Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 The motoway was carrying him now straight through the central gate into the city. He could see the pale domes of the . city pulsing with radiance and the feature- less bulk of the central power station loom- ing like a Gargantuan skyward, . pointing finger against the everlasting east wall of the valley. He could see as well the crisscrossing, prismatic spider webs which were the moto- ways, uniting domes and power shafts and residential tier units in a continuously mov- ing system of communication. He could see the robots. The great, stationary, nonvolitional robots which did not at all resemble men, but were simply cubes of prismatic metal with retractile limbs, and teleo-electronic minds sensitive to human-brain impulses. They stood motionless at intervals in the blueness, ready to move, connect, clip, dis- entangle, rectify, check and in a hundred smoothly efficient ways dispose of the kinks which were constantly developing in the vast, complex life of the city. When they moved about they were all whirring disks and agile digits, but there was no possibility of any physical change in them. They were mindless until intelligence flowed into them along communicator beams, and for a hundred years they had moved mechanically about the city. They were virtually indestructible, sensi- tive, mechanical slaves, and Monitor 236 saw that a few of them were moving now deep in the blueness as he stumbled with bursting lungs from the moto-pavement. Someone was running toward him, waving white arms. Running toward him in the blueness and it seemed to him as though he were returning from a long journey to that someone alone. The someone wasn’t beautiful. A snub nose and a freckled face impinged first on his vision and then with a gaze. almost con- vulsive in its eagerness he embraced the whole of the vision. She wasn’t a vision, though. You couldn’t - smell a vision and you couldn’t embrace it with your arms after you had embraced it with your eyes. Her hair smelled like charred embers, and there was something utterly savage and possessive in the way she clung to him, and kissed him that would have made the Monitors blanch. Surprisingly, it brought rapture, pure joy. It seemed to melt all of the tension inside ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION him, so that he was no longer terrified, or confused. Yet she wasn’t beautiful. A barbarian woman clad ‘in a poor apology for a panther’s skin—a thing of shreds and tatters which had left her almost unclothed. A savage woman, with jungle-bright eyes, and splintered teeth stained with berry juice. “We thought you’d never come,” she panted. “You were right and we were— stupid fools! The Prowlers are going to attack.” He stared at her, his jaw. rahecles twitch- ing. For a moment he seemed to be living in two obscurely remembered worlds which impinged, overlapped, and yet were separ- ated by wide wastes of time. The tension had returned again. Utter bewilderment shone in his eyes, and com- municated itself to the girl. “What is wrong, Agar?” she whicoered hoarsely. “Why are you staring at me like that?” “Agar? Yes, I am Agar,” he replied, as though he felt a need to speak his name aloud. The girl seemed frightened. Frantically she gripped his wrist. “Agar, what is it? Tell me, Agar!” — Her long, sharp nails were cutting into his flesh now, and when he lowered his gaze he perceived that there were little flecks of crimson on the moto-pavement, which was swirling past him on a level with his knees. His blood, the blood of a Monitor, spilled by the too-frantic clasp of a savage woman in a city of. the twenty-ninth century. A city of glowing domes receding to an everlast- ing cliff, a city which seemed to stretch far away into blue distances— A compulsion which he could not explain caused him to leap suddenly back on the moto-pavement: “Our people are ready, Agar,” the girl exclaimed, clambering up beside him. She did not leap on the pavement as he had done, but seemed rather to draw herself up over it. as though it were somehow charged with magic and had to be cautiously mounted. “Our people are waiting in the shadow of the Half Body, Agar!” _— The Half Body! Yes, he remembered now. He had left his people huddled be- neath the great metal Half Body, their hairy, uneouth faces illumined by the leaping <SHIGO) 99 oO Cconmicboo