It was a great world in the fortieth century. No economic problems. No work. Robots and androids everywhere. Every girl a princess, every man a king. Pleasure, parties, amusements, art, drama and literature were the ultimate goal of every man woman and child. When people have too much leisure there is a danger. They grow soft and effete. There hadn't been a standing army on earth for a thousand years. There hadn't been a single warrior for five hundred. Then the Masked Swordsmen began breaking up the pleasure parties, after the swords came guns, stolen from the museums. Then... worse,... far, far worse. But that wasn't all. There were rumours of alien ships in the sky. Ships manned by a savage blue skinned humanoid race. Ships landed. Blues were enslaved. More blues came. Earthmen and women were captured in reprisal. Who were the blues? Why did they come? What was their history? What were their plans for the future? Would the human race survive?
Release date:
December 19, 2013
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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DELILAH was throwing a party. There was nothing unusual in that. It didn’t mark any particular event. As far as Delilah and her set were concerned there were no particular events to mark any more. Life was a round of parties, amusement, drama, sport and entertainment. There was nothing but entertainment. There was nothing but amusement.
Time was a mind of enemy. …
She was thinking as she opened the door. Thinking deep down, at the level of her mental being which she had hardly even suspected that she possessed. Hoping that this would be something to break the monotone. The monotone that passed for life. It was a pity in some ways, she decided, that nothing ever happened. Parties and yet more parties … She stood her Martini glass down. A swift, padding, silent, efficient, obsequious robot glided up and whisked the thing away.
Delilah looked after it with a strange mixture of loathing and contempt. There was no reason why she should feel either.
The robot did its job efficiently—more than efficiently, it almost seemed to predict her slightest whim. When she was thirsty it provided her with drink. When she was hungry, there was food. It read to her when she wished it. It showed telefilms when she wanted something more elaborate. It could read poetry like a Shakespearean actor. It could recite Burns, Tennyson, and all the old classic literary giants. It was built to do these things. In its slightly metallic, but highly modulated voice it could produce renditions that would have made Henry Irving envious. Produced them, because it was a thing of plastic, steel, and tape. Yet, for all its ability it lacked something … It lacked a soul. There was something about that robot that reflected the 40th century.
It was a century without a soul. A cold, dead century. A century that was trying desperately to ignore its coldness and death in a mad round of gaiety—artificial gaiety. Yet, behind the neon flares, lay cold, black, dead wires. Behind the garish fronts of the streets and the houses, behind the bright sparkling personas of the people, was something else. Something that can only be described as desperate.
This society was sophisticated, madly sophisticated, and yet, beyond the sophistication lay a terrifying naiveté. The society was trying to meet life with just about as much subtlety as a sixteen year old boy, who wakes up in the middle of the night, in a panic for the first time, and wonders if there is a God!
And thinks about his own death.
He meets it by putting on his gramophone and playing loud, crashing, garish music. By reading a detective novel, in other words, by an elementary process of escape.
The 40th century was an escapist society. It escaped into the highways and byways of liquor and sex and music and entertainment. In a kind of crazy, crashing, jangling competition.
It was an Omar Khayyam society.
“One moment in Annihilation’s waste, and then
the caravan starts for the Dawn of Nothing
Oh make haste!”
They were making haste. They had resigned themselves to the fact that they weren’t going to hell. That they weren’t going anywhere—but wherever they were going, they were going there fast, and gaily and breathlessly. It was a sin to stand still. If you stand still, you can think. A ring at the bell. A repeated ring, an insistent ring.
It brought Delilah back to where she was, back to reality. Her mind came flitting back from the Realm of Thought like a butterfly. A butterfly that has been lured to a plant that was apparently rich in pollen, yet which turns out to hold no nectar at all. To be a thing of colour and brightness only. This was reality, and she didn’t care for it very much.
She opened the door.
“We aren’t having a masquerade to-night,” she said suddenly. The stranger was masked. He was obviously handsome. The eyes that looked at her through the two ovoid slits were as dark and as gleaming as wet coals that have suddenly been thrown into a furnace. The eyes bored into her. She felt weak and helpless before their overpowering gaze. …
“I said. …” she faltered.
“I heard what you said,” the stranger’s voice seemed to come up from way down the bottom of his broad chest. A hack might have described it as a ‘barrel chest’ But it wasn’t, it was too square. It was as deep as a cedar forest, as powerful as a framework of steel girders, and the muscles rippled over the top like layers of vulcanised rubber. Strong, unbelievably strong and resilient.
“Are you a man or a robot?” she asked suddenly.
“What do you think?” That was no metallic voice. It was human. It came from vocal cords and lungs. It was not an electronic effect. She had heard skilfully reproduced robot voices far too often to be deceived by one now.
Whoever and whatever the stranger was, he spoke the truth.
He lived and breathed. He had crisp, curly, black hair, and shoulders that matched the chest. She could see now that her original question had been superfluous. He was no robot Yet he was so unlike any other man that she had ever seen, that she had blurted the question out almost involuntarily Men were effete, flimsy specimens in the 40th century. Their feats of strength and their muscular prowess were conducted in the realms of imagination, not in the world of fact. They padded their shoulders, covered their baldness with wigs, they even covered their effeminate, hairless chests with artificial fun. Some even went to the extreme length of having it grafted in. 40th century manhood was a horrible caricature. An effete, effeminate, almost boyish thing. And 40th century woman, as represented by girls like Delilah was disappointed and restless. She remembered she was the hostess and had a part to play:-
“Well—come in.” Taken aback as she was, she still had a part to play She still had to be the hostess. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“I didn’t give it.” Again that deep voice, rumbling up from subterranean depths He was like a mountain walking. A man-mountain, she decided, a Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Then she realised that he was not alone. In the neon-lit street outside, hover cars were sliding gently to a standstill.
“Would your friends like to come in?” she smiled, “if they’re all as handsome as you, they’ll be more than welcome.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” replied the stranger. She looked at his tunic. It seemed strangely old fashioned.
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“Mind your own dam’ business,” said the stranger, and pushed past her into the room. Then she saw that dangling from his hip was not the theatrical property of the type used in masquerades, it looked old, almost unbelievably old, but pretty well preserved. She caught hold of his arm, clinging to him desperately, like a drowning woman on to a straw.
“Who are you?” she shouted.
“The name is Steele,” replied the stranger, walking past her as though she didn’t exist. She might just as well have tried to stop a charging bull elephant, as to hold back the stranger, “My name is Smithson Steele,” he repeated, and tossed the words carelessly over his shoulder. “And I’m the leader of the Masked Swordsmen!”
“The—the—who?”
Steele walked into the centre of the room, and without any apparent reason crashed his enormous fist down onto the top of the electronic organ. The top of that organ was made of plastic. Plastic had developed a lot since the dim, pioneering days of the 20th century. Plastic was tough. Tough as iron and less brittle. Steele’s enormous gauntleted hand thudded down on to the tough plastic organ case, and it split. Split from top to bottom, like a great stone that has been struck by a savage blacksmith with a twenty-pound sledge.
“Stop this blasted music!” The command was unnecessary. The music had tailed away in a demoniac wail, as the electronic circuits and relays crashed and cut out inside the intricate circuits of the organ.
There was a deathly silence.
Then one of the pathetic, effete little men tried to show some kind of spark of protective chivalry.
“Who the devil are you, sir?” he demanded. His voice was high pitched and childish.
“I’m getting tired of all these stupid questions,” retorted Steele. The sword leapt from the scabbard into his hand, as though by magic.
“That’s not a theatrical sword!” said the would-be Galahad.
“If you want to find out just what kind of sword it is,” replied Steele, “just take another step forward, and I’ll slit your throat!”
“Is this some kind of a joke, Delilah?” asked a desperate, middle-aged flapper.
Delilah shook her head.
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” she answered in a terrified whisper.
Then the room was suddenly full of enormous, masked men. None of them stood under six feet, and most of them were built on the line of the enormous, muscular stranger, who seemed to be their leader, a fantastic man who said his name was Smithson Steele.
“We’re breaking up the party,” he said coldly, “and we’ll thank you for your jewellery and valuables.”
“Ow, we’re being robbed,” screamed the middle-aged flapper.
“Shut-up,” snapped Delilah, “Mr Steele—are you joking?”
There was a desperate edge to her voice that made the question unnecessary. The eyes behind the mask flickered into a kind of grin.
“I never joke about things I believe in!” retorted Steele. “And I believe in money, more than you will ever know. Come on! Hand over!” He put a hand, slowly and deliberately, under the beautiful diamond necklace adorning her throat. A quick tug and the clasp snapped pitifully. He thrust it into the voluminous pocket of his costume.
“Thank you,” he mocked graciously, “It should fetch quite a tidy sum! Now, you’ll probably find it less painful to remove your own jewellery.” Delilah put a hand to her neck. It stung, but her pride stung more. …
There were at least a dozen of them, but Smithson Steele could probably have done it on his own. The men stood powerless, bottling up a kind of pathetic fury, they made Steele think of angry flies. They were about as terrible as three-year-olds throwing a tantrum … and as dangerous! He could have picked up two of them in one hand—or so he thought—and crus. . .
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