On the far side of the pit was a small river, worn deep into the stone around it. A knot of pines clutched it at the lip of the basin. There were no other trees in this part of the hills. Only those remained untouched. Somehow the little copse felt like a flag or a cairn, marking where something was buried.
He walked across the basin to the trees and where the river crested and fell. Then he walked to the edge of the water. The rock edge was smooth and rounded. Slick with the wear of time. The river had to be thousands of years old. Millions, even. He looked down into the waters and saw nothing but darkness. He felt strangely cold, yet it was a feeling he had felt before, in the city. That strange pounding machinery, deep underground in the trolley tunnels…
He knelt down. Put his hands in the water. It was icy cold, so cold it hurt.
Yes, said a voice inside of him.
He stood and took off his leather fireman’s coat and threw it away. Then he looked into the waters again.
There was something down there. Something looking back. Something that had lain there for uncounted years, sitting in darkness, waiting.
He grabbed the torch and took a breath and dove in.
The power of the cold was deafening, overwhelming. The shock of it nearly drove the breath from his body. He strained to hold on to it. A little column of bubbles escaped one of his nostrils and threaded its way toward the surface. He struggled to orient himself and the beam of light from the torch thrashed about, catching smooth rocks and stabbing into the deeps. Then he steadied and began forcing himself down, the torch clapped to his side as he kicked, driving his body into the darkness as far as he could go.
He caught a glimpse of it first, a random flash from the torch in his hand. Something silver and white in the rock wall. He stopped where he was, breath burning within him, and then flashed the light around again. Finding nothing, he tried once more, and saw he had gone too far. It was above him. He fixed the beam on what he could see of it and looked, and then fought to hold on to his breath.
The machine was enormous. Huge and long and thin, just breaching the wall of the mountain river, and now that the torch had found it the machine seemed to refract or enhance the light until it gained a faint luminescence. Its surface was smooth and pristine, almost unearthly, and still completely intact after so long. He knew he was only seeing a bare fraction of it, that the rest was hidden up under the shelf of rock below the river.
He saw that the metal was slightly translucent, and deep within it there were things moving, delicate threads and tubing and miniscule gear-works churning away quietly and smoothly. He somehow suspected he’d seen it before, or something like it. Then he remembered the wonders he’d glimpsed down in the factory’s floors, spindled glass and pearly alloys, and Tazz’s machine. They were similar, he realized, as if they were related, though those were primitive toys compared to this. But the golden device he’d found mere hours ago matched this buried thing perfectly. They were parts of a whole, he realized instantly. One broken off from the other.
Hayes swam up to it, blinking in the murky water. He had only a few seconds’ worth of air left now. As he neared it he thought he could hear it humming. Still functioning, somewhere. Somewhere in the heart of the Earth.
Yes, said the voice.
He felt the machine turn its awareness on him, examining him, then welcoming him.
Touch, it said.
Hayes hesitated. Then he placed one hand on its side.
Then a voice inside him roared, “I AM A MESSENGER, SENT FROM AFAR. YOU MUST LISTEN TO ME. YOU MUST LISTEN.” And the world lit up.
He felt cool air wash over him. Listened to the sigh of the wind and the breath of the shore. Then he opened his eyes.
He was in a small field on a cliff next to the ocean. It was night. Clean green grass rose up to his waist and tickled the tips of his fingers. He had never been to the spot before, yet he felt it was familiar. It was somewhere around the city, to the west, yet Evesden was gone from the shore below. The countryside seemed empty without it. Above him the stars shone bright, and he knew then he was seeing the sky untouched by the lights of any city. A younger sky, before any building began.
“Where am I?” he asked out loud.
“Where you were,” said a voice. It was tinny and weary-sounding, as though coming through a worn-down phonograph, yet it seemed to come from all around him. “I am merely showing you this place as it was, long ago.”
Hayes realized he could not feel himself breathing. He grabbed at his wrists and could feel no pulse there either. Before he could speak the voice said, “You are not dead. All this is but a dream, in some ways. It lasts no more than a mere moment in the time outside. In the real world. You are safe.”
“Who are you?” asked Hayes.
“A messenger,” said the voice. “I traveled a great distance once, and have waited so long to deliver my message. So long, down there in the dark. Far below the earth.”
“Are you… are you a god?” asked Hayes hesitantly.
“A god?” said the voice. “No. I am perhaps no more than a recording. A record waiting to be played.”
Hayes didn’t say anything at first. Then he ventured, “What… what is your message?”
“That your kind will die,” said the voice simply. “That it will overreach, and crumble, and perish, and be forgotten. And that this will happen soon.”
Hayes was silent. He grew aware that there was something walking in the field beyond the circle. Something pacing through the grass, yet he could see nothing.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I am nowhere,” said the voice. “I am nothing. I am a voice in the darkness, a ghost in an old, old machine telling you of a future. Of your future. And what you must do to survive.”
“What do you mean? Where did you come from?”
“From the stars,” said the voice softly. Up ahead one star shone brighter than the rest. “That star, specifically.”
“You’re from the stars?” Hayes asked, astounded.
“Yes. I was made there, once, long ago. Made to help you.”
“By who?”
“By watchers. By those who left their own world and made the stars their own, ages ago. And having done so they saw what little life foundered in the empty black, and learned much. Do you know how many worlds have been birthed out there? In the far places, in the lost places? Only a few. Thousands, maybe. Maybe less. And can you guess how many survived more than a few million years? Even less than that. Most die, of their own doing. Sputter out. Flash and flame and fade like hot stars. It is the nature of life to overreach,” said the voice sadly. “To spread out and multiply and grow until it can grow no further. And then, starving, it will devour itself.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Hayes asked the thing in the field.
“Because you must know,” it said. “Someone must know, besides me. You must know that you are dying. It was my purpose to help you avoid it, but now I can do no more than tell you. I have tried to speak to you before, using the crude signaling machines in your city. They recognized me and tried to do my bidding, but you could not listen. Not you or anyone else…”
Hayes suddenly remembered the strange noises rushing through the trolley tunnels, and the vision of the ruins of Evesden. “That was you,” he said softly.
“Yes. But now you can hear. You can hear my message. Will you listen?”
Hayes was not sure what to say. “All right.”
“Then listen,” whispered the voice. “Intelligence changes the life span of a species. It is enormously talented at self-destruction. Those few worlds that foster it rarely see it last for more than a handful of years. It is the price for your complexity, for ability, and it is paid in hunger and bloodshed. It begins as you grow. First clans become tribes. Then tribes become cities. Cities become nations. Nations become empires. Until it is nothing but a constant war of giants. Enormous forces struggling against one another. And when one of those giants falls, sometimes there is no recovering. Sometimes everything ends.