to both.' Well—there are blue tiles in the hall, and I wear a red coat."

They found blue and yellow tiles, and Ulan Dhor cut a strip from the hem of his tunic.

Red to the left eye, yellow to the right. Blue to both. A click, a screech, a whirring like a hundred bee-hives.

The wall opened on a flight of steps. Ulan Dhor entered, and, with Elai breathing hard at his back, mounted the steps.

They came out in a flood of daylight, under the dome itself. In the center on a pedestral sat a glistening round-topped cylinder, black and vitreous.

The whirring rose to a shrill whine. The cylinder quivered, softened, became barely transparent, slumped a trifle. In the center hung a pulpy white mass—a brain?

The cylinder was alive.

It sprouted pseudopods which poised wavering in the air. Ulan Dhor and Elai watched frozen, close together. One black finger shaped itself to an eye, another formed a mouth. The eye inspected them carefully.

The mouth said cheerfully, "Greetings across time, greetings. So you have come at last to rouse old Rogol Domedonfors from his dreams? I have dreamed long and well— but it seems for an unconscionable period. How long? Twenty years? Fifty years? Let me look."

The eye swung to a tube on the wall, a quarter full of gray powder.

The mouth gave a cry of wonder. "The energy has nearly dissipated! How long have I slept? With a half-life of 1,200 years—over five thousand years!" The eye swung back to Ulan Dhor and Elai. "Who are you then? Where are my bickering subjects, the adherents of Pansiu and Cazdal? Did they kill themselves then, so long ago?"

"No," said Ulan Dhor with a sick grin. "They are still fighting in the streets."

The eye-tentacle extended swiftly, thrust through a window, and looked down over the city. The central jelly twitched, became suffused with an orange glow. The voice spoke again, and it held a terrible harshness. Ulan Dhor's neck tingled and he felt Elai's hand clenching deep into his arm.

"Five thousand years!" cried the voice. "Five thousand years and the wretches still quarrel? Time has taught them no wisdom? Then stronger agencies must be used. Rogol Domedonfors will show them wisdom. Behold!"

A vast sound came from below, a hundred sharp reports. Ulan Dhor and Elai hastened to the window and looked down. A mind-filling sight occupied the streets.

The ten-foot vestibules leading below the city had snapped open. From each of these licked a great tentacle of black transparent jelly like the substance of the fluid roads.

The tentacles reached into the air, sprouted a hundred branches which pursued the madly fleeing Ampridatvians, caught them, stripped away their robes of gray and green, then whipping them high through the air, dropped them into the great central square. In the chill morning air the populace of Ampridatvir stood mingled naked together and no man could distinguish Green from Gray.

"Rogol Domedonfors has great long arms now," cried a vast voice, "strong as the moon, all-seeing as the air."

The voice came from everywhere, nowhere.

"I'm Rogol Domedonfors, the last ruler of Ampridatvir. And to this state have you descended? Dwellers in hovels, eaters of filth? Watch—in a moment I repair the neglect of five thousand years!"

The tentacles sprouted a thousand appendages—hard horny cutters, nozzles that spouted blue flame, tremendous scoops, and each appendage sprouted an eye-stalk. These ranged the city, and wherever there was crumbling or mark of age the tentacles dug, tore, blasted, burnt; then spewed new materials into place and when they passed new and gleaming structure remained behind.

Many-armed tentacles gathered the litter of ages; when loaded they snapped high through the air, a monstrous catapult, flinging the rubbish far out over the sea. And wherever was gray paint or green paint a tentacle ground off the color, sprayed new various pigments.

Down every street ran the tremendous root-things and offshoots plunged into every tower, every dwelling, every park and square—demolishing, stripping, building, clearing, repairing. Ampridatvir was gripped and permeated by Rogol Domedonfors as a tree's roots clench the ground.

In a time measured by breaths, a new Ampridatvir had replaced the ruins, a gleaming, glistening city— proud, intrepid, challenging the red sun.

Ulan Dhor and Elai had watched in a half-conscious, uncomprehending daze. Was it possibly reality; was there such a being which could demolish a city and build it anew while a man watched?

Arms of black jelly darted over the hills of the island, threaded the caves where the Gauns lay gorged and torpid. It seized, snatched them through the air, and dangled them above the huddled Ampridatvians—a hundred Gauns on a hundred tentacles, horrible fruits on a weird tree.

"Look!" boomed a voice, boastful and wild. "These whom you have feared! See how Rogol Domedonfors deals with these!

The tentacles flicked, and a hundred Gauns hurtled —sprawling, wheeling shapes—high over Ampridatvir; and they fell far out in the sea.

"The creature is mad," whispered Ulan Dhor to Elai. "The long dreaming has addled its brain."

"Behold the new Ampridatvir!" boomed the mighty voice. "See it for the first and last time. For now you die! You have proved unworthy of the past—unworthy to worship the new god Rogol Domedonfors. There are two here beside me who shall found the new race—"

Ulan Dhor started in alarm. What? He to live in Ampridatvir under the thumb of the mad super-being?

No.

And perhaps he would never be so close to the brain again.

With a single motion he drew his sword and hurled it point-first into the translucent cylinder of jelly—transfixed the brain, skewered it on the shaft of steel.

The most awful sound yet heard on Earth shattered the air. Men and women went mad in the square.

Rogol Domedonfors' city-girding tentacles beat up and down in frantic agony, as an injured insect lashes his legs. The gorgeous towers toppled, the Ampridatvians fled shrieking through cataclysm.

Ulan Dhor and Elai ran for the terrace where they had left the air-car. Behind they heard a hoarse whisper —a broken voice.

"I—am not—dead—yet! If all else, if all dreams are broken—I will kill you two . .."

They tumbled into the air-car. Ulan Dhor threw it into the air. By a terrible effort a tentacle stopped its mad thrashing and jerked up to intercept them. Ulan Dhor swerved, plunged off through the sky. The tentacle darted to cut them off.

Ulan Dhor pressed hard down on the speed lever, and air whined and sang behind the craft. And directly behind came the wavering black arm of the dying god, straining to touch the fleeting midge that had so hurt it.

"More! More!" prayed Ulan Dhor to the air-car.

"Go higher," whispered the girl. "Higher—faster—"

Ulan Dhor tilted the nose; up on a slant flashed the car, and the straining arm followed behind—a tremendous member stretching rigid through the sky, a black rainbow footed in distant Ampridatvir.

Rogol Domedonfors died. The arm snapped into a wisp of smoke and slowly sank toward the sea.

Ulan Dhor held his boat at full speed until the island disappeared across the horizon. He slowed, sighed, relaxed.

Elai suddenly flung herself against his shoulder and burst into hysteria.

"Quiet, girl, quiet," admonished Ulan Dhor. "We are safe; we are forever done of the cursed city."

She quieted; presently: "Where do we go now?"

Ulan Dhor's eyes roved about the air-car with doubt and calculation. "There will be no magic for Kandive. However, I will have a great tale to tell him, and he may be satisfied ... He will surely want the air-car. But I will contrive, I will contrive ..."