PRISON OF CLAY, PRISON OF STEEL

Henry-Luc Planchat

The tale of a little man who threw himself over a cliff; a dynasty of sick princes; and a captive sun …

I was a sun, and they made me their slave.

And I am here, alone, a prisoner in this body of steel, between these cold walls.

In this block of clay that imprisons my soul.

* * * *

GOLEM

Made of sun and clay

Powerless, with this punched card

That holds me like a chain

Son of Heaven and the Machine

GOLEM

I was a sun, and they made me their slave.

They drew my soul into this block of clay and shut me up in this prison of steel, of integrated circuits, and they locked away my freedom with this punched card. They, the merchants, they bought my life and the lives of those I created.

He threw himself down from the top of the cliff, the one who sold me, but that did not set me free. And they, the merchants, they keep me here, in this machine, to watch over their city.

Watchman at their gates.

GOLEM

But I must love or die.

And they have taken away my love and condemned me to life.

They have mastered me—me, a sun. And they say:

“Here are the data, Golem!”

And I record them.

And they say: “Destroy our enemies!”

And I, who was drunk with love, must kill. And I cannot rebel against these bonds which hold me, from beyond space and time, in this block of clay. Then I wait (and time is no more than a hope) for them to need me again.

While the beings that I created are dying, far from me, in the glacial cold of space that overcomes them little by little, and while my body of energy and light, their only protection, so far away, is going out.

Oh, when will I rekindle the star-fire!

GOLEM

The city is called Phares. For thousands of years it has been the greatest port of the Northern Ocean, and its ships go in search of precious cargoes even beyond the Mountains on the Rim of the Abyss. Its caravans cross the Great Plain to bring back goods found only in the most remote countries of the Old Continent. Phares is famed for its great wealth, but famed also for being a city it is best not to attack, and all who have tried it have failed, for the City of Merchants is protected by Emidhin, the slave-sun, the chained god, the Golem.

* * * *

Hyersios, the Prince of Phares, opened the sanctuary door by means of the retractable key embedded in his left forefinger.

Hyersios, the seventeenth of the Sick Princes, was dressed as usual in a wide toga of green silk which brushed the floor, and his face and arms were painted with the blue insignia of his rank.

Hyersios, the Jailer of God, had a somber visage, and the lines traced by illness on his forehead made his expression even darker.

Hyersios, the Master of the West Provinces, was soon to die.

And he knew it. He closed the door quietly behind him. Here he was in the presence of Emidhin.

* * * *

Or rather of Emidhin’s organs of communication, for the soul of the star was imprisoned in a block of clay behind twenty meters of metal. The sanctuary. A little room. Walls painted green. On the floor, white tiles. At the rear, metal. A few buttons and handles. A little loudspeaker, the voice of the sun. A little mobile camera, the eye of the sun.

* * * *

Cold.

Hold me tighter, child.

The wind. Cold.

Take my coat, child, I don’t need it.

The dark …

Don’t be afraid, child, I am here, close to you. Sleep now. Tomorrow it will be light and we will go to the dune.

* * * *

“Good morning, Emidhin,” said Hyersios, advancing toward the wall of metal.

“Greeting, Hyersios the Prince,” answered the prisoner.

Hyersios seated himself delicately on the only chair in the sanctuary. The pain in his back made him grimace slightly. The corner of his mouth rose a little, pressing his right cheek upward. The eye half-closed. A silent rictus. A contortion of pain and a resigned smile, mocking that illness that had fastened its claws in the dynasty of the Princes of Phares. He leaned gently against the wooden back of the chair and for a moment had the illusion that it eased him. But the pain returned, stronger than before. He closed his eyes and slowly passed his hand over his forehead, rubbing the lines as if to make them disappear. The camera, motionless, gazed at him.

The Prince of Phares opened his eyes again and breathed deeply. The green silk sleeve had slid back along his arm, revealing the blue marks that Freeyn had tattooed there when he had received his title, seven years before. The marks said things known to him alone, and sometimes he had an almost irresistible impulse to tell them to someone. To Emidhin, to a beggar in the North Quarter, to anyone. His hand fell slowly and rested on the punched cards which he held in the other hand, the left, the one that contained the key to the sanctuary. His fingers slid over the edges of the cards, then held them tightly. Hyersios leaned forward to place the little pile of cards on the cold tiles. The pain seized its opportunity. It gripped the right hand as it moved toward the floor, then climbed along the arm, turned around the shoulder and sprang onto his back, between the shoulder blades. Hyersios grimaced again, then straightened. He had thrown down the gauntlet to the illness that tormented him, and it had accepted the challenge. They understood each other very well. Each was lying in wait for the other. But the Prince of Phares already knew the end of this silent duel. He straightened again and leaned against the back of the chair.

“I’m going to need you, Emidhin,” he said at last.

* * * *

The little man had said simply there it is, and had left the sanctuary. Prince Greter, President Tremis and the other high dignitaries of the city followed him for a moment with their eyes, then turned back to the wall of metal. The Prince activated the prisoner’s organs of communication. At once a murmur, almost a moan, was heard:

“Aaaaah! Aaaaah!”

Then they told him that he was their slave.

He replied that he was a sun.

They told him that he must obey them.

He asked them to set him free so that he might continue to protect his planets.

They repeated that he was their slave.

He told them that, without him, his planets would die.

They explained to him that if he did not obey them, they would kill him and that in this case his planets would be lost forever.

He began to howl, and they lowered the volume of the loudspeaker.

The next day, the body of the little man was found at the base of the cliff that overhangs the Northern Ocean.

* * * *

Is that better, child?

Yes.

Dawn has come, child. It is cold and the sun is very red, but we’ll be able to start moving.

The dune?

Yes, child, we must reach the dune.

* * * *

A man was working in his field when he saw them. They were moving along the road, a little farther away. He was a brave man, but he felt the sweat chill his back under the shirt. He wondered if it was their footsteps that reverberated or the earth that groaned at their passing.

A traveler from one of the worlds of the Great Star asked who they were, and a scowling woman replied: “It’s the Golem.” He said nothing and went on his way, but he stopped singing.

A girl named Minia went to her window and listened to the noise in the village street. All the Enashins, at the same instant, turned their heads in her direction, and she saw among them the face of Yeni. Minia and Yeni were to have been married the previous autumn, according to an old custom still followed in the countries of the west. Yeni was a fisherman. One day his small boat was overtaken by a storm far out at sea. A week later, some other fishermen found his body, still alive, clinging to a piece of wreckage, but his mind was gone forever. The Enashins passed and the sound of their footsteps faded behind them. Minia was still crying when darkness fell.

* * * *

Far away, elsewhere, in a country called Perihel, an old man sits at a table, close to the fire, in the Starhauler Tavern.

“I’ve seen many things, oh, I’ve seen many things!” says he to the yellow-haired stranger across the table. “I’ve seen the blue lakes of Samoth, I’ve crossed the Hacschcnischen Channel, where there’s traps that can pull you into another universe, a dream, or maybe another level, who knows. I’ve shared a meal with the pilgrims of the Green Galaxy and I’ve even fought the Enashins of Emidhin, the imprisoned god, the Golem. Ah! I was young then, and a little crazy. You have to be a little crazy to fight the Enashins. That was on my home world, Shangui-H’e, a good world, yes, a good world. I was working with my brother Elllis at the time. We had a few fields of myi and they enabled us to live in comfort. Myi is a plant that only grows on Shangui-H’e, at least as far as I know. It’s very nourishing and much wanted by us humans, the descendants of the Emigrants, but also it’s very hard to grow. At harvest time you’ve got to be very clever. The only death the myi will accept is suicide. If it realizes you’re about to kill it, it commits suicide by releasing a virulent poison into its sap, and the whole crop may be lost. To keep it from doing that, you hypnotize it by making it listen to the song of a crazy bird called the ayetl, but that bird doesn’t live in Essenin, the province where I was born, or in any other western province, either. So to reap the myi we needed the help of a Diatshin who had to imitate the song of the ayetl bird for hours and hours, until the myi was completely hypnotized and would let itself be reaped. But it’s a demanding song; one false note and you’re out of luck. Not only that, but after a while the song also hypnotizes people and can drive the singer crazy. We put wax plugs in our ears, but a Diatshin’s endurance has its limits, and of course you can only harvest a crop once.

“Yes, yes, the Enashins, I’m coming to them. Anyhow, my brother and I had a few fields of myi and we knew how to work them. Myi is a valuable commodity and we were doing quite well. Very well, in fact; but Essenin is a province that depends more or less on the city of Phares, anyhow I won’t go into all the details, but we had to pay tribute to them every year. This tribute had been getting steadily bigger for some time because of the Merchants’ Guild of Phares—they’re as powerful as the Prince of the city, or more so, and they always wanted more ships, wagons, spaceships. They were burning with thirst for power and wealth and they were getting harder and harder to satisfy. One year, Essenin didn’t pay all its tribute and the Merchants threatened to withhold their goods from us. Then, when we still couldn’t pay, they forbade the Diatshins to work for us. That was hard. Poverty, famine. Finally, we peaceful farmers took up arms, we banded together into a little army, oh, nothing much, two or three thousand young men, inexperienced and a little crazy, and started to march toward the province of Phares, more than five hundred kilometers north of Essenin, to bring back the food we needed. Oh, of course, we had heard of the Enashins, but to us they were more like a legend, and we even joked about them. Yes, well, they weren’t a legend. We met them on a hill, near a little town in the south of the province of Phares. Yes, I’ll never forget that scene. We were climbing the hill and we saw them appear on top. We all stopped and they kept on coming toward us. At first, we couldn’t make out their faces, but I remember that the wind moved their hair in a strange way. Finally they stopped not more than fifty paces off and we could count them. Two hundred Enashins. Two hundred creatures, most of them human, but there were also some foreigners from nonhuman planets, as well as some metal humanoids. (And two or three arkel birds that circled above us must have been Enashins too.) Some were in rags, others in the uniform of the guardsmen of Phares, some were dressed like fishermen, others like peasants, still others like lenyates. And I noticed that the humans’ eyes were like those of madmen, gray and staring, not really seeing us. And each one carried a double-bitted ax in the same manner over his shoulder. Then they began to talk, and I still remember those first words. Imagine it, two hundred creatures speaking the same words all together, at the same instant, and with the same voice. They said: ‘I am Emidhin, the keeper of the gates of Phares. Go home, brothers. I beg you.’ Then some of us tried to argue, but the Enashins only repeated in their one voice: ‘Go home, brothers. I wish you no harm, but I must obey the orders of the Prince of Phares. I beg you, go home.’

“At that point, a few of us, no doubt a little crazier than the rest, moved toward the Enashins saying that we couldn’t retreat any more, and the rest followed. Then, of course, the fighting began. Oh, it didn’t last long. I can still see the blood that spurted. The Enashins seemed to be able to look in every direction at once, they were like the tentacles of a gigantic octopus, and they were amazingly strong. They raised their axes in both hands like woodcutters and brought them slashing down through our ranks. And they kept shouting, ‘Forgive me, brothers! Forgive me! Forgive me!’ After that, I don’t remember much. I’d had my right hand lopped off by an Enashin and I was lying on the ground thinking, ‘I must be dreaming, I must really be dreaming, this isn’t possible.’ My brother found me after the fight and brought me home. Not long afterward we left Shangui-H’e aboard a spaceship bound for the Blue-Blue-Yellow Galaxy. I had another hand made for me, and it works very well, but I’d rather have the first one. It was a good hand, yes, a good hand. Oh, I’ve seen many things, I’ve seen many things! I’ve been to a place called Roquebrune …”

* * * *

Exhaustion.

Yes, child, we’ll stop and sleep here. You see, the dune isn’t far away now.

Tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow we’ll reach the dune, child. Tomorrow.

* * * *

The Prince Hyersios died.

The Prince Herdunt succeeded him, and the Prince Blillil succeeded the Prince Herdunt. And the dynasty endured a long time.

And the centuries passed, and still more centuries.

Phares was still the principal port of the Northern Ocean, but that no longer mattered very much. On Shangui-H’e, the human race was coming to the end of its term. The planet had lost most of its inhabitants at the time of the New Emigration and man was disappearing little by little, giving place to others. So it goes, and so it should go.

The last Prince of Phares was called Moyann. He was master of nothing but a few old farmers and an immense city falling into ruin, almost deserted. But that did not matter very much.

When the Prince Moyann felt his approaching death, the same that had struck down his ancestors and that was about to strike now for the last time, he went to the sanctuary. There he was in the presence of Emidhin.

* * * *

“Greeting, Emidhin.” The Prince Moyann advanced slowly toward the wall. His left leg dragged behind him, and that was almost a blessing, for the paralysis was winning out over his pain.

“Greeting, Moyann the Prince.” The little camera stared at the Master of Phares.

Moyann, with that little grimace which the Princes of Phares had made for so many generations, sat down on the only chair in the sanctuary. The pain subsided a little.

“My race has done you much harm, Emidhin.” He shook his head slowly and closed his tired eyes a moment.

“You are not responsible.”

The Prince noticed that the paint on the wall was flaking more and more, leaving tiny green spots on the dusty tiles.

“Yes, in a way, I am responsible.” Moyann was almost whispering. It was becoming difficult to speak.

“What do you want from me, Moyann the Prince?”

The Master of Phares took a breath. The air flowed down his windpipe, inflated his lungs, and minuscule things struggled and yelled to keep it from purifying his blood. But it succeeded all the same, once more, before it withdrew. Then the minuscule things subsided. In the time of a breath.

“I’m going to give you back your freedom, Emidhin.”

It’s strange, thought the Prince suddenly, how that spider spins its web. He gazed at the dark little creature on the wall near him. He couldn’t see the spider very well, but its movements seemed unnatural. It climbed the wall slowly, no more now than a moving spot on the green background, and presently the sick eyes of the Prince lost it. Perhaps it was only an illusion, he thought. But suddenly the creature reappeared before him, motionless a few centimeters from his face, hanging from the ceiling by a slender thread that glimmered blue. Is it you, Sickness? thought the Prince. Is it you, come to announce your victory? Or to watch me while I enter the edge of darkness? Or are you the image of Death that watches me sinking slowly into the marshes from which no one can escape? The mud is up to my neck already and it’s harder and harder to breathe. The gray sky above me. And all this silence. I’m sinking into the mud and into silence. I don’t cry out and I don’t struggle to escape from the darkness crouching below me. Why break this silence which gives me its last salute? For many years the Princes of Phares have committed an offense which nature does not pardon. The mud pulls me slowly, sucks me down, swallows me. What is there left for me to do? What should the last Prince of Phares do, before disappearing once for all into the marsh of oblivion? I have no pardon to beg. I’ve restored to Emidhin all that I can restore and the Sickness has punished me for the crime we committed. I’ve paid. There’s nothing left for me but to let myself be swallowed up in that darkness, looking at the landscape while I still can. The landscape of Shangui-H’e, which gives this silent salute to the last Master of the Western Provinces, the vanquished. The gray sky. There’s no wind today, and the leaves of the tomb-trees are motionless and silent. The blue-gray marsh has almost no ripples in it, only those caused by my slight movements. All this is beautiful, for it’s the very image of my planet, calm, harsh and marvelous. And there’s that little black spider sitting on a reed and watching the bluish mud rise to my mouth.

“But not my body of light?”

The spider is gone. This room is very cold, thought Moyann. The light? That minuscule glimmer lost somewhere in the depths of space?

“No. I don’t know how to send you back.”

I don’t know how and none of the others knew either. The only one who might have known was Tahn, the little man, the one who sold you to us. No, the one we forced to lure you here. But who knows his secret? What evil we have done!

“In fact, I’ve suspected that for a long time. What do you intend to do?”

He is calm like our planet. He is of the race of stars.

“I’m going to set your Enashins free. Perhaps with their help you will find a way to regain your body. I hope so.”

“Thank you.”

“No, don’t thank me. I wish I could have helped you more.”

Outside, the morning breeze from the sea rises over Phares. It helps the ruins crumble a bit more.

“You have already done much for me.”

So little. I’m dying and you are being reborn.

“Do you think your planets are still alive?”

“I think so. They are good planets.”

Moyann painfully got up out of the chair and moved slowly toward the metal wall. The little camera turned in silence. The Prince pushed the wooden button and with a faint click a punched metal card thrust itself half out of a console. The Prince took it. Now, he thought, nothing ties you to me henceforward. You are still a prisoner, but I am not your jailer. The oppression of the Princes of Phares is done with forever. He would drop this plaque into acid and no one would ever be able again to enslave a sun, at least with the little man’s machine.

“Now I’m going to leave you.”

He turned and went out, dragging his dead leg.

“Farewell, Moyann the Prince.”

The last Master of Phares stopped and glanced at the metal wall. Cold prison.

“Good luck, Emidhin the Sun,” he said, then left without closing the sanctuary door.

* * * *

Look, child, look, the dune!

I see.

Well, come on, child, come on. We’re here!

* * * *

The spine of the universe curved a little more.

Wide-eyed, turning for centuries around the exploded carcass of an old Haggirian ship. His guts like a cortege.

Or else:

Swollen cadaver coming apart in tatters, a choice meal. At the bottom of a blue lake on Samoth.

Or else:

Eyes hollowed by age, white hair like a waterfall. Motionless. Leaning against the trunk of a lyre-tree, under the clear sky of the planet Douce. Insects in his mouth.

Dead.

Most of the Enashins.

* * * *

Come, child, I beg you, come!

Cold.

We’re almost there! The dune is there! Come on, child, try to get up. I can’t carry you. I beg you, child!

Cold …

* * * *

The metal creature advanced down the main street of Phares and the sand crunched underfoot. The sea wind blew softly and murmured the song of time among the ruins. The metal creature came to the deserted great square and stopped to examine the palace of the Princes of Phares, its green facade almost intact, windows useless.

The sun, still high over Phares, gave the building a little of its old splendor. That splendor of the great ones, built on the oppression of peoples.

The metal creature turned its head when it heard the crunching sound.

Out of the shadow of a collapsed building a man was coming toward him. Wearing a long blue coat. Sandals. And on his right cheek the mark of the Diatshins. His eyes put out. To sing better. As the barbarians did long ago to birds, to make them warble.

The man went toward the metal creature with slow and tired steps. Then he stopped in front of it and put out his hand to touch the metal breast.

“You are Emidhin the Robot,” he said. “You have journeyed very far and very long. You have traveled in other universes and you were once a sun.”

“Can you tell me how you know that?”

“If you like, I can. I haven’t much longer to live, but you will lend me your eyes and I will teach you marvelous songs.”

The metal creature entered the palace and followed the long corridors. The ancient seat of the Princes of Phares. Cracks along the walls. Rotted tapestries. Decayed paneling. Then a bare corridor. A half-open door. A little room. Walls that had once been painted green. On the floor, tiles that had once been white. At the back, metal. A spiderweb in a corner of the ceiling. A little camera. A tired voice that came from the little loud speaker.

“Here you are at last.”

(Face to face with myself.)

“Here I am.”

(You are me and you are different. I could not follow you out of this universe and I gave you your freedom. And since then you are no longer entirely myself.)

“You have found it.”

(I had no one but this spider for company after all the others died. Then it died too. Then there was no one left.)

“I found it.”

(I’m going back to my planets. There will be much heat to give.)

(Much love.)

(Yes. Much love.)

The robot went up to the metal wall and pressed down a steel lever. Then another. Then a third.

“There. I’m setting you free.”

(I press this now and you’ll go back to your body of light.)

(Wait.)

“Are you coming back with me?”

(You will not come back.)

“No. Farewell, sun.” The Enashin pressed down the fourth metal lever.

* * * *

On a frozen planet. Two corpses at the foot of a dune. Dead without having seen the ocean.

* * * *

Emidhin the Robot left the palace and rejoined the blind man who was waiting in the square.

The man stood up and the two of them went together under the summer sun, making their way through the ruins of Phares, the blind man’s hand on the shoulder of the android.

* * * *

And at the back of the sanctuary, on the metal wall, was graven the inscription the robot had put there before it left the palace:

* * * *

I was a sun, and they made me their slave.

GOLEM

And time, and the wind, and the rain were very long in wearing it away.

—Translated from the French by Damon Knight