A Diversity of Creatures | Page 4

Takahira. 'But what on earth are they doing to the place? I thought they used it for a market nowadays! Drop a little, please.'
We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines--the cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled, slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red before our astonished eyes.
'It is the Old Market,' said De Forest. 'Well, there's nothing to prevent Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn't interfere with traffic, that I can see.'
'Hsh!' said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. 'Listen! They're singing. Why on the earth are they singing?'
We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the edge of that glowing square.
At first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and levellers. Then the words came up clearly--the words of the Forbidden Song that all men knew, and none let pass their lips--poor Pat MacDonough's Song, made in the days of the Crowds and the Plague--every silly word of it loaded to sparking-point with the Planet's inherited memories of horror, panic, fear and cruelty. And Chicago--innocent, contented little Chicago--was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that carried riot, pestilence and lunacy round our Planet a few generations ago!
'Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth; Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth!'
(Then the stamp and pause):
'Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain! Once there was The People--it shall never be again!'
The levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the melting walls.
De Forest frowned.
'I don't like that,' he said. 'They've broken back to the Old Days! They'll be killing somebody soon. I think we'd better divert 'em, Arnott.'
'Ay, ay, sir.' Arnott's hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of the Victor Pirolo ring to the command: 'Lamps! Both watches stand by! Lamps! Lamps! Lamps!'
'Keep still!' Takahira whispered to me. 'Blinkers, please, quartermaster.'
'It's all right--all right!' said Pirolo from behind, and to my horror slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a snap. I could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but I stood in absolute darkness.
'To save the sight,' he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room divan. 'You will see in a minute.'
As he spoke I became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light, let down from heaven at an immense distance--one vertical hairsbreadth of frozen lightning.
'Those are our flanking ships,' said Arnott at my elbow. 'That one is over Galena. Look south--that other one's over Keithburg. Vincennes is behind us, and north yonder is Winthrop Woods. The Fleet's in position, sir'--this to De Forest. 'As soon as you give the word.'
'Ah no! No!' cried Dragomiroff at my side. I could feel the old man tremble. 'I do not know all that you can do, but be kind! I ask you to be a little kind to them below! This is horrible--horrible!'
'When a Woman kills a Chicken, Dynasties and Empires sicken,'
Takahira quoted. 'It is too late to be gentle now.'
'Then take off my helmet! Take off my helmet!' Dragomiroff began hysterically.
Pirolo must have put his arm round him.
'Hush,' he said, 'I am here. It is all right, Ivan, my dear fellow.'
'I'll just send our little girl in Bureau County a warning,' said Arnott. 'She don't deserve it, but we'll allow her a minute or two to take mamma to the cellar.'
In the utter hush that followed the growling spark after Arnott had linked up his Service Communicator with the invisible Fleet, we heard MacDonough's Song from the city beneath us grow fainter as we rose to position. Then I clapped my hand before my mask lenses, for it was as though the floor of Heaven had been riddled and all the inconceivable blaze of suns in the making was poured through the manholes.
'You needn't count,' said Arnott. I had had no thought of such a thing. 'There are two hundred and fifty keels up there, five miles apart. Full power, please, for another twelve seconds.'
The firmament, as far as eye could reach, stood on pillars of white fire. One fell on the glowing square at Chicago, and turned it black.
'Oh! Oh! Oh! Can men be allowed to do such things?' Dragomiroff cried, and fell across our knees.
'Glass of water, please,' said Takahira to a helmeted shape that leaped forward. 'He is a