The cockerel, red wattles quivering, had twisted his neck round to stare at me with a fierce yellow eye. It suddenly emitted a loud, cold shriek.
‘The Holy… Machine?’ I mumbled.
‘Yes.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘A great miracle. He is a kind of robot, but God has given him a soul – and not an ordinary human soul either, but the soul of a saint or an angel!’
‘But… I thought robots were… bad…’
‘Yes, of course, and Mary Magdalene was a whore. To God, all things are possible.’
The woman smiled and patted me on the arm.
‘Go in, young man. You’ve got a fever. They’ll get you dry and give you something to eat.’
A sudden eruption of activity and noise made me cower and cry out with fear. But it was just the cockerel. It had worked one of its wings free and was beating it frantically.
‘No you don’t!’ snapped the old woman, grabbing it grimly by the throat.
‘Go in,’ she urged me over her shoulder as she dealt with the offending bird. ‘Go in!’
The rain was starting up again. She hurried on.
Even just the time I had spent standing and talking with the widow had left my body stiff. I hobbled very slowly across the square, only to quail in front of the blue double door. Here was food, warmth, rest. Here more importantly than anything was the possibility of forgiveness that had been the whole purpose of this journey. Somewhere within was that bright, silver being that I so longed to meet. But now I dreaded that encounter.
Very reluctantly I lifted my hand to the knocker. A stab of pain ran through my body. I let the knocker fall.
Thud!
Silence.
Silence.
A cold gust of wind blew the rain across the empty square.
I give up, I thought. Let me just crawl away to some hole in the ground and sink peacefully into oblivion.
I had already turned away from the door when from within came the sound of sliding bolts. The left half of the big door slowly opened to reveal a small, fat, balding monk.
‘I am…’ I hesitated for a moment before I could recall my own name. ‘I am George Simling, an Illyrian. I wondered… I need food, somewhere to sleep. I want to see the Holy Machine.’
‘Come in then, come in.’
66
And then I found that the closed door was already behind me and I was in a pale, stone-flagged corridor. The monk took my arm. There were many small blue doors down one side. I caught a glimpse of a bright tree glistening in an empty courtyard. Then many more doors.
I felt myself coming to from a labyrinthine dream of mountains, wars and roads… I woke up and remembered that reality was simply this: moving slowly along a corridor with calm blue doors. On and on. That was life. Why bother to open the doors? Why bother? Why not just carry on along here? It would be fine if it wasn’t so cold. It would be just fine.
I came to again. There were voices. Another monk had appeared, this one tall and sandy-haired. The two men were conferring about me. I couldn’t understand the words at first. I think I was trying to listen to them in the wrong language.
A blue door opened. I was a little afraid. But I went up into the sky and looked down from above, as if into a doll’s house.
In a small bare room with a single chair and a single bed, a monk was talking to a pale young man with bleeding feet. (‘Not him again!’ I thought. ‘Why is it always him?’)
‘Take off your wet clothes,’ the monk coaxed gently, ‘We’ll get you some dry things and something to eat, and we’ll dress these feet. Then you must rest. You have a very high temperature indeed.’
Another monk arrived. Another little monk down there in the doll’s house with miniature dressings and a tiny bowl of water.
‘We’ll have to undress him,’ said the first one. ‘I don’t think he can do it for himself.’
‘Are you sure he speaks Croatian?’
‘Yes. Well he spoke it clearly enough when he arrived. His name is George. He’s from the City.’
‘Alright then George,’ said the second monk. ‘We’ll just take off these pants…’
‘NO!’ the young man shouted. ‘No, leave me alone!’
His hand came out to push the monk away. ‘Easy, George, easy!’ said the monk.
Looking down from my high vantage point, I smiled.
‘Silly boy,’ I thought, ‘he thinks he’s going to get raped again. But really this is a totally different situation.’
So when the monks tried again to remove his clothes, the young man did not resist.
‘Blood here too,’ muttered the first monk.
‘My God, what’s happened to him?’
‘Easy, George, easy!’
I closed my eyes and sank into a dream. I was walking slowly past the blue doors. The cool quiet corridor stretched away into the distance. Why must we always open the doors and disturb things? But it occurred to me that even if I never opened any of them at all, there was no guarantee that one of them might not suddenly open of its own accord, suddenly, and without warning…
I woke up abruptly. I found I was sitting on the bed with bandages on both feet, wrapped in a clean woollen robe.
‘Here, drink this!’ one of the monks was saying. ‘It’ll warm you up. Then you should get into bed and have a proper sleep.’
I took the warm cup and lifted it to my lips. I was about to drink when I remembered what the old woman had told me in the square outside.
‘The Holy Machine!’ I whimpered. ‘I want to see the Holy Machine!’
‘Not now, my friend, not now. You are too tired and too sick. You can see him later. He isn’t going away.’
67
But as soon as the monk had left me, I got out of bed and went out into the corridor. It was early evening. The cloud had broken up and there were pools of barred sunlight on the flagstones beneath every window. It was very quiet. And I felt quiet. After all my ramblings and hallucinations I was calm and clear-headed.
I passed a kitchen and a chapel where a service of some kind was taking place, and then I came to that sunlit courtyard which I had glimpsed on the way in.
There were monks sitting out there, watching and listening to something I couldn’t see. Full of dread, I crept towards the archway.
I heard a strange, buzzing, inhuman voice.
How would I face it? That wise stern silvery head…
Shouldn’t I just go on down the corridor?
Huddled on a stone bench under a window was a small, stooped, skeletal thing, not silver at all but a stained, dirty brown. Its eyes were crab-like stalks embedded in hollow metal hemispheres which swivelled slowly from side to side. Its limbs dangled like the limbs of a discarded puppet. Its voice sounded like a poorly tuned radio receiver, fizzing and buzzing with interference. I couldn’t make out what words it spoke and seem- ingly nor could anyone else, for a monk sitting in front of it acted as interpreter.
I was devastated. This was an obvious hoax. It was just a heap of junk wired up to a hidden operator with a microphone, or to a recording of some kind.. The so-called ‘interpreter’ was probably just making it up as he went along. It was all so cheap and so obvious. It might fool a superstitious and technologically illiterate peasant, the sort who fell for saint’s bones and statues that wept. But it certainly wouldn’t fool anyone acquainted with real robots.
‘So that’s that,’ I thought bleakly, ‘I suppose I should have known better.’
I sat down anyway to listen. I supposed I’d have to pretend an interest in these monks’ peculiar idol if they were to look upon me with favour and let me stay.