Part 2

Greaves walked to the window in the chamber's far wall and looked down. But it was dark below; nothing to mark the outlines of a city as cities had been in the time he remembered. The temple apparently stood atop a high hill, with the city in a great valley at its foot, but again all Greaves could see were three glowing mountaintops across the way, and, beyond them, the night sky.

Then suddenly one of the volcanos flared for an instant, and the few overhead clouds reflected redly down into the valley.

Greaves caught his breath. The city had emerged black and immense, extending for miles, its lightless towers like the spine-bones of a beast half-eaten and rotting in a tidal pool. Then the light was gone, and once again there was nothing visible down there--if the undead beast had chosen to bestir itself and stealthily move on some errand of the night, no one standing here could have known until it was too late.

"So that's the city of the Shadows," Greaves said.

"The city that was once the First City of Man," Vigil said bitterly. "That Mayron has made into an outpost of Hell. Where no man dares live; where they say that those with Shadows, once they were in sufficient number, dragged women and children into the Chamber of Shadows so that their men, heart-broken, joined them when their Shadow-children returned to plead with them."

"And this gun of yours is going to do what to them?" he asked.

"Kill them."

"I know that. How?" Greaves stared at the old man through narrowing eyes.

"A beam of power, made of the stuff that spins within all things--the pure force of this continuum."

"You mean this thing is some kind of particle emitter--an electron or photon gun?"

* * * * *

"Our science need not concern itself with crudities like names, barbarian. This gun was made as a song or a poem is made--in the mind of a man who dreams weapons where another man might dream bridges ... and when the gun finds its fruition, tomorrow when Mayron expects no mightier enemy than you, then the beam will sweep that city, and when it stops Mayron's city will be a tomb for empty skins. And Man will build another First City, and those who fled shall have a place again, and--"

"Who built--who _dreamed_--this piece of ironmongery?" Greaves growled. "Who was the poet--you?"

"Yes! Why not? Do you think because I am an old man--"

"A heedlessly spiteful one who hasn't stopped to think."

"Stopped to think! _Look!_" Vigil seized the torch at the doorway and lifted it high. "Did you think I wasn't sure? That the weapon has not been tested?"

Now Greaves could see why the gun sang rather than rested in quiet patience. A Shadow hung against the far wall, supported by its out-stretched arms, its hands sunken wrist-deep in the stone. And though it jerked its legs and struggled feebly to be free, the hands remained trapped. Under the sound of the idling gun, he could distinguish a quiet, thin, whimpering.

Adelie laughed softly to herself.

Vigil crowed: "He cannot move--what little strength remains to him is needed for bare existence ... if I were to touch that control--

"The weapon is at its lowest setting--it has incomparably more power than that; it has the power of all the Universe in it--and look what it can do when it is barely tapped in to its source of power!"

Greaves rumbled in his throat. Suddenly the gun's song was more than he could stand. He barely seemed to move, but Vigil had time to shout, the outraged cry beginning to echo in the chamber when suddenly there came the snap of rending metal, and a choked stammer from the gun. And then Greaves had the gun in his hands, completely torn from its pedestal. He threw it out into the night in a bright flash of fire that bathed them all in a thunderclap of light. Greaves stared after it, his teeth bared, the horrid sound of his hatred still rumbling within him. When that had dwindled, leaving him with his heavy chest heaving for air, the trapped Shadow had vanished, no doubt to tell Mayron that Humanity's godling had gone insane.

Adelie was very pale. Vigil was trying to speak.

And that from the old man was enough to bring back the first scarlet edge of the fury he had turned on the gun.

"Close your mouth!" Greaves commanded him. "I have to go fight Mayron tomorrow, and I don't want another word out of you. Go find something useless to do. Adelie, I want a bath, some food and drink. Right now!"

IV

During the night, he asked Adelie: "I'm supposed to fight him with my hands, is that it? Or with simple weapons of some kind? And this will prove to the worshippers all over the Universe or to the Shadows that either my or Mayron's way of life is right?"

"Yes," she said. "And you _are_ very strong. I'm sure you will win. I was sure when I suggested it to Mayron. He's so completely confident--I knew I could trick him into it."

Later, he asked her: "Tell me--was there a famous weapon poet in First City?" And he took her hand, not letting go of it. When she asked him, once, hesitantly, why he had broken the gun, he answered honestly: "Because it seemed hateful." And other than that, they said very little to each other during that night, and whatever they did say had about as much truth in it as all the things they had said or he had been told from the first moment of his awakening. He did not sleep. For one thing, he felt no need of it. For another, he was frightened. He did not want to be a Shadow....

In the morning he had forgotten fear. Steps led from the temple to a pathway that wound down toward the city. He stood for a moment at their head, with the altar burning behind him, and then stepped out into the morning, with Adelie and Vigil following.

There were people waiting out there. They lined the path, murmuring among themselves. As he strode along they fell in behind him, leaving behind the temporary shelters they had put up when they fled from the city and took refuge here.

"Sheep," Vigil snorted as he padded through the dust beside Greaves. "All right, _let_ them see you brought down. I'll make another gun--if your stupidity hasn't robbed me of the time I need--and then they'll see...."

"I'm sure that if I lose today, Mayron will give you all the time you need. Maybe he'll even send that same Shadow poet back to you with whatever story you'll believe this time."

"What--?" Vigil stammered.

"What did he tell you? That he would create the gun for you because he hated the Shadows, even though he was a Shadow? Did he tell you how he remembered how fine it was to be a man? Is _that_ the story you believed? You simple, credulous murderer! And you repaid him by testing it on him. As he well suspected you might. It's not only humans who can be brave. Or sacrifice themselves for the ferocity of their race. Or were you too busy taking Humanity's name in vain to ever consider that? _You_ never dreamed that gun. Not you--you may be foolish, but you don't hate this Universe."

Vigil was blinking at him. "What--?"

Adelie laughed. "Last night, father. He asked me about weapon poets. There's no use trying to lie out of it."

Greaves smiled at her. "That's right. I asked you, and from that moment on you knew I was cleverer than Mayron thinks. But you never got away to tell him that, did you? You know," he said thoughtfully, "you'd better hope I win today. Mayron won't be too fond of you if I give him any more shocks."

Adelie grinned. "I thought of that. But if you win, he dies. And if you die...?"

"You will have had your glory anyway? You will have engineered the battle of the gods, and dabbled in other pleasures, too?" Greaves was still smiling, but Adelie's eyes grew wider. "Maybe it'll be that simple, Adelie. But who can tell the minds of gods, hmm?"

And so David Greaves strode into the city of Shadows, followed by a fearful multitude and two badly shaken people. He walked down a broad avenue at whose end something black bulked and glimmered, while things with black-filled eyes stood watching thin-lipped. And as he walked he showed none of his fear.

* * * * *

He stopped at the end of the avenue, with the tall towers looming over him, and stood facing the Temple of Shadows. There was no sign of life in the square black opening that served as a door for the featureless stone block, dark but not as dark as a Shadow.

He threw back his head and called: "Mayron!"

The worshippers huddled around him. Vigil, like them, was throwing anxious looks over his shoulders as the city's Shadows crowded closer.

Adelie murmured: "There he is."

And he was, trotting lightly down the steps, smiling. He wore his human skin as naturally as if it were more than a cloak, and Greaves had to look hard to see that when he smiled his lips stretched but no teeth showed.

"Well, Man in all your pride. Are you ready?"

"Ready as any man. How do you propose to go about this?"

"Adelie didn't tell you?"

"She told me as much as I asked. I didn't ask much. Could you suggest any way I could have refused the conditions, no matter what they are? That loses the fight right there. Wasn't I supposed to understand that? Do you think politics is a recent invention?"

"Fierce, fierce," Mayron murmured. "Well spoken." He chuckled. "When I was a man, I would have liked you."

"Get to the business, Mayron."

The Shadow held up his hand. "Not so fast. Perhaps we can arrive at some--"

"Arrive at nothing. Put up or shut up. Vigil no longer has that monstrous gun and there's no point in this for you today. But there is for _me_, and you don't have much time to realize that." He glowered at the Shadow, feeling the rage, feeling the onrush of the bright white exaltation when the body moves too fast for the brain to speak, when what directs the body is the reflex founded on the silent knowledge of the brain's deep layers, where the learning has no words.

Mayron frowned. His head was cocked to one side. If he had had eyes, he would have been peering at Greaves' face. But he said nothing; he had lost the moment, and now Greaves used it.

"You scum," Greaves said, his voice booming through the Temple square for all the Shadows to hear. "A weapon that drains the power of this continuum! You leech--you would have had that doddering old man put all my stars out!"

And now the moment was at its peak, and Greaves screamed with rage, so that the faces of the towers were turned into sounding boards and the shout crackled in the air like thunder. He jumped forward, one sweeping arm tossing Mayron out of his way and flailing for balance, while Greaves sprang into the Temple and charged the Chamber of Shadows.

* * * * *

And now the fear--the great devouring fear that came like fangs in his belly but did not stop him. Now the fear as he burst through the acolytes and into the black, light-shot sphere that quivered at the focus of Mayron's machine. And he stood there, feeling the suck not of one voracious universe but many--all the universes that had eaten the over-curious Mayron and sent back a Judas goat in his skin to conquer what belonged to Man. Feeling the icy cold, and the energy-hunger that could suck Man's Universe dry and still leave a hunger immeasurable.

But the rage--the rage that came to him, that came to the god uncounted generations of men had made while David Greaves lay sleeping but his deepest mind lay awake, feeling, feeling the faith, knowing the splendor of what Man had done--The rage that could make a god, that could give a creature like David Greaves the power to create, to dream a man--to make a David Greaves who would lie waiting, ready to become a god....

That rage went forth.

And in parallel continuums of life unimaginable, the dawn of Apocalypse burst upon suns unnameable and worlds unheard-of--upon all the universes which were the true Shadows. The god who was David Greaves again, when the rage had passed--that image which Man himself had made stood blazing his fury in the Chamber of Shadows, and the Universe of Man was free and safe. But in the places of the Shadows there was no hope, no joy, no place of refuge. Mankind was come forth, and galaxies were dying.

One last snap of the fangs--one moment when the death-spurred Shadows almost had their greatest prize of all--and then it was over. Greaves turned and strode out of the blasted Chamber, and the acolytes cowered, covering their eyes, not yet realizing that once more they had eyes.

* * * * *

David Greaves appeared on the temple steps, and began walking slowly down, his legs shaking with exhaustion. Adelie watched him coming toward her. Around her, Shadows that had once been men were men again, but at her feet Mayron lay without his skin, and though her father had fled, she did not dare go without learning what the look on David Greaves' face meant for her.